General Election June 8

[Lord Beria3]

Well, I agree with you on the chances of a Blairite challenge to Corbyn.

I think you under-estimate how much these MP's loath Corbyn. If they fail to remove him via a leadership election I still think that they will be prepared to create a new party.

[clv101]

LB3, it really does seem like your personal biases are getting in the way of any rational analysis these days.

[Lord Beria3]

Lets see.

a key test will be if Labour moderates are able to return to pre Ed Miliband system for electing the leader. Reducing the clout of the membership will increase the chances of overcoming Corbyn's massive popularity among the grassroots activists.

As for my personal bias, I supported Corbyn after the Brexit leadership challenge because unlike Owen Smith he supported triggering Article 50. On a personal level I consider Corbyn a more likeable and charming person then Theresa May, I just happen to think that he is unfit to be our pm.

Nothing personal old boy.

[UndercoverElephant]

Lets see.

a key test will be if Labour moderates are able to return to pre Ed Miliband system for electing the leader.

I'm not sure what planet you are living on, Beria. British politics is changing. Regardless of the result of this election, Corbyn has won. He's conclusively won the argument about the direction the Labour Party, and its 600,000 members, are heading in. Large number of Corbynskeptics, both in and out of the Labour Party, are admitting they have underestimated him, and were out of touch with the mood of the country. Everything you are posting in this thread identifies you as one of those for whom the penny is yet to drop on this.

The Labour moderates aren't even going to try to change the leadership election back to how it was before Miliband changed it. The tide has turned against their vision of the Labour party, decisively.

Reducing the clout of the membership will increase the chances of overcoming Corbyn's massive popularity among the grassroots activists.

"Overcoming Corbyn's massive popularity"? You clearly aren't aware of the absurdity of what you're posting. The only justification for trying to "overcome Corbyn's popularity" was the argument that his appeal was limited to a small number on the "hard left" and if he was to fight a general election, he'd get slaughtered by the wider electorate. Well, we've now had several weeks of campaigning for that election, and it turns out that when Corbyn is given a fair crack of the whip, instead of being continually smeared and lied about by the right wing press you apparently depend on for your information, his popularity extends to a much wider swathe of the electorate. Are you not paying attention? He's just pulled off the most extraordinary swing in political fortunes during an election campaign in modern history. He's cut the tory lead from 25 points to 5, and he's turning his critics around in droves.

Wake up, Beria. It is you who are trying to turn the clock back. It is very obvious to anybody reading this that you are personally shitting bricks about what is happening. Corbyn scares the pants off you. Go on - admit it.

Nothing personal old boy.

The above statement is an attempt to patronise and ridicule Corbyn. He's survived 2 years of that bullshit, not just from the right wing press but from the supposedly neutral BBC, the supposedly left-wing Guardian, and much of his own party. And he's come out the end of the process having proved all of those critics wrong. Yesterday the Guardian changed its tune and supported him, and even the BBC has started being fairer to him. Even if he loses, he's won. He's already changed British politics. Come on, old chap - try to keep up.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... its-labour

Politics is changing

If centre-left politicians want to regain support for their policies, they must find ways of engaging with provincial Britain – with its economic needs, its sense of place, and its estrangement from the corridors of power – as well as courting urban citadels. In talking about the big questions – about the inequality of wealth and power – in moral terms, of what is right and wrong, Mr Corbyn is on to something resonant, something common, something good. If he were to win, then he must respect all of the party’s traditions, rebuild the Labour coalition in the Commons and recruit the party’s best talents into government. Labour needs to find a convincing voice to conduct tricky Brexit talks. Mr Corbyn would need to stick to the manifesto: most important, given Labour’s economic reputation, to show that his party can unlock growth through careful and prudent stewardship to pay for the public goods it wishes to deliver.

Our desire is for a Labour government, but our priority is to stop the Conservatives. All politics is local and there are unique dynamics in Britain’s 650 constituencies. The electoral script in Scotland is now plainly different and we will consider the options there in a separate editorial. Similarly, Northern Ireland has its own narrative. There are many reasons to vote Lib Dem, not least their campaign for membership of the EU’s single market and reform of the voting system. Likewise, the Green party – and the epoch-shaping concern over the environment – should not be dismissed. Our support for Labour does not mean a “progressive alliance” of like-minded parties should be discarded. It should be embraced as an idea, but one whose time has not come. To limit the Tories by tactical voting makes sense.

Forecasts in politics are based on the premise “if present trends continue” and it is in the nature of trends to change. That is what makes this election so interesting. We do not know what political groups are coalescing, what realignments are taking place. Politics is changing. What seems important today, history may well judge irrelevant. An election is a chance to snatch a cup from the stream of public opinion. While we stare into its depths, the river rushes on. Most pundits think the voters will repudiate Mr Corbyn’s Labour party. They may do so. But Mr Corbyn has shown that the party might be the start of something big rather than the last gasp of something small. On 8 June, Labour deserves our vote.

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.ft.com/content/3cc15f1e-478 ... b4dd6296b8

The challenge for Mr Corbyn, in the last week of the campaign, is to break the 40 per cent barrier. Those who backed him always believed a radical left agenda would help Labour back to and beyond the 35 per cent target of the Ed Miliband era.

The problem then becomes how to appeal to the political centre. The UK is not a leftwing country — it is a fair one that has had enough of austerity. A divided country looking for a story it can unify around.

Mr Corbyn must pledge his willingness to govern from the centre, bringing in big hitters from the centrist factions who refused to serve in his shadow cabinet. He has said the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will get an institutional role in the Brexit negotiations — but he must go further.

The Labour leader should signal he would form a government with cross-party support in parliament, at the very least from the Greens and the progressive nationalist parties. That would not be a “coalition of chaos”, in Mrs May’s phrase. Rather, it is the thing any pro-globalist Tory leader should have sought: a machine for creating consensus about what kind of country we want to become.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... leadership

When Theresa May called a snap general election, the first thing I did was call my dad, Alastair Campbell, to tell him how smart and strategic a move I thought it was. I believed that the Labour party would face catastrophe. That voters in Labour strongholds across the north of England would crave her policies on immigration, fear Jeremy Corbyn’s historical links to the IRA, and clamour for the modern-day iron lady. Theresa May clearly felt the same, kicking off her campaign in Hartlepool with a smile that suggested a belief that the election was over before it had even started.

What this campaign has shown is just how out of touch I was.

[snip]

Today, I pledged to get out the vote for Labour. I’ve joined thousands of people around Britain who have committed to knocking on doors on 8 June – the most important day of the campaign. Getting people who said they’d vote Labour to actually do it could be the difference between a Labour victory or five more years of Theresa May.

Twenty years on from the last time a Labour government, including my father, entered No 10, the country requires a radical change once again. There really is only one party for me to vote for now, and that’s Corbyn’s Labour.

Beria - get your head out of whatever backwards, right-wing, reactionary publications and sources you are getting your information from and smell the roses. What these people are realising - including the frickin' Financial Times - is that even if the tories win this election, they have lost the ideological battle for the future of this country. "Common knowledge" had it, until recently, that the left was dead, and the only way to defeat the tory (economically) far-right neoliberal agenda was with a Blairite "centrist" agenda which amounts to a slightly less right wing neoliberal agenda. Corbyn has just demonstrated that this common knowledge was wrong. I am one of the many people who have been forced to acknowledge this. I too wrote off Corbyn. I too was wrong. Against all the apparent odds, he won the Labour leadership and transformed the Labour Party. Now he's doing the same to British politics. This is not a co-incidence; it is a sign of the times, just as surely as Brexit, Sanders and Trump.

We are witnessing the beginning of the end of neoliberalism. What Thatcher started is now ending. It may not end with a Tory defeat next week, but it will certainly receive a hammer blow from which it will never fully recover. Although there is now a very real possibility that Corbyn has built up enough momentum, with the Tories on the ropes and breaking ranks, to deprive Theresa May of her majority and her job.

[UndercoverElephant]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/po ... 71526.html

General Election: Conservative lead over Labour cut to just one point, new poll finds

The Conservatives' lead over Labour has been cut to a single point, according to one new opinion poll, amid a range of different predictions by pollsters five days ahead of the General Election.

Survation for The Mail on Sunday put the two main parties virtually neck and neck, with the Tories on 40 per cent and Labour on 39 per cent.

What were you saying a few days ago about taking the idea of a tory defeat seriously if the poll gap closed to 5 points?

The tories are in free fall.

[clv101]

Maybe tonight's London Bridge attack will mark the end of election campaigning.

[Little John]

Who benefits?

[UndercoverElephant]

Maybe tonight's London Bridge attack will mark the end of election campaigning.

No way. Tomorrow is the climax of the campaign, and if the tories were to suggest a suspension of campaigning between Monday and Wednesday then it would look like more weakness and fear. Whatever has happened in London this evening, we are in for four more days of desperate attempts to influence the electorate. If it was a foregone conclusion then maybe end the campaigns, but it actually hangs in the balance.

[vtsnowedin]

Maybe tonight's London Bridge attack will mark the end of election campaigning.

No way. Tomorrow is the climax of the campaign, and if the tories were to suggest a suspension of campaigning between Monday and Wednesday then it would look like more weakness and fear. Whatever has happened in London this evening, we are in for four more days of desperate attempts to influence the electorate. If it was a foregone conclusion then maybe end the campaigns, but it actually hangs in the balance.

The right speech about it , well delivered, may well swing it one way or the other.

[Lord Beria3]

UE, you clearly don't read my blog because I have been talking about the end of neo-liberalism for over a year now!

Last year, I discussed the popularity of Corbyn's economic policies and now the Tories would start shifting to the centre-left on economics to adjust to this new common ground. Tory policies on a industrial strategy for the country, interventionism in the energy markets are all signs that yes, you are right, and that the Tories are shifting to the Left on these issues.*

*You may not trust the Tories motives or think that their programme is too weak, but that doesn't change the fact that big business is not happy with the perceived anti-business message of the Tory manifesto.

https://forecastingintelligence.org/201 ... may-falle/

https://forecastingintelligence.org/201 ... r-england/

UE - I wrote this last year! Read and absorb!

Elements of Corbynism could have some relevance as we transition into the twilight era of a stagnating economy, rising protectionism and the breakdown of key international markets as resource scarcity increases. Corbyn’s emphasis on a strong industrial strategy, the revival and expansion of the state and the proposal that central banks print billions to invest in national infrastructure, like renewable energy, are policies that could enter the political mainstream within the next ten years.

I've also being saying for a while that if Britain had narrowly voted to Remain, George Osborne (who is more economically liberal then the interventionist May) had been elected the next Tory leader, then Corbyn would have most likely won the 2020 election.

Regarding my "sources", I read across the ideological spectrum, including the left-wing New Statesman, the World Socialist Web Site (a proper Marxist website) and I lurk in a number of hard-left forums. So, please stop making out that I only read right-wing media sources!! I DON'T.

Regarding the Labour leadership, this article in the WSWS on the on-going Blairite plots is indicative. Note UE, this is NOT a Right-wing media source!

http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2017/05 ... o-m29.html

Ahead of the June 8 snap general election, former Labour Party leader Tony Blair and his supporters are brazenly advancing plans to establish a new right-wing political formation.

The Blairites have openly outlined their agenda through a series of deliberate leaks to the Telegraph, Times and Daily Mail—longstanding Conservative-supporting newspapers. Corbyn’s office dismissed the plans as “silly” stories from “Tory papers,” but this week the Blairites continued airing their intentions via the pages of the Observer, the Sunday edition of the anti-Corbyn and staunchly Blairite Guardian.

Amid poll results showing Labour under Jeremy Corbyn cutting the Conservative (Tory) lead to just 5 percent, from a high of 20, the Observer ran comments from Jonathan Powell, described as Blair’s “most trusted adviser.” The Blairites are committed to opposing the Tories’ plans for a hard Brexit that would result in the British bourgeoisie losing access to the European Union’s Single Market. The Observer reported that Powell “said that there was no pro-European party capable of commanding significant support and that ‘a different party’ could fill the vacuum if Labour opted not to do so.”

Powell declared, “We will wait to see what happens in the election, but… there is a yawning chasm in the middle of politics at the moment that is not represented and the [Liberal Democrats] are incapable of filling that space. At some stage, someone is going to fill it. Whether it is the Labour party after the election or a different party, who knows?”

Just hours after Corbyn launched Labour’s manifesto, veteran Blairite MP Frank Field became the first to call openly for a split. Speaking to the Conservative-supporting Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch, Field said if Corbyn refused to go in the aftermath of a Tory win, the right wing had to break away and form a caucus in parliament, possibly as “People’s Labour.”

Finally, regarding my own personal views of Corbyn getting elected, it is something that would greatly disappoint me and I certainly wouldn't deny it.

However, I don't live in the UK (anymore), my individual world wouldn't change in the event of a Corbyn government and things would carry on.

You may be surprised to know that politics isn't everything to me and the world will not end should Corbyn get elected. If, as still seems likely, the Tories will get in with a enlarged majority, then that will be fine with me, even if the Tories within the Westminster bubble are upset that there Tory landslide hasn't happened.

I'm getting married this year, planning to have kids in a few years and tbh, this is ultimately more important then the size of the Tory majority.

[adam2]

Who benefits?

Presuming that you meant whom benefits from the terrorist attacks, then I expect UKIP and the conservatives to gain, slightly.

[Lord Beria3]

Tories have been weak on security out of fear of upsetting the liberal elites.

Only UKIP are talking about internment of jihadi extremists which is the only credible way for the security services to get a grip of this rising threat.

Since Corbyn is a wet fish on anything to do with national security and UKIP have no chance of getting a seat, the Tories will probably benefit modestly from this attack.

[UndercoverElephant]

Tories have been weak on security out of fear of upsetting the liberal elites.

Cutting 20,000 police officers can't have helped much either.

UKIP have no chance of getting a seat

Anything could happen in South Thanet now