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

Another 'obvious' thing with polls - margin of error

yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2011/11/21/understanding-margin-error

Obviously you have the margin of error with the larger samples - the headline figure.

But then when you drill down - e.g. to Scotland, or Northern England, the margin of error gets much bigger - because the voting intention figure is based on much fewer people. e.g. 50 people in Scotland who were asked.

In reality, this makes polling a bit useless for working at constituency level.

This would be a great episode for More or Less.

Clash - I think the SNP/LD election bid is intended to (a) secure an extension to end Jan (b) WITHOUT allowing the WAIB to proceed.

Thanks mistri

Choma all the polls are like that, they don’t like the don’t knows so they are edited out. The 944 left will be skewed to male and older. Opinium are one of the better ones in that you can work out where their numbers come from Delta give you nothing. That’s why I just don’t get worked up about Opinion Polls they will give a direction of travel nothing more we are what a minimum of six weeks away from putting a cross in a box.

Nobody was ever going to agree to debate the WAIB in 5 sitting days though. BoZo's plan was always doomed to failure as it would've been rejected for the WAIB purpose.

And, obviously this amendment is outside of the FTPA, so BoZo couldn't then move the date to beyond the extension date to ensure no deal. It has a date in the amendment.

It's actually the most sensible way of avoiding BoZo's WAIB debating trap and the moving election trap whilst still getting an election.

The don't know are going to be very important.

Basil's point about removing dont knows skewing the polls older and above all more male is a very important one.

Men are far far more likely that women to make decisions on things they don't know about. Women tend to wait to make their judgement. This is a consistent finding across polls (for eg see the levels of support for the new WA after it was published: the don't-knows were heavily biased towards women, who tend to be more comfortable with saying that they do not know enough to have an opinion.)

I think there will be quite a few voting decisions made at the last minute (i.e. once the tactical voter sites publish their best guess as to how to vote tactically).

I'm going to wait for the tip to come in, though my constituency is more likely to tip back to LD than go Labour (we've never been Labour). The LD candidate is ace too.

I will possibly drop my postal vote into the Town Hall or the polling station rather than post it if it's too close to the day to trust the post.

@chomalungma if you want some data tables that give good insight into voters have a look at these by BMG they look into things like home ownership, income, as well as the usual age and region.

What you will see is the Tory voter is older and own property (37% mortgage free).

www.bmgresearch.co.uk/bmgs-westminster-voting-intention-results-october-2019/

Enjoy !

I agree with Misti stop reliving the past where other parties are concerned: it's the future you need to think about, so vote for whoever has the best chance of beating the Tories right now (melting the Fatberg ), holding your nose if you must. Otherwise, tuition fees will be the least of your worries....

Bloody hell. It would be nice if the Law Society would keep their spamming of me to working hours. I've got an ad at the bottom of the page!

"If they lose we end up with a Johnson majority to dismantle justice and democracy as we know it in this country."

The same thing would happen if they just let time run out to 31 Jan or however long the EU give us

Exactly BigChoc. I’ve been saying we need an election for a while now on these threads. It’s a gamble but it’s one we’ve got to take.

I see the Leavers are taking the delay with good grace:

www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/sick-gofundme-page-pay-murder-20732052

It occurs to me that it might be a good time to move to a Sunday election day as we always have here in France. No problem with schools and people wouldn't have to go out in the dark.

Arleene Foster at her conference yesterday said that no one can predict the next GE but she will work tirelessly for DUP and NI. Also she ain't having any if Boris's shitty deal!
I think she is right about GE tbh.
Wtf are the lib dems and SNP playing at the idiots!?

I think the problem with a Sunday election is the availability of church halls, and the council workers who would be on double double time.

Can’t believe a) somebody would put a page like that up in the first place b) it was allowed to be up so long before removal Mockers

I agree we need an election but I feel that the longer we can keep Boris holding the ' hot' potatoes of Brexit the better! He and his party will be scarred for life the longer they hold it in their hands!

I think the Lib Dems and SNP have been forced into this position. It's a bloody risky one though.

I can see the logic behind the LD SNP proposal but it's a gamble.

So many moderate (grown up) Tories will not be standing at this election and their replacements are much more right wing/ harder Brexit types.

This means the final waib passed will be harder, less of a level playing field etc than if somehow the current sitting parliament manage to get it through.

Nick Boles and Jess Phillips discuss this on the Gary Gibbon podcast. Worth a listen.

Shit or bust innit !

If that WAIB goes through revoke is removed but not no deal.

keep Boris holding the ' hot' potatoes of Brexit

Yes to this. Make the fucker own it. Popular opinion is like the proverbial super-tanker. It will take a while for the 'Good Old Boris' stuff to crumble as the public see his tantrums and constantly rubbed out and redrawn red lines.

Exactly @Basilpots but the current parliament will challenge that via amendments.

If there is an election and Johnson gets a majority it will be so much harder to challenge.

Internal Brexit negotiations memo presented to Whitehall “Economic Partnership Steering Group” last week shows how negotiators removed the word “adequate” from description of employment, environmental level playing field standards enforcement in Political Declaration /1

From Faisal Islam.

twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1188370684042452992?s=21

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-december-date-snp-lib-dems-boris-johnson-brexit-nicky-morgan-a9172901.html

Government say no, apparently.

Facepalm.

Err hasn’t Johnson been asking for an election since (checks notes) September??