It seems he was right.
He seems to be enjoying himself in his new gig…
It seems that the Labour liars are out in force:
And the Liberal Democrats have also been caught:
And the thugs are out and about:
And the Tories fare little better:
(And Guido’s supposed to be right wing.)
I’m sure he knows where all the Tories’ skeletons are buried.
Pretty sure he loathes May too.The feeling is no doubt mutual.
The biggest issues for me with this u-turn are (a) it undermines the central ‘strong and stable’ mantra and (b) it undermines the whole ‘best person for the Brexit negotiation’ theme.
It’s not the end of the world but she really hasn’t done herself any favours.
Loving the voter registration numbers (currently 15,000 online) - Corbyn has the yoof vote and they are piling in.
Holy smoke! Three weeks ago the Tories led by 6% in Wales - an historic high. That’s now smashed: Voting Intention (Wales): Labour 44%, Conservatives 34% (18-21 May) | YouGov
If this could sweep across to the Midlands …
If we assume your enthusiasm is rewarded and Labor forms the next government, what then? I’m not trying to be a smart-ass or set a rhetorical trap. I’m genuinely wondering how the rest plays out.
Perhaps Corbyn becomes PM. Perhaps there’s some internal party discord and somehow one of the other current Labor leading lights becomes PM.
Then they confront the problem that Article 50 is ticking. As is all the rest of the crap involved in leading the fractious & fracturing UK out of the current economic & social situations.
Did perhaps the Tories aim the bus directly at the swamp and now they’re about to engineer, perhaps unwittingly, turning the steering over to Labor just as the mud gets soft & deep?
One of our US conservative posters thinks that by winning in 2016 the US Republicans have bought themselves an endless morass of problems they’d have done better to let the Democrats fail at handling.
Are Labor about to win a thoroughly poisoned chalice? Are they still better off doing so than letting the Tories continue to poison it further? Interesting questions. At least to me.
I disagree. It’s to the Tories’ credit that they’ve admitted the fuck-up and reversed it so quickly. That’s strength. Of course, it would have been better for them if they hadn’t made the error in the first place but now it’s no longer an open sore.
It does look startling, but until it shows up in other polls over a few days, it is highly likely to be an outlier…
He’s offering them a £27K+ bribe - no more paying for university course fees.
Is this an irregular verb? Like, I vote for a better future for my family, you’re easily swayed by campaign promises, he takes bribes?
To be fair, the list of people who don’t loathe Osborne is a lot shorter than the list of people who do.
Interesting definition of “strength”. If Labour or the LibDems had done it, would you have characterised it as such, or as a “flip-flop” and sign of internal chaos?
A lot of the Conservatives’ late “come-to-Jesus” worker-friendly items shoehorned into their manifesto resemble the sort of desperate pandering they did just before the Scottish referendum when all sorts of promises were made at the eleventh hour about devolving power to Scotland, most of which become abruptly much less urgent the day after the vote. Anyone believing that the party has suddenly taken an interest in the working class after years of screwing it over has a very short memory.
You see this in the US too - my party represents the needs of “real Americans”; the other party is attempting to buy votes.
At least Labour’s abrupt update on tuition is consistent with their previous stance; they’ve accelerated the timeline but it was already on their agenda. Theresa May’s newfound concern for worker’s rights is pretty much the opposite of the line she and the party have been touting for years.
No. If they actually win it, it will be like the Second Coming, so no-one’s going to challenge him. There would be at least a year for the new (and probably somewhat surprised) Labour members to get the measure of each other (a challenge can only really originate in the parliamentary party).
Indeed, and a great deal would depend on what they would come up with as a negotiating position and the EU would then do in response. Chances are that the seemingly sticky opening points (financial disentanglement, status of migrated nationals) might be more easily got over, but the big questions for the long-term relationship are as problematic as ever.
No, she did it to stifle UKIP and those of that tendency in her own party (and on present form looks like she’s succeeding). Whether, having done so, she would adopt a more emollient approach in the Brexit negotiations will depend on the size of the majority and the complexion of the members making it up.
I don’t think they will win, or if they do it would be with so narrow a majority as to make for not a very long-lived government, unless Corbyn can do a Harold Wilson, which I doubt. Perhaps the answer to your question depends on whether you think the chalice was poisoned by the Tory response to the financial crisis in the first place. There is a view that says the economy, and the public finances, were reviving in 2010 and the process was thrown into reverse by the insistence on cutting expenditure more than raising revenue. The long-term underlying future issues remain, but it’s a value judgment as to whether that will be eased by reducing the size of the state, or where new investment is going to come from and where it’s going to go, how you persuade people to keep on re-skilling, how you bring the housing market back from la-la-land, and so on.
Not really. Compare it with Farron recently firing a racist candidate.
Of course, May is now making a complete hash of it by making excuses and prevaricating. She should just say something along the lines of, “Yes, it wasn’t a good idea and we’ve binned it. Next question?”
The problem will come if there’s a hung Parliament. The SNP will likely hold the balance of power and will, of course, demand independence for Scotland. And the Tories will give May the boot PDQ. A second chance for Boris, perhaps?
There really aren’t any good outcomes to this election. If the Conservatives win outright they’ll continue to drive the country to the right and the economy into the toilet. In the unlikely event Labour win outright we get the Corbyn, McDonnell and Abbott shitshow. If there’s a hung Parliament we get chaos.
Best option might be a close Labour win and internal party coup, although I haven’t the foggiest idea who would be any better to lead. Keir Starmer might be the best current choice despite his very short Parliamentary tenure; he’d certainly be best placed to deal with Brexit. The thought of Boris as Tory leader is a sad one but the other options aren’t much better there either. I mean, imagine Michael Gove in charge - there’s a thought to chill the blood.
Don’t. Tempt. Fate.
oh god oh god oh god I take it all back I didn’t mean it oh god please no
Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetle … 
ETA: Thank you Patrick.