Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza

UK Election 2017

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Jubal:
Yup, the UK is having a general election.

Major catch-up for non-Brits:

* Going in to the election, Conservatives (governing right wing party) had a big ol' lead over Labour (left).
* Election was called probably partly to take advantage of this to knock a load more seats off Labour's vote tally, and partly to smooth over any complications with a set of potential electoral fraud cases against the Conservatives from 2015 (though in the end those didn't lead to any prosecutions, as the law requires proof of fraudulent intent to prosecute).
* UKIP, the harder-right nationalist party, collapsed as soon as the election was called - their vote has halved in a matter of weeks and the Conservatives have picked up almost all of it, reaching nearly 50% of the national vote. This is probably due to the poor approval ratings of Labour's leader Jeremy Corbyn, and to people trusting Theresa May more to deliver a firm Brexit deal.
* Labour's vote has also shot up, however, probably taking some votes from all the other parties and certainly squeezing the Liberal Democrat and Green vote. Whilst the Conservatives are still extremely dominant, Labour have narrowed the gap so it may be less of a landslide than expected a week or so ago.
* The Liberal Democrats are fighting on a mostly anti-Brexit platform, but Brexit hasn't turned out to be the main election issue, the party is small and struggles for air time, and it's unclear that the public have taken to Tim Farron as their leader. The LDs have thus slipped a point or so in polls back to about where they were in 2015. They may still be able to take some more seats in places like south London where Theresa May's quite nationalist/populist style of Conservatism goes down less well.
* The biggest furore so far has been over care costs, where Theresa May's government wanted to include the value of people's homes in the amount they could be liable for when working out care for the elderly. This would have made it a lot harder for middle-income pensioners, especially those with long term needs like dementia, to pass their houses on to their children (and still wouldn't have dented the wealth of the highest-wealth pensioner groups). It's thus been very unpopular with just about everyone, put May under a lot of pressure, and the government has U-turned and announced that there will be some cap but aren't saying what.
* Most recently, we just had a major terrorist attack which has shaken up the campaign and led to a temporary campaigning freeze which is now slowly being relaxed. We've got troops guarding major buildings (very unusual in the UK) and the probable coming focus on security issues may provide another boost to the Conservatives (both because they're the incumbent government and because they're traditionally seen as "tougher" than Labour). It's unclear how much this will affect the election still, though.
* Everything is different in Scotland, where the SNP have almost all the seats but are finally on the back foot and may lose some seats to the Conservatives (and possibly 1 or 2 to the Lib Dems if we're lucky).
My prediction is that the Tories will sleepwalk home but probably not quite hit landslide territory - I'm going to guess around 370 to 380 seats for the Conservatives. Though I may be wrong and they may sail up to 400+ of course, especially if Labour crumple worse than expected in the midlands and Yorkshire. (I'd say 390 or so is about the landslide mark). I don't think my (Lib Dem) party will do that well, I'm hoping for a handful of net gains but we may well stay pretty static if it's a bad night for us. Labour will stay as main opposition, and might do well enough for Corbyn to stay leader which could create a whole new mess after the election.

Clockwork:
Legit no good options, everyone is so terrible. May is so old fashioned and seemingly unable to see what the digital age is, she's terrible. Corbyn wants a communist Britain and ISIS are misunderstood freedom fighters, he's terrible. Farron is wants to bankrupt the country, let in yet more refugees and allow children to vote which would end up which politician has the dankest memes getting a boost, he's terrible.


UKIP are all but done, may as well disband.

Jubal:
Obvs I disagree on the Lib Dems - at least in that I think more refugees/votes at 16 are a good thing (can most 16 year olds make a perfect informed decision: no, but nor can most 60 year olds!). And I think my party would be the least likely to bankrupt the country given we're the "don't just suddenly cut off most of our trade deals" party. Anyhow, we mostly know each other's views and we LDs are not likely to be in power regardless I think it's fair to say...

As to the Tories - I said to someone recently that the thing is they're not really a conservative party any more, they've ideologically moved much more toward being a nationalist party. The Burkean philosophy of "elect smart/effective representatives and let parliament get on with it" has gone out the window in favour of a very strong-leader philosophy (except one where the strong leader changes direction according to what the Daily Mail says). And on things like their new internet control ideas the idea of conservative small-state governance has gone out the window in favour of something that seems to me to be both more authoritarian than I like and, more pertinently, is unenforceable/makes no sense.

But yeah, we'll see what happens, and I'm running away to Europe in any case if it all goes too badly!  :P

Pentagathus:
Yeah we're a bit portugaled, going to just try and work out which of my local candidates don't seem like wibulnibrags and go from there.

Jubal:
My own seat is safe enough Labour, so I'll just vote Lib Dem on party lines really. I might head down to Cheltenham and help out there on Tuesday, the former MP Martin Horwood is a nice guy and I'd quite like to see him get back in.

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