Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
I welcome the news. It is the last chance for the country to stop the disaster that is Brexit. I am not concerned about the national opinion polls. Labour won't lose any seats in London or Scotland. Any sensible Labour voter in the South West is going to vote Liberal Democrat. Any sensible Lib Dem voter in the North will vote Labour. It will be interesting to see how the opinion polls move over the next few weeks in those seats with traditionally high Lib Dem votes.
I'd love to live in your world (genuinely), cannot see it happening though, sadly
So who will be the main party leaders, coming in to the Autumn conference season. I am going for...
Tories - Theresa May Labour - John McDonnell LibDems - Tim Farron Ukip - Nigel Farage SNP - Nicola Sturgeon
In your opinion, why do you think they'll be the leaders?
I don't think the Tories will ditch Theresa May. I think Labour will perform worse in 2017 than in 2015 and the leader will have to step down. But I think that the left-leaning membership of the party will support the highest-profile left-leaning name; and my guess is that would be McDonnell. Tim Farron will secure more seats in 2017 than Blegg did in 2015 and will therefore remain as LibDem leader. Ukip will be trounced (there is, clearly, no point in them any more) so Nuttall will be toast. Farage will "reluctantly" step in as "interim caretaker" ((c) Katrien Meire). Nicola Sturgeon is untouchable right now - at least until the next Scottish referendum.
I also very confidently predict that some, most or all of the above will fail to happen!
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Why don't you change allegiance to another party like, oh I dunno, the Greens, @Greenie
I welcome the news. It is the last chance for the country to stop the disaster that is Brexit. I am not concerned about the national opinion polls. Labour won't lose any seats in London or Scotland. Any sensible Labour voter in the South West is going to vote Liberal Democrat. Any sensible Lib Dem voter in the North will vote Labour. It will be interesting to see how the opinion polls move over the next few weeks in those seats with traditionally high Lib Dem votes.
You do realise that outside the urban trendy areas, the North of England was heavily pro Brexit?
You mean the areas where many people live, presumably.
An awful lot of people live in the "blue" areas as well...
Did Cornwall just not understand what they were supposed to be doing ?
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
You do quite a lot of fence sitting an all tbf Leutho
In an ideal world Jezza would remove his mask after the vote tomorrow to reveal someone who looks like George Clooney and has the charisma of Obama. Or he's replaced overnight by someone of that ilk.
Sadly neither are going to happen so we are left with a non-functioning divided opposition, desperately trying to seem like they support Brexit but fooling no one which will get easily beaten whilst Corbyn remains.
The Tories have just got themselves another couple of years of guaranteed government but by that time the implications of Brexit will be increasingly clear to all so they are less likely to be in power until 2025 as a result.
I still maintain the Tories care far, far less about what's good for the country than what's good for the party.
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
I suppose there is a desire from some to vote Nationalist, either for the SNP or UKIP (which purport to be very different...hmmn) and I can only assume that those of a nationalist persuasion are happy to do so for some reason, and others will vote nationalist because they can't bring themselves to vote for one of the others. I find it really hard to understand though, this global movement towards some idealised view of the world. Great Britain, making America great again, Le Pen inviting people to vote for the Frenchness of the French, Sinn Fein, the Scots, the idea of UK independence and sovereignty and so on. To me nationalists seem to want ti stick a pin into a moment from history when they felt their country was great. For the Scots it would be when Mel Gibson took them to the world cup in Argentina sporting Kilts and sporrens, for the English maybe Victorian Britain, or the world wars, maybe for Americans or Australians it would be when white settlers were practicing genocide on an industrial scale against native peoples, maybe for the French it would be the age of the Guillotine or Napoleon. My overall point is that what one person thinks of as their 'nation', good old British values and all that, will differ from what another person thinks of as their nation. Indeed in Fascist Germany they took the notion of being a proper German to a whole new level. I get the romantic yearning for a notion that has never really existed in terms of ones perceived 'nation'. However I really don't see how nationalism of any sort can speak to the reality of our present interconnected Global Village, sharing the same air and water in this part of the galaxy, where indeed there certainly ought to be more things that unite us than divide us.
In an ideal world Jezza would remove his mask after the vote tomorrow to reveal someone who looks like George Clooney and has the charisma of Obama. Or he's replaced overnight by someone of that ilk.
Sadly neither are going to happen so we are left with a non-functioning divided opposition, desperately trying to seem like they support Brexit but fooling no one which will get easily beaten whilst Corbyn remains.
The Tories have just got themselves another couple of years of guaranteed government but by that time implications of Brexit will be increasingly clear to all so are less likely to be in power until 2025 as a result.
I still maintain the Tories care far, far less about what's good for the country than what's good for the party.
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
Lib Dems only credible English party who are opposing Brexit...
This must present some real dilemmas for Labour MPs like Starmer who are anti Brexit and probably thought any referendum wouldn't happen until after/in 2 years once we know about the Brexit deal, and I'm sure plenty would have thought Corbyn wouldn't be around by 2019/20... But either way they were probably resigned to being able to argue "the terms of Brexit" rather than reversing it.
Effectively, a General Election gives the possibility of a manifesto like Tim Fallon's which will state that they want to reverse Brexit... Rather than just the terms of it...
I'm sure there's a lot of Labour party MPs brains whirring into overdrive at the moment. For a lot of constituents it is a possible change in MP, for a lot of these people, they could be losing their jobs, and largely because they are part of a party that is led by a man with values completely different from their own.
If you asked 100 Labour MPs, or 100 members of the public even, 3 years ago who would be the party losing a Copeland Seat standing for a pro Brexit party in an election and I don't think anyone of a sane mind would say Labour... A lot of them are part of a party that doesn't represent them or their constituents... Add to that that their job is what is at stake and a lot of them will have to make the decision whether to stick or twist...
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
Interesting point, I guess that says more about you than me then?
Lib Dems only credible English party who are opposing Brexit...
Conservatives and Labour are both pro Remain (unless they have both done u-turns from the referendum campaign) but are both pro respecting the will of the people. Big difference.
Because the Tories have no credible opposition, its a good call from May. Hopefully once Corbyn gets trounced he will leave and take Abbot with him and then Labour can become credible and current. So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Credit where it's due, you have the hardest-to-decipher politics of anyone on CL
So when May says the country is united but Westminster isn't, the election is supposed to make the country as divided as Westminster and not the other way around?
I suppose there is a desire from some to vote Nationalist, either for the SNP or UKIP (which purport to be very different...hmmn) and I can only assume that those of a nationalist persuasion are happy to do so for some reason, and others will vote nationalist because they can't bring themselves to vote for one of the others. I find it really hard to understand though, this global movement towards some idealised view of the world. Great Britain, making America great again, Le Pen inviting people to vote for the Frenchness of the French, Sinn Fein, the Scots, the idea of UK independence and sovereignty and so on. To me nationalists seem to want ti stick a pin into a moment from history when they felt their country was great. For the Scots it would be when Mel Gibson took them to the world cup in Argentina sporting Kilts and sporrens, for the English maybe Victorian Britain, or the world wars, maybe for Americans or Australians it would be when white settlers were practicing genocide on an industrial scale against native peoples, maybe for the French it would be the age of the Guillotine or Napoleon. My overall point is that what one person thinks of as their 'nation', good old British values and all that, will differ from what another person thinks of as their nation. Indeed in Fascist Germany they took the notion of being a proper German to a whole new level. I get the romantic yearning for a notion that has never really existed in terms of ones perceived 'nation'. However I really don't see how nationalism of any sort can speak to the reality of our present interconnected Global Village, sharing the same air and water in this part of the galaxy, where indeed there certainly ought to be more things that unite us than divide us.
I'm not going to make too much comment but Great Britain is not exactly a new concept and you may struggle to find anyone that yearns for a return to world wars!
If the Lib Dems sell themselves on a Remain ticket this could get interesting, even in constituencies which are pro-Brexit.
Take my constituency of Braintree for example. It's been blue as long as anybody can remember, and was 60% leave in the EU referendum. Safe seat you would think?
However, 33,523 people voted remain. That's more than the 27,071 votes the current Tory MP was elected with back in 2015. We also need to bear in mind that the leave vote will be split - UKIP will see this as an opportunity to capitalise and will probably play on fears of backsliding on Brexit. In other constituencies there are leave voters who won't bring themselves to vote Tory (or Labour).
It may come down to the strength of the LD campaign, and just how important the EU is to those Remain voters.
Before the referendum, I said that people are often far more motivated to get off their backside and vote for change, rather than for the status quo. This worked in favour of the Brexiteers last time around, but now effectively the tables have turned. Many of those who voted for Remain care more deeply about this than any other issue - this shouldn't be underestimated.
We also shouldn't forget about the 3 million or so EU national who weren't eligible to vote in the referendum, but will be in a General Election.
I think this could backfire on the Tories to be honest!
Now you've raised my hopes and I'll actually be looking forward to the result. "Thanks a lot", he said ironically.
Lib Dems only credible English party who are opposing Brexit...
Conservatives and Labour are both pro Remain (unless they have both done u-turns from the referendum campaign) but are both pro respecting the will of the people. Big difference.
They were pro remain, they are now, based on the will of the people, pro Brexit.
Let me put it this way then, the Lib Dems are the only big party in England that don't care about democracy.
Tories will win by a landslide, labour will be wiped out and wake up to the fact that corbyn is a good protest politician like Dennis Skinner but in no way is capable of leading the country, sadly there are many also in other parties that fit that vein.
Comments
So another 4 years of the rich robbing the poor then....oh joy.
Sadly neither are going to happen so we are left with a non-functioning divided opposition, desperately trying to seem like they support Brexit but fooling no one which will get easily beaten whilst Corbyn remains.
The Tories have just got themselves another couple of years of guaranteed government but by that time the implications of Brexit will be increasingly clear to all so they are less likely to be in power until 2025 as a result.
I still maintain the Tories care far, far less about what's good for the country than what's good for the party.
I find it really hard to understand though, this global movement towards some idealised view of the world. Great Britain, making America great again, Le Pen inviting people to vote for the Frenchness of the French, Sinn Fein, the Scots, the idea of UK independence and sovereignty and so on.
To me nationalists seem to want ti stick a pin into a moment from history when they felt their country was great. For the Scots it would be when Mel Gibson took them to the world cup in Argentina sporting Kilts and sporrens, for the English maybe Victorian Britain, or the world wars, maybe for Americans or Australians it would be when white settlers were practicing genocide on an industrial scale against native peoples, maybe for the French it would be the age of the Guillotine or Napoleon. My overall point is that what one person thinks of as their 'nation', good old British values and all that, will differ from what another person thinks of as their nation. Indeed in Fascist Germany they took the notion of being a proper German to a whole new level.
I get the romantic yearning for a notion that has never really existed in terms of ones perceived 'nation'. However I really don't see how nationalism of any sort can speak to the reality of our present interconnected Global Village, sharing the same air and water in this part of the galaxy, where indeed there certainly ought to be more things that unite us than divide us.
Wagstaff was much better.
Lib Dems only credible English party who are opposing Brexit...
This must present some real dilemmas for Labour MPs like Starmer who are anti Brexit and probably thought any referendum wouldn't happen until after/in 2 years once we know about the Brexit deal, and I'm sure plenty would have thought Corbyn wouldn't be around by 2019/20... But either way they were probably resigned to being able to argue "the terms of Brexit" rather than reversing it.
Effectively, a General Election gives the possibility of a manifesto like Tim Fallon's which will state that they want to reverse Brexit... Rather than just the terms of it...
I'm sure there's a lot of Labour party MPs brains whirring into overdrive at the moment. For a lot of constituents it is a possible change in MP, for a lot of these people, they could be losing their jobs, and largely because they are part of a party that is led by a man with values completely different from their own.
If you asked 100 Labour MPs, or 100 members of the public even, 3 years ago who would be the party losing a Copeland Seat standing for a pro Brexit party in an election and I don't think anyone of a sane mind would say Labour... A lot of them are part of a party that doesn't represent them or their constituents... Add to that that their job is what is at stake and a lot of them will have to make the decision whether to stick or twist...
Let me put it this way then, the Lib Dems are the only big party in England that don't care about democracy.