How will you vote?

[baldrick]

I hope you enjoyed your break, and congratulations on your wedding anniversary.
Well done too for your acknowledgement of Corbyn's achievement.

[jetblack]

Corbyn has indicated he will play ball with some of the wider PLP that previously were hostile to him. I feel this is a good move and could create a shadow cabinet second to none - which will bode very well indeed for the upcoming general election

Good too here from you FT. I do hope you haven't been climbing in my neck of the woods - pretty vile out there just now. Can't see me trusting Mrs JB to be my second TBH

[jetblack]

BTW - where's Fishtank ?

And where is sierraoscarbravo? They were both predicting a Conservative landslide and the destruction of the Labour Party, though from different perspectives.
Perhaps they are in penetive contemplative retreat, considering the error of their ways.
The immediate question now is how and when strong and stable May leaves Downing Street. Mexit means Mexit! But will it be a hard or soft Mexit?

BTW Baldrick - well done for your efforts during the campaign on behalf of the party - it paid off buddy.

Had to join myself recently - we have, at long last, a party worth being part of and proud of.

[DirtyHarry]

Bloody hell!
113 people said they'd vote conservative?

113 people who aren't bothered about seeing more children driven further into poverty.

113 people who aren't bothered about having the NHS.

113 people who think it's a good idea to cut the numbers of doctors, nurses, police, firefighters, teachers.

113 people who didn't want to see our railways taken back from largely foreign ownership.

113 people who didn't want to see Royal Mail's incompetent executives see their privatised shambles reversed.

113 people who aren't worried about pensions, and loss of winter fuel payments to the elderly.

113 people who probably have played a major part in making our job, the rank pile of s**t it now is.

[jetblack]

Instead of continuing the same old polemic and divisive narrative on here it would be far more interesting for all of those involved if they sit back and wonder why Thursday actually happened.

To answer your question FT, I can only restate what Nigel Farage said of T.May - "She is a weathercock who believes in nothing". It has become clear that the only issue for Theresa May is the political ambition and welfare of Theresa May. Self serving, self interested and selfish. The election was called by May to further her own standing at a time that was absolutely disastrous for the people of the UK, but (possibly) expediant for herself.
Mathew Paris did a good piece for the BBC (IIRC) a few days before the election - ha talked about how she kept her cards very close to her chest, and how it was difficult with such a person to work out wether they were genuinely worthy individuals - or wether in fact they were guarded because they had other motives at heart that they didn't wish to share with others because it wouldn't be good PR.
I think we now know the answer to this question as far as T.May is concerned - she is a politician of the worst kind - a Machiavellian sneek.

Who have the Tories got to replace her ? Its gonna have to be Jesus/Mandela/JFK all rolled into one to get them out of this hole.

[k979aaa]

I still say 20 to 30 Conservatives will leave if the DUP prop the party or Theresa May most will go to the Lib Dems One could go to UKIP as there is a vacancy!

[fishtank]

I still say 20 to 30 Conservatives will leave if the DUP prop the party or Theresa May most will go to the Lib Dems One could go to UKIP as there is a vacancy!

The DUP are a sorry bunch of backward thinking religious fanatics, all fire and brimstone and hatred of anything that doesn't fit their 19th century ideals. If politics now needs to listen to diverse views these are not the kind of people you want doing the listening. I give that particular coalition of chaos 3 months at most. A couple of lost by-elections or as you say a defection or two and the whole thing falls apart anyway.

[aiden01]

I still say 20 to 30 Conservatives will leave if the DUP prop the party or Theresa May most will go to the Lib Dems One could go to UKIP as there is a vacancy!

The DUP are a sorry bunch of backward thinking religious fanatics, all fire and brimstone and hatred of anything that doesn't fit their 19th century ideals. If politics now needs to listen to diverse views these are not the kind of people you want doing the listening. I give that particular coalition of chaos 3 months at most. A couple of lost by-elections or as you say a defection or two and the whole thing falls apart anyway.

here,s hoping

[baldrick]

BTW Baldrick - well done for your efforts during the campaign on behalf of the party - it paid off buddy.

Had to join myself recently - we have, at long last, a party worth being part of and proud of.

Thanks jetblack, I didn't think I would like the doorknocking bit, but it had to be done, and I found I did quite enjoy it. Given the Press attacks on Corbyn I was expecting a lot of hostility, but apart from a couple of people who had been taken in by the media propaganda, most people were quite impressed by Corbyn.
The media anti-Corbyn campaign seemed to have backfired. Locally our Labour MP's share of the vote increased by 10.9%, gaining over 10,000 more votes.
She got double the votes of all the other four candidates combined.

Well done on joining up, I hope others on here will think about joining the Labour Party too now. Another General Election is likely in the not too distant future, and Labour are well placed to win it.

In this GE we concentrated on defending existing Labour seats, especially marginals. Next time we will be going on the offensive to take Conservative seats.

[Tman]

You back-slappers are fooling yourselves.
The 1922 Committee and other Tory movers-and-shakers will have told May she will have to stay in post for six months, give or take, and by that time the planning and plotting will have taken place for the next GE. They know that by then the Brexit talks will have not only begun but will be boring to most (thus largely negating the Brexit protest vote) and the social media "vote Corbyn" campaigns will have died as the "bright young things" will have moved on to the next big thing to engage their snowflake minds.
They know (as do we all) that May's election campaign was dire in it's entirety but they won't make the same mistakes next time. They also know that Corbyn achieved his electoral share using unreliable social media campaigns and Brexit protest votes rather than the backing of "solid traditional Labour voters" who would be desperately needed for your projected Labour victory. Corbyn played the trick of holding rallies etc in safe labour seats so the media portrayed large numbers of people dressed in red shirts smiling and waving at Jezza, but he'll have to change tack next time if he wants to attract floating voters, and one thing old Jez can't handle is a hostile audience.
He played to his strengths, but those tricks only work until you've been sussed.
Then there's another six months of Corbyn playing the "smug old gallant loser" act guaranteed to ensure that he loses more votes, too.
Rather like that other irritant Krankie, the only way now is down....

[fishtank]

May's fate will be sealed long before the Tory party conference in October Tman, there's no way they'll subject her and the party to the kind of embarrassment and media scrutiny of holding up a lame duck "dead woman walking" as the glorious leader. The Tory party are stuck between a rock and a hard place, if they call a GE in the middle of the Brexit negotiations they'll cop the blame for destabilizing the negotiations, if they parachute in another leader he/she will still have to work with no majority and no mandate, if they limp on with May everyone including the EU will walk all over her.

If I were the Tories I would be seriously considering handing the reins over to Corbyn and hoping that while they get a chance to regroup and choose another leader he takes some of the blame for the s**t storm of Brexit.

[Tman]

If I were the Tories I would be seriously considering handing the reins over to Corbyn and hoping that while they get a chance to regroup and choose another leader he takes some of the blame for the s**t storm of Brexit.

I probably would too, but I'm guessing that they feel as many others do, that although they'd love to dump the whole sorry mess in Corbyns lap (and knowing the daft old fool would grasp it) they also appreciate that whoever is in place would be making agreements and deals, and he (Jezza) is probably one of the last people on Earth to be trusted with anything serious or long-term like that.
Nice in theory, but too risky given Corbyn's wishy-washy approach to Brexit.

[bustedflush]

You back-slappers are fooling yourselves.
The 1922 Committee and other Tory movers-and-shakers will have told May she will have to stay in post for six months, give or take, and by that time the planning and plotting will have taken place for the next GE. They know that by then the Brexit talks will have not only begun but will be boring to most (thus largely negating the Brexit protest vote) and the social media "vote Corbyn" campaigns will have died as the "bright young things" will have moved on to the next big thing to engage their snowflake minds.
They know (as do we all) that May's election campaign was dire in it's entirety but they won't make the same mistakes next time. They also know that Corbyn achieved his electoral share using unreliable social media campaigns and Brexit protest votes rather than the backing of "solid traditional Labour voters" who would be desperately needed for your projected Labour victory. Corbyn played the trick of holding rallies etc in safe labour seats so the media portrayed large numbers of people dressed in red shirts smiling and waving at Jezza, but he'll have to change tack next time if he wants to attract floating voters, and one thing old Jez can't handle is a hostile audience.
He played to his strengths, but those tricks only work until you've been sussed.
Then there's another six months of Corbyn playing the "smug old gallant loser" act guaranteed to ensure that he loses more votes, too.
Rather like that other irritant Krankie, the only way now is down....

Indeed. I don't think there'll be an election until after Brexit talks have been concluded. They'll just scrape along until then. People are fed up with them, 'election fatigue'. As for the C*rbynites they need to look at the amount of people who voted and how and why. May ran a suicidal campaign, a DIM could've run it better. Yet despite this she got the best Tory vote in 25 years, and was nearly a million ahead of C*rbyn. Why? Because fortunately the voters had a clear choice and the lesser parties saw their votes diminish to galvanize the anti-C*rbyn vote - as well as going back to Labour. So the clear message here is that despite the massive Faecebook campaign and suspicious amount of new voting registrations, luckily there were enough people to neutralize this 70's throwback. He got just over 40% of the seats, whereas Bliar used to get nearly 60% - doesn't that tell you something?

The guy is a shambles, he needs a shave and to put a tie on - the image of your favourite scruffy commie 1970's schoolmaster with a CND badge on his lapel and rusty VW Beetle in the car park plastered with WWF stickers may wash with some but fortunately for the rest of us, not enough.

His magic money policies may have fooled some here, but be thankful you've avoided the political triumvirate from hell - C*rbyn, Abbott and Wee Jimmy.

P.S. I mean 'nationalize the railways'!! Really? TENS OF BILLIONS for what? Subsidize the freight business? No. Have cheaper tickets? When do you ever use the railways? You have a car which has the convenience of getting from A to B with no need to change trains, buses etc. plus your personal space. The huge majority of passenger revenue is from commuters, most of whom earn above the national average and many of whom are higher-rate taxpayers. So this cretin wants to bankrupt the UK to subsidize the season tickets of mainly Tory voters in the shires and commuter belts! Don't tell me, next he'll be wanting to build some more coal-fired power stations and bring back the Austin Allegro....

[fishtank]

That kind of bluster and ranting is exactly what's driving a need for change busted, you've managed to cram straw men, whataboutery, conspiracy theory, slippery slope fallacy, false narrative, personal insult and plain denial into one comment which in itself is quite impressive but the reality is all those words have little of substance behind them.

Those are busted arguments now busted if you'll excuse the pun. What's clear from Thursday's events is that it's no longer enough to attack a position with constant negativity, the Tories thought they could get away with that. What you now have to do is be brave and take a positive stance and show the electorate how that can improve their lives.

[clashcityrocker]

I don't know why you anyone is still going on about Brexit.
The people were asked to give TM a mandate for her hard Brexit vision and they rejected it.
There isn't any other type of Brexit. If we want to stay inside the single market, as it stands you have to accept the free movement of people.
As sterling continues to fall and our standard of living goes with it, somebody needs to stand up and tell the British people it was a bad choice, is completely impractical and will destroy our economy.
Oh yeah, Ken Clarke did and that is why I voted for him.