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This has not been Boris Johnson’s finest week. A series of humiliating defeats in Westminster, an underwhelming PMQs, harangued on the campaign trail, caught out using policemen for partisan ends and left to dangle in Number 10 without either an electoral escape or a means of leaving the EU by the foolishly promised 31 October.
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Boris might well win a GE?
Not with the Brexit Party in the high teens.
And with the combined Con+Lab vote sub 55%, you can throw Uniform National Swing out the window too.
There be carnage ahead lads. Man the lifeboats.
I have small amounts on Hunt and Gove as potential next PMs.
I wonder what happened to her?
#RuthForFM
Ho ho.
Diagree. If Boris wins a working majority, he will stick through that full term, as he will have shown quite an ability to negotiate his way through the minefield.
There will be the EU trade arrangements - however they come about - to put away. Trade deals with the US and elsewhere. I think he will try and reform several areas where his essentially socially liberal attitudes will come into play. An amnesty on those illegally in the UK for example.
He will have shown he is more than prepared to take on old Tory duffers, so there will be a wholesale implementation of boundary reform, probably also changes to the size of the House of Commons and maybe even Lords reform to get his teeth into.
We're overdue a recession. That will prove taxing to unravel from those shouting "It is entirely down to Brexit". But the one area I see him possibly resigning early as PM is if there is a second Scottish referendum and they choose to leave the Union. Boris will have invested his political capital in trying to hold us together. If he fails, I can see him taking the blame - and making a graceful resignation.
The Tory electoral problem is longer term. Post-purge, the party’s MPs are going to be more right wing than they have ever been before. Johnson himself will be on the leftist fringes, certainly in terms of social attitudes. That won’t matter in a Brexit election, but it will matter a lot as the country deals with the consequences of the No Deal Johnson has to deliver. Hard right solutions are not going to be popular and at some point - when Corbyn has finally departed the scene - there will be a reckoning.
However, I am not sure David is right about there being relatively little tactical voting at the next GE. People who want to stop No Deal will vote for whoever is best placed to prevent it. The issue is more that the anti-No Deal vote is heavily concentrated in certain parts of the country and will not deliver enough MPs to stop Johnson as a result.
https://twitter.com/britainelects/status/1170117064159350784?s=20
That’s not just a PB first, that’s gotta be a world first.
This GE, whenever it comes, is so hard to call that I think we can only make three predictions with any reasonable degree of certainty:
1. The SNP will do very well
2. The Brexit Party won't win a single seat
3. Labour will have more than 200 MPs (the Tories probably will as well, but if the campaign goes horribly for them then who knows?)
The ideal outcome of the election depends very much on one's own point of view, of course, but an anti-Tory majority with as weakened a Labour Party in it as possible (a 1983-type performance,) and a sizeable Lib Dem presence, would be best. Labour need to be so far short of a majority that they have to treat with Swinson as well as Sturgeon to get there, and the price the Lib Dems should enforce upon Labour (over and above preventing McDonnell from exploring the wilder hinterlands of socialist economic policy) is PR for Westminster. We must have an end to the public being forced to choose between increasingly polarised extremes at every election, before things properly spiral out of control. This should also mean a second referendum on Scottish independence, but I'm entirely relaxed about this prospect.
Ed Davey would be wiping the floor with The Clown.
This is no time for a shouty Vicky Pollard.
Is it just me, or is the subtext "please do a deal or my boyfriend won't win a seat" ?
IDS
Howard
Cameron
May
Clown
Gove?
Loser
Loser
Loser
Loser
Loser
Loser
Loser
Anyone spotting a pattern here?
Well, that’s what Con+Bxp are doing to the United Kingdom: rotting it from the inside out.
Also the Benn bill might be of use if you’ve run out of Kleenex - but that’s about it.
And I'm absolutely sure that the former does not want the latter, and a small contingent of his troops, constantly breathing down his neck in the Commons. Any deal with the Brexit Party is bound to include the Tories letting them run unopposed in a selection of target seats (which is the only way the Brexit Party is going to get any MPs returned.)
He did in Brecon. And that was an eminently winnable by-election, whatever the London media thought, and at the same time also a completely free hit given the circumstances as nobody was going to blame him for a defeat. As it was, he seriously upset all the activists by standing them up and seems to have shoved some waverers to the Yellows leading them to a more comfortable victory than expected (although the key was the collapse of the Labour red rosette on a donkey vote).
If he's frit there, he might well be frit in the main event.
An extension will be the end of BoZo as premier, whether there is an election or not, and BoZo will have to be replaced with someone of different approach. It cannot be another No Dealer. Javid or Hunt for me. With Shadsys odds boost, 35/1 and 80/1.
All the Conservatives are/were either PM or Cabinet members and you forgot to name any Referendum SNP "Loser"
...no-one knows.
LibDems believe their "team" will soar during the election campaign. Labourites believe it will be a rerun of 2017. BJers think they'll suck the Brexit Party dry and land a 100 seat majority.
No-one knows.
My view is that an early election favours the Conservatives, but that they will lost 5-15 Remain seats to the LibDems (probably at the lower end of the range), and 8-10 seats to the SNP. I also think that the Alliance will do surprisingly well in Northern Ireland, as it allows people to vote against "a hard border" without crossing sectarian lines. (In Sinn Fein seats, a combination of wanting an MP that actually turns up, combined with a bit of Unionist tactical voting wouldn't surprise me in the least.)
But these 15-20 losses will likely be made up by gains from Labour. I'd expect 20-30 gains there, resulting in a small overall Conservative majority.
Go beyond the end of the year mind, and irrespective of Brexit, the UK and the world will likely have drifted into recession. That won't be a fun time, as the governing party, to ask for a mandate. And if it's in the context of "No Deal", it may be especially painful. (Not the recession, but the electoral response; the electorate rarely looks beyond the border.)
*Grabs tinfoil hat and ducks*
I have my fingers crossed for remainer MPs telling Boris to delay Brexit, him refusing and them setting up a puppet government to thwart the UK's exit.
The GE that follows will see the LD's ok but Labour will be utterly gutted out.
Or am I getting confused and Lord Ashcroft isn't her boyfriend?
Boris Johnson hides rather than making a stand. We saw the same thing when he was Foreign Secretary and hid in Afghanistan rather than voting against a Heathrow expansion, only to resign a week or so later for fear David Davis might steal his imaginary crown as King of the Leavers.
Just a guess, but I suspect she'll improve over time, and that she'll do OK. Not super duper amazing, but OK.
Salmond - mostly a loser (2011 being a truly dazzling exception)
Swinney - loser
Sturgeon - loser
Robertson - loser
I'm spotting a pattern here too...
But then, as Enoch Powell noted with uncharacteristic accuracy, all political careers end in failure. It's just recently most of our politicians haven't had any success beforehand either.
The idea that the Conservatives are now united in Westminster is absolutely risible. Good grief, David. Are you living in the Outer Hebrides? They are ripping themselves apart. Listen to the whisperings and fury in the corridors, right through from Portcullis House to No.10 itself there is open revolt. Some Cabinet members are likely to break cover soon. So, I'm sorry, but with respect that's a complete joke. You've got nutcases like IDS openly encouraging Johnson to break the law and go to jail as a martyr, through to the normal tories suggesting Johnson might ditch that prize berk Cummings and get a deal with the EU.
The next election will not solely be about Brexit. This will be especially true if, as is likely, it's after Oct 31st and an extension. Brexit bores most people outside of the headbangers and there are many, many, other issues that have historically always been to the fore and will be so again. This is all the more true in a long campaign.
Johnson has looked flummoxed and flustered this week. Almost like he wants to give this up, which wouldn't surprise me. He's clearly not up to the job.
When Brexit doesn't happen on Oct 31st, the BXP will hoover up most of Johnson's right wing support. He's already lost the One Nation tories with absolute fury. I expect the tories to bomb.
Finally, parties which are disunited don't win elections. You think it's bad now? You wait until a campaign starts. They aren't just disunited. They are in open civil war.
But apart from any of the above, take a step back. The Tories have been in power one way or another since 2010. There have been 3 elections in that time, only one of which they won outright and that was narrowly under Cameron.
You may be right. But for all the reasons above I suggest the chances of an outright Conservative win are vanishingly narrow.
But Labour are going to face very awkward questions as to why they had a chance to turf out this shambles via an election and refused. And that's going to be their membership that get mad at them, not just their voters.
But if you look at the Conservative defectors (of all shapes and sizes), I can see maybe three or four who MIGHT hold their seats:
- Rory Stewart, because my wife is as apolitical as they come, and she adores him. I suspect she's not alone
- Heidi Allen, because it's a Remain seat, and she's relatively popular local MP
- Sarah Wollaston, because the LDs will stand down, and the BXP will split the Leave vote
Who else?
This is why I think Labour are acting stupidly. They look almost as inept as Dominic Cummings right now, and that is saying something.
AN ELECTION!
When Do We Want It?
NOT NOW!
SNP sweep the boards in Scotland ala 2015 (One reason I voted Davey is Swinson is vulnerable to the SNP surge and may need to campaign in her constituency too much for a national campaign, though there is a leadership bonus)
Alliance to pick up some NI seats
Lib Dems and Independent Remainers to form a tacit or explicit coupon electoral team, with Greens and PC too. This is Swinsons strength. Multiple gains across Southern, and South-Western England.
Brexit party nul points, and no formal alliance.
Lab to lose a couple of dozen seats in England, and wipeout in Scotaland.
Anyway, you must be living in cloud cuckoo land. The Tories are in the process of ripping themselves apart. With a lying scumbag at the helm, their prospects dwindle by the day.
NOM will be the result of the next GE when it happens either in November or the spring.
The real value is in the Labour majority odds. That's the value bet.
Of course, they may overcome this - they did before - but they seem determined to make life difficult for themselves.
But, despite his delusions, the PM is not Augustus.
And we were all wrong.
Even worse Stuart this one claims to be Scottish.
Anabobazina said:
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You really are funny.
This quality of Unionist debate is bog standard in Scotland. They have zero policy platform to promote, so they just hurl preposterous abuse. Before Venezuela they were banging on about the Yugoslav war. Cuba is a perennial favourite.
They think they’re being clever, but what they are really doing is betraying their profound hatred (often self-hatred). They really do think that Scotland is a basket case and that Scots are complete morons. And then they wonder why they’ve been out of power in Edinburgh for 12 years, with no end in sight.
They are very comfortable with a high tax, high spend, puritanical, meddling and authoritarian Conservative government in London, but the prospect of vibrant, open, innovative, multi-party democracy in Edinburgh horrifies them.
They sound like at least a 20-1 shot.
Despite your complete conviction in the VANISHINGLY NARROW chance of a Conservative majority I will give you the opportunity of putting your money where your mouth is.
Happy to have anything up to £10k on a Tory majority at 5-1...which is incredibly skinny odds going by your post.
Money to be held by trusted 3rd party.
Of course, it depends a bit on how you define 'loser.' Sturgeon lost Salmond's hard earned majority ((c) TSE) but she did still have by far the most seats.
Mind you, I used to be a Plaid voter and they've never won anything at all.
If I were to pun, I'd probably prefer:
"The lie is cast!"
Bow down
Traitor
Diehard
Phase 2 of the war
Bonkers
Stark
Raving
Bonkers
It's got to be a Remain seat. It's got to be a popular local MP. It's got to have a good sized LD (and possibly Lab) vote to squeeze.
So, if Heidi Allen takes 25% of the Conservative vote, 15% of the Labour vote, and all the LibDem vote she's re-elected. That sounds plausible, if hardly a massively odds on bet.
I can make a similar case for SarahW, and maybe Justine Greening and Stephen Hammond at a push. But realistically, it's four of the former Tory MPs. Maybe five in extremis.
Kate Hoey is standing down. I agree about Rory. I know lots of people who like him. One day, when the Conservative party re-emerges from the ashes he might be the one to bring them back to sanity.
I don't disagree with much of your lengthier post (I usually find myself agreeing with you!) and as you say, no one knows. I think you might be underestimating how will the LibDems will do in London and the south. Their unequivocal Bollox to Brexit / Remain stance is going to make substantial inroads in Remain areas.
I am also far from convinced that Cummings will gain traction with 'white working class man' in the north. The memes of JRM and Johnson just don't work with Labour heartlands and we had all this bs with Theresa May. Do you remember that fleeting moment when we heard that 'even the Labour heartlands aren't safe':
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/27/theresa-may-to-lay-bare-ambition-to-capture-labour-heartlands
In fact, she lost her majority.
The voters don't seem *hugely* keen on an election. It's not clear that it'll actual solve anything - we're on the second parliament since Brexit and the third Tory Prime Minister and no closer to resolving the Tory Party's inherent contradictions - and lots of them seem to want Brexit settled first.
The opposition have a majority of 20, many of whom don't even have a party let alone a winnable seat. LDs and ex-Cons may not particularly like Corbyn or Boris, but they have no better option than Boris after an election, and a situation like the current one is literally the best they can hope for. Nearly everyone would agree on the way forward (Norway PD+Referendum), the EU would agree, and with a couple of kamikaze exceptions like Hoey the Labour people who aren't that keen on the approach are the people who might lose their seats to Con or BXP in an immediate Brexit election.
The ex-Cons would love the opportunity to stick it to Boris, and if they can get Brexit out of the way they have a good chance of getting their party back under a new leader.
Corbyn may or may not to persuade everyone else to let him be PM, but either way he gets to look sensible and statesman-like and detoxify himself, and shake everything up before holding an election that may not necessarily work out to his advantage.
Why isn't this the obvious way forward? I think people's thinking is still stuck where it was when Boris's majority was approximately zero, and the narrative has yet to catch up with how everything changed when Boris decided to try peeling off his face and feeding it to the dogs.
[*] Subject to a confirmatory referendum, terms and conditions may apply
We right now have a party led by a pair of inept posh boys - one in Parliament and one appointed because of being bezzy mates - running a third rate cabal of hopelessly incompetent members with an ideology seemingly determined to take us back to the 1950s, noted for their institutionalised racism, incapable of forming a coherent sentence, ruthlessly kicking all of their opponents out, rumoured to have links to Russia, constitutionally incapable of telling the truth, and putting forward a pack of populist lies based on their own drunken prejudices and outmoded principles in a blatant attempt to bribe the electorate into voting for them.
And because Labour are in this state, somehow the Tories sitll lead the polls.
I tactfully passed her a plate of sandwiches and kept schtum. After all, she did vote for the WA.
If the next election is six or more months away, I wonder how many other MPs will conclude like Jo Johnson that this just isn't worth it.
I wouldn't want any money on an outright Conservative win at anything shorter than 15-1. But, as I say, I'm not betting with an unknown figure on here. Ta.
Jezza is a Brexit hero and BoZo is a footnote
Funnily enough, nobody's asked me since.
But on a serious point, no government in this state should have even a faint chance of re-election. Labour members, I hope you're happy with how electing a geriatric populist nutter with the integrity of Horatio Bottomley has turned out.
As mentioned, I wouldn't want shorter than about 15-1 on an outright tory win and even that's probably being generous.
Johnson lost the battle when Parliament returned. Cummings and him are quite good at whipping up the media attention when no-one is actually scrutinising them, so 5 weeks prorogation leaves me nervous.
Additionally I don't trust Johnson as far as I can spit. He might yet try to dodge the law. We know from his past that he's prepared to play fast and loose with it.
I would much prefer the Opposition not to play games themselves. Bite the Bullet and install a caretaker PM to bring us through to November. I realise the risks of the meme: being seen as the ones extending Art 50. But in my opinion there's still a slight danger of a No Deal crash out if Johnson is left in No.10.
https://twitter.com/DUPleader/status/1170111587325218816?s=20
Simply, the Tories lead in the polls, and it's entirely possible the Remain vote will be split.
But, as I said, who knows? If the UK enters a recession this year, 15-1 might look skinny.
With a third the odds top 2 (each way), Hamilton's 4.5 for fastest qualifier. Bottas is 21.
The new Mercedes engine seems pretty tasty and if they can run it full tilt, unlike last time, (when Hamilton was still just a few thousandths off Vettel), surely they have a decent shot of top 2?
BoZo resigns or they VONC him, Corbyn takes over (or Ken Clarke or Rory Stewart or whoever, with Corbyn having some kind of "be responsible for something important and ostentatiously don't break it" position), rejig the PD to be more Norway-ish, pass that with the existing WA it subject to a referendum.
Referendum in January, out or revoke by Jan 31st. Election after that or not, see how it goes.