Westminstenders: One Pepperoni Pizza Please. And a Milkshake To Go.

[RedToothBrush]

On the Eve of the EU Elections that we never met to happen, and we don't know what the next hour next mind day might bring.

Farage is enjoying the theatre of milkshakes. It means he gets attention and gets to play the victim. And avoid talking about his dodgy friends and even dodgier financing. The Brexit Party are polling so highly its possible he could be PM. And boy does he know it. The temptation is there and its too much to resist.

May has refused to resign so far tonight after a day of asking her to. The 1922 Committee refused to change the rules to help oust her - possibly because they don't want the next PM to be beset with challenges to the leadership at the drop of a hat. Graham Brady is seeing her on Friday... The ERG are not happy bunnies.

May is still apparently planning to plough on with the WAB with a referendum possibly attached. Though this remains to be seen.

Meanwhile Leadsom has just quit the Cabinet. She was one of the Brexit 'Pizza Club'. Rumours are this might be the Cabinet withdrawing support for her. Though Gove has said he doesn't intend to resign (tonight at least).

Rumour is that May's senior staff have abandoned her to let her make the decision to go. And rumours are that when Leadsom rang May to tell her she was leaving cabinet, May didn't tell her senior staff. This comes two weeks after rumours where that Phillip May was at the point of telling her it was time to resign. The rumours of course may be just that, rumours but it's hard to see how or why anyone would tell her to carry on now.

And so tomorrow. Who would vote for this utter shower of shit? Even if you were the most loyal of Tories?

The thing tomorrow is to get the remain vote out. It doesn't matter ultimately what people vote for. Every vote cast for remain keeps the Brexit Party popular vote down. Even if it doesn't win seats. And that is psychologically important.

Tomorrow make sure EVERYONE you know who is anti brexit party votes. More so if they are a Remainer voting for a Remain party, but also if they are solid Labour or the rarest of things, a true blue.

It MATTERS. Narratives will be set.

If you are not sure if you are registered to vote, please TRY ANYWAY. The worst case is you are turned away and have lost 20 mins of your life. But you might also be able to vote and that might change the course of events.

Talk to people tomorrow. Remind them. Make sure it's about preventing a hard right foothold. Apathy will destroy our futures. Being fed up of politicians so refusing to vote is actively shooting yourself in the face.

Who am I voting for?

Still no idea. But I will vote.

My position on "who next" would always be that I would want the best person for the job, difficult to state clearly what the criteria for that are without knowing who all the candidates are but I'm personally much more bothered about their leadership qualities than whether they personally voted Leave or Remain.

May's preferred successor I'm sure is Gove.

Gove is one of the few who has shown any willingness at all to compromise.

The new leader of the House is a Gove supporter.

She won't publicly support Gove. (too toxic).

I despise Gove but here we are...

European Election vote verification now complete - Turnout 35.7% In Flintshire (41365 votes) up from 31% in 2014...

This is a leave area.

The turnout in Hertsmere for the #EuropeanElection2019 was 36.39 per cent. The count will take place on Sunday evening. We will have further updates for you then.

The Conservative 'nasty' party at least have some fragments of a plan. A totally shit plan, but it is at least something can be worked on.
Brex/UKIP/BNP have no plan.
Labour probably have a plan, and parking Corbyn in a corner somewhere it might not be as shit a plan as Conservatives.
LibDem with remaining as their main goal might be able to work out a decent plan, if they listen to the public and get stuck in addressing what is actually 'wrong' in the UK.

I'm another who lacks killer instinct... she was an idiot for mentioing Glenfell and I REALLY, intensely, dislike her. But I fucking cried with her....couldnt help it. It's sad, the last leadership race was her and loathsome. Two women running for a job that was so messy no man would do it and now we're facing a far right con leader. It's dismal.

Can we please have NS plonked into No. 10?

I am noticing turquoise arrows doing quite a bit of expectation management this morning. Wise but doesn't mean a lot. It's just managing expectations with the hope that low turnout is good for Farage anyway, then they can claim the 'unprecedented success'.

I don't think the LDs will worry too much about expectation management though. Pretty obvious that the result will be good for them whatever.

In hindsight the GE was a terrible terrible mistake for TM. The fatal one, along with triggering A50, IMO.

However, I remember general consensus was it seemed like a stroke of genius at the time, given how far ahead they were in the polls. And look how it played out...

This is very worrying, though. I don't know what would be the best thing (if I'm keeping out of unicorn territory) to happen next.

So just over a third of voters gave a shit? That's depressing.

How do you find out the turnout? I was the first one to be crossed off the list when I went at 10.30 yesterday.

Well.
I've no sympathy for her.
I'll save my sympathy for people like the homeless couple who came to the foodbank yesterday.
Her entire speech - right up to the end - was just lie after lie.
How DARE she mention Grenfell???
I've long thought that get power and reboke was johnsons plan.
Johnson as PM and trump as president.
We are fucked, my friends.

The October 2016 red lines. She misunderstood the ref and pandered to the right ..Triggering article 50 without a clear path forward. Again pandering to the right.

I think she pandered to the right because that's where her real sympathies lie. She's as right as JRM and just as small minded.

Instinctively, you want to feel sorry for her - just because she's a woman -and had an impossible hand. But she chose that hand and interpreted the ref based on her own bitter prejudices and her failures at the home office.And she bribed the DUP and stuck to her red lines with arrogant obstinacy.

---

With glass cliff theory what happens after the glass cliff women has got the top leadership position? The woman only gets the job because there are inherently unsolvable problems? But what happens if the problems are still there?

TM was classic glass cliff- insuperable problems that the woman strives very hard to address – but no matter her effort, the problems cannot be solved.

The woman in charge is then held personally accountable for failure, ultimately leading to their resignation.

The downside is it perpetuates a myth that women are unsuitable for leadership positions. But what is the profile of the next incumbent.

Off to research glass cliff theory to profile what happens next...

I think the main probems for TM began when she decided that instead of calling out UKIP/Leave on their lies she pretended they had as much right in negotiations - oh yes, of course we can get a deal, the BEST deal! All of that bollocks.

What they (and the country needed) was someone firm enough to stop the shit. To call a conference and explain the facts ('immigration from EU = good' would have been a good start as ex Home Sec).

She left herself balancing on the top of a mountain of lies compounded by her rhetoric. Now the party can't do anything else but elect someone who either swerves sharply back on themselves or drops out and no deals. No one will want to be seen to be dithering like she did.

Well it'll be a white male next- but all the leading contenders are white males anyway!

"THE REAL-WORLD SCENARIOS
Women have fallen off the glass cliff in a wide variety of sectors, including politics.
Two separate reports from European academic researchers reveals that this most often happens in right-wing parties. One studied U.K. general election results from 2001, 2005, and 2010, and another analyzed French elections, and both found that each country’s conservative party tended to support female and minority candidates when conditions weren’t favorable for them to succeed. On the more progressive side, this didn’t happen. The implication is that conservatives are deliberately choosing to put women and minorities in these no-win situations in order to have them fail and support the status quo of having white men in power."

www.fastcompany.com/90206067/what-is-the-glass-cliff-and-why-do-so-many-female-ceos-fall-off-it

This smells brexitty

lincolnshirereporter.co.uk/2019/05/higher-turnout-for-eu-elections-than-locals/

More Lincolnshire people on average turned out to vote in the EU Elections than the May 2 local elections from preliminary council figures.

East Lindsey District Council has yet to give its turnout figures but the average of the other six councils comes out as a turnout of around 33.8% for yesterday’s poll. For May 2’s vote at local level the turnout was almost four per cent lower at 29.79%.

The highest turnout so far is in South Kesteven, where 36.6% of voters took part, while the lowest was South Holland District Council with 32.12%.

In comparison, East Lindsey District Council and North Kesteven District Council saw the highest turnouts in the local elections with around 31% each. However, South Holland was still the lowest turnout with 28.05% of the vote.

And

BBC – EU: 32.7%, Local: 27.34%
SHDC – EU: 32.12%, Local: 28.05%
SKDC – EU: 36.6%, Local: 30.56%
NKDC – EU: 34,39%, Local: 31.28%
CoL – EU: 32.37%, Local: 29.29%
WLDC – EU: 34.5%, Local: 30.75%
ELDC – EU: not-yet-supplied, Local: 31.28%
TOTAL: EU: 33.79% (without ELDC), Local: 29.79%

I'm reading that as a Conservative vote collapse and big swings to Brexit Party.

{someone who either swerves sharply back on themselves or drops out and no deals. }

But anyone who has been paying attention and has a vague understanding of how the world works knows that the WA and subsequent deals HAVE to happen.
No deal in the context of not negotiating anything with anybody ever again is not possible, although DM readers think it is the best thing ever and it should be brought on immediately.

Turnout for the European election yesterday was up by 3.5% in the Vale of Glamorgan from 37% in 2014 to 41.58% yesterday. #EUelections2019 #EuropeanElections @VOGCouncil

I'd read somewhere (perhaps here) that if turnout was below 40% that would be in The Brexit Party's favour ….. this is going to be an excruciating few days.

Regarding the Prime Minister's resignation - I'd have had more respect for her if they had had to break down the door of number 10 and take her out kicking and screaming. Never capitulate to bullies.

My prediction there will be another PM's head to roll before we start seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Given Johnson's pathetic craving for adulation he won't want to have the toxic parcel passed on to him. Given that women tend to be the sex more likely to first clean up a mess I think we are likely to see our third female PM come into the colosseum and face the lions - I might even go to the bookies (for my first time) and place a bet on Andrea Leadsom.

Andy McKay @ andygmckay
Vale of Glamorgan was 51% Remain. It had a 42% turnout.

I'm another who lacks killer instinct... she was an idiot for mentioing Glenfell and I REALLY, intensely, dislike her. But I fucking cried with her....couldnt help it.

You're clearly an empathetic person, which is a good thing. I just rolled my eyes.

NS is pitch perfect for HER own Agenda (IndyRef II)
She is also v quick off the mark. No fan here but she is smart.

I have to confess to not one iota of sympathy for her. She was not handed a poisoned chalice (or any other variant); she seized it with two hands and has clutched it to her chest with a death grip ever since. She has no heart and her crying at the end sounded like wail of enraged self-pity. There is so much she could have done but did not; refused not to. Her successors appear no better but it is often said that a country has the politicians it deserves. Onus is on the rest of us to take up the mantle (note to self in particular).

Yes, typical men - get the women to do the dirty work for them and then swoop in at the end and take all the credit.

tava63
Can we borrow some lions from somewhere, Andrea Vs the lions would make great reality TV.

{Yes, typical men - get the women to do the dirty work for them}

May did not have to take the job on, she put herself forward.
There are plenty of capable women in the world, May isn't one of them.

Unkind but hey ho.
www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/may-to-be-remembered-as-poundland-thatcher-who-accomplished-jack-sht-20190524185944