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.

Incidentally, listening to Johnson on a BBC question time debate. He hasn't yet answered a single question put to him. That's always been his technique -  he answers another different question. Usually when asked 'how he intends to do something' he responds with 'what we want as an outcome is...' and avoids the how altogether.

He and earlier, Swinson are both getting hammered on this.

It's at the point where it's beyond a joke. The evening concluded with 3 specific questions for him which he didn't even pretend to address. He just gave yet another mini speech about Brexit and he was allowed to get away with it. 

As for Jo Swinson - is it wrong that every time she appears on the telly-box the only thing that pops into my head is "Yeth, and I'm only thixteen." It probably is. It probably says something about how much work I need to do on my attitudes. I can't abide her. She's crass. Questioned about the level of student debt following the libdem/tory coalition she restricted herself to "sorry". It took a follow up question to ask the obvious  "er, yes, so you're sorry - and what are you intending to do about it?"

I'm never going to sympathise with the LibDem position, but I'm familiar with what the Liberal Party was like in the 70s. It was a genuine repository for alternative political thought much of it was centre of centre left, but it encompassed some pretty radical left wing thinking through its fabian links. It all turned to shit with the SDP/Liberal merger in 87. I have no idea at all what the LibDem's stand for. I mean, yes, I know they're pro EU and pro cancelling Article 50, but apart from that, a bit of tinkering with tax, legalising cannabis and a fistful of Hooray policies around good things like renewables and train fares, they just seem to be ferociously in favour of not a lot - except Corbyn is the Devil's cousin.

> Obviously the minimum unit pricing thing is an aberration.

Yeah, because why the fuck should anyone want to save lives? :|

It was a response to an earlier remark by kos. I have no objection to the policy and for clarity I don't really think its an aberration.

I think the tories and libdems both took a shellacking from the evening's fiasco, vote-wise. I expect boris will play it safe for the remainder of the campaign (appearing only before friendly shills in the media) and jo will... quietly fade away.

To be honest, I don't think the minimum pricing thing will make a whole lot of difference, plus it tends to penalise those on lower incomes the most. Some EU countries with the highest alcohol prices (ie, Finland) have high levels of alcohol consumption, yet go to Germany and despite the cheap alcohol, consumption is a lot lower in general. I don't have a problem with trying to reduce alcohol consumption, but I do feel that minimum pricing is not really the solution, an educational approach would be more effective (albeit more difficult).

Personally though, I'll be voting SNP - mainly as it is a 2-horse race in my constituency between SNP and the Tories.

> it tends to penalise those on lower incomes the most.

Yes, and I'm generally opposed to taxing the poor, but when the studies on alcohol consistently show greater harm to less well off people, a specifically targetted deterrant is worth considering.

 

> Some EU countries with the highest alcohol prices (ie, Finland) have high levels of alcohol consumption, yet go to Germany and despite the cheap alcohol, consumption is a lot lower in general.

Obviously price isn't the only factor, however your claim there does not match WHO statistics:

Three year averages between 2009..2011 and 2015..2017 show Germany's alcohol consumption increasing from 12.9 to 13.4 litres per capita.

In the same time period, Finland's consumption decreased from 12.6 to 10.7 litres per capita.

 

> I do feel that minimum pricing is not really the solution, an educational approach would be more effective (albeit more difficult)

I'm always in favour of education, but when it's not working then it needs to be combined with other approaches.

Russia's average consumption peaked in 2003 at over 20 litres per capita. That was the year Russia introduced minimum unit pricing (along with other measures), and their consumption rates have been falling since then. For the same two periods mentioned above they went from 15.8 (2009..2011) to 11.7 (2015..2017).

Since 2003, life expectancy in Russia has increased by ten years.

 

> I don't think the minimum pricing thing will make a whole lot of difference

I don't expect Scotland's results to mirror Russia, but the evidence I've seen definitely suggests MUP is a significant part of the solution.

 

> Personally though, I'll be voting SNP - mainly as it is a 2-horse race in my constituency between SNP and the Tories.

It's still a one horse race here. :(

Though their margin was significantly reduced last time, so perhaps there's an outside chance of that changing...

And that was vodka!