Open thread on the UK election

1. Outcome of election: Conservatives to win with a majority of 50. Not the ‘landslide’ predicted, but some improvement.
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2. Conduct of election campaign: Very badly managed by Conservatives. Surpringly good performance and manifesto by Labour. If Corbyn, Abbott, had not been the leadership; with the admitted Marxists McDonnell, Fisher, Milne, and Murray behind them, Labour would have won.
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Best performers: Corbyn and McDonnell. Worst: Abbott and May.
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3. Liberals: a small improvement on last time; a failure.
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4. UKIP: finished.
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5. SNP: Loss of up to 10 seats. Their high water has passed due to their domestic performance in Scotland. Hence the desperate attempts to force another independence vote.
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5. Leadership of Labour: Mr Corbyn will stay until his cadre identify a like minded successor. The Autumn will give another (the last?) chance for traditional Labour to regain control.
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6. The future: bleak. The U.K. economy will weaken regardless of Leave EU. Society will feel increasingly disenchanted.
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The Economist has tweeted a photo of two owl chicks, no doubt to remind us of Labour’s long-ago promise of a free owl for everyone. Labour seem to have forgotten this promise in the Manifesto.

https://mobile.twitter.com/TheEconomist/status/872570154512777216

Tough to call.

On the one hand we have a Labour Party we thought was in slow-burn self-destruct mode (and maybe still is), but has produced a pretty reasonable manifesto (I don’t buy that it isn’t costed, but it’s probably only vaguely costed) of things most people would actually like to have. If only they thought the party could credibly deliver. We have in Corbyn a leader who is more like a professor of Marxian economics and Rawlsian social justice with a bit of street protester thrown in, starting on single points ratings for PM … and yet he’s been calm, cogent and clear with only the very odd miss in every interview, stump speech and TV engagement. Even his enemies kind of like his style. You can disagree with things he says, but there’s very little BS. His huge weakness is that he equivocates when asked does he support the use of force (armed police for example) when push comes to shove, reverting to abstract non-violence lecturing. His history of love-ins with Hamas (a pretty execrable organisation) and the IRA (a different kettle of fish entirely) do him no favours among those for whom association with someone with the plague means you must have it yourself. His inability to say he would push a nuclear button is a problem because he has not chosen the right tack and forced the questioner to state the exact scenario they are thinking of, which would expose the issue properly. And then there is Diane Abbott.

On the other hand we have Theresa May, whom I can only describe as an empty vessel, literally devoid of ideas, whose only capability seems to be the chanting of meaningless slogans like ‘Brexit means Brexit’ and ‘strong and stable’. She’s dreadful in every aspect of political engagement and thinking, with an awful track record in the Home office in the past. There’s nothing to recommend her at all. She leads a party that was in the majority pro-Europe, on a death march out of Europe with no discernible plan or even understanding of a framework of working (according to various experts). It’s truly hard to think of why anyone would vote for them, they look so utterly lost.

On the third hand, Tim Farron thought he would be a shoe-in in the polls by promising a new referendum on the final deal (not a bad idea), but it turns out that most of British voters have bought into the mass delusion that is Brexit, and being the pro-Europe party doesn’t matter anymore. But I think the LibDems will pick up seats anyway, as people relent on their student fees anger of last election, and realise that having some MPs literate in Locke and Montsequieu isn’t such a bad thing.

I believe a lot of us are voting tactically. I will vote Labour in my electorate, for a sitting MP who is actually very good, and for whom I would vote anyway. In certain other seats, Lib Dems would be the appropriate choice. Maybe Greens, at least to keep Caroline Lucas in, but she always gets in, because she’s cool and hot at the same time. There’s even a website for tactical voting.

My guess is that if younger voters turn out, Labour might just get enough seats to think about a minority government, although that’s not really the done thing here. They would probably have to get into a room with the SNP and LibDems and set up a proper coalition. If the young stay home to play Resident Evil 18, the Tories are back, and it’s a sad day. I suspect it will be by a modest margin, and I think May could be booted out soon after. Although the slew of tabloid anti-Labour hysteria today was something to see, and apparently such messages work with the obligatory nice pair of boobs on the same page. So maybe a landslide after all.

Corbyn will stay as leader either way, since getting rid of him means healing the SJWs versus old-skool Labour rift first, and that’s not going to happen any time soon.

Nobody could have scripted this, only reality could be such a mess. Let’s see where we are in 36h.

So, what’s going to happen tomorrow?

Conservative victory, increased majority.

And what will it mean for the future?

Disaster.

Who have been your favorite and least favorite performers?

Respectively: Jez, who has done tremendous work to narrow the gap; and May, who has not quite managed to fail hard enough to properly sink her lead.

Who will be leading the Labour Party in 6 months time?

Corbyn will have resigned or announced his resignation. Don’t know enough about the internal politics to name someone new.

Who will be leading the Conservative Party?

May will have underperformed relative to expectations at the start of the campaign, which will lead to some grumbling and rumours of a challenge, but she will successfully defend against this and will remain PM and party leader.

If I may throw this back at the blog bosses, why exactly aren’t you supporting Corbyn, or standing up for Diane Abbott?

Given there was a pro-Hillary outpouring, and a giddy Macron! article up here, why not a single vaguely pro-Corbyn piece? If CT exists to attack the vicious right, what explains this aloof stance? The very worst right-wing smears are everywhere emboldened and affirmed by the silent bystander-ism of the liberals (centre-leftists, social democrats). In 2017, we have the planet teetering on the brink of no return, extreme and murderous inequality, nutters sitting on nukes, overt racisms and nationalisms resurgent, and the horror of the Middle East in full evidence. It is difficult to understand what it is that allows this resistance to stand up for justice, against the toxic ideas that have led us to our present predicament. How do we stay so studiously neutral when faced with an outcome that promises to be as disastrous as an emboldened May?

I see many people say Corbyn’s pushed the field of politics to the left, but they are all solid lefties who would say that. Unlike them I see that the very serious people who control what will be understood as left refuse to change their minds. Even the ‘exciting’ manifesto defers to them, and remains timid. That may be pragmatism but as Corbyn’s little group is pushed to the wall, the big beasts scheme and titter in the shadows. Where they should be standing up, you have their collusive silence on bombs for brown people, nuclear weapons, shoot-to-kill, immigration, Islamophobia, banksterism, fracking and racism. If only Corbyn were a meat-eating, hard man with a background in the military, the state or investment banking! instead of a girly, vegan pacifist enamoured with uppity swarthy types from the colonies.

This is the most important election of my lifetime. The choices and their consequences are stark, but the serious people play neutral.

Tories win everything remotely winnable. SNP becomes Official Opposition.

The whole thing is insane. Election supposedly called because of impending Brexit negotiations, and majority of rational observers see high risk of catastrophe even if things go relatively smoothly, and yet it suits both major parties to avoid any sort of sensible discussion of plans and prospects. Vacuous platitudes on one side, evasive waffle on the other, even before security and terrorism issues took over everything. We are either thoroughly doomed or totally doomed, with the election result making at best only a marginal difference.

(1) Both the Tory and Labour high commands, who have access to canvas returns as well as polls, fully expect an increased Tory majority.

(2) More particularly, they both expect the Labour vote to hold up well in the large cities, in Wales, and in the South. They also expect, however, the Tories to take the Lion’s share of the UKIP vote at GE 2015. This is likely to lead to Labour losing many seats in the Midlands and the North. That said, the margins in some of those seats are fine. If Labour is able to squeeze what remains of the LibDem and Green vote in those areas, it may minimise the damage.

(3) In the medium term, it is probably for the best that the Tories win this one. Whoever is in charge of the Brexit negotiations will have to make compromises for which Leave voters have not been prepared. While Starmer might well make more intelligent trade-offs than Davies, the fact remains that the UK hand is very weak whoever is playing it, so Labour would be vulnerable to accusations of ‘stabbing Leavers in the back’. In the long run, it will be better if the Tories are forced to own the whole mess and face the consequences of a Brexit outcome which (because it will be much worse than the status quo) is likely to disappoint pretty well everyone.

(4) Best performer? There has not been much competition this time, but the winner is probably Corbyn. It has been refreshing to see someone campaigning on their positive programme for Government rather than just trying to sling mud at their opponents. He carries too much baggage to be palatable to traditional Labour voters in the Midlands and the North, but he has reminded people that left-wing campaigns go best if they convey a message of hope for the future.

(5) What will it mean for the future? It is probably silly to speculate ahead of the results. But IF the Tories get a good majority on the back of former UKIP voters, they will have to accommodate those voters’ interests if they are to keep them onside, a goal which will be in tension with the traditional strategy of pandering to well-off older voters in the South. The row over social care costs was a first skirmish in this battle. The fact that the manifesto policy was ditched so quickly suggests that, for the moment, traditional Tory interests will prevail.

I don’t object in principle to Corbyn staying on for a bit. One of the bad features of current UK politics is this presidential mode and the assumption that a leader only gets 1 shot at the target and has to go if s/he fails. It only came in in the last 20 years, Kinnock stayed on after 1987 and previously lots of Tory and Labour leaders continued after defeats.

Of course Corbyn isn’t very good, though I don’t know who’d replace him. I always thought Andy Burnham should have taken over in 2010. Never saw the appeal of the Milibands, though I warmed to Ed by the end. Like Corbyn, going on tour did seem to energise him. What’s happened to Corbyn, visibly, is that transformation that happens to hard lefties when they suddenly think “hang on, let’s try to really change things, instead of just going on marches.”

I am somewhat bemused at the people on this thread who bring up Corbyn’s associations with Sinn Fein, and then ignore an actual Home Secretary giving actual material aid to actual terrorists.

Referring of course to this. This fairly cynical case of a government privileging foreign policy over domestic safety should have had a much greater profile.

I’m confused by the claim Corbyn isn’t popular with traditional labour voters. Dude favors nationalization! I would have thought hisnproblem is the opposite, that he can’t grab the fairweather friends who can get labor over the line (i.e. The south eastern middle class) because he is too Marxist. What exactly does he lack that “traditional” labour voters want?

I admit I share basil’s sentiment.

By now, I think it is pretty clear that a powerful democratic nation-state like the UK can very well
-Reduce inequalities and transition to a carbon-free, green economy
or
-Promote corporate friendly policies, lower taxes and a dynamic private sector for the top 10% (and soaring income for the top 0,1%)
or
-Make your country great again by stamping on immigrants (or anyone who looks like one)
but that it has to choose. I’m fine with whatever choice one makes, but I would have anticipated more explicit support towards group 1 from the CT crowd.

“IF the Tories get a good majority on the back of former UKIP voters, they will have to accommodate those voters’ interests if they are to keep them onside, a goal which will be in tension with the traditional strategy of pandering to well-off older voters in the South.”

Many UKIP voters ARE well-off older voters in the South. As this election will unfortunately demonstrate, UKIP always took more votes from the Tories than Labour.

Ad 19:

I am working on the assumption that May and those around her belong to the sensible wing of the Tory party who know they will have to face down Cash, Redwood, et al., and accept continued payments into the EU budget and some migration as the price for continued access to European airports, to having nuclear fuels, to avoid Kent turning into a massive lorry park, etc., etc. etc. I don’t see how they can avoid owning the deal, for they will have to make the case that it was the best hat could be obtained.

But yes: if I am wrong about this, and they are serious about walking out without a deal, then the damage will be truly catastrophic.

@Fautusnotes, I think this election has given Corbyn the opportunity to appeal to both the Brexit/Northern and Remain/London members of the party by challenging austerity. Where traditional safe seats might be lost it will be more to do about local issues and feelings of being let down by the local party, especially where the MP is seen as a Blairite or has not backed Corbyn. Corbyn’s problem will be in appealin to floating voters and winning marginal seats.

Thanks a lot Harry for that long and patient explanation. Before I push back on a couple of points, let me first register that I agree with many points and very well understand many others (for instance the reluctance to openly comment on a country you left long ago).

Labour would be inheriting a disaster […], so I am ambivalent about the Labour victory

On the other hand, won’t a victory by the architects of the disaster be interpreted as a democratic vindication of their policies and the admission that the situation is not disastrous? Obama inherited a disaster, did that make anyone ambivalent about him winning?

Why does Brexit matter so much to some of us, whereas we concede to rapacious capitalism?

That is precisely what I don’t understand about the current state of the Left in the UK. In the French situation with a choice between a pro-rapacious capitalism and pro-EU candidate (Macron) and an anti-rapacious capitalism and anti-EU candidate (Mélenchon), I understand how a left-leaning voter deeply committed to the European Union might choose Macron (not my choice, but I understand the dilemma). In the American (or French in the second round) situation, in a choice between rapacious capitalism and xenophobia, I of course understand the choice of rapacious capitalism (though I also understand those who chose to abstain).

But in the UK, the very same people are the most active defenders of rapacious capitalism, the direct organizers of Brexit and the xenophobia profiteers, so I don’t understand the lack of passionate calls for unity in defeating them (though I have duly noted your own commitment). To me, it is almost as if the centrist or even left-leaning establishment is running the Clinton/Trump election but in reverse (we understand that May and Brexit are very unpalatable, but you understand, the alternative is Corbyn; just impossible).

the fact that I haven’t been able to see how Labour could win

This I think is the most frustrating point to me.

Sanders was doomed: out of touch, unserious, decrepit, isolated, running on a radical left-wing platform, a socialist who honey-mooned in Soviet Union… Yet his campaign obviously resonated, young people voted en masse for him and he got a real chance despite very adversarial media coverage and precious few vocal supporters among anyone with a platform (including academics). Mélenchon was doomed: unserious, aggressive, decrepit, isolated, running on a radical left-wing platform, a trotskyist who admired Chavez… Yet his campaign obviously resonated, young people voted en masse for him and he got a real chance despite very adversarial media coverage and precious few vocal supporters among anyone with a platform (including academics). Corbyn is doomed: out of touch, unserious, decrepit, isolated, running on a radical left-wing platform, a vegan leftist who hangs around Hamas and IRA… Yet I read in this very thread that his campaign was successful, young voters are apparently poised to vote en masse for him, and the opinion polls are in fact far from catastrophic despite… you know the rest.

Seems to me young people have understood something and that the rest of us (i.e older left-leaning voters) might very well learn from them.

we disagree about whether the tuition fees policy is radical (or at least, I suppose it is radical, just radical wrong direction — a gift to the rich

Like free school meals?

Faustusnotes #22: The answer to your question is in 3 parts:

(1) traditional working class Labour supporters hate communism/ Marxism. Socialist parties on the mainland had Marxist influences, but Labour is based “more on Mthodism than Marxism”. This was affirmed in the 1930s when Labour rejected any alliance with Marxist inclined parties on the mainland. Apart from an attempted insurrection in the 1980s, this has remained the case until 2015.

(2) traditional Labour is patriotic. In the late 1940s Labour was a major influence on the creation of NATO and built the first British A bomb.

(3) a significant part of Labour support are social conservatives. The “PC” liberal influence on Labour – more in the New Labour Blair years – is unattractive to them.

I am not arguing which is right or wrong, but explaining.

As just an observing American, whose own country I thought was turning into an oligarchic dictatorship last November 8, only to see the forces of darkness stymied by their own stupidity, I must admit that after all the nasty surprises of the last year, perhaps a pleasant surprise (a lower Conservative vote and higher Liberal Democratic vote, with a better Labour performance then expected), would be welcomed. A hung parliament with Labour minority Government supported by the SNP, Greens, and LibDems would be a delightful surprise.

One thing I have not be able to figure out is what do the billionaires who funded LeFarge, the UKIP, and who own the mass dailies and tabloids what they expect to gain by Briexit? That the Tories would turn England into a “Galt Gulch” off the coast of Europe, with low taxes and no welfare state? Is that the business plan?

OK, sorry.

Regarding the OP: it is scary to see how both major parties have been avoiding the topic of Brexit like the plague and I am pretty certain that they really don’t have any idea how they are going to proceed. The Tories have used the issue to capture the Little England vote without producing anything substantial beyond soundbites. And the discrepancy between the Labour party and their Brexit voting electorate is so great that the former have put fingers in their ears and pretend it’s not really happening, e.g. that there can be single market access without free movement etc.

So the UK is woefully unprepared for the Brexit talks starting next week, the process will take much longer than advertised and since the UK economy is completely dependent on foreign labour and capital it will become second rate very soon – unless someone at some point has the guts to say: let’s stop this nonsense, we were wrong. This is the defining question of our time and everybody seems to prefer to talk about something else.

http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21723156-new-government-faces-daunting-negotiation-brussels-after-election-real-test

Polly Toynbee has an article in the Guardian c

Speaking of the SDP!

So, what’s going to happen tomorrow? And what will it mean for the future?

nothing ever happens

nothing happens at all

the needle returns to the start of the song

and we all sing along like before

Surprisingly good performance and manifesto by Labour. If Corbyn, Abbott, had not been the leadership; with the admitted Marxists McDonnell, Fisher, Milne, and Murray behind them, Labour would have won

This is completely insane.

One of the most upsetting memories about this campaign will be the viciousness of the wildly racist and misogynistic attacks on Abbott.

Agreed.

@ gastro George

“With another Tory-lite manifesto, Labour would have lost, and lost badly. ”

Exactly. One of the main reasons for the tirade of anti-Corbyn abuse from the Labour centre and right has been to put the focus on ‘leadership’ in the abstract and take the focus away from their complete lack of ideas, strategy and, one might say, principles. As with the issue of Brexit, when you scratch the surface you find there are 57 varieties of response within the PLP, very few of them coherent in any sense.

For someone up against it so much, Corbyn has done a great job campaigning.

George # 49. You make a good point:

(1) a manifesto which includes some distinctive, and to some attractive, policies; but with a leadership distrusted by most; or

(2) a mediocre “Conservative light” manifesto; with a more credible shadow cabinet.

For the future, I hope we can take the best of each.

Engels #52: Thanks for the thoughtful, reasoned, response to the first.

Just seen the exit poll. Conservatives lose their majority, and Labour gain c. 34 seats; SNP lose 22 seats. Not quite enough, but a very creditable performance.

Now we await the haggling as to whether Conservatives can run a minority government – but even that will curb the worst of their policies.

It seems likely there will have to be a further election within 12 months: which gives Labour a great chance of winning.

How does this leave the Leave EU negotiations? Great uncertainty. Wild (very wild) guess – we stay in the single market under an EFTA type regime?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/08/exit-poll-points-to-hung-parliament-in-2017-general-election

If the exit polls are right, Corbyn is the man.

Lawman@56:a mediocre “Conservative light” manifesto; with a more credible shadow cabinet.

I strongly feel that the entire reason the conservative-lite politicians are promoted and treated as more serious and credible is that they are right wing. The media and powerful people would very much like a political contest fought strictly between the pro-oligarch right and the free-market centre-right. You’ve had that in the UK for 30 years, how’s it been?

The moment they stop the centre-right politics is the moment they become untrustworthy raving looney nutcases[sic] like Corbyn. Unless they have the misfortune to be other than middle-aged white men, of course, in which case they become either hysterical or primitive… raving lunatic nutcases. I admire Mhairi Black for somehow managing to thread that needle, possibly however by being irrelevant.

Like Val I really enjoy political systems like the ones we have in Aotearoa and Australia because they let voters express opinions other than Major Party #1 and Major Party #2. I’ll take Pauline Hanson over John Major any day.

And speaking of consorting with terrorists, how’s the arms trade with Saudi Arabia going? Are you all convinced that the Saudis are not involved in any way with the terrorism and war crimes in Yemen and Syria? I’m not.

Re my previous comment: what do I know…

Pulled from previous comments.
YouGov won. Like Nate Silver in 2012. Always the defeat next time.
Given the YouGov poll, why anyone would think Tory will hav an increased majority is beyond me.
Mark Blyth also won, since he called Corbyn a left Trumpist.
=========
Lawman:
1. Outcome of election: Conservatives to win with a majority of 50. Not the ‘landslide’ predicted, but some improvement.

Dipper:
Tory win with majority between 50 and 100 seats.

Jonathan:
Larger Tory majority despite higher Labour vote %.

Good to see the Dippers having their nose rubbed in it, after all their tedious “voice of England” posturing. Will they now object to a Tory/DUP deal since they claimed Lab/SNP was unacceptable?

Jonathan 06.08.17 at 8:09 pm

“Presumably CT can’t be bothered to ask who will be leading the Lib Dems next, but it is somewhat interesting to ask why they have done quite so badly with Brexit and the perception at least that Tories have shifted right and Labour have shifted left. If there is a centre ground where British elections are fought and won then where and what is it now?”

As I understand it (a Yank), the LibDems spent several years working for the Tories, and gaining nothing for their members except Tory policies (I’ll bet that the leadership was handsomely rewarded).

So what ‘centre ground’ is there for the LibDems to offer? ‘Vote for us and we’ll help the Tories, and claim that it could be worse’?

Uwe hits a good point here – the attraction of Sanders bros and Corbynites to the young is precisely because they were born after the demise of the USSR on the one hand and Thatcher/Reagan on the other. They simply don’t carry the baggage oldies – including old lefties – do. The irony is, of course, that both Sanders and Corbyn are quintessential baggage carriers, formed in the 70s and 80s.

Some oldies no doubt would uncharitably retort that the young ‘uns are rejecting both centre-left and centre-right because they’ve no personal experience of the drawbacks of departing from that centre.