When Theresa May announced that she was calling a snap election, I said she would lose, and everyone said I was dreaming. She is now only three points ahead with one week to go.
Why is she losing?
1. She failed to follow the courage of her convictions on Brexit, caving to the Trump-like Know-Nothing populists in Britain by failing to call for a re-vote, instead pretending the flawed vote was sacrosanct;
2. The mainstream in Britain, particularly London and its suburbs, which was bamboozled on Brexit, is being given its very first chance to send a message that they reject Trumpism since the Brexit vote; and
3. The British people do not want to risk the exit of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom.
The outcome is yet uncertain, but now it is clear that I was not dreaming.
I will disagree, because:
1 – British pollsters suck at their job.
2 – Jeremy Corbyn is peaking too early, and the Conservatives are turning fire on him.
3 – A key part of Labour’s plan was to take back large parts of Scotland. But May is playing right into the SNP’s hands by driving their soft votes back into their camp.
4 – UKIP is so pathetic, that their soft votes will go Tory.
5 – Labour’s votes are distributed inefficiently, just like the Democrats’.
It’s *conceivable* that a Labour party might rule in a minority, either in coalition with the LibDems, or with a SNP confidence and supply agreement. But an outright win with Corbyn in the lead? I can’t imagine it.
Oh, and:
6 – British pollsters suck at their job.
He is doing substantially better than expectations and it has a lot to do with equal coverage rules and her shitty campaign. Numerically speaking his best outcome is a hung parliament-but she will lose seats when she was projected to have a majority.
You may be right…his lead appears to be for real. The LibDems are collapsing, a bit to my surprise.
The last point is wrong. Historically speaking, the opposite has been true. With the SNP ascendancy in Scotland, things may have shifted around a bit. A lot of Labour’s over-performance was because of the way seats ended up breaking in Scotland.
Corbyn deserves some of the credit for this. He certainly was given a lot of the blame when he was 25 points behind.
Yes. And he’s doing this despite awful media coverage across the political spectrum. The “debate” clips and interviews that I see popping up about him on social media over the past few weeks make him seem like a pretty remarkable guy – very smart, outrageously empathetic, and quite personable. May’s media appearances have basically been the opposite.
Does it matter?
Formal notification of the exist of the UK from the EU has already taken place. Unless I am mistaken about the process, it is too late for the UK to turn back. Elections have consequences. The UK and US are each learning this, the hard way.
In my view, the real question is how much of each nation is left after the scourge of ignorant, incompetent, barbarism recedes.
I suggest that the UK and US is entering a new dark ages. I wonder how long it will last and what happens to all of us while we go through it.
I don’t see any reason the UK can’t slow down or reverse the process. If I were running in the UK I would run on a platform of conditional return to the EU in an attempt to get concerns addressed.
I’m currently in an endless argument about this with a close friend in Paris. His argument is essentially that it’s over because of the way article50 of the European Union treated as written. My argument is that teresa may missed a tremendous opportunity to show leadership on the issue in the immediate aftermath of the Brexit vote. Namely, that she did not have to except that vote as a fait accompli, and instead could have petitioned (technically repartitioned) the new constitutional court to permit a second vote because of Russian interference.
Sorry about all of the voice recognition errors… I seem to be incapable of editing this… I’ll figure out how to do it later…
It was non-binding anyway, right? I would have called snap elections immediately after the Brexit vote and campaigned on leveraging the UK’s return in exchange for certain reforms to the EU.
If by ‘it” you mean the brexit vote… that’s actually a question that was never answered satisfactorily. The bill authorizing the vote doesn’t specify and there are statements and precedent that supports each side coupled with Britains famously squishy constitution leaving the question rather open. I think it was pretty fairly hubris on the part of Cameron, et al, who could not imagine a Britain voting for brexit and spinelessness on the part of May, et al, for not testing the theory.
If, however, by ‘it’ you mean the actual invocation of article 50, that’s absolutely legally binding.
“reform’ from the point of view of Britain, isn’t ‘reform’ from the point of view of the EU and, since things have changed ( Britain, now, needs the EU more than the EU needs Britain. This did not hold when PM Thatcher negotiated an ‘arms-length’ relationship back when the EU needed Britain more than Britain needed the EU) such efforts at ‘reform’ would have been unlikely to eventuate in anything other than (further) embarrassment for Britain.
Yes, I meant the Brexit vote, and I would have called elections and seated a new parliament BEFORE pulling the article 50 trigger officially. I heard many reports of almost immediate regrets about the result, even from pro-Brexit voters who thought they were sending a message, but didn’t think they would actually prevail. I understand that UK and EU probably have different ideas of reform, but that’s how you start a negotiation. I think a PM would have a very strong hand if s/he went to the EU and said, “My country just voted to leave, but if you want us to stay that badly I might be able to sell it back home if the EU makes reforms x, y, and z.”
Wishful thinking on your part. She was leading by 20 pts before she introduced the Ryan-ish dementia tax.