Leavers aghast at getting arch Leaver as PM....

[Miljah]

Anyone else got Leaver 'friends', family or work colleagues who are stunned and horrified at getting Bojo The Clown as PM?

I want to slap them.

Instead, I cannot help myself, but I say things along the lines of 'Well, I guess it's a good thing getting a hard Brexit PM, at least now you know you're getting Brexit, come what may...' to which they say 'It didn't say anything about a no deal Brexit at the referendum'...

Well, my voting slip didn't say anything at all about what Leave would look like, too, which is why I didn't project what sort of Leave I, personally imagined; which is one reason why I voted Remain. Apart from all the other good reasons for staying on the inside of a hugely successful trading block.

My DB is a classic, flippy-floppy Brexiter.

Voted Leave. And, as above, told me what his version of Leave would look like. We'd have this, but not that, and so forth. Then, at the GE designed to seal TM's mandate, not only voted Labour but joined the Labour Party . Then, at the EP elections, voted LD- and is horrified about BJ.

FFS, the analytical ability of tarmac.

What did Leavers expect?

[MockerstheFeManist]

Manifesto promises are often broken. Sometimes they were dishonest from the outset, such as Cameron and May's pledge to cut net migration to five-figure numbers. Sometimes they are hopelessly optimistic, such as Cameron and Osborne's promise to eliminate the deficit by 2015, then 2017, then 2020, etc.

And sometimes there are what Harold Macmillan called "Events, dear boy, Events." Clem Attlee had no idea the Korean War was coming and blew his spending plans apart. Ted Heath had no idea OPEC would quadruple the price of oil.

Choosing who to vote for is a matter of judging character as much as comptence and honesty.

(Now apply those three to the current PM.)

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

Mockers, do you not think there is something wrong in a system where MPs make the rules for themselves?
It's so glib to say if you don't like it vote them out. But we are just replacing like for like.
I don't feel sufficiently aligned to any party to stand up and represent them in parliament.

[MockerstheFeManist]

Mockers, do you not think there is something wrong in a system where MPs make the rules for themselves?

That's what we have, an unwritten constitution with parliamentary sovereignty.

There's certainly plenty wrong with a system that can give a party a massive majority with the support of a quarter of the electorate (35% of the vote on a 70% turnout.) A system where every PM ever educated at an English university went to either Oxford or Cambridge is certainly amiss. And now it looks like our FPTP system is breaking down as the party divide cuts diametrically across the demographic divide.

Perhaps we'd be better off with a German-style AMS system with German business practices and a thriving mittelstat. But when they got the chance to vote for electoral reform, the Great British Public were comprehensively stoat-danced into voting it down

[DadDadDad]

A party shouldn't win an election on a promise to reduce class sizes and then not do it. It's obtaining their position through deception. Anybody else who did that at work would be sacked.

I think this is too simplistic. Sometimes, for a start, we make promises and despite good intentions and our best efforts, we don't deliver on them. (I'm sure I've promised to do something at work and then failed - I'm glad to say I wasn't sacked, as my managers actually had the intelligence to judge the circumstances). To call it deception, we would have to have evidence that they deliberately ignored a pledge as soon as they got into office - and we have media and the Opposition to scrutinise such things.

[DadDadDad]

A system where every PM ever educated at an English university went to either Oxford or Cambridge is certainly amiss.

I understand the point you are making, but MacDonald and Chamberlain appear to have gone to non-Oxbridge English institutions. It's also worth pointing out that out of 55 PMs in this article, I count 17 that didn't attend Oxbridge (11 didn't attend university). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_the_United_Kingdom_by_education

[Namenic]

Do an alternative vote 2nd referendum where you state all the leave options and remain. This means we can differentiate between soft and hard leave and more people will be less angry.

We need a bit of clarity over NI border issue though. I don’t really think we have a solution which will not cause political problems there and possibly violence.

[bellinisurge]

If the magic muppet can get a Brexit that doesn't wreck GFA, I'll tolerate him. Otherwise, he can fuck off.

[Basilpots]

Dad was a staunch Tory voted Leave. I here is little we agree on politically the irony being we can discuss and agree on our dislike/distrust of one Boris Johnson !

I haven’t managed to steal myself to ask who he would vote for in the likely soon to be called General Election but I suspect it would be BXP which is of course the opposite of what the Tory Party would be hopping for. I have of course no idea whether my Dad is particularly representative of many Tory voters or if he is an anomaly.

[EmeraldIsle2016]

Do an alternative vote 2nd referendum where you state all the leave options and remain

Impossible as you would never get agreement on what all the different leave options could be. The number of different leaves could be measured in the thousands if not Millions. Remember that 17.4 million voted leave. How would you be sure that you captured all the versions of leave?

[EmeraldIsle2016]

Otherwise, he can fuck off

How does that statement prevent Johnson from leaving without a deal?

[bellinisurge]

I was prepared to support WA to Brexit and save GFA. I would be prepared to support an NI only backstop and Brexit. If he thinks he can bring the country back together with anything else, he can fuck off. Does that explain what mean @EmeraldIsle2016

[MockerstheFeManist]

There is no easy route out of this shitheap.

Any third referendum (first was in 1975, Remain still ahead on aggregate) could not retiterate the same question.

It could offer the option of No Brexit and Revoke. It could offer EEA. It could offer No Deal. Or any number of alternative options.

It would need to allow for preference voting, and to have public confidence it would need some sort of threshold such as the 1979 Scottish Indyref with its requirement for 40% of the electorate to support the proposal.

But its looking like the gameplan is to go for No Deal then a GE when parliament votes this down.

[EmeraldIsle2016]

GE when parliament votes this down

If you believe polls a GE would likely result in a coalition of Brexit Party and conservatives. Remember GE are won on seats as opposed to %. This favours leave as in the 2016 referendum 406 constituencies voted leave compare to 242 voting remain. Also estimated that around 60% of labour constituencies are leave supporters.

A government made up of Johnson and Farage with a majority of seats makes no deal look even more likely.

[Mistigri]

If you believe polls a GE would likely result in a coalition of Brexit Party and conservatives.

1. You shouldn't believe polls. At the moment they are very volatile, for obvious and good reasons.

1. The BXP will win only a handful of seats, if that, unless they enter an overt electoral pact with the Tories. Their support is already falling. It's UKIP #2.

[MockerstheFeManist]

A GE would be wide open. There's no place for Peter Snow's swingometer anymore even if he can still get it to swing at his age.

The distribution of the vote is anyone's guess. The tactical votes will confuse the issue, and the Nigeloids are such an unproven quantity. UKIP never won a seat in the first instance, they just gained a couple of Tory turncoats who didn't last long. And they've used all their best candidates for the Euros, so what chance a few more fruitcakes, loonies and not-even-closet racists?

A Tory pact with Farage will see a flight of Tory Remainers and Soft Leavers. No pact will see the Libs sneak in on the rails.

Nobody Knows Anything

[EmeraldIsle2016]

Their support is already falling. It's UKIP #2

If you don’t believe polls where does that statement come from?

A Tory pact with farage

If Johnson is clever he will not announce any pact with Farage before a GE to avoid remain conservative voters from voting elsewhere. Brexit party will rely on fact that 406 constituencies voted leave in 2016 and at present there is no evidence of a big swing from leave to remain.

If no party has an overall majority then coalitions can be talked about as voters have already voted and Johnson will not have lost remain conservative votes to others.

Remember it is not % that wins GE it is seats. 1997 was a good example. Labour won 418 seats, but with only 43% of the vote.

[Mistigri]

If you don’t believe polls where does that statement come from?

Individual polls won't tell you much. The trend is more interesting (and it's down).

Still early days, but my opinion is that there is a hard ceiling and they've already hit it.

[Songsofexperience]

The BXP represents the % of hard leavers that have always been there. Roughly 30% of voters. It's pretty consistent through the decades: UKIP won 26% at the 2014 MEP elections and there's always been a eurosceptic hard core within tge conservatives. That gives you tge other 5-6% of batshit.
So in fact today is nothing new. What's new is how unrepresentative our new government is.

[Peregrina]

If a week is a long time in politics, three years is an eternity.

But do remember the other saying 'All political careers end in failure'.

• but Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown, Cameron, May and soon I hope, Johnson, will provide the proof of the pudding.

[IWannaSeeHowItEnds]

But they all swan off to live lives of incredible wealth, with their gilt edges pensions and all the other financial rewards that come with having been PM. If only we could all enjoy that kind of failure...

[Peregrina]

Most of them were already wealthy, although in Tatcher and May's cases via their husbands, but the damage to their reputation is what will hurt them most.

Some one like Cameron who wanted to be PM because he thought he'd be good at it!

[Tullow2016]

But they all swan off to live lives of incredible wealth, with their gilt edges pensions and all the other financial rewards that come with having been PM

That LibDem guy Sir Clegg seems to fit that description.

[CustardDonuts]

Nope the people and family I know are happy to have a Leaver as PM.

[Clavinova]

But they all swan off to live lives of incredible wealth

The incredibly wealthy have threatened to 'swan off' if Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM as well.

[GhostofFrankGrimes]

The incredibly wealthy have threatened to 'swan off' if Jeremy Corbyn becomes PM as well.

I'm afraid that the Tory cliche that they are economically competent has been shot to pieces over the last 3 years culminating in, I believe, "fuck business".

It'll take more than "reds under the beds" fearmongering to continue justifying economic policies that are dismantling public services and communities before we reach the perceived benefits of Brexit in 50 years time.