General Election, June 8th

[Alf Bentley]

Excellent article here on the prospects for May's policy-lite, "strong and stable" one-party state: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/opinion/theresa-mays-vapid-vision-for-a-one-party-state.html?_r=0

 

It's from the New York Times but written by an academic from Goldsmith's College.

 

Samples:

"The Conservatives are being presented as a new type of “people’s party,” under which everyone can huddle to stay safe from the multiple storms that are brewing”

 

"Mrs. May’s idea that her opponents are merely playing self-interested political “games” is a classic populist trope, one that suggests that constitutional democracy is really an obstacle standing between people and leader".

 

"She is seeking to personify the nation state itself — a job that technically belongs to the queen. In a campaign video, which sees her speaking solemnly in front of a Union Jack in a dimly lit room as if announcing a new war, she uses the term “us” in multiple ways: At times it means the Conservative Party, at others it means the government, and at other times it means Britain itself".

 

"What is worrying about Mrs. May is that she seems to be deliberately aggravating Britain’s existential anxiety, precisely so as to benefit from it personally. Her extraordinary Trumpian accusation that European Union leaders are seeking to interfere in the election seems to be aimed at stoking nationalist resentment toward the very people who will end up deciding what type of trade deals and “divorce bill” Britain will be granted. This suggests that she views the destruction of the Labour Party as a more important national priority than Britain’s long-term economic prosperity".

 

"Mrs. May clearly has a good emotional antenna, especially when it comes to sensing the fears and resentments of what she calls “ordinary working people.” But if it turns out that she is a weak negotiator with the European Union, and if she fails to grasp the magnitude of Britain’s economic vulnerability, the politics of resentment will be all she has to fall back on. Britain’s conservative tabloid press will praise every step in this direction with its usual wartime nostalgia, and she will continue to claim the support of “the people.” But the reality will be a fractured nation slipping ungraciously to the status of an angry and irrelevant midsize economy".

[Sharpe's Fox]

She's basically a nasty barren old slag

[Strokes]

2 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

She's basically a nasty barren old slag

I can't wait for all the feminists on here to berate you for that. 

[Sharpe's Fox]

Just now, Strokes said:

I can't wait for all the feminists on here to berate you for that. 

It's a football forum we are all just sad blokes

[Guest MattP]

37 minutes ago, Alf Bentley said:

 

Yep, the Tories definitely stand a good chance of taking Leicester West, unless the polls change.

 

Plenty of arguments for that:

- Not a massive majority last time, with a big UKIP vote, probably mainly going to the Tories

- Labour did worse than average in the Midlands at the local elections

- Labour is doing much worse in white working-class areas than in big, metropolitan cities, university towns, more racially-mixed areas & more prosperous areas

 

A strong, well-liked local candidate (like Kendall?) or strong local activist base might gain you another couple of thousand votes, but not much more. That might be enough to save a seat in a close contest, but not if the national swing suggested a 5000 majority or something. Most people vote for the party, not the candidate.

 

I reckon massively variable swing could be a real feature of this election. There could be very big swings in struggling white former industrial towns or struggling working-class areas, but very little swing in big cities and prosperous areas.

It wouldn't surprise me to see Labour holding tight marginals - maybe even winning 1 or 2 - in London/South/SW & the big northern cities, but losing seats with large majorities in the Midlands, NE, North outside Manchester/Liverpool/Leeds etc.

Labour (16,501)

Tory (8,848)

UKIP (5,950)

Green (1,878)

Lib Dem (1,507)

 

You would have to assume a good 50% of that UKIP vote will go and probably 10% of the Labour vote Tory so they are looking at just shy of 14,000, I think Kendall will pick up a few from the Greens and Liberals so she's then probably on a possible vote of 16,000 so it will all come down to how many of her voters she can get out, if a lot of Labour voters abstain which is very possible with the current leadership then I think she'll lose, if she can get 90% of them out again to vote she'll hold on - it's certain to be a close one.

 

Although turnout was very low at the election (54%), there could even be more voters here that didn't bother last time as it's a safe seat that will this time.

 

I had a check on her Twitter account earlier, aside from looking lovely as she always does she's out on the streets every single day, she is under no illlusions how tough it's going to be. My partner lives in Leicester West so I'm looking forward to seeing the leaflet, its possible the Conservative one will have a picture of Corbyn on but Labour's won't!

 

Completely agree with regards to regional variable swing, I'll think we'll see a bigger swing to the Conservatives across the North and the Midlands than the South.

 

3 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

She's basically a nasty barren old slag

The kinder, gentler politics?

 

On a serious note that's a great read, I can't disagree with almost anything in there but I do think May has played an absolute blinder. Although if Corbyn and his cult do manage to seize control of the Labour party after this election I think it's destruction as an electoral force would be a good thing and then hopefully a moderate centre left alternative could prop up as a proper opposition, I wouldn't blame anyone from the other side for thinking the same about the Conservative party either had it been railroaded by people from the hard/alt right etc

[leicsmac]

22 minutes ago, MattP said:

Labour (16,501)

Tory (8,848)

UKIP (5,950)

Green (1,878)

Lib Dem (1,507)

 

You would have to assume a good 50% of that UKIP vote will go and probably 10% of the Labour vote Tory so they are looking at just shy of 14,000, I think Kendall will pick up a few from the Greens and Liberals so she's then probably on a possible vote of 16,000 so it will all come down to how many of her voters she can get out, if a lot of Labour voters abstain which is very possible with the current leadership then I think she'll lose, if she can get 90% of them out again to vote she'll hold on - it's certain to be a close one.

 

Although turnout was very low at the election (54%), there could even be more voters here that didn't bother last time as it's a safe seat that will this time.

 

I had a check on her Twitter account earlier, aside from looking lovely as she always does she's out on the streets every single day, she is under no illlusions how tough it's going to be. My partner lives in Leicester West so I'm looking forward to seeing the leaflet, its possible the Conservative one will have a picture of Corbyn on but Labour's won't!

 

Completely agree with regards to regional variable swing, I'll think we'll see a bigger swing to the Conservatives across the North and the Midlands than the South.

 

The kinder, gentler politics?

 

On a serious note that's a great read, I can't disagree with almost anything in there but I do think May has played an absolute blinder. Although if Corbyn and his cult do manage to seize control of the Labour party after this election I think it's destruction as an electoral force would be a good thing and then hopefully a moderate centre left alternative could prop up as a proper opposition, I wouldn't blame anyone from the other side for thinking the same about the Conservative party either had it been railroaded by people from the hard/alt right etc

5

Might have asked you this before, but would you say the Tories did similar reconstruction after the Howard fiasco in the mid-2000's?

[Sharpe's Fox]

50 minutes ago, MattP said:

The kinder, gentler politics?

Yeah well you have a squeeky voice so there

[Strokes]

1 hour ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

It's a football forum we are all just sad blokes

It depends on who is making the comment I think or who it is about.

[Jon the Hat]

Been reading the BBC summary of the Labour maifesto:  There is just no way this is costed.  Absolutely impossible.  Spend here, spend there spend everywhere!

 

My personal favourite is completely contradictory 20% VAT on private school fees, and ensuring all primary school kids 5-7 are in classes of less than 30.  The first definitely wont cause a huge drop in kids in private pre- prep education, leading to even more pressure on primary places will it..  Jesus.

[Guest MattP]

47 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Might have asked you this before, but would you say the Tories did similar reconstruction after the Howard fiasco in the mid-2000's?

Absolutely, massively, it was Theresa May who gave the speech at a conference around that time that they need to face upto the fact a lot of people see them as the nasty party, it then became the next leader's job to change that and for all Cameron's faults he did very well in doing so, a lot of people I knew at the time said the Tories could never win again because of the demographics, now we sit here with them polling on 50% and Hindu's and Sikhs and now more likely to vote Tory than Labour.  - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-4-charts-that-show-labour-may-be-losing-the-ethnic-minority-vote-10274051.html

 

It ended up with a massive campaign to take it away from being seen as a party of only the white middle class, Cameron was being pictured with his turban on outside Gurdwara's and we had Black and Asian candidates being propelled to the front bench like Warsi, Javed, and Kwarteng. I watched BBC parliament the other week and they re-ran the 1992 victory, even as short a time as that ago the Conservatives lost in Cheltenham and it was considered a controversial seat as they has selected a black candidate (Taylor I think he was called) - imagine that now, it would be unthinkable for a major party to be in a controversy because of the skin colour of a candidate.

 

They seemed prepared to lose a lot of the harder side of the vote to UKIP to achieve this and grab more of the middle ground, now they've got the middle ground and bought that vote back, extremely lucky mind, had the EU ref gone the other way and Cameron was still in office they would probably be around 30% now. But we'll never know.

 

19 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

Yeah well you have a squeeky voice so there

[leicsmac]

16 minutes ago, MattP said:

Absolutely, massively, it was Theresa May who gave the speech at a conference around that time that they need to face upto the fact a lot of people see them as the nasty party, it then became the next leader's job to change that and for all Cameron's faults he did very well in doing so, a lot of people I knew at the time said the Tories could never win again because of the demographics, now we sit here with them polling on 50% and Hindu's and Sikhs and now more likely to vote Tory than Labour.  - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-4-charts-that-show-labour-may-be-losing-the-ethnic-minority-vote-10274051.html

 

It ended up with a massive campaign to take it away from being seen as a party of only the white middle class, Cameron was being pictured with his turban on outside Gurdwara's and we had Black and Asian candidates being propelled to the front bench like Warsi, Javed, and Kwarteng. I watched BBC parliament the other week and they re-ran the 1992 victory, even as short a time as that ago the Conservatives lost in Cheltenham and it was considered a controversial seat as they has selected a black candidate (Taylor I think he was called) - imagine that now, it would be unthinkable for a major party to be in a controversy because of the skin colour of a candidate.

 

They seemed prepared to lose a lot of the harder side of the vote to UKIP to achieve this and grab more of the middle ground, now they've got the middle ground and bought that vote back, extremely lucky mind, had the EU ref gone the other way and Cameron was still in office they would probably be around 30% now. But we'll never know.

 

Yeah, that all figures. It baffles me how both parties sometimes completely lose track of how important the middle ground is.

 

I hope Labour can reinvent themselves in that way at some point because right now people are thinking, rightly or wrongly, that they're not addressing that middle ground. And every good democratic system needs an effective opposition to the sitting government.

[Guest MattP]

4 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Yeah, that all figures. It baffles me how both parties sometimes completely lose track of how important the middle ground is.

 

I hope Labour can reinvent themselves in that way at some point because right now people are thinking, rightly or wrongly, that they're not addressing that middle ground. And every good democratic system needs an effective opposition to the sitting government.

The battle for the Labour party after this election could be something quite incredible, for the first time in history I think we have a major party actually hoping to lose certain MP's from the PLP to make it easier to keep control. I'm convinced Corbyn isn't going to resign, people like him just don't do that, they have to be ousted.

 

I hope the Conservatives win obviously but I also will be happy if I wake up to people like Kendall, Woodcock etc having managed to hold the seats they have. We are going to see some shocks on all sides, I'm tempted to have a few quid on Denis Skinner going in Bolsover, Tories are 5/2, the combined UKIP/Tory vote against him is only about 1,000 behind.

[The Doctor]

5 hours ago, Rob1742 said:

 

Its like giving you the choice of going to watch either Derby or Forest on Saturday, and like fools we make a decision and go to watch one of them. Well there is another choice, don't go and watch eother, or in this case don't vote and they will realise we have had enough of this.

 

If you were then dragged along to watch whoever the majority picked perhaps. It may be a lesser evil choice, but the supposed other option doesn't exist.

[BlueSi13]

3 hours ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

She's basically a nasty barren old slag

Seek help.

[EnderbyFox]

Had high hopes for the interview between Nick Ferrari & the PM after watching him grill labour this week - what an embarrassingly soft interview it was however. Pretty sure I was given a tougher time when I was interviewed for my paper round. Pathetic 

[LiberalFox]

 

From 1992..

[Guest MattP]

13 minutes ago, EnderbyFox said:

Had high hopes for the interview between Nick Ferrari & the PM after watching him grill labour this week - what an embarrassingly soft interview it was however. Pretty sure I was given a tougher time when I was interviewed for my paper round. Pathetic 

I haven't listened but fortunately we have Andrew Neil doing his set of interviews for the BBC in a couple of weeks with all the party leaders.

 

The ones with Corbyn, Nuttall and Sturgeon (who I think he genuinely hates for trying to break up his country) are probably going to be an excruciating watch. There is a reason why the front bench politicians do everything they can to avoid him.

[Sharpe's Fox]

17 minutes ago, MattP said:

I haven't listened but fortunately we have Andrew Neil doing his set of interviews for the BBC in a couple of weeks with all the party leaders.

 

The ones with Corbyn, Nuttall and Sturgeon (who I think he genuinely hates for trying to break up his country) are probably going to be an excruciating watch. There is a reason why the front bench politicians do everything they can to avoid him.

You say this every time he bags a big interview and it never happens. I like Neill but he goes soft on the big hitters and hard on the day to day small fry.

[The Doctor]

Interesting hearing McDonnell talking about the manifesto leak and how our rail system is owned by foreign companies with the profits then funnelled back into, for instance, the german rail system. With moronic nationalism being the flavour of the month at the moment, selling it as "British industry for British people" could be quite a canny move.

[Guest MattP]

10 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

You say this every time he bags a big interview and it never happens. I like Neill but he goes soft on the big hitters and hard on the day to day small fry.

Which interviews are you referring to?

 

The EU ones were great and the only really big hitter since then was the one on article 50 night with May and that wasn't exactly going to be the time for a rottweiler attack. 

[Sharpe's Fox]

6 minutes ago, MattP said:

Which interviews are you referring to?

 

The EU ones were great and the only really big hitter since then was the one on article 50 night with May and that wasn't exactly going to be the time for a rottweiler attack. 

The Article 50 ones specifically, yeah. Like you said I was expecting him to tear into JC and May because they're the weakest leaders probably ever but he was tame.

[Guest MattP]

4 minutes ago, Sharpe's Fox said:

The Article 50 ones specifically, yeah. Like you said I was expecting him to tear into JC and May because they're the weakest leaders probably ever but he was tame.

He was never going to tear into her that night, you don't send the PM on prime time television on her own to be savaged. 

 

In these ones he'll be a lot harder because they all have to go through it, that's the difference. 

[Realist Guy In The Room]

55 minutes ago, MattP said:

I haven't listened but fortunately we have Andrew Neil doing his set of interviews for the BBC in a couple of weeks with all the party leaders.

 

The ones with Corbyn, Nuttall and Sturgeon (who I think he genuinely hates for trying to break up his country) are probably going to be an excruciating watch. There is a reason why the front bench politicians do everything they can to avoid him.

If you're going to listen, forward the first 10 minutes so you dont have to listen to the presenter climbing inside Theresa May's arsehole.

 

I'm not one for the conspiracy stuff but he quite clearly gave her an easy time of it.

[Guest MattP]

Just listened to it, I think you are being harsh.

 

May was squirming when he pressed her on taxation, he quite clearly had her and it's obvious that even the Conservatives are going to raise them somewhere.

[Stadt]

1 hour ago, The Doctor said:

Interesting hearing McDonnell talking about the manifesto leak and how our rail system is owned by foreign companies with the profits then funnelled back into, for instance, the german rail system. With moronic nationalism being the flavour of the month at the moment, selling it as "British industry for British people" could be quite a canny move.

I'm not against the re-nationalisation of the railways but it's not very practical at least in the short term.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39886998

 

I'm not sure if it's feasible but wouldn't it make sense to open up the railways so all operators can operate on all lines so actual competition occurs?