United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[Walmart_shopper]

How likely Tories get rinsed in Cornwall, Norfolk, London, and Scotland? Enough to lose any chance of a majority despite 10 point lead?

They'll be decimated in Scotland and emaciated in some of their London seats. That should be enough to make a majority very tight, although how well they do in Labour-Leave constituencies in the north will probably determine the election. I certainly don't think the Tories should be as eager for an election as they seem.

[Walmart_shopper]

Is there any discussion about electoral pacts, stand down agreements etc?

The Lib Dems are allegedly in talks with Plaid Cymru, the SNP, and Greens about selected stand downs in a handful of seats. The Tories have categorically ruled out any cooperation with the Brexit Party. I don't think the Brexit Party has responded in kind, but the inexorable logic of the situation is that they will attempt to stand a full slate of candidates.

Brilliant. Now the massive SNP and Plaid Cymru vote in London can be united behind the LibDems.

[Walmart_shopper]

Labour had no choice but to go along with an election soon once Swinson in particular decided to support it for their own short-termist and narrow party political considerations.

But maybe some in the party think they can defy the odds again? Crazy thought, I know.

It would be actually crazy if the Tories weren't led by a carnival-barking ideological jellyfish who has chosen to stand with the most grotesque and unpopular wing of his party in an attempt to ram through a Brexit policy that a consistent majority of Britons really don't like.

I suppose Jezza thinks that a cogent and credible case against a Brexiteer government can be made and can beat the Tories. Of course he's right, but the question is whether this case will be made. Obviously it would be easier to have, say, Keir Starmer doing this rather than Corbyn's weird British Guevarrista-in-tweed cosplay. But at the end of the day it's easier to oppose than defend a sitting government, which is why Labour's silliness about Brexit probably matters less than people realize.

[Walmart_shopper]

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-boris-johnson-corbyn-would-take-uk-to-bad-places-2019-10

"Trump backs 'fantastic' Boris Johnson and says Jeremy Corbyn would take UK to 'bad places'"

Trump says this to Nigel Farage and encouraged that Nigel Farage's BXP and Johnson's CON should join forces.

Corbyn should just surreptitiously bait Trump every day for the next seven weeks to comment on British elections. Labour will have 400 seats at this rate.

[Walmart_shopper]

Yes the importance of Scottish leave voters has been ignored; I’m sure I’m as guilty as most but there’s a trend to treat Scotland as one universal set of seats rather than the 4-5 different clusters you have

Any Scottish leave voter is simply an SNP voter. There is virtually zero leave-unionist piece of the electoral pie big enough to swing a seat.

[Walmart_shopper]

Labour say their systems have been hit by a DDoS attack.

No, it was just a compatibility issue with the Soviet hardware the campaign is using.

[Walmart_shopper]

More polls...

Survation: Con 35, Lab 29, LDem 17, BP 10, Greens 1, Others ?*
ICM: Con 39, Lab 31, LDem 15, BP 8, Greens 3, SNP 3, Others 1

_{*Note that Survation polls include Northern Ireland, so mentally change those figures to 36, 30... for comparative purposes.}

It's certainly tightening up.

[Walmart_shopper]

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1194285159538970624

Okay so the first DDoS was the probe?

Jezza: Keir, mate, WHAT IS THIS "WEBSITE NOT FOUND" MESSAGE? Is it the modem again? I just wanted to send an electronic mail to Evo.

Diane Abbot: RUSSIANS!!!

Jezza: SAY MORE.

[Walmart_shopper]

This whole Canterbury thing is such a sorry affair for the Lib Dems and has the potential to be rather damaging all because of one idiot's ego.

Even if you buy the whole 'Vote Labour Get Remain' line (which I think we've established I don't), he must have known that this would create a serious debate within the party at a time more than any other when it needs to provide a united front. It also continues to perpetuate the idea that Labour can take control of the Remain vote which not only is ridiculous (accepting Jeremy Corbyn as Remain's great hope is accepting we have finally lost) but also is completely counter to what the Lib Dems actually need to be doing right now to win votes and seats - i.e getting remainers to vote for them. It also creates a lovely line for Tory leaflets: "The Lib Dems back Corbyn in Canterbury. How do you know they won't in Cheltenham/Winchester/Guildford/Brecon/St Ives/Cheadle/Hazel Grove/Westmoreland/Carshalton etc." And the worst thing is it won't even achieve what he wants! The national party will just impose another candidate who I doubt will get all that much less than he would have done. I can only conclude he is a rampant egotist who has decided his 20 minutes in the spotlight is more important than actually getting Remain MPs elected. This will hurt the party and the cause in the short, medium and long run.

It's not complicated. A man who is member of a party almost entirely oriented around stopping Brexit determined that the best way of stopping Brexit was not running at all. When your party makes itself entirely about stopping Brexit, this is entirely the right thing to do. In fact, the only mystery is why more members of the party entirely about stopping Brexit wouldn't do what is most likely to stop Brexit and step down. The LibDems prattlr on and on about Brexit but when it comes down to making hard choices to stop Brexit they go about political strutting that makes stopping Brexit less likely. But please do go on (and on) about how thr LibDems are the only party capable of stopping Brexit.

[Walmart_shopper]

https://twitter.com/BBCChrisD/status/1194604198513586178

What morons. Corbyn probably can't believe his luck. Not only is his conning people into thinking he'll support Remain working, he's actually getting help for it! And the Lib Dems wonder why they got plastered so badly in 2015.

It's almost as though remainers want to do what it takes to, you know, remain.

[Walmart_shopper]

It's almost as though remainers want to do what it takes to, you know, remain.

By supporting a man who's done nothing but support Brexit for years? Brilliant logic. I guess in your view a great way for Democrats to get rid of Republicans in 2020 is to vote for Trump?

Wow, not only do you have no idea what you're talking about when it comes to those named MPs in particular, let alone many of the other Remainer Labour MPs who also understand that the Remain movement is bigger than Labour

Single MPs don't have the room to be independent mavericks in these hyper-polarised, charged up times. We saw that in the last parliament when MPs with years of service to the Conservative Party, including Ken Clarke, a man who served as a Tory chancellor and was Father of the House, were unceremoniously booted for opposing the party line on Brexit. I'm happy to bet a similar occurrence will take place in a Corbyn-led government.

And I can tell you've never met a Corbynite if you think they prioritise Remain over Corbyn Worship

but that would be a fantastic way for Corbyn to lose valuable, super marginal seats, then.

He's been doing nothing but supporting Brexit for years and his reward is about to be millions of remainers happily voting for him. I think it's a risk he'll take based on that.

--

My overall point was nothing to do with Corbyn anyway. It was that these Lib Dems are self-defeating idiots who have taken down the party's vote share by at least a few points and I'm surprised some are so dismissive of it. They've come out and said 'don't vote for us'. There's a massive difference between doing a non-existent campaign (which they easily could have done if they wanted these Corbyn Mouthpieces re-elected) and making a public display that their own party doesn't matter. If this is a message that gets repeated any further, its the end in any LD-Lab contests and is an easy print on every Tory leaflet in every Con-LD contest ("Vote Lib Dem Get Corbyn"). It's because of poor message discipline and that there's yet to be a strong rebuttal from the leadership speaks volumes. The downward trajectory of the party going into the campaign was probably inevitable but this event could well hasten and amplify the decline. Which leaves Remainers with Mr 7/10 as our spokesman.

It is true for these two things to he true at the same time--that Corbyn is a feckless leader with little ability to see clearly on Brexit because he wears thick ideological blinders AND that Corbyn is the last, best hope for remainers. He certainly is more competent and less monstrous than his opponents think of him, in any case. He also is hemmed in enough by political reality that even of he were a closet leaver (I think he's just agnostic) his fecklessness still wouldn't prevent a second referendum which stands a good shot at overturning Brexit. In certain constituencies the LibDems may very well be a better option for remainers. But if remainers in many other constituencies see that Labour is the better remain choice, it's downright craven to suggest that they are sealing the deal for Brexit.

[Walmart_shopper]

Conservatives -- party of the working class.

https://twitter.com/GoodwinMJ/status/1194917892527022080

It must be all of the economic distress that EU subsidies cause people.

[Walmart_shopper]

Not this **** again.

a) the 'social grade' system was faulty even in the 1970s and is a complete disaster now; it in no way reflects the realities of a service sector economy with a very large elderly population (it is true, by the way, pensioners are routinely rolled into category DE by some polling firms).* I can go into far too much detail about this if anyone is interested: I have done before. But for now: how many people in Great Britain consider, for example, nursing to be a middle class occupation? I suspect not many. I wonder how many people (in the countryside, where this is relevant) consider farmers to be working class? No one.

b) even were this not so, YouGov's peculiar polling methods happen to make their internal numbers completely worthless anyway. It's some real voodoo nonsense. Rubbish.

c) even were this not so, different polling firms internals show very different figures and patterns, not just from YouGov but from each other. In fact the main thing that shows up when one monitors numbers for these categories over even a short period of time (say, a month) is how absurdly volatile they are. Which is not surprising as they are almost random categories by this point.

d) this actually takes us back to a) because there are serious issues with sampling for some of the categories, particularly C2 which is a notorious disaster.

e) even were all of this not so, poll internals are not polls or surveys themselves, but a way of making sure that the poll was conducted with an appropriately balanced sample. The way they are thrown around by people who know this but have commercial reasons to ignore that fact amounts to the pollution of public discourse.

f) you wouldn't give your bank details to a 'Nigerian Prince', you don't believe anything hawked by Matthew Badwin.

_{*And there are reasons to be a mildly dubious as to how thorough the ones that say they do not do this actually are.}

This is most likely too America-centric but why cannot the polls instead group the population by education (grad school, university, vocational, and high school etc etc)?

In the UK educational attainment is at least as horizontal as it is vertical. So private vs public school can be at leaat as or even more meaningful than PhD vs BA or BA vs vocational work. The point is that you would have to weight for different TYPES as well as levels.

[Walmart_shopper]

Corbyn surge is real and this time around the gap at the beginning of the campaign is smaller than 2 years ago. Comrades, our dreams may become a reality after all.



https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/11/coffee-house-shots-live-what-will-happen-in-this-election/

Jezza is an outstanding campaigner. Corbyn's Labour is perhaps as good at campaigning as the Tories are bad. Somehow "Let's not tax rich people, let's cut ties with our main economic benefactor across the Channel, and maybe America's impeached president will bestow glory on us" is emphatically less aspirational than Labour's promises to build a fair, equal, and prosperous future.

[Walmart_shopper]

What a boring election.

But basically everyone has no one to blame but themselves

Labour for not ditching Corbyn

LibDems for a ridiculous policy of defying the will of the people regardless of what they might say in a second referendum

Brexit - for not fighting the Tories nationwide. If they did I think they could actually win a handful of seats. But not fighting a full campaign has definitely discouraged voters and Farage not running was a putrid mistake because most Brexit party voters look up to him a lot and would be more motivated to vote for them knowing they’d be led by Farage in parliament.

Yawn

Labour isn't New Labour anymore.

And opposing Brexit is a brilliant political strategy for any of the opposition parties, and not only because "the will of the people" has so obviously changed.

[Walmart_shopper]

I know it's too early to discuss this, but if Corbyn were to resign after the election due to a bad Labour performance, who would be the likely candidates to replace him? I hear names like John McDonnell and Emily Thornberry but I obviously don't know what's the actual sentiment on the ground among Labour members and I'm curious.

The fact that Keir Starmer isn't leader is dumb. But for him to not replace Corbyn is simply unthinkable.

[Walmart_shopper]

The vast majority of what I have seen post-debate seems to be more about the Tories' "Fact Checking" rather than anything that was actually said during. Is that broadly how it is going down overall, or just left wing bubble-ism?

And Bojo stepping all over his party's tax plan roll out (oops).

[Walmart_shopper]

And one thing that is notable in this campaign - anecdotal, but agreed by quite a few people of varying persuasions - is how keen many of the public are to talk about literally anything *but* Brexit.

(and just a point about the debate viewing figures - it is now quite a bit easier to view these and other things on social media rather than simply the TV, compared to 2010)

A poll today (Ipsos, I reckon) now has the NHS as the most important issue for voters, for the first time topping Brexit. Corbyn's namby-pambyism on Brexit may hurt Labour in core remainer constituencies in central London, but a government will be made out of marginals outside of London, in places where voters want to see Brexit views couched within a broader ideological context involving trade, taxes, nhs, etc. And on those issues Labour is clearly winning the debate so far.

[Walmart_shopper]

I have to say, it's really not a good look for the media to go after Corbyn for supposedly mispronouncing a name while he was pledging to defend the victims of Epstein's sordid pedophile ring. It's more than a bit anti-Semitic to assume that disdain for a literal pedophile is some sign of an anti-Semitic bent...

What is more anti-Semitic: obsessing about the Jewish identity of a man who ran an illegal smut ring, or mispronouncing his name?

For what it's worth, Israelis often pronounce the "-stein" differently than Americans, too. "Ayan-sta-yan" can be "Ayan-shteen," for example.

But this obviously has less to do with Jew-phobia than with Jezza-phobia.

[Walmart_shopper]

Getting closer.

https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1197949416101031939

It's worth noting that the Tories have kept a decent lead solely by cannibalizing the Leave vote and turning the Brexit Party into dust. The ceiling for the Tories is no higher than the 42% they have here. On the other hand, by squeezing a few seats away from the SNP in Scotland and continuing to eat away at the LibDem (presumably Remain) vote, they can continue to grow as in 2015.

So with a few weeks left the Tories have a nice lead but have no room to grow, and Labour trails but still has a lot of room to grow. Sound familiar? I would still rather be the Conservative Party than Labour with these numbers, but the trajectory of this campaign means that at Tory HQ they'll be white-knuckling it to see how much ground Corbyn the Campy Campaigning Champion makes up between now and the election.

[Walmart_shopper]

My main concern about this latest batch of polls are that the CON+BXP vote share seems to be dropping from something like 48% to something like 46%.  Any CON gains are mostly from gains from BXP due to real shifts in support or methodological changes to take into account that BXP will only be running in half the seats.  At this stage CON gains are maxed out vis-a-vis BXP and any more gains will have to be from LAB or LIB.  But the recent trends seems to be the other direction.

Because it isn't true that every Brexit vote is a Tory vote. It isn't a one-to-one correspondence and Labour will net a small number of Brexit Party voters if and when they come home.

It seems pretty obvious that Labour will almost inevitably spend the next few weeks eating into the Tory polling lead. The question is whether it's a small bite or a Milliband bacon-bite.

[Walmart_shopper]

Umunna and Chuka

Chuka Umunna is a single person, as much as his baffling political transgressions over the past few years might suggest otherwise.

I agree with the bulk of your argument, though: A LD surge that takes out BoJo is a particularly deranged fantasy. A net loss for the LDs compared to their current total but not their 2017 result is basically guaranteed, as far as I'm concerned.

Meant Gyimah, embarrassingly enough

I find it hard to imagine them not making it to the mid-20s or so on present numbers; if they win 12 seats on 7%, they should win 24 seats on 14% (which is on the lower end of current polling) assuming their vote stays as efficient as it was in 2017; if anything given that their gains are among strong Remainers, who tend to be a pretty geographically concentrated demographic, I'd expect them to get *more* efficient. (I'd bet on ~30 seats or so, I think).

But I can't imagine the world that some Labour supporters/the editors of the New Statesman seem to be suggesting where they're on 14 seats but are taking Esher & Walton, Wokingham, and Chingford & Wood Green. Surely some Lib Dem seats will come in constituencies without prominent Tories running?

 

I'm sure part of it is that the LibDem's support may he almost comically disproportionate, largely bottled up in quaint and insulated remain constituencies in London--the sort of people who can't fathom supporting Jezza the supposed British Hugo Chavez but also can't fathom supporting a Tory party taken over by what they see as xenophobic chavs taking away their remain-y multinational corporate European dream. Obviously, there are only a precious few places like this, but it is entirely possible that the LibDems may do quite well in them even as they do poorly nationally.

[Walmart_shopper]

I genuinely cannot tell what is supposed to be funny about that.

Loans to rent? That is absolutely the worst idea ever. And it's so LibDem. Let's help people by further burying them under our Thatcherite delusion. Have any LibDems, like, ever met a poor person before?

[Walmart_shopper]

I'd argue the focus on Labour anti-semitism is perfectly proportionate - quite aside from the various horrorshows with e.g. holocaust deniers in the party, there are still way too many people who clearly have antisemitic attitudes to some degree (thinking in particular of the people who can't discuss it for two sentences without mentioning Israel). It's bad and we deserve the kicking we've been taking for it.

There is an issue in that racist attitudes in other parties don't receive sufficient attention, but I don't think we should be getting an easier ride to compensate.

Yes, but the reflexive labeling of criticism of Israel as "anti-Semitic" is a really bad and Israel-supported habit that only makes it easier for people to shrug off authentic cases of racism. Does anyone really doubt that Jezza and Labour are subject to such scaremongering for any other reason than their rejection of the pro-Israel political narrative? This is mainly about Labour posing a considerable problem for Israel and not about actual anti-Semitism, even if there is a problem with anti-Semitism within some parts of Labour (just as there are anti-Semitic tendencies across the political spectrum in Europe). Reducing the anti-Semitism discussion to an obviously morally imperfect State of Israel is the dumbest thing in the world, but certain Jewish leaders and people looking to make political gain from them keep doing it, to their own detriment.

[Walmart_shopper]

If these polls bear fruit, this is one lesson to my fellow Americans in this thread: BERNIE CANNOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES BE THE NOMINEE.

Lol. If anything Corbyn was inconsistently left-wing and is hurt far more by being centrist on the issue of Brexit than being left-wing on everything else.

Eh, I think calling the market-internationalist liberalism of remain "left wing" is a bit much. Merkel and Macron are the faces of the globalist impulse of Remain, and they are obviously more to the right than to the left. The farther left you go, the more Euro-skeptical you tend to get, for a variety of reasons. It's just that the Social Democratic left in Europe tends not to go as far left as Corbyn so we aren't used to seeing this.