2017 UK General Election - 8th June

blanch152 wrote: »

There is a difference between a "hard border" and a "hard Brexit".

Hard Brexit means hard border. And this won't happen as the EU negotiation team, wont take DUP serious if they want that. If they insist to be serious, this gets leaked and 15 minutes later you will see pitchforks and torches outside of every DUP office.
So May is now limited to a soft brexit or going "crazy Teresa" and imploding the coalition.

May's incompetence, arrogance and terrible judgement will see her jobless in short order.. Running to the DUP without any real discussion with the parliamentary party was a bad move.. British people are only cottoning on to who the DUP are.. And I bet many Tory constituents are already contacting their newly elected representatives to voice their disgust.. I can't see all 319 Tories holding their noses here and voting against their best interests..

There seems to be a lot of sweeping statements being made about how huge this election is.

Of course, in practice there's been a huge shift in power against the Tories, the government is in chaos, May looks like a fool and all that kind of thing.

But, as far as assigning motives to the voting, talking about the shift in public opinion, there being some impending Labour landslidea and a massive vindication of Corbyn goes, I don't think that's anything like as clear.

Labour votes have increased by 3.5m, vs 2.3m for the Tories. They've narrowed the gap, but it's still substantial.
In terms of seats, they've again narrowed the gap, but it's still 57 seats.

SNP are talked about having a disaster but while it's 400k fewer votes and 20 fewer seats, that's on a very small population, and I haven't gone and checked every constituency but it's likely many of the wins in 2015 were marginal and many of the losses are this time around as well.

It seems the nature of FPTP to flip-flop massively.

Clearly, there has been some change, and the practicalities are huge for the country, but given how poor a campaign May ran and the ability of Corbyn to energise a young population this time around, I don't think still losing by 60 seats and a million votes is either a sudden massive rejection of Tory politics in a country that has voted them in for most of its existence, or a huge vindication of Corbyn, either as a character and leader, or as the representative of a set of policies.

I don't think most of those that swung have a ****ing notion about what they're voting for and I think trying to ascribe particular motivations to what happened is a fools errand unless you have some seriously heavy duty statistics to hand to back you up.

I've not read any of this thread today and just watching CNN over the last hour and from the pictures of both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn I've seen you'd swear Corbyn won. Theresa May had a look on her face liked she's been yelled at by some in her party.

Also the DUP and their views(which are backward IMO) will have a spotlight on them and I'm not so sure how many conservative MPs and voters will like them.

Next Tory voter who whinges to me about Corbyn and the IRA is getting a slap.

EDIT; forgot we weren't in the cafe.

On a serious note; this lays bare the total and utter hypocrisy behind the Conservative party. They spent weeks flogging some dead IRA horse (while arming the Saudis) and then jump into a party with extensive paramilitary links in order to save their own skin. Make no mistake, this won't last. The stories are in disarray and all of those decrying Labour can observe the fact that they got the highest vote since 1997.

Once May makes a pig's arse out of Brexit Labour will be quid's in. A sea changed has occurred and its great to see. I saw a photo earlier of lads from my boxing club in Wood Green outside a polling booth captioned "Mandem Mobilize"; Corbyn has unlocked a new demographic. Lets hope he can build on it.

Jamiekelly wrote: »

The DUP social media and politician's accounts are being flooded with gay and lesbian GIF's. It's amazing how effective people can be when they hate someone with such positivity. Arlene might have a heart attack.

Yeah their views aren't going to sit well with a lot of the uk electorate. I mean if your only option to keep you going in government is to need the DUP is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

FTA69 wrote: »

Next Tory voter who whinges to me about Corbyn and the IRA is getting a slap.

EDIT; forgot we weren't in the cafe.

On a serious note; this lays bare the total and utter hypocrisy behind the Conservative party. They spent weeks flogging some dead IRA horse (while arming the Saudis) and then jump into a party with extensive paramilitary links in order to save their own skin. Make no mistake, this won't last. The stories are in disarray and all of those decrying Labour can observe the fact that they got the highest vote since 1997.

Once May makes a pig's arse out of Brexit Labour will be quid's in. A sea changed has occurred and its great to see. I saw a photo earlier of lads from my boxing club in Wood Green outside a polling booth captioned "Mandem Mobilize"; Corbyn has unlocked a new demographic. Lets hope he can build on it.

Do you have any evidence that there are current "extensive paramilitary links" or are you referring to some historical event?

Either way, do you agree that any party with extensive paramilitary links in say living memory (40 years) is unsuitable for government?

Right2Write wrote: »

One thing is for sure, the SF goose in NI is well and truly cooked for the immediate future. They have some hard thinking to do, no easy road anymore.

You've spent all day penning Sinn Feinn's political epitaph the day after they garnered more Westminster seats than ever before hot on the heels from their best Assembly election performance to date. You may personally hate SF, but there is no electoral data to support the claims you have spouted in your posts on this thread all day sir.

From the Torygraph. Seven things you might not know about the DUP. Makes them look like a party of dinosaurs.

Fwiw, I was working in England today. I have a lovely classy colleague there, who came up to me and said she had never really been aware of the DUP, and had hence done some research.
Visibly upset, she said, and I quote, "but they're nothing but thugs and criminals".
Teresa May isn't a normal , rational person imho.

blanch152 wrote: »

There is a difference between a "hard border" and a "hard Brexit".

The only way to have a hard Brexit and no hard border is if NI stays within the customs union and freedom of movement. But DUP have ruled out any special status for NI.

A hard border won't be up to us or the UK, it'll be the EU insisting on it the same as they do with Poland-Belarus etc.

It'll look like the Berlin Wall in a few years (minus the minefields, hopefully) if the Tories keep going the way they are.

The economy of NI will completely implode before it gets to that stage, which could be a good thing if it forces a saner solution

As far as SF are concerned, 'worse is better'. The worse things get in NI the more attractive a UI looks. It's not in their interest to achieve a softer Brexit, whatever they say about it. It's not in their interest to get Stormont running again. Worse is better.