General Election June 8

[UndercoverElephant]

It looks like 40-80 tory majority to me.

And it looked to you like Remain would beat Leave and Clinton would easily beat Trump.

40 is within my personal range of expected results. 80 is not. It is going to be an interesting election, that is for sure.

[UndercoverElephant]

Also, a week is a long time in politics and Corbyn has already demonstrated he knows how to wrong-foot May. Turning up to the leader's debate at the last minute was not an example of him changing his mind - it was carefully planned to cause May as much damage as possible, and it worked. I wouldn't be at all surprised if Corbyn has got another ace or two up his sleeve, ready to be played at just the right moment to swing the result a little bit more in his favour.

[Lord Beria3]

UE, if the Tories do end up winning by 80 or more, you'll be having an horrendous evening!

[careful_eugene]

Today's Yougov projection has the tories on 317, 9 short of a majority. The NI parties aren't broken down, so let us assume none of them change hands. The DUP has 8 seats. That would leave a tory-DUP coalition one short of a majority, which would leave Theresa May with a nightmare choice:

try to govern the UK, through Brexit, for 5 long years, as a minority government totally at the mercy of a handful of malcontents in her own party and, if they fancied causing a problem, 4 Sinn Fein MPs

OR

call another election, wasting another couple of months of valuable Brexit negotiating time, making herself look like a complete idiot while the EU and everybody else wonders where the hell this is all leading.

Or she could always resign as tory party leader, creating an even bigger mess for somebody else to sort out.

Its all problems and no solutions with you isn't it. I think Theresa May's position will be challenged anyway unless the tories win a significant majority which is looking unlikely. I predict Boris will be PM by September, and the rest of the world will laugh more at us than they do at the U.S.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE, if the Tories do end up winning by 80 or more, you'll be having an horrendous evening!

I'd be disappointed, yes. Although it is still considerably worse for the tories than I expected when the election was called.

[Potemkin Villager]

A hung parliament would be an unspeakable catastrophe for the tories, but there's one possible outcome that is just about apocalyptic, and that is if Tory + DUP total is just a few seats short of 326. This would leave Sinn Fein and the UUP holding the balance of power between the Tories/DUP on one side and all the other parties on the other. I am guessing this would lead to another election, immediately, at which the tories would inevitably lose more seats.

There would be a sort of richly textured poetic justice with this outcome especially considering the land frontier issue in Ireland. Rudd having her Portillo moment would be delicious icing on the cake.

Expect the curse of Britex to strike in more unexpected ways before the fat lady sings. The next week may indeed prove to be a really, really long time in politics.

Dodgy Dqvid Cameroon has left a fine crock of s***e as a political legacy to the party and country he claims to love.

[PS_RalphW]

The last three polls give the Tory lead as 3,5, and 8 percent. Average 5, which would be no change from last election.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.thecanary.co/2017/06/02/bbc ... eresa-may/

Apparently May has refused to do any more interviews at all, and the BBC have been banned from telling anybody about it.

[Lord Beria3]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 67726.html

"Betting on Jeremy Corbyn is following the same pattern seen for Donald Trump ahead of his upset win in the US presidential election.

Mr Trump was considered the outsider by bookmakers, but the majority of bets went his way. The same as is reportedly happening for Mr Corbyn."

Well, well, somewhat surprised nobody is prepared to put a wager on Corbyn winning the election.

Boys and men...

Still, my master forecaster Nadeem (this man has made me literally thousands over the past few years through political betting), will be shortly be publishing his final forecasting prediction on the ge outcome.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article59243.html

Here is his update on the spread betting markets and the odds on the various potential outcomes.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 67726.html

"Betting on Jeremy Corbyn is following the same pattern seen for Donald Trump ahead of his upset win in the US presidential election.

Mr Trump was considered the outsider by bookmakers, but the majority of bets went his way. The same as is reportedly happening for Mr Corbyn."

Well, well, somewhat surprised nobody is prepared to put a wager on Corbyn winning the election.

Boys and men...

Sorry, Beria, but if anybody needs to grow up around here, it is you.

I don't bet at all - I think gambling is for losers. If I did have to bet, I'd bet on a modest tory majority. That is my head talking. My intuition - my gut instinct - senses that something else might - MIGHT - be going on here, and that we could wake up on June 9th to a hung parliament.

That Yougov model, which is being widely ridiculed, looks spot on to me. People are just looking at the headline figures rather than reading the small print. It is actually giving a very wide range of possible outcomes, with a slightly hung parliament as the central prediction. This doesn't reflect a poor model, but what is actually going on at this election - there are simply far too many novel, unknown factors in play. How will the UKIP vote split? How effective will Corbyn be in convincing LD and Green voters in English Tory-Labour marginals to switch to Labour when they usually vote otherwise? How effective will Corbyn be in getting youngsters and don't-usually-votes to the polling stations?

I simply don't know the answers to these questions, and neither do the pollsters, or anybody else, including you. I am personally quite happy, in these circumstances, to say "This is the toughest election to predict in my lifetime", and I don't particularly appreciate being labelled as immature because I'm not willing to put my money where my mouth isn't.

You, on the other hand, appear to be resorting to this "men or boys" thing in order to re-assure yourself. It we do wake up on June 9th to a hung parliament, you will be considerably more shocked and upset than I will be if we wake up to a tory majority of 80, that is for sure.

And just for the record, AGAIN, absolutely nobody thinks Corbyn is going to "win" this election. The question is about whether or not the Tories lose their majority, not whether Labour gets more seats than the tories and certainly not about an overall Labour majority, which has been effectively impossible ever since the SNP took over Scotland. If you add Labour and SNP share of the vote together, they are already ahead of the Tories. If the SNP didn't exist, Labour would be ahead of the tories in the polls and the tories would only be thinking about a sneaky victory because the system is rigged in their favour.

[Lord Beria3]

Fair enough UE.

Betting isn't for everybody.

Regarding the election, like you, I don't know what the result will be. It may be a hung parliament, or small Tory majority or a big one.

I may have a personal opinion on what is the most likely outcome, but that is just my opinion, backed up by my reading, analysis and the views of forecasters with a decent track record of successfully predicting elections.

I will be adding my own forecasting prediction in the coming days and we will see who is most successful.

[UndercoverElephant]

Rudd having her Portillo moment would be delicious icing on the cake.

Would be nice. Unfortunately I think she will win in Hastings, albeit with a reduced majority. The Labour candidate would make a much better MP (leader of Hastings Borough Council, who my OH works for, until recently as head of communications), but he needs a small miracle to unseat Rudd. The greens have stood down, and the LibDem candidate is going nowhere fast. I predict Rudd to win by 1000-2000 votes.

[Lord Beria3]

UE - out of interest, are you at all concerned about Corbyn's position on Falklands, his long relationship with the IRA and his record of voting against all extra powers given to the security services in the fight against Islamist terrorism?

Surely you are a bit concerned that if Argentina invaded the Falklands islands, Corbyn would almost certainly not fight to defend them?

Or are these issues simply not of great importance compared to say Corbyn's economic policies.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE - out of interest, are you at all concerned about Corbyn's position on Falklands, his long relationship with the IRA and his record of voting against all extra powers given to the security services in the fight against Islamist terrorism?

He voted against giving powers to the intelligence services to snoop on whoever they liked without judicial review. I agree with him. I don't believe a lack of power of the intelligence services is the problem - the problem is the cuts to police manpower, which will get worse under another tory administration.

The stuff about the IRA is totally ridiculous, because the historical facts are that Thatcher's attempt at a military solution to the Irish problem was a failure, and talking to the IRA brought the troubles to an end. There is nothing wrong with talking to your enemies in order to try to end conflicts. Thatcher didn't understand that, and some tories I have encountered recently on facebook don't understand it either.

As for the Falklands, I doubt very much that Corbyn would oversee a sell-out of the Falkland islanders if he was Prime Minister. He has shown he is willing to listen, and he'd listen on that one. He's not stupid, Beria. That's why his manifesto was good, which is large part of the reason why he is doing so well in the polls. So no I am not worried about that. Far more worried about what the tories are doing to the NHS and the rest of the things they are f*cking up.

Surely you are a bit concerned that if Argentina invaded the Falklands islands, Corbyn would almost certainly not fight to defend them?

Nope. Argentina aren't going to invade the falkland islands, and actually the fate of two little islands on the other side of the planet is rather low down my list of priorities.

Or are these issues simply not of great importance compared to say Corbyn's economic policies.

Bullseye. If I get sick, I need the NHS to be functioning. If I have kids, I want the state school system to be functioning. I want the tax loopholes closed, and I want the gap between rich and poor in this country to get smaller, not even bigger. I want to see the railways and royal mail re-nationalised. All these things are far more important than nationalistic, flag-waving bollucks about the Falkland Islands and the IRA.

[Lord Beria3]

Well that is the fundamental difference between you and me, and I would suggest that it is a broader chasm between the typical centre-left voters and the typical Conservative/UKIP voter.

Defending the national interest is considered by most Tories and patriotic Labour/UKIP voters who derive from the working classes, as pretty important... it's not a "nice to have" but a pre-requisite to voting for a prime minister.

That's why I could never vote for Labour under the leadership of Corbyn even if I actually like a few of his economic policies (taking on corporate tax evasion and investing in infrastructure). I want to see a leader who defends Britain's national interests and not suck up to our internal and foreign enemies.