UK Pol - #independenceday

[Bella]

God, this election is depressing. Those of you who actually have the right to vote, please do so. I would say preferably not for any of the clowns, but then you're basically voting Green.

[Randomnamechange]

get out the vote ie mobilizing your own base.

gotcha

God, this election is depressing. Those of you who actually have the right to vote, please do so. I would say preferably not for any of the clowns, but then you're basically voting Green.

i don't really feel like Greens escape that category tbh

[zoraster]

Only 24 hours until I get to start ragging on Corbyn again.

[Randomnamechange]

isn't your avi bet in favour of Corbyn?

[zoraster]

the opposite.

[Randomnamechange]

must have misread it mb

[zoraster]

it's stated a little confusingly. Suffice it to say, I do not think there will be a lot of joy for Labour tomorrow. I hope I'm wrong, but if they aren't in a position to scrabble together a coalition, I hope they lose badly and learn some lessons from what should have been a very winnable race.

[Randomnamechange]

I'm curious, what should hey have done better? They've played a v smart campaign to reduce the lead by as much as they have. Apart from not locking Diane Abbot in a cellar at the start of thr campaign i didnt see a massive amount of issues with it?

[zoraster]

Once the election was

announced

Labour has done a fine job. And the Tories have tried their level best to help Labour out. But they were always going to have an immense amount of trouble with this election. What I'd have done differently is mostly everything before the announcement:

1. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever select Jeremy Corbyn. Everything I say after this point is basically second fiddle to this first point.

2. It's tough because of the different constituencies that Labour makes up, but Brexit should never have been allowed to calcify. Labour rolled over on it, and that ceded all potential ground for difference on an issue that they could have won on. Instead, the majority of their MPs voted for the government's brexit proposal. The Brexit campaign was a cynical one that even supporters of Brexit recognized as false in the immediate aftermath, but it was given legitimacy when the opposition decided it wasn't really worth talking about.

[Randomnamechange]

I disagree on point 1. Corbyn is a hell of a lot better than Ed Milliband and the whole 'unelectable Corbyn' angle is massively over-exaggerated by the media. He's overtaken May in polling on leadership ability and now that he's in the limelight people are realizing he is better than they thought.
People like Owen Smith would just continue to slowly facilitate the decline of the Labour Party into an unelectable mess that refuses to update their stances.

[zoraster]

No. He really is not better than Ed Milliband. Owen Smith would have been no great giant of politics, but he would have been better than Corbyn.

And no. It really is not exaggerated. It's not impossible that some situation will occur that Corbyn could be elected, but it will be despite him.

Yes, he's "better than people thought" but that doesn't really go very far because it's basically true of any time people actually have to gut up and decide to vote on someone.

[Randomnamechange]

What is the actual issue with Corbyn?

[zoraster]

I think his presence allows the Tories to get away with all manner of terrible things. Brexit itself can be pinned on him. Sure, it can be on the Tories too, but any other Labour leader of the past 20 years wouldn't give mealy-mouthed campaign in favor of Remain.

Ultimately the thing I care most about is not having the Tories in charge, continuing austerity, succumbing to an even deeper loathing of immigrants, decreasing the public nature of the NHS, etc. and I thoroughly reject the idea that Labour under its previous iterations were particularly close to this Tory party. So when I see Corbyn, whose inherent appeal is fairly narrow, I think he does his party harm as the head of it.

Politics is rarely as simple as "unelectable" or not: but we can say that certain things create unnecessary headwinds.

[Max]

Corbyn has basically offered the most economically attractive and competent vision for the UK in 40 years. I struggle to believe that anyone else would have offered such a popular manifesto.

The Conservative party at this election are basically the furthest right that they have been in a long time. Their nationalist, authoritarian and corporatist message and planning on cutting the state to 35% of GDP (lower than basically any western country).

In opposition to an extreme right wing vision for the country, the choice was the moderate stylings of last election (which failed) or adopting a stronger approach that shifts the British economy in line with other industrialised European economies. Ed Miliband wasn't perfect, he would be a better opposition for May. But the rest of the leadership candidates basically failed themselves by not winning, despite a strong lead (they talk about entryists, but Corbyn was first placed against the rest of the candidates).

Btw, I went to an Owen Smith event in Hull. He implied he had a 30 inch penis. His leadership campaign was marked by repeated allegations of sexism. And his entire stance was "elect me, I'm not Corbyn". He isn't charismatic (nor is Corbyn), but nor is Theresa May. I can't name any sitting MPs that are known that would be good leadership material.

I do like Lisa Nandy though.

Btw, I've not seen people provide actual ideas for what he should have done over Brexit. He did events all over the country, the BBC didn't cover him - they didn't really give Labour any coverage (10% vs tories 30%). Some people say he should have joined the main campaign with the Conservatives, but that didn't work well in Scotland. Also remember that the Brexit campaign was treated as Tory vs Tory for the obvious reason that the only people in parliament who wanted to leave and were high profile were all Tories.

It wasn't as if any other Labour politician appeared in anything except that one leave woman.

The real Brexit failing was nobody (but particularly the BBC) for not explaining what the European Union actually did. You might say that the parties should have done that, but basic education coming from the public broadcaster isn't a big ask. Ignorance won that day.

[zoraster]

If it's so popular, I guess we'll see a surprise victory tomorrow.

[Max]

I mean it's certainly more popular than Ed Miliband's, Gordon Brown's and the polling averages have it around on par with 2005 Blair. On the simple measure of change in vote share, Corbyn might increase vote share by a figure comparable to Thatcher and Blair. Against the headwind of the UKIP vote collapse.

It's highly possible that the left can only win in the UK when the right wing vote is split between further right parties like UKIP and centrists like the Lib Dems, which might be post the Tories destroying Brexit - which is bad, but not implausible.

We can't always get a once-in-a-generation swing, and certainly not in two years. Since '45 only one swing has been enough to overcome this deficit. So Corbyn's victory parameters are going to be a good hung parliament or better.

If Corbyn is peforming to low ends of polling, it'll be a miserable day. But if he's performing to the top range, it might be a pretty happy day.

[Not_Mafia]

It largely depends on youth turnout and I'm not optimistic

[Drench]

comparisons are meaningless when the major party vote share is the highest it's been in decades

[Max]

I live in a pretty working class area and the young people I know seem unusually hyped. (Like younger siblings of my friends). Some are too young to vote, and my sister who is 30 (so the "young vote") has never voted before and got all of friends to register.

The question is whether there's enough people like her.

[Max]

comparisons are meaningless when the major party vote share is the highest it's been in decades

I mean, somewhat. The UK doesn't have big vote share changes, basically ever. And it's only recently the vote split. So this helps backtrack the numbers in pretty good detail.

In 2015, the Lib Dem collapse basically fell 2:1 for Tories. With about the same outflow to UKIP (slightly more from Conservatives). If we give the votes back accordingly, you have a residual left/right vote of about 40/50 with core Lib Dems in the middle.

Give UKIP 5% and minor parties 5% and suddenly you're at 35/45, which is what the polls that think there'll be a 2015 style turnout are saying it'll be. Give a 3%ish swing that the YouGov method gives and you're at their 39/42, hung parliament territory.

Demographics are obv at play though, young people are concentrated in cities, so they might not help, even if they turn out in droves.

[zoraster]

we shall see! I think there's a lot of wishful thinking involved. I hope I'm wrong.

[Drench]

elecciones! elecciones! elecciones!

[Drench]

i think anything could happen except like a labor plurality
unless there's a REALLY big polling error
and then whatever, we'll have a couple spills, life goes on

[Davsto]

It largely depends on youth turnout and I'm not optimistic

Partly because this election is in the middle of fucking exam season

I'm not even eligible for voting but I'm still pissed about that

[Bellaphant]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng ... 7-election