Westministenders: Another Thread, another Shit Show. Its Trump Week

[RedToothBrush]

That is all.

Yay for Peterborough! Our wifi completely crashed last night so we had to watch the awful TV coverage.

The BP should have walked that. They had the ideal candidate in a Tory/Labour marginal - a guy who had been a Tory member until a few months ago (& former donor), pro Brexit in a brexity constituency & with good local connections & no dubious past (AFAIK).

Really interested in how relatively well the Tory vote held up. Would love to know what motivated those 7000 + voters to stick with the Tories given the overwhelming narrative atm that all Tories want the hardest of hard brexits asap. And Mike Greene would almost certainly have voted with the Tories on most non brexit stuff.

Accidentally caught some of the Today programme - Brandon Lewis being a twat as always. Despite the winning Labour candidate being anti hard Brexit, the message for the Tories is obviously that they have to leave by 31/10 no matter what.

He also seemed to be suggesting that those Tory MPs facing votes of no confidence in constituency parties wouldn't be getting much support from the party. I thought when that happened with Dominic Grieve that there were lots of supportive voices and it was made clear that the party would be sticking by him?

Lewis denied that UKIP / BP entryism was a significant issue. Didn't seem worried about the idea of brexit purist purges. His sympathy was with frustrated Tory members who just wanted to leave, etc etc.

Going to settle down with lots of coffee to catch up with the thread now wifi back - so, so pleased that Farage is disappointed this morning.

Do you think we can infer that many of the Tories who haven't abandoned ship are soft remain?

Woo! So good to wake up to good news!!!!

Interested in that LD win in Herefordshire. I live in rural Worcs which is Brexitty, Herefordshire is even more so.

My prediction is that the Brexit Party honeymoon will be over when issues other than Brexit start to come up and candidates realise the don’t have as much common ground as they thought.

Good news for a change :)

So pleased with this resultIs it too much to hope that perhaps the recent news of British Steel, Ford and Trump making a grab for the NHS has made some people wake up and realise that project fear is in fact project reality.

Corbyn on Sky News just now, when asked about whether the Labour Party would now support a PV, answered that it shows that there is support for the Labour Party across the country and that they are ready for a GE and that they wanted a good trade relationship with the EU, whatever the political relationship

Corbyn has to go

borntobequiet Neighbouring MP Chris Davies is subject to a recall petition in the neighbouring Brecon and Powys constituency - and the Conservative Group for Europe are based there too. Reckon there will be enough signatures for a recall and bye election?

Corbyn is still useless. Interestingly, I was talking to a hardcore Corbynite yesterday. They said he has to go. Labour need to win toget the Tories out and he won't do it for them - needs to be a centrist that can appeal to the voters. Gobsmacking if you knew the person who said it.

Corbyn has to go

Without him or a similar old school lexiter type Labour could win by a landslide.

The BXP candidate mentioned data, said the two other big parties had loads of the stuff and BXP didn't because they were only 4 weeks old or some such. He said he knew this because he used to work for / own a company that dealt with such data. Data sounds like a dirty word when uttered by certain people.

Oh, that's interesting. He seems to have been very dishonest, why are these people so stupid?

Did anyone see the Conservative chap in Peterborough demanding that every MP who didn't support a WTO No Deal Brexit should be automatically de-selected ?

Morning !

I wonder if the BBC could have made that story seem any less significant on their website ? It would be amusing if they were to be hacked and we got to see the layout they wanted had ready to run if their boy Nige's party had won

Brexit party insiders said Labour’s reliance upon a mainly Pakistani vote in inner-city wards had been the difference between the parties. “Some of these houses had 14 people in them registered to vote. It would be interesting to see what proportion voted Labour,” said one.

Whilst I don't like the needless citing of any individual community in the constituency, I refer back to my concerns about postal voting and how it's vulnerability to controlling patriarchal societies does raise serious questions about abuse. It's not great for democracy if we allow people like BXP to start sowing seeds of doubt in the publics mind. And I for one, am not convinced the current system is able to detect and deter such fraud.

All of which said, a Labour win was pretty low on my list of outcomes, although objectively, it was the one outcome which left things less clear after than before. So on that basis, I wish I had dropped a fiver on it.

You are right to worry about the possible abuse of postal votes DGR, but I bet that Farage wouldn't have said a word if the vote had gone his way.

A Contract with his members, hey? In lieu of a manifesto...
"Generally, to be legally valid, most contracts must contain two elements: All parties must agree about an offer made by one party and accepted by the other. Something of value must be exchanged for something else of value. This can include goods, cash, services, or a pledge to exchange these items."
So have his members been told what this exchange is? Doesn't sound as though his Contract is legally very clear to me.

I didn't see that, frumpety, who said it?

It's bizarre to think that only 3 years ago remaining in the EU was the established majority position in the Tory party, yet now an extreme no deal position that has no democratic mandate is essential. It's almost like the Tories have no actual values other than to cling on to power.

The Tories will lose their most able MPs if they go down this route. It can hardly be a coincidence that a lot of the no dealer, ERG types are some of the dimmest people in Parliament. Just look at Andrea Jenkyns, Mark Francois, Priti Patel, Nadine Dorries etc.

Ultimately it's about confidence in the system. And I don't have 100% confidence that postal voting is not protected against systematic and intentional fraud in a way personal and proxy voting are.

That's it.

I don't like any disconnect between the ballot paper and the ballot box. I appreciate there are very good cases for postal voting. But I also think it needs to be very much the exception rather than the rule.

It's counter intuitive, but the easier you make it to vote - with the more obvious potential for fraud - the less the actual result is worth.

We can easily dismiss the BXPs nasty dog-whistle nakedly racist criticism of this election. They're to dim to know better. But it would be a worry if (for example) the LibDems, or Labour themselves starting questioning the process.

Looking back at the strikes of the 70s, with car parks of men voting openly, who feels any confidence they were honest votes ?

I hope Corbyn doesn't take it as an endorsement of his Brexit no-policy

Unfortunately for Labour he doubtlessly will.

Labour had an excellent result tonight - and I’m delighted the Farage and his cronies lost. However, the fact that it will entrench Corbyn and his Lexiter buddies in their “constructive ambiguity” will do Labour no favours as we move towards what I believe is a likely GE in the autumn.

This is all good news for the LDs.... there will have been many Remainers who held their nose voting for Labour in Peterborough because they really wanted to stop Farage.

Oaken winning on one hand no BXP Mp.

Lose on the other when Corbyn sits there and says see told you so.

Oakenbeach - judging by the Sky interview with Corbyn, that's eaxctly how he sees it: an endorsement of his Janus strategy and still has his head stuck up his arse about how Labour will negotiate as good a deal as our current one, that protects jobs and the economy

I had to laugh at Farage whinging about Labour's database. Yes, Nigel, it's built up from people going out knocking on doors canvassing, volunteers in the back office inputting data or addressing envelopes to send letters to supporters, or making phone calls. Something called leg work, spade work or hard graft, all of which seem to be terms which you struggle to understand.

Yes, Nigel's not being a very good loser, is he? Only just noticed too that Mike Greene stood there doing a thumbs down for the whole of Lisa Forbes' speech.

This twitter thread about Nigel's quick exit as the results came in has made me laugh.

twitter.com/sturdyAlex/status/1136896996323876865