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Corbyn in Sleaford where tomorrow's by-election is taking place pic.twitter.com/Xg4s3lW8gf

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FF43

FIRST sighting of Corbyn for ages.

williamglenn

Corbyn with the WASP dog whistle.

MikeK

Third with no sighting of Labour for ages.

surbiton

What if the Lib Dems win ?

RobD

Fourth!

SimonStClare

Why do I keep confusing Sleaford with Manchester? – Still sober, honest…

Pulpstar

surbiton said:

What if the Lib Dems win ?

I'll retire from political betting, and leave the site.

brokenwheel

Strange how Corbynites have forgotten the State.

RobD

I wonder if this election will be viewed in the prism of Brexit. Probably not since it'll be a Leave hold.

RobD

Pulpstar said:

surbiton said:

What if the Lib Dems win ?

I'll retire from political betting, and leave the site.

Nice avatar. Hadn't realised Admiral Ackbar passed away this year!

Black_Rook

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

YellowSubmarine

Labour aren't walking into a trap. They are neatly parking in a preallocated space. Tonight the House of Commons will vote to invoke A50 by the end of March '17 and endorse government policy. The fact it's a non binding motion doesn't matter. Another thread holding the Sword of Damocles up will snap.

The synchronicity of the PM being absent from the debate while being off *West of Suez* flogging arms to the Sunni Monarchies is too much for me to bear. I pray evoking Suez in such an obvious way is a subconscious response to the unfolding tragedy. If it's a conscious decision then God help us all.

The added sence of Greek Tragedy ( or should that be Red, White and Blue Tragedy ? ) about this is what Labour is going to get in return for helping to get Brexit through the House of Commons. When the voters most shafted by Brexit turn out to be the poorest in northern towns they'll turn to UKIP to punish Labour for not protecting them from the consequences of their own Leave votes.

Sacrificing a victim to the Gods to make the Rains come back only buys you time. In the end politicians have to explain the Climate has changed, adapt to new climates or move people to new Climates. Thatcher and curiously Blair understood this and each won three elections. It's what the Greats do.

Do we have any Greats left ? Or just false idols ?

Black_Rook

When this seat was first contested in 1997, Labour polled fully double the vote share that it received in 2015. A further decrease would merely be part of a trend of long-term decline - but it certainly will be interesting to see if this continues or even accelerates.

They didn't do that badly in Witney, but were crushed in Richmond Park. It would be a massive upset of Ukip were actually to win this seat, but maybe in a fairly strong Leave area well away from London there is capacity for what's left of the Labour vote to be squeezed hard again?

Black_Rook

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Alanbrooke

YellowSubmarine said:

Labour aren't walking into a trap. They are neatly parking in a preallocated space. Tonight the House of Commons will vote to invoke A50 by the end of March '17 and endorse government policy. The fact it's a non binding motion doesn't matter. Another thread holding the Sword of Damocles up will snap.

The synchronicity of the PM being absent from the debate while being off *West of Suez* flogging arms to the Sunni Monarchies is too much for me to bear. I pray evoking Suez in such an obvious way is a subconscious response to the unfolding tragedy. If it's a conscious decision then God help us all.

The added sence of Greek Tragedy ( or should that be Red, White and Blue Tragedy ? ) about this is what Labour is going to get in return for helping to get Brexit through the House of Commons. When the voters most shafted by Brexit turn out to be the poorest in northern towns they'll turn to UKIP to punish Labour for not protecting them from the consequences of their own Leave votes.

Sacrificing a victim to the Gods to make the Rains come back only buys you time. In the end politicians have to explain the Climate has changed, adapt to new climates or move people to new Climates. Thatcher and curiously Blair understood this and each won three elections. It's what the Greats do.

Do we have any Greats left ? Or just false idols ?

Theres always Tim Farron

williamglenn

Using a toothless motion to 'call on' the government to get its act together in time to invoke Article 50 by the end of March is a neat get out of jail free card for the opponents of Brexit. If the government can't deliver, no-one will be able to blame the remainers.

RobD

williamglenn said:

Using a toothless motion to 'call on' the government to get its act together in time to invoke Article 50 by the end of March is a neat get out of jail free card for the opponents of Brexit. If the government can't deliver, no-one will be able to blame the remainers.

So it's also toothless in requiring the Government to present a plan? Good to know!

I think some on here will be shocked when A50 is actually invoked.

williamglenn

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

Pulpstar

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

That is utterly dire for Labour if true.

RobD

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

Seriously?

YellowSubmarine

On Topic: UKIP have never won a Westminster election without an incumbent standing ( Carswell ) so real question is why would the By-election be the first ? A relatively poor starting position, a short campaign, a December poll heightening the significance of postal votes the Tories will have sown up. And the recent leadership election only had a 50% + turn out on a membership barely above 30K. The party structure doesn't seem in great health.

I think UKIP will come second with a solid and improved vote share but be miles behind the Tories.*

* I've been wrong about almost everything this year ! My only by correct call was on May not Boris getting No. 10 if Leave actually won. All else is forecasting ruins.

AnneJGP

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

Richard_Nabavi

Going back to the discussion on customs unions on the previous thread, I think that @rcs1000 is wrong about concluding our own trade deals. My understanding is that if we're in a customs union with the EU, then by definition all of our external tariffs in those products covered by the customs union would have to be identical to the EU ones. That, indeed, is the entire idea, since it means that we can then have zero paperwork for UK-EU trading and not have to faff around with Certificates of Origin and all that dross.

Of course we could in principle sign trade deals in areas outside the scope of the customs union, most notably services. But in practice that's fairly unlikely, since anyone wanting to buy our services will almost certainly want to sell us manufactured goods, which would be subject to the EU-set tariffs and conditions. The only possible exception, although a significant one, might be the US, which I'm sure would be keen to sell us more healthcare services.

Taking the specific example of Turkey, I believe that the various trade deals they have negotiated are simply replicas of the EU ones, which of course makes perfect sense since the whole idea of a customs union is to have the same external terms as the the other members. That includes the agreement with Israel, with whom the EU does have a deal:

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_146089.pdf

However, I'm not an expert on this, and I might be wrong.

Stark_Dawning

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

rcs1000

surbiton said:

What if the Lib Dems win ?

You would need:

(a) The LibDems to hoover up almost all the Remain vote, and to benefit from Lab->LD tactical switchin
(b) Very low turnout (sub 35%)
(c) A split Leave vote between Tories and UKIP

While it is possible, I would consider it extremely unlikely, and you'd need to dangle 50-1 in front of me before I was even vaguely tempted.

YellowSubmarine

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

That seems perfectly plausible to me. In a seat with demographics like this one a Labour vote is neither use ( for Brexit ) or Ornament ( sufficiently anti Brexit to appeal to the small minority of leftish protest voters ).

From interviews the Labour candidate seems a good sort and an authentic manual worker. But spends every interview apologising for having voted Remain. It's building a house in no man's land during a Culture War.

williamglenn

rcs1000 said:

While it is possible, I would consider it extremely unlikely, and you'd need to dangle 50-1 in front of me before I was even vaguely tempted.

If the Labour vote collapses to that extent and the Tories are not enthused then it's not impossible by any means. The situation is also made more complex by the presence of Marianne Overton.

AnneJGP

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

I don't know who the Others are, or how many of them there are, but it will be interesting to see if they can collectively beat Labour.

A bit like a batsman scoring fewer runs than the extras tally?

Black_Rook

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

If there's anything like a combined Tory-Ukip vote of two-thirds of all those turning out, then that will take some doing! In this seat, one imagines that the yellows will be content to get their share back above 10%, i.e. show signs of life.

However, whether or not this will translate into a significant improvement in the LDs miserable general intention VI percentages is anybody's guess.

RobD

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

SquareRoot

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour coming fourth would reinforce my view that they are seriously overstated in the polls.

HYUFD

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford after coming 3rd in Richmond Park and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

williamglenn

I think today has also seen a new development in post-referendum politics: the use of forensic analysis of Remainers' pre-vote statements about the disaster of Brexit against them. May's one speech on the subject looks like a masterstroke from this perspective, but her Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary and others are very vulnerable to this kind of ambush.

YellowSubmarine

@AnneJGP The danger to Cameron's legacy is historians will conclude he made two huge misjudgements. Promising a Referendum because he couldn't win a Conservative majority to deliver it. Keeping the referendum promise because he didn't think he could lose the referendum.

If that's the eventual judgement he'll look like a decadent and bankrupt noble Inna Hogarth painting to Historian's eyes.

rcs1000

Black_Rook said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

If there's anything like a combined Tory-Ukip vote of two-thirds of all those turning out, then that will take some doing! In this seat, one imagines that the yellows will be content to get their share back above 10%, i.e. show signs of life.

However, whether or not this will translate into a significant improvement in the LDs miserable general intention VI percentages is anybody's guess.

I think the minimum UKIP + Con is 60%.

The LDs are on the path to get to 12-14% in 2020. I.e., gaining councillors, gaining seats at by-elections, gradually detoxifying themselves.

While - as you and I are both Leavers - we don't see being "the party of Remain" as being electorally appealing, that doesn't mean there isn't 20% of the population that is receptive to their message.

RobD

williamglenn said:

I think today has also seen a new development in post-referendum politics: the use of forensic analysis of Remainers' pre-vote statements about the disaster of Brexit against them. May's one speech on the subject looks like a masterstroke from this perspective, but her Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary and others are very vulnerable to this kind of ambush.

They do have a defence- they are doing what the people commanded.

brokenwheel

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

HYUFD

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

The LD voteshare will be up but there is no way they will beat UKIP in a seat which voted over 62% Leave, 10% more than nationally

Stark_Dawning

I can see the Lib Dems doing quite well. Brexit is the new politically orthodoxy espoused by the governing elites; Remain is the new insurgency. Assuming the Coalition years have now been forgiven, the Lib Dems are ideally placed to cash in on this sentiment.

williamglenn

RobD said:

williamglenn said:

I think today has also seen a new development in post-referendum politics: the use of forensic analysis of Remainers' pre-vote statements about the disaster of Brexit against them. May's one speech on the subject looks like a masterstroke from this perspective, but her Chancellor, Home Secretary, Defence Secretary and others are very vulnerable to this kind of ambush.

They do have a defence- they are doing what the people commanded.

"I am their leader. I must follow them." - It doesn't take long before that wears off when people can see they're being led off a cliff.

HYUFD

SeanT said:

On topic, the only way the Tories could come close to losing this is if they looked like they were stalling or sabotaging Brexit.

Right now the news is all about how they will actually enact Brexit, despite and against the evil forces of elitist liberal London.

An easy Tory hold. Labour will be knocked down to 3rd or 4th.

However May and Davies' suggestions they will keep paying contributions to the EU will likely see at least a few Tory Leave voters giving UKIP a protest vote

rcs1000

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

The great irony is that if David Cameron been more plausibly on the fence in his negotiations with Merkel and co, then he probably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

RochdalePioneers

Labour?

Didn't they go extinct a while back?

rcs1000

HYUFD said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

The LD voteshare will be up but there is no way they will beat UKIP in a seat which voted over 62% Leave, 10% more than nationally

No way?

Given a poor UKIP candidate, little ground game, and an imploding Labour Party, it's quite possible (5-1 shot?) that the LibDems score 18% or so, and UKIP 16%.

The one UKIP voter I know in the constituency is going Conservative.

(That's right, Richard???)

Richard_Nabavi

brokenwheel said:

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

Yes, I think Shadsy might well have Labour too low, although he's a very good judge of these things!

rcs1000

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

On topic, the only way the Tories could come close to losing this is if they looked like they were stalling or sabotaging Brexit.

Right now the news is all about how they will actually enact Brexit, despite and against the evil forces of elitist liberal London.

An easy Tory hold. Labour will be knocked down to 3rd or 4th.

However May and Davies' suggestions they will keep paying contributions to the EU will likely see at least a few Tory Leave voters giving UKIP a protest vote

Does "contributions" mean that we are paying to be members of CERN or Erasmus?

More than half of Norway's contributions are about them paying to be members of EU administered bodies.

williamglenn

SeanT said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.



Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

The great irony is that if David Cameron been more plausibly on the fence in his negotiations with Merkel and co, then he probably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

Yep.

Looking back, it was possibly a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of a negotiating error, for Dave to have said, explicitly, years before the referendum, that he could never countenance campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.

Just a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny little tactical misstep, there, DAVE

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9410061/David-Cameron-Ill-never-campaign-to-take-us-out-of-Europe.html

What a fucking twat he was. A political dwarf with no common sense. A pathetic, wanking little midget of a man. UGH. Go away.

The fundamental problem was that he wasn't even negotiating, which made the presentational disaster that ensued all the more pitiful given that PR for the domestic audience was the only reason he was doing it.

rcs1000

brokenwheel said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

One factor that makes this hard to call is just how low turnout will be on a cold winter's day, in an extremely safe Conservative seat.

There have been no shortage of turnouts below 30%; could we see 25%? (Manchester Central was just 18.2% in 2012, but I cannot imagine we'll be anywhere near that low.)

Tissue_Price

200/1 @bet365

http://www.bet365.com/#/AC/B5/C20508142/D1/E31518053/F2/

rcs1000

Tissue_Price said:

200/1 @bet365

http://www.bet365.com/#/AC/B5/C20508142/D1/E31518053/F2/

They have the LibDems on 25-1.

I'm not tempted.

YellowSubmarine

@SeanT @HYUFD This is the nub of it. If you look at Burnham's nauseating speech today you can see it perfectly. If they recover elements of what we must call the WWC vote but in a way that detatched middle class liberals that's as ruinous under FPTP as just loosing the WWC. They need shared and unifying national socioeconomic projects. If they then frame those differently and use different vocabulary to sell these to different groups that's fine. But a decent into the romantic cess pit of Blue Labour cod nationalism will send other parts of it's coalition fleeing to the Lib Dems, Greens or Nats while attracting very few Tories.

Do such national socioeconomic projects exist ? I think they do. But Labour are still fighting the 2010 election with a leadership team fighting the 1983 one.

brokenwheel

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

On topic, the only way the Tories could come close to losing this is if they looked like they were stalling or sabotaging Brexit.

Right now the news is all about how they will actually enact Brexit, despite and against the evil forces of elitist liberal London.

An easy Tory hold. Labour will be knocked down to 3rd or 4th.

However May and Davies' suggestions they will keep paying contributions to the EU will likely see at least a few Tory Leave voters giving UKIP a protest vote

Does "contributions" mean that we are paying to be members of CERN or Erasmus?

More than half of Norway's contributions are about them paying to be members of EU administered bodies.

CERN is not an EU organisation.

HYUFD

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

On topic, the only way the Tories could come close to losing this is if they looked like they were stalling or sabotaging Brexit.

Right now the news is all about how they will actually enact Brexit, despite and against the evil forces of elitist liberal London.

An easy Tory hold. Labour will be knocked down to 3rd or 4th.

However May and Davies' suggestions they will keep paying contributions to the EU will likely see at least a few Tory Leave voters giving UKIP a protest vote

Does "contributions" mean that we are paying to be members of CERN or Erasmus?

More than half of Norway's contributions are about them paying to be members of EU administered bodies.

Regardless of what it is for for hardcore Leavers it will never be worth it

TOPPING

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Quite a lot of moral flexibility you seem to admire in your politicians.

rcs1000

brokenwheel said:

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

On topic, the only way the Tories could come close to losing this is if they looked like they were stalling or sabotaging Brexit.

Right now the news is all about how they will actually enact Brexit, despite and against the evil forces of elitist liberal London.

An easy Tory hold. Labour will be knocked down to 3rd or 4th.

However May and Davies' suggestions they will keep paying contributions to the EU will likely see at least a few Tory Leave voters giving UKIP a protest vote

Does "contributions" mean that we are paying to be members of CERN or Erasmus?

More than half of Norway's contributions are about them paying to be members of EU administered bodies.

CERN is not an EU organisation.

I thought it was listed as one of the programmes it pays into as part of the EUR450m it spends on EU administered programmes (European Space Agency, Erasmus, Horizon, etc.)?

HYUFD

brokenwheel said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

The Labour vote still fell 2% in Witney under Corbyn from what Ed Miliband got in May 2015

rcs1000

One of my colleagues made the very cynical point today that Gina Miller has managed to get an awful lot of publicity for a very average investment business.

TOPPING

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.
ld be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

The great irony is that if David Cameron been more plausibly on the fence in his negotiations with Merkel and co, then he probably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

TOPPING

rcs1000 said:

One of my colleagues made the very cynical point today that Gina Miller has managed to get an awful lot of publicity for a very average investment business.

meow

rcs1000

TOPPING said:

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

I guess my point is that Germany is now implementing the five years of contributions before benefits for migrants that would probably have kept the UK in the EU.

Not that I'm complaining, just amused.

williamglenn

rcs1000 said:

One of my colleagues made the very cynical point today that Gina Miller has managed to get an awful lot of publicity for a very average investment business.

Wishing they'd thought of it, eh?

TOPPING

rcs1000 said:

TOPPING said:

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

I guess my point is that Germany is now implementing the five years of contributions before benefits for migrants that would probably have kept the UK in the EU.

Not that I'm complaining, just amused.

Yes it might have, but with tens of thousands promised, and 350k annual figures, it might also have been perceived to have not been enough.

HYUFD

SeanT said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

I genuinely don't know how Labour come back from this.

There must be room for a left or centre left party of government, but the topography of British politics - from Scotland to FPTP - makes the UK an almost uniquely hostile environment for such a force.

How do they simultaneously appeal to playwrights in Islington and plumbers in Sunderland, as they used to do? It cannot be done. And Scotland is lost, seemingly forever.

It's over for them, barring some incredible black swan (not unlikely in 2016)

On a worst case scenario Labour would lose most of its working class vote to UKIP and its middle class vote to the LDs, if it is going to win again it needs to secure its middle class vote first and then once the Brexit deal is done and eventually immigration becomes less of an issue start to try and win back the working class voters who went to UKIP

Roger

It is beyond humiliating to see Theresa May fawning over the most repressive regimes in the world where public beheadings are commonplace in order to promote trade. From the most civilized trading block in the world where capital punishment prohibited entry to this.....

The rest of the EU will be pleased to see the back of us. No wonder they want us to get a move on.

AnneJGP

SeanT said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

I genuinely don't know how Labour come back from this.

There must be room for a left or centre left party of government, but the topography of British politics - from Scotland to FPTP - makes the UK an almost uniquely hostile environment for such a force.

How do they simultaneously appeal to playwrights in Islington and plumbers in Sunderland, as they used to do? It cannot be done. And Scotland is lost, seemingly forever.

It's over for them, barring some incredible black swan (not unlikely in 2016)

If memory serves me aright, it used to be the case that the 'playwrights in Islington' supported Labour because they wanted to show their support for 'plumbers in Sunderland'.

If that was the case way back when, what happened to change the reason the 'playwrights' support Labour?

We see the end result in the 'plumbers' voting Leave and the 'playwrights' voting Remain: a clear divergence of interests now.

Stark_Dawning

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

That is the paradox, I readily admit.

I reckon Brexit will, ultimately - in 10 or 20 years - be an obvious success and the clearly correct moral choice and we will wonder why we ever worried, and why we didn't do it before. In that light, Cameron could be seen, if you are so minded, as a "good" prime minister.

But in his own terms he was a disaster. Walking lazily into a catastrophic, career-ending defeat, and an outcome which he apparently views as terrible for the country. A defeat moreover which he did more than anyone to bring on, by overpromising on his renegotiation, then under-delivering in reality, and then by conducting a terrible cackhanded referendum campaign which turned 20-point leads into a loss on the day.

Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Historian Niall Ferguson (Remain backer turned Brexit convert) came to two conclusions when he made his volte face - firstly that voters in provincial England and Wales had been justified in voting to leave because of EU's incompetence; and secondly that Cameron should have campaigned for Brexit himself. His career-ending mistake was not to promise the referendum in the first place, but to try to sell his pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Just pointing out that if Cameron was so inept that he couldn't delivery Remain, why do we think that he'd suddenly become a political titan if he had to delivery Leave? Actually, I think that if the Tories had officially advocated Brexit, then it would have been far easier to get the anti-Tory, liberal and left contingents to coalesce around Remain - rhetoric about xenophobia, racism, the erosion of workers' right etc. would have had far more potency.

HYUFD

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

The LD voteshare will be up but there is no way they will beat UKIP in a seat which voted over 62% Leave, 10% more than nationally

No way?

Given a poor UKIP candidate, little ground game, and an imploding Labour Party, it's quite possible (5-1 shot?) that the LibDems score 18% or so, and UKIP 16%.

The one UKIP voter I know in the constituency is going Conservative.

(That's right, Richard???)

Richard Tyndall is more of a rare Richmond Park Leave voter than a Sleaford one in demographic terms, despite the fact he lives there. Both Nuttall and Farage have been to Sleaford, it is a strong Leave seat with little Remain protest vote, unlike Richmond Park and with UKIP on 18% in the Midland, clearly above their national score and the LDs on 6%, below their national score, UKIP will certainly be second

brokenwheel

rcs1000 said:

brokenwheel said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

One factor that makes this hard to call is just how low turnout will be on a cold winter's day, in an extremely safe Conservative seat.

There have been no shortage of turnouts below 30%; could we see 25%? (Manchester Central was just 18.2% in 2012, but I cannot imagine we'll be anywhere near that low.)

If you look at recent by-elections a pattern emerges; safe labour seats see appalling turnouts e.g. Manchester Central. Safe Tory seats however maintain decent turnouts (they also tend to have relatively high turnout at GEs). Safe Tory seats have tended to get roughly about 50% in by-elections.

TOPPING

AnneJGP said:

SeanT said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

I genuinely don't know how Labour come back from this.

There must be room for a left or centre left party of government, but the topography of British politics - from Scotland to FPTP - makes the UK an almost uniquely hostile environment for such a force.

How do they simultaneously appeal to playwrights in Islington and plumbers in Sunderland, as they used to do? It cannot be done. And Scotland is lost, seemingly forever.

It's over for them, barring some incredible black swan (not unlikely in 2016)

If memory serves me aright, it used to be the case that the 'playwrights in Islington' supported Labour because they wanted to show their support for 'plumbers in Sunderland'.

If that was the case way back when, what happened to change the reason the 'playwrights' support Labour?

We see the end result in the 'plumbers' voting Leave and the 'playwrights' voting Remain: a clear divergence of interests now.

playwrights in Islington now have bigger fish to fry; they support Hamas.

rcs1000

HYUFD said:

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

The LD voteshare will be up but there is no way they will beat UKIP in a seat which voted over 62% Leave, 10% more than nationally

No way?

Given a poor UKIP candidate, little ground game, and an imploding Labour Party, it's quite possible (5-1 shot?) that the LibDems score 18% or so, and UKIP 16%.

The one UKIP voter I know in the constituency is going Conservative.

(That's right, Richard???)

Richard Tyndall is more of a rare Richmond Park Leave voter than a Sleaford one in demographic terms, despite the fact he lives there. Both Nuttall and Farage have been to Sleaford, it is a strong Leave seat with little Remain protest vote, unlike Richmond Park and with UKIP on 18% in the Midland, clearly above their national score and the LDs on 6%, below their national score, UKIP will certainly be second

Will you offer me 6-1 then?

Black_Rook

rcs1000 said:

Black_Rook said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

If there's anything like a combined Tory-Ukip vote of two-thirds of all those turning out, then that will take some doing! In this seat, one imagines that the yellows will be content to get their share back above 10%, i.e. show signs of life.

However, whether or not this will translate into a significant improvement in the LDs miserable general intention VI percentages is anybody's guess.

I think the minimum UKIP + Con is 60%.

The LDs are on the path to get to 12-14% in 2020. I.e., gaining councillors, gaining seats at by-elections, gradually detoxifying themselves.

While - as you and I are both Leavers - we don't see being "the party of Remain" as being electorally appealing, that doesn't mean there isn't 20% of the population that is receptive to their message.

I've never doubted that an anti-Ukip would be appealing to some people. I merely doubt the limits of its appeal, that's all. There's no particular reason to suppose that an anti-Ukip would appeal to any greater proportion of the electorate, taken as a whole, than the original thing - IF it allows its agenda to become dominated by the subject.

An awful lot of people are concerned about Brexit, but it doesn't necessarily follow that all of those people are either really passionately for or against the EU and will vote first and foremost on that basis, after all.

williamglenn

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

Th
Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Histori pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Thbably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

The deal was shit. And he knew it was shit. And his Cabinet knew it was shit because they received it (according to the Times) in total stony silence.

It depends on your starting point. Cameron's biggest mistake was spending years telling everyone that the status quo was shit, so that's why he was never in a position to sell something that was to all intents and purposes the status quo as being a wonderful thing. He lost it way before the deal, which he would have been better off not even attempting.

rcs1000

brokenwheel said:

rcs1000 said:

brokenwheel said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

One factor that makes this hard to call is just how low turnout will be on a cold winter's day, in an extremely safe Conservative seat.

There have been no shortage of turnouts below 30%; could we see 25%? (Manchester Central was just 18.2% in 2012, but I cannot imagine we'll be anywhere near that low.)

If you look at recent by-elections a pattern emerges; safe labour seats see appalling turnouts e.g. Manchester Central. Safe Tory seats however maintain decent turnouts (they also tend to have relatively high turnout at GEs). Safe Tory seats have tended to get roughly about 50%.

Kensington was 30%, but your overall point is, I'm sure, correct.

Sandpit

williamglenn said:

SeanT said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

The great irony is that if David Cameron been more plausibly on the fence in his negotiations with Merkel and co, then he probably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

Yep.

Looking back, it was possibly a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny bit of a negotiating error, for Dave to have said, explicitly, years before the referendum, that he could never countenance campaigning for Britain to leave the EU.

Just a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny little tactical misstep, there, DAVE

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/9410061/David-Cameron-Ill-never-campaign-to-take-us-out-of-Europe.html

What a fucking twat he was. A political dwarf with no common sense. A pathetic, wanking little midget of a man. UGH. Go away.

The fundamental problem was that he wasn't even negotiating, which made the presentational disaster that ensued all the more pitiful given that PR for the domestic audience was the only reason he was doing it.

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

Edit: @SeanT's way with words a few posts below is much better than my feeble attempt!

bigjohnowls

Laura Kuenssberg ‏@bbclaurak 16m16 minutes ago
Early numbers - seems 22 Labour MPs voted against the amendment and only one Tory, Ken Clarke

Tissue_Price

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

TOPPING

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

r.

ic.

Sinc

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Thbably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

The deal was shit. And he knew it was shit. And his Cabinet knew it was shit because they received it (according to the Times) in total stony silence.

The deal was when the referendum was lost.

The deal was shit because Cameron had already told his European colleagues that he would win the vote whatever, and because he had told the world he would always campaign for REMAIN, whatever the circumstances. Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

It wasn't shit. That it is better dramatically for you to portray it as shit doesn't mean it was indeed shit. We have been over many times before why it was not shit and I understand that the details are far too boring for you and most people, but it was not shit.

FF43

Richard_Nabavi said:

Going back to the discussion on customs unions on the previous thread, I think that @rcs1000 is wrong about concluding our own trade deals. My understanding is that if we're in a customs union with the EU, then by definition all of our external tariffs in those products covered by the customs union would have to be identical to the EU ones. That, indeed, is the entire idea, since it means that we can then have zero paperwork for UK-EU trading and not have to faff around with Certificates of Origin and all that dross.

Of course we could in principle sign trade deals in areas outside the scope of the customs union, most notably services. But in practice that's fairly unlikely, since anyone wanting to buy our services will almost certainly want to sell us manufactured goods, which would be subject to the EU-set tariffs and conditions. The only possible exception, although a significant one, might be the US, which I'm sure would be keen to sell us more healthcare services.

Taking the specific example of Turkey, I believe that the various trade deals they have negotiated are simply replicas of the EU ones, which of course makes perfect sense since the whole idea of a customs union is to have the same external terms as the the other members. That includes the agreement with Israel, with whom the EU does have a deal:

http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2010/april/tradoc_146089.pdf

However, I'm not an expert on this, and I might be wrong.

The Turkish customs union covers manufactured goods only, so an FTA dealing with services and agriculture would be worth having. The problem Turkey has is that since its customs union was signed in 1996, the EU has agreed some relatively high value FTAs that Turkey isn't part of. So that might seem like an argument for us NOT joining a customs union. But it would only apply if more countries were prepared to do a brand new FTA with us than to extend the existing EU one to the UK. AND if those FTAs were more favourable than the ones we already have with the EU. Where it gets murky, I think, is how this fits into the negotiations for our WTO schedules. Will countries with whom we have preferential trade though an EU FTA now trade with us on the existing EU FTA extended to us or will it be on our MFN schedule? It seems unlikely that we would have a portfolio of bespoke FTAs in place after we leave the EU and before we sign up to the WTO on new terms.

One thing is certain us that the customs union would benefit our EU trade, which makes up half of our total.

rcs1000

Tissue_Price said:

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

I don't think our negotiating position is anything other than completely obvious:

As many of the benefits of single market access (especially financial services passporting)
with as few as possible of the costs, either financial, constiutional or legal

Tissue_Price

Sandpit said:

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

The deal was what swung several PB'ers behind Leave, myself included.

Now obviously we're not a very representative bunch on here, but then again the margin was pretty tight.

rcs1000

SeanT said:

AnneJGP said:

SeanT said:

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

I genuinely don't know how Labour come back from this.

There must be room for a left or centre left party of government, but the topography of British politics - from Scotland to FPTP - makes the UK an almost uniquely hostile environment for such a force.

How do they simultaneously appeal to playwrights in Islington and plumbers in Sunderland, as they used to do? It cannot be done. And Scotland is lost, seemingly forever.

It's over for them, barring some incredible black swan (not unlikely in 2016)

If memory serves me aright, it used to be the case that the 'playwrights in Islington' supported Labour because they wanted to show their support for 'plumbers in Sunderland'.

If that was the case way back when, what happened to change the reason the 'playwrights' support Labour?

We see the end result in the 'plumbers' voting Leave and the 'playwrights' voting Remain: a clear divergence of interests now.

immigration, immigration, immigration,

Mass immigration makes life better for playwrights in Islington (cheaper plumbers!), it makes life harder for plumbers in Sunderland (too many cheap plumbers).

Until Labour square the immigration circle, they are screwed. Right now they are ideologically incapable of doing this.

It is possible to see the Lib Dems reviving as the big Remain party to 15%, Labour becoming the Corbynite left on 20-25%, UKIP being ultra-Brexit on 5-10%, and the Tories governing in total perpetuity as the sane option for the other 40%.

Systems are inherently unstable, though.

Being in power for too long corrupts, and leads to complacency, and crony capitalism, and the like.

williamglenn

Tissue_Price said:

Sandpit said:

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

The deal was what swung several PB'ers behind Leave, myself included.

A position I've never understood. What exactly were you hoping for from Cameron?

Tissue_Price

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

I don't think our negotiating position is anything other than completely obvious:

As many of the benefits of single market access (especially financial services passporting)
with as few as possible of the costs, either financial, constiutional or legal

Of course. So why was, for example, Ms Thornberry spending PMQs trying to extract a definitive Govt position on the Customs Union?

rcs1000

Tissue_Price said:

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

I don't think our negotiating position is anything other than completely obvious:

As many of the benefits of single market access (especially financial services passporting)
with as few as possible of the costs, either financial, constiutional or legal

Of course. So why was, for example, Ms Thornberry spending PMQs trying to extract a definitive Govt position on the Customs Union?

Because she's in opposition, and she looks good if she embarrasses the government.

foxinsoxuk

foxinsoxuk said:

Ben Hamer in goal for Leicester, 9/1 for a clean sheet.

Worth a quid or two. He is a good shotstopper.

TOPPING

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

r.

ic.

Sinc

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Thbably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

The deal was shit. And he knew it was shit. And his Cabinet knew it was shit because they received it (according to the Times) in total stony silence.

The deal was when the referendum was lost.

The deal was shit because Cameron had already told his European colleagues that he would win the vote whatever, and because he had told the world he would always campaign for REMAIN, whatever the circumstances. Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

It wasn shit.

Nah, it was shit.

It was not shit.

GIN1138

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

Th
Cameron was a shit campaigner and a shit politician, even if in retrospect we might thank him for his greatest Error.

Histori pathetic renegotiation to a disbelieving public.

Since Mr Cameron manifestly believes that the UK's best interest lay in the EU on any terms, no-one can say he "should" have campaigned to leave.

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Thbably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

The deal was shit. And he knew it was shit. And his Cabinet knew it was shit because they received it (according to the Times) in total stony silence.

The deal was when the referendum was lost.

The deal was shit because Cameron had already told his European colleagues that he would win the vote whatever, and because he had told the world he would always campaign for REMAIN, whatever the circumstances. Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

Tissue_Price

williamglenn said:

Tissue_Price said:

Sandpit said:

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

The deal was what swung several PB'ers behind Leave, myself included.

A position I've never understood. What exactly were you hoping for from Cameron?

Actually, I was hoping for more from the EU. That they were capable of recognising an existential threat and adjusting accordingly, specifically on freedom of movement. The "four freedoms" aren't written on tablets of stone and shouldn't be treated as such.

tyson

Roger said:

It is beyond humiliating to see Theresa May fawning over the most repressive regimes in the world where public beheadings are commonplace in order to promote trade. From the most civilized trading block in the world where capital punishment prohibited entry to this.....

The rest of the EU will be pleased to see the back of us. No wonder they want us to get a move on.

Seeing May brownnose these terrible regimes on behalf of the UK is shameful.....
I don't get it with Brexit....somehow Tusk and Merkel and co. are evil, but the Arab states are acceptable. Can someone please explain?

rcs1000

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/804863098138005504

https://twitter.com/nickspencer/status/804867054754902018

Sandpit

williamglenn said:

Tissue_Price said:

Sandpit said:

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

The deal was what swung several PB'ers behind Leave, myself included.

A position I've never understood. What exactly were you hoping for from Cameron?

He made a speech at Bloomberg a few months prior, outlining his vision for where he saw Britain in Europe - if he had achieved in his renegotiation a fraction of what was in that speech, it would have won the referendum for Remain. Having come back empty handed, the PM should have had the balls to back Leave - he would have won it by a landslide.

The 'deal' was the defining moment for a number on this site, many who had been Cameron fans for a decade or more, deciding to vote Leave because of that shit deal.

Jonathan

TOPPING said:

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

SeanT said:

TOPPING said:

rcs1000 said:

SeanT said:

RobD said:

Stark_Dawning said:

AnneJGP said:

Black_Rook said:

SeanT said:

fpt for bobajob on Cameron

r.

ic.

Sinc

What he should not have done was to make big set-piece speeches saying he was prepared to campaign for leave.

And good evening, everyone.

If Cameron had campaigned for Leave - and he was as hated and mistrusted as much as everyone was saying on the previous thread - then surely Remain would have won.

You are kidding, right? He'd have won it by a landslide.

Stark Dawning has been driven Stark Raving Mad by Brexit.

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

Thbably would have won greater concessions on benefits, and would therefore have won his referendum.

The deal was fine; it addressed much that needed to be addressed, but was admittedly weak on immigration.

Perhaps also, it was all he was going to get? We seem to have had the EU27 pretty much speaking with one voice telling us what to expect. Now, of course this I'm sure is so much bluster and tactics, but what if...we weren't going to get a better deal then, and we might not get a great deal now?

The deal was shit. And he knew it was shit. And his Cabinet knew it was shit because they received it (according to the Times) in total stony silence.

The deal was when the referendum was lost.

The deal was shit because Cameron had already told his European colleagues that he would win the vote whatever, and because he had told the world he would always campaign for REMAIN, whatever the circumstances. Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

It wasn shit.

Nah, it was shit.

It was not shit.

This is the greatest debate in PB history.

foxinsoxuk

foxinsoxuk said:

foxinsoxuk said:

Ben Hamer in goal for Leicester, 9/1 for a clean sheet.

Worth a quid or two. He is a good shotstopper.

Maybe not :-(

rcs1000

Tissue_Price said:

williamglenn said:

Tissue_Price said:

Sandpit said:

When we did the little poll the other day, I put the moment of Dave's 'deal' in February as the key defining moment of the year. He came back with almost empty hands from Brussels but told us he had the best deal ever.

Before that date he was riding high in the polls and leading a popular government, four months later he had resigned.

The deal was what swung several PB'ers behind Leave, myself included.

A position I've never understood. What exactly were you hoping for from Cameron?

Actually, I was hoping for more from the EU. That they were capable of recognising an existential threat and adjusting accordingly, specifically on freedom of movement. The "four freedoms" aren't written on tablets of stone and shouldn't be treated as such.

Also, freedom to work != freedom to claim benefits.

Tissue_Price

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

I don't think our negotiating position is anything other than completely obvious:

As many of the benefits of single market access (especially financial services passporting)
with as few as possible of the costs, either financial, constiutional or legal

Of course. So why was, for example, Ms Thornberry spending PMQs trying to extract a definitive Govt position on the Customs Union?

Because she's in opposition, and she looks good if she embarrasses the government.

Well, there is that. But I think most people are with the government on this (keeping one's cards close to one's chest). For now.

williamglenn

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

rcs1000 said:

Tissue_Price said:

SeanT said:

Understandably, in that situation, dealing with a political moron like Cameron, the Europeans decided to give him fuck all as he had loudly promised to campaign for them even if he got fuck all.

On top of that, Cameron promised beforehand in the Bloomberg speech that he'd get a whole lot more than fuck all, and when he actually came back with the predictable fuck all, he tried to tell us he'd got the Deal of the Century, and when we all laughed in despair and said he had fuck all, he shut the fuck up and never mentioned his Deal again, throughout the campaign.

Draw your own conclusions.

And yet half our political class wants us to stake out our position in advance for an even more important negotiation.

Like you say, draw your own conclusions.

I don't think our negotiating position is anything other than completely obvious:

As many of the benefits of single market access (especially financial services passporting)
with as few as possible of the costs, either financial, constiutional or legal

Of course. So why was, for example, Ms Thornberry spending PMQs trying to extract a definitive Govt position on the Customs Union?

Because she's in opposition, and she looks good if she embarrasses the government.

Acting as if the government needs to have a completely free hand is preposterous in the modern world. David Davis isn't Palmerston and can't send a few gunboats to enforce his will.

The negotiations on both sides ought to be constrained by the norms of rational administration of first world countries. Pretending that we need to retain the option of commiting economic suicide as a means of creating some artificial leverage just underlines what a stupid exercise the whole thing is from our perspective.

brokenwheel

rcs1000 said:

brokenwheel said:

rcs1000 said:

brokenwheel said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

In Witney the raw Labour vote was 60% of their GE vote, in-line with turnout, so they were not squeezed at all. In Richmond it was only 20%. I would expect Sleaford to be more representative of the former than the latter. For that reason the Labour vote seems low to me.

One factor that makes this hard to call is just how low turnout will be on a cold winter's day, in an extremely safe Conservative seat.

There have been no shortage of turnouts below 30%; could we see 25%? (Manchester Central was just 18.2% in 2012, but I cannot imagine we'll be anywhere near that low.)

If you look at recent by-elections a pattern emerges; safe labour seats see appalling turnouts e.g. Manchester Central. Safe Tory seats however maintain decent turnouts (they also tend to have relatively high turnout at GEs). Safe Tory seats have tended to get roughly about 50%.

Kensington was 30%, but your overall point is, I'm sure, correct.

Starting from a low base which is why I mentioned the high GE turnout. Kensington is a London seat which had only 54.7% turnout at the previous GE.

Richmond had 76.5% at GE15 down to 53.44% in the by-election.
Witney had 73.3% at GE15 down to 46.8% in the by-election.
Rochester 64.9% at GE10 down to 50.6% in the by-election.
Clacton 64.2% at GE10 down to 51% in the by-election.
Newark had 71.4% at GE10 down to 52.79% in the by-election.

Sleaford had 70.2% turnout at GE15, so I would be shocked if it went below 40% say.

Black_Rook

HYUFD said:

SeanT said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

Labour coming 4th would be quite something. It would mean they are dwindling into insignificance across the entirety of south, east and south west England, and the Midlands (absent London and Brum)

And also utterly irrelevant in Scotland.

Labour is staring at electoral death.

Labour's problem is affluent centre left and liberal Remainers are switching back to the LDs and the white working class are increasingly switching to UKIP over immigration and the middle class voters who voted for Blair and for Cameron are sticking with May. That leaves them with just ethnic minorities and the hard and traditional left, mainly in the inner cities, they will likely come 4th on Thursday in Sleaford after coming 3rd in Richmond Park and the County Council elections next year could see Corbyn lose seats even Ed Miliband won in 2013

Except that the Liberal Democrats still aren't improving in the national poll: by-elections and general elections remain clean different things. And, although shrunken, there's little sign of further contraction in Labour's voter coalition. IIRC they've not even been down as low as 25% in any of the GB-wide polls, and whilst I think it's fair to assume that the kind of swing voters in marginal seats that they need to attract want nothing of Corbyn, the surviving core vote appears substantial and surprisingly resilient. There are still, one suspects, a lot of white working class Labour voters who insist in adhering to tribal/brand loyalty, and refuse to be moved by the Ukip message.

I remain concerned that Labour may shamble on for a very long time as a zombie opposition - too weak to take down the Tories at a general election, but simultaneously too strong in their remaining heartlands to allow an alternative to rise up and take their place.

HYUFD

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

rcs1000 said:

HYUFD said:

williamglenn said:

Black_Rook said:

https://twitter.com/LadPolitics/status/806565842372689920

If the LDs beat UKIP it will be spun as another body blow to Brexit.

The LD voteshare will be up but there is no way they will beat UKIP in a seat which voted over 62% Leave, 10% more than nationally

No way?

Given a poor UKIP candidate, little ground game, and an imploding Labour Party, it's quite possible (5-1 shot?) that the LibDems score 18% or so, and UKIP 16%.

The one UKIP voter I know in the constituency is going Conservative.

(That's right, Richard???)

Richard Tyndall is more of a rare Richmond Park Leave voter than a Sleaford one in demographic terms, despite the fact he lives there. Both Nuttall and Farage have been to Sleaford, it is a strong Leave seat with little Remain protest vote, unlike Richmond Park and with UKIP on 18% in the Midland, clearly above their national score and the LDs on 6%, below their national score, UKIP will certainly be second

Will you offer me 6-1 then?

Maybe if say you offered me 3-1 on UKIP on 25%+ but I only bet for small stakes so would not be more than about £10

Scott_P

SeanT said:

If Cameron had come out for Brexit, Leave would have won by 60/40 or more.

SeanT said:

What a fucking twat he was. A political dwarf with no common sense. A pathetic, wanking little midget of a man. UGH. Go away.

Sean, you appear to still be drunk...