Second do not underestimate Boris, he may act like a buffoon but behind him are some seriously smart people and more importantly they play to win, sometime too aggressively. 3 months ago all the so called intelligent commentators thought Boris was a busted flush, losing in Parliament, being accused of dodgy prorogation's, 21 rebels being sacked (terrible move apparently) and being accused of being a far right nationalist. Now with a splash of Cummings he is master of his own party, the Government of his choice and Country broadly behind him if a little sceptical. The last thing the Labour party should do is just dis him as a buffon.
Even you are underestimating Boris. He won a scholarship to Eton and studied PPE at Balliol, one of Oxford's most intellectually rigorous colleges, if not the most. Academic intelligence is not perfectly correlated with judgement, but it is an important pre-requisite.
I met Boris a couple of times (briefly) professionally when he was Mayor of London and he has a mind like a bacon-slicer. It really comes across when he is interested in soemthing. His big disadvantage in governing is a total disinterest in policy detail when he isn't, but that's not a fatal one, as Reagan showed.
So if he's got a mind like a bacon-slicer, how did he come to be so confused as to think the DUP had backed his deal?
It was just about the most crucial political issue of the moment, and apparently he didn't have a clue.
Neurological degeneration since you met him, or what?
He should have come to you for advice, a blowhard wanking for coins on the internet. Yet he’S PM and you’re irrelevant.
Re Labour, forget Corbyn for a second, and just think Brexit.
There was no easy way out for them, because their seats fell into two broad groups: Remainiac City Centres and University towns, and Leaverstan towns in the North and North West of the country.
If the Labour Party had had a policy of "Brexit, but not a Tory Brexit", they might have held up in Leaverstan. But they would have lost in London, Cambridge, Bristol, Sheffield Hallam and the like. They were faced with an unenviable choice, disappoint one group of supporters or the other. Wholeheartedly backing Brexit might have saved Leigh in Manchester or Newcastle-under-Lyme, but it would have lost them another bunch of seats.
They had a way out and Corbyn was following it for quite a while. Say you oppose the Tory Brexit but let May get it through. He could, especially at MV3 with a nod and a wink have ensured May had enough votes to get it through while still leaving her impotent and unpopular. Or done the same with Boris while he had no majority, they just didn't need to support the wrecking amendment on the timetable motion.
Then the Brexit issue would be closed tand they could move on. The issue was the Brexit issue wasn't closed. If Brexit had happened already then Leave/Remain/betrayal/whatever wouldn't matter so much.
Yep i’m sure that there were quite sufficient numbers of Labour MPs in leave seats who would have been quite happy to “rebel” against the leadership, provided they had reasonable reassurance that they wouldn’t have been immediately thrown to the hounds.
Not just Labour Leavers, his own mates too. Corbyn and his mates were Brexiteers. Dennis Skinner was as ardent a Brexiteer as anyone in Parliament but he voted against or abstained on the Meaningful Votes. I think he might have spontaneously combusted going into the Aye Lobby with a Tory PM but still I'm sure with a conversation between him and Corbyn he could have voted to get Brexit done.
Electorally naive Remainers thought the Tories would be screwed by Brexit not happening, but instead realistically the Tories just removed May and Johnson profited from being seen to show Parliament as the obstruction. The reality is Corbyn needed Brexit done more than Johnson - and he was the one to block it!
Yes, the presumption of the Benn Act was that the electorate was stupid, that it would blame Boris for breaking his “die in the ditch” promise. Well, as we now know just plain 100% wrong. The electorate could totally see what was going on, Remainers were using every wheeze in the book, and indeed writing new books, to frustrate the referendum result.
The election was a classic case of, you can’t fool all the people all the time.
I don't think any assumptions can be made about the way in which LD voters would have preferenced the Conservatives and Labour under a transfer system of voting.
Is Paul Hilder seriously suggesting all the other parties should fold?
I don't think any assumptions can be made about the way in which LD voters would have preferenced the Conservatives and Labour under a transfer system of voting.
Is Paul Hilder seriously suggesting all the other parties should fold?
Cyclefree and Meeks should really be clear about who they back. All the rest of them have. For reference-
Smithson - LD TSE - Tory (although not anymore) Herdson - Tory (although not anymore)
To be honest, the only people who should say who they voted for are those who work for or assist unpaid a political party. The rest, if they have any honour, will politely tell you to do one. I don't even discuss it with my family even when it's bloody obvious - which was the source of some awkwardness this weekend.
Is this going to be a PB Tory meme going forward? They just spent a month crapping themselves in fear but now they've won it's like seeing little PBHitlers hatching. Perhaps less telling people what to do, yes?
Having knocked on hundreds of doors saying "can I count on your support" trying to get peoples voting intentions I don't really like your stance.
Ms Briskin was threatening to not reveal to me but once she'd done it she just told me.
I've very rarely told people what to do - and when I have they've never done it about 99.9pc of the time
Fair point and I am happy to believe you do not exhibit such behavior. But have a look of some of your fellows over the coming months (and years, and decades...). I think it's going to become more and more prevalent....
And there’s more. Given there is no possible route to a Labour govt of any kind even with SNP support that doesn’t go through West Bromwich, Stoke, Leigh, and Grimsby, how “ rejoiny” can Labour be next time?
If the EU, “North London”, the Lib Dem’s and the clever dick lawyers running off to court every five minutes or coming up with Byzantine Parliamentary wheezes had really accepted the vote of June 2016, they’d be in a better place now vis a vis our membership both now and in the future.
They didn’t, they spent three years carpet bombing people like me that we were thick, racist, stupid etc etc. Well we won. I hope we can be more gracious than they’ve been.
We need as a nation to rest, heal, and above all a bit of normality for a few years.
+++
Yes, this is why I think there won't be any Scots indyref for a while, let alone a YES vote. The nation is weary. Sturgeon knows this, she just has to feed her radical Nats some separatist ribeye
On your point, the Remainers totally fucked up all of this, from the start. Indeed you could easily argue they fucked this up from about Maastricht, when any kind of referendum, if offered, would have stopped EU integration for the UK, but kept us in the EU.
Instead they overplayed their hand all the way along, and in the end they have lost everything. Total wretched arrogance. Hubris/nemesis. Twats.
How “rejoiny” can Labour (or the LDs or anyone) be next time? Well, let’s see how reale existierender Brexitismus pans out over the next five years, shall we?
And as to hubris, what you Brexiteers seem to forget in your moment of triumph is that almost as many people voted to remain in the EU as to leave it, and it always used to be sensible politics that if you had a knife-edge divisive issue, you needed to work hard to compromise and make it as palatable for the dissenting minority as possible.
So be careful. If you want keep your hard-won Brexit, remember that the harder a Brexit you impose, the more likely it'll be you'll trigger a reaction that will put the UK (or more likely England) back in the EU and with Schengen and the Euro to boot.
Belated congratulations to HYUFD & RCS for their excellent GE forecasts, unbelievably accurate.
And letx not forget the bile directed at HYUFD....
That was not to do with what he predicted. But he did call things well.
But his full prediction was further off than many PB’ers. Many of his other predictions were way off. I’d see him as akin to the football fan that would have argued for his team regardless; that his team won doesn’t necessarily imply any predictive value in his fandom.
Voters are not infinitely interchangeable. They aren't all going to vote the way you want on any particular issue.
This guy seems like the visitor we had briefly here on election night, who was simultaneously accusing LibDems of being Tories and arguing that they should disband the party so that they can all vote Labour.
We at Tories4Wrong-Daily on the other hand can't believe our luck.
Conservative supporters hilariously shoehorning unsuitable candidates in as Leader of the Labour Party should be careful what they wish for. Don't forget Corbyn was only 2 percentage points away from it going horribly wrong in 2017.
No government should be without the checks and balances of a competent opposition, particularly one led by someone as erratic as Johnson.
True. Let that be the LibDems or the Brexit Party though.
Not just Labour Leavers, his own mates too. Corbyn and his mates were Brexiteers. Dennis Skinner was as ardent a Brexiteer as anyone in Parliament but he voted against or abstained on the Meaningful Votes. I think he might have spontaneously combusted going into the Aye Lobby with a Tory PM but still I'm sure with a conversation between him and Corbyn he could have voted to get Brexit done.
Electorally naive Remainers thought the Tories would be screwed by Brexit not happening, but instead realistically the Tories just removed May and Johnson profited from being seen to show Parliament as the obstruction. The reality is Corbyn needed Brexit done more than Johnson - and he was the one to block it!
Yes, the presumption of the Benn Act was that the electorate was stupid, that it would blame Boris for breaking his “die in the ditch” promise. Well, as we now know just plain 100% wrong. The electorate could totally see what was going on, Remainers were using every wheeze in the book, and indeed writing new books, to frustrate the referendum result.
The election was a classic case of, you can’t fool all the people all the time.
Well indeed. At the time of the Benn Act I wrote here saying that Leavers aren't stupid and wouldn't blame Boris, I got replies by people here basically saying "yes Leavers are stupid". Oops, don't drink your own kool aid.
I also said at the time the Tories would be polling 40% by the end of October, which again got laughed at. It not only happened but the Tories polled well past it.
Comments
The election was a classic case of, you can’t fool all the people all the time.
And as to hubris, what you Brexiteers seem to forget in your moment of triumph is that almost as many people voted to remain in the EU as to leave it, and it always used to be sensible politics that if you had a knife-edge divisive issue, you needed to work hard to compromise and make it as palatable for the dissenting minority as possible.
So be careful. If you want keep your hard-won Brexit, remember that the harder a Brexit you impose, the more likely it'll be you'll trigger a reaction that will put the UK (or more likely England) back in the EU and with Schengen and the Euro to boot.
I also said at the time the Tories would be polling 40% by the end of October, which again got laughed at. It not only happened but the Tories polled well past it.