https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbm6NqFFSU8

So:

Conservative - is there anything redeemable about these people now? Actually adopting Trump rhetoric all over the place now. I mean, I didn't find much redeemable about the likes of Soubry and Stewart beforehand anyway, but still.

Lib Dem - appear increasingly open that their aim is to get in as minority partners with the Cons again. Half their MPs are newly ex-Tories these days anyway and Swinson voted more times with the government than Michael bloody Gove! I'm starting to think of them as simply a way for ostensibly 'nice' people to back the Tory policies without actually having to admit that this is what they want to do. So they'll probably 'win' a referendum with Remain on it against B. Johnson's next-to-no-deal and we'll end up brexiting horribly and it somehow won't be their fault. Austerity economics forever yay.
 
Labour - got some progressive manifesto promises, the kind of thing that would stimulate our economy while actually getting somewhere on the vital environment issues, get people into work fairly, address the messed up housing situation. Brexit is just so much less important than all of that but even so, theirs seems the only path to Remain that actually makes sense to me. But the media and prominent commenters appear largely happy to argue disingenuously against them about bullshit so it most likely won't matter; it would be nice to believe things could get better though eh?

Green - as soon as we get PR (ahaha) I'll give them more thought. They seem to have some pretty dumb ideas about how to go about Remaining but nevermind. I'd like them to recognise that Labour share their aims more closely than anyone else, and it seems that some of them do at least.

SNP - dunno mate not really something I know enough about to comment in detail. It'd be nice if they partnered up with Labour to get rid of the tories and LDs though, there seems enough crossover in policy aims to make it not a completely impossible dream. I gather Labour Scotland are not good though, which doubtless doesn't help.

Wales/NI parties - dunno sorry see above.


Yeah I got some views. Anybody differing much?
 

Same really.

Will obviously vote Labour. Policies broadly match my views. Would happily revoke Article 50 but know that's not the way to go, happy with 2nd Referendum.

Can't stomach the Lib Dems these days.

I don't need you to answer this at all, but wtf is Rachel Riley doing today. Maybe all these desperate nocorbynatanycost types are overreaching and this will all work out for the best, or maybe I should stop being so optimistic.

Some of Labour's stuff in the manifesto about tighter border control and bloody Trident I don't like the look of, I hope that is something that (haha) can change after they (haha) get into power and do Levenson 2 and don't have to pander to the rightwing press as much. 

Supposedly the best possible outcome is for bojo to not get a majority, so that a coalition of rational MPs can continue to block his more egregious idiocy -- assuming the new speaker won't facilitate said idiocy.

Well, that's the best possible with a pessimistic view of what's coming. 

We had a conservative minority government already though, it was shit. There's a lot of less egregious idiocy that still happens.

The theory I read is that (best case scenario), bojo returns with another minority, loses a VONC, and Corbyn forms a coalition gummint.

I do still believe there's Antisemitism on the left that needs to be tackled. And obviously on the right, along with Islamophobia and every other form of racism, but they're the right and it's no surprise. But yeah, she's a complete idiot. That t-shirt was totally unnecessary. I've kinda ignored all that stuff for a while but that was front and centre of the timeline.

Unfortunately people don't look at policy and concentrate on personality.

The LDs have explicitly said they’d support the Tories in this scenario. Unless they’re gonna change their mind.

That's because they are Tories.

On the left it's usually in the form of the odd senile loose cannon Palestine enthusiast spouting off, getting shouted down and turfed out. On the right they're rabid, dangerous, global, and well-organized.

It's all a bit of a technicality because, short of footage emerging of Johnson fucking a kitten, the Tories are going to romp home. To a considerable extent Labour has only itself to blame for adopting Murphy & Milne's mad Destructive Vagueness policy, which has left a pervasive impression that they're weak on Brexit.

I'll vote Labour because it's a two horse race in Keighley which has, until the last election, been a bellwether constituency. I'm a member of the Green party, but they're not fielding a candidate. Even if they had, I'd probably have voted tactically anyway.

I am, however, perpetually incensed at the spurious Coke or Pepsi choice imposed on me by the Tory/Labour cartel. I hate having to vote for a party I don't believe in, or throw it away. In a real democracy, every vote cast would contribute to the complexion of government. The only European nations with no element of proportional representation in their electoral system are the UK and fucking Belarus.

I recognise loads of similar thoughts and worries in all that, Mr F. 

No, I don't think the Conservative Party is redeemable. It may change with the passage of time into something less malevolent, but that's not redemption. The single most dangerous recent change to my mind has been the arrival of Johnson as PM because he's brought the "flameproof" thing with him -  what people mean when they say his badness is "baked in" or "expected" so that it's ignored as normal. What we see is lying, cheating, ruthless betrayal, contempt in every aspect of his life. When Jo and Joan Public are interviewed in the street, they describe him as "a bit of a naughty boy". What he's done, though, in concert with his private organisation under Cummings, is neutralise every voice in the parliamentary party  that might oppose him. At local party level, something even less appealing has happened with an influx of radical right-wingers who now feel far more at home.

In fact, everything that's happened: the expulsion of detractors, the takeover of local constituencies, the destruction of the party mechanisms that used to ensure stability, is exactly what the Tory-supporting press has accused the Labour party of doing.

And there's a growing confidence across the media. It's now OK to lie quite brazenly. When you have fellow-travellers and useful idiots like Laura Kuenssberg reporting every leak and whisper from Conservative Head Office as the absolute truth, it's no surprise that the narrative is firmly controlled by the Tory right.

I would love to see the Labour Manifesto given a chance. It's being described as breathtakingly radical by our right-wing press for the UK to invest around the same percentage of its GDP as almost every modern European nation. I don't suppose many people realised (or will ever realise for that matter) just how astonishingly low our level of public investment is (which isn't surprising since the OFFICIAL narrative is that we are bleeding those poor billionaires dry and pouring vast sums of cash into offering sex-change operations in infant schools). As for nationalisation - I'd like even more change. I'd like to see that religious tenet of the political right swept away - that a publicly owned business may not compete. There's no such prejudice in other economies and it's why 80% of our so-called privately run utilities and services are actually run by the state-owned utilities of other fucking countries. It's why THAT MODEL STATE OF CAPITALISM the US of A still has a Federal Postal Service! And don't bring up the all-too-brief but amazing success of East Coast Mainline when it was in public ownership after the dismal failure(s) of Virgin, Stagecoach and the rest. The official line is that it favoured donkey carts over trains, all journeys were 60 minutes late by law and it was systemically inefficient - just like when the GPO ran the telephone service.

Going to stop writing now as it's all too depressing. And don't get my started on Jo Swinson.

But more important, with Christmas approaching and in TYPICAL BLOODY CHAMPAGNE SOCIALIST stylee, the Louis Delauney Champagne in Tesco is bloody good value at £14 and with their current special offer at 25% off if you buy 6 bottles that comes down to £10.50. So get yourself down to Tesco and celebrate the Labour Manifesto before the offer ends on 2 December.

PS offer applies to all wines in units of 6 bottles. 

I don't know how to read Corbyn as the leader of a major political party. He seems affable, very intelligent and well-informed, and consistent in his views over many decades. That's on the plus side.

His laid-back, 'walking dead' absent-minded professor campaign style just has me completely baffled.

If the polls are to be believed, it's not gone down well with the public (allowing for external factors of extreme media/establishment hostility, the ceaseless character assassination, even from within his party).

I've seen similar before, here in Canada: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Liberal_leadership_bid_by_St%C3%A9phane_Dion

Seems accurate.

SNP for me. I realised Scottish Labour were rotten to the core when I had to share an office building with them in 2009ish. They're absolutely toxic up here now, though for a variety of reasons. 

Really hoping for a Lab/SNP coalition at Westminster, but I'm not quite sure I can see it happening unless there is some serious backlash against the Tories for all the shitty tricks they've already trotted out in this campaign (the edited video, the 'FactcheckUK' bollocks, and registering www.labourmanifesto.com and paying for google ads to promote to the top of searches for Labour stuff, to name but 3).

 

Steve - yeah. PR would be great (allowing for the pity that it'd let Farage's mob have an official influence to go along with their current unofficial one). We at least have the hope that the polls are like they were in 2017, i.e. completely wrong. Which is actually a reasonable hope since all their modelling tends to be adjusted to get the result they want to show, but you'd still rather be on the winning side of it wouldn't you. Funnily enough somebody as principled as Corbyn getting in would probably be the best chance of PR in our lifetimes now after everybody fucked up the AV referendum (cheers lib dems! Glad we keep learning from these referendum things and don't keep making the same mistake but worse each time somehow!), but ho hum.

WilliamA - agree 100% maybe I'll just drink 6 bottles of that champagne and read some more Swinson The Squirrel Hater shitposting to cheer myself up.

DSMITH - yes it is a sad fact that people want their party to be fronted by a shiny suit still. Whenever he's exposed to people directly, the majority of them seem to respond very well, strangely enough. Fuck this country's media.

Nicola 'Adolf bloody Hitler' Sturgeon outlawed those offers in Scotland. Might have to go on a booze cruise to Carlisle. 

"people want their party to be fronted by a shiny suit"

doesn't explain bojo going about in a clown suit he's just soiled.

What's the general feeling towards Sturgeon north of the border?

From what I've seen, she's not gone down the usual 'I'm an MP running for election look at this wacky thing I'm doing to be popular' schtick, which is meritorious but she does unfortunately come across as a bit lot of a twat.

Not as much as her predecessor.

Does she come across as a lot of a twat? I stand to be corrected, but when I listen to her and look about the competition within the UK she usually comes across quite well. Obviously the minimum unit pricing thing is an aberration.