No politician wants to give up power while they’re still in the running. “Playing the long game” means staying in as long as possible.
Yes, you are.
The Tories are substantially ahead in the polls. What you are saying would only make sense if the Tories were behind in the polls.
May didn’t win an election to become prime minister. I hope the fire suppression systems in the House of Commons are in good working order. 
She won her seat in the Commons by a regular election, and won the leadership by the rules of the Conservative Party.
I’ve suspected it for a while but now I know it. I’m outing you as Kim Campbell.
It looks like too big a risk to me for the potential gain.
I mean “stop all the constant sniping” is pretty much what prompted Cameron to hold the brexit referendum, a vote everyone was sure he couldn’t lose (at the time of proposing it).
Nah, she’s way too enthusiastic about Brexit for it to be merely a matter of following through. She likes it because it’s a strong wedge issue for the left.
The Conservative base aren’t going to change their vote even if they don’t like Brexit.
But heaps of non-conservative voters are also working and lower middle class who are pro-Brexit due to xenophobia, and feel strongly enough about it for it to influence their vote.
May herself and many conservatives would probably be completely happy with some form of soft Brexit approach, but she’s hell bent on the toughest hardline Brexit she can dream up. Why? Because when you are wedging you want to take the most extreme position possible, so that your opponents can’t follow you, and consequently get wedged.
She looks like a pissed off Headmistress.
Well if Marie La Pen wins in France, hard/soft dichotomy becomes moot, the EU is going to be a drowning man.
That may be what she’s aiming for.
Ah, come on. That simply isn’t helpful to anyone’s case. The Tory’s are to the left of Obama and Clinton and any (even joking) comparisons to Hitler just bolster the case for left-leaning hysteria and demonisation that we’ve already covered on these boards post-Trump.
Is there a degree of self-serving political reasoning behind this?..yes, to the exactly the same degree as at every other election in UK history. Nothing new or special there.
No democratic rules have been broken, The other parties are free to stop this election if they choose, the oppositions have said consistently that May does not have a mandate for the sort of Brexit she’s put forward…well she’s now put it out there and is standing on that platform. If there truly is a swell of opinion in the country that they don’t want this direction then now there is a perfect opportunity to stop it.
A free vote at an opportune time on the most massive issues of the day seems like the very definition of democratic. I’m not a Tory but I can’t see any downside in having this vote now other than the fact that Labour is in disarray but that is their own problem.
The Tories have been in power 7 years. I cannot think of any recent party in power which gained seats (despite winning an election) which increased its majority on an election held 7 years after being in power. Thatcher lost around 21 seats in 1987 and Blair near 50 in 2005. I think McMillan gained some seats in 1959.
Incumbent fatigue should never be discounted and I think May might well lose her majority outright.
I can’t get the image out of my head of the leader singer of The Cure, Robert Smith.
Probably is, she’s following the Thatcher lead. The stern headmistress is an acceptable female power role and persona for female English politicians to adopt.
It’s not enough for incumbent fatigue to be a thing; it has to be more of a thing than the millstone currently sitting around Labour’s neck.
It is, however, a pretty fair summary of May’s statement announcing the election:
In summary, she’s saying that when the opposition have the effrontery to oppose her [spoiler: this isn’t actually happening] they’re damaging the country, so she’s calling an election to get rid of them, or in other words, “Crush the saboteurs”. It’s not the Mail’s rhetoric, it’s May’s.
NB, with respect to her first para: Following a 52/48 vote there should **not **be unity in Westminster, and the country is **not **coming together - attitudes to Brexit among both Remainers and Leavers are pretty much what they were in June. But it obviously helps her enormously to plant the idea that any opposition to her particular interpretation of Brexit is flying in the face of the settled will of the whole British people.
Yeah, it’s pretty clear, both from polls and from the bye-election win in Copeland (where the incumbent government won the seat from the opposition) that people just aren’t that fed up with the Tories. One reason for this is that Labour are not challenging them. The other is that as a government they’ve undergone quite the change, both in terms of personnel (Cam/Osbo/Hague/Gove out and May/Hammond/Johnson/Davis in) and in terms of policies (Remain/Leave being the obvious one, but also grammar schools and the timetable for clearing the deficit).
That isn’t what I hear from the fairly disparate group of voters I work and socialise with.
Theresa May is, when compared to Corbyn, a strong leader with clear ideas, clearly expressed. Even those who aren’t Tory voters say that. Incumbent fatigue comes into it when a party has been ploughing the same furrow for years but the clock has somewhat been reset by brexit and the switch to May. It is enough of a change for this to feel like a new administration.
Labour have a problem that the Lib-dems don’t have. They are pro-brexit but must stand on a platform of frustrating of either a) getting in power and continuing to leave the EU but watering down the brexit plan (which isn’t popular to many people) or b) being in opposition and trying to frustrate the government at every turn. A turn of events that will make it easy for the EU to offer a poorer deal.
It is a hard one for them to spin and even harder for Corbyn to make attractive.
Yeah, May’s position vs Corbyn is incredibly strong right now. He’s coming third to Don’t Know in terms of who would make a better leader.
I don’t agree that watering down the Brexit plan would be unpopular, if it were presented right (a big if). May has been watering down her own Brexit plan quite a bit recently (e.g. we’re now going to have both continued freedom of movement and a role for the ECJ post 2020, and we’re looking at all kinds of special visas to keep a permanent flow of high immigration, and no-one seems to mind particularly). And far from frustrating the government at every turn, Labour have made the process ludicrously easy. Three-line whips to vote for the central government bill are not particularly frustrating to the government.
If Labour had an actual position on Brexit which it could articulate clearly and present as “ensuring we get the best deal for British workers” they could do alright. It’s problem is that it literally doesn’t know what it thinks.
I also don’t agree - which puts me in a minority, I think - that having a bolshy opposition makes it easier for the EU to offer a poor deal. Having a parliament to push a deal through lets May say “Sorry, you’ll have to do better because that won’t wash at home.” The US, for example, are past masters at this approach. Conversely, when the Tories have a c.80 seat majority with a Brexit mandate, the EU will know that any deal they offer will be taken up enthusiastically, so where’s the incentive to offer easier terms?