[AFAIK]

What happened to the Lib Dems this election? How come they failed to soak up remainer votes and even their leader lost her seat?

[B0ycey]

What happened to the Lib Dems this election? How come they failed to soak up remainer votes and even their leader lost her seat?

She called the election when they told her not to. That and Swinson is associated with austerity. Not exactly a vote winner.

[Beren]

She called the election when they told her not to. That and Swinson is associated with austerity. Not exactly a vote winner.

The Lib Dems got a lot more votes in this election than they did in 2017, actually.


Source

I'm sure they got most of it from Labour and Labour seem to have lost more even to the Greens than the Conservatives, so Remainers rather than Leavers must have deserted them.

[B0ycey]

The Lib Dems got a lot more votes in this election than they did in 2017, actually.


Source

I'm sure they got most of it from Labour and Labour seem to have lost more even to the Greens than the Conservatives, so Remainers rather than Leavers must have deserted them.

In terms of vote increase they were the big winners Beren. So why does it appear they lost? Simple. Because as it happens the polls were very accurate and at two points they were ahead of Labour. They also stormed the EU election. You no doubt will remember me saying I expect then to storm this election and take the undecided vote. That all changed once they called the election because I could see her supporters abandon her in front of my eyes. And Labour calling out austerity every single chance they had put the final nail in the coffin. The mere fact they increased their vote share by 4% only highlights that people want change. But they will not just vote for anyone. They want someone who will stand up to their values and not jump into bed for political gain. You showed me that Davey video of him looking at gold without crossing the line first for what would have been an extra 20 seats. It seems not everyone was fooled for their greed and voted Labour regardless. But Moran has published her take of this election and her evaluation is accurate. If she is the next leader they might stand a chance in an election time because as great as Swinson was she kept fucking up at important times.

[ingliz]

great as Swinson was

"Great", my arse.

She was a yellow tory bitch.

[noemon]

It is quite evident that Jo Swinson is a Tory much like Farage. Swinson's main concern has always been denying Jeremy Corbyn the government. Corbyn did not manage to rally people as a movement as he eventually managed to alienate both remainer's & leaver's as well as scare a proportion of the population that is evidently a lot larger than 5% and that is mainly on him. Looking at the math it is clear that he would eventually lose the election even if he had the full max of what he could get from the others too. The Tories played the narrative well with Theresa and Boris and why wouldn't they after all as they had everything going for them as government for 10 years, press favourite + Farage & Swinson as lieutenants + the Brexit flag. They have calmed the remainer's since early this year with Theresa May and satisfied the leaver's now too with Johnson's deal.

[Kaiserschmarrn]

What happened to the Lib Dems this election? How come they failed to soak up remainer votes and even their leader lost her seat?

Ultimately, FPTP happened to them, probably helped by the fear that a vote for the Lib Dems could lead to Corbyn in No 10.

[skinster]

For those curious about what has been happening to the NHS under Thatcher, New Labour, the Tories and Lib Dems, this documentary explains it pretty forensically. A lot of it is already owned by various companies that aren't the government.
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/thegreatnhsheist

Tonight on ITV at 10:45pm was the airing of John Pilger's film The Dirty War on the NHS. He complained that no channel would air his film before the election. It is also worth watching.

Boris Johnson to pass anti-BDS law:
https://www.jpost.com/International/Bor ... ays-611044

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson moved quick in his thanks to Israel for interfering in U.K. politics.

[ThirdTerm]

This is another interesting campaign footage. Boris Johnson rolled up his sleeves and got behind the counter at a kosher bakery to serve up pastries during the election campaign. In Golders Green, the Jewish population is 21%. Banning the BDS movement was included in the party’s manifesto to woo Jewish voters. Historically, there was a high level of support for Labour among Jewish voters, who make up 0.5% of the total UK population. But in recent years there has been a significant shift towards the Conservatives (67%) due to Labour's pro-Arab stance.

[Ter]

The Muslim vote went largely to Labour

Four women of Bangladeshi origin win the UK election




Four British-Bangladeshi women representing the Labour Party have been elected to parliament despite another debacle for the party in the general election.

The four women - Tulip Siddiq, Rushanara Ali, Rupa Huq and Apsana Begum all won their respective seats with big margins on Friday.

Three of them- Tulip from Hampstead and Kilburn, Rushnara from Tower Hamlets, Bethnal Green and Bow and Rupa from Ealing West were re-elected as MPs while Apsana won the Poplar and Limehouse constituency in her debut election.

Three other candidates of Bangladeshi origin - Merina Ahmed, Bablin Mallik and Dr Anowara Ali - lost the election races.

Bangabandhu’s granddaughter and Sheikh Rehana’s daughter Tulip held on to her Hampstead and Kilburn seat on Friday with a majority of 14,188 votes. She bagged 28,080 votes against her Conservative rival Johnny Luk to win the seat for a third time. In 2017, Tulip had a majority of 15,560 votes.

Thank you Hampstead & Kilburn for electing me once again. Thanks to all my volunteers & my family. But devastated by our national results- sorry to lose such talented MPs. Tough times ahead, we have to work together. #ElectionNight pic.twitter.com/u1hBb4CLiy
— Tulip Siddiq (@TulipSiddiq) December 13, 2019



Rushanara, the first British lawmaker of Bangladeshi descent, won her fourth election in a row with a majority of 37,524 votes. She won 44,052 of the 60,810 ballots cast - 72 per cent of the vote.

Rupa won the Ealing Central and Acton seat for Labour by a margin 13,300 votes. She secured 28,132 votes in her constituency of 75, 510 voters to finish ahead of Conservative candidate Julian Gallant. Rupa had won the seat with of 13,807 votes in the 2017 election.

I thank the voters of Ealing, Acton and Chiswick for placing their trust in me for the third time in four years. Gutted for good colleagues who will not be returning to Parliament and indeed for the nation which will be poorer for five more years of rightwing Tory rule and Brexit https://t.co/iYUaF2mJbk
— Rupa Huq (@RupaHuq) December 13, 2019


Newcomer Apsana, who completed her BA Hons in Politics from Queen Mary University, polled ahead of her Conservative Party rival by 28,080 votes to take the Poplar and Limehouse seat.

https://bdnews24.com/world/europe/2019/ ... k-election

[Zionist Nationalist]

Labor is the party of foreigners they work against the long term interest of the locals to promote their crazy progressive ideas.

Maybe its best if the UK will just end its no longer an empire and have little influence worldwide no point in its existence anymore

[Rich]

Your signature doesn't tell the whole story of the US Army in World War II.

No well the character limit somewhat precludes that. Feel free to start a separate thread on the matter. In brief, it is response to American snideness towards the French. There was nothing better about the British, Soviet or US militaries, or their nations intrinsic will to resist. It is just that they were protected by the English Channel, a thousand kilometres of the most terrible infrastructure and the Atlantic ocean respectively.

[Politics_Observer]

@Rich

No well the character limit somewhat precludes that. Feel free to start a separate thread on the matter. In brief, it is response to American snideness towards the French. There was nothing better about the British, Soviet or US militaries, or their nations intrinsic will to resist. It is just that they were protected by the English Channel, a thousand kilometres of the most terrible infrastructure and the Atlantic ocean respectively.

Fair enough. We shouldn't have been snide towards the French. Getting run over by the German Blitzkrieg and Dunkirk could have happened to anybody if we were in the same circumstances. The German Blitzkrieg was brilliant warfare even if they gave their troops crystal meth to keep them going without having to rest (being given drugs or drug use among troops, even back during World War II happens in every modern war it seems). We got our asses kicked in the initial battle with German troops in Africa because our soldiers and our generals were inexperienced and hadn't seen real combat whereas the Germans had real battle experience. Combat experience matters man, let me tell you. Makes a world of difference in troop performance. Anyway, don't want to derail the thread.

[Rich]

The German Blitzkrieg was brilliant warfare even if they gave their troops crystal meth to keep them going without having to rest (being given drugs or drug use among troops,

Have you ready Heinz Guderian's autobiography "Its not about the Tank!"

[Politics_Observer]

@Rich

Have you ready Heinz Guderian's autobiography "Its not about the Tank!"

Ohh yeah, you mean that memoir he wrote when he was a POW in an Allied prison!?

But hey, you got to hand it to the guy, he was a brilliant general. He should have never taken a personal oath to Hitler though. He should have retained his oath to the German constitution just prior to Hitler rising to power. No soldier should ever take an oath to one person. Only to the constitution and laws they are sworn to protect and be loyal to. He lost his honor as a professional soldier by taking an oath to Hitler as the entire German Army did instead of keeping the oath they swore to German laws and their constitution. Heinz Guderian should have resigned his position as an officer once Hitler consolidated his absolute power as dictator of Germany and started requiring the German army to swear an oath to him rather than the German constitution and it's laws. By resigning his commission when such a set of circumstances started taking place, he would have retained his honor as a soldier. Maybe it's not always as simple as that but that is what I would have done were I in his position.

Plus the war crimes that the German army committed in the areas they fought in, especially in the east in the Soviet Union. They lost their honor by encouraging their soldiers to engage in such conduct instead of holding their soldiers accountable for such crimes to discourage and deter war crimes. But you know all sides committed war crimes and war is a dirty business. You can still retain your honor even in defeat so long as you keep to the code of conduct of a professional soldier who protects and upholds the laws and constitution and remains loyal to those laws and constitution of their government rather than simply swearing an oath to one person and only being loyal to one person.

[Nonsense]

Just like the OP most of the people of the UK are easily deluded morons.

That is like saying that the people voting 'Leave' in the 23 June 2016 referendum got it 'wrong', they didn't & they didn't get it wrong on 12 December 2019 either.

Maybe the 'morons' are those wishing for another result, but who are always foiled by their own delusions.

[Nonsense]

@Red_Army

Amen to that RA. I don't know much about UK politics, but I do think it was a mistake for the UK to try to leave the EU and I also think their National Health Service is more important than Brexit if I were in the shoes of a UK citizen. I am not an expert on their NHS either, so those who have used it would be a better authority to speak on it than me. But it would seem a NHS properly funded would be something I would want as a UK citizen. I know an engineer here in the US who is from the UK and he tells me, if I remember correctly, the "Tories" as he called them, are doing their best to ensure that the NHS is not properly funded.

I assume by ensuring that their NHS is not properly funded they (the so called "Tories" as he called them which I assume is a UK political party) could somehow just say, "You see! This NHS doesn't work! We have to get rid of it! It was just a bad idea that could never possibly work every no matter what." This is their way of trying to intentionally ensure that the NHS is not properly funded and then turn around and blame the idea of NHS and portray it as a bad idea by setting it up for failure in the first place and intentionally ensuring it fails. I could be wrong, but that's what I gathered from some dude here in the US who is from the UK. But I never lived there, so, what do I know? And who knows if this guy knows what he's talking about?

The 'mistake' would have been remaining in the E.U, the U.K is a very different animal to the early 1970's, for which this country's economy lacked the money for investment to restructure itself from war production into civil & thus competitiveness in a free world of trade.

We have always been a global trading nation, our 'problem' then, as now, is that when the going gets tough, our businesses either fold, or sell of to foreign buyers, who then dismantle the companies & stripping their assets clean in order to monopolise market share.

One big mistake was the running down of the British Merchant Navy, because the ship owners didn't like paying a proper wage to the best seamen in the world at the time, they were quick to hire Asian cheap labour instead & flying flags of convenience.

I have used the NHS since it's inception, The Labour government stuffed the doctors faces with taxpayers money, because the greedy doctors would not accept direct employment in the public sector, therefore to buy their support for an NHS, that government introduced a contract system, where doctors would remain as self-employed.
The price of that concession has been very heavy indeed, years ago, doctors\consultants were treated like 'gods' by patients & staff alike.

They ran the roost, that stopped dead any real systemic change, after all, the 'elite'(self-appointed-as usual)control the system from top-bottom & will not relax that control.
I strongly believe that all foreign doctors, as well as new British doctors, should either accept direct employment, or else seek employment outside of the NHS.

Again, the NHS pharmacology used to create as well as produce their own medicines for prescribing to patients in-house, that was stopped by the Tories.

As with so much of the NHS, it is being privatised from the inside on a wholesale basis, through out-sourcing, PFI(started by Labour), sending patients to private hospitals or even abroad & it's no longer a 'National' health service, it's a magnet for health-benefit tourist from across the globe.

As it is, no matter how much money is pumped in by the Tories, the NHS will always be 'underfunded' , because the money being pumped in, goes to pay for 'lifestyle' operations, such as gender alignment, which are often reversed once done, cosmetic surgery, but mainly because the money always ends up in the pockets of private companies as profits & patient waiting times or list continue to grow longer.

That last two, is just another opportunity to pump more money in, due to 'increased demand' , as much by political as personal calls for remediation of queues.

Labour, on the other hand, want more money spent on the NHS, not because of the health of people, but because it's an opportunity to bring in more migrants to work in a heavily unionised system funded by taxpayers & the union members finance the Labour Party.

Whether it's the Tories pumping money in which benefits rich businessmen, or the Labour Party demanding more nurses\doctors, which fills the Labour Party coffers from those workers union-political levy, it's the patients-taxpayers that always pays for, but loses out every time.

It's only at a snails pace that change comes about in the NHS, it's true that private provision is superior to NHS service, that's not the fault of nurses, for whom the NHS couldn't function without, but because the system has evolved at the political level to put patients at the back of the queue where consideration is concerned.

'Oil-water' do not mix, yet in the NHS, we increasingly have mixed provision with one source of payments, the taxpayer, the 'benefits' are not so clear cut, the initial idea of the NHS has been deliberately adulterated towards political direction, away from clinically based decisions, some may call it 'democratic', maybe, but it's at a cost, as rather than treating people based on clinical need, it's subjected to political pressure to treat certain patients according to political reasons instead.

[Politics_Observer]

@Nonsense

The 'mistake' would have been remaining in the E.U, the U.K is a very different animal to the early 1970's, for which this country's economy lacked the money for investment to restructure itself from war production into civil & thus competitiveness in a free world of trade.

We have always been a global trading nation, our 'problem' then, as now, is that when the going gets tough, our businesses either fold, or sell of to foreign buyers, who then dismantle the companies & stripping their assets clean in order to monopolise market share.

One big mistake was the running down of the British Merchant Navy, because the ship owners didn't like paying a proper wage to the best seamen in the world at the time, they were quick to hire Asian cheap labour instead & flying flags of convenience.

I have used the NHS since it's inception, The Labour government stuffed the doctors faces with taxpayers money, because the greedy doctors would not accept direct employment in the public sector, therefore to buy their support for an NHS, that government introduced a contract system, where doctors would remain as self-employed.
The price of that concession has been very heavy indeed, years ago, doctors\consultants were treated like 'gods' by patients & staff alike.

They ran the roost, that stopped dead any real systemic change, after all, the 'elite'(self-appointed-as usual)control the system from top-bottom & will not relax that control.
I strongly believe that all foreign doctors, as well as new British doctors, should either accept direct employment, or else seek employment outside of the NHS.

Again, the NHS pharmacology used to create as well as produce their own medicines for prescribing to patients in-house, that was stopped by the Tories.

As with so much of the NHS, it is being privatised from the inside on a wholesale basis, through out-sourcing, PFI(started by Labour), sending patients to private hospitals or even abroad & it's no longer a 'National' health service, it's a magnet for health-benefit tourist from across the globe.

As it is, no matter how much money is pumped in by the Tories, the NHS will always be 'underfunded' , because the money being pumped in, goes to pay for 'lifestyle' operations, such as gender alignment, which are often reversed once done, cosmetic surgery, but mainly because the money always ends up in the pockets of private companies as profits & patient waiting times or list continue to grow longer.

That last two, is just another opportunity to pump more money in, due to 'increased demand' , as much by political as personal calls for remediation of queues.

Labour, on the other hand, want more money spent on the NHS, not because of the health of people, but because it's an opportunity to bring in more migrants to work in a heavily unionised system funded by taxpayers & the union members finance the Labour Party.

Whether it's the Tories pumping money in which benefits rich businessmen, or the Labour Party demanding more nurses\doctors, which fills the Labour Party coffers from those workers union-political levy, it's the patients-taxpayers that always pays for, but loses out every time.

It's only at a snails pace that change comes about in the NHS, it's true that private provision is superior to NHS service, that's not the fault of nurses, for whom the NHS couldn't function without, but because the system has evolved at the political level to put patients at the back of the queue where consideration is concerned.

'Oil-water' do not mix, yet in the NHS, we increasingly have mixed provision with one source of payments, the taxpayer, the 'benefits' are not so clear cut, the initial idea of the NHS has been deliberately adulterated towards political direction, away from clinically based decisions, some may call it 'democratic', maybe, but it's at a cost, as rather than treating people based on clinical need, it's subjected to political pressure to treat certain patients according to political reasons instead.

Yeah, that sounds like a mess BIG TIME. It's what I always tell people, no matter where you go, there is no such thing as a perfect place to live. The grass is always greener on the other side.

[Red_Army]

I think leaving the EU and Jeremy Corbyn are both great. That being said, Brexit is less important than austerity and the rest of the moron Tory agenda. If you think Bojo is better than Corbyn you're a moron.

[Patrickov]

I think leaving the EU and Jeremy Corbyn are both great. That being said, Brexit is less important than austerity and the rest of the moron Tory agenda. If you think Bojo is better than Corbyn you're a moron.

Just curious (because I am not a British voter): Does it make someone a moron if the person believes Johnson is more controllable than Corbyn?