United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

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(b) Election counts are nearly always in large sports centres. I don't think any of the locations have been announced for where they will be, but your best bet is to ask the relevant local council for more information.

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If the Conservatives get a substantial majority, they will almost certainly repeal the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.

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I wouldn't be surprised if the overall result is pretty much the same as 2017.... or indeed the situation as this Parliament comes to an end. More deadlock.

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How many seats is the Brexit Party likely to win?

One or two at most.

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Labour are never going to work with the Tories to deliver a version of Brexit that they haven't written.

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Labour isn't going to win Hornchurch and Upminster or Romford, so I can happily vote my conscience there.

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Can we please not derail this thread with such banal and inaccurate comments?

If you want to stop Brexit you need a second referendum. If you want a second referendum you need to work out how to get Lab+LD+Green+PC+SNP to get to 325. Look at your seat & work out who that candidate is... it's not that hard

The comment about voting Labour for a 'hard brexit' ignores the fact that there's a chunk of 50-100 members of the PLP who've spend the last two years organizing, pushing and fighting for Labour to take a much more pro-remains stance... and it's worked. And ignores the fact it was the Benn Bill that blocked no-deal & Labour votes which got the various wrecking amendments to Brexit through the HOC.

Why throw those MPs out just to get a Tory MP (the reality if you don't vote Labour in a Lib-Dem Tory marginal)

It needs to be mentioned that Hilary Benn is very different from his father in worldview.

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Not in this election, no. She's been shortlisted for the Labour nomination for West Midlands mayor.

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Corbyn is 70; he's probably gone by 2024 regardless. Whether he becomes PM in a hung Parliament remains to be seen - convention is that the incumbent PM stays on until he resigns or is ousted via losing a confidence vote.

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Let's just say that today was the first time I and probably many other people have heard of Dan Carden, so he didn't exactly make a good first impression.

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"Oh tell me who are you, you, you, ah you?"

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BXP support has been on a pretty clear downward trend anyway and it's likely they'd have been below 5% by polling day anyway

They might plausibly have seen the campaign as a chance to change that. But it appears not.

Could this actually cause a few more UKIP candidates to appear in Tory held seats?

Remember it's £500 a seat just on the deposit.

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Best way to have stopped Brexit would have been to vote Labour in 2015. That was the most important election of our times, everything else just follows the ghastly course it set. Oh well.

I did. I campaigned on the doorstep too, on a trip in Thurrock where the TV actor Shaun Dooley was one of the people bussed in to the marginal seat.

Labour came third. Then Ed Miliband decided to throw open the leadership ballot to every Johnny and Jenny come lately that could pony up a sum less than what I spent on my lunch today instead of limiting it to actual members.

So we got Corbyn. Who managed to make multiple unforced errors in week one. Since then Labour supporters have spent a huge amount of time moaning about media coverage and very little working out a viable way of dealing with it.

Then there's been antisemitism. I quit partly because it was taking longer than a murder case from arrest to conviction does to deal with Ken Livingstone and things have gotten worse since then.

A Conservative majority is a realistic possibility here and to be honest, a heavy loss might be what Labour needs to bring some sense back into its politics. I'd rather have five more years of Tory rule if it gets us ten of Labour after that than vice versa.

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What I want to know about Labour's position is which passport control queue I'll end up in if I land at Vienna airport.

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They did last time. Not necessarily a guarantee that they do this time.

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For purposes of comparison, 2017 was Conservatives 42, Labour 40.

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Sinn Fein are abstentionists, so people feel that's giving the Tories half a seat for free.

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How come Boris gets heckled so much? Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it happens more often than in previous elections. And divisiveness over Brexit doesn't seem like the explanation because most of the heckling isn't actually about Brexit. The other party leaders, who are polling worse, don't seem to get heckled as much.

Those who dislike him, really dislike him. He's a British version of Trump.

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worth noting that New Labour was many things, but it wasn't what Tony Blair thinks it is now (i.e. a socially liberal version of Thatcherism). If anything it was the most naked form of populism we've ever seen the party go down, given it mainly consisted of focus grouped targets and catchy slogans that polled well with non-ideological types.

Arguably built on pillars of sand with all the PFI borrowing.

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In a surreal turn, here we see Leader of the Opposition Jeremy Corbyn photographed holding a blu-ray of a fanmade spinoff movie of an obscure Doctor Who villain from the 1980s. I wish this was fake.

Sil. Arguably a parody of the sort of capitalist Thatcher made common...

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Ah, Ernest Marples! Hilarious man. Not the only notable Conservative minister of the period to raise eyebrows because of ties to the construction industry: there was also Keith Joseph, though in his case there doesn't seem to be any evidence that the (radical, socially disastrous, much regretted) policies he championed were linked to that. Though the possibility does seem to have aided his relations with the various local government rogues he had to deal with: 'one of us!' they, incorrectly, assumed.

Also fled the country to avoid tax evasion charges... via the Night Ferry sleeper train.

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For reasons that genuinely escape me, the LibDems seem to have endorsed the same "permanent government surplus" plan that went down like a cup of cold sick when Liz Kendall put it forward in the 2015 Labour contest.

As I understand, the proposal is for ‘current spending’ (welfare payments et al) to be covered by taxation, whilst ‘worthwhile investment’ will be funded by borrowing, so not quite a British version of a balanced budget amendment.

Of course, it’s just posturing for the ‘fIsCaLlY cOnSeRvAtIvE but SoCiAlLy LiBeRaL’ technocracy crowd that the Lib Dem’s have been gunning full bore for since Swinson took over. Not that most of them will understand the distinction between current and investment spending.

That seems a rather reasonable stance to have with allowances for recessions.

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I think a Conservative majority of 50 is at the top end of realistic projections here.

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It would be hilarious, in a very dark way.

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Seven year olds having a tiff would be an improvement.