General Election 8 June

[vinceprince]

Originally Posted by seany65

I'm not quite so sure the result is such a foregone conclusion. I thik it partly depends on what "They" (N.W.O. etc.) want for Britain. Do they care one way or the other if we leave the EU? If not then the tories will prolly win, if they want us to stay in, then maybe a 'shock' result may be in order so that we end up staying in or the brexit is so soft we may as well havew stayed in.

So it would go "shock result" of referendum to make us think we are getting out and then "shock result" to show 'common sense prevails' and we never get another chance of leaving.

Not really comparable, the odds on a shock result of Brexit was about 3 or 4-1. As was Trump.

You can get 20-1 on the Tories losing.
So you're putting a bet on to make a ton of cash? Any takers?

Many 'remainers' like me are in constituencies where the Lib Dems don't even bother campaigning, I wouldn't vote Tory and a vote for Labour just keeps loser Corbyn going a bit longer. So no point in voting really, that's the problem with the FPTP system.

[Wendigo]

Originally Posted by vinceprince

Not really comparable, the odds on a shock result of Brexit was about 3 or 4-1. As was Trump.

You can get 20-1 on the Tories losing.
So you're putting a bet on to make a ton of cash? Any takers?

Many 'remainers' like me are in constituencies where the Lib Dems don't even bother campaigning, I wouldn't vote Tory and a vote for Labour just keeps loser Corbyn going a bit longer. So no point in voting really, that's the problem with the FPTP system.

I think many this time will vote differently to the last General Election or as VP says abstain, UKIP have done their bit already so a vote for them is largely useless, the LibDems are a spent force and Corbyn has no sense of gravitas about him. The only thing that may ruin it for the Conservatives is if they do something mega-stupid.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by vinceprince

Not really comparable, the odds on a shock result of Brexit was about 3 or 4-1. As was Trump.

You can get 20-1 on the Tories losing.
So you're putting a bet on to make a ton of cash? Any takers?

Many 'remainers' like me are in constituencies where the Lib Dems don't even bother campaigning, I wouldn't vote Tory and a vote for Labour just keeps loser Corbyn going a bit longer. So no point in voting really, that's the problem with the FPTP system.

You can still spoil your ballot Vince if there's really no one you can support. I have done that before. That is better than not voting because you are making a statement instead of not being counted at all.

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by Wendigo

I think many this time will vote differently to the last General Election or as VP says abstain, UKIP have done their bit already so a vote for them is largely useless, the LibDems are a spent force and Corbyn has no sense of gravitas about him. The only thing that may ruin it for the Conservatives is if they do something mega-stupid.

The Tories have the advantage this time that the election is really about the leaving of the EU. No one who supports leaving should dream of entrusting the negotiations to the Labour Party, even though it is widely suspected that Jeremy Corbyn is probably more in favour of Leave personally than is Theresa May, who was more active for Remain during the referendum campiagn than he was. It is with great reluctance that Labour has conceded that Britain will leave and it is rather likely that Labour would seek to Remain if they can find any shred of an excuse and hold the levers of power.

Some Leave supporters will still vote Labour on tribal grounds but I think that the referendum has broken this allegiance for many. I think Labour will now pay for decades of systematically betraying its working class roots and supporting fashionably liberal ideas which are not shared in decaying mill and mining communities where economic problems are more important than legislation to forbid people to smoke inside their own cars or to spank their own children if it turns out that they have deliberately torched the Maths block at school. The bedrock of Labour support in north of England communities is actually far more socially conservative than a lot of Tories are and for a long time the Labour Party has not been representing the traditional values of hard work, family loyalty and duty to Queen; country; family; employers (and the reciprocal duty a good employer feels to the employees); neighbours and friends.

I think we may be starting to see a reaction against the "Me me me!" values we have been living with since the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 - though she was created by the selfishness of union power in the 1970s and I don't particularly blame her for social trends she merely recognised and acted upon. The Brexit vote was an anti-establishment vote and Labour has intimately connected itself to the neo-liberal corporatist establishment and become part of what the people have reacted against. I see a real trauma for the Labour Party coming up.

A few months ago I was in an Tube train going home and sat in the middle of some self-evidently left wing political activist types: I say self-evidently because I was in the middle and listening to their conversation. Who they were I do not know. But there were some older ones who I took to be local government employees and younger ones who I took to be students or similar. One of the younger ones, who looked stereotypically like one of those "Socialist Worker Party" street newspaper vendors, was arguing a rather cute point. He stated that the British Left collectively had made a historic mistake by aligning itself so squarely with the Remain campaign. He isolated the critical point I myself had isolated. His words were, as near as I can remember:

The four freedoms are not freedoms for people; they are freedoms for commerce. Especially the freedom of movement of people, When I was on the doorstep, that was a very difficult freedom to defend. That freedom is really unpopular. It was a really historic mistake for the Left to support the EU.

His reasoning was not exactly like mine, because he was thinking from a Left activist perspective; but I agreed with his analysis of what has gone wrong with the EU and why it works against ordinary people instead of for them.

[tamsmith]

Originally Posted by scoundrel

You can still spoil your ballot Vince if there's really no one you can support. I have done that before. That is better than not voting because you are making a statement instead of not being counted at all.

I am sorry. People have given their lives to be able to vote. To try and make a difference.
Really not sure how spoiling a ballot paper makes a statement.

Does it make you look like a numpty.

A vote is a statement.

If you don't vote don't moan about the people who control you.

Simple.

[palo5]

Originally Posted by tamsmith

If you don't vote don't moan about the people who control you

Vince and Scoundrel are both right. Both know the system is rigged and most votes don't count. Both know they're screwed. One says don't waste time voting, and the other says force them to count your protest

Both opinions are rational

[scoundrel]

Originally Posted by tamsmith

I am sorry. People have given their lives to be able to vote. To try and make a difference.
Really not sure how spoiling a ballot paper makes a statement.

Does it make you look like a numpty.

A vote is a statement.

If you don't vote don't moan about the people who control you.

Simple.

The time when I spoiled my ballot was in a local government election when I assessed the individual candidates and formed the considered view that none of them was worthy to shovel excrement from one place to another place. At least one of them was convicted of social security fraud not long afterwards. The rest may not have been convicted of anything but they were no better IMHO. In order to make it absolutely clear I wrote in block capitals the message "I spoiled this ballot deliberately" so that no one would be able to pretend I was merely too stupid to know how to vote.

The statement was/is that you refuse to endorse any of the candidates. "None of the above".

Actually, I would like voting to be compulsory by law but on the basis that a "None of the above" box is on the ballot and that if NOTB wins, then that constituency has to have an immediate by-election in which none of the previous candidates is legally allowed to run again.

[haroldeye]

I have lived in both a marginal and solid Labour Constituencies and voted for the person I thought would best represent that constituency. At three elections I have felt it necessary to write SPOILED on the paper because I thought all of the candidates were arseholes. I have voted for both Labour and Conservative, though my Labour vote proved to be for someone who turned out to be one of the biggest, as yet uncaught, naughty boys in the House.

I'm in complete agreement withe Scoundrel and the none of the above box idea. Sadly none of the existing MP's will vote for it as chances are it would win every time.

[Mal Hombre]

Where I live,They could put a blue rosette on a rubber plant and it would be elected so voting anything other than Conservative is the equivalent of none of the above..

[Wendigo]

What will be interesting is if any normally rock solid Labout seats change. As in Mal's constituency you could put a flasher garden gnome in a blue rosette in those seats and it would win.
Will voters who chose to leave the EU support any MP who they think may have tried to thwart the Brexit result?