General Election Dec 2019 thread

[UndercoverElephant]

Hastings increase of 4000 on Amber Rudd. Quite the swing.

Yep, Labour leavers voting tory here too.

[UndercoverElephant]

What you and those like you have done is to systematically fail to understand that the most vulnerable people in the poorest constituencies in this country have consistently voted voted since 2016, via the only routes made available to them, to ensure their democratic wishes are respected.

I have no idea why you think that. I have repeatedly and consistently defended those people for voting they way they did. Why on earth do you think otherwise?

They did this because they understand, more than most and certainly far more than people like you, that the one single weapon they posses to enact any real control over their lives is the VOTE. It's all they have and they understand only too well it is the single most revolutionary weapon they will ever posses.

Why do you think this is news to me??

But, politically/intellectually arrogant buggers like you thought it was okay for the Labour party to piss all over those votes on the basis that the thick buggers would just keep on voting for Labour because that's what their grandad did...right? All on the basis of your conception of the "greater good".

No, I didn't. If I had been one of the people calling for Labour to back a second referendum then your comment might make some sense, but I was not. At no point did I suggest this was a good idea, or demand Labour did it. You are projecting, really badly. You've managed to convince yourself that I have said a bunch of things that I simply have not said, ever. You appear to believe I am some sort of closet remainer, but I have never been anything of the sort, and have never posted anything on this board to suggest I am anything of the sort. Seriously. You are imagining things. I voted to leave the EU, and I am glad we are leaving. How many times do I have to tell you this before it sinks in?

[Little John]

The revenge of democracy

Yesterday’s election was a people’s revolt against the Remoaner tyranny.

Brendan O'Neill

So now we know. Now we know what happens when you declare war on democracy. Now we know the consequences of demeaning the largest democratic vote in a nation’s history. Now we know what becomes of a political class that sneers at voters, silences their democratic voice, and libels them as racist, xenophobic know-nothings who cannot be trusted with stewardship of the nation. You get punished. You get rebelled against. You get replaced. Last night, in those extraordinary election results, we witnessed the revenge of democracy.

You don’t have to be a fan of Boris Johnson or his withdrawal treaty to appreciate the significance and even brilliance of yesterday’s events. The results are striking, historically so. Labour suffering one of its worst results in decades, the Tories winning a powerful majority which, in the final days of the campaign anyway, not many people were predicting. Most striking of all has been the corrosion, collapse in fact, of Labour’s ‘red wall’ – that historic terrain of red constituencies stretching from North Wales through northern England. Well, it’s not red anymore: brick by brick it has fallen, with vast swathes of people who have voted Labour for decades turning to the Tories this time.

Stockton South, Darlington, Wrexham – all Tory seats. Even saying that sounds strange. Bolsover, held by Dennis Skinner since 1970, now has a 5,000+ Tory majority. Former mining towns that have long loathed the Tories – Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield – have turned blue. Bishop Auckland’s Tory MP – 25-year-old Hull-educated Dehenna Davison – is the first it’s had in its 134-year history. Don Valley is gone, too, despite MP Caroline Flint’s best efforts to warn her party that its betrayal of its working-class, Brexit-backing voters would cost it dear. The wall hasn’t only been breached – it’s been torn down.

The ‘red wall’ collapse is the most significant, telling event in this election because it speaks, clearly and profoundly, to the revolt-like nature of yesterday’s ballot-box rejection of the Remainer elites. These working-class communities were at the sharp end of the elites’ seething contempt for Brexit voters. When you heard liberal-elite EU lovers or the performative radicals of the bourgeois Corbynista movement bemoaning the ‘low-information’, demagogue-swayed sections of society who had apparently been misled into backing Brexit, this is who they were talking about. The good people of Blackpool South, of the Vale of Clwyd, of Workington – all Tory seats this morning. That poisonous contempt was aimed most directly at these people. And now these people have responded. They have returned the contempt that has been heaped so heavily on them these past three-and-a-half years.

The red-wall revolt against Labour feels era-defining. This is working people rejecting that foul old idea that they would vote for a donkey so long as it was wearing a red rosette. This is ordinary people rebelling against the neo-aristocracy of the woke identitarian middle classes who have hijacked the party their forefathers founded. And this is an uprising against anti-democracy. For more than three years the political class has agitated against the largest democratic vote in our history. They have used every legal and parliamentary trick in the book to thwart or delay Brexit. And now the people have passed their judgement on this disgraceful behaviour. Democracy’s payback.

[UndercoverElephant]

Steve...just to make this crystal clear, yet again. I just posted this on reddit, and it is entirely consistent with everything I have ever posted on this topic on this forum:

So many remainers have learned precisely nothing from yesterday.

It is truly depressing how many people today appear to have learned nothing from what just happened. I am seeing many people who apparently believe that the tories won because Labour wasn't remainy enough, when the reality is the exact opposite.

Labour and the Liberal Democrats lost yesterday for one massive reason: they failed to respect the result of the brexit referendum. The libdems failed totally, and were punished totally. Their revoke article 50 without a second referendum policy was fundamentally anti-democratic. There was no justification for it whatsoever. However, their decision to pursue that policy, along with massive internal pressure from people like Tom Watson, Emily Thornberry and millions of remain-supporting Labour members, forced Labour to abandon its policy of respecting the referendum result, and this was a fatal mistake.

The truth is that we had a referendum which was billed as a one-off, the result of which would be implemented. Those were the terms everybody agreed to. The terms were not "the result will be implemented if remain wins, but if leave wins then we'll have a second referendum just to make sure people don't want to change their minds."

Remainers need to admit that their justifications for demanding a second referendum (or worse, a straight revoke) were bogus. Saying that the referendum wasn't legally binding was a ludicrous argument, because nobody ever claimed it was legally binding. Rather, they claimed it was politically and morally binding, and that is exactly what it was. Saying that leavers didn't know what they were voting for was equally ludicrous, because it could not have been any other way. Leaving the EU was always going to be a leap in the dark, and pretty much everybody who voted leave knew that. This should have been obvious from the fact that the only people complaining that leave voters had been misled, or didn't know what they voted for, were remainers. The truth is that these remainers simply didn't want to accept they'd lost the referendum, and wanted a chance to overturn the result. This forced Labour to adopt a position which amounted to a total betrayal of its own leave voters. And that gave many people in Labour's heartlands no choice but to vote for the tories for the first time in their lives, and probably the last time.

What happened yesterday was not Jeremy Corbyn's fault. Corbyn knew the consequences of abandoning his leave voters, and desperately tried to resist. It is entirely the fault of the politicians and activists who thought that the people who voted to leave the EU are stupid, ignorant racists whose democratic rights could just be trampled into the ground. These people prioritised stopping brexit, regardless of the fact that doing so made a mockery of democracy, over stopping the tories. They treated leave voters with utter contempt, and they continue to do so even now. That is NOT how democracy works. Democracy depends on the losers accepting their defeat.

If the result of the referendum had been respected, Labour might well now be in power.

[clv101]

If the result of the referendum had been respected, Labour might well now be in power.

Well, if a few more Labour MPs had backed May's Withdrawal Agreement, we would now have left, May would still be PM of a minority government, and we'd be busy negotiating the long term agreements. Labour would be looking strong for a 2022 win if not earlier if trade talks didn't go well.

[Little John]

May's "deal" was a surrender treaty

Johnson's "deal" is likely to be Brino no more or less than Labour's proposed "deal"

The reason, however, that the Tories have won a majority and Labour have been routed is because Johnson had the necessary venal instinct to know he had to at least provide a simulacrum of respecting the will of the people.

But, what we are now going to be subjected to, due to Labour's abject f***ing stupidity, in addition to another five years of Tory rule, which is bad enough in itself, will be the next stage in the psychological warfare operation to break the people into submitting to EU rule by virtue of accepting that the politicians will never let us leave the empire. A vote for Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum (thankfully, Tweedle Dumber lost her seat) still will mean the bourgeois europhiles get in. But, the people had no choice but to vote for the only party that looked like it might even vaguely honour the result of the 2016 referendum.

In fact, that is the only f***ing consistent thing about the last three years. Every single time the public have been given a vote, they have voted for Brexit both directly and indirectly.

[stumuz1]

What happened yesterday was not Jeremy Corbyn's fault.

It so was JC's fault.

Having watched hours of soundbites/vox pops/ and opinions on the TV for the last few hours, it seems to be that Corbyn was anathema to most voters, Labour included.

[Potemkin Villager]

I really did not see this one coming and had convinced myself that the GB and NI elections would once again not deliver an overall majority for any party at Westminster. How wrong I was.

Now that Johnson has an unassailable majority he and his gang will do as they like and it will make Thatcher's efforts comparable to the proverbial tea party. The only things missing are him quoting from St Francis of Assisi on the steps of no 10 and a Reichstag fire. It will be even more brutal than so far. Millions who voted to get Brexit done and take back control will be perplexed and undoubtably highly disappointed how these popular slogans work out in practice over the coming years.

This is the beginning of the end of the UK. England may be leaving Europe in some manner but Scotland and Northern Ireland are irrevocably heading elsewhere as well.

[UndercoverElephant]

What happened yesterday was not Jeremy Corbyn's fault.

It so was JC's fault.

Having watched hours of soundbites/vox pops/ and opinions on the TV for the last few hours, it seems to be that Corbyn was anathema to most voters, Labour included.

No. Had Corbyn been allowed to choose Labour's brexit policy, yesterday's result would have been very different. It really was all about brexit.

[UndercoverElephant]

If the result of the referendum had been respected, Labour might well now be in power.

Well, if a few more Labour MPs had backed May's Withdrawal Agreement, we would now have left, May would still be PM of a minority government, and we'd be busy negotiating the long term agreements. Labour would be looking strong for a 2022 win if not earlier if trade talks didn't go well.

May's agreement was unratifiable. The backstop was unratifiable. It fundamentally failed to return sovereignty to the UK

[UndercoverElephant]

Now that Johnson has an unassailable majority he and his gang will do as they like

I doubt it. His majority is unstable. If he wants to win another election in 5 years time (and he does) then he needs to respect the fact that many of the people who put him back Downing Street are already planning on returning to Labour next time. If he's going to avoid the tory party being reduced to a rump in 2024 then he cannot do as he likes.

This is the beginning of the end of the UK. England may be leaving Europe in some manner but Scotland and Northern Ireland are irrevocably heading elsewhere as well.

It is the beginning of the end of NI being part of the UK. It is much less clear what will happen to Scotland.

[clv101]

We are likely to have boundary reform now and a reduction bro 600 MPs. Bother the change of boundaries and MP reduction will favour Tories, and rightly so as the current setup is in Labour's favour. A few other things might change, like voter ID and/or automatic enrollment.

Five years of a significant majority allows a lot to change.

[Vortex2]

So what happens with all those pro-Remain Tory MPs who are still in place?

Mine has taken £1m from the state (i..e us) since the referendum, is anti-BREXIT and has supported Theresa May blindly ... and was elected and re-elected in a pro-BREXIT area.

A total loser who now has 5 more years of status, income and pension contributions.

UPDATE: Just heard mega-remainer Lord Adonis on the radio ... now seems pro-BREXIT ... couldn't make it up.

[acman]

Reading with interest the views on here but here is something I read on another forum, I got permission from the author,

It was a choice between 2 extremes; 2 nightmare scenarios and in the end, people decided that the Tories under Johnson was less of a nightmare than Labour under Corbyn. If the Labour Party and their supporters want to start winning elections again, they need to pull their heads out of the sand, leave their bubble of political correctness and denial and face up to some hard, uncomfortable truths. Their failure to keep their promise to respect the referendum result was a major factor as were their irresponsible spending plans but the underlying factor that has made them so unpopular is their obsession with multi-culturalism and diversity and their determination to swamp this country with as many immigrants as possible until it's standing room only. There's a silent majority who don't feel enriched by decades of mass immigration and don't feel it's been good for the country.
Labour need to realise that people like David Lammy and especially the odious Diane Abbott aren't assets to their party but liabilities; the prospect of her as Home Secretary was enough in itself to lose them the election. I recently read on the 'Russia Today' website about the last election in Denmark where the Social Democrats got the highest % of the votes. They're a moderate left wing party who are tough on immigration because they have the common sense and honesty to recognize the problems it brings, especially when you have a large input of new arrivals whose cultural attitudes are incompatible with those of the native population. All we hear is how enriching it has all been and how they contribute more than they take out, which most of us know is nonsense. I've felt for decades that this country has been crying out for a party like that but there's no chance of the Labour Party reforming itself as it's been totally infiltrated by parasites who want to use it as a Trojan Horse to further their own agendas, whether they be Marxism, black power or turning this country into an Islamic state. Our only hope is that the more sensible members of the party break away and form a new party on the lines of Denmark's Social Democrats so we can at last have a party worth voting for.

Regards,

[fuzzy]

That is some of it. The media will not allow the topic and it is hyper easy for the city of london, representing the banks, landlords, overseas wealth and landowners to generate hysteria about lowering immigration. Apart from the problems you mentioned, just shutting the door to eu workers would be very useful. The media plays an endless game that there are 'skills shortages' and it is 'low skilled' people who struggle to be employed. Then there is the endless propaganda about 'hard working' people - migrants, families etc. We have technology and fossil fuels so that we aren't supposed to be working hard, or replaced by harder workers from elsewhere. It's just endless BS and lack of government.

Incidentally there is the the SDP who have a sensible agenda, but no coverage.

https://sdp.org.uk/new-declaration/