British Politics Guide

[KathTheDragon]

BBC's exit poll suggests a massive Tory win, best since Thatcher.

[chris_notts]

Exit polls suggest the Lib Dems have succeeded in both doing badly at a party level and splitting the anti-Tory vote, creating a massive Tory majority and destroying any hope of a second referendum. Well done Jo, following in the proud tradition of the SDP.

The only hope now is that Boris f*** it up enough to make this the last Tory Parliament for a long time, assuming the country is saveable at that point.

[chris_notts]

BBC's exit poll suggests a massive Tory win, best since Thatcher.

Sorry, didn't see your post.

[Frislander]

Kyrie eleison.

[Frislander]

Well at least Corbyn has promised he won't lead Labour into the next election, so hopefully they might actually regroup this time.

I wonder how much this election has been problematised by people voting for party over MP (Anna Soubry having just lost her seat by a massive margin)?

[Frislander]

Boris Johnson was reelected.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

But also damnit the Lib Dems not stepping aside Labour seats in was a mistake but not as big of a mistake as Labour focusing too hard on Remain as opposed to its core voterbase.

[Frislander]

Well The SNP just stole Jo Swinson's seat which I guess is kinda funny but fucking hell

[Frislander]

At least the SNP dominance over Scotland should something of a spanner in Johnson's Tory machine.

[chris_notts]

Well The SNP just stole Jo Swinson's seat which I guess is kinda funny but fucking hell

Swinson was a poor choice for Lib Dem leader. People didn't like her or her record. As much as possible the Lib Dems needed a fresh face, and instead they picked Mrs Enthusiastic for Austerity Orange Booker.

[chris_notts]

And again, the result fairly closely mirrors the referendum, with 50% voting Remainish and 50% voting Leaveish. It's just that the Lib Dems have played their traditional role since the 80s of creating Conservative majorities by winning a thin slice of the vote everywhere instead of achieving concentration somewhere. They're ensured that Brexit will happen and that what comes after will be led by the mop-headed idiot.

[DesEsseintes]

Yay yay yay! I’m pleased.

[Frislander]

Yay yay yay! I’m pleased.

I didn't think Bozza was your type.

[alice]

Realistically, Jezza lost the election, and N*g#l F@r)g" is far more to blame than the LibDems.

EDIT: After doing some research, it's actually the fault of the Labour right wing. I stand corrected.

[chris_notts]

Realistically, Jezza lost the election, and N*g#l F@r)g" is far more to blame than the LibDems.

There's more than enough blame to go around. Labour didn't have a great campaign and Corbyn did have shortcomings as a leader. Nigel Farage's bile and hate have done a lot of damage too. But at least Nigel acted based on his claimed objective of delivering Brexit by clearing the field where he had no chance of winning to try to help his objective, at a potential cost to the Brexit party's political interests. The Liberal Democrats had a choice too, of perhaps getting a few extra MPs or of maximising the chance of achieving what they claimed to be their primary objective (stopping Brexit), and they chose to risk having Brexit to get a few extra MPs. The fact they didn't even make electoral progress is one of the big ironies of the election.

If life were fair we'd have a better voting system and parties would have seats approximately proportional to their support. But it isn't, our voting system is only really fit for purpose with two options in each constituency, and ever since the SDP was founded, the main electoral role of the Lib Dems has been to shift things in favour of the Conservatives. In many of the marginal constituencies that went blue, the margin of victory was less than Lib Dem share of the vote. It's not the job of the Lib Dems to help the Labour party, but it supposedly was their job to stop Brexit. They had a choice: aim to be a small kingmaker in a hung Parliament, or a bigger but powerless block in a likely Tory majority parliament, and they went for the latter. As usual, they chose venality and hypocrisy over their supposed political goals.

In our crappy voting system, small parties without a concentrated voter base make the result even more capricious and less fair and representative. The SNP to a large extent isn't a problem because their vote is concentrated and they are #1 or #2 in most of the seats where they run. The Lib Dems and the Greens are a problem because they attract result-swinging minorities in many seats that favour the party their supporters would not want to be in power.

[MacAnDàil]

You're mostly right. The only tiny difference is that SNP are in second place in all 11 seats they are not in first place. For detail, 5 of these are less than 5% behind their rivals (most of these 5 are just behind the Tories) and 4 more of these are less than 10% behind their rivals. So we can say that, taking into account the number of seats they're standing in, the SNP is doing a better job than anyone.

Parts of the media were biased against Corbyn as well, especially most of the tabloids, which are the most well-read. Johnson has actually said racist things himself unlike Corbyn. Despite this, it was Corbyn that got all the accusations of antisemitism. To be fair, one of those was from a prominent rabbi, but the same media largely ignored the Muslim Council of Britain's criticism of Johnson and the Tories.

And the Tories often lied in their election material. 88% in one analysis in contrast to 0% for Labour. Just for that, I feel the Tories don't deserve to have won, even though I clearly never wanted them to win in the first place.

I suppose the Lib Dems could have mirrored the Brexit Party's pulling out, or pulled out just from marginals. It seems the Brexit Party learnt from the Lib Dems gaining in the byelection where Plaid stood down.

[Moose-tache]

OK, refresh my memory. Does this mean that Johnson will get his deal through parliament, or that No Deal happens on January 31?

[alice]

Where's Sal when you need him?

[MacAnDàil]

OK, refresh my memory. Does this mean that Johnson will get his deal through parliament, or that No Deal happens on January 31?

Johnson will get his deal through parliament. Not quite as bad as No Deal, but also accompanied by some new fellow travellers: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article ... the-tories

[chris_notts]

OK, refresh my memory. Does this mean that Johnson will get his deal through parliament, or that No Deal happens on January 31?

Johnson will get his deal through parliament. Not quite as bad as No Deal, but also accompanied by some new fellow travellers: https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article ... the-tories

The current deal only deals with the terms of withdrawal, and puts the new cliff edge at the end of 2020. Boris has promised to finalise the new relationship with the EU by that point and not extend the "transition period" when the UK is outside the EU but still part of the single market. Everyone knows that complex and deep trade deals take quite a long time to negotiate, so there are three main possibilities:

1. Boris lied and will extend
2. Boris will go for a minimal deal that may eliminate many tariffs but will do little for non-tariff barriers (e.g. product standards, mutual recognition of qualifications, services)
3. Boris will leave with no deal on the future relationship and revert to the famous "WTO terms" at a time when the WTO has no functioning court to enforce them

Anything other than (1) would be an economic shock, although (3) would be a bigger one than (2).

[quinterbeck]

Where's Sal when you need him?

If his work is anything to do with politics (which I have a hunch it might) it's probably keeping him busy at the moment!