UK Politics: Johnsons Hoaxy Yurt North of Hadrian's Wall

[BigFatCoward]

5 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Boom.

Westminster voting intention: LAB: 42% (+3) CON: 39% (-3) via

@OpiniumResearch

Chgs. w/ 11 Sep

That's not great. With this run of fuck ups it should be far bigger. I'll take it but it doesn't make my heart sing. 

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

That's not great. With this run of fuck ups it should be far bigger. I'll take it but it doesn't make my heart sing. 

The surprising thing i agree is that Labour aren’t hugely ahead right now. Nobody is thinking Boris has done a good job and yet lots of polls are basically even. Also the big swings to Labour have generally come out of the Lib Dem vote rather than the tories.

Either way, it’s a long time till there’s an election.

[Chaircat Meow]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

That's not great. With this run of fuck ups it should be far bigger. I'll take it but it doesn't make my heart sing. 

It is considering the absolute pit Corbyn had driven the party into. 

[The Anti-Targ]

One has to assume about 1/3 of the country will vote conservative come what may. According to election stats I just looked up the Cons worst ever vote share performance was in 1997 with 30.7%. It also appears like the Conservative average is in the mid to high 30's. So 39% is not that far off starting to get close to average performance.

Labour, by contrast with 42% is doing decently above average, since its historical GE average is also in the mid-30s.

[Which Tyler]

Unfortunately, with FPTP, vote share doesn't mean all that much. What matters is where that share is distributed

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Which Tyler said:

Unfortunately, with FPTP, vote share doesn't mean all that much. What matters is where that share is distributed

Yup, the UK system throws up completely bananas results on a fairly frequent basis. The LibDems attracted a million new voters to the party in 2019 and the result is that they had 1 seat less than in 2017. The right-wing parties mustered 45% of the vote share between them and the left-wing (if only ish, in some cases) parties mustered 55% and the right-wing party has a massive majority. Dislikeable as they might be, but parties like UKIP won over hundreds of thousands of voters and never won a single seat.

The UK is a firm believer in democracy, just not particularly genuinely representational democracy.

[Werthead]

double post

[Varysblackfyre321]

42 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Dislikeable as they might be, but parties like UKIP won over hundreds of thousands of voters and never won a single seat.

That’s at least a little goof news.

[Heartofice]

56 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

That’s at least a little goof news.

The point about UKIP is they didn’t win seats but they did enough to get Brexit to happen.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

That’s at least a little goof news.

Not from a democratic standpoint. UKIP got 12.6% of the vote but only won one seat (my error, I'd misrecalled that they hadn't won a seat but only gained ones from MPs crossing the floor, but they did win Clacton in 2015) whilst parties with far less vote share (Liberal Democrats and the SNP) got a lot more seats (8 and 56 respectively).

The point is in a representative system, they should have been represented fairly, no matter how you may disagree with their views, the same as everyone else. And if this was the case we wouldn't have the shitshow we have going on right now.

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

The point about UKIP is they didn’t win seats but they did enough to get Brexit to happen.

Hmm, yes, they are truly terrible for this I agree.

Glad we could come to an understanding.

If you’re confused or happy about what I just said give me an emoji buddy. 

17 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Not from a democratic standpoint. UKIP got 12.6% of the vote but only won one seat (my error, I'd misrecalled that they hadn't won a seat but only gained ones from MPs crossing the floor, but they did win Clacton in 2015) whilst parties with far less vote share (Liberal Democrats and the SNP) got a lot more seats (8 and 56 respectively).

The point is in a representative system, they should have been represented fairly, no matter how you may disagree with their views, the same as everyone else. And if this was the case we wouldn't have the shitshow we have going on right now.

Eh. I guess that's a fair point. They're awful extremists but  they need to be allowed a level playing field to participate in democracy.

I apologize for treating this as good merely because it happened to a party although is admittedly deplorable needs to be represented accurately and fairly.

[Heartofice]

2 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Hmm, yes, they are truly terrible for this I agree.

Glad we could come to an understanding.

If you’re confused or happy about what I just said give me an emoji buddy.

Eh. I guess that's a fair point. They're awful extremists they need to be allowed a level playing field to participate in democracy.

I apologize for treating this as good merely because it happened to a party although is admittedly deplorable needs to be represented accurately.

Yup, that's democracy "buddy". Sometimes people you don't like have political opinions you disagree with, and you need to deal with it. 

I mean of course, you could do that.. or you could bury your head in the sand and call everyone "extremists" and "deplorables". That's been working so well hasn't it?
 

[Varysblackfyre321]

55 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Yup, that's democracy "buddy". Sometimes people you don't like have political opinions you disagree with, and you need to deal with it. 

I mean of course, you could do that.. or you could bury your head in the sand and call everyone "extremists" and "deplorables". That's been working so well hasn't it?
 

I wanted a laughing or confused emoji.
Instead you’ve been given me but mindless right-wing virtue-signaling.

 
Eh you can do it for this one.

Democracy good. Even extremists should get fair representation due to elections. Covered that in the last post bro. 

Please don’t hyperventilate pretending UKIP is everyone. 

I wouldn't mind if Mitt Romney became the next president to my country. Or even Paul Ryan. But I can see differences between them and the political extremity of UkIP. Perhaps you cant because--and I know this may sound shocking--you’re not as moderate as you like try pretend and take offense to UKIP being called extreme because it hits a little close to home. 
I'll stop calling UKIP a party of deplorable extremists when they stop being a party of deplorable extremists.

When they change a few their party positions, switch up their rhetoric and such.

I cant peer into their minds. So I can only judge them by superficial things their rhetoric and position.

Sound good? I guess You can believe the vast majority of people are UKIP and get overly offended when the extreme far-right party’s called extreme.

It’d be silly but you can and I salute you big brained “moderate” hero.

[BigFatCoward]

Bumbling idiot doesn't know what he's talking about, par for the course, so much so that nobody even can be arsed to comment. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

Bumbling idiot doesn't know what he's talking about, par for the course, so much so that nobody even can be arsed to comment. 

I assume you’re referring to our illustrious leader fucking up an explanation of his own government’s covid restrictions?

Jon Snow on Channel 4 News ripped Matt Hancock a new one.

 

[williamjm]

14 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

I assume you’re referring to our illustrious leader fucking up an explanation of his own government’s covid restrictions?

Jon Snow on Channel 4 News ripped Matt Hancock a new one.

 

I was reading an article a few days ago in The Times which said that Tory MPs have started a Whatsapp group entitled What the f*** is going on?.

[Heartofice]

Yeah, don’t really care if Boris doesn’t know every single exception and implementation of the rules. He’s not a detail guy, we know that. 
 

The actual problem here is that the rules themselves make little sense and are seemingly picked out of a hat marked ‘stuff that might work’.

The curfew I read was actually just a sop to get something over the line because Sunak was blocking circuit break tactics. There is little rhyme or reason behind it, and seemingly it might in fact make things worse.

Nobody knows what the rules are. That’s the point. They keep changing , they don’t really make any sense and I think people lost interest a long time ago. 

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, williamjm said:

I was reading an article a few days ago in The Times which said that Tory MPs have started a Whatsapp group entitled What the f*** is going on?.

That seems likely.

Johnson's behaviour is quite strange in that it's not very Tory-like, and in fact his ideas and measures seem to look a lot like massive socialism to some Conservatives. They were giving him leeway because of the sheer scale of the crisis and clearly the government and state mechanisms were needed to deal with it, but as it's gone on they seem to be looking more and more askance at the ideas coming out of Number 10 and scratching their heads.

What's saving Johnson at the moment (aside from personal loyalty from a lot of the new Tory MPs from Labour strongholds who might feel they're on borrowed time) is that no one else seems to have a better idea, or even any other ideas.

[williamjm]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

The actual problem here is that the rules themselves make little sense and are seemingly picked out of a hat marked ‘stuff that might work’.

The curfew I read was actually just a sop to get something over the line because Sunak was blocking circuit break tactics. There is little rhyme or reason behind it, and seemingly it might in fact make things worse.

Nobody knows what the rules are. That’s the point. They keep changing , they don’t really make any sense and I think people lost interest a long time ago. 

Whatever we might think the rules should be I think we can all agree that they shouldn't be new announcements every 3 or 4 days, which is what it feels like at the moment. To some extent I can see why there might be a temptation by the government to try to have more nuanced rules since simpler rules might tend to be stricter ones due to the lack of exceptions but it does make the message very muddled.

44 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Johnson's behaviour is quite strange in that it's not very Tory-like, and in fact his ideas and measures seem to look a lot like massive socialism to some Conservatives. They were giving him leeway because of the sheer scale of the crisis and clearly the government and state mechanisms were needed to deal with it, but as it's gone on they seem to be looking more and more askance at the ideas coming out of Number 10 and scratching their heads.

There also seems to be a lot of anger from the Tory backbenches about the lack of Parliamentary scrutiny of the ever-changing measures. I think that's another thing where those on different sides of the debate about how to respond to the rising cases might be able to agree on it being better for there to be some opportunity to discuss new measures rather than them suddenly being announced.

[Spockydog]

6 minutes ago, williamjm said:

There also seems to be a lot of anger from the Tory backbenches about the lack of Parliamentary scrutiny of the ever-changing measures.

Isn't this what a lot of them wanted? No? Well, this is what taking back control looks like.