UK's Going to have a snap election

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Theresa May has announced a "snap" General Election on 8th June. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39629603

I love elections! As soon as I heard the news I booked the 9th June off work so I stay up all night watching the results coming in. (The wife thinks I'm crazy - she will not be staying up with me). It doesn't really matter who wins - I just love all the stats, the results and the speculation throughout the night...

But this one should be a really good one! Lots of difficult things to predict. My personal prediction is:

Increased Tory majority- probably getting towards 100
Lib Dems bounce back a bit to something like 30 or so
UKIP may pick up two or three seats "up north" off Labour
SNP's stranglehold on Scottish seats is loosened a little - it'd be funny if the Tories could pick one or two off them just to see the look on Sturgeon's face, but realistically it'll be Labour or perhaps the Lib Dems

[aels]

I am always ready for a chance to tell the Tories to fuck off. They never do fuck off but it is still satisfying.

[Derived Absurdity]

Aels, I have a question. Why are the Tories so popular over there when they suck so much?

[aels]

I don't even know. My suspicion is that it's primarily because we're a country of absolute shitheads but I've been kinda bitter since Brexit.

[Monk]

I don't even know. My suspicion is that it's primarily because we're a country of absolute shitheads but I've been kinda bitter since Brexit.

Sounds familiar.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Aels, I have a question. Why are the Tories so popular over there when they suck so much?

As a UK voter for over 20 years now I think I can have a go at answering this...

None of the political parties really represent my views so when it comes to elections it's always a question of picking the "least bad option" or perhaps trying to push one or two particular agendas that interest me at the expense of other things the candidate stands for. And I can say that I have never voted Tory but I have been tempted a couple of times and am seriously considering it in both the forthcoming council and general elections.

The main thing the Tories have going for them is the economy. Labour have an appalling track record of mis-managing the economy. Even when the economy was booming they generally run at a deficit. And following the Crash in 2008 (which happened under their watch) the large numbers of people didn't trust them to sort the economy out. Corbyn isn't exactly helping matters now as his response to everything is just "we'll spend lots of money on it" or "we won't cut spending on that". The problem is that it doesn't add up and there are enough people out there who realise it doesn't add up. We've watched the mess that Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland have all got themselves into following that approach. And the UK is far too big to be bailed out - particularly if we're leaving the EU. The economy is main reason I'm inclined to vote Tory.

Secondly you have the anti-EU/traditional values stuff. Kind of a "UKIP light". Which will appeal to a lot of people too. Especially the older generation, the closet racists and homophobes. You know the sort. All the stuff which if you look at it in the wrong light becomes clear that it's really not particularly PC. You don't get that with the Lib Dems or Labour! And that's the stuff that makes me not want to vote for the Tories.

So you're left with either picking "good intentions but they'll spend all the money (and then borrow loads more) in minutes" or "somewhat nasty but they'll make the books balance and they'll sort out the mess the previous lot left behind too"... and we get stuck in the loop of going from one to the other because we can leave either in charge too long.

But it's all going to break. Because Corbyn's doing his damnedest to make the Labour completely unelectable. Possibly on a permanent basis.

[Derived Absurdity]

Interesting. So I have another question for you two (and any other Brit here): why is Corbyn doing so horrifically awful? Is he really just that incompetent? Cuz his poll numbers are amazingly bad. What exactly is he doing to turn people against him so much?

edit: you have to wait like a day to get an answer to a question on this board

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Sorry - if it was a short answer I could have done it during the day, but for a longer answer you need to wait until I'm at home in the evening...

Corbyn is very left wing. And he doesn't really make any effort to hide the fact. He's extremely close to the Trade Unions and has an automatic, knee-jerk reaction against business - no matter what they say or do, they are the enemy. He believes that anyone who earns more than about £70k (a little under $100k) is wealthy and should pay considerably more tax (which is fine for him to say when he gets paid twice that and doesn't have to worry about the cost of his home - if you live in London and are on £70k that's barely going to cover your mortgage).

But more directly his policies are poorly thought through or unpopular. For example, as with a lot of countries many people worry about immigration (personally I'm pretty laid back about it, but many aren't - it's one of the main reasons Brexit happened). And whilst the other parties make promises about controlling immigrant numbers and reducing them, etc he has (several times) said publicly that he doesn't care how many come, whether they're economic migrants or refugees, what skills they have or where they're coming from. This is seriously unpopular with the "average man in the street".

He wants to reverse the cuts to benefits (social security) that the government's been making, he wants to massively increase funding to the NHS, he wants to increase funding to schools, he wants to give free tuition to all further education students and so on and so on. Which would all be lovely. But all cost an absolute fortune and none of which will help the economy (in the short term anyway) so when people ask where the money is coming from he either says that he'll borrow it or he'll tax people more. Neither of which are popular answers.

And perhaps most damning in my eyes - he can't actually get on with his own party. Most of his own MPs hate him. The vast majority have refused to sit in his shadow cabinet and they've tried to sack him once already. So if he did become PM how's he going to get anything done when he can't even rely on the support of his own MPs let alone the opposition MPs?

I suppose the best way to think of him would be a left wing version of Trump but without any of the personality. He makes up policies as he goes along and doesn't think any of them through. He opens his mouth in front of the cameras without thinking and then has a team of people following him around after saying "what he actually meant was..." and he can't get on with his own party. He's a walking disaster area. The only people that seem to like him are hard-line socialists and the young and naive who don't want to think things through either...

But I think his pro-Europe, soft on immigration stance will be enough to kill off his chances with a huge chunk of natural Labour supporters and UKIP are campaigning hard in Labour's heartland in the North to take advantage of that.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

And right on cue as an example of a populist policy that obviously hasn't been given a second's thought and would cost the economy, Corbyn announces that he would create four new Bank Holidays:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-39682388

Sounds great until you think about it... it costs the national economy billions every time there's a bank holiday and it won't actually mean that people will end up with more time off because all that will happen is that companies will end up reducing the amount of annual leave that they can take. (Unless - of course - he ends up legally requiring them to increase that too which wouldn't surprise me)

[Blade Azaezel]

I like Corbyn. I like his idea to increase bank holidays, as we have far fewer then many other countries, and the economic crisis may have been presided over by Labour, but it was a world event kick-started in the US. The uk debt has also risen by 550 billion under Tory rule, wages are stagnant, benefits are cut, the NHS is in crisis, schools are worse off and cutting their budgets, zero hour contracts have risen, there aren't enough affordable homes available and Brexit happened. At this point i almost don't care where Corbyn gets his money to fund schools, hospitals, bank holidays, raising minimum wage to £10 an hour etc. I'm sick of the Tories and i want them gone.

Course, i also expect this election to hail another Tory government until at least 2022. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I like Corbyn. I like his idea to increase bank holidays, as we have far fewer then many other countries, and the economic crisis may have been presided over by Labour, but it was a world event kick-started in the US. The uk debt has also risen by 550 billion under Tory rule, wages are stagnant, benefits are cut, the NHS is in crisis, schools are worse off and cutting their budgets, zero hour contracts have risen, there aren't enough affordable homes available and Brexit happened. At this point i almost don't care where Corbyn gets his money to fund schools, hospitals, bank holidays, raising minimum wage to £10 an hour etc. I'm sick of the Tories and i want them gone.

Course, i also expect this election to hail another Tory government until at least 2022. Turkeys voting for Christmas.

You seem to be contradicting yourself. You complain that the debt has risen under the Tories and then say that you don't care where the Labour Party gets the money from. It sounds like you're really saying "spend as much as you like now to make life better - let the debt pile up - some other poor sod can worry about it later". Is that about right?

I have an ethical problem with deliberately piling up mode and more debt - particularly for things like "extra bank holidays" - knowing that that debt will be around for decades to come and my children and probably their children will end up paying for it - both literally and also indirectly because there will be less money for schools, hospitals, pensions, etc.

We're partly in the position that we're in now because the Baby Boomers took the attitude you've got now - "spend now, worry never". The buck has to stop somewhere. Whilst we may not be able to fix it we can certainly do our best not waste a whole bunch of extra money.

[Blade Azaezel]

We tried austerity for 7 years and we're in more debt now then when we started. Maybe it's time we tried investing in jobs and people again, see how that turns out. When you have 1/3 of the population living below the poverty line it's time to try something different. Labour have outlined where they'd get the cash to fund their various projects. If i was at a pc I'd provide some links, but my phone is pretty low techy tech.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Increasing the amount we give people on benefits is not investing in jobs and will not help the economy. Increasing the amount companies have to pay people will not increase the amount of jobs they are going to create.

I have no problem with people wanting to spend more money on social programmes or wanting to impose change on business, but I find it a bit dishonest when they try to dress it up as being "good business sense" when it's not. It's a choice (and very arguably the right moral choice) but it's not the "smart economic" choice.

So that takes us back to the ethics of it. And given that it will be paid for by borrowing that will (effectively) never be paid be back how much extra benefits do you want to give people now that you want to deprive future generations from having? We're partly in this mess because previous generations decided to do just that - they decided to give out money and let future generations pay it off and every time it happens it gets more painful for the coming generation who will have even less money available.

You may be willing to screw them over rather than make any attempt to live within your means. I'm not.

I personally dislike a lot of the Tories spending plans and their zeal to cut taxes (especially for the rich). I'd be happy to pay a little bit more tax. But given that the choice is the Tories who are at least trying to bring it under control or Labour who will spend money like there's no tomorrow (and often on things that don't make a long term difference) then it isn't really a choice.

[BruceSmith78]

than*

[Blade Azaezel]

than*

I was on my phone and didn't spot the auto correct.

[Derived Absurdity]

Apparently Labour has closed the polling gap by about ten points in a week. It might not be as much of a slaughter as people think.

[Blade Azaezel]

Apparently Labour has closed the polling gap by about ten points in a week. It might not be as much of a slaughter as people think.

Because people forget Labour has attracted the young voters on Facebook and the newspaper polls are aimed at old people on the streets. Also, Theresa May constantly repeating 'strong and stable' government ad nauseum is not offering much substance to the debate.

[Derived Absurdity]

Those old people on the streets are the ones who vote.

I think people are also angry that she evidently won't hold a debate with Corbyn one-on-one.

[Blade Azaezel]

Those old people on the streets are the ones who vote.

I think people are also angry that she evidently won't hold a debate with Corbyn one-on-one.

I would usually agree, but I've allowed hope into my heart and i think a lot of younger voters will turn out this time. Labour party membership has exploded under Corbyn's leadership. The media all too often seem skewed against him, which is annoying. But their manifesto is out now and hopefully they gain even more support.

Course, May has the Brexiters behind her now too, so we're probably fucked for another 5 years or more.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Apparently Labour has closed the polling gap by about ten points in a week. It might not be as much of a slaughter as people think.

I'm curious which polls you're looking at - the ones I've been seeing are showing a different story, with the Tories still generally being about 20 points ahead.

I think Blade's point about young voters hits the nail on the head - if they turn out in force that will have the potential to make it much closer, but historically that never happens so even if everything else goes pear-shaped if Labour can significantly increase that demographic's turnout that would be an achievement in itself. I suppose the danger there will be that they "try voting and it doesn't achieve anything" so they then never bother voting again... But I could be being overly cynical.

[Derived Absurdity]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 09961.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Young voters didn't turn out for Sanders, young voters didn't turn out for Brexit, young voters didn't turn out for Melenchon. I have no faith in the voting habits of young voters.

[Blade Azaezel]

I almost wouldn't blame young voters for not turning out this election. The way the media has covered this election, and even the way politicians like Farron have talked about it, make it seem almost a full gone conclusion we're going to get another Tory government regardless and that nothing can stop it.

[aels]

Did my democratic duty as a young person and voted in my local council elections. Will be back for the general to tell the Tories to fuck off all over again.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Ahh... but young people are very good at "doing things on the internet" and that's how you make real change in the world isn't it? Not going out and actually voting?!?

Joking aside (and I'm very pleased that aels is doing her bit for both the young and the anti-Tories) I think that given the FPTP system we have in this country another Tory government is a forgone conclusion - regardless of whether or not we have 50%, 60% or even 95% turnout next month.

But I too did my bit today and voted and it'll be interesting to see what the results of the local elections are as they will be possibly be a good indication of what will happen in the General Election...

...although...

...they could act as a wake up call. Because all the political pundits on the TV will be leaping on these and saying "if we project these results onto a General Election - this is what we'll get" and lots of people might look at that and think "hang on - I don't want that" and actually get off their backside and vote in the General Election. Or vote more tactically. Or something!

But probably not. So get used to the idea of 5 more years of the Tories.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I was wondering if any of you lot will be tactically voting? Or will you steadfastly be sticking to your preferred party regardless? I would assumed that many of you think that many of the options (e.g. Labour, Lib Dems, Green) are all better/preferential to the Tories so which one of them has the best chance of getting over the line in your constituency will be the one you'll be voting for?

Where I live is very much a Tory safe seat (I think it's something like the 20th safest seat in the country for them - something like that anyway), but the LibDems are next on the list so I always vote for them as I dislike the idea that anyone should have a guaranteed victory.

(I think the FPTP system sucks big time and we should have a proper proportional system but that's a separate debate...)

[Blade Azaezel]

I'm voting Labour because my town always used to be Labour and I'm hoping that, even though the idiots all voted Tory in the locals, they'll stick to Labour for the general.

[aels]

My neck of the woods used to be Lib Dem and I will be voting Lib Dem as I did in the locals and in 2010.

[Blade Azaezel]

According to one poll I saw this morning, the gap between Labour and Tory has closed by 8% this week - mainly due to Corbyn actually going out and meeting people, whereas May has dodged debates and came out this morning in favour of fox hunting, lulz.

[Derived Absurdity]

dayum jeremy

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 56421.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Blade Azaezel]

dayum jeremy

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 56421.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

#Jezwecan

[Derived Absurdity]

https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesMomentu ... 241104335/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Blade Azaezel]

The only topic he's weak on nuclear weapons. People want him to use them and he never will. I agree with him, but apparently a majority of UK voters are bloodthirsty.

[Derived Absurdity]

He makes some reactionary comments (concerning immigration and the police, mostly) which concern me, but I can understand it in the context of trying to gain support from a highly reactionary and xenophobic electorate. I also don't know how much his public image is due to his own supposed ineptitude over internal sabotage from his own party and the news media being in complete lockstep against him. Other than that, he seems cool.

[Blade Azaezel]

20 months of the media being against him at every turn make him look far more inept than he is. He's improved a lot in terms of public speaking too. When he originally ran as Labour leader candidate he stumbled and stuttered a lot.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

I think the main problem that Corbyn (and in a wider sense the entire Labour party) is that the lack of trust the public has with them when it comes to the economy. Immigration and defense will certainly be a factor to one extent or another to some people, but as we painfully crawl out of a recession most people about the economy.

And this is further exacerbated when Corbyn comes up with such a radical manifesto promising to spend such huge amounts of money and pretty much everyone else repeatedly saying that Labour's sums don't add up. Cos it's great promising to give everyone magical unicorns that shit golden eggs that also cure cancer, but if we have to mortgage not only our own souls but our children's and our grandchildren's souls to do so it becomes slightly less appealing to many voters.

We'll see what happens. Personally, I still think the Tories will get re-elected and I still think they'll get re-elected with a fairly health majority.

[Blade Azaezel]

We aren't crawling out of the recession though, because we're in more debt since austerity and the Tories took over. Labour's manifesto may be a wish list to Santa or it may not. But it's at least fully costed and I'm prepared to see what their plans for investment do to the economy. I'm worried that another five years of Tory cuts will see our education system and NHS collapse.

But i agree we'll probably still see a Tory majority on Thursday, much as I'm dreading it.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

We are more in debt, but the deficit is being reduced. In 2010 when the Tories came to power the deficit was £100 billion. And they've reduced it to £14 billion last year. So yes, the total national debt is still increasing, but the rate at which it is increasing is slowing down which is the first step.

Labour's "fully costed" plans basically aren't fully costed. They've admitted they don't include the cost of nationalising all the industries they want to nationalise. And their projections for how much taxation they can raise are extremely optimistic. Even ignoring that, they're still short at least £10 billion a year, which they're happy to add to the national debt.

For the "big ticket" items they say they're going to "issue bonds" to raise the money. Now I don't know if this is an attempt to pull the wool over people's eyes or simply an ignorance over how countries' economies work, but "issuing bonds" is the only way that countries get debt. And personally I think that lying to people about it/not understanding how the economy works is not a good sign when they're trying to make out that they are a safe pair of hands with the economy.

The bottom line is that Labour have openly stated that they are happy to let the deficit increase and with it the national debt rather than make any attempt to reduce them. This should really be a surprise to anyone though. During Blair/Brown's tenure and the height of the boom years they still ran the government at a deficit and made no attempt to pay down the debt. Corbyn is far less fiscally astute than even they were.

And that's all fine if as long as you understand that that's what you're voting for.

But claiming that in 15 years (or whatever) your children will inherit a more prosperous country is almost certainly a lie. They are pretty much guaranteed to inheret significantly more debt and as a result face even less public services. If we really care about our children, we'd try to pay off the debt ourselves rather than increasing it and then leaving it for them to deal with.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Stayed upto 6am watching the election results. I quite liked it - I thought the results were "about right". And the good news for someone who enjoys watching elections is that I'm guessing that we're going to get another election within a year...

[Blade Azaezel]

I love that the Tories are relying on the DUP to keep them in power. Hoping for another election in October and a Labour victory, or at least a progressive alliance of chaos

[Derived Absurdity]

It's amazing the whirlwind of expectations I had last night. At the beginning I was sort of amazed that he got a hung parliament, and the night then went so well that at the end I was actually disappointed he wasn't literally elected PM.

But it's nice to feel some hope every once in a while. This should show that "hard" leftism, a leftism in (semi-)principled opposition to imperialism and neoliberalism, is not actually electorally impossible.

[OpiateOfTheMasses]

Upon more considered reflection between this and the last two election results (2010 and 2015) I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that the days of large majorities may be coming to an end. The Tories had 44% of the vote and Labour had 40% of the vote, either of which would have given them a huge majority 20 years ago. So even if Labour beats the Tories at the next election there's a good chance they'd end up in a similar situation and be a minority government or need to form a coalition (although they're more likely to find allies) - however, with English votes for English laws, that is more likely to be harder for Labour when it comes to passing legislation for England.

Now I'm in favour of proportional representation anyway - which pretty much guarantees no majority. But I actually think large majorities are generally a "bad thing" (for any party) - they encourage them to impose the worst excesses of their ideology on everyone even though less than half the country voted for them. Small majority (or better still coalitions) - or any other mechanism that forces them to work with other parties - generally has to be a good thing as we end up with more rounded policies that are designed to best suit the needs of the country rather than push one party's hobby horse.

[Blade Azaezel]

I could live with a Coalition if it was Labour and SNP, out some such other left wing parties. The Tories and the DUP are a joke though.

It's quite bizarre that the winners lost and the losers feel like winners. Everyone thought this would kill off Labour as a political party and yet they survived pretty well.

[Derived Absurdity]

They didn't just survive, they're stronger than they've been in a long, long time and completely humiliated the Tories. I couldn't be happier.

[Blade Azaezel]

They didn't just survive, they're stronger than they've been in a long, long time and completely humiliated the Tories. I couldn't be happier.

Apparently there are 19 seats the Tories won with a majority of fewer than 2,000 votes. So if Theresa May continues to fuck up with her DUP Alliance and loses the support of her left wing Tory colleagues, we could potentially see a bigger swing towards Labour if a second election is called in October.

Similar thing happened in 1974. Heath, a Tory, wanted a bigger mandate to deal with the miners, but the electorate decided to vote on economic policy. Labour managed to sneak in then and run a minority government...if i recall my reading correctly.

[Derived Absurdity]

https://twitter.com/ladyhaja/status/873013264120250368" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;