[EmperorMagus]

My condolences to all the poor UK folks who have to put up with this bullshit. After the Brexit referendum and then a year of Trump BS another election is just ... ungh

Although, I really feel like May is not acting in the best interests of Britain by calling a snap election. At best her party is going to lose 5-6 months of time for the Brexit negotiations and at worst the Tories are going to be ousted and someone knew will have to take them over. A clusterfuck either way.

[Werthead]

Fourth year in a row of major electoral upheavals (after the Scottish referendum in 2014, the last General Election in 2015 and the EU referendum in 2016)

Quote

In all honesty the LibDems have no chance. I've always gone that way (or Green when the chance permits) but it is really going to be a waste this time.

That depends on your seat. My seat has been a two-horse race between the Lib Dems and Tories for decades, Labour and the rest don't stand a chance, so I'll be voting Lib Dem. The chances of the Lib Dems winning is trivial, but it is quite possible for them to get back up to 20 or so seats (getting back up to the 50+ of 2010 is more fanciful, however) which does give them a little more influence.

Labour has very little chance, but the one chance they do have to maintain their current line is to go all-in, hard, on the NHS. There is a major funding crisis brewing in the NHS based on demographics (the baby boomers will be retiring in bigger and bigger numbers between now and 2022 and the NHS urgently needs a major budget hike to cope or it will start crashing) which will be quite catastrophic if the current Tory line is maintained. If Labour can land points there, they can probably do better than expected.

The other possibility is the Conservative election expenses scandal blowing up and the race suddenly going Francois Fillon on us.

By the way, the Conservative election expense scandal just blew up and the race could go Francois Fillon on us. Hoo boy.

[Khellendros]

Fid, on 18 April 2017 - 07:26 PM, said:

Can I just have 8 weeks on a desert island with no TV radio or news? It is going to be hideously tedious again.

Everyone I've talked to today (and myself) has reacted in the same way.

[worry]

Why is it such a foregone conclusion?

[Khellendros]

EmperorMagus, on 18 April 2017 - 07:49 PM, said:

My condolences to all the poor UK folks who have to put up with this bullshit. After the Brexit referendum and then a year of Trump BS another election is just ... ungh

Although, I really feel like May is not acting in the best interests of Britain by calling a snap election. At best her party is going to lose 5-6 months of time for the Brexit negotiations and at worst the Tories are going to be ousted and someone knew will have to take them over. A clusterfuck either way.

She's not. She's doing it for the same reason that Tories do anything, anytime - political expediency. Very Trumpishly she's been on record several times categorically stating that there will be no chance of an election before 2020 - but here we are, quelle surprise.

[Khellendros]

worry, on 18 April 2017 - 09:40 PM, said:

Why is it such a foregone conclusion?

Because the main opposition party, Labour, are historically low in the polls, an average of 15 points behind the Conservatives when all the main polls are taken together. People dislike the Tories, but they have no faith in Labour, who also have no backing in the press. Labour are painted (and, in many ways, are) as a disunited, chaotic mess at the moment, because the majority of MPs hate their leader, who they've unsuccessfully tried to oust several times (but he has a fairly large popular support base - but of the wrong sorts of voters for national elections, i.e. young, urban, rather than older and rural).


So the entire thing is a gamble by May to earn a landslide election victory and a 100+ majority in Parliament. At the moment they have a slim one, 17 I think.

[Werthead]

Quote

Why is it such a foregone conclusion?

What Khellendros said.

However, it was a foregone conclusion in 2015 that we'd have Labour-Liberal Democrat-SNP coalition, that Scotland would vote for independence (although that margin of error on that was much tighter and IIRC the No vote did pull ahead in the polls just before the final vote), that Remain would win the referendum and Trump would lose the US election, so the pollsters are being more cautious this time around. However, all of those were much closer than this. One pollster on the BBC who's been analysing the errors of margin in the previous votes said he though it was quite possible that the Tories are actually only 7 points ahead rather than 15-20: still enough for a comfortable victory but it wouldn't translate into many more seats for them. The biggest problem in this is that many of the remaining Labour seats are safe seats, with majorities so huge that removing them will be next to impossible. There's a few marginals the Tories or other parties could hoover up, but the most likely positive result for the Tories is a gain of about 20 seats, which would give them a more commanding majority but they'd still be vulnerable to backbench rebellions.

In fact, the Lib Dems are the wild cards in this. There is a strong possibility that the Lib Dem vote which collapsed in the south and in London during 2015 may resurge, as many of those seats voted Remain (this was tested in a by-election recently and the Lib Dems won). If the Lib Dems do reasonably well, winning back say 20 seats in total, most of those would come from the Tories and would negate a modest Labour collapse elsewhere. Also, if the expenses scandal blows up seriously, that could be a gamechanger: the British public were revolted over the last major expenses scandal and it did tremendous damage to all MPs (Labour couldn't capitalise as many of their MPs were implicated as well). This could be enormously worse, with criminal charges against sitting Tory MPs possible.

There is next to no chance that the Tories would lose the election but there is a very strong risk that the election could end with things roughly as they are now, which would probably leave a lot of people annoyed. It would, however, give Theresa May a personal mandate and would negate the Tories from having to follow the 2015 manifesto, which they're already mostly ignoring but it's causing a lot of irritation within the party.

[Tiste Simeon]

This election is a distraction from the fact that 30 Tory MPs are under investigation for expenses fraud from the last election. If they all got found guilty she could potentially lose 30 seats and thus the majority. By aiming for a deeper majority she cements her hold on power...

[Gorefest]

My work have decided that they will pay for my permanent residency permit, which is very nice.

The application process itself is utterly stupid though. And I am in a fortunate position in that I have worked and paid taxes form the day I set foot on UK soil. I dread to think what pensioners/widowers or unemployed EU citizens will have to go through, because some of the proof that they ask is frankly stupid. I need to show yearly tax overviews from the first (!!) five years of work, even though official home office regulations state that you only need to keep such documentation for the last 10 years. I have lived in the UK for over 11 years and luckily despite various moves I managed to keep hold of all my tax overviews (P60s), apart from the bleeding first year (2006-2007). I contacted my work and they say that they don't even have formal documentation dating that far back, but luckily they couyld provide me with a formal annual salary and tax statement for that year so I am still covered. Still stressful as hell though.

The worst thing is that it is the UK government themselves who have a shit administration. In the Netherlands, each time I moved cities I actually had to sign out in my old city and register with the council of my new city. In the UK the only reason I ever had to register with the council is because I wanted to vote in the local elections. So it was an active choice. There is no formal requirement to do so. There are no records and the government has never made any attempt to put formal records for this sort of movement in place. So they can have no idea who is actually in the country at any one point in time. And now they suddenly require all these people to retroactively provide all this evidence, instead of ensuring that we would have been registered at entry point and thus avoiding all sorts of later hassle and headache. Total madness.

[Werthead]

What a difference a month makes.

In my local seat Labour have surged from fourth to second in the opinion polls, edging ahead of the Lib Dems (who won three elections here between 2001 and 2010) and closing down on the Tories, whose sitting MP is under investigation for electoral fraud. There's now a reasonable chance that Labour could win Colchester, which looked utterly impossible just a month ago.

That's been happening right across the board. Some opinion polls now have Labour right on the margin of error, although most put the Conservatives ahead by 4 to 7 points. Even some very pro-Tory, Labour-hating polls have been forced to put it down to about 9 points, whilst a few weeks ago they were on 20.

The Conservatives have really shot themselves in the foot with their manifesto. They decided they could be "hard and honest" in their manifesto and promised five years of brutal cuts, more austerity, pension reductions and taking people's houses off them to pay for social care. With the Tory core vote made up of pensioners, this has turned out to be a catastrophically bad idea. People who were rock solid for May a few weeks ago are now saying they won't vote at all. Simultaneously, the Labour manifesto has come out and it's full of hope, big ideas and optimism. It was also costed, which the Tory one wasn't (well, it was, but it turned out they got their sums wrong). The Tories also tried their "Well, Jeremy Corbyn said we should talk to the IRA so that makes him pro-terrorism even though we ended up talking to the IRA ourselves a few years later, but we're not pro-terroists, somehow," attack line which people got bored of years ago. The fact that a sitting Tory councillor in Croydon is also a former member of the IRA has also come to light, which has made taking that line more difficult.

The terror attacks in Manchester have also exposed key weaknesses in the police services, which have lost 19,000 officers since 2009 and are needed by the intelligence services to back up their operations. Given the massive profile of this attacker (who had form over years, many police reports, had travelled to Libya and back and had procured explosives through channels that were supposed to be monitored, as well as having a support network), he really should have been caught and the security services have some tough questions to answer. This wasn't some lone nutter with an SUV and a knife.

The Conservatives should still win, but they have nothing like the energy and momentum behind them now that they did a few weeks ago. It's possible that the majority gains will be minor, or the Tories could even lose a few seats. Worse, if Corbyn manages to increase vote share (which looks certain), picks up a few seats (which looks possible, if not quite as likely) or even loses far less seats than expected, he will remain in position and the Tories will lose one of their long-term strategic objectives, getting rid of a more left-leaning opponent in the hopes that he'll be replaced by a centrist they'd find easier to neutralise.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 28 May 2017 - 11:36 AM

[Messremb]

Colchester? Mine is Witham which still looks pretty solid blue.

Will your current MP was an officer in our Student Union at university. I wasn't impressed with him then.

[Werthead]

Messremb, on 28 May 2017 - 12:02 PM, said:

Colchester? Mine is Witham which still looks pretty solid blue.

Will your current MP was an officer in our Student Union at university. I wasn't impressed with him then.

He came in and did a few things Bob Russell (LibDems) couldn't get done in 14 years (like renaming our third station so it gets more funding, which was weird) so he's made a good first impression. But that was fairly low-hanging fruit and he is being hit over the head with the expenses investigation (especially saying he was exonerated and then the police said they were re-opening it). A bit embarassing, even if it was central office funding issues and not him personally involved.

The Lib Dems made a mistake by getting Russell to stand again. I can see why, as he has profile and they didn't have an alternative lined up and were caught on the hop, but he's become so polarising in Colchester that people will vote Tory just to keep him out.

[Werthead]

And YouGov are now predicting a hung Parliament.

[worry]

Interesting. Hanging parliament might be better than using the guillotine, since the swinging bodies make such good reminders.

[worry]

Not to butt in, but you guys -- as a country -- should marry this man. https://twitter.com/...680061963751424
"Labour will roll out 30 hours of free childcare a week to all 2-4 year olds to give all our children the best possible start in life."

[Illuyankas]

 18740812_10155320081022603_3167929621298971449_n.jpg (9.56K)
Number of downloads: 0

[Tiste Simeon]

I mean based on Brexit and Trump I wouldn't hold too much hope on what the polls say but the Tories do seem to be bungling things. Is it enough? I don't know. A part of me would like to think so. Another part of me is terrified of waking up on the 9th to find they have strengthened their grip on the country.

[Morgoth]

I think everyone should listen to John Oliver and Andy Zaltzman's podcast The Bugle, in particular episode 292 - A career defining election. It's from right after the results of the 2015 election, and it sums up everything pretty well.

Sadly, the Bugle, though still funny, is not as good these days now that Oliver left.

[Werthead]

Quote

I mean based on Brexit and Trump I wouldn't hold too much hope on what the polls say but the Tories do seem to be bungling things. Is it enough? I don't know. A part of me would like to think so. Another part of me is terrified of waking up on the 9th to find they have strengthened their grip on the country.

A Labour win would be difficult. A Labour coalition win with the SNP and the LibDems and Greens might be doable, but the SNP price will be a 2nd indy ref. If they lost a few seats (say 10 or more) Labour might be able to get them to drop that demand. Given the SNP's support is not rooted in independence (given the number of people who voted to Remain in 2014 and then voted for the SNP in 2015) that could be possible. Labour giving into the indy ref demand would not really be a goer.

[Khellendros]

Werthead, on 30 May 2017 - 10:11 PM, said:

And YouGov are now predicting a hung Parliament.

As much as I'd want to see that, I just don't see it happening. I still don't see anything but an increased Tory majority of some kind. It's interesting that the one paper which led on this news as a headline, The Times, is a right-leaning paper, i.e. trying to motivate Conservative voters to actually go out and vote and not not bother because "it's a sure thing".

The YouGov one is self-admittedly using a controversial method, and they're excusing themselves by saying there's actually a wide margin for error - that is, it could also be that the Tories end up with a 60+ majority.