General Election - December 12th, 2019

[mat]

https://www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/al...cummings-voter-data?__twitter_impression=true

Boris Johnson Secretly Asked For A Massive Amount Of User Data To Be Tracked. Dominic Cummings Said It's "TOP PRIORITY".
Leaked documents show the prime minister's chief adviser emailed senior officials instructing them: "We must get this stuff finalised ASAP".

And again. Silence from the MSM.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

Not convinced. The Tory membership have shown how Brexity they are and the leadership are already moving to reflect their base, starting with the purge of dissenters. It won't be long before they're fully aligned with the BXP. The ERG already are.

Tory Members are less than 3 constituencies worth of voters. The members are the extreme end of the voters. Which is my point. Play to one end of the spectrum and they drop away at the other.

 

[inbetween]

I agree with much of that.

I don’t know why people think that the Leave threat to the northern labour vote is equivalent to the remain threat to the southern Tory vote. My reading of the referendum result is that a lot of labour voting working class people voted leave as a great big fuck off to those who they saw as being responsible for the fact that their lives were shit - Cameron and Osborne in particular. If there was another referendum I would imagine a large number would vote the same way again. In a general election this November, however, their lives will still be just as shit, but I doubt many see leaving the EU as the pathway to the sunlit uplands. I suspect more see more value in voting the way they have always voted.

In the south, very few people people voted to remain out of deep love for the EU project. It was all about economics. I suspect in general people in the south will have a lot more to lose from a no deal exit than people in the north simply because of the way wealth tends to be spread (well, not spread) in this country. For that reason, I suspect a much larger number of remain tories will defect to the Lib Dem’s. Labour will not pick up remain votes in the south any more than Johnson will pick up Leave votes in the north. Like you, I imagine that the 21 ex tories will not be opposed by the Lib Dems and will largely be returned as independents to the same constituencies.

When push comes to shove, in other words, more working class leave voters will come home to labour in a general election than middle class remain voters will go home to the tories.

For all these reasons, I can imagine that post a general election the numbers in Parliament would not be too different to the way they look now - the tories being the single largest party but 30/40 seats short of a majority.

What happens next depends upon what kind of national unity program the rebel alliance can put together as a way out of this mess.

Much of the Labour vote comes from the Northern leave areas and 60% of Labour seats originate in a leave constituency.

This is compared to the Tories where 70% of seats originate in a leave constituency.

Generally in the south and outside of London people voted leave AND they voted Tory so how will Labour win those seats?

It is just plain obvious that the Labour position on Brexit puts many seats at risk.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

The people are often wrong mate, we are just obliged to carry out and live with the consequences. And no one is saying the people cannot have a say. The election has been put off for a month not cancelled and do you actually think it made sense to have an election two weeks away from a potential economic meltdown?

Everyone wants it ‘sorted’. It will never be sorted. Any form of Brexit requires us to either get minced in perpetual negations with the EU or at best become a passive rule taker with no say in the decision making process. Johnson is still pretending that he will be working to secure a deal on Oct 17 when the leaders meet. Yet he will be told to leave the room when Brexit is discussed. They meet to discuss their position on Brexit. They do not negotiate Brexit with the U.K. That is the job of the man they appointed to do the work on their behalf.

The only chance we have of ‘sorting it’ is revoking A50 which brings the fight back to where it really belongs. The U.K. This is a domestic nervous breakdown dressed up as an international negotiation. All we have done in three years is soil ourselves in public. At least let us have the decency to try and resolve our issues behind closed doors.

Revoking and re-invoking after a period of consultation and reflection has to be the most sensible way forward (if practically possible).

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

I agree with much of that.

I don’t know why people think that the Leave threat to the northern labour vote is equivalent to the remain threat to the southern Tory vote. My reading of the referendum result is that a lot of labour voting working class people voted leave as a great big fuck off to those who they saw as being responsible for the fact that their lives were shit - Cameron and Osborne in particular. If there was another referendum I would imagine a large number would vote the same way again. In a general election this November, however, their lives will still be just as shit, but I doubt many see leaving the EU as the pathway to the sunlit uplands. I suspect more see more value in voting the way they have always voted.

In the south, very few people people voted to remain out of deep love for the EU project. It was all about economics. I suspect in general people in the south will have a lot more to lose from a no deal exit than people in the north simply because of the way wealth tends to be spread (well, not spread) in this country. For that reason, I suspect a much larger number of remain tories will defect to the Lib Dem’s. Labour will not pick up remain votes in the south any more than Johnson will pick up Leave votes in the north. Like you, I imagine that the 21 ex tories will not be opposed by the Lib Dems and will largely be returned as independents to the same constituencies.

When push comes to shove, in other words, more working class leave voters will come home to labour in a general election than middle class remain voters will go home to the tories.

For all these reasons, I can imagine that post a general election the numbers in Parliament would not be too different to the way they look now - the tories being the single largest party but 30/40 seats short of a majority.

What happens next depends upon what kind of national unity program the rebel alliance can put together as a way out of this mess.

It's hard for any of us not to exist in some sort of echo-chamber, myself included, but I'm fairly confident that the strident predictions made by many Brexiteers of a Tory majority are wide of the mark for the reasons you and @Gaudion M have outlined in your posts.

fwiw, my broad predictions are as follows:

• decent number of Tory gains in the north and midlands
• A few Labour gains in and around London
  
• Tories wiped out in Scotland
• A handful of seats, maybe 5-10, to BXP in eastern seats, especially Kent and Lincs
• Libdebms to end up with about 80 seats; any gains mainly from the Tories
• Around half the 'rebels' retaining their seats as independents or Libdems
• Substantial losses for the DUP
  
• No party with an overall control, but Labour possibly being able to cobble some sort of loose working alliance together.

It's going to be the most absorbing GE ever imo.

 

[BobKowalski]

Revoking and re-invoking after a period of consultation and reflection has to be the most sensible way forward (if practically possible).

Revoking A50, reflecting and trying again is the best strategic option as long as we do have the debate on what and why we are doing it (or not doing it as the case may be). @George Hannah concurs on this as well (apologies if I’m wrong).

That it is the only sensible option left virtually guarantees we will not take this option. Right now on Brexit the U.K. is this guy...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-49641063

 

[denislawsbackheel]

The ERG are wankers but there have been opportunities to get it through since and 3 times it was voted down

The impasse is down to all sides

When May had a majority it would not have mattered a tinker’s toss what any opposition parties did if the ERG traitors had voted for her deal.

 

[Chris in London]

Much of the Labour vote comes from the Northern leave areas and 60% of Labour seats originate in a leave constituency.

This is compared to the Tories where 70% of seats originate in a leave constituency.

Generally in the south and outside of London people voted leave AND they voted Tory so how will Labour win those seats?

It is just plain obvious that the Labour position on Brexit puts many seats at risk.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

They won't. But the Lib dems will take quite a few southern tory seats. Not many northern labour seats, by contrast, will IMO be lost to BXP, and none at all to the tories.

Don't forget, the tories actually need to win about 40 more seats than they currently have, and given that it's highly likely that they

will lose a lot of seats in London and the South West to the lib dems and to the SNP in Scotland, I just don't see them making a net gain of 40 or so seats overall​

even if you give them a handful of BXP seats won from labour as well.

The assumption that people who voted leave in a referendum would, when push comes to shove in a general election, side with Nigel Farage rather than the party they have voted for all their lives is in my view a highly dubious one.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

Much of the Labour vote comes from the Northern leave areas and 60% of Labour seats originate in a leave constituency.

This is compared to the Tories where 70% of seats originate in a leave constituency.

Generally in the south and outside of London people voted leave AND they voted Tory so how will Labour win those seats?

It is just plain obvious that the Labour position on Brexit puts many seats at risk.

https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/homepage.html

Not strictly true. There was a big soft hole in the brexit support in 2016 around the home counties / M3 corridor and up to Oxford and Cambridge - that is tory heartlands. The tory pitch for Northern Labour Votes will be at the expense of its formerly safe seats. Labour voters were 65% in favour of remain - no guarantee that they will switch to back Tory. Much easier for a tory voter to shift to lib dem than it is for a Labour voter to switch to tory. Tory losses in Scotland are guaranteed but anything else is in the balance.

 

[jay_mcfc]

I could easily see a situation like this:

Cons 260
Labour 240
SNp 50
Lib Dems 40
Brexit 20

Then the rest split between ind, plaid, Dup, Sinn Fein. Or something like that. And it will just confirm that the UK has gone the way of many european nations as a 4/5 party split and big coalitions needed to form governments.