Vote for Boris, or someone else.. UK election an early Christmas present

[MajorMitchell]

Hoorah !!? The citizens of the UK get a general election as an early Christmas present. Did Jeremy Corbin decide to go now before he gets replaced as Party leader ? Will Dipbro Jamiet99uk stand as a candidate ? (& not for the Monster Raving Looney Party but the Diplomacy First Party perhaps ?)

[MajorMitchell]

Boris is definitely Brexit, Corbin is "Brexit maybe" and this hardy Scottish SNP clans are No Brexit & the Liberals are No Brexit. I have no idea what the Irish Nationals Brexit policy is, or how a win or loss in the rugby world cup for England will affect the first weeks of the election campaign

[MajorMitchell]

..those hardy Scottish.. damn typos

[Octavious]

The Lib Dem position on Brexit is to revoke it regardless of what the people actually want if the wonderful First Past The Post system gives them a majority from 30 something percent of the vote. This contrasts quite sharply with their usual policies of campaigning against the injust and undemocratic FPTP system, and with listening to the will of the people. One would be tempted to accuse them of hypocrisy but it's so ingrained in Lib Dem thinking it would be like accusing a duck of quacking.

Labour have finally stumbled across a vaguely sensible Brexit policy of a referendum, which they have done their very best to confuse and ridicule. For some reason they have kept Corbyn as the least impressive figurehead in politics despite adopting policies that he is dead against.

The Tories are standing in favour of May's deal that they've attempted to disguise with a blonde wig so unconvincing that even the DUP didn't fall for it. But it benefits from at least being consistent and understandable.

The Brexit Party are in a grump after realising that the Tory threat of no deal was never going to happen, and find themselves in the awkward situation of having the clearest and most popular Brexit policy which ironically happens to be the least likely to take place.

The SNP are delighted to be having an election before their former leader is dragged through a very public and very humiliating trial, and still seem a little unsure about whether Brexit will help their cause or not.

The other parties aren't worthy of mention, although watching the slaughter of the TIGs or Change UK or whatever they're called will be amusing.

[Jamiet99uk]

Due to my civil service position I am unable to stand as a candidate, Major.

[orathaic]

The majority of Northern Irish parties... Well all the nationalist parties will argue for remaining (which means voting SDLP if you want representatives who will go to Parliament rather than SF), the unionists have the UUP planning to contest DUP seats, and they are probably closer to remain than Labour, while the DUP remain the only NI leave party... Just not with Johnson's deal. The non-community (ie alternative to sectarian) Alliance party are remain.

All of this is complicated by the fact that nationalist and unionists will not vote across community lines, with only the possibility of the Alliance gaining votes from both communities (and they have not traditionally done much better than the Greens in England).

[Hellenic Riot]

I can't wait to get a Tory majority for Christmas, yay.

Then again, we're only 12 points behind when the election was called, as opposed to the 25 in 2017, so we only need to have half as good a campaign as last time to get yet another Hung Parliament.

At least I can console myself that the renewed SNP surge in Scotland has a good chance of kicking Jo Swinson back out of parliament, and that the hardcore Momentum campaigning in Uxbridge & Ruislip for the past year means there's a not-insignificant possibility that Boris might lose his as well.

Labour actually asked me to stand in my no-hope constituency, but I politely declined, and look forward to pointlessly voting Labour while the Tories retain it; as the local Lib Dems who should really be taking this seat back (they held it from 1997-2015) are a total mess, and got knocked into third place by the Green party in the Local elections earlier this year. Shame the Greens don't have the funds or the tactical nous to target a rural seat like this instead of wasting all their money and effort on an inevitable failure in some big city constituency in London or Bristol. I think the Greens would actually do pretty well if they focused on rural seats.

[orathaic]

Meanwhile DUP linked paramilitaries have threatened the UUP for their stance of planning to run candidates in Northern Ireland this election: https://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/polit ... ssion=true

Which is both undemocratic, and a sign of need for electoral reform (getting rid of First-Past-the-Post)

[flash2015]

The Lib Dem position on Brexit is to revoke it regardless of what the people actually want if the wonderful First Past The Post system gives them a majority from 30 something percent of the vote. This contrasts quite sharply with their usual policies of campaigning against the injust and undemocratic FPTP system, and with listening to the will of the people. One would be tempted to accuse them of hypocrisy but it's so ingrained in Lib Dem thinking it would be like accusing a duck of quacking.

Isn't it a bit early to be calling them hypocrites? If they were able to get 30%+ of the vote, anti-Brexit forces (Labour + SNP) total likely would have got more than 50% of the vote...so it would be entirely reasonable for them to assume they have a mandate on this.

I am not sure what you are asking them to do. If they don't get a fair number of seats due to FPTP they have to accept it, of course. But if they win too many are you expecting them to reject their own victory?

The only way they would be hypocrites would be after winning government due to FPTP to then change and say they like FPTP and don't want to change anything about the electoral system.

We keep talking about a Brexit mandate...but the mandate just wasn't that big. The Brexit vote was far, far below the original mandate to enter the European Union (67% to 33% vs the Brexit vote of 52% to 48%). And this is before it was realized how truly complex it would be to make it happen and how much of the pro-Brexit rhetoric was utter BS (like the NHS bus). I would argue that this is really a massive constitutional change and constitutional changes should probably require bigger mandates (e.g. like the 2/3 majorities required in the USA).

Having said all this I think Brexit has to happen no matter what (unless there is some truly massive electoral loss for the pro-Brexit forces - which won't happen) because the country is so divided currently and the frothing at the mouth hard pro-Brexit crowd will be a major destabilizing force until it happens. Brexit is bad but the social division it is causing is far, far worse.

[MajorMitchell]

I think that Hellenic Riot made an interesting observation about Green candidates and rural electorates. In the Australian Federal Parliament the only lower house seat held by the Greens (Adam Bandt) is an inner city (Melbourne) seat. It's easier for minor parties to win seats in the Senate. What has happened in Australia is that several lower house rural seats have been won by independent MPs who are either, in the case of Queensland, right wing extremists like One Nation candidate Pauline Hanson previously or Clive Palmer (a wealthy mining magnate of imho dubious reputation) who only lasted one term, or in other states sensible progressive "centrists". Eg Zalli Steggal who won Manly, defeating ultra conservative former PM Tony Abbott, or in my Federal electorate Mayo held by Rebekha Sharkie, now in her second term. Andrews Wilkie is another similar MP from a lower house seat in Tasmania.
But Rebekha Sharkie is a Centre Alliance MP from South Australia and they have two Senators representing Sth Australia which is an example of a minor Party finding it easier to win upper house seats.
The "cross bench" MPs are more numerous in the Senate than the House of Representatives. But once these independent MPs in rural electorates get in they can be quite difficult to defeat. Often these rural electorates have reasonable sized towns, so they are a mix of rural populations with some urban areas/towns, and often these independent MPs get second preference votes from ALP (Union linked quasi socialist party) & Green voters that enable them to defeat the traditional electorate holders, the conservative Liberal or National Party.
So I found HR's comment interesting, but wonder if there are rural electorates in the UK that could be won by a progressive centrist independent candidate, although the FPTP system makes that harder than the preferential voting system.

[Hellenic Riot]

It's not the "Progressiveness" that appeals to potential rural voters when it comes to the Greens here, but the fact that they're actually the biggest NIMBY party in Britain. This only tends to be noticeable at council level, because they have just the one single MP and Lucas is only noticeable when it comes to Fracking anyway, but environmental issues can be quite important at local level (particularly in flood-prone regions), and the Greens also have none of the toxicity associated with either the Lib Dems (either courtesy of the coalition or of their bizarre decision to embrace A50 Revocation without even holding a second referendum), or more obviously with Labour (who Tories are extremely unlikely to defect their vote to under Corbyn).

This all means that the Greens are actually the best placed to take stalwart Tory voters dissatisfied with the piss-poor leadership and general incompetence the Conservatives have displayed in the past three years. Sure, they'll never get the Hard Brexiteers on side, but the Tory Remainers who are fairly ambivalent on Brexit without being in either cadre don't have any other protest vote available nowadays... And these people are generally not in the Inner Cities that the Greens actually target (where they're competing with Labour and the Lib Dems for the Progressive vote and easily crowded out by both), but in rural areas where Labour are absolute no hopers and the seat is either a Tory/LD Marginal or a historically just a straight Tory safe seat. The Greens just don't have either the funds or the tactical nous to focus on those seats instead of trying some headline-grabbing failure in London or Bristol hoping to repeat the success they had in Brighton Pavilion.

[orathaic]

I don't know, I suspect tory remainers will vote Lib Dem this election. That much is clear. Not sure where the greens see themselves, they need to build the party across the UK.

[Maniac]

@Hellenic Riot - you make some good points about what kind of seats the Greens should be targeting. I think there is a growing realisation that we (Greens) should be targeting more rural seats. The problem is that all local parties have high degree of autonomy so they push on targeting district or metro seats in their own area rather than looking at the bigger picture. Well focused targeting of Conservative rural seats could pay dividends but it will mean accepting we can’t win in some of our strongest performing metro areas and shifting resources away from them.

My local Green Party has been quietly building a Councillor base at district level and we hope to get County Councilors elected in 2021 too. Watch this space your friendly neighbourhood Maniac might actually stand in a winnable seat.

[TooCoolSunday]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MjUWX6S8iYU
I'm not sure if this is even satire.

[TooCoolSunday]

@Jamiet99uk
Civil Servants can stand. You just have to apply for unpaid leave for the time you are an MP.

Please don't though! :)

[Jamiet99uk]

@Jamiet99uk
Civil Servants can stand. You just have to apply for unpaid leave for the time you are an MP.

Please don't though! :)

That is not correct, I'm afraid.

All civil servants are disqualified from election to Parliament, by the House of Commons Disqualification Act 1975, and must resign from the Civil Service before standing for election.

[MajorMitchell]

Boris might win in a BoriSlide ... & Labor can get new leadership soon?

[ND]

YES BORIS WON. BREXIT!!!!!! UK IS FREE OF THE EU. CELEBRATIONS HAHAHHAAHHA FREEDOM FROM THE EU!!!!! YEEESSSSSS

[MajorMitchell]

With ebullient Boris probably being able to command a majority in the House of Commons what could possibly go wrong ?

[MajorMitchell]

Boris doesn't have high appeal with voters in Scotland.