[JohnRawls]

@JohnRawls

I think the smaller parties will do well this time. Well, enough to put the kibosh on a landslide Labour victory anyway. Starmer is not popular.

I am not saying the Tories will win.

I am saying I think it will be very hard for Labour to govern.

It was very hard for Tories to govern, what is new. Brexit was a shit idea.

[Potemkin]

@JohnRawls

I am not sure he is coming. FPTP can throw up some strange results.

He needs a 15% swing. And every time he opens his mouth he's losing Labour voters.

Yes, he may get in with a rainbow coalition, but is that a government likely to last more than a few months? We have seen he doesn't play the game well with other parties.

He may get in a strop, do a Humza Yousaf, and give the lettuce a run for her money.

I strongly dislike Keir Starmer, but I think it’s going to be a rerun of 1997. In both senses - a complete collapse of the Tory vote, and a Red Tory getting in and fucking up big time….

[JohnRawls]

I strongly dislike Keir Starmer, but I think it’s going to be a rerun of 1997. In both senses - a complete collapse of the Tory vote, and a Red Tory getting in and fucking up big time….

Yeah, yeah he ain't Corbin we get it.

[Potemkin]

Yeah, yeah he ain't Corbin we get it.

All Tories are fuck-ups, whether they’re Blue or Red. It’s not the fact that Tories are evil which bothers me (though they clearly are), it’s the fact that they’re incompetent fuck-ups which bothers me.

[JohnRawls]

All Tories are fuck-ups, whether they’re Blue or Red. It’s not the fact that Tories are evil which bothers me (though they clearly are), it’s the fact that they’re incompetent fuck-ups which bothers me.

The old lady damaged your brains(UK people) or something that you think that unless the candidate from technically "your party" is not an outright hardcore "supporter of your ideology" then he is a traitor. This is a very specific UK blunt trauma that needs psychiatric treatment honestly.

[Rich]

I'm no great fan of David Cameron, but his announcement of the EU referendum in January 2013 was a brilliant move both for his party and for his career. If he'd lost in 2015, and be under no illusions, without the promise of the referendum he would have lost in 2015, that would have almost certainly been toast for his political career. But things look pretty bad for the Tories? Indeed,but democratic party politics rarely involves long term victories. Even a decade in power is a great political achievement, few parties ever manage two.

Your best chance of a good run of power in government with FPTP, is to totally dominate one side of the political spectrum while the other side of the spectrum is divided. Thatcher had a lot of luck, but the key thing she did was to say enough, to move enough to stifle the growth of the National Front and maintain the Tories dominance of conservative / nationalist/ reactionary and militarist politics. The immediate situation was looking utterly dire for the Tories, but the longer term outlook was not so bad. The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish National party, the Greens and Plaid Cumry have all established strong foot holds within the progressive votes. This means that if things start to wrong for Labour they could go very wrong indeed, very quickly. Across the western democratic world we've seen parties that seemed eternal, virtually wiped out over night.

We saw this phenomena in Scotland, but so far we haven't seen it England or in the United States for that matter. I was expecting Reform to win zero seats comfortably. But now it seems likely they will win at least one.