Westministenders: Sub-Prime Minister at large

[BigChocFrenzy]

Our Sub-Prime Minister BJ is threatening a govt tantrum strike until he is allowed his Haribo GE on 12 December.

If MPs vote for a GE, he has promised them "more time" to debate the WAB,
but that would only be from 29 October to 7 November

• ridiculously inadequate for such complex legislation -

before Parliament is automatically dissolved for the 25 sitting days before a GE.

The GE debate starts Monday 2:30 pm in the HoC
Corbyn says he'll agree to a GE if BJ takes No Deal off the table

BUT wIth this WA,
No deal cannot 100% be taken off the table whilst the Tories are in office:

they could still No Deal after transition ends on 31 December 2020,
if they don't request a transition by July.

We don't know when the EU will give their decision on an extension, or what it will be:

The EU may decide only after the HoC vote
- in which case MPs would be voting "blindly"

Tusk, Merkel & most other leaders want to grant the Flextension until 31 January,
but Macron & a few others want to give a short extension of only 2-4 weeks, to pressure MPs to pass the WA in November

• in which case the GE would take place shortly after Brexit, which would be a gift to BJ.

A 12 December GE would also cause serious logistical problems for local council officials:

Apart from their poll station bookings clashing with Xmas bookings for church halls & schools,

they are legally required to send out all the polling cards based on the current electoral roll,
then at the GE, check names against the new electoral roll which must be updated on 1 December

The Rebel Alliance want a long extension, so they have time to add amendments to the WAB,
e.g. a CU, the Level Playing Field agreement in May's WA, maybe even a PV
So many may want to vote against a GE before that ..... but what does Corbyn want ?

BJ as PM could still change the date of any GE after he has agreed to it, if it suits him.

What does BJ want ?
Alice Cooper said it:

"I'm your top prime cut of meat, I'm your choice
I wanna be elected
I'm your yankee doodle dandy in a gold Rolls Royce
I wanna be elected
Kids want a savior, don't need a fake

I wanna be elected
We're all gonna rock to the rules that I make
I wanna be elected, elected, elected..."

m.youtube.com/watch?v=cSvy8HpxFxo

• Post edited to correct dates

Well, fb and people talk generally.

I actually came across someone who likes bojo this week

I voted Green in the MEP elections. Guess what? We got a Green MEP.

So pleased!

One of the leave voters in my office and I were talking this week, she regrets it now, but has said she’s never voting again because she’s so appalled with all of them. I suspect hers isn’t a lone voice in that camp

My mother likes BoZo! 😱 But she has picked up on and pointed out the misogyny and sexism in Parliament to her ERG MP.

She's not totally beyond redemption.

fluffy he certainly is!

I guess that's my worry....lots of white wc who voted in 2016 just won't bother.

And if the young (student, woke) vote doesn't get out there labour are fucked.

Big uni town near here. Tories still won in 2017...

Maybe they voted at home, Hoooo. It was prime exam leave time, so probably patchy levels of students about.

And I want the first, not the second.

Like grown ups do.

We must badger our young. Bear in mind I understand they can vote either at uni, or at home.

Get them to select the most 'useful' constituency, and get a postal vote if necessary.

Miljah
and the funny thing is that the HoC is not in any way a historic space
it was TOTALLY rebuilt after WW2 (with the wiring conduits in the benches)
It could be reconfigured within that space easily
if there was the will to do so

Yes. How it works entirely suits braying public school boys, a combative arena of big egos.

PR would struggle in that place.

Change would take greater statesmen, or women, who currently sit in any number in Government, right now.

But a crash out Brexit might make it possible. Tho too late for most of us 😕

It's like that to imitate the chior stalls where parliament first sat. The red lines are set far enough apart so you can't stab the other side with your sword. You still get a peg to hang your sword if you're an MP.

That uni fees thing really is tired, childish and misunderstands the role of a minority party in a coalition.

Until the lib dems admit they stuffed up and have learned from it they're still toxic.

They chose to enter coalition, they could have exited at any point, 'tempering' tory policies is still enabling those policies. If they collapsed the coalition they could have stopped austerity and of course the brexit vote.

The plan was to get into bed with the Tories as the price for securing PR so they'd never have Tory Govt ever again, but Clegg was comprehensively mugged by the way the (forgotten) PR referendum was staged.

Recent polls may influence Corbyn & Labour MPs on Monday

(I also suspect we'll have a drop-in from a certain someone shortly)

Britain Elects@britainelects

Opinium (Con +16), Deltapoll (Con +13) and YouGov (Con +15) all showing Conservative leads in excess of 10pts.

Westminster voting intention:

CON: 40% (+3)
LAB: 24% (-)
LDEM: 15% (-1)
BREX: 10% (-2)

via @OpiniumResearch, 23 - 25 Oct, Chgs. w/ 17 Oct

Until the lib dems admit they stuffed up and have learned from it they're still toxic.

Then EVERY party is toxic in some way or other.

We have to be pragmatic and do what's best for the country, which is ousting the Tories. The electorate has to be the grown ups where parliament has failed.

Showed 20pt lead in 2017.....

I think we all know people lent votes to Labour in 2017.

And this GE, we're fighting the effect of the likes of Owen Jones gaslighting voters by telling them that we all knew a vote for Labour was a vote for Brexit.

I can't forgive him for that.

It was utterly damaging.

I'll never understand why he did it.

Self-interest I think (trying to prove his loyalty) & short-term isn.

But even he must have seen what it did/would do in another GE.

OJ was also chirruping in Newsnight about how not going for an election in September was a mistake. From memory everyone else was saying it was a trap that Labour needed to avoid.

In the 2017 election Labour did say they would respect the Brexit referendum result, I don't know why people at the time thought otherwise.

I am far more concerned by the LibDems' current policy, particularly on self-id. I also think they are opportunists who are more comfortable sniping from the sidelines than putting forward decent, workable solutions.

However, they are the only hope of getting Jeremy Hunt out in a coming election. I also like the local LibDems and I think they have more integrity than the central party (fair few of them are ex-Labour ).
So I will consider voting for them, safe in the knowledge that, even now, they are unlikely to form a Government in their present form.

If Labour don’t go for a GE (or vote through Boris’s deal) then there’s a very real chance that Macron will veto the extension and we’ll crash out with no deal. Corbyn has been backed into a corner.

The Lib Dems propping up the Tories and austerity is the reason they are toxic to me.

BigChocFrenzy

Recent polls may influence Corbyn & Labour MPs on Monday

(I also suspect we'll have a drop-in from a certain someone shortly)

Touched as always, but since I've now encouraged you into the habit of providing the reality check I don't really need to bother doing it myself

Oh, and dodging the election in September did terrible damage to Labour, and not just in the polling. Think about it - Boris wouldn't have had any Deal to campaign on, which would have allowed Labour to run on a "Vote for us to avoid No Deal" platform that might have given them an actual chance of success. That angle's gone now, leaving Labour desperate not to have to defend their confused mess of a policy in front of the electorate...