Westminstenders: Dissolved.

[RedToothBrush]

Parliament has formally been dissolved. We are now officially in an election period including purdah and spending limits. Not that all the parties haven't got campaign material out already to bypass the rules, making the rules a complete farce. And the government has made some very dodgy adverts about the fund for towns, 90% of which just happen to be marginals.

The Tory Campaign has got off to an interesting start with a dead cat dog whistle against Grenfell where many well educated people lived (Inc an architect), privately owned their property and just happened to be white. And fast asleep. I'm not sure about you but I don't tend to have huge amounts of 'common sense' when I'm snoring.

Apologies have of course been made. In true Trumpian / Bannon style. But the whistle was blown and made its desired point to its target audience. Expect many more examples before we get to the end of this campaign.

Of course the same day it was made public that the government have blocked the publication of a report into Russian Electoral Interference. Which is in no way connected to the massive amount of donations the Tory Party has been receiving lately and who Boris Johnson hangs out with.

This election is all about breaking 'The Red Wall' and the Tories taking Northern seats. So everyone between Birmingham and Cumbria is going to be particularly fed up by 12th December at people from London coming out with ridiculous stereotypes, and telling them how to vote. We await Corbyn and Johnson adopting flat caps and vowels whilst drinking a pint of bitter or mild.

As usual we've had the candidate selection process throw up a few curve balls including forcing cabinet minister Alun Cairns to resign as Welsh Secretary on the day the tories launch their campaign. Its become very clear from the list of Tory MPs who aren't standing that the party has officially split and 'one nation conservatism' is merely now a slogan Johnson throws around to pretend that the hard right of the party hasn't slung out or forced out all the moderates. On the Labour side we have the usual rows at factions in local parties fighting or being really upset at a London candidate being parachuted in.

Farage isn't standing but the Brexit Party apparently is, despite calls for an electoral pact with the Tories. Whether local parties get the memo from Leave.eu and CCHQ we will find out in time. The LDs, Greens and Plaid seem to be consolidating a Remain pact in some seats but this still splits the vote with Labour which will be a problem in some areas.

Johnson is apparently standing in Uxbridge. This does leave us with the possibility he could yet lose his seat. Swinson's seat is also far from a safe one. Corbyn will likely be safe but Islington did back the LDs as the 1st Party at the Euros with the assistance of some very pissed off Labour members.

Nothing is certain about the next 6 weeks apart from the fact it will throw up some shocks and leave us all shouting at the telly at some point.

waterfordwhispersnews.com/2019/11/06/jacob-rees-mogg-to-be-set-on-fire-to-test-his-theory/?fbclid=IwAR0mfAonF7sR9098LISidKHvBLJulhRBPT_sh2aYdNvY0K-iuiMzU8jRdOo

"Its wonderful self indulgence to say you have nobody to vote for when record numbers of people are reliant on food banks."
And yet still I won't vote for a Corbyn led Labour Party.
Nice try putting that on me.

Don't lecture me on food banks.

I run one.

An aside from me to share my disbelief and misery.

This tracker has a clear direction. I read an article predicting a 100 seat majority.

Superficial insight/ being duped- whatever the reason I don't think there's much chance of millions of voters waking up in 5 weeks time.

If any of you are interested trussell trust have released their report on hunger in the uk.
You can find it at
Www.trusselltrust.org.uk

I just want a centre left option to vote for that doesn't piss on women's rights. Is that too much to ask?

Your choice is Not Tories or Tories.

Apparently so, bellini and we are idiots for caring about womens rights anyway

I've got an awful feeling the odious bridgen might even increase his majority. Ugh.

And nobody can be trusted not to piss on women's rights.

If No Deal goes through and the UK becomes Singapore on speed women can forget about rights, and the entire country can forget about Parliament's relevance. Decisions on your future will be made in penthouses on the other side of the Atlantic.

I'm votong labour math

Just not thrilled about it.

Its wonderful self indulgence to say you have nobody to vote for

I'm not going to lecture anyone about who they should vote for, but I agree with this sentiment. You have a vote. There is a choice of imperfect, sometimes racist, sometimes misogynist parties to vote for. The fact that they are all imperfect does not mean that the consequences of voting for them are the same.

I am afraid that I consider handwringing feminists who can't look at the wider policy platform as being no different from the woke Bernie Bros who delivered Trump. Can't abide ideological purity, especially when people are happy for others to pay the price for it.

White middle-class left wingers in the US voting to damage the interests of working class blacks, migrants and women. And now white middle class women want to do the same here?

It's all very cult-like and self-confessed terf though I am, I want no part of it.

Well. There you go.

We women have been "indulged" allthese years....

This country voted for Brexit. And then, following a democratic general election, the Tories were able to form a government and they were the version of the UK government that negotiated Brexit. I don't support either of those things but I have to accept that more people in this country do. Once article 50 was triggered by a majority vote in our democratically elected Parliament any arguments about how shit the advisory referendum was fell away. The die was cast.
My only concern with Brexit was protecting GFA. Which is what the EU's negotiating position was.
I lost but GFA can be protected. It's not 2016 or even 2017. We can't do a reset unless the Lib Dems win a majority at the next election. And enact the TWAW woke shit as an afterthought.
I would vote for a Labour Party led by a decent centrist like Cooper or Benn or Starmer. That option isn't available. Only more unicorns.

Once article 50 was triggered by a majority vote in our democratically elected Parliament any arguments about how shit the advisory referendum was fell away. The die was cast.

Actually Bellini apart from your reds-under-the-beds stuff about Corbyn (which I can understand as being a personal history thing) I do think that you have a principled and defensible position.

That I don't agree with .

The above statement was true for as long as Brexit was deliverable within a single parliament. Parliament voted for Brexit, it should have delivered it.

Why didn't it? Because May dissolved that parliament, and no parliament can bind another future parliament. So I don't see the referendum or the A50 vote as having any particular democratic power that outweighs whatever mandate the people give the next parliament.

The A50 vote has legal power, but a new parliament can change the law.

I remember hearing him in a radio interview a couple of years ago talking about 'Nick' (before he was revealed to be a lying fantasist)
Strangely enough 'Nick' cropped up in a few conversations a while back IRL. I have a few friends who work for the police in varying ways, and they're quite sure he wasn't making it up. Whenever I see something about this I wonder if in years to come they'll be shown to be right. I suppose only time will tell on that one.

Bernie wasn't running in the Presidential Election Mistigri.

It's people who stayed home in the counties that mattered who lost the election for Clinton. She won the popular vote by several million votes, lost the EC.

Bernie holds a valid and well supported economic pov that has now been sustained through two election cycles. Elizabeth Warren, pretty close to Bernie on the left, is currently a front runner in polling.

Not sure how universal healthcare and vastly increased funding for the public schools are a kick in the teeth for the disadvantaged of the US.

It's not verboten to propose an agenda that differs from that of the Establishment in your own party, and as shown, there is a lot of support in the US for positions that would be considered mild, moderate, and even centrist in Europe.

I've not got the luxury of being principled.

I live in a Tory seat but it's a seat that's often discussed in elections.

It's a seat that usually goes the way of the biggest party.

If I lived in a Labour safe seat then maybe I would be able to protest vote. I can't.

Math, I didn't say that Bernie lost Clinton the election. But close elections elections are won and lost at the margins, and it is at the margins that Stein and Sanders supporters adding their voices to the anti-Clinton klaxon had an impact.

This is a nuanced point on a highly emotive issue. It is absolutely fine to campaign for the person you want to win. But in the US campaign, many of the most vociferous Bernie supporters were active promoters of the idea that Clinton was as bad as Trump (the "they're all as bad as each other" message that we are seeing promoted on here).

Of course this may work in reverse this time with Biden supporters effectively deciding that they prefer another 4 years of Trump to a Sanders administration.

Trump wont be the candidate in 2020.

@Mistigri but that's how Article 50 works. It was triggered by the UK government supported by a vote in Parliament. The EU don't care which flavour of UK government it is dealing with.
We don't renegotiate tbe existence of the NHS with every Parliament (yet). So once Article 50 was triggered, that was it. Unless we Revoke it as a consequence of the result of a democratically run election.

My concern with Corbyn isn't reds under the bed. It's his shitty behaviour indulging antisemitism and his minions pretence that he was part of the peace process. And him being a Lexiteer. He's not capable of being PM. He's barely capable of being an MP. And locally, my Labour MP who is otherwise a decent guy is on the wrong side of a local "protect the Greenbelt/fix local infrastructure first" issue .

(If it's not already obvious I'd be just as critical of Biden supporters delivering Trump as I am of Bernie Bros delivering Trump. The parallels with the U.K. situation are i hope obvious too).

So once Article 50 was triggered, that was it. Unless we Revoke it as a consequence of the result of a democratically run election.

That's what I said. Parliament triggered A50, this is a legal process that can be reversed legally. No parliament can bind another because parliament can change the law.

We women have been "indulged" allthese years.... That is exactly what is implicit in the Tory mindset, Dominic Raab thinks anyone fighting for women’s rights in the face of white male privilege is an obnoxious bigot, because men are hard done by. The issues around gender are complicated but actually the biggest elephant in the room is white male privilege and I see that at work in all the parties. One of the things that pissed me off most about campaigning for the libdems was not their trans policies which never came up but that they did nothing to encourage women to come out of the office and get involved in the streets. Indeed the canvassing culture had more than a whiff of the hunter gatherer about it, finishing with a session in the pub. Male students were co- opted to the doorsteps, women shown the envelopes. It was probably unconscious but that is the point. Whatever the GC issues let’s not lose sight of the real problem that faces women. And whilst I agree there has been progress in terms of legislation I feel very strongly that the rhetoric around respect for female equality has degenerated in the last thirty years. I never had to put up with the crap my DDs have in the name of “lad banter” and that is as dangerous as the resurgence in racism www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/politics/2019/may/26/dominic-raab-defends-calling-feminists-obnoxious-bigots

It can only be stopped by Revoke. And the chaos that would cause is a level of frightful I don't want to unleash, any more than I want to unleash No Deal.

He's barely capable of being an MP.

He is by all accounts a decent constituency MP, easily in the top half of the distribution in the current/ just dissolved parliament, compared to MPs who don't even have constituency offices (Johnson) or routinely block constituents on social media over mild criticism.

I don't like Corbyn either. But the chance of a Corbyn majority government is so small as to be effectively zero.