United Kingdom General Elections: December 12th, 2019

[adma]

There will always be a political left and a political right, if one tent on one side of the gap vanishes another takes it's place. That is the law of competitive politics. People have been predicting since the 70s that left-leaning strength with the youth with transform into a permanent advantage in 'X' country. Well, turns out old people are a renewable resource.

Not sure why you felt the need to write these platitudes as no one argued the left would dominate permanently.

The point is that the main centre-right party in the UK doesn't have to be particularly right wing or even Conservative, plenty of European countries have a fairly centrist party as their main centre-right party, and that generational change could undermine the Tories and either open the door for the LibDems or a situation where different centre-right parties dominate in different regions. If they become the third largest party they would struggle to get back. It will probably be hard for the Tories to rebrand enough (and fast enough) to appeal to younger generations in the post-boomer era.

Macron in France can be viewed as a test case for such "post-boomer middle" dynamics.

[adma]

There will always be a political left and a political right, if one tent on one side of the gap vanishes another takes it's place. That is the law of competitive politics. People have been predicting since the 70s that left-leaning strength with the youth with transform into a permanent advantage in 'X' country. Well, turns out old people are a renewable resource.

Not sure why you felt the need to write these platitudes as no one argued the left would dominate permanently.

The point is that the main centre-right party in the UK doesn't have to be particularly right wing or even Conservative, plenty of European countries have a fairly centrist party as their main centre-right party, and that generational change could undermine the Tories and either open the door for the LibDems or a situation where different centre-right parties dominate in different regions. If they become the third largest party they would struggle to get back. It will probably be hard for the Tories to rebrand enough (and fast enough) to appeal to younger generations in the post-boomer era.

Macron in France can be viewed as a test case for such "post-boomer middle" dynamics.

Then it's just more of the same old neoliberal right.

No it isn't; it's the *new* neoliberal right!  If you get my drift.  (Also cf Justin Trudeau)

[adma]

The usual American pronunciation would be 'steen',* the usual British pronunciation would be 'stein', the original pronunciation would be 'schtein'.

*Though there are exceptions: e.g. the great LENNY always insisted that his surnname should be pronounced as Bern-schtein not Burn-steen.

Case in point: the most fabled British Epstein, Beatles manager Brian Epstein.  (Which Wikipedia affirms as "stein", even though a lot of casual Yank Beatlemaniacs have tended to default to "steen")

[adma]

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.

And besides, when it comes to left-of-the-party odd ducks, Corbyn's more comparable to Dennis Kucinich than to Bernie.

[adma]

Why is it that in two succeeding campaigns, the Tories have lost ground as polling day gets closer?

Because May wasn't a campaigner and Boris has a tendency to be a 'clown'.

And Labour has this odd tendency to return to the mean, or some approximation thereof.  (Scotland's 2015 paradigm shift excepted.)

[adma]

In all seriousness, the 2017 thread was *way* heavier on the 'Corbyn is a terrorist' angle. This year the collective wisdom centres on something more like 'Corbyn is incompetent/a Brexiter/shifty'.

*And* an anti-Semite.  (Maybe not so much in *this* thread, but...)

[adma]

Something to remember: under leadership like Corbyn's, Labour was lucky to get even 200 seats (and a higher vote than 2010/15) this time--which actually suggests there might be a more-significant-than-it-looks share of voters willing to *bank* on the party under different leadership and circumstances.  That is, unless, in our deeply electorally-sorted times, it's a Labour version of the solid, inelastic bloc of Trump/GOP support "no matter what".  (But remember when, going into 2017, there was talk of Corbyn taking Labour to double-digit seat numbers?)