E.U: Leave or Stay? Your thoughts.

Yeah, funny, that. Normalcy bias: just because you can't conceive of it happening, you believe it won't.

I call another hung parliament, by the way.

 

Ah yes, whinging remoaner Farage

A lot depends on turnout, and what if any electoral pacts happen imo. And any disastrous dementia tax level campaign/policy blunders.

An SNP whitewash north of the border is pretty much a given though imo.

 

I'm in danger of sounding like a Labour apologist lately, so let me be clear: I am not. I was a Labour member until about a year ago when I cancelled my membership over the party's ambivalent Brexit stance. To be totally honest my ballot paper this year might just have a big turd drawn on it.

You'd only vote for Jo Swinson if you lived in the East Dunbartonshire constituency, and you'd only vote for Jeremy Corbyn if you lived in Islington North. It might seem a pedantic distinction, but in the context of our electoral system it's an important one. You vote for a representative for your constituency, you only vote for a party leader if you happen to belong to that party and meet the leadership election eligibility criteria.

Lib Dems sure, but not Labour. Labour has actually been pretty consistent on their ambivalent Brexit position, basically: give us a majority government and we'll negotiate our version of Brexit. It's only in the 6 months or so that they've come around to the idea of a confirmatory referendum on any deal they agree. Having a second referendum doesn't say "right, bugger this whole Brexit thing, call it off"; giving a second referendum once a deal has been agreed says "you wanted Brexit, here's what we agreed on, is this still what you want?". If an electorate wasn't allowed to change its mind then why would we even bother with elections in the first place? This is an important decision regardless of what side of the fence you sit on; even high-profile people from Vote Leave were saying in 2016 that this could take years to get right, so why are we surprised when it turns out that it takes years to get right?

Unfortunately that won't be the case even when a withdrawal agreement is passed and comes into effect. If Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had his deal approved and somehow the legislation made its way through both houses and received royal assent in time for tomorrow then it still wouldn't be over tomorrow. Everything that the Tories have tried to get through in the last 3 years has just been the first stage of Brexit; the initial withdrawal arrangements along with some nice non-legally-binding wording about what we want our relationship to be in the future. Once the withdrawal agreement is implemented that is far from the end of it, we have to actually negotiate that future relationship. That negotiation will make the last three years seem like the sunlit uplands that were originally promised by Vote Leave.

No matter what happens, whether we leave, remain, leave with a deal, leave with no deal, or just keep extending, this will not be "over" for a long time. Let's suppose that I ride a flying pig to go and join the Tory party tomorrow because they take leave of their senses and unilaterally revoke Article 50; that might be the end of it as far as hardcore remain supporters like me are concerned, but that would not be the end of the Brexit debate in British politics.

 

Double-post, sue me...

This is pretty much the only thing that can be said about this election with any certainty: it will be a hung parliament and the party with the most seats will have to form a coalition or confidence and supply arrangement with a smaller party.

 

it's post-2016... it'll probably require multiple parties... be it -

Tory/Lib/DUP/Brexit [if they actually secure any seats] or Labour/SNP/Lib

...and regardless of configuration, it'll probably collapse at the first stiff breeze.

 

True but that didn't seem purposeful whereas what Boris is doing is, May seemed to be trying to deliver Brexit and Boris seems to be doing everything he can to make his job as difficult as possible.

 

I think may had a plan... only to cock it up... [whther deliberately or not is a matter of debate]
Whereas Boris just cocks up... and everyone assumes it's part of some master plan.

 

Master plan or not I'm sort of glad he's such a clown, despite the shiny new thing of a GE having distracted all the politicians it seems calls for a 2nd referendum have grown louder since Boris' fumbling.

 

My issue with Corbyn isn't that he might be antisemitic, or that he met with terrorists (Hell, people have to meet Trump, and that man has as much blood and **** on his hands as any politician who met members of the IRA, but no one goes "Ew, Merkel, you met Trump you dirty racist"), it's that he is so ****ing ambivalent. To me he seems like an old man who was found wandering around a garden center and would like nothing more than to go back to his allotment to grow eight carrots and two cabbages a year. I don't mean to imply he's a doddering old dementia patient, only that he seems so apathetic to the things happening around him that he comes across as spineless. Not to mention dishonest, what with the "ohno poor me I had to sit on the floor of a train seatswahwah" next to a fairly empty carriage.

He rubs me the absolute wrong way, and considering the other political choices that's a problem. Labour are pretty much the only viable alternative to the Tories that stand any chance of getting anywhere.

I'd vote Lib dem (I did last time, despite them shitting the bed, because I knew it'd mean nothing in the long run (My county was and likely always will be Tory), and it wasn't as much of a waste of my time as spoiling the ballot paper), but while they seem to oppose Brexit, **** knows what they'd actually do with a win. Probably post the EU a box of bronzed turds, claim victory, and disappear into irrelevance again.

Greens are just.. They have some sane policies, then they seem to have had a mental patient fill in the blank spaces. If they made their entire manifesto reasonable, then they might appeal more. But mostly it just seems like a university hippy got high as balls and wrote all their dumbass ideas down about how we should live in mud hut communes and only eat leaves that've fallen off the tree.

The rest are racist, jokes, or ****tards IMO.

Although, I firmly believe that all politicians are liars and only in it for personal glory - Regardless of what happens with the country. I know most people **** on American politics, but Brexit is showing the English politics true colours and they are not any better IMO.


Not that it really matters, my application to vote as an expat has seemingly been ignored into oblivion, so I suspect I shan't be voting on anything any time soon.

 

I'm fairly disengaged from the whole thing now. When BoJo and the EU managed to agree a WA the GBP went up to 1.16 Euros. I reckon that it will probably settle around that figure in the long run post Brexit. Fine, I can live with that. I'm out of here within five years, and what post-Brexit Britain then does with itself will not be my problem anymore.

 

The only reason I'm still invested is that, until I'm a German citizen, I still need to know where the UK stands and what paperwork I need to do to stay here in Germany.

The second I don't need to give a **** about that, then toodle-oo paying attention to Brexit Extension 45; Return of the Bojo.

 

So does anyone have any use for a secondhand ditch, the original owner bought it but never used it so it's unboxed, unfortunately it doesn't come with any ifs or buts as the previous owner didn't want those so it can be yours for only 50p.

 

Happy ditch/brexit riots/Mark Francois exploding day!


Has Farage decided where he's going to lose this time?

 

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

Posted for 'lets see how wrong this kind of forecast/nowcast ends up being' purposes -

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

I'm not going to disagree that he doesn't interview well at all. He's a great campaigner, not going to deny that - it's what he's spent the last 40 years doing. But as a party leader he simply doesn't inspire any confidence.

I don't know, maybe after Tony Blair and David Cameron's shininess in front of the cameras, dowdy Gordon Brown, Theresa May's botched attempt at channelling Thatcher's Iron Lady, and Johnson's boisterous bluster, maybe we need someone who's more measured and reserved. It sure as sh-- isn't winning over many except the Corbyn/Momentum faithful though, and the handling of the anti-semitism row has been just atrocious.

FWIW I highly doubt we'll ever see the "truth" of the whole train incident. Corbyn & his team claimed the train was packed and there was no choice but to sit on the floor; Virgin Media release footage (which, when it comes to privacy and their own Ts&Cs was a pretty dubious thing to do) showing plenty of seats, but with a timestamp after Corbyn's piece to camera was supposedly filmed; and irrespective of the objective truth, the media had an absolute field day continuing the dishonest/untrustworthy narrative that his opponents had already entrenched so firmly. Either way it isn't a lie to say that our railways are, in general, an absolute ****ing state.

If there's another dire election performance in December I don't see that he has any choice but to step down as party leader. Probably won't though.

EDIT: The whole Brexit situation reminds me of a scene from The West Wing (my other half watches the entire thing every couple of years like a ritual, so practically every episode is burned into my brain). There's an episode where a senior White House aide has a plan to reform social security; the president remarks "Social Security is the third rail of American politics. Touch it, and you die.". The aide in question retorts with "That's 'cause the third rail's where all the power is." (imdb quote link). Brexit is the third rail of British politics: it killed David Cameron, it killed Theresa May, and it seems to be killing Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

 

The faithful will paint any poor performance as a victory or at least as not a defeat... then they'll blame 'blairites', the media/elite, larry the downing street cat for their defeat... but corbyn didn't lose you know...

See also: the 2017 GE and every other europarl/local election since...

Europe is certainly the death of Tory Leaders/PMs... Stretching as far back as Thatcher, if not before.

 

Meanwhile Labour will [or at least they should] run with this -

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

No argument our trains are ****, but I sincerely doubt that he had no choice but to sit on the floor.

And no, no one came out of that looking like an angel. It was just another shady seeming situation that screamed to me 'i was trying to score political points' when he could have, I don't know, done something actually useful instead. Like sit in a ****ing seat and have a serious moment of self reflection and looked at what he has done and does do wrong.

Even if I was predisposed to having party allegiances, I couldn't fathom voting for a man who appears to have a decision making spine made by slinky.

Although, it must be said, any vote I cast for a politician is done begrudgingly. Liar, cheat, thief, self-aggrandizing jackass, take your pick. I'm confident it could apply to the overwhelming majority of politicians.