10 ms·

To me it demonstrates the mastery of the ruling class at strategy. Just the ticket when you plan to want to rule something as complicated as a country! Serious

To me it demonstrates the mastery of the ruling class at strategy. Just the ticket when you plan to want to rule something as complicated as a country! Seriously, I'm completely apolitical, but this one is probably one of the worst strategic blunder, ever. Oh, perhaps that and Cameron's brexit gamble. And it feels exactly like that; they are just gambling with the future of the country, repeatedly, with just petty objectives and personal power in play. And it's on pretty much every sides of the political landscape, it's feels to me (as an adult) like a watching a gang of 10 years old all trying to pull on a rag, only difference being that we live on the rag :-) Ok, rambling over. it's friday! :-)

jansho 9y ago
Weekend for me already!
matthewmacleod 9y ago
Honestly, I reckon May's decision was understandable. Great polling with a complex negotiation coming up - makes sense to establish a national convention consensus government and press on (regardless of that decision being a bad one or not). But she completely fluffed the campaign, to a ludicrous extent. She had a weak opposition and popular support, and seemed to make every possible attempt to run as poor as a campaign as possible. I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories.
- sqldba 9y ago
  How is it a collapse for the Tories when they still have 48.5% of the vote? It seems pretty good to me - though I'm not familiar with English politics. (Serious Q not attacking)
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    You might have noticed that the last US presidential election was not won by the candidate who had most of the vote. In a similar fashion, the key thing in the UK vote is individual district elections of members of Parliament, not the % of the overall vote.
    - mcintyre1994 9y ago
      Well actually I'm fairly sure the parent comment is referring to % of seats - just under half. The tory vote figure I've heard is 43% - so they've outperformed their vote share (which labour and conservatives do consistently under FPTP). So to the parent: they have less seats - that % was just over 50% before. It's significant because they've been 20%+ ahead in the polls before the election was called - and we've heard predictions of them getting a 50-100 seat majority. They certainly weren't expecting to lose seats.
  - lyschoening 9y ago
    The latest projections have them at 42.4% of the vote vs Labour's 40.1%. They do have 48.5% of the seats because of an unfair system.
    - mamon 9y ago
      There's always a tension between fairness and stability. In a perfectly fair system you can end up with dozens of small parties, each having small number of people in parliament, struggling to find majority for a government (see last elections in Netherlands). That's why some voting systems are designed to give a winning party some premium over their vote percentage.
      - lhopki01 9y ago
        The supposedly stable system has led to 3 nation elections in 7 years (probably another one this year too) and 2 hung parliaments in the same time. Meanwhile Germany and many other countries have very stable politics with proportional representation.
        lostlogin 9y ago
        To add to this, having a system which has to learn to work with other parties, negotiate and compromise is a good thing. MMPs supposed downsides are not necessarily so.
        walshemj 9y ago
        But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Its why NI doesn't have abortion or the same rights for Gay people its down to the Ultras in the DUP as Churchill Said "nothing so loyal as an Ulster "policeman"
        majewsky 9y ago
        > But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Evidence for this: CSU in Germany (the quite-a-bit-more-right-wing sister party of Merkel's CDU).
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    In pre-election polling they had a comfortable lead of over 20%. That's reduced to 3% - a relative collapse! Polling is of course never entirely accurate, but it was their election to lose. (They did take a greater share of seats due to FPTP)
  - taejo 9y ago
    A few months ago people were talking about a 100-seat majority for the Tories. Now they have no majority at all: they'll need to get every member of their party plus a few from the DUP to agree to any controversial thing they want to pass (e.g. the Brexit treaty) which might force the government (administration) to make concessions to extreme wings of the party (e.g. a hard-Brexit faction).
    - walshemj 9y ago
      actually for some votes that only effect England the DUP cant vote so they cant pass "English" bills without doing a deal with labor / liberals.
      - majewsky 9y ago
        When I look at http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results/england http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results/england (the election results for England specifically), it shows a comfortable majority for the Tories (297 of 533 seats = 55.7%). Am I misunderstanding something?
      - parenthephobia 9y ago
        This isn't quite accurate. On such bills there is an additional phase in the process where the English MPs can veto the bill, but they must also be voted through the full parliament.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    They were running against a candidate who was widely thought to be a joke. They should have had a landslide win. Instead they lost seats, and they lost so many seats they no longer have enough of a majority to win, so we've got a hung parliament.
- open-source-ux 9y ago
  Labour as an opposition have been abysmal prior to the election campaign. But they ran a really remarkable campaign during the election period. It's all the more impressive when you consider we have the nastiest, most vicious rightwing press in Europe. Here are the national newspaper headlines from Thu 8 Jun: https://imgur.com/a/Gojht https://imgur.com/a/Gojht
  - rollthehard6 9y ago
    Elections are still won on hope for change it seems. Not that anyone won but certainly more of the same with nothing much positive seems to have not won it for Tories.
- rollthehard6 9y ago
  It makes sense but it makes way more sense to do that before triggering Article 50, not after and 11 days before negotiations commence. Just reckless and stupid.
- spdy 9y ago
  Why is Corbyn a weak candidate? I don`t get it why left = communism. Corbyn is a lot like Sanders he can get the youth to vote for some degrees and has good ideas for the majority of a country. Austerity is not a good solution for the future within the new dawn of technology around the corner (ML/AI driven software)
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    Why is Corbyn a weak candidate? He had consistently poor approval ratings in the run-up to the election, and was hampered by having no support from the parliamentary party. I'd argue that he also had rather muddled and inconsistent policies, but that's open to interpretation. Austerity is not a good solution for the future Completely agreed, but I don't think that the correct response is that kind of leftism.
    - ionised 9y ago
      Idealogues on the right don't think there is room for any kind of leftism, which will be their undoing.
      - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
        That applies to both sides.
  - walshemj 9y ago
    Jeremy is well to the left of the majority of labour party members he's a old school socialist not a communist though. David Miliband (the king over the water) or Ed Miliband running on the same platform would have probably got a LAB majority given the disastrous tory campaign.
    - hanoz 9y ago
      Not necessarily, a major component of Labour's pitch to the middle ground was explicitly that a vote for Labour would help keep the Tories in check whilst safe in the knowledge that there was no chance whatsoever it would put labour in government, because of Jeremy Corbyn.
- buserror 9y ago
  I agree on the campaign, someone decided to have 'strong' and 'national' into the campaign slogan, despite the fact it actually didn't work terribly well for the UKIP last time around (nor this time!), and didn't work for the Front National either a few weeks back. To me, in both cases, it seems the ruling caste has misread the fact most people want to see some real change with some sort of isolationist/nationalist trend... Her asking for a mandate was laudable mind you, it was clearly needed. However, it now leaves her with nothing to stand on, and especially no weight whatsoever to negotiate that brexit thing. Unfortunately I don't see who can replace her either... The thing is, on the other side the labour proposals are in some case quite laughable -- but they seems to have inherited a lot of anti-brexiters who decided that it was the least-worst scenario. I have to say quite a few people I know where very, very confused about who to vote for, there was none of the 'classical' 'generational voting' which seems to have existed before. Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead?
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead? As a staunch centrist liberal, I'd have to agree I'm surprised :) The lack of a central figure is definitely part of it. Tim Farron is a nice guy, but not much of a political heavyweight unfortunately. I still think they're suffering from the hangover of the 2010 coalition, and as ever voters are turned off by the feeling that a Lib Dem vote is 'wasted' which—thanks to FPTP—it often is.
    - chris__butters 9y ago
      I believe that Tim Farron is a great leader and the campaign went well for him, the truth is that his manifesto got lost in the campaign with the Tories and Labour party taking over all media coverage.
      - matthewmacleod 9y ago
- DanBC 9y ago
  > I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories. But it is a victory for the left. Before this election everyone thought Corbyn was a fucking joke - even his own party. He ran a strong campaign and Labour got 40% of the vote.
  - matthewmacleod 9y ago
    I don't think Corbyn ran a strong campaign, that's the point. The Conservatives handed the election to him on a silver platter, and the Labour Party still lost.
    - DanBC 9y ago
      > Labour's vote share is 9.6% up on 2015 - the largest increase from one election to another, for any party, since 1935-1945 (9.8%) That's pretty impressive, especially considering the vigorous campaigns from DM, and the Sun, against Corbyn.
odiroot 9y ago
Something like this? http://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/ce/97/ce973cf4-2f46-4c9f-bd23-e9d37b7ce40a_900x http://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/ce/97/ce973cf4-...
- buserror 9y ago
  Nice find! Reality doesn't look as graceful tho! Is that May flying off with an article 50 printout? :-)
  - odiroot 9y ago
    That's a metaphor for partitions of Poland.
wowtip 9y ago
Democracy needs to get a lot less representative, and a lot more accountability and checks need to be put into place.

jansho 9y ago

Weekend for me already!

matthewmacleod 9y ago

Honestly, I reckon May's decision was understandable. Great polling with a complex negotiation coming up - makes sense to establish a national convention consensus government and press on (regardless of that decision being a bad one or not). But she completely fluffed the campaign, to a ludicrous extent. She had a weak opposition and popular support, and seemed to make every possible attempt to run as poor as a campaign as possible. I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories.

sqldba 9y ago
How is it a collapse for the Tories when they still have 48.5% of the vote? It seems pretty good to me - though I'm not familiar with English politics. (Serious Q not attacking)
- greglindahl 9y ago
  You might have noticed that the last US presidential election was not won by the candidate who had most of the vote. In a similar fashion, the key thing in the UK vote is individual district elections of members of Parliament, not the % of the overall vote.
  - mcintyre1994 9y ago
    Well actually I'm fairly sure the parent comment is referring to % of seats - just under half. The tory vote figure I've heard is 43% - so they've outperformed their vote share (which labour and conservatives do consistently under FPTP). So to the parent: they have less seats - that % was just over 50% before. It's significant because they've been 20%+ ahead in the polls before the election was called - and we've heard predictions of them getting a 50-100 seat majority. They certainly weren't expecting to lose seats.
- lyschoening 9y ago
  The latest projections have them at 42.4% of the vote vs Labour's 40.1%. They do have 48.5% of the seats because of an unfair system.
  - mamon 9y ago
    There's always a tension between fairness and stability. In a perfectly fair system you can end up with dozens of small parties, each having small number of people in parliament, struggling to find majority for a government (see last elections in Netherlands). That's why some voting systems are designed to give a winning party some premium over their vote percentage.
    - lhopki01 9y ago
      The supposedly stable system has led to 3 nation elections in 7 years (probably another one this year too) and 2 hung parliaments in the same time. Meanwhile Germany and many other countries have very stable politics with proportional representation.
      - lostlogin 9y ago
        To add to this, having a system which has to learn to work with other parties, negotiate and compromise is a good thing. MMPs supposed downsides are not necessarily so.
        walshemj 9y ago
        But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Its why NI doesn't have abortion or the same rights for Gay people its down to the Ultras in the DUP as Churchill Said "nothing so loyal as an Ulster "policeman"
        majewsky 9y ago
        > But it does mean that fringe extremist parties can get pet policies passed by holding their partners feet to the fire that the majority of the population wouldn't vote for Evidence for this: CSU in Germany (the quite-a-bit-more-right-wing sister party of Merkel's CDU).
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  In pre-election polling they had a comfortable lead of over 20%. That's reduced to 3% - a relative collapse! Polling is of course never entirely accurate, but it was their election to lose. (They did take a greater share of seats due to FPTP)
- taejo 9y ago
  A few months ago people were talking about a 100-seat majority for the Tories. Now they have no majority at all: they'll need to get every member of their party plus a few from the DUP to agree to any controversial thing they want to pass (e.g. the Brexit treaty) which might force the government (administration) to make concessions to extreme wings of the party (e.g. a hard-Brexit faction).
  - walshemj 9y ago
    actually for some votes that only effect England the DUP cant vote so they cant pass "English" bills without doing a deal with labor / liberals.
    - majewsky 9y ago
      When I look at http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results/england http://www.bbc.com/news/election/2017/results/england (the election results for England specifically), it shows a comfortable majority for the Tories (297 of 533 seats = 55.7%). Am I misunderstanding something?
    - parenthephobia 9y ago
      This isn't quite accurate. On such bills there is an additional phase in the process where the English MPs can veto the bill, but they must also be voted through the full parliament.
- DanBC 9y ago
  They were running against a candidate who was widely thought to be a joke. They should have had a landslide win. Instead they lost seats, and they lost so many seats they no longer have enough of a majority to win, so we've got a hung parliament.
open-source-ux 9y ago
Labour as an opposition have been abysmal prior to the election campaign. But they ran a really remarkable campaign during the election period. It's all the more impressive when you consider we have the nastiest, most vicious rightwing press in Europe. Here are the national newspaper headlines from Thu 8 Jun: https://imgur.com/a/Gojht https://imgur.com/a/Gojht
- rollthehard6 9y ago
  Elections are still won on hope for change it seems. Not that anyone won but certainly more of the same with nothing much positive seems to have not won it for Tories.
rollthehard6 9y ago
It makes sense but it makes way more sense to do that before triggering Article 50, not after and 11 days before negotiations commence. Just reckless and stupid.
spdy 9y ago
Why is Corbyn a weak candidate? I don`t get it why left = communism. Corbyn is a lot like Sanders he can get the youth to vote for some degrees and has good ideas for the majority of a country. Austerity is not a good solution for the future within the new dawn of technology around the corner (ML/AI driven software)
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Why is Corbyn a weak candidate? He had consistently poor approval ratings in the run-up to the election, and was hampered by having no support from the parliamentary party. I'd argue that he also had rather muddled and inconsistent policies, but that's open to interpretation. Austerity is not a good solution for the future Completely agreed, but I don't think that the correct response is that kind of leftism.
  - ionised 9y ago
    Idealogues on the right don't think there is room for any kind of leftism, which will be their undoing.
    - tonyedgecombe 9y ago
      That applies to both sides.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Jeremy is well to the left of the majority of labour party members he's a old school socialist not a communist though. David Miliband (the king over the water) or Ed Miliband running on the same platform would have probably got a LAB majority given the disastrous tory campaign.
  - hanoz 9y ago
    Not necessarily, a major component of Labour's pitch to the middle ground was explicitly that a vote for Labour would help keep the Tories in check whilst safe in the knowledge that there was no chance whatsoever it would put labour in government, because of Jeremy Corbyn.
buserror 9y ago
I agree on the campaign, someone decided to have 'strong' and 'national' into the campaign slogan, despite the fact it actually didn't work terribly well for the UKIP last time around (nor this time!), and didn't work for the Front National either a few weeks back. To me, in both cases, it seems the ruling caste has misread the fact most people want to see some real change with some sort of isolationist/nationalist trend... Her asking for a mandate was laudable mind you, it was clearly needed. However, it now leaves her with nothing to stand on, and especially no weight whatsoever to negotiate that brexit thing. Unfortunately I don't see who can replace her either... The thing is, on the other side the labour proposals are in some case quite laughable -- but they seems to have inherited a lot of anti-brexiters who decided that it was the least-worst scenario. I have to say quite a few people I know where very, very confused about who to vote for, there was none of the 'classical' 'generational voting' which seems to have existed before. Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead?
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Even Lib Dem failed to attract people, and I have to say that surprised me a bit, as the 'center' seems to have worked for Macron in france -- perhaps they lacked a figurehead? As a staunch centrist liberal, I'd have to agree I'm surprised :) The lack of a central figure is definitely part of it. Tim Farron is a nice guy, but not much of a political heavyweight unfortunately. I still think they're suffering from the hangover of the 2010 coalition, and as ever voters are turned off by the feeling that a Lib Dem vote is 'wasted' which—thanks to FPTP—it often is.
  - chris__butters 9y ago
    I believe that Tim Farron is a great leader and the campaign went well for him, the truth is that his manifesto got lost in the campaign with the Tories and Labour party taking over all media coverage.
    - matthewmacleod 9y ago
DanBC 9y ago
> I'm nervous about this being spun as a victory for the left, which I'm already hearing. It's more of a collapse of the Tories. But it is a victory for the left. Before this election everyone thought Corbyn was a fucking joke - even his own party. He ran a strong campaign and Labour got 40% of the vote.
- matthewmacleod 9y ago
  I don't think Corbyn ran a strong campaign, that's the point. The Conservatives handed the election to him on a silver platter, and the Labour Party still lost.
  - DanBC 9y ago
    > Labour's vote share is 9.6% up on 2015 - the largest increase from one election to another, for any party, since 1935-1945 (9.8%) That's pretty impressive, especially considering the vigorous campaigns from DM, and the Sun, against Corbyn.

odiroot 9y ago

Something like this? http://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/ce/97/ce973cf4-2f46-4c9f-bd23-e9d37b7ce40a_900x http://static.polityka.pl/_resource/res/path/ce/97/ce973cf4-...

buserror 9y ago
Nice find! Reality doesn't look as graceful tho! Is that May flying off with an article 50 printout? :-)
- odiroot 9y ago
  That's a metaphor for partitions of Poland.

wowtip 9y ago

Democracy needs to get a lot less representative, and a lot more accountability and checks need to be put into place.