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General Erection 2019


Gus Mears

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If Labour went all in with Brexit under a left narrative it would have been a hung parliament. My constituency was part of the red wall which went blue, but talking to people in the pub they didn't like Corbyn but would have voted Labour if Brexit Meant Brexit and they'd Get Brexit Done. Men in their 60s saying their dads are spinning in their grave as they've voted Tory. They should have taken a Lexit position. It wasn't as if Corbyn was a fan of the EU anyway. 

Edited by PowerButchi
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6 hours ago, neil said:

Except that I can actually control who gets to post on this forum, so see ya later

I called him a fucking Tory cunt as well so I should get some time off. Max is sound.

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6 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

If Labour went all in with Brexit under a left narrative it would have been a hung parliament. My constituency was part of the red wall which went blue, but talking to people in the pub they didn't like Corbyn but would have voted Labour if Brexit Meant Brexit and they'd Get Brexit Done. Men in their 60s saying their dads are spinning in their grave as they've voted Tory. They should have taken a Lexit position. It wasn't as if Corbyn was a fan of the EU anyway. 

You're probably right. People are constantly trying to map Remain & Leave to conventional Right & Left positions, and they're just not like-for-like. For all the talk of "SEND THEM BACK" knuckledragging racists, there are plenty of solid left-wing arguments for leaving the EU. There is no left-wing argument for leaving the EU under a Tory majority government. While my preference would have been for a second vote/referendum, a Labour-managed Brexit deal that prioritised workers' rights and EU citizens' rights in the UK would have likely been a strong, clear electoral policy.

It's probably the area where the gulf between the middle-class membership and working class voters is most glaringly apparent, and if I were to find any specific truth in criticisms of the party becoming too London-centric, it would be on thinking the Remain option was a stronger possibility than it was.

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6 hours ago, PowerButchi said:

If Labour went all in with Brexit under a left narrative it would have been a hung parliament. My constituency was part of the red wall which went blue, but talking to people in the pub they didn't like Corbyn but would have voted Labour if Brexit Meant Brexit and they'd Get Brexit Done. Men in their 60s saying their dads are spinning in their grave as they've voted Tory. They should have taken a Lexit position. It wasn't as if Corbyn was a fan of the EU anyway. 

Hypothetical discussion, then (because it's way less depressing than reality): Corbyn holds firm on soft brexit/honouring outcome of referendum. Red wall more or less holds and as you said, hung parliament. Lib dems pick up a few more seats in remainy areas. Both potential kingmakers in the SNP and Lib Dems oppose Brexit. Who forms a coalition with who, and what would the price be?

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I have severe doubts about this narrative that 'Labour would have won a hung Parliament if they had backed Brexit'. Assuming a 3% Con>Lab swing from what eventually happened you're still looking at a net loss of between 52 and 57 seats - between 20 and 25 remain seats, 6 Scottish seats and 26 marginal seats . 

Brexit was always going to be a tough nut to crack with Labour needing to please the remain majority of its popular vote and the leave minority that were key in terms of seat count. 

That is also ignoring how unpopular the leadership is/was, which was equally key to the result as Brexit was. 

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Assuming the election is still happening in the same circumstances with all the votes in Parliament, I don't think Labour backing leave would make that much difference. The Tories wouldn't just have said "Well, we agree on the big issue now, so let's spend our time debating the NHS."

We'd have had six weeks of Boris Johnson shouting "Real Brexit, Right Now" and claiming the Labour position was a big scam to dither and delay and then deliver a "fake Brexit" that didn't take back control, and that a vote for Labour risked a hung parliament where they'd sell everyone out and agree a second referendum anyway.

Plus if the Lib Dems had got wind of Labour adopting a Leave position, they would likely not have campaigned on the obviously flawed Revoke position. You'd probably have got a healthy chunk of Labour Remain supporters going to the Lib Dems and losing a bunch of seats, many of them to Conservatives sneaking through the middle under our joke of an electoral system.

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Interesting piece here on the "red wall" theory: https://thecritic.co.uk/the-myth-of-the-red-wall/

The gist is that it's too simplistic to treat all Labour/Northern seats the same and that about half of them are actually historic swing seats anyway, it's just that the Tories haven't actually had a big win nationally since 1987 so they haven't swung all the way in that period. There's good reason to think that even if Labour were to claw back a bit of the gap nationally they'd be recoverable.

It's the other half that's the big problem, mainly former mining or "single industry" towns that have lost their industry and broken the historic affinity for Labour. A lot of them have gradually been shifting towards the Tories since the early 2000s but this was the year a wave of them finally moved over and they may be harder to reliably win back.

 

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6 hours ago, Devon Malcolm said:

I called him a fucking Tory cunt as well so I should get some time off. Max is sound.

Lucky I only have 😍for you. He'll be back. But seriously, I'm interested in this thread actually containing discussion, so one line insult posts can go elsewhere as they add nothing to what has otherwise been a great thread.

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On 12/18/2019 at 9:13 AM, RedRooster said:

I’m still absolutely baffled that the Tories managed to gain such a large majority. What possesses people to vote against their own interests in such numbers?

’Boris is a liar and I can’t trust anything he says...but I DO like what he says...’

It’s bizarre and utterly deflating. Almost one week has gone since the general election and I’m still struggling to process what has happened, and what it actually means.

Homer Simpson, somewhere in England, December 2019...

"...I don't approve of their NHS killing policy, but I do approve of their EU membership killing policy!"

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Gawd damn double post! Sorry.

Edited by PJ Power
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