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The weekend has seen the leaders question time debates.

Johnson failed to answer a question and the BBC edited later edited footage to change laughter at him to applause.

Swinson continues to prove that the Lib Dem campaign planners don't understand the electorate. They based the campaign around her and the more the public see her and the more she opens her gob she proves she's the witless headgirl who really knows fuck all.

Corbyn has now adopted a neutral 2nd referendum position. Far too late.

Jo Johnson apparently said that a good election manifesto is one people aren’t talking about 48 hrs later, and it seems that the Conservatives really have gone for that strategy.

Johnson had promised a manifesto for change yet of the three main parties it seems far from that. It avoids controversy for the most part, but also doesn't offer solutions to some of our biggest problems like social care. But with the Tories so ahead in the polls, the status quo and making sure they don't have a repeat of the 'dementia tax' car crash seems to be the order of the day. Because Brexit is going to going to provide a magic solution instead...

Meanwhile the Labour Party have gone completely the other way and really have gone for it and come up with ideas. With a mixed response from the public and press.

And I still can't tell you what is in the LD one, cos Prince Andrew...

This week should see the election come into focus as postal voting starts. As it stands its hard to bet on anything but a Tory majority.

Not bluster and bullying.

People voted Leave Motheroffourdragons , they have the taste for voting to fuck things up and do things that others don't expect.

Yes, I wonder if it is some kind of power thing.

Mother, It's supposed to happen to other people never to them.

Very long, very good piece from Ivan Rogers here, from which the quote below is taken.

Tl;dr the hard bit is just starting; there is a high risk of leaving with no trade deal; the idea that pre-existing alignment makes it easier to do a trade deal is hogwash; it is much harder to diverge than to converge. The U.K. services sector, on which U.K. prosperity depends, has yet to wake up to the implications (see quote below).

policyscotland.gla.ac.uk/ghost-of-christmas-yet-to-come-brexit-lecture-full-text/

"Why is the fair answer to “we do not want any special EU preferences and old obligations in our system any more: we have left the EU” not “well, we do not want any special British preferences and old obligations in our system any more: you chose to leave it”?

Just please don’t tell me that either position is a particularly rational view about life with your nearest neighbours.

The implications of this for U.K. services firms, above all, is one of many dogs which has yet properly to bark in this process. But bark it will, when it becomes apparent to the private sector that continuities they wrongly thought were close to laws of nature will disappear at the end of 2020.

I find that firms are only now just waking up to the huge implications on professional mobility.
And much of the UK services sector still harbours hopes that, having essentially been forgotten or ignored by two successive Prime Ministers to date, their interests will, to some degree at least, be catered for in any FTA. I fear they will be sorely disappointed: because the EU has simply no intention of offering more here to an ex member than it does to other major third countries."

What I find utterly desperate is the number of nurses that always come out on those (and education ) threads as being really rather misanthropic and self centred. it astonishes me. But I hope they are the vocal few.

@Peregrina

I hope so. Those of you who can think back to 1997 when Blair first got in - from what I remember the Tories were expected to do badly, but no one predicted the absolute carnage they suffered.

Actually they were if you were looking at the polls. In fact 1997 regarded as a polling fail, though one that no one cares about as it didn’t impact the result in any meaningful way. Labour’s margin was 12% in the end, not the 20%+ as in many of the polls.

However, there are positives for you to draw. My theory is that when one party seems well ahead, floating or uncommitted voters are less likely to vote for that party... Also, the LDs did better than expected in 1997 exceeding most opinion polls - something I know you would like!

Quite an intervention by the chief rabbi this morning.
Are we going to hear about the hushed up islamaphobia issue in the Tories as well?

There was a woman on Victoria Derbyshire yesterday who works with homeless people or food banks or similar and she was saying how terrible things are. But she is voting for the Conservatives as they are the only party that can sort it out apparently.

BJ/the Conservatives looking to extend the government's ability to bypass parliament and to reduce the power of the courts

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/general-election-brexit-latest-boris-johnson-article-50-second-referendum-a9217656.html

last night I had a dream where I was just screaming at Michael Gove. It was both very satisfying and extremely stressful - not a restful night's sleep.

I had four days work booked this week which got cancelled literally as I was driving away from the house. Life in tory Britain - no money in schools and no protections for workers. Sadly I doubt even if Corbyn gets rid of zero hours contracts it will mean better protections for supply teachers. No one ever remembers that we're essentially zero hours contract workers as well.

@TiddleTaddleTat , it's only hushed up if, like antisemitism in the Labour Party, you pretend it's not there.
Of course it's there. People don't expect better of the Tories. But they do of Labour.
And for all those Corbynistas complaining about that point, isn't it terrible when you are held to a higher standard than everyone else - if you don't get what I am referring to there you are probably pretty ignorant about antisemitism anyway.

I am upset about the anti-Semitism debate for a number of reasons.I would very much welcome an opening up of all parties to close scrutiny of their behaviours and attitudes and a rooting out of anti se mites, Islamophobies, homophobes and on and on.

Equally, I am upset that the end product might be hushing up any sensible and open debate about the behaviour of successive Israeli governments in the Middle East.
I agree that people expect better of Labour and not of the Tories : but that is what depresses me so much!

Nothing like advertising you're a racist twat.

I agree @BercowsFestiveFlamingo . And the only reason I am not copying a picture of that mural which Corbyn endorsed is that it is too vile.

What a shame about that picture as the door itself looks quite nice!

My pondering this morning have been trying to understand the other view of the NHS.

How many doctors and nurses need to be interviewed telling us what the tories do to public services in this country to make people listen?

I think partly because it’s been an incremental erosion, drip, drip - lots of people don’t believe it.

However some people and many politicians do not believe in the NHS. Because no one openly explains the arguments against it- it's hard to explore a contrary view. Its seen as political suicide to be honest about it. So Johnson says he ❤️ the NHS but the actions say something different.

For some reason we know several hospital consultants and some nurses around where I live. Working at St Thomas’s , Great Ormond Street, Brompton, Hounslow and Kingston. They all say the same thing. The NHS is on its knees. It is deliberately being slowly dismantled and replaced with a US style private system.

The people I know are all angry, chronically stressed, understaffed and underfunded. They openly say more patient are suffering as a result.

Yet we are bracing for defeat over the forthcoming weeks to the new Tory breed and their steady NHS agenda.. They are going to win the election and continue their incremental NHS replacement.

So I’ve been trying (really hard) to see their point of view on the NHS. Yes the NHS staff are obviously biased. Yes they are the experts but what is the opposing ERG view?

It's partly I'm alright Jack but it's part of a right wing philosophy isn't it. If the ERG lot were honest what would they say?

Basically I suppose their point is that Health services should be left to the individual not the state.

The ERG and Farage philosophy is a quiet belief that a state-upheld monopoly in health care is anti competitive? If people can’t afford to pay that’s sad, but tough.

Is there an argument that effective nationalisation. drives down standards? It doesn’t seem that has been so, but that’s the usual argument isn't it? Can investing more by patients paying drive up standards?

If you vote for these Tories I guess you are saying that those who’ve worked hard should not be forced to pay for everyone else’s healthcare? Our EU 0.7% membership fee was a splash in the ocean of NHS needs which is 9% annual GDP ? and rising.

I suppose now you could argue the NHS is already a failing project? I know it’s due to underfunding but some cardiac patients do die waiting for treatment? Delays in treatment for some cancers decrease cure ability?

If you support these Tories I guess you might also think that burdening the state with a system like this puts the power of life and death in a state bureaucratic system? So the NHS may decide not to treat smokers for example -but that shouldn’t be a state decision but an individual one?

Obvs I simply believe any country, especially a wealthy one, can and should supply free healthcare.
However I’m trying to understand the winning POV. Why don’t people listen to NHS staff is because they believe something else is better.

It would help
If we didn’t have the shabby duplicity. Why don’t Johnson and co come out and say what they do believe in. Persuade us- say we don’t believe in state healthcare for these reasons. Then at least voters could fully consider the merits up front. To be fair at least Farage did try and sell a positive case for NHS replacement at one point.

Sorry rambling -trying to understand more about the unspoken but dominant economic political arguments against free healthcare at point of use.

They are lovely cottages in Marple Bridge. There's a mixed race famy living next door. It's not somewhere you'd elect trouble but a sign like that on the door is going to invite it. Most lampposts here are stickered with stop brexit signs. I might have to get some

It would be trespass and wrong but if anyone put a very sticky EU flag over the middle section it could read "Labour and Lib Dems 🇪🇺 [ No
Need] to knock at this door."

Michael Rosen
@MichaelRosenYes
·
1h
Just to be clear,
@BBCr4today
the Chief Rabbi may well speak for most Jews, but in terms of representation, he represents 40,000 of the UKs 284,000 Jews. I hope you can see the distinction.

You know, lonelyplanetmum, I think a lot of the anti-NHS stuff just comes down to the fact that some people will make a lot of money from privatisation.

In the US, some people do extremely well from private healthcare - including some of the people who work in the privatised healthcare system.

In the US, it's woven into the entire economic system - it helps to drive wages down in other sectors because your healthcare depends on being employed (healthcare is paid for by your workplace).

So you can see that aspect being attractive, too.

As for 'little people' voting Conservative, despite being told, repeatedly, what's coming.

Well, I think that is partly about people's ability to reason imaginatively.

Most people have grown up with the NHS, it's consequently wuite hard to really believe/imagine what it would be like without it.

And people keep getting told these stories about the evil NHS limiting access to treatments available in places without an NHS.

Most people don't experience pure autonomy. Many people resent that. They dislike being told, 'No.'

There's a weird subset of people who have a very peculiar relationship with authority: they have an authoritarian steak themselves, along with a quite irrational rage of people and institutions they perceive as limiting their choices.

The NHS has been constructed, over the past decades, as one of those institutions.

And they are very cross about it.

It's bizarre - very few people in this country could afford to have a long-term illness treated privately (and many people will have such an illness, particularly as they age) but ...

I just think there's a massive disconnect in thinking.

Not with the people who know they'll make money - but with the people who will vote for this, complain about NICE regulation, and yet are voting against their own interests - despite quite staggering evidence to the contrary.

Did anyone see this from @JoshuaRozenberg?

The @Conservatives promise: “We will ensure that judicial review is available to protect the rights of the individuals against an overbearing state, while ensuring that it is not abused to conduct politics by another means or to create needless delays.” Yes but what does it mean?

Sounds like the Tories wanting to stop review and scrutiny of the executive - Johnson’s revenge against the Supreme Court?

To be fair, though, the whole 'New Labour' 'stakeholder' thing was a conceptual realignment of our relationship with the NHS. And, long-term, I'm not sure it was helpful.

* ContinuityError*

Yes.

Gina Millar and Jolyon Maugham are saying we need to be very concerned with this.

The whole Supreme Court ruling against Johnson and co. re. proroging would come under this.