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Post by michael on Dec 13, 2019 1:59:51 GMT
Sedgefield is looking good.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2019 3:52:41 GMT
I'm still up and have watched Corbyn effectively resign as Labour leader and Swinson lose her seat to the SNP.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 13, 2019 4:34:10 GMT
Terrible news: Diane Abbott is still an MP.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Dec 13, 2019 6:33:44 GMT
Darlington is wonderful. I've promised my neighbour that if Pidcock gets ousted, I will dance down my friends drive wearing a blue rosette. (she is a Momentum member). He has promised to join me. š i think you dropped your ballot paper.
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Post by Alex on Dec 13, 2019 6:42:54 GMT
Terrible news: Diane Abbott is still an MP. As indeed is Corbyn. Looks like Jo Swindon is the only party leader to lose her seat. Thatās embarrassing. Jeremy Quinn took 35k votes in our area vs. 14k Lib Dem 9k Labour. Thatās one hell of a majority.
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Post by Alex on Dec 13, 2019 6:45:05 GMT
Instead we get to enjoy listening to endless Boris waffle whilst we still donāt have a clue what the fuck heās going to do because he doesnāt either. Um I think Boris has been pretty clear on what heās going to do. Heās got a deal and with a majority government, plans to get it agreed by parliament and have us leave by 31st January. It was Corbyn who didnāt say what way he would vote in a second referendum and thatās why all the leaders in the Labour heartlands turned against him.
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Post by Martin on Dec 13, 2019 6:52:45 GMT
Terrible news: Diane Abbott is still an MP. That completely baffles me
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Post by LandieMark on Dec 13, 2019 8:08:22 GMT
Northwest Durham has turned blue for the first time since it was created in 1950. Laura Pidcock has gone. Best Christmas present ever.
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Post by johnc on Dec 13, 2019 8:15:02 GMT
I'm really upset at losing Jo Swinson as my MP and also the SNP domination (although it will be interesting to see the % of the electorate who gave 90% of the seats to the SNP). I now hope that Boris will be good to his word and refuse another independence referendum. If he does that, I might have a chance of getting to retirement before another referendum under a future Government, in which case I will be much more able to move south if or when required.
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Post by LandieMark on Dec 13, 2019 8:51:22 GMT
I saw wee Jimmy Krankie this morning bleating on about another independence referendum. I am sure Boris will tell her to sod off.
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Post by michael on Dec 13, 2019 9:04:35 GMT
Thereās no way there will be an Indy-ref until we have left the EU so that the inevitable āhard borderā can play on votes minds.
Some sensational results. As to our own poll, it turns out we arenāt representative of the country at large. Who knew?
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Post by johnc on Dec 13, 2019 9:07:10 GMT
I saw wee Jimmy Krankie this morning bleating on about another independence referendum. I am sure Boris will tell her to sod off. I hope so. She got 45% of the vote, taking a good bit from Labour (which may have been because of the Corbyn effect or Brexit) but got nearly double that as a percentage of the seats. The financial implications of an independent Scotland are horrendous and if an independent Scotland got entry to the EU, tax rates would need to increase significantly or public services would have to be cut to meet the basic entry requirements: we would just be a Greece or Portugal without the sun. I heard one commentator saying that income tax would need to increase by 2% to 3% just for an independent Scotland to be able to pay for State pensions.
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Dec 13, 2019 9:07:57 GMT
I must admit to a smug smile as The Beast of Bolsoverā¢ lost his seat.
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Post by Roadsterstu on Dec 13, 2019 9:12:16 GMT
Terrible news: Diane Abbott is still an MP. That completely baffles me Sympathy vote. Can't see what else it could be.
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Post by Roadsterstu on Dec 13, 2019 9:13:16 GMT
I saw wee Jimmy Krankie this morning bleating on about another independence referendum. I am sure Boris will tell her to sod off. We're going to hear more of her. Oh good grief.
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Post by michael on Dec 13, 2019 9:16:16 GMT
I must admit to a smug smile as The Beast of Bolsoverā¢ lost his seat. I thought heād stood down anyway?
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Post by scouse on Dec 13, 2019 9:17:07 GMT
Darlington is wonderful. I've promised my neighbour that if Pidcock gets ousted, I will dance down my friends drive wearing a blue rosette. (she is a Momentum member). He has promised to join me. š Video or it didn't happen!
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Post by Roadsterstu on Dec 13, 2019 9:29:01 GMT
By Phillip Collins in the Times today:
"Boris Johnsonās doubters should hope he wins big
My favourite line in British political history is George Dangerfieldās verdict on the 1906 election. The Liberal Party, which won a landslide, was, he wrote, āflushed with one of the great victories of all timeā. Yet it proved to be an illusion. Dangerfield met the occasion with a great line: āfrom that victory they never recoveredā. It may be that the Conservative Party is about to experience something similar. A handsome victory is still a long way off but, if it happened, it would contain hidden terrors.
The election campaign has raised doubts about the character of the prime minister as a person but relatively few about his character as a politician. What would he do with an emphatic win? The cartoon version of Boris Johnson, retailed raucously throughout the campaign, is that he would castigate the state and deplore the poor in standard right-wing fashion. Mr Johnson would deprive public services of funds and fill the coffers of the Treasury with the blood money of the American government which would, before long, be running NHS England.
Ideological monsters are the staple of campaign rhetoric. Most of the things said are not lies or libels. They are the attempts of hard-pressed party apparatchiks to paint a dull canvas in vivid colours. There is something else going on this time, though. Lots of senior Labour people know their leader and his team are a disgrace. The only way they can reconcile their advice to vote Labour with their sense of honour is to talk up the Tory danger. A madcap right-wing Johnson government, recklessly leaving the EU without a trade deal, helps to assuage their support for Jeremy Corbyn. The very people who are usually quickest to tell you that Mr Johnson never tells you the truth appear to believe him implicitly when he says he will not extend the negotiating period.
The truth is much more prosaic. Mr Johnson will not re-enter Downing Street with a clear plan. He doesnāt have a plan. Heās a bit clueless. Heās all bluster and guff. The best rule of thumb for assessing Mr Johnson is to assume, until it is shown otherwise, that he believes nothing but will say anything. For the best of old-school conservatives this was a way of avoiding idĆ©es fixes and staying supple in the face of political change. In Mr Johnsonās case itās more likely he doesnāt really know what he wants beyond the ambition to be the king of the world.
The view of Mr Johnson as a chancer is entirely at odds with the accusation that he is a determined ideologue with a plan for the nation. He is an empty vessel who makes a lot of noise. The critical question is then: who fills the empty vessel and this is why the size of the majority may matter.
There are three things that will define how Mr Johnson conducts himself as prime minister: his ideas, his people or his electorate. The first one need not detain us long. The Conservative Party manifesto sets out to be boring and achieves it with ease. Scarred by the furore over their social care policy in 2017, this time the Tories are playing safe. It is all perfunctory stuff: more nurses, no rise in income tax, national insurance or VAT, a little bit more public spending, better insulation in 2.2 million homes, more childcare places, a railway line between Manchester and Leeds and pensions rising by at least 2.5 per cent a year. It is worthy but dull and Mr Johnson is renowned for being neither so this cannot be the right answer.
If his stated ideas offer no real clue to the character of the prime minister, and neither does his rather featureless and forgettable time as mayor of London, maybe his team hold the clue. Like most princes who want nothing but power, Mr Johnson is highly susceptible to the people he has around him. A slim victory would make him once again prey to the Francois/Baker/Rees-Mogg phalanx. The only virtue of this awful election is that at least we have heard less from the likes of them. With a negotiation looming a small Tory majority, in which those voices were still loud, might be the worst of all options. A larger majority would liberate Boris Johnson from the European Research Group crowd, should he wish to be liberated.
There is some evidence that he might and that can be found in the people he has chosen to put around him. One of the more intriguing aspects of the modern Tory party is that it keeps attracting radical, sometimes anarchistic, outsiders as prominent counsellors. David Cameron had Steve Hilton, Theresa May had Nick Timothy and Boris Johnson has Dominic Cummings. The worst characteristic of these Tory anarchists is a cavalier and unconservative disregard for the tested modus operandi. In that context the truly alarming passage in the Tory manifesto is the paragraph in which the authors ominously suggest that the balance between the state, the executive and the judiciary may have to change. Coming from a prime minister who prorogued parliament just because it suited him, who saw nothing wrong in disparaging the verdict of the supreme court and who decides which media outlets he will grace with his presence, that is worrying.
There is more to Mr Cummings than this, though. In his latest blog post, Mr Johnsonās chief adviser offers a glimpse of what an unleashed government might conceivably do. Citing a study called āA Resurgence of the Regionsā by an academic from Sheffield, Mr Cummings makes the case for a state industrial strategy, ushering private markets into life with public money, without which productivity growth outside London will be too slow. The unfettered market, on this view, concentrates wealth and leaves provincial ruins.
Which brings us to the main reason why Mr Johnson may be a surprising prime minister. If he wins the substantial victory that will mean he can ignore phone calls from Mark Francois, then he is going to win seats in some very strange places. If the Conservatives take seats in the industrial Midlands and north, and in Wales, from Labour, they are going to find the experience of government uncomfortable. The more successful the Conservative Party next week, the more it will have a set of MPs quite unlike the profile of its own voters. Apart from on Brexit, there will never have been a parliamentary party which understands its own victory less well. If it does not find viable policies for working-class Britain it is going to hit serious trouble.
The paradox, for those of us who are not well disposed to Mr Johnson, is that a larger victory is better than a smaller one because it frees him from the ERG, releases the pressure that forces him into constitutional vandalism and pushes him to the left in order to please the new voters with whom he has nothing in common. The consolation is that this might look like a wonderful victory, but not for long."
I think this has the potential to be highly accurate and is quite probably the biggest danger for Boris now. John Pienaar has just said much the same thing on BBC 1.
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Post by johnc on Dec 13, 2019 9:37:20 GMT
But I think this is also a great opportunity for the Conservatives to do something for the whole country and show that they are not just a party of the south of England. If dealt with properly this could do the country a lot of good.
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Post by michael on Dec 13, 2019 9:41:44 GMT
But I think this is also a great opportunity for the Conservatives to do something for the whole country and show that they are not just a party of the south of England. If dealt with properly this could do the country a lot of good. Thatās exactly what they plan to do.
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Post by LandieMark on Dec 13, 2019 9:43:54 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party.
Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all.
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Post by johnc on Dec 13, 2019 10:23:38 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party. Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all. But the membership of the Labour party is dominated by the Momentum/left of the party and they have full power to choose the leader. Whoever thought that arrangement was a good one (Mr Milliband) was an idiot because until the membership changes, they will always vote for the left of the party! The electorate have told the Labour party quite firmly that a very left of centre party is not what they want.
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Post by racingteatray on Dec 13, 2019 10:25:45 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party. Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all. None. It was astonishing how genuinely shocked John McDonnell was last night but what turned out to be a highly accurate exit poll. I had always assumed he was electioneering when he said he thought Labour could win a majority. Turns out he was just buried deep inside his own little bubble of fantasy.
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Post by LandieMark on Dec 13, 2019 10:29:03 GMT
Yes, he was visibly shaken. johnc I did say potential.š
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Dec 13, 2019 10:30:03 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party. Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all. None. It was astonishing how genuinely shocked John McDonnell was last night but what turned out to be a highly accurate exit poll. I had always assumed he was electioneering when he said he thought Labour could win a majority. Turns out he was just buried deep inside his own little bubble of fantasy. He really was shocked, close to tears I thought. It was like everything he'd worked for in his life was ripped up and thrown away. I actually felt sorry for him.
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Post by Tim on Dec 13, 2019 10:31:14 GMT
It'll be interesting to see who they replace Corbyn with. A Momentum lady was interviewed on R4 this morning and reckons this was all about Brexit and that actually their policies are generally ok. Hmmm not sure about that really.
I thought the Tories might get a very small majority but nothing like this. I see Boris said all the right things about trying to represent traditional non-Tory voters who have clearly changed sides but only time will tell. I suspect a lot of Labour voters changed sides purely about Brexit (there were plenty of vox pops that indicated that) whereas I think plenty of unhappy Tories still voted for them despite having similar reservations to Racing.
Still, it was said often enough over the summer that applying the Brexit referendum result was in the in manifesto and that manifesto promises must be honoured so bring on all the new police, nurses, doctors, hospitals, etc that have been in this manifesto......
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Post by Bob Sacamano v2.0 on Dec 13, 2019 10:35:25 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party. Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all. I've already seen a few posts about how this vote is the bourgeoisie middle classes protecting themselves from the working class, who they despise, and the answer is not to become some token centre left party that get a go at government every once in a while, but they need to double down on socialism. move further left, and present braver, more radical, policies. They never learn. Isn't Tony Blair the only Labour PM to have won an election in the last 50 years? And they hate him.
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Post by PG on Dec 13, 2019 10:36:12 GMT
But I think this is also a great opportunity for the Conservatives to do something for the whole country and show that they are not just a party of the south of England. If dealt with properly this could do the country a lot of good. +1. Very few people saw this result coming. The most I hoped for was a 20 seat majority if the Conservatives did really, really well. Some of the presenters and commentators last night looked like they had seen a ghost, they were so shocked. But I think in their little bubble they underestimated a few factors. Just how much people north of Islington hate Jeremy Corbyn (and his marxist agenda probably). Just how much the Labour party took its core brexit voting base for granted - and nobody likes being taken for granted. And that while the press and many people profess to loathe Boris, he is the only leader the Conservatives could have chosen who had any chance of connecting with non-core Conservative voters - and so that has proved. He is far more a "man of the people" than any of the Labour front bench of champagne socialists.
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Post by racingteatray on Dec 13, 2019 10:38:39 GMT
But I think this is also a great opportunity for the Conservatives to do something for the whole country and show that they are not just a party of the south of England. If dealt with properly this could do the country a lot of good. Thatās exactly what they plan to do. I shall observe that with a great deal of scepticism. Much will depend now on whether Boris is capable of graduating from Prime Mistake to something approximating a Prime Minister, and as per the Collins piece, who he surrounds himself with and listens to, and whether indeed he now can, or indeed wants to, ignore calls from Mark Francois and the other ERG Spartans.
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Post by PG on Dec 13, 2019 10:42:19 GMT
It also has the potential to get the Labour Party away from the Marxist Hard Left and back to more centrist party. Corbyn has said he will resign but after a period of reflection. The man has no shame at all. None. It was astonishing how genuinely shocked John McDonnell was last night but what turned out to be a highly accurate exit poll. I had always assumed he was electioneering when he said he thought Labour could win a majority. Turns out he was just buried deep inside his own little bubble of fantasy. When he said that they lost as it became a Brexit election and that the policies that they had followed were the right ones, I knew he had simply lost it. If this was a Brexit election, then why did they not have a sensible Brexit policy that would attract their core vote? Instead as usual they adopted a "we know best" approach, and people are simply fed up with that aspect of politics. People want politicians who will actually listen to them.
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