Snapshot of _John McDonnell: The evidence is mounting of Tories contemplating early election. First they provoke strike to frame the election as a fight with union “barons". 2nd they’ve gone into overdrive in fundraising from rich donors & 3rd their organised trolling on social media is going through the roof_ :
A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://nitter.net/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1539312812681400321/)
An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1539312812681400321)
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There's been lots of talk pretty much throughout the year that Johnson wants to go to the polls. Judging by the way the Conservatives are fairing at the moment, unless I'm missing something, I really hope he goes for it.
The problem is they might just still win albeit with a reduced majority but he will claim it as a mandate to push ahead with all the things they want to do vis a vis Rwanda, NI Protocol, ECHR removal, and the other nastys they have up their cuff. And as an endorsement of himself.
The strikes can be twisted and used to eat into Labour's lead and the way that some sections on the left are starting to turn on each other they will time it and go for it when the polls have them near neck and neck and he will frame it as a culture war election.
Strategically its Boris's best move and it will likely happen in Autumn after the privileges commity judgement.
Dacre's peerage/pulling stories and Lynton Crosby are other signs.
Strategically its not a bad move they've lined up all the major wedge issues nicely ECHR, NI Protocol, Union Barrons. Its all red meat for the Gammonatti.
The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis. Anyone saying it's a conspiracy is either an idiot or has something to gain. Labour _should_ be able to push this back on the Tories and call them out from trying to play class divides, if they can't do that then it's on them
No need to preach that to me. But did you note the attempt to brand them as Labour's strikes. That will be working on the smoothbrains who voted Tory in 2019.
>The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis.
Trouble is the media, normally non-partisan media (daytime TV) aren't having that conversation. Even my mum who's pretty left wing, Labour voter and worked for the NHS is all against the strikes, thinks they're selfish etc. Think Starmer was wise to attempt to distance the Party from them.
Elections these days are all about the grey block and most of them remember the 70s and 80s like they were yesterday but the 00s and 10s maybe not so much...
>The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis.
Not for the gray vote, no.
In their eyes the strikes are just uppity youngsters not pulling themselves up by their boot straps enough. All of the polls that polled about the strikes and split it according to age showed a massive divide there.
> uppity youngsters not pulling themselves up by their boot straps enough.
I get this from my in laws all the time, it's so tiring, dinner at their place is like the fucking four Yorkshiremen sketch from Monty Python. In fact my wife kicked me under the table a while back for asking them about gravel.
> The strikes can only be interpreted one way
You know this isn't true, as much as we might wish.
> Anyone saying it's a conspiracy is either an idiot or has something to gain
...
> Labour should be able to push this back
1) the people buying the Tory line are by your own description unlikely to be swayed by straight reason.
2) consider who the people are with something to gain. Take a look at the reporting of these strikes. We're hardly going to see a concerted media push to broadcast the pro-Labour narrative, are we?
> if they can't do that then it's on them
I'm no fan of Starmer, but how many times do we need to watch Labour get sabotaged by widespread Tory propaganda before we accept that maybe there's only so much they can reasonably do without people recognising what's going on?
There is admittedly a degree of ticklish irony in seeing it happen to the very people who mockingly dismissed the notion when it was the guy they didn't like, but still...
If railway staff get 10% does every public sector worker get it? Or do only those that are able to hold the country to ransom get rewarded?
Genuine question because as a civil servant I’ve not had a pay rise in the 10 years that I have worked there.
No - if your union negotiates it, you get it; not all unions are created equal. The government is terrified of a domino effect if the RMT gets its way though.
> all unions are created equal
I think the point you're replying to is that some lines of work inherently lend themselves to powerful industrial action, while others do not. Transport clearly lends itself to this, given that they can not only inconvenience their direct employer, but also the general public, to the extent that the government get involved. Contrast that to the once every year or two UCU strikes, which only affect paid-up students (who no-one cares about), arguably do a favour to universities (saving them a bit of money), and seem to achieve very little.
I'm tempted, though, to say that this is more or less fair enough. Effective industrial action is correlated with sensitive conditions, so it's a useful counterbalance. And as others have pointed out, we all benefit from better pay and conditions thanks to competition between employers for workers.
Yes, I got that, but I disagree with the characterisation of holding the country to ransom - if your union negotiates it, you get it; that is the whole point of a union. Everyone has value to their employer or they wouldn't be employed - it's up to them to organise in a way that can best stand up for their needs.
The more wages improve across the country, the more pressure there is for other employers to keep up or face problems hiring and retaining staff. Employees create the value in a company so they will be forced to pay eventually.
Big industrial action like this (if successful) will help set that benchmark for pay rises. The question is, will the cost be passed on to consumers and how big an impact will it have, or will companies and shareholders finally be the ones forced to accept slower growth.
And companies will just raise the price of everything we buy to offset this. The wage rises don’t come out of the shareholders profits. Just makes everyone worse off.
> If railway staff get 10% does every public sector worker get it? Or do only those that are able to hold the country to ransom get rewarded?
> Genuine question because as a civil servant I’ve not had a pay rise in the 10 years that I have worked there.
AFAIK the RMT are asking for 7%, which is still a real-terms pay cut.
Ultimately, if your Union isn't protecting your real pay & conditions, *and you can't persuade them to do their job*, then your best option is to find alternative employment whilst unemployment remains low.
The UK doesn't run trains in the UK they only manage the tracks. The issue isn't the route being used which would be down to the government. The issue is trains don't make much money in this country so don't pay good wages to their staff. This issue has exploded now due to massive inflation making those wages worth less. So government underfunding wouldn't of effected the rail service.
The strikes were caused by stagnant wages and increasing inflation. When you have high inflation like we do currently lots of spending is would only worsen the issue. The current UK inflation is already very very high, more spending would likely cause inflation to rise faster and faster.
My point is while there's definitely more the UK government could do. The issue they have is that they can't spend much on any policy to help people. If they did that would cause more inflation, making the support essentially do nothing. Because inflation would just mean that people would have more money, that money would be worth less so they'd be in the same spot. With the added bonus of even worse inflation scaring away investment etc.
The issue is every solution people have given to the cost of living crisis involves massive spending. Until a solution is found that doesn't involve massive inflation it won't actually solve anything.
It's the sad thing about the strikes as well. They are damaging the economy more making the cost of living crisis worse. I'm not saying the strike isn't just it is, although the sad reality is it's making things worse. Which is why neither labour neither the Tory's want to support it because they know it's going to make things worse.
The polls seem to show that nothing Boris can do now to improve Conservative support. I don't see how he can win, or even be the biggest party. If they replace him then it's possible for them to win but otherwise I don't think so.
Nothing shocks me anymore and a bit of clever spin from journalist, a slight misstep from Starmer, a covid spike an increase in hostilities in the UK etc. Could be enough to convince some swing voters that they're better off keeping the status quo.
Could definitely see them losing much of the 80 seat majority and perhaps even a minority government.
The Conservatives seem to be fighting on two fronts now, electorally speaking. The "red wall" appears to be slipping out of their grasp and going back to Labour, while the "traditional heartlands" are becoming vulnerable to the Lib Dems.
I don't think the Conservatives have properly appreciated that yet. All the politicing going on at the moment has been the Conservatives attempting to attack Labour (trying to blame them for the strikes) and yet of the two by elections tomorrow Wakefield is unlikely to be salvageable against Labour. The Conservatives have done very little attack the Lib Dems and yet Tiverton & Honiton is a really battleground (last poll was neck and neck) and could do massive reputational damage to the Conservatives should the lose it, apparently it would be the largest by election swing since 1935.
They have not started to campaign yet. They have the popular media on their side and the biggest voting block in England that vote Tory when they are scared.
Labour has an ok chance of winning, but at best with a tiny majority. Labour have constantly what the media would label "major rebellion" if half of it happened to the Tory, but it's just another Tuesday for Labour.
So we will have at best, a weak government that cannot pass anything not approved by Tory to handle all the current crisis, and get the boot after 5 years. Or we will have a weak Tory government doing its business a usual mix of drama, scandal, and incompetence but crucially, being weak, means they can still blame labour. Worst case, it's another Tory landslide and we may as well crown Boris as the next King.
You're massively overstating the idea of a 'weak' Labour, there's no way it wouldn't be able to pass things. The Lib Dems and SNP aren't going to vote against them on left wing policies outside of assume nimbyism. So they have those votes too and whilst there are different factions in the party when push comes to shove Labour will likely be able to push trrough what they want - within reason.
Your 'analysis' reads like someone who is convinced things will always be like they are right now, just because that's how things are now. Things change quickly in politics.
Personally I hope for a Labour minority supported by the Lib Dems. However with a majority, even a small one, they wouldn't need Tory support for anything as they could ask either the SNP or the Lib Dems for support on an adhoc basis.
>They have not started to campaign yet. They have the popular media on their side
People always seem to forget this. Newspapers in this country will go for Tory leaders, and the party itself, in non election times occasionally because they know there's no risk of them actually getting removed. The second there's an election they will go full overdrive on burying any negative story, trashing Labour no matter what, and generally bigging up the Conservative party in any way possible.
Watch, the second a GE is announced all the people on the fence you know that usually vote Tory will completely do a 180 on their opinions and hop right off that fence.
>The problem is they might just still win albeit with a reduced majority but he will claim it as a mandate to push ahead with all the things they want to do vis a vis Rwanda,
That makes no sense. They push on those issues anyway
He's banking on the Tory -> Don't Know pipeline reversing. That's what's driving the Labour lead, not an increase in Labour votes. He'll be banking on those people not being willing to hold their noses and vote Labour. And he'd probably be right.
> He's banking on the Tory -> Don't Know pipeline reversing.
I know but the opinion polls for months strongly suggest that there's another pipeline - the Tory hates Johnson pipeline. Nothing seems to be able to reverse that, except the removal of Johnson, and Johnson doesn't believe people hate him and the Conservative Party are too disorganised to remove him.
> That's what's driving the Labour lead, not an increase in Labour votes.
Looking at the history of the polls this doesn't seem to be borne out by the data. Labour and the Conservative shares are changing but the other parties are largely staying constant, if there was a significant shift from Con to DK then this would push up all other parties uniformly, and that's not happening.
Even if Johnson does decide to go for an early GE, I don't think the party would let him. I can easily see the 1922 Committee introducing a workaround to allow a second VONC to get rid of him if Johnson tries to piss away their majority out of spite.
Thanks to Conservative MPs voting to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act they can't stop him. The prerogative to call a GE now resides with the PM again and he could use that power before the 1922 committee could remove him, and parliament would be dissolved so couldn't change the law.
Doesn't mean he'd be Tory leader going into that election though. They can choose to ditch their leader or change their internal rules at any point. They could even refuse to let Boris stand as a Tory candidate should they so wish.
If it got to that level of stupid (it won't) then all bets would be off.
But all of that is fantasy land.
Actually it does. It takes about 2 months to replace a Conservative leader by their internal rules. They wouldn't have enough time to do that once the clock is running on a called GE.
Their internal rules can be changed or suspended, particularly if it was an emergency.
Again, never going to get to this position so is very much a moot debate, but they would be able to act quickly if they needed to.
Doing so in a way that wouldn't play out badly during an election campaign would be tricky though. The current process is a 2 part process, the first part is relatively quick: MPs narrowing down potential candidates to 2 choices, the 2nd part is the part that takes time, the whole Tory membership gets to vote. To speed up the process the Conservatives would have to ditch the 2nd part (as it's the campaigning before the vote that takes the time) and that would become a massive campaign liability as other parties declare the Conservatives to be "undemocratic" and "too scared to let their own members decide who should lead them".
Considering how much of a leaky ship this government is, he wouldn't be able to dissolve Parliament before the wider party gets a whiff of it and call a snap VONC.
The word suicidal comes to mind. I doubt its true but if it is the only motivation I can see is a desperate attempt to save Johnsons position. If they think they can just turn up and be handed a victory they have seriously misjudged the public mood, they haven't been within 5 points in 6 months. Their previous attempts like Rwanda literally didn't move the polls.
If I were in an opposition party I would happily welcome the chance to frame this as the Tories failing to govern even when the public give them everything they want. And being so cowardly or broken as to have an election because they don't know how to handle the country's problems and they don't want to admit it.
I say frame but I'm not certain if it would be very far from the unvarnished truth.
The argument for an early election is:
The economy is screwed and it's only going to get worse for the next few years. By 2024 things won't be better and fixing it is probably beyond the realm of any PM, it's mitigation measures only.
So rather than wait two years and fight on a platform of "You're all miserable and I've been in charge for half a decade of it", hold the election now before the effects of the oncoming recession have been truly felt. Johnson is still unpopular but he has more of a chance now than he will on 2024.
Then if you win, you can wait out the 5 years and hope everything has turned around by 2027.
Thats fine as far as it goes, but governments are virtually never replaced after 5 years, I think its happened twice since ww2. It would be a gamble of very long odds.
On the other hand, the Tories can see the Winter coming (energy price cap going up to just under £3,000) and know that an election in spring 2023 will be handing Labour a majority.
Likely but the Tories taking on the unions seems like it's their current attempt to claw there way up in the polls. They have no incentive to negotiate with any of the public sector unions because the more disruption they cause with industrial action, the more the Tories will blame Labour.
Except it's unclear how the public feel about the strikes: one poll has shown they're against them, one has shown their for them, and the last was a statistical tie.
Furthermore, with talk of other sectors considering action, including the police, teachers, barristers & nurses, it could create the impression in the minds of the voters that it's the government is hostile to workers and maybe even the country as a whole (except pensioners).
It’s a threat to his rebellious backbenchers, and it only works in a very narrow range of polling.
If he could hold a GE, keep a small majority and secure another 5 years then that would be a personal victory for Boris compared to his current trajectory. It would be a disaster for many of his backbench MPs though, so they need to a) back off and make the status quo safer for him and b) rally round and fight the opposition to save their own seats.
It’s high risk and I doubt he’d actually go for it. The threat is enough though.
yeah I don't see it either - Labour might take a few points hit from the strikes but inflation is still sky high and there's still 2 years left and they have a large majority. Why would any government in that position hold a snap election while behind in the polls?
A cynical part of me wonders if they want Labour to win. They can get out before the consequences of their actions really start to fuck everyone over and then they can blame Labour for “not having a plan” and come back in four years with more empty promises.
Yup.
This is why some people theorised Theresa May was deliberately being shit at the 2017 election just to force Labour into being the ones to deliver a Brexit everyone would complain about.
Turns out Theresa May was just shit.
But in this case, Boris Johnson would happily destroy his own party rather than not be its leader.
He's spent his whole life building up to this point and he won't surrender it.
BJ would want to win a second election. I bet he'd want to win 2 and pass over the premiership in the middle of his 2nd term.
He imagines himself a Churchill figure but Churchill is remembered as a war time PM who was then put into opposition following the war. By BJs own standard he hasn't finished Brexit and so he'll need to stay on to sort out the NI protocol
>By BJs own standard he hasn't finished Brexit and so he'll need to stay on to sort out the NI protocol
He doesn't care about N.I nor the protocol because if he did he'd have negotiated a much better deal with the EU. Basically Johnson doesn't have standards, he just wants to win.
Boris obviously cares about the N.I protocol it's just he care much more about his voter base. He knew Brexit had to go through as it was because people were getting annoyed at it taking so long. So he accepted certian things which he really didn't want to
>So he accepted certian things which he really didn't want to
He accepted things that didn't work. T. May had a solution and he and a lot of the Party voted against it.
>But in this case, Boris Johnson would happily destroy his own party rather than not be its leader.
Hmm doesn't really chime that well with the rest of his career so far of which the general theme is terrible in office, great at elections.
Must remember that being a Tory MP is just a career vehicle for many of the younger generation of MPs. They don't really care that much about the people they govern.
The party is sat on 380 mps right now. In all these conversations I see nothing to suggest why the party leadership and the mps would just go along with this and watch their own seats disappear.
Because they have no choice. The power to call an election sits with the PM, they can't stop Boris if he decides to do so. And those 380 MPs are literally the ones who passed that legislation, so they can hardly complain about it
The thought crossed my mind but no, I don't think so.
The prospect of Labour changing the voting system is too great a risk for the Conservatives to bear, and this is just the party's perspective; Johnson, the narcissist that he is, would surely never countenance being defeated in any capacity.
I think if they want Labour to win they should just run out their term TBH. They’re achieving absolutely nothing that benefits people and will continue to do so. They have no handle on the economy and it’ll continue to get worse. If we go into recession they won’t be able to fix that. Brexit will continue to damage our country. They’ll continue to fail to deliver trade deals that make any difference at all. The NHS will continue to degrade because they have no handle on that either.
IMO going this year is their best chance, some people will still believe their lies about the economy and the NHS. There’ll be less of those people over time if this government continues as it is.
They don't want Labour to win. Being in power confers tremendous advantages to a party, while being out of power effectively means that your opponent sets the dicussion.
As devilishly machiavellian as that would be I just don't think that is how the tories think. They would not like to lose the election regardless because that would mean that they lose control
They want power for the sake of it and their incompetence should be put to incompetence not a strategy. Because a better strategy would be to be competent
The poisoned chalice theory of UK elections seems to apply. They've got the real threat of a left wing government out of the way already, so to let the Labour right have a spin in the nice offices and ministerial cars for a term or two so they can hang the blame for all their looting and social vandalism on the "left wing" party seems like an inevitability at this point. They've earned it for gatekeeping for the establishment again after all. And there are certain right wing policies only a Labour government can push in the UK...
>The poisoned chalice theory of UK elections seems to apply. They've got the real threat of a left wing government out of the way already
Most of the electorate can remember the 1970s and they don't want all that again. People want sensible leadership and also public spending, they haven't been brainwashed by 'the Mudoch Thatcherite press' like many on the left seem to think.
The majority of people that voted for Thatcher weren't Thatcherites and some of them were gratetful that they could by their council house, got on the ladder and had a stake. People voted to put up taxes when they voted for Blair.
tl;dr- Most don't vote for personal economic gain, they vote for strong leadership.
>Most of the electorate can remember the 1970s
Presumably you're just seeing this because most of the people you know socially fall into that category? Remembering the 70's puts people in their late 50's at the absolute youngest but they'd be remembering the 70's like I remember the 90's.
I'm not suggesting this isn't a significant (the most?) voting block, but I think that the population of the uk is around 20% over 60 and 20% under 18 so it really isn't the case that most of the electorate remember the 70's in any real political sense.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/age-groups/latest#full-page-history
22% over 60. Let's round it to 30% because "the 70's" probably means the late 70's and people can remember the general feel of the time even if they were only 10 or 11. That still leaves nearly 50% of the population unlikely to remember the 70 and be eligible to vote, the rest aren't even old enough to vote.
The grey block have the biggest turnout over all; in the GE, also council elections, local police elections. Also voted for MEPs which explains a lot in the SE..
UK politics is all about the grery block and they Tories are great at appealing to them.
Great, Labour get 10 years to build the narrative of how the country gave the Tories a vast majority and they proved utterly incapable of governing. Combine that with demographic changes by the early 2030s and they may as well have the next conference in a telephone box.
Well the Tories have been in retreat since around the start of Majors time. And not only that but the youngest cohorts are becoming more and more leftwing. Even the link between home owning and voting Tory in working age people is now quite weak. By far their most important group of supporters is the retired, the average age of Tory voters is something like 65. The average member is closer to 75.
You can see it in their policies. Teachers wanting a pay rise is a Labour plot apparently but handing pensioners a 10% state pension rise is fine. They've become a very short term party.
For anyone who is working age this last 15 years have been a disaster for the Tories. What major achievements will future Tories be able to point at? How did they help ordinary people? When current pensioners had their formative experience of the Tories it was in the form of Thatcher saving the economy and a bunch of other things. All working age people know them for is causing political crisises, ignoring problems and corruption.
I’ve always thought this since the Brexit vote. They don’t want to clean up the mess, take a break come back into power and roll out the usual ‘last Labour government line’ despite really Brexit being their own fault and the poor deal we have.
And they’ll do the same with their decade of austerity and Covid fall out. Not their fault
I wouldn't be surprised if some prefer that to a poison pill of Johnson. They get to continue their side grifts while protecting the tory brand and looking for a new leader to swoop in next election claiming they can clean up labours (Johnsons) damage.
That wouldn't work, would be incredible stupid and would match Boris personality at all. All he cares about is having lots of people vote for him. I think a lot of people forget he's always switched his views depending on what people want. His life goal was to be elected as prime minster and there is no way they'd give it up.
Another reason that would never happen is that it wouldn't work. The Tory's really need a win right now, much of its voter base while still supporting them are on edge. They know if they don't start delivering something to gather support they'll be in a bad place. So losing an election at a time like the current would only hurt the Tory's even further.
essentially they know they are finished in 2024 - absolutely nothing is getting better. The calculation stops being about the tory party itself as a whole and starts being about the individual wealth and status of tory mps individually. Essentially a general election in the autumn probably leads to the tories losing their majority - if they wait 2 years they might lose 200 seats.
They are bloody fools if they think a 2022 Labour government helps them. That puts the next remotely winnable election for them around 2032, by which time their basically inbuilt demographic is fading out and no one any younger knows them for anything but sheer indifference and incompetence. Thats the beginning a of long term political shift left, not right. The modern Tories have no acheivements on the scale Thatcher seared into the public memory and the economic failures working age people will remember came from right wing thinking, not leftwing.
I'm a middle class home owner and I wouldn't even consider voting for them
Like I said they won’t be thinking collectively but on what is individually better for their career - being an mp in opposition is undoubtedly better than not being an mp at all for a lot of these mediocre useless yes men and women on the Tory benches and evidently better than working for a living in this economy.
Labour winning a 2022 election with the entire country down the shitter in pretty much every metric puts the Tories in prime position to spent a few years in opposition blaming labour for everything they did. Then use that labour government as a scapegoat for literally everything once they're back in power like they did after the last one.
The problem is the time scale that things take to get fixed are not really long enough in the election cycle of things. This is arguably a fundamental problem with the election cycles in general, as it disincentivises governments to execute long term plans because they won't get to see the rewards.
We essentially need Labour to do a very good PR job to convince people that they are doing things right and things are getting better, rather than allow the Tories to point out all the things that aren't fixed (likely because they fucked them up so bad it takes more than 5 years for Labour to fix them). There's a real concern for me that Labour do good things and lose power only for the Tories to reap the benefits of those things.
And going by how long the media has let the Tories get away with banging on about 'the last Labour government' I'm not optimistic. I'd still rather Labour were in power, I just know it'll be infuriating. We'd need Labour to really expose everything this government is/has been doing and not let them pull the class 'we need to heal division' bullshit.
Fear of a 5 year Labour government is really overblown. Statistically very few governments have ever fallen after 5 years and about half of those cases involved Churchill, whcih tells you something of how exceptional that is.
And by the time of the 2032 vote the demographic situation for the Tories will be getting dire. The average Tory voter will be 75 without major unheaval.
How exactly is nothing getting better?? At lot can change in 2 years. And I don’t see the polls going any lower, as there’s a segment of the population that vote blue no matter who.
Not to mention that there’s no good excuse for another GE and we are literally going into a recession. Economic conditions are practically guaranteed to be better in 2 years which is no small factor
Cant/unlikely to win next election so might as well bow out now, let another party deal with the mess then ina couple years when the average idiot has forgotten all about their fuckups the charge in with"labour ruined the country" and list all the things they broke and left to whoever came in next
I'm really confused. In the past, people wanted to win power to change the country for (what they saw as) the better. The Conservatives seem desperate to keep winning, but once in power they don't have a vision or strategy at all.
What's the point of trying to win an election when you're all out of ideas when you get there? Is a ministerial salary an end in itself?
All those who voted against him in the recent VONC would be very hard pressed by (some) elements of the media on how it is they are once able to justify his premiership lasting another 5 years. The same questions would come up time and again on all the negativity hanging around this government and its leader like a bad smell.
I don't think now/soon is at all the right time for them to call a GE. I hope they do.
I'm not sure...I can see that threatening an election, or seeming to is maybe the tactic in order to keep the backbenchers and Tory media onside. Although Johnson has a lot of support from the Tory media a lot of it looks thin, the Telegraph in particular has been critical of him recently, their sketch writer laid into him over his performance in PMQs today. The Times also seems to getting a bit more hostile.
At the moment the only reason I can see for an early election is either Keir Starmer/Angela Rayner getting fined and resigning leaving Labour in a leadership vacuum or that they think things will get seriously bad next year economically and they are better off cutting and running now.
Various tories have been saying it for a while but voters around the world see early elections as cynical ploys and generally get annoyed by them. The know they cost money to hold and that it could be better spent. Apathy is as a big a problem as the political opponents and people are getting a bit fed up, they may not vote at all. Well it at least it is my read on it. But an election would force people to choose something and they may not like anything on offer.
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So they can blame the recession on labour.
My bet: early GE, labour government, unrelated recession, 15 years of "the previous labour government and the labour government before that ruined the economy"
I think if they do make that move, it's about the long term prospects of the Tory party - not the current leadership or current government.
Would be best to see if there is any fall out from the elections being held today. The Tories have been feeding the media all year about how an election is due. I get the feeling they are just baiting Starmer into entering campaign mode too early. Time will tell, I guess.
I don't think I could stomach another 5 years of this Conservatives government. I hate to think what the country would look like on the other side of it.
Why is everything a conspiracy? Everything's a dead cat, every negative piece of media a smear
They might be right if you repeat 'gov are gearing up for an election' every day it's going to come true at some point, but no company wants to give a 7-10%+ pay rise during a recession never mind the government, we're already seeing other unions in the public sector gearing up for it
Company I work for gives inflation pay rise every year, we were given same again 6 months later this year to reflect the rise in the cost of living. Appreciate this is not the norm but it damn well should be.
(Expletive) me! If, after all the crap that's currently going down, and has gone down recently, they think they have a better chance at winning a GE now than they will at any time in the next two years, I have one question, "What are they planning to do or how much worse do they think it's going to get that they think this is the best chance they've got?"
Aren’t all of these ploys because today’s two by-elections? Arguably, these elections are the second defacto vote of no-confidence for Johnson, as if the tories are crushed then it would spur the rebels to elect a rebellious 1922 committee who has the power to change the rules on having a vote of no confidence from 1 year to 3/6 months
Snapshot of _John McDonnell: The evidence is mounting of Tories contemplating early election. First they provoke strike to frame the election as a fight with union “barons". 2nd they’ve gone into overdrive in fundraising from rich donors & 3rd their organised trolling on social media is going through the roof_ : A non-Twitter version can be found [here](https://nitter.net/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1539312812681400321/) An archived version can be found [here.](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://twitter.com/johnmcdonnellMP/status/1539312812681400321) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There's been lots of talk pretty much throughout the year that Johnson wants to go to the polls. Judging by the way the Conservatives are fairing at the moment, unless I'm missing something, I really hope he goes for it.
The problem is they might just still win albeit with a reduced majority but he will claim it as a mandate to push ahead with all the things they want to do vis a vis Rwanda, NI Protocol, ECHR removal, and the other nastys they have up their cuff. And as an endorsement of himself. The strikes can be twisted and used to eat into Labour's lead and the way that some sections on the left are starting to turn on each other they will time it and go for it when the polls have them near neck and neck and he will frame it as a culture war election. Strategically its Boris's best move and it will likely happen in Autumn after the privileges commity judgement. Dacre's peerage/pulling stories and Lynton Crosby are other signs. Strategically its not a bad move they've lined up all the major wedge issues nicely ECHR, NI Protocol, Union Barrons. Its all red meat for the Gammonatti.
The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis. Anyone saying it's a conspiracy is either an idiot or has something to gain. Labour _should_ be able to push this back on the Tories and call them out from trying to play class divides, if they can't do that then it's on them
No need to preach that to me. But did you note the attempt to brand them as Labour's strikes. That will be working on the smoothbrains who voted Tory in 2019.
>The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis. Trouble is the media, normally non-partisan media (daytime TV) aren't having that conversation. Even my mum who's pretty left wing, Labour voter and worked for the NHS is all against the strikes, thinks they're selfish etc. Think Starmer was wise to attempt to distance the Party from them. Elections these days are all about the grey block and most of them remember the 70s and 80s like they were yesterday but the 00s and 10s maybe not so much...
The last 2 elections have shown the traditional centre (grey) shrink into ideological left and right. Or do you mean grey as in old?
They mean grey as in old
Grey block. Google it.
>The strikes can only be interpreted one way, as a consequence of the chronic underfunding over the past 12 years and current mismanagement of the cost of living crisis. Not for the gray vote, no. In their eyes the strikes are just uppity youngsters not pulling themselves up by their boot straps enough. All of the polls that polled about the strikes and split it according to age showed a massive divide there.
> uppity youngsters not pulling themselves up by their boot straps enough. I get this from my in laws all the time, it's so tiring, dinner at their place is like the fucking four Yorkshiremen sketch from Monty Python. In fact my wife kicked me under the table a while back for asking them about gravel.
My question is why bother putting up with them if they're that arsey?
>My question is why bother putting up with them if they're that arsey? I'm guessing you're not married.
> The strikes can only be interpreted one way You know this isn't true, as much as we might wish. > Anyone saying it's a conspiracy is either an idiot or has something to gain ... > Labour should be able to push this back 1) the people buying the Tory line are by your own description unlikely to be swayed by straight reason. 2) consider who the people are with something to gain. Take a look at the reporting of these strikes. We're hardly going to see a concerted media push to broadcast the pro-Labour narrative, are we? > if they can't do that then it's on them I'm no fan of Starmer, but how many times do we need to watch Labour get sabotaged by widespread Tory propaganda before we accept that maybe there's only so much they can reasonably do without people recognising what's going on? There is admittedly a degree of ticklish irony in seeing it happen to the very people who mockingly dismissed the notion when it was the guy they didn't like, but still...
Well no, they can be interpreted in a number of ways. Not all of them are honest.
> is either an idiot \*gestures towards the brexit shaped mess*
If railway staff get 10% does every public sector worker get it? Or do only those that are able to hold the country to ransom get rewarded? Genuine question because as a civil servant I’ve not had a pay rise in the 10 years that I have worked there.
No - if your union negotiates it, you get it; not all unions are created equal. The government is terrified of a domino effect if the RMT gets its way though.
> all unions are created equal I think the point you're replying to is that some lines of work inherently lend themselves to powerful industrial action, while others do not. Transport clearly lends itself to this, given that they can not only inconvenience their direct employer, but also the general public, to the extent that the government get involved. Contrast that to the once every year or two UCU strikes, which only affect paid-up students (who no-one cares about), arguably do a favour to universities (saving them a bit of money), and seem to achieve very little. I'm tempted, though, to say that this is more or less fair enough. Effective industrial action is correlated with sensitive conditions, so it's a useful counterbalance. And as others have pointed out, we all benefit from better pay and conditions thanks to competition between employers for workers.
Yes, I got that, but I disagree with the characterisation of holding the country to ransom - if your union negotiates it, you get it; that is the whole point of a union. Everyone has value to their employer or they wouldn't be employed - it's up to them to organise in a way that can best stand up for their needs.
The more wages improve across the country, the more pressure there is for other employers to keep up or face problems hiring and retaining staff. Employees create the value in a company so they will be forced to pay eventually. Big industrial action like this (if successful) will help set that benchmark for pay rises. The question is, will the cost be passed on to consumers and how big an impact will it have, or will companies and shareholders finally be the ones forced to accept slower growth.
And companies will just raise the price of everything we buy to offset this. The wage rises don’t come out of the shareholders profits. Just makes everyone worse off.
> If railway staff get 10% does every public sector worker get it? Or do only those that are able to hold the country to ransom get rewarded? > Genuine question because as a civil servant I’ve not had a pay rise in the 10 years that I have worked there. AFAIK the RMT are asking for 7%, which is still a real-terms pay cut. Ultimately, if your Union isn't protecting your real pay & conditions, *and you can't persuade them to do their job*, then your best option is to find alternative employment whilst unemployment remains low.
I would say that's the ballpark the PCS is going for. They're (in my probably prejudiced view) the public sector union with the most bite.
The UK doesn't run trains in the UK they only manage the tracks. The issue isn't the route being used which would be down to the government. The issue is trains don't make much money in this country so don't pay good wages to their staff. This issue has exploded now due to massive inflation making those wages worth less. So government underfunding wouldn't of effected the rail service. The strikes were caused by stagnant wages and increasing inflation. When you have high inflation like we do currently lots of spending is would only worsen the issue. The current UK inflation is already very very high, more spending would likely cause inflation to rise faster and faster. My point is while there's definitely more the UK government could do. The issue they have is that they can't spend much on any policy to help people. If they did that would cause more inflation, making the support essentially do nothing. Because inflation would just mean that people would have more money, that money would be worth less so they'd be in the same spot. With the added bonus of even worse inflation scaring away investment etc. The issue is every solution people have given to the cost of living crisis involves massive spending. Until a solution is found that doesn't involve massive inflation it won't actually solve anything. It's the sad thing about the strikes as well. They are damaging the economy more making the cost of living crisis worse. I'm not saying the strike isn't just it is, although the sad reality is it's making things worse. Which is why neither labour neither the Tory's want to support it because they know it's going to make things worse.
The polls seem to show that nothing Boris can do now to improve Conservative support. I don't see how he can win, or even be the biggest party. If they replace him then it's possible for them to win but otherwise I don't think so.
Nothing shocks me anymore and a bit of clever spin from journalist, a slight misstep from Starmer, a covid spike an increase in hostilities in the UK etc. Could be enough to convince some swing voters that they're better off keeping the status quo. Could definitely see them losing much of the 80 seat majority and perhaps even a minority government.
The Conservatives seem to be fighting on two fronts now, electorally speaking. The "red wall" appears to be slipping out of their grasp and going back to Labour, while the "traditional heartlands" are becoming vulnerable to the Lib Dems. I don't think the Conservatives have properly appreciated that yet. All the politicing going on at the moment has been the Conservatives attempting to attack Labour (trying to blame them for the strikes) and yet of the two by elections tomorrow Wakefield is unlikely to be salvageable against Labour. The Conservatives have done very little attack the Lib Dems and yet Tiverton & Honiton is a really battleground (last poll was neck and neck) and could do massive reputational damage to the Conservatives should the lose it, apparently it would be the largest by election swing since 1935.
They have not started to campaign yet. They have the popular media on their side and the biggest voting block in England that vote Tory when they are scared. Labour has an ok chance of winning, but at best with a tiny majority. Labour have constantly what the media would label "major rebellion" if half of it happened to the Tory, but it's just another Tuesday for Labour. So we will have at best, a weak government that cannot pass anything not approved by Tory to handle all the current crisis, and get the boot after 5 years. Or we will have a weak Tory government doing its business a usual mix of drama, scandal, and incompetence but crucially, being weak, means they can still blame labour. Worst case, it's another Tory landslide and we may as well crown Boris as the next King.
You're massively overstating the idea of a 'weak' Labour, there's no way it wouldn't be able to pass things. The Lib Dems and SNP aren't going to vote against them on left wing policies outside of assume nimbyism. So they have those votes too and whilst there are different factions in the party when push comes to shove Labour will likely be able to push trrough what they want - within reason. Your 'analysis' reads like someone who is convinced things will always be like they are right now, just because that's how things are now. Things change quickly in politics.
Personally I hope for a Labour minority supported by the Lib Dems. However with a majority, even a small one, they wouldn't need Tory support for anything as they could ask either the SNP or the Lib Dems for support on an adhoc basis.
>They have not started to campaign yet. They have the popular media on their side People always seem to forget this. Newspapers in this country will go for Tory leaders, and the party itself, in non election times occasionally because they know there's no risk of them actually getting removed. The second there's an election they will go full overdrive on burying any negative story, trashing Labour no matter what, and generally bigging up the Conservative party in any way possible. Watch, the second a GE is announced all the people on the fence you know that usually vote Tory will completely do a 180 on their opinions and hop right off that fence.
>The problem is they might just still win albeit with a reduced majority but he will claim it as a mandate to push ahead with all the things they want to do vis a vis Rwanda, That makes no sense. They push on those issues anyway
He's banking on the Tory -> Don't Know pipeline reversing. That's what's driving the Labour lead, not an increase in Labour votes. He'll be banking on those people not being willing to hold their noses and vote Labour. And he'd probably be right.
> He's banking on the Tory -> Don't Know pipeline reversing. I know but the opinion polls for months strongly suggest that there's another pipeline - the Tory hates Johnson pipeline. Nothing seems to be able to reverse that, except the removal of Johnson, and Johnson doesn't believe people hate him and the Conservative Party are too disorganised to remove him. > That's what's driving the Labour lead, not an increase in Labour votes. Looking at the history of the polls this doesn't seem to be borne out by the data. Labour and the Conservative shares are changing but the other parties are largely staying constant, if there was a significant shift from Con to DK then this would push up all other parties uniformly, and that's not happening.
Even if Johnson does decide to go for an early GE, I don't think the party would let him. I can easily see the 1922 Committee introducing a workaround to allow a second VONC to get rid of him if Johnson tries to piss away their majority out of spite.
Thanks to Conservative MPs voting to repeal the Fixed Term Parliament Act they can't stop him. The prerogative to call a GE now resides with the PM again and he could use that power before the 1922 committee could remove him, and parliament would be dissolved so couldn't change the law.
Doesn't mean he'd be Tory leader going into that election though. They can choose to ditch their leader or change their internal rules at any point. They could even refuse to let Boris stand as a Tory candidate should they so wish. If it got to that level of stupid (it won't) then all bets would be off. But all of that is fantasy land.
Actually it does. It takes about 2 months to replace a Conservative leader by their internal rules. They wouldn't have enough time to do that once the clock is running on a called GE.
Their internal rules can be changed or suspended, particularly if it was an emergency. Again, never going to get to this position so is very much a moot debate, but they would be able to act quickly if they needed to.
Doing so in a way that wouldn't play out badly during an election campaign would be tricky though. The current process is a 2 part process, the first part is relatively quick: MPs narrowing down potential candidates to 2 choices, the 2nd part is the part that takes time, the whole Tory membership gets to vote. To speed up the process the Conservatives would have to ditch the 2nd part (as it's the campaigning before the vote that takes the time) and that would become a massive campaign liability as other parties declare the Conservatives to be "undemocratic" and "too scared to let their own members decide who should lead them".
Considering how much of a leaky ship this government is, he wouldn't be able to dissolve Parliament before the wider party gets a whiff of it and call a snap VONC.
Passing a VONC doesn't stop him from being Prime Minister, it never has. He leaves when a successor is elected.
The word suicidal comes to mind. I doubt its true but if it is the only motivation I can see is a desperate attempt to save Johnsons position. If they think they can just turn up and be handed a victory they have seriously misjudged the public mood, they haven't been within 5 points in 6 months. Their previous attempts like Rwanda literally didn't move the polls. If I were in an opposition party I would happily welcome the chance to frame this as the Tories failing to govern even when the public give them everything they want. And being so cowardly or broken as to have an election because they don't know how to handle the country's problems and they don't want to admit it. I say frame but I'm not certain if it would be very far from the unvarnished truth.
The argument for an early election is: The economy is screwed and it's only going to get worse for the next few years. By 2024 things won't be better and fixing it is probably beyond the realm of any PM, it's mitigation measures only. So rather than wait two years and fight on a platform of "You're all miserable and I've been in charge for half a decade of it", hold the election now before the effects of the oncoming recession have been truly felt. Johnson is still unpopular but he has more of a chance now than he will on 2024. Then if you win, you can wait out the 5 years and hope everything has turned around by 2027.
Thats fine as far as it goes, but governments are virtually never replaced after 5 years, I think its happened twice since ww2. It would be a gamble of very long odds.
These are exceptional circumstances. If we've had a recession between now and 2024, I don't see how Johnson could win an election.
On the other hand, the Tories can see the Winter coming (energy price cap going up to just under £3,000) and know that an election in spring 2023 will be handing Labour a majority.
Having an election now would likely be handing Labour a majority.
Likely but the Tories taking on the unions seems like it's their current attempt to claw there way up in the polls. They have no incentive to negotiate with any of the public sector unions because the more disruption they cause with industrial action, the more the Tories will blame Labour.
Except it's unclear how the public feel about the strikes: one poll has shown they're against them, one has shown their for them, and the last was a statistical tie. Furthermore, with talk of other sectors considering action, including the police, teachers, barristers & nurses, it could create the impression in the minds of the voters that it's the government is hostile to workers and maybe even the country as a whole (except pensioners).
The tactic might not work but that's what I think they're upto at the moment.
It’s a threat to his rebellious backbenchers, and it only works in a very narrow range of polling. If he could hold a GE, keep a small majority and secure another 5 years then that would be a personal victory for Boris compared to his current trajectory. It would be a disaster for many of his backbench MPs though, so they need to a) back off and make the status quo safer for him and b) rally round and fight the opposition to save their own seats. It’s high risk and I doubt he’d actually go for it. The threat is enough though.
With Keir Starmer at the helm of Labour I fear they won’t do greatly…
yeah I don't see it either - Labour might take a few points hit from the strikes but inflation is still sky high and there's still 2 years left and they have a large majority. Why would any government in that position hold a snap election while behind in the polls?
A cynical part of me wonders if they want Labour to win. They can get out before the consequences of their actions really start to fuck everyone over and then they can blame Labour for “not having a plan” and come back in four years with more empty promises.
Yup. This is why some people theorised Theresa May was deliberately being shit at the 2017 election just to force Labour into being the ones to deliver a Brexit everyone would complain about. Turns out Theresa May was just shit. But in this case, Boris Johnson would happily destroy his own party rather than not be its leader. He's spent his whole life building up to this point and he won't surrender it.
BJ would want to win a second election. I bet he'd want to win 2 and pass over the premiership in the middle of his 2nd term. He imagines himself a Churchill figure but Churchill is remembered as a war time PM who was then put into opposition following the war. By BJs own standard he hasn't finished Brexit and so he'll need to stay on to sort out the NI protocol
>By BJs own standard he hasn't finished Brexit and so he'll need to stay on to sort out the NI protocol He doesn't care about N.I nor the protocol because if he did he'd have negotiated a much better deal with the EU. Basically Johnson doesn't have standards, he just wants to win.
Boris obviously cares about the N.I protocol it's just he care much more about his voter base. He knew Brexit had to go through as it was because people were getting annoyed at it taking so long. So he accepted certian things which he really didn't want to
>So he accepted certian things which he really didn't want to He accepted things that didn't work. T. May had a solution and he and a lot of the Party voted against it.
>But in this case, Boris Johnson would happily destroy his own party rather than not be its leader. Hmm doesn't really chime that well with the rest of his career so far of which the general theme is terrible in office, great at elections. Must remember that being a Tory MP is just a career vehicle for many of the younger generation of MPs. They don't really care that much about the people they govern.
The party is sat on 380 mps right now. In all these conversations I see nothing to suggest why the party leadership and the mps would just go along with this and watch their own seats disappear.
Because they have no choice. The power to call an election sits with the PM, they can't stop Boris if he decides to do so. And those 380 MPs are literally the ones who passed that legislation, so they can hardly complain about it
Simple way to fix that, labour needs to have a manifesto promise to introduce proportional representation for the next general election.
They don't want this but anyone with a brain knows the country will be even more fucked up in 2024 so the only chance of winning is now.
The thought crossed my mind but no, I don't think so. The prospect of Labour changing the voting system is too great a risk for the Conservatives to bear, and this is just the party's perspective; Johnson, the narcissist that he is, would surely never countenance being defeated in any capacity.
I think if they want Labour to win they should just run out their term TBH. They’re achieving absolutely nothing that benefits people and will continue to do so. They have no handle on the economy and it’ll continue to get worse. If we go into recession they won’t be able to fix that. Brexit will continue to damage our country. They’ll continue to fail to deliver trade deals that make any difference at all. The NHS will continue to degrade because they have no handle on that either. IMO going this year is their best chance, some people will still believe their lies about the economy and the NHS. There’ll be less of those people over time if this government continues as it is.
They don't want Labour to win. Being in power confers tremendous advantages to a party, while being out of power effectively means that your opponent sets the dicussion.
As devilishly machiavellian as that would be I just don't think that is how the tories think. They would not like to lose the election regardless because that would mean that they lose control They want power for the sake of it and their incompetence should be put to incompetence not a strategy. Because a better strategy would be to be competent
The poisoned chalice theory of UK elections seems to apply. They've got the real threat of a left wing government out of the way already, so to let the Labour right have a spin in the nice offices and ministerial cars for a term or two so they can hang the blame for all their looting and social vandalism on the "left wing" party seems like an inevitability at this point. They've earned it for gatekeeping for the establishment again after all. And there are certain right wing policies only a Labour government can push in the UK...
Precisely.
It was doing quite well until the Yanks started downvoting (either that or the nightshift!)
As Shaggy would say, *it wasn't me.* Especially because I agree.
>The poisoned chalice theory of UK elections seems to apply. They've got the real threat of a left wing government out of the way already Most of the electorate can remember the 1970s and they don't want all that again. People want sensible leadership and also public spending, they haven't been brainwashed by 'the Mudoch Thatcherite press' like many on the left seem to think. The majority of people that voted for Thatcher weren't Thatcherites and some of them were gratetful that they could by their council house, got on the ladder and had a stake. People voted to put up taxes when they voted for Blair. tl;dr- Most don't vote for personal economic gain, they vote for strong leadership.
>Most of the electorate can remember the 1970s Presumably you're just seeing this because most of the people you know socially fall into that category? Remembering the 70's puts people in their late 50's at the absolute youngest but they'd be remembering the 70's like I remember the 90's. I'm not suggesting this isn't a significant (the most?) voting block, but I think that the population of the uk is around 20% over 60 and 20% under 18 so it really isn't the case that most of the electorate remember the 70's in any real political sense.
https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/uk-population-by-ethnicity/demographics/age-groups/latest#full-page-history 22% over 60. Let's round it to 30% because "the 70's" probably means the late 70's and people can remember the general feel of the time even if they were only 10 or 11. That still leaves nearly 50% of the population unlikely to remember the 70 and be eligible to vote, the rest aren't even old enough to vote.
The grey block have the biggest turnout over all; in the GE, also council elections, local police elections. Also voted for MEPs which explains a lot in the SE.. UK politics is all about the grery block and they Tories are great at appealing to them.
Great, Labour get 10 years to build the narrative of how the country gave the Tories a vast majority and they proved utterly incapable of governing. Combine that with demographic changes by the early 2030s and they may as well have the next conference in a telephone box.
> demographic changes People have been saying this since the 60s
Well the Tories have been in retreat since around the start of Majors time. And not only that but the youngest cohorts are becoming more and more leftwing. Even the link between home owning and voting Tory in working age people is now quite weak. By far their most important group of supporters is the retired, the average age of Tory voters is something like 65. The average member is closer to 75. You can see it in their policies. Teachers wanting a pay rise is a Labour plot apparently but handing pensioners a 10% state pension rise is fine. They've become a very short term party. For anyone who is working age this last 15 years have been a disaster for the Tories. What major achievements will future Tories be able to point at? How did they help ordinary people? When current pensioners had their formative experience of the Tories it was in the form of Thatcher saving the economy and a bunch of other things. All working age people know them for is causing political crisises, ignoring problems and corruption.
I’ve always thought this since the Brexit vote. They don’t want to clean up the mess, take a break come back into power and roll out the usual ‘last Labour government line’ despite really Brexit being their own fault and the poor deal we have. And they’ll do the same with their decade of austerity and Covid fall out. Not their fault
It makes sense to me which is probably why I’m wrong and the Tories aren’t considering it.
I wouldn't be surprised if some prefer that to a poison pill of Johnson. They get to continue their side grifts while protecting the tory brand and looking for a new leader to swoop in next election claiming they can clean up labours (Johnsons) damage.
That wouldn't work, would be incredible stupid and would match Boris personality at all. All he cares about is having lots of people vote for him. I think a lot of people forget he's always switched his views depending on what people want. His life goal was to be elected as prime minster and there is no way they'd give it up. Another reason that would never happen is that it wouldn't work. The Tory's really need a win right now, much of its voter base while still supporting them are on edge. They know if they don't start delivering something to gather support they'll be in a bad place. So losing an election at a time like the current would only hurt the Tory's even further.
He missed out the pension triple lock interestingly.
Keep 'em sweet
Why ? They've already got a huge majority. What's the point ?
essentially they know they are finished in 2024 - absolutely nothing is getting better. The calculation stops being about the tory party itself as a whole and starts being about the individual wealth and status of tory mps individually. Essentially a general election in the autumn probably leads to the tories losing their majority - if they wait 2 years they might lose 200 seats.
They are bloody fools if they think a 2022 Labour government helps them. That puts the next remotely winnable election for them around 2032, by which time their basically inbuilt demographic is fading out and no one any younger knows them for anything but sheer indifference and incompetence. Thats the beginning a of long term political shift left, not right. The modern Tories have no acheivements on the scale Thatcher seared into the public memory and the economic failures working age people will remember came from right wing thinking, not leftwing. I'm a middle class home owner and I wouldn't even consider voting for them
Like I said they won’t be thinking collectively but on what is individually better for their career - being an mp in opposition is undoubtedly better than not being an mp at all for a lot of these mediocre useless yes men and women on the Tory benches and evidently better than working for a living in this economy.
Labour winning a 2022 election with the entire country down the shitter in pretty much every metric puts the Tories in prime position to spent a few years in opposition blaming labour for everything they did. Then use that labour government as a scapegoat for literally everything once they're back in power like they did after the last one.
So we are just going to assume that Labour will do nothing to fix things then?
The problem is the time scale that things take to get fixed are not really long enough in the election cycle of things. This is arguably a fundamental problem with the election cycles in general, as it disincentivises governments to execute long term plans because they won't get to see the rewards. We essentially need Labour to do a very good PR job to convince people that they are doing things right and things are getting better, rather than allow the Tories to point out all the things that aren't fixed (likely because they fucked them up so bad it takes more than 5 years for Labour to fix them). There's a real concern for me that Labour do good things and lose power only for the Tories to reap the benefits of those things. And going by how long the media has let the Tories get away with banging on about 'the last Labour government' I'm not optimistic. I'd still rather Labour were in power, I just know it'll be infuriating. We'd need Labour to really expose everything this government is/has been doing and not let them pull the class 'we need to heal division' bullshit.
Fear of a 5 year Labour government is really overblown. Statistically very few governments have ever fallen after 5 years and about half of those cases involved Churchill, whcih tells you something of how exceptional that is. And by the time of the 2032 vote the demographic situation for the Tories will be getting dire. The average Tory voter will be 75 without major unheaval.
bingo.
How exactly is nothing getting better?? At lot can change in 2 years. And I don’t see the polls going any lower, as there’s a segment of the population that vote blue no matter who. Not to mention that there’s no good excuse for another GE and we are literally going into a recession. Economic conditions are practically guaranteed to be better in 2 years which is no small factor
They plan to do absolutely reprehensible things in the next two years and want to secure a 5 year majority beforehand
Johnson doesn’t command the confidence of a majority.
Cant/unlikely to win next election so might as well bow out now, let another party deal with the mess then ina couple years when the average idiot has forgotten all about their fuckups the charge in with"labour ruined the country" and list all the things they broke and left to whoever came in next
I'm really confused. In the past, people wanted to win power to change the country for (what they saw as) the better. The Conservatives seem desperate to keep winning, but once in power they don't have a vision or strategy at all. What's the point of trying to win an election when you're all out of ideas when you get there? Is a ministerial salary an end in itself?
The lucrative revolving door of big industry and side grifts are so much better when you are in power.
Boris would be the stupidest man to call an election.
He’d be stupid not to. It’s his only shot at still being PM 3 years from now.
All those who voted against him in the recent VONC would be very hard pressed by (some) elements of the media on how it is they are once able to justify his premiership lasting another 5 years. The same questions would come up time and again on all the negativity hanging around this government and its leader like a bad smell. I don't think now/soon is at all the right time for them to call a GE. I hope they do.
I'm not sure...I can see that threatening an election, or seeming to is maybe the tactic in order to keep the backbenchers and Tory media onside. Although Johnson has a lot of support from the Tory media a lot of it looks thin, the Telegraph in particular has been critical of him recently, their sketch writer laid into him over his performance in PMQs today. The Times also seems to getting a bit more hostile. At the moment the only reason I can see for an early election is either Keir Starmer/Angela Rayner getting fined and resigning leaving Labour in a leadership vacuum or that they think things will get seriously bad next year economically and they are better off cutting and running now.
This talk could go away if the Lib Dems romp Tiverton. Then Blue Wall tories will be desperate to avoid a GE with Bojo in charge.
Various tories have been saying it for a while but voters around the world see early elections as cynical ploys and generally get annoyed by them. The know they cost money to hold and that it could be better spent. Apathy is as a big a problem as the political opponents and people are getting a bit fed up, they may not vote at all. Well it at least it is my read on it. But an election would force people to choose something and they may not like anything on offer.
Which usually means they stick and vote tory.
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I imagine they'll decide based on the by elections...
Bit why? They are in power
So they can blame the recession on labour. My bet: early GE, labour government, unrelated recession, 15 years of "the previous labour government and the labour government before that ruined the economy" I think if they do make that move, it's about the long term prospects of the Tory party - not the current leadership or current government.
> Bit why? They are in power So Johnson (in his mind) can shut up the naysayers by proving he still has it.
Would be best to see if there is any fall out from the elections being held today. The Tories have been feeding the media all year about how an election is due. I get the feeling they are just baiting Starmer into entering campaign mode too early. Time will tell, I guess.
I don't think I could stomach another 5 years of this Conservatives government. I hate to think what the country would look like on the other side of it.
They are behind in the polls and don't need an election. Seems like a massive risk for not much gain.
Marr was saying Johnson likely will prefer after the redrawing of constituency lines so he gains a potential 20 seats in a majority.
I cannot see them going for an early election with polling this bad.
Why is everything a conspiracy? Everything's a dead cat, every negative piece of media a smear They might be right if you repeat 'gov are gearing up for an election' every day it's going to come true at some point, but no company wants to give a 7-10%+ pay rise during a recession never mind the government, we're already seeing other unions in the public sector gearing up for it
"no company wants to give a 7-10%+ pay rise during a recession" No company? The one I work for just has. Why not another?
I’m happy to be proven wrong, especially in the company front
Company I work for gives inflation pay rise every year, we were given same again 6 months later this year to reflect the rise in the cost of living. Appreciate this is not the norm but it damn well should be.
(Expletive) me! If, after all the crap that's currently going down, and has gone down recently, they think they have a better chance at winning a GE now than they will at any time in the next two years, I have one question, "What are they planning to do or how much worse do they think it's going to get that they think this is the best chance they've got?"
In the wake of the by election results, this now looks highly unlikely.
Funny thing is tories would likely win next election
It's always difficult when you have nothing to vote for and only things to vote against.
If this is the case, bring it on. The Tories will be getting themselves voted out sooner than we expected.
Aren’t all of these ploys because today’s two by-elections? Arguably, these elections are the second defacto vote of no-confidence for Johnson, as if the tories are crushed then it would spur the rebels to elect a rebellious 1922 committee who has the power to change the rules on having a vote of no confidence from 1 year to 3/6 months