Westministenders – 10 days to go

[RedToothBrush]

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.

Mother the Survation Scotland only poll you quote is from April. At that time in UK wide Survation poll SNP figure was 4%. Can't see a later Scotland only one from them but the UK wide fall to 2%, which looks to have flipped to Labour echoes and magnify a poll carried by the Sun last week quoting SNP at 39% and Labour at 25%.

Because of the concentration of the Labour vote in the central belt if Labour gets towards 30% then the impact on seats starts to reach a tipping point. More to play for than the SNP or the Tories are letting on.

Not exactly, but the Tories are now pretty much allied with the DUP, which with their fascist and paramilitary links, is imo comparable to if Labour were to become loosely allied to Sinn Fein.

Unfortunately the DUP appear to have sufficient influence over the Tory party to be able to rule out some ideas for resolving the Irish border issue after Brexit

One Tory MP who served in NI did say he'd been "a bit of a torturer"
However, that was for the army, not the Tory party

Two of the nastiest aspects of NI were:

• collaboration of UK security forces with loyalist terrorists in killing Catholics, both in NI and RoI
• UK armed forces shooting unarmed civilians, beating up and torturing suspects

The Tories were not exactly innocent bystanders in the Troubles if I understand it correctly. They supported the loyalist paramilitaries, no?

They also did talk to the IRA (and Sinn Fein) in the 1970s - very secretly under Edward Heath. But (maybe like Mrs Thatcher ????) the government were more afraid of the reaction of the Tory party, than the public (this is a recurring motif in UK politics).

Future generations will probably be more sanguine about how the Irish peace process happened. But I believe part of it was due to the IRAs prescient understanding of the more ephemeral nature of politics, and a belief that as the years moved forward, less and less UK voters would care less - let along understand - the situation. Which slowly strengthened their hand.

Or, to put it another way : My late DM would have been quite upset at the notion of "losing" Northern Ireland. (This from a position of someone with 0% connection with it). I, myself take the view: "it should be up to the people who live there.".

But DS: "Who cares ?".

Trivia alert: One episode of "Star Trek: The New Generation" was not shown on UK TV, as it referred to the Irish reunification ...

memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Irish_Unification_of_2024

We need to wait for a reliable Scottish poll, to be sure
However, latest poll suggests the SNP are being squeezed because this GE is being dominated by UK issues.
Their lead over Tories reduced to 10%, over Labour to 14-15%

Hence they are likely to lose several seats to the Tories and a few to Labour, while still winning about ⅔ of all Scottish seats.
So, scaled down from ridiculous dominance of Westminster seats to more like what SLab used to have

Survey Monkey Scottish poll yesterday (but they have a short track record, so accuracy unknown)

http://scotgoespop.blogspot.de/2017/05/full-scale-scottish-poll-from.html

SNP 39%
CON 29%
LAB 25%
LDEM 4%

which fits with the small YouGov Scottish subsample:
SNP 40%
CON 30%
LAB 25%
LDEM 4%

Two of the nastiest aspects of NI were:
+ collaboration of UK security forces with loyalist terrorists in killing Catholics, both in NI and RoI
+ UK armed forces shooting unarmed civilians, beating up and torturing suspects

For balance the IRA were a bunch of murdering thugs too. No one comes out with much valour apart from the people who have done their utmost to make peace work. They are heroes every day.

Bigchoc if it is to be a Conservative Government then a good reason for an enhanced majority would be to reduce DUP influence.

Lh there were a few polls during the Troubles on Uk attitudes to Irish reunification. iirc, they found most people on the mainland supported a United Ireland, mostly because they were sick of the violence.
I remember the frequent quote "let them kill each other, not us"

Of course, decades after the bombs stopped, people may have forgotten and now want to keep hold of NI.

I naturally require a much higher standard of behaviour from any UK govt than I do from a terrorist organization

Yes, howabout I personally wanted a GE ever since May became PM, partly in the hope of reducing the influence of both the DUP and the Brexit Ultras like Redwood, IDS, Gove

It makes it easier to negotiate if May isn't subject to constant stabbing pains in her back. More flexibility - if she hadn't made so many statements she'd have to back down from.

Also, Brexit requires the mandate of a GE - that narrow and very flawed (Cambridge Analytica & co) referendum was insufficient

Lh there were a few polls during the Troubles on Uk attitudes to Irish reunification. iirc, they found most people on the mainland supported a United Ireland, mostly because they were sick of the violence.

But not sick enough to educate themselves as to why it was happening ???

Placemarking for the inevitable shitstorm.

Of course, with Scotland, as for England & Wales, this GE may be peak Tory:

• Even if Brexit goes well, those Labour voters, who are swapping to the Tories just to ensure Brexit, are likely to return to Labour with a new, younger dynamic leader.
  The Labour policies look quite popular; just a combination of Brexit, plus Corbyn's past and his incompetent acolytes made it impossible for Labour this time

• If Brexit hopes badly, the economy will tank.
  Ditching May in 2020-2021 is unlikely to deflect all of the blame

So, expect a scorched earth policy, as Tories try to change things permanently, so that Labour can't undo them e.g. further privatization
or just throw money at their friends while they can e.g. benefit cuts to fund tax cuts for the wealthy & corporations

lh Looking deeper to understand the causes of problems was nearly as unpopular then as now.
That's namby pamby metropolitan elite thinking

Most people just seem to react to events, without trying to understand why they happened, or how to avoid similar issues in the future

If Brexit goes badly < autocorrect is buggering about today >

"Winning" for the SNP is a highly malleable concept, but if the vote approaches 1/3 SNP and 2/3 UK wide parties -regardless of seat tally, they can define it however they like but their ship will have sailed.

Survey Monkey also shows support for independence at 55%, which looks unlikely combined with that drop in SNP support
So, we definitely need a poll from an organization with more of a track record to confirm the monkey business

lh Looking deeper to understand the causes of problems was nearly as unpopular then as now.That's namby pamby metropolitan elite thinking
Most people just seem to react to events, without trying to understand why they happened, or how to avoid similar issues in the future

There is a very real danger in trying to understand things deeper that you might have to actually do something rather than talk loudly about how terrible it all is.

In much the same way that it's far easier to go to church every Sunday and talk about being nice to people than it is to go to a homeless shelter every Sunday and actually help people. (And yes, there is a subtext).

When it comes to how to deal with people, Churchill is my hero:

to jaw-jaw is better than to war-war

Interesting what you remind us about margin of error on polling size BigChoc: checked both the most recent YouGov and Survation polls.

The Scottish subset of the YouGov poll was under 200 (MoE +/- 7%) and in the Survation poll was under 100 (MoE +/- 10%).

This GE will decide Brexit, but it certainly doesn't decide Scottish Independence for evermore, much as unionists would like this.
Few issues are decided forever
e.g. in 15 years, a UK with changed demographics could apply to join EEA / EFTA.
That might quell the demand for Independence

A Corbyn win would do so.
However, almost certainly there will be a Tory majority of whatever size, which will carry out measures for the next 5 years which much of Scotland will hate.
The Tories could stop the Indy movement dead by granting DevoMax, but they are always too arrogant when they have power over people.

I remember the SDLP in NI kept saying "too little, too late" as the Tory govts were forced to make grudging concessions, which were then too late to work. Rinsed & repeated.

The SNP vote looks squeezed, but they will still be the largest Scottish party (and with an incredible 120k members) which will be a powerful base to rocket upwards if Brexit tanks the economy, or the Tories otherwise cause pain / humiliation.

Free Trade with the EU (reminder to Labour & Tory parties)

Of course the Uk can eventually have a new FTA with the EU and without FOM, like e.g. CETA so often quoted wrt Canada
BUT

• CETA is MUCH more limited for goods than the access the UK enjoys now and with many rules & quotas - e.g. Canada meat producers say they don't have effective access to the EU, despite CETA
• CETA doesn't cover services, which are 80% of UK exports, but not very important for Canada
• CETA took at least 7 years to negotiate, didn't depend on other issues like expats, exit bill & NI being resolved - and didn't cover much of what the UK needs

BigChoc do you have a link to the Richard North article you mentioned with regard to Ireland in your post of this morning?

This GE will decide Brexit, but it certainly doesn't decide Scottish Independence for evermore, much as unionists would like this.

As with NI, my sense before was that as far as people living in England were concerned, Scottish independence was really their decision. I can't recall chatting with anyone who was vehemently opposed on anything but sentimental grounds.

I'd be curious, if Brexit does prove to be the Horlicks it's shaping up to be, whether that changes at all ? After all, why should Scotland be able to get out of it when the rest of us are suffering ?

Been listening to Radio 5 and them discussing a statement about the Manchester Arena Bomber from the head of Greater Manchester Police.

He said that whilst the bomber was a petty criminal and was known to police, he was not known by the Prevent programme. This is despite several reports that concerns were raised about him to the police about being radicalised AND suggestions in the newspaper that the security services were aware of him (and his family). I think there will be quite an investigation on who knew what going here.

The Head of GMP also said he had said that people needed to be tolerant in the face of things after a reported spike in hate crimes. To this he was subjected himself to abuse from what he called 'extremists' for being an 'apologist' for the attacks. Exact words. This in itself is troubling given the extent to which this has been almost normalised as being ok to do. Abuse like this is common place. The goalposts have moved.

Re Corbyn and the IRA / present day and ISIS. I think one of the big things that is emerging is about how the role of the community in which individuals hide is marginalised and outside the establishment and is therefore blamed (perhaps when the community has tried to inform and government institutions have played 'less than productive' role in the chain of events). The idea of a crackdown affects the whole of this community and at the same time there is no stepping up of opening lines of communication. Indeed the opposite is effectively happening, as Prevent is viewed with suspicion and the community policing which is needed to support it has been removed.

Peace in NI also came about because of social pressure from within the community and a desire for it to stop, what they had got caught up in through no fault of their own, which helped to direct Sinn Fein in a different direction and distance itself from violence. Talks were part of the process but there was also other stuff going on too.