UK election today

[Tassman]

The Exit Polls appear to have been pretty much correct.

Sadly yes. A hung parliament is the worst of all possible worlds.

[Terraceth]

You virtually have one in the US, what with Trump demanding personal loyalty from the likes of Comey.

...which has essentially nothing to do with whether the US is a monarchy (virtually or not). This is basically a non sequitur on your part.

[Abigail]

Am watching the BBC coverage as the UK election unfolds. Some very interesting trends...

- It's still too-close to call. It currently looks like neither Labour (left) nor Conservatives (right, current government) will have an outright majority, which means post-election they will need to negotiate with other parties to form a ruling coalition government. Obviously Theresa May's (Prime Minister) decision to have an early election to increase her majority has not paid off, and her majority has vanished. Even if her party can form a government, she herself will likely be replaced as its leader (in parliamentary systems where there is no president, the ruling party can change its leader at any time - like how the Speaker of the House can be changed in the US)

Conservatives will probably team up with Northern Irelands DUP to form a majority. however Theresa May is vulnerable now. Perhaps she will resign, only time will tell.

- Labour (left) is gaining lots of seats. Everyone is praising Labour's leader, Jeremy Corbyn, even his enemies. I watched his speech and he has become an excellent speaker.

- Now that UKIP's (alt-right) purpose of the Brexit vote has been achieved, the vote for UKIP has collapsed completely, and unexpectedly to everyone, UKIP voters seem to have split equally among Labour (left) and Conservative (right).

This was bound to happen because the real competition was between Conservatives and Labour. Labour is left but a lot of those voting for them are right in a lot of areas and only vote Labour because of their personal economic reasons and Labours promise to end austerity.

- The SNP (left-leaning Scottish National Party) who's primary purpose was Scottish independence, who semi-achieved their goal of having a referendum on Scottish independence and having the referendum fail, has had its share of the vote collapse, and surprisingly to everyone its seats seem to have been split among Labour and Conservatives with seemingly slightly more going to the Conservatives. Scotland has traditionally been extremely liberal compared to England, so seeing Scotland vote for Conservatives is really strange.

Again you cannot assume Conservatives are non liberal. In economic areas yes but in other areas they arent. Nicola Sturgeon has been feathering her own nest and people dont like it.

- Theresa May reminds me of Hillary Clinton in terms of being absolutely terrible at campaigning and being uninspiring when talking.

Yes you are so right. She was terrible. When I watched the debate the other night a nurse said she has not had a rise in years even though living costs have gone up (My husband, not a nurse, has seen the same with no real pay rise in about 7years and so I am sure this is true for a lot of people). Firstly Theresa May seemed to think they had had raises but the problem is when you have a raise of 1% after all is said and done with tax and NI contributions and inflation you dont see a raise in real terms and everybody knows how MPs raise their own salaries. I know Theresa May does have a heart for working ckass people but she just said we all just have to make hard choices because there is only so much money to go around. This is very true but she could have at least sympathised with the lady and it would have been sincere whereas with lots of Labour people the just gush out pseudosympathy which is just a means to an end in getting votes since they actually despise a lot of the working class especially those who voted Leave in the referendum (so the people who have been most affected by their policies)

[Tassman]

...which has essentially nothing to do with whether the US is a monarchy (virtually or not). This is basically a non sequitur on your part.

[demi-conservative]

Now that UKIP's (alt-right) purpose of the Brexit vote has been achieved, the vote for UKIP has collapsed completely, and unexpectedly to everyone, UKIP voters seem to have split equally among Labour (left) and Conservative (right).

Only to progtards like you who can't accept that lots of usually left voters voted for Brexit (also for Trump)!!

Theresa May reminds me of Hillary Clinton in terms of being absolutely terrible at campaigning and being uninspiring when talking.

Has there ever been inspiring female candidate??

[demi-conservative]

Firstly Labour have made gains mainly in London - where they have mobilised the masses of Remainers, especially those who didnt vote in the referendum, to vote. They have not actually made massive gains in their traditional areas like the North East -places like Newcastle and Sunderland - where they have won, yes, but the margins by which they have won have gone down and the Conservatives have gone up.

So if I understand this correctly...native Brits voting less for lib party, but immigrants are? Shocking, I know!!

[demi-conservative]

Sadly yes. A hung parliament is the worst of all possible worlds.

You forgot to whine about Russians!!!

I'm really excited to see who the Russians pick to run the U.K.

[Abigail]

So if I understand this correctly...native Brits voting less for lib party, but immigrants are? Shocking, I know!!

Lots of native Brits have voted for Labour too, because of promises to end austerity, London has a large immigrant population but so do other cities in UK. Lots of native Brits wanted Remain too so one cant say this or that. Remainers were complacent in the referendum and Leavers obviously had motive to vote. The Remainers then wanted to cry and call foul. Labout targeted all these people - including the young who are more liberal (I would argue because liberals hold control in most sixth form schools, colleges and universities and do not hesitate to indoctrinate young people at every opportunity - captive audiences)..

[Roy]

My prediction: the polls will be wrong.

Prediction confirmed. Almost all polls predicted (incorrectly) a conservative majority.

But this time they got it wrong in the right direction

[Starlight]

Conservatives will probably team up with Northern Irelands DUP to form a majority.

Yep. Seems to be their plan.

however Theresa May is vulnerable now. Perhaps she will resign, only time will tell.

Since she's refusing to resign, she'll be pushed out once the party settles on a new leader to rally behind.

So he will be able to fund it by raising taxes, and hence he wasn't lying.

For starters the reason we are in austerity is Labour's uncontrolled spending during their time in power under Blair and Brown.

Um...



The mind boggles at how you can blame Blair (PM from 1997 to 2007) for that debt. Blaming Brown (PM from 2007 to May 2010) is more plausible as he added about 24 percentage points worth of debt. But the Conservatives under Cameron (PM from May 2010 to 2016) then added about 20 percentage points worth of debt. So Cameron (Conservatives) and Brown (Labour) appear about equally blameworthy. I don't think you can reasonably blame Blair given the debt dropped about 5 percentage points during his leadership!

Let me add that I think austerity is generally a bad economic policy, and that increasing taxes on the wealthy is generally a much better route to balancing the books than is cutting spending, especially in the present day where there is record levels of wealth among the wealthy and record inequality and where the NHS clearly needs more funding. The UK clearly needs more taxes on the wealthy and more spending on government services like the NHS. The UK is below the OECD average for the amount of revenue its government takes in taxes, and France has tax rates that are half again as high as the UK, so there is great scope for raising taxes in the UK and good reason to do so. It seems to me the only sensible discussion to be having is exactly which taxes to raise (e.g. capital gains tax, company tax, wealth tax, financial transactions tax, income tax etc).

[Starlight]

Prediction confirmed. Almost all polls predicted (incorrectly) a conservative majority.

But this time they got it wrong in the right direction

The polls were trending clearly toward a smaller and smaller victory for the conservatives in the weeks leading up to election day. The Exit Polls on the day were simply a continuation of that trend in predicting the Conservatives would beat Labour by a narrow margin but not have enough seats to govern alone, and they turned out to be right. I would say that overall the polls were pretty much 99% accurate this election cycle.

[Starlight]

Has there ever been inspiring female candidate??

We've had some good ones here in NZ. Helen Clark was our Prime Minister for 9 years and was well-liked and then had one of the top UN jobs for 8 years.

[Abigail]

Yep. Seems to be their plan.

Since she's refusing to resign, she'll be pushed out once the party settles on a new leader to rally behind.

So he will be able to fund it by raising taxes, and hence he wasn't lying.

Um...



The mind boggles at how you can blame Blair (PM from 1997 to 2007) for that debt. Blaming Brown (PM from 2007 to May 2010) is more plausible as he added about 24 percentage points worth of debt. But the Conservatives under Cameron (PM from May 2010 to 2016) then added about 20 percentage points worth of debt. So Cameron (Conservatives) and Brown (Labour) appear about equally blameworthy. I don't think you can reasonably blame Blair given the debt dropped about 5 percentage points during his leadershi
Let me add that I think austerity is generally a bad economic policy, and that increasing taxes on the wealthy is generally a much better route to balancing the books than is cutting spending, especially in the present day where there is record levels of wealth among the wealthy and record inequality and where the NHS clearly needs more funding. The UK clearly needs more taxes on the wealthy and more spending on government services like the NHS. The UK is below the OECD average for the amount of revenue its government takes in taxes, and France has tax rates that are half again as high as the UK, so there is great scope for raising taxes in the UK and good reason to do so. It seems to me the only sensible discussion to be having is exactly which taxes to raise (e.g. capital gains tax, company tax, wealth tax, financial transactions tax, income tax etc).

[EvoUK]

Ha Ha Ha!

Love how this spectacularly backfired in their face. Now they have their 'Coalition of Chaos' (a phrase I do hope is thrown in her face in interviews & newspaper articles over the next few days). So just so everyone is clear: for the Tories to end an election campaign which they spent attacking Corbyn for his alleged links to former Northern Irish terrorists by going into coalition with a party founded by former Northern Irish terrorists is a deep irony and they should be roundly ridiculed for doing so. The double standards are extraordinary. And I fully expect the right-wing press to sweep most of this under the carpet (even though Dacre has now essentially signed her political death warrant)

Even the nutters a mentalists in the Daily Mail online comments section are calling May & the Tories out on this one.

It will be interesting to see how this effects the colossal act of pointless self-harm that was Brexit, seeing as the negotiations (already late as the Tory Brexiteers didn't have a plan in place in the event of a leave vote, other than a couple of vague wishes which have no chance of being granted) is due to begin in around 10 days.

[One Bad Pig]

Has there ever been inspiring female candidate??

Margaret Thatcher? Golda Meir?