UK General Election on June 8th April 18, 2017
Posted by irishelectionliterature in Uncategorized.trackback
A surprise but given the polls it shouldn’t really be one. The bigger picture should see big gains for the Tories , losses for Labour. As for Northern Ireland a lot of eyes will be on Fermanagh South Tyrone, South Belfast, East Belfast, South Antrim and maybe even Foyle.
Will the SNP hold their seats in Scotland? Where will Welsh voters turn? Can The Greens win a few more seats? A Lib Den comeback of sorts? Oh and UKIP can they actually win some seats?
What will the Campaign be about? Just Brexit?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
May doing an Erdogan. Tortes who oppose hard Brexit will be afraid to say so – imagine the media assault on any who did.
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You’d assume that prospective Tory candidates would have to show their Brexit credentials at selection conventions also. So you end up with a larger , even more pro Brexit Tory Parliamentary party.
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She is horrid but she has not yet jailed many tens of thousands, crushed the media , set the military on a minority and shit them in the streets and surrounded their cities, or invaded about half of her neighbors while threatening the others.
Erdogan is Europe’s first proper fascist leader since the war. Don’t mind the Mickey mouse Orban. Erdogan ticks all the boxes.
One might humbly suggest May hasn’t yet got so far.
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Fair point OL. Though the technical political ruthlessness is similar.
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The death toll is not though.
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Wow.
Didn’t see it coming, I have to say. Lib Dems to win 50+ seats since anti- Brexiters in the south will vote tactically away from Labour. UKIP in disarray and will not be able to capitalise.
BTW, there are local elections across England in a few weeks – will be very interesting as indicators
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Could be nasty too: we foreigners might do well to keep our heads down.
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Here’s a list of local seats up for decision on May 4th. Added bonus – the interim Tory mayor of the west Midlands is called Bob Sleigh.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_local_elections,_2017
sorry, here.
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Is there any hope whatsoever of the Tories not getting a majority?Could a Labour/SNP/liberal collation come together under any imaginable circumstance?
Its hard to read UK polling, because the seat to vote ratios vary so erratically.
But surely the 48% who voted against Brexit – including Tory voters – will be reluctant to vote Tory now, effectively backing a hard brexit?
I’m just looking for hope….
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Almost none, I would have thought, and May knows it.
As a first stab – SNP will hold Scotland. Libdems will take a lot of seats in the south of England – revising down from 50, but maybe 30+? Some of these will come from the tories, replicating Richmond, but more will come from Labour. In too many cases though, the combined Lab/ LD vote will be greater than the Tory but the tory will be elected. Labour are in no condition to fight an election; will come back with under 240.
It’s May’s to lose, and with a bought and paid for media, and hysteria about the nasty EU wanting their pound of flech it won’t be pleasant. This will be all about Brexit and austerity, the death of the NHS, the cuts in social care will be irrelevant.
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Oh god…..A persuasive analysis. But a depressing one.
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Jesus that’s a surprise but politically and I don’t like saying this she couldn’t pick a better moment. Labour are seriously screwed – probably ,1983 levels. No coherent opposition maybe the sheer cynicism of the move will put people off but…
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Hard to disagree with SoS’s analysis of the situation. Looking at the polls yesterday and seeing Tories at 44% and UKIP at 11% I was shaking my head thinking “who the fuck are these people? What are they thinking?”
Does anyone know what is the status of Labour candidate selection procedures in the time remaining before the election? Is there a possibility right-wing anti-Brexit Labour MPs would try to cut some kind of deal with the Lib Dems (an anti-Brexit or soft-Brexit “coupon” or something) ahead of the poll? Or do they have to be confirmed by the local branch before the election?
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“Is there a possibility right-wing anti-Brexit Labour MPs would try to cut some kind of deal with the Lib Dems (an anti-Brexit or soft-Brexit “coupon” or something) ahead of the poll? ”
depressingly, that’s probably the only chance of defeating the tories. But it won’t happen, so no chance.
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Wasn’t there some kind of Green/LibDem Alliance at one of the recent by-elections?
It’s highly unlikely though to broaden to include Labour Remainers on an anti Brexit platform.
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Yes, in Richmond.
The tories will be nervous in some London seats, in Oxford and Bath, strong remain areas where the LDs came second in ’15. But they will be confident of letting UKIP damage Labour enough in some midland and northern seats to sweep back comfortably.
Explaining PR to Brits is like explaining why we’re post-colonial. Does not compute. ‘Sounds complicated’ they say……
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Rumours Bath MP (Tory first elected in 2015) is stepping down.
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Is he a remainer?
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I’ll watch labour but without much hope. Mostly be looking to see whether the SNP can maintain their seats. Also whether SF can take back FST and maybe take some of the SDLP seats also whether the alliance can take belfast east. Now I’m hearing rumors of a same day assembly election so lots to keep on top of.
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Due to the fixed terms act she needs a 2/3 majority in parliament. It would be opposition suicide to resist though.
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2/3 majority to call election I mean
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Corbyn’s last chance – if he doesn’t implement mandatory reselection of MPs now then the Blarites will sabotage the election and Corbyn wil be out on his ear a couple of days later.
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In most cases (either sitting MPs or prospective candidates) Labour candidates are in place.Same is true of the Tories , so unlikely to be any upsets with local parties selecting/de-selecting pro-or anti-Brexit candidates.Furthermore in both parties the central organization can easily impose candidates. Corbyn is in no position to introduce rule changes outside of a conference so that’s out too.The Labour right will be strengthened by the inevitable defeat and the left will be unable to defend him.Unlike the right, who have waited and bided their time, the left have not organized and carried the fight to the Labour right when they had their chance in the last eighteen months.
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Yeah this comes at an awful time for the left in labour they haven’t even had the time to change the rules to require fewer backers to get their candidate on the ballot so if corbyn resigns after a loss he won’t be succeeded by anyone in his group
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Now bear with me here please.
There is a lot of negativity here in all the above posts with regards to the British Labour Party. It seems to me that you all have been listening to the propaganda of the MSM or indeed reading to much shite from the Guardian !
Have ye not noticed that the British Labour Party has been on an election footing since the second coming ( second election to the leadership ) of Jermy Corbyn ?
All the above posts seem to be taking the view of the establishment approach, Labour is fucked now ! Really?
Why would that be?
Who says so ?
If the Tories are really going to win, what`s the point of the ” snap, 8 week long ” election?
Ye need to look at this from a very different perspective entirely.
Remember ye all got it so totally wrong about Trump !
There are a lot of reasons that a ” snap, 8 week long ” election has been called. The position of Labour MIGHT, just MIGHT be a part of it. But most definitely not the main part.
Write the British Labour Party off if you so wish. But don`t write off the British electorate.
They have had a rude awaking in terms of the lies that were peddled in the referendum, I sincerely think they will not be fooled again.
I`m as optimistic as ever.
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I fervently hope so.
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To add to this, the Tories occupy about 80 remain constituencies. There must be some vulnerability there, especially since this will be a GE all about Brexit. Chances are the Lib Dems will be the ones to capitalize, though.
Most of Labour’s seats are safe seats, although a good chunk of those constituencies voted Leave.
I think May is calling a GE to ratify her as PM.
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Labour will be vulnerable to the Lib Dems in London seats. And any halfway decent UKIP showing could deliver some of those ‘safe’ seats to the tories.
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I’d love to agree Tawdy and I’m not in the anti-Corbyn camp at all. But I think the obstacles to an LP win are significant and go beyond the MSM. Indeed I’d doubt anyone here regards the MSM as having any credence whatsoever.
Time will tell.
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“the Tories occupy about 80 remain constituencies”
I live on one of those – the MP is a Brexiter, but the constituency voted 52/48 remain. Nevertheless he’s as nailed on as a Healy-Rae seat in Kerry
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Will I hope you’re right Owen Jones has a column out today about how labour needs to lead with a positive message. But what elections like 92 show is that media bias has an effect.
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As an aside. It most certainly looks as if 30 members of the tories elected to the last parliament may be charged with fraud related to expenses during that election.
Would this be enough reason to call an election before the roof caves in?
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I see that there will be no TV debates or at least none with Theresa May in them. Clever enough move on her part as Tim Farron has little or no National Profile, Corbyns national profile seems crap . Leanne Wood and Nicola Sturgeon came across very well in the various Brexit debates on TV.
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http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/25284/18-04-2017/defeat-the-millionaires-tory-government
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The British electoral system is clearly very broken — and will be much mores so if Scotland leaves. The Tories could win elections from here to eternity with a plurality of the votes in a post-split rump UK. Is there any hope that Labour will hold off the Tories in enough seats while the LDP takes sufficient Tory seats to lead to a hung parliament? If that happens, the anti-Tory majority needs to get real and push PR through and then hold another election. Maybe Labour and the Lob Fems promise the SNP a referendum to get them on board. That would mean there would never be another majority Labour government, but what’s the likelihood of that anyway?
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for “Lob Fems” read “Lib Dems”!
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Two snippets from insta-comment on the LRB by Glen Newey.
First, his sister in hospital in Eastbourne:
“She said she was shocked at the habitual rudeness of the white English patients towards the mainly non-white, unfailingly courteous hospital staff”
and then Glen himself about the SNP:
” [whose]regard for the EU stands between it and its apotheosis as the Ukip of the north”
Being rude about and to the other is endemic, what? In whose world is the SNP anything like UKIP?
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I noticed that! What is he smoking; I’m no SNP cheerleader but Jesus. Apart from anything else, the SNP has been vastly more successful than UKIP, they’ve won several Scottish elections, run the local government and made a clean sweep of Westminster seats. UKIP have never even won a seat, their only MPs have been defectors. It’s not just English Tories who have a blind spot when it comes to the ‘Celtic fringe’.
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SF gained in the Assembly election. Does anybody who knows the numbers for Westminster know if they cab take a seat or two from others in this election?
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They have a few opportunities for gains the most obvious being Fermanagh South Tyrone which the UUP holds based on a unionist pact which may not be repeated at this election. The other obvious gains are north belfast which has never returned a Nationalist mp but which returned 3 out of 5 nationalists at the assembly election. They could also make gains at the SDLP’s expense in foyle where SF overtook them for the first time and in south down where they have the same number of mla’s but SF got 38% of the vote compared to the sdlp’s 25%.
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Not very optimistic about this, I have to say. I didn’t see it coming, and a lot of shrewd political commentators thought the same, but now it’s happened it seems natural enough. Obviously it’s perfect timing for the Tories, when they get the benefits of Brexit but none of the drawbacks, still promising the sun, the moon and the stars, and no hard choices or consequences yet as the thing hasn’t started properly yet. They’ll be helped by a lot of ostrich-like liberals who still want to refight last year’s battle and turn it into a second referendum on Brexit.
As far as Labour is concerned: my feeling lately was that last year’s leadership heave and all that came with it had done so much lasting damage to Corbyn’s public image that it was very difficult to see how he could turn that around; the most realistic prospect was to hold on until he could be sure a left-wing candidate from the younger generation of MPs would get on the ballot and then step down (I’m pretty sure that’s what Corbyn’s inner circle were planning on too). Now that’s impossible, and there’s no telling what the prospects for the left will be in a few months’ time when the dust has settled. The people who had done the most to try and sabotage Labour’s efforts for the last 18 months will be the very ones crowing and clapping their hands with delight, ‘we told you so, we told you so’, if Labour has a very bad performance. And they’ll be the ones who get to write the story in the Guardian, Observer, New Statesman etc.
Best case scenario is that Labour manages to hunker down and hold onto existing seats as much as possible, while a Lib Dem surge comes more at the expense of the Tories than Labour; wouldn’t put much money on either outcome, but that’s about as much as can be hoped for. The Lib Dems won’t care if the Tories end up with a much bigger majority as long as they get more seats (and they’d happily do another deal with the Tories if they could, all the ‘resist Brexit’ stuff would go out the window). Best to keep our hopes low for this and maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised. One thing I’d say about Corbyn: he’s definitely been at his best during the two leadership campaigns, once he got sucked back into routine Westminster politics, a lot of the energy seemed to fizzle out. His best hope is to throw caution to the wind and run the same kind of campaign for the general election, he’s got nothing to lose now.
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“Still promising the sun, the moon and the stars, and no hard choices or consequences yet as the thing hasn’t started properly yet.”
The obvious question: just how stupid is the British electorate?
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One problem with showing May and the Tories up is: in the run-up to last year’s referendum, there were all kinds of dire predictions from experts, including the Bank of England, that the UK economy would tip into a deep recession if there was a Leave vote. That hasn’t happened, so it makes it harder when people talk about the damaging long-term economic consequences of May’s Brexit strategy (which I think are going to be very real). Gove was mocked for saying ‘people are sick of experts’, but he was putting his finger on something very real; economists have been wrong about so much, and largely indifferent to the pain the policies they support have been inflicting on people. It makes it a lot harder to counter the arguments of charlatans like Gove and Farage.
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+1
And also this:
“They’ll be helped by a lot of ostrich-like liberals who still want to refight last year’s battle and turn it into a second referendum on Brexit.”
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“just how stupid is the British electorate?”
Probably no more or less than an electorate who thought Bertie was gas entirely, to be fair.
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Quite a thoughtful post on Labour’s prospects from the head of the Fabian Society, whose politics I obviously wouldn’t share:
“It should make a virtue of necessity and present itself as the only political force that can heal the wounds of Brexit and bring the nation together. Labour’s formula should be to say that the party accepts Brexit, but not Brexit at all costs. It should promise to oppose a cliff-edge hard Brexit, and hold open the possibility of a second referendum if necessary. This middle-way is a high stakes path – the Tories will be seeking to win every Leave vote in the Labour-Conservative marginals (expect Ukip to be squeezed). But Labour has no other choice that is true to its principles or stands any chance of keeping its broad electoral coalition together.”
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2017/04/our-election-prediction-labour-dire-heres-how-party-can-prove-us-wrong
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Completely agree. The idea of opposing Brexit is a non-runner. The idea of embracing its worst forms likewise. This at least is true to the overall direction of the party given the circumstances.
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The combined unionist vote DUP,TUV,UUP, Conservative a few weeks ago was 0.9% ahead of the SF vote. (43 to 42) the remainder being divided among SDLP, Alliance,cross community labour and Green.I think SF should be able to squeeze the SDLP 9% and the others to take the seat.Can’t see the unionist unity candidate expanding beyond it’s constituent parts.
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Looks like there will be a battle over trigger ballots for the reselection of MPs – hopefully Corbyn makes a fight out if it.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jeremy-corbyn-opposes-automatic-reselection-of-labour-mps-for-general-election-sources-claim_uk_58f638a7e4b0b9e9848ec795?iqk
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No reselection:
“The National Executive Committee has agreed an exceptional selections procedure for candidates in the General Election to be held on Thursday 8 June 2017.
The NEC has agreed MPs will be reselected automatically if they wish to stand again. Vacancies will be advertised on Friday 21 April and after close of applications on Sunday 23 April will be selected directly by panels of the NEC and Regional Board members in order to ensure candidates are in place and endorsed by the NEC before the nomination deadline of 11 May 2017.
It is with the greatest regret that local party members will not be able to select parliamentary candidates. This process is necessary and it is only due to the exceptional snap General Election circumstances and will not set any precedent for future elections.”
Just got this as email
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Thats a right kick in the face for Corbyn…. and the membership. I presume some of the membership may be less inclined to campaign for MPs that are anti Corbyn.
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And a further directive from the NEC, directing that all CLP/ Branch meetings from now on confine their agendas to election strategy. No policy discussion allowed.
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The one obvious thing about calling the election now is that the leader of the Conservative and Unionist party as was doesn’t give a flying one about unionists in either Ireland or Scotland, since she has almost certainly brought the end of the union closer in both cases.
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Watching some of the coverage on the BBC news channel this evening. One thing that struck me was how electorally regionalized the UK has become in the last decade or so.
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Crush the Saboteurs, says the Daily Mail.
This will be ugly.
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What gets me is the seeming lack of pushback from the ‘mainstream’ on this. What is that about?
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Who do you mean?
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Isn’t the problem that it’s now seen as ‘mainstream’ ?
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The “mainstream” reckon people’s “legitimate concerns” should be addressed.
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For my sins I ended up on ConservativeHome this morning. Fuckin Hell!! Some chap had a 7 point radical manifesto up…. The first item…
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With mugs.
Amazing how long ago the last GE seems. David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg……figures from history.
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That was in response to MC
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If any of us survive long enough for the history of this period to be written, it will be very rich in case studies.
And we haven’t got to October yet.
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I can’t help feeling some hope. As misguided as that probably is.
Yesterday I was going with the idea that this was May taking advantage of Labours weakness, and there’s definitely some truth there. But surely she’s going with an election now before the Tory’s many problems begin to bite.
Not only do they have some 50 MPs possibly facing prosecution due to election expense issues, they also have a party pushing through a hard brexit when most voted to remain. How is that going to play over the next two years, as negotiations get dirty? How is it going to play when they have to present to parliament an exit deal that either rows back on commitments or leaves the UK hopelessly damaged or isolated.
I’m not saying I’m optimistic. But I just can’t believe they can ride out these absurdities for ever without an electoral disaster. And I think May sees it that way too.
But I suppose they’ll still get their majority this year….
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You’d wonder if all these predictions of 100 seat Tory majorities will put pressure on them, by that if they get a 40 seat majority it will be seen as a failure.
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That’s what cameron gained over milliband. It’d be surprising if they got only that this time given the non option of a labour government.
I fear labour is going to have a very bad day at the office.
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2 points from this mornings papers struck.
1 May wants a majority to be able to negotiate a softer brexit. I’d be inclined to believe that.
2 She wants to boost her backers in the the Tory parliamentary party and reduce the number of Cameron supporters.
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