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Brexit

Westministenders – 10 days to go

999 replies

RedToothBrush · 29/05/2017 11:48

The Maynifesto is out (lets be honest here; other Manifestos are just exercises in dreaming). The rumours of what will happen post Election are in full swing.

The Conservatives are ‘relaunching’ their campaign after Theresa May’s single handed attempt at throwing the election, has needed an intervention.

Yet the reality is that May will win. And win comfortably, increasing her majority. Talk of a Corbyn surge is just that. Talk. He still is more than 5% behind and the excitement about how the gap has closed is getting carried away. Indeed it only helps the Conservatives to get their vote out. Corbyn also started from such a dreadful position, it just makes the effect look more dramatic than it really is and May was always going to struggle to get much more support after the local election peak.

The thing is none of the political parties are covering themselves in glory. No one is offering what people want. In terms of voters not being impressed by their leadership, I don’t think many are really happy and are just going for the best available option out of a particular bad crop. It does not bode well for the future regardless of who wins. We should be worried about the quality of debate and our representatives regardless of who we end up voting for.

Come election night there are going to be some particularly shocking results. The idea that there is a national trend is not right. This election is highly localised in nature. Which will result in these surprises to outsiders but perhaps not locals.

June 9th will make for a lot of soul searching I suspect. For all three parties. There will be leadership questions that remain unanswered and need to be resolved. There are still massive political divides in parties. Heads will roll and need to be replaced. Expectations and the reality have been out of line for all three in one way or another.

Yet all of this is a side show to an extent. Whilst we all scrabble around trying to work it out amongst ourselves, the rest of the world moves forward without us. And the clock ticks.

Merkel has set the tone for the next round of Brexit. It is regarded by the German political elite as ‘Trumpandbrexit’. We are part of the same phenomenon even though many see it through different eyes in this country. This lack of awareness of how we are perceived outside our own walls is something we will face head on at some point and it won’t be good.

Trump himself is up to his neck in scandal. And has risked our safety as a direct result. May might have held her hand but that relationship does not seem to be going well for us. We are between a rock and a hard place and are drifting out to see.

Global Britain has never seemed so lonely and isolated. The rosy future we were promised, becomes ever more a distant dream rather than a dawn of a new age.

Reality will get us in the end.

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29
Motheroffourdragons · 01/06/2017 17:19

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ on behalf of the poster.

SwedishEdith · 01/06/2017 17:26

Christopher Hope 📝‏Verified account
@christopherhope

BREAKING Theresa May has refused to appear on @BBCRadio4's Woman's Hour tomorrow morning. She is sending Justine Greening.

missmoon · 01/06/2017 17:26

"Sorry, no need for me to tell you that polls did not say Brexit or Trump."

Just to say that the polls were actually right on Brexit (it was within the margin of error). They also predicted the US result (Hillary won the popular vote), but got a few of the state races wrong and hence didn't predict a Trump win.

The polls were wrong on the 2015 UK election, and this article is very interesting on the reasons why (to do with biased samples, exacerbated by the weighting):
academic.oup.com/poq/article/doi/10.1093/poq/nfx015/3852137/Missing-Nonvoters-and-Misweighted

BiglyBadgers · 01/06/2017 17:33

BREAKING Theresa May has refused to appear on @BBCRadio4's Woman's Hour tomorrow morning. She is sending Justine Greening.

No lessons learnt then.

squoosh · 01/06/2017 17:35

What is she playing at?! I think she's trolling us at this point.

Artisanjam · 01/06/2017 17:36

Her non-appearance is pretty inept.

I saw my pils today. They have always voted conservative and never considered anything else. They don't like her education policies and think the ducking out of interviews and debates makes her look flimsy and pathetic.

They're now not planning to vote.

HashiAsLarry · 01/06/2017 17:37

Maybe she lost the kitten?

squoosh · 01/06/2017 17:38

Has anyone seen Weekend at Bernies?

Maybe that's what's happened to May.

Artisanjam · 01/06/2017 17:43

Grin. Weekend at Bernies makes so much sense!

LurkingHusband · 01/06/2017 17:46

www.independent.co.uk/voices/theresa-may-tv-debate-no-show-idiot-called-election-a7767696.html

(I CBA to format properly)

Theresa May has been criticised for not going on the TV debate, but as she said of Jeremy Corbyn, instead of going on television he “should be paying attention to Brexit negotiations. That’s what I’m doing.”

This would be an extremely valid point, if Corbyn was going on television to commentate on the snooker, or appear in The Chase, or take an old bust of Harold Wilson to Antiques Roadshow as he’d been told it could fetch £60, rather than debating why he should be Prime Minister in an election in which he’s trying to become Prime Minister.

She must see the whole election as a distraction, so I bet she wishes she could get her hands on whichever idiot called this election unnecessarily, while she’s trying to pay attention to Brexit negotiations.

On Sunday she’ll see Jeremy Hunt is being interviewed by Andrew Marr, and run into the studio, grabbing him out of the chair while yelling “WHAT do you think you’re doing here asking people to vote for us? Go home and pay attention to Brexit negotiations, like I’m doing.”

Maybe she thinks everyone should be at home studying Brexit negotiations, and runs up the road after dustcarts, shouting “stop collecting rubbish and pay attention to Brexit negotiations”.

Presumably she didn’t even watch the debate, as that would have distracted her attention from memorising regional figures for beetroot production, so she doesn’t get caught out by the wily Italians, who would know she had no idea about them because she’d wasted two hours going on television.

In any case, as Damian Green explained when asked why she didn’t turn up, “She takes lots of questions from the public.” There you are, that explains it. She can’t take questions from the public AND go on television, who’s she supposed to be, Superman?

Luckily, the public who she’s taken questions from during this election have all been journalists, as she’s not had time to meet members of the public who only represent minority groups, such as people who aren’t journalists.

Sometimes she meets as many as 12 members of the public all at once, all of which are holding Conservative Party placards, because she’s obviously wandered into a random street in which local members of the public have shouted “Gawd blimey it’s the Prime Minister”, then surrounded her in a perfect circle, smiling and clapping at her funny joke about Jeremy Corbyn being naked, before going back to work driving a forklift truck.

In any case, whenever you’re asking someone to select you to do a job, whether in an election or a job interview, it’s vital to make an impression straight away by not turning up. I’m sure there are government leaflets that get handed to the unemployed, that advise “When you are asked to attend an interview, it’s essential that you stand out as a candidate by not going. When they call and ask why you’re not there, affect an air that says ‘I’ve got better things to do than waste time with you wankers’ and the job will be as good as yours!”

Now, to make the democratic process fair, the leaders who did waste their time by going on television should be allowed to choose a TV show Theresa May does have to go on. I’d vote for Geordie Shore, so Theresa has to get a fake tan and a tattoo of a winged horse across her back and scream “I canna believe it like, ‘cos Boris was snogging that Nathan AND that Chloe tart reet in front of me like, OH MY GOD.”

Or she can make announcements such as the one she thrilled us with yesterday, that went “I have said many times in the past, people can have faith in me as I have faith in them.”

This is so refreshing, to hear a politician explain honestly that the reason we should vote for her is because she has faith in us. We’re sick of people who stand for office, saying “People can have faith in me because I think they’re scum.”

I’ve copied this myself, writing to the England manager to say he can have faith in me as I have faith in him, and now he’s got no choice but to play me as a striker instead of Harry Kane.

It shows why she doesn’t have to appear on television, as she’s asking for more than our vote, she wants our faith. We’re not just choosing a government, we’re voting for a new God.

The only thing Theresa May needs to be careful of, is if she keeps making statements like that, she’ll end up having to slap her dementia tax on herself.

She sent Amber Rudd to the debate in her place, which must mean Amber has Attention Deficit Disorder, so she might as well go on television as she can’t keep still enough to spend all night studying Brexit negotiations. But Amber made her own valuable point to Jeremy Corbyn, that the real economy wasn’t like Monopoly, “where you buy the gas works with yellow money and electricity with green money”.

It’s fascinating how we all have variations of the rules of Monopoly. Some of us play by going round the board trying to acquire properties.
And she plays a different version, in which you set everything up, then buy utilities with different coloured money. “Who’s got the yellow money?” they must all shout in the Rudd household, “oh it’s cousin Phyllis – go on then, buy the gas works”, then they pack everything away, leaving plenty of time to spend the rest of Christmas paying attention to Brexit negotiations, like the normal members of the public her party likes so much

SwedishEdith · 01/06/2017 18:03

medium.com/@chrishanretty/labours-reliance-on-non-voters-9f88c516310a

Fascinating geeky polls stuff from Chris Hanretty.

Eeeeeowwwfftz · 01/06/2017 18:08

I think I agree with the Hanretty assessment. Not that I have any expertise in such things. So I am perfectly qualified to comment :)

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 01/06/2017 18:17

I posted that article elsewhere Swedish It is fascinating and shows why Labour HQ will be a bit worried about the polls.

TheElementsSong · 01/06/2017 18:17

Grin LH

BiglyBadgers · 01/06/2017 18:18

I know people have mentioned these before. Buzzfeed have done an article on the Tory Facebook advertising.

These Are The Anti-Corbyn Adverts The Tories Are Paying To Promote On Facebook
www.buzzfeed.com/jimwaterson/conservative-election-adverts?utm_term=.wi8oozN2w4#.cqM00xG8Aa

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 01/06/2017 18:20

These Are The Anti-Corbyn Adverts The Tories Are Paying To Promote On Facebook

Labour pay to use SM too.

PigletWasPoohsFriend · 01/06/2017 18:20

Not seen any LibDem ones though. They'd be silly to not use it.

TheElementsSong · 01/06/2017 18:22

mobile.twitter.com/tony_nog/status/870253779450552324

woman12345 · 01/06/2017 18:24

Thanks for posting bigly. £3m worth.Hmm Not to mention the unusual activity more locally. There's a thread about CCHQ threads. Grin

BiglyBadgers · 01/06/2017 18:32

From the article piglet

Although all parties are spending heavily on Facebook advertising during this election — with millions of pounds set to go on online advertising — the Conservatives are pioneers in the field and their messaging is more negative and personal than the adverts put out by rival parties.

BiglyBadgers · 01/06/2017 18:34

It is not the fact that the conservatives are paying for Facebook advertising that makes them different. Parties would be mad not to imho. It is the way they are doing that is different and slips into grey areas in regard to spending and the ethics of targeting.

officerhinrika · 01/06/2017 18:34

And for more startling poll predictions try this one for France. Hope I can make the link work.

https://twitter.com/yannikouts/status/870298879836737536
Conversation


Yannis Koutsomitiss @YanniKouts*

#France #Législatives projection @opinionway]:
En Marche 335~355 seats
Les Républicains 145~165
Socialists 20~35
Left 24~31
Front Natl 7~17


4:19 pm · 1 Jun 2017
255* RETWEETS
166* LIKES

MsHooliesCardigan · 01/06/2017 18:40

Lurking I love the idea of JC commentating on the snooker or going on The Chase.
She is seriously pissing me off now - how stupid does she think people are?
I don't think it counts as a personal attack because it isn't something beyond her control but I have to say that her taste in necklaces is bloody awful - she looked like she was wearing a string of ball bearings round her neck today.
I think there generally tends to be a swing back towards the governing party towards the end of an election campaign so it's almost a certainty that the Tories will win but TM really hasn't covered herself in glory and I think the GE will actually make her position weaker rather than stronger in the long term.

BiglyBadgers · 01/06/2017 18:40

Top marks for effort to the telegraph for giving it their very best. May has such an awesome team she should actually be getting them to do more of her interviews if anything. Grin

Westministenders – 10 days to go
RedToothBrush · 01/06/2017 18:42

Not seen any LibDem ones though. They'd be silly to not use it.

You donating to them then?
Serious point. Do they have the money to do it?

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