The all encompassing UK General Election thread!

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Welcome, welcome one and all. The starting gun was fired yesterday, parliament due to dissolve itself in a few days for campaigning to start.

Strap yourselves in and hold on tight everyone!

Johnson is going to loose his shirt and Jeremy Corbyn will come in and screw everything up even more.The best option would be for brexit to happen tommorow at 11pm no strings attached.Not a good option but the best option.

The Tories will win by quite a large margin, and there will be 5 more years of sociopathic abuse of the disabled and poor.
It could have been so different if Corbyn had accepted he's an electoral liability and stepped down .

I'm not so sure, it might be another 2017 moment.



As much as I hate the Tories the sociopathic label is wrong. They do care too much about their positions but morally, socially, economically they are more Blairite than Blair. The problem is the neoliberal model isn't working anymore and they don't know what to do except cut services, raise taxes (hurting global competitiveness and inevitably the tax take), stuff more immigrants into an already crowded economy or Venezuela the currency. They are incompetent, not sociopaths.

If Labour (Corbyn or no, I doubt they would go full ret*d communist even with the Marxist duo in charge) were in power things would be going exactly the same way. Free trade, globalism, internationalism has reached its peak and now the cracks in this unsustainable model are starting to become chasms that swallow everything.

On the surface it should really be a solid Tory victory but it's a more complex GE than usual with Brexit voting obviously playing it's part and so the Brexit Party could cause complications for either side and the Libs should gain some more seats too.

I feel fairly politically homeless tbh. I think I am just hoping that Johnson comically screws it all up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory and we end up with a hung parliament, from which emerges a Lib/Lab/SNP coalition.

Be careful what you wish for. That could be the trigger for some real unrest in the country.

 
 

Why is everyone so sure of a Tory victory,Johnson has been an embarrassment,he losed his majority and his own party defected or was kicked out of the party.He has losed all of his votes,he only won the vote for a GE because Corbyn agreed to it.

His attempt to prorogue parliament was overturned by the courts and he deceived the Queen.He has been a laughing stock for the Tories,yes Corbyn is not popular but he is stable which Johnson is not.

I don’t want to call the result just yet. However, I do fear that the Conservatives will win a majority and we could very well see the NHS being sold off to American corporate interests along with all the mayhem that will ensue with a hard Brexit. The best we can hope for is that we have another hung parliament and Labour will have enough seats to form an administration with the support of the SNP.

Usually when I make predictions I like to have confidence intervals. I don't think I have the patience to do that properly, so I'll just say that they're probably the widest they've been in my relatively short lifetime.

In lieu of a good prediction, here's a bad one - my stab at exact seat totals:

- Conservative 326
- Labour 206
- SNP 48
- Lib Dem 44
- DUP 8
- Sinn Fein 7
- Plaid Cymru 4
- Alliance 2
- Green 1
- Independents 4 (North Down, East Devon, Beaconsfield, Broxtowe)

650 MPs. 643 voting MPs. 322 needed for a majority. Conservative majority of 4.

Little bit of wishful thinking with the independents there, and I'm assuming TIG fold before their anniversary with Soubry becoming a true independent.

Assumptions:
- Polling holds steady (lol)
- Brexit Party support is spread evenly around the country in a similar pattern to UKIP's support in 2015 (I do think it's possible that they'll win seats, but I only give it about a 50% chance and I'm erring on the side of caution)
- Lib Dem support is slightly more concentrated than at past elections, particularly in London
- Tories win Buckingham.
- I haven't factored in the Speaker or deputies as I don't know who they'll be. I suspect there will still be a 2-2 split so it won't really affect anything.

In that scenario, realistically I don't think much would change. Most of the "Labour Leave" lot are standing down but Johnson should pick up some extra Brexiteers of his own. On the other hand, that 326 includes people who won't accept No Deal, although whether they're willing to be quite as active about it as Letwin has been remains to be seen.

Jeremy Corbyn would pretty much have to stand down, but his replacement would probably be a younger socialist like Long-Bailey or (shudder) Pidcock, rather than a moderate who might actually be able to win.

There would be the usual calls for voting reform and they'd still be ignored by the Conservatives. Media commentators will smugly point out that the Tories would have won at least 10 more seats if they had been able to transfer all the Brexit votes to themselves, missing the point.

In reality I think there's a good chance that the seat totals will look very different from that, but that's my mid-point prediction.

While nearly everything you say is correct from a certain point of view (you're wrong about the General Election Act), Johnson has proved remarkably resilient in the polls. Defections and whip withdrawals don't really matter in the election, in fact he'll be confident of winning nearly all of those seats.

You might be able to argue that Corbyn is objectively "more stable" than Johnson but that stability isn't going to appeal to many people. The sort of people who care about stable leadership are also the sort of people who will never vote Labour while Corbyn is in charge.

The campaign could change things but right now it doesn't look at all good for Labour. If the election was tomorrow then the big question would be whether or not the gains the Tories will make from Labour will be cancelled out by their losses to the SNP, Lib Dems, and Plaid Cymru.

326 is also what the Yougov by constituency polling currently says, and I think they were closest to being correct in 2017. Not that I am placing too much faith in polling

Waiting for The Brexit Party to announce their intentions. They could obviously cause problems for the bigger parties depending on which seats they go for.

Reckon we could see them stepping aside completely for the Tories and then coincidentally a peerage for Farage is announced in the new years honours list? Would be the ultimate sell out, but wouldn't surprise me at all

I'm happy that this is taking place as a bit of psephological geek.

One of Johnson's strategies over recent weeks has been to make this election seem inevitable due to Parliament being obstructionist. If he's succeeded in planting roughly that viewpoint in the minds of enough people, then the Tories could do very well, particularly as this is a rare December election (the previous one was in 1923). Originally, he pushed for an election in the milder and less commercialized month of October, which may have been more tricky for him. If there's a widespread view in December that Parliament has forced this cold, darkly lit election then it will likely work out well for the Tories. On the other hand, the campaign could throw up surprises and polling changes. Let's see.

Johnson moving constituencies as he had put his own under threat

Lmao