Exit poll predicting an 86 seat Conservative majority. :'(

Bit of a shitter for you lot, eh?

If Scotland gets another referendum (in spite of Johnson's implacable resistance), votes for independence, splits off the UK, and rejoins the EU, I wonder how citizenship and residency will be dealt with.

If Scotland gets another referendum (in spite of Johnson's implacable resistance) 

Rather than asking the UK Government for a legally binding referendum and getting refused, I have a theory the Scottish Government will get round it by somehow holding an advisory referendum instead. That'd be fucking hilarious.

And as ever, I'll re-iterate my belief that it would all be a lot easier if England elected to leave the United Kingdom if it wants to leave the EU.

Of course, what I'm really wondering is what the chances are of getting Scottish nationality in the event that things get even worse down here in Little England. It looks like I'll be stuck with fuckers like Johnson, Mogg and the Hugo Boss suited Raab as my rulers until I'm nearly sixty fucking nine years old and I'd like to be somewhere with a more humane care policy before fucking Sid legs it with all the NHS shares.

Incidentally, in true right-wing tradition, it seems like Gypsies and Travellers will be early targets of the benevolent Johnson administration with police powers to seize their vehicles and property (i.e. their homes) and intentional trespass becoming a criminal offence. That last proposal about trespass is an interesting one with even wider implications.

Oh my fucking god.

 :-((  :-((  :-((

Watching Peter Snow on the tellybox this morning show us round the virtual House of Commons was a fairly depressing sight. 

The left benches were full of blue, but the right was barely a quarter full of Labour's seats.  

What's even more depressing is the crowd of current and ex Labour MPs like Alan Fucking Johnson who have spent the last four years doing nothing but lying, writing, speaking, briefing against and generally undermining Corbyn and the Labour leadership, now queuing up to say that they have no responsibility at all for the loss and it's all down to Jeremy Corbyn and Momentum.

We don't elect our PMs like presidents. They get chosen by their party. But for years the media have worked to make it seem like a presidential race. That suits the right just fine. When all but a tiny part of the media are committed to support of right-wing candidates then I defy any left-wing "presidential" figure to still look presidential after 4 years of utter and total character assassination. And when the ruling party thinks fact-checking is a huge joke...

Sage words. I believe that Corbyn has stood still while other members have taken a step back to wherever they wash their hands, leaving him vulnerable and an easy scapegoat. Not that he didn't have a hand in the whole result. Standing on the Brexit fence and then throwing a whole host of manifesto pledges that promised everything to everyone at the last minute didn't do him any favours.

Given our dire need for people, reckon it'd be pretty much open borders on that front!

I don't think his brexit position was bad, but his presentation of it was awful. He need to go on the offensive with it from the off, and he didn't so it came over as weak. 

I've met him a couple of times and he does seem like a genuinely lovely guy, but does rather lack the absolute killer streak that's (sadly) required to survive the front line. 

You're quite right, it isn't the whole story. Labour would have benefited from some better strategic planning and the senior MPs were almost all in dire need of some presentation coaching. My heart sank every time Corbyn (or several others) was faced with a difficult question and almost always muffed it, or fell back on waffle. I can't believe they weren't better briefed on some of these really obvious questions.

I thought the manifesto was superb, but I also thought it was a huge error of judgement to only reveal the key features at the 11th hour. Nothing had time to sink in before Johnson and his tame media (many of whom are his personal friends) was able to drag the narrative back to Brexit with no time at all for Labour to shift the focus. As for the pledges promising everything to everyone, one of the points that needed to sink in in particular was that the spending was modest and similar to the levels of public spending and investment across Europe. The UK is unusual in Western Europe in that we have an essentially socialist welfare system funded on a very low proportion of GDP. Far more of our GDP is directed either by various tax incentives, or by very high salaries and dividends etc. to the wealthy which has created a huge wealth gap that is more akin to the US or Russia.

> My heart sank every time Corbyn (or several others) was faced with a difficult
> question and almost always muffed it, or fell back on waffle. I can't believe
> they weren't better briefed on some of these really obvious questions.

i.e. They're useless and learned nothing from last time.

> I thought the manifesto was superb, but I also thought it was a huge error of
> judgement to only reveal the key features at the 11th hour.

Four day working weeks is a great idea, but I doubt the average idiot on the street understands why, so it's a terrible thing to put in an opposition manifesto if you want to be taken seriously.

Also, consider the difference between "we're going to invest in improving broadband for everyone" vs "we want to take control of your Internet access". One of those is going to be far more popular than the other.

> As for the pledges promising everything to everyone, one of the points that
> needed to sink in in particular was that the spending was modest and similar
> to the levels of public spending and investment across Europe.

How often did anyone say "we're not overspending, we're matching the spending of [insert country with succesful economy]"? Or "here's the spending of previous Labour governments. Here's Tory government spending. Can you spot the difference?"

Who should be the new Labour leader? To my mind, Rebecca Long-Bailey would be a disaster and, if she stayed the course, would hand the Tories another decade in power. There's no point in changing the captain if the new one isn't going to change course. She also has some of the presentational issues that did for Corbyn: a lack of warmth on screen and an instinctive belligerence that can prevent her from apologising, even when that would be the most effective strategy. Although she has good working class credentials, in a sense she's left them behind and speaks primarily that same middle class, public sector, HE faction of the party that Corbyn does.

The effective end of Remain as an option can be seen as a potential gift for Labour: the Brexit project is wholly owned by the Tories now, and if the UK fares badly by it (as EU interest should ensure), the the Tories own the mess.  An effective Opposition leader could mince Johnson at the despatch box over the next five years.

Incidentally, I will be astonished if Labour doesn't adopt a policy of electoral reform. They'd have done so much better if this election had been conducted under PR. If they adopt it as a manifesto pledge for the next, they know that they will have the tactical vote of all the smaller parties' supporters.

Not sure yet. Maybe Rayner. Needs to be somebody female, ideally not London, not too associated with Remain. Whoever it is will get a monstering from the press so they will have to be tough and ideally not have too many open goals already. They need to keep Labour’s membership and ground campaigners in while trying to bring back some of the centre of the party to stop them self-sabotaging. Maybe just purge the right of the party and be done with it? 

I think it will be trivial for the conservatives and media to blame the brexit mess on the EU, the metropolitan liberal elite, immigrants, the feckless poor, basically anybody but themselves. And people will lap this up because otherwise they’d have to question their own choices and votes. Absolutely nothing for the Tories to worry about here. 

PR would be very nice. It would need a lot of buildup to stand a chance, the way all recent referenda have gone doesn’t give me much hope that the electorate have much time for a nuanced position,

 

Would electoral reform require a referendum if it was a pledge in the manifesto of a winning party? I just had a little google trawl and I can't find anything.

The party in power (Trudeau Liberals) here had PR in their first platform then promptly forgot about it. Good job too, or they likely would have lost the October GE.

I don't know, actually. It seems quite a big change to be able to 'just do' but perhaps so. I wonder how it'd be implemented? The trick would be that to get it done that way you'd have to get elected with a solid majority, and then presumably set a date for your own government to be most likely weakened by the PR followup. I bet that's hard to swallow at the time.