Continuing the discussion from "Christian" hospital charges its own nurse $900,000 for her premature baby:
We don’t have a General Election thread yet, so this seemed like a good opportunity to start one.
Edit:
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Shouldn’t that read, “British General Election 2019: Just Exactly How Fucked Are We?”
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I’m in another Labour safe seat* in a strongly remain area. I really feel like voting Green (again) because the Tories are Tories, the Lib Dems are remain Tories and Labour just seem to keep disappointing us.
* the city council hasn’t elected a tory since 2000, there have been a couple of defections since then but they were voted out at the next election
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Changed, just for you.
The real reason I went for the plain title is because the situation is so depressing that I couldn’t think of anything.
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My reply there is copied here to help move discussion along:
It looks as though Labour might still be open to a 2nd Referendum
Their policy is clear - if not single syllable three-word phrase simple, which is why the tabloids and news interviewers are castigating it.
- Renegotiate a potential deal - much closer customs union, much more alignment with EU standards (workers rights, environment, consumer protection). Takes three months - especially as it will be much closer to what pertains today and they have already done much of the groundwork with EU leaders.
- Put that deal to the voters in a 2nd referendum. Takes another three months.
Hence six in total. Vote will be for the new deal or remain (I need to check if they are also going to put a no-deal option on the referendum papers)
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No. Really? Gosh. I wonder why. I tend not to read those fuckers, but BBC News and Newsnight have pretty much allowed Labour to get that point over and Kier Starmer on BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning was crystal clear about it. The ONLY party that will run a 2nd referendum. Lib Dems are committed to revoking Article 50. That’s great, but they won’t win. Labour might, or might at least be able to form a coalition govt. Although there’s still more chance that Boris will charm the gullible uneducated C2DEs in enough numbers to win. And I do not say that with a sneer - Newsnight last night did an analysis of Harlow where Corbyn kicks off his campaign today. Majority leave and the leave numbers correlate closely to blue collar workers, education levels and social groupings.
I’ve said it before: Education, education, education. They get upset when we say they do not know what they voted for. They know WHY they voted for it, but they do not understand what it means - the real consequences.
And for the record, Kier Starmer should be the next Labour leader - right now.
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You think that’s bad? I’m a constituent of Jeremy Corbyn… (I generally vote LibDem to help them save their deposit; I may be voting Green this time round for the same reason.)
Corbyn has always been an exceptional constituency MP; I’ve benefited from his assistance in the past and I admire his commitment to local groups and issues. He’s just entirely the wrong person to be leading the Labour party right now. If at all. It’s the weird confluence of circumstances in 2015 that led to it, and Brexit had prevented any sane politics from happening for too many years now.
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That’s why their effective actual policy is a second referendum. Because, like Labour, they won’t be forming a majority government this time around. (Labour can’t because of Scotland.) Which is why Labour’s effective policy is a second referendum too.
I cannot see a route to a viable Tory majority though. Because it would need to be at least 10 to avoid being held to ransom again - whilst a lot of moderate Tories have gone, there are still going to be enough who would interfere with the process. And given their likely losses in Scotland and the South West of England, they’d have to hold everything else and win a lot elsewhere.
I can see them easily ending up with 300 (in 2017 they won 313) but reaching 320 will be a significant challenge, and 330 seems out of the question. And counting on the DUP (who are also likely to lose seats) seems like an epic gamble.
We’re essentially on course to turn into Israel (i.e. nobody able to form an actual government), but without the excuse of PR…
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Disagree. I hope you are right but after (if) Boris wins a majority they’ll have to agree he has a ‘mandate’ and suck it up. In any case voting against him WILL get the whip immediately withdrawn - he has proven he will do that even if it kills his majority - it’s what he did a few weeks ago. And many of the Tories standing down are the moderates and are replaced with hard-liners like that shit who wanted Benefits Street people ‘put down’.
Well, Belgium seemed to function without a govt for a very long time - but then they weren’t trying to commit economic suicide at the time, so it may have been easier for them. 
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Which is why tactical voting is critical in this election. We need anyone but the Tories/Brexit Party.
The important message for this election is Vote for the candidate who keeps the Tories and Brexit Party out.
I don’t like the Lib Dems in their current form, but they are clearly better than the Conservative party. I have major problems with the Labour party, but they are also clearly better than the Conservative party. If you live in Brighton Pavilion vote Green. SNP and Plaid Cymru make sense if they keep the Tories out.
I am lucky enough to live somewhere where the Tories and Brexit party don’t have a hope of winning and if they do then it’s time to nuke Britain from orbit, but if you don’t then don’t take a chance. Just get the bigger bastards out of parliament so we can fix this fuck-up.
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Basically every Tory except Zac Goldsmith is shit, and Zac Goldsmith is a Brexiter, just like his father.
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As noted previously, I live in a constituency where the Tory has a huge majority and could be a smelly turd with a blue rosette and still get elected. Even in these febrile times. I will vote for LDs who are most likely to come second.
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This is capitalism failing us, not socialism.
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Oh christ, this is happening, isn’t it? Maybe i’ll just lie under a pile of coats until it all blows over.
I agree though - in that everyone should vote to keep the tory/brexit partys, and a likely coalition in the event of a hung parliament, OUT. I’m in a relatively safe labour seat but their majority is dwindling, plus a leave area. Ask why those who voted leave voted leave - “too many foreigners innit”. 
I hope this thread remains open.
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And another thing… why do leavers keep saying “i just want it done so we can move on” when we haven’t even reached the start line yet, the beginning of the beginning. We have years and years of this hell stretching out ahead of us.
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I suspect a combination of abject ignorance and cynicism.
The abjectly ignorant had absolutely no idea how many complexities “I’ll just take my ball and go home, because reasons” actually entails; and so are operating under the assumption that even the half-assed and rushed attempt to unravel them is some sort of stalling plot rather than a natural consequence of the scope of the project.(as it is, especially with the incompetence of some involved, it’s only getting done as fast as it is because nobody seems overly concerned about the quality of the product)
The more cynical have an incentive to keep things moving as fast as possible because watching the unraveling of the various details has largely been an object lesson in why the plan is terrible(both by bringing to light assorted EU-linked conveniences that most people don’t think about; and by delivering approximately zero obvious victories; unless you count Wetherspoons’ promise that brexit will mean cheaper beer because reasons); and because it will be much easier for opponents of the plan to enact the “let’s not do this dumb thing” proposal, if they obtain the authority to do so even relatively briefly; than it will be for anyone to enact the “Let’s undo this dumb thing that has already been done” proposal.
Always helpful to have your plan accruing historical finality as early as possible.
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I hope that this more to do with the strong impact they had on me at the time than with the expected outcome; but I have to admit that, lately, reading about British politics always brings to mind the images I remember most vividly from the foot and mouth outbreaks.
Assorted emergency scrambling, dire looking quarantine signage and clampdowns on movement, guys in serious PPE standing by burn piles and pits full of corpses(the nighttime ones, illuminated by either the fire or vehicle headlights particularly stick with me).
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I was up all night watching the campaign kickoffs (11 hour time difference to the UK); I loved the way at the Labour press conference they took questions in groups of three, so that Corbyn could simply ignore the ones he didn’t like and only answer 2 out of 3.
Swinson could be a little less vehement in her rejection of deals with Corbyn; I think there are a lot of people who see a Labour-LDP-SNP-Green coalition as the UK’s only hope, and Labour doesn’t seem ready to drop Corbyn as PM. She should leave herself and her party some wiggle-room for after the election.
Some of them are anti-antisemitic Labour. (After all, the SDP were a splinter from Labour, not the Conservatives.) I understand that Clegg and the coalition are still recent history, but long term I think they will just have been an embarrassing aberration.
Basically every Tory except Zac Goldsmith is shit
I was going to say “Grieve”, but I guess he’s not a Tory anymore. Is Bercow still a Tory, or does the neutering that happens when you become Speaker persist after you move on to stewardship of the manor?
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In reply to this thread title- nobody has a clue how bad it’s going to be. With the breakdown of party loyalty, realignment of voters along Brexit lInes and the increased number of three or four-way marginal seats, trying to predict the outcome of this election is an excersise in futility. This is doubly uncertain, as it makes it even harder to vote tactically, something that is often unfortunately essential, given the horrible outdated voting system that Westminster still uses.
And the stakes have never been higher:
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I don’t think many of us fully understood the complexities apart from, y’know, those in a representative democracy who know more about this stuff than a lot of us do. But it takes wilful ignorance to not understand that you can’t pick apart over four decades of legislation no matter how angrily you shout and harass people. They can’t understand why this thing does not conform to their will, damn the consequences of just exiting with nothing in place despite businesses already *jumping ship and the words ‘NHS’ and ‘trade deal’ being used in the same sentence which is just horrifying.
*I mean, dyson FFS. Run by a guy who is a staunch brexiteer lickspittle.
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