When are the UK elections?

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
21,137
16,347
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8th of June 2017.

In the hands of a decent opposition leader, a win would be pretty much a sure thing. However, the UK has a number of political problems:

1 - Jeremy Corbyn (leader of the Labour party, the largest opposition party). I respect the guy as a principled man (something that modern politics really needs), and his principles are respectable IMO, however he hasn't really shown any signs of leadership nor does he have the support or passion of Labour MPs. IMO they're almost hoping that he will crash and burn in this election so their (second or third?) attempt to get rid of him will finally succeed. He has the support of the unions and the rank and file Labour party members, he's won two leadership contests in succession.

2 - The SNP. Scotland used to be a Labour (and Liberal Democrat I think) heartland, but since the 2015 election the Scottish National Party (NB: these guys are not far right despite their name, they're largely lefties who believe in an independent Scotland) swept almost all the MP seats for Scotland. So therefore the SNP have a load of UK Parliament seats but they're seemingly only interested in Scottish affairs, which means that for any issues that don't explicitly affect Scotland, a large portion of Parliament is basically neutered against a Conservative majority. AFAIK the SNP do not field any candidates in any other part of the UK besides Scotland. I don't see any reason why the SNP's share should change in this election since they're still hoping for another independence vote once Brexit has really happened.

3 - The Liberal Democrats: They had been a third-place party with a steadily increasing MP count over the decades, but In the 2015 elections they got ripped a new one by the electorate. IMO the general consensus was that because they formed a coalition with the Conservatives in the 2010 election and were therefore partially culpable for allowing things like the rise in university student fees (something they had campaigned against for the election). Now they have something like 8 seats. They seem an unlikely possibility to come out with a majority. Their current leader has said that he would consider another coalition with the Conservatives this time around, which IMO signs the Libdem death warrant.

4 - Brexit. This is a major point on which opposing parties could rip the Conservatives a new one, but only the Libdems seem particularly willing to take them on with this point. Basically every point that Brexit was fought on was straight-up BS. Jeremy Corbyn seemingly did little during the referendum, and is acting pretty ambivalent about the whole thing. The lunacy of this situation reminds me of the second dossier regarding Iraq II, except it's worse than that since the lies all came out before Article 50 (the document declaring our intent to leave the EU) was signed, yet we're going ahead anyway. It's like finding out you've been scammed then giving your credit card number to the scammer anyway.

Another thing that I really don't understand is that surely the opposition parties should be hammering the Conservatives for all the moon-on-a-stick promises they've been throwing about (both to do with Brexit and their new election campaign promises) and the fact that these promises are pretty much the opposite of what they've delivered over 7 years. The NHS is in a critical funding state and the Conservative government is trying to sell it off bit by bit and making it so that doctors and nurses don't get paid for working overtime. Every austerity cut (under the guise of making a government live within its means) has only been taking away from the poor.

The media is largely right wing here, and while I would say that the BBC aren't inherently right-wing, they are eager not to portray the government in a consistently poor light. We've got our fare share of idiotic news outlets akin to Fox News, such as the Daily Mail, The Sun and The Express, and they're all telling the people that Brexit is the best thing since sliced bread.

I think the absolute best case scenario I could plausibly hope for will be some multi-way coalition government with the Conservatives in opposition, but unless something major happens during the campaign, I'd say the chance of that is 10-20%.

If I didn't care about the consequences, I'd hope that the Conservatives will win so that they can see the shitshow that is Brexit to the very end and then be obliterated by the fallout for decades to come.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
21,137
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So BREXIT is most likely gonna happen then?

Based on past experience, I'd say no. Based on the full-derp that the Conservative party has been exhibiting since the referendum, I'd say 90% yes.

My reasoning is that in the recent past (more than once between 2010-2017), the government went to the EU and said "guys, we need you to throw us a bone to feed our people so we look all tough and powerful". Every time the answer was basically no, except for a couple of scraps that literally no-one in the UK puts any stock in whatsoever. The EU held all the cards in any case and the UK government had little to bargain with. Furthermore, the UK government wasn't in the habit of doing anything particularly crazy like threatening to leave for the obvious reasons being that we have a lot more to lose from leaving than to gain and the party would eat itself alive for doing something like that without some kind of mandate.

So, the referendum was announced as promised (a bone that David Cameron threw the electorate in the 2015 election because he thought he wouldn't have to honour it as he expected another coalition government - instead the conservatives won an effective majority in that election), and the government played both sides of the fence in that referendum (though really their remain campaign was little more than the character Fiver out of Watership Down saying "we're all in a mist! I have a funny feeling in my toe if we leave the EU!": Yet another thing the opposing parties should flay them alive for, for lacking any kind of grit or principle that they can't even get their party to back one side), and brexit won.

So now the conservatives feel they have some kind of mandate, but what does this mean? Does it alter anything about the UK's bargaining position, apart from giving them a 'get out of jail free' card as far as the UK populace is officially concerned if they want to go full-derp and go through with what they've threatened to do and consider leaving the negotiations with no deal whatsoever for trade and everything else from the EU? In my opinion, no.

In a sane world, they would have come to the same conclusion, and furthermore concluded if they went full-derp then the UK public would want them flayed alive for destroying at least half of our economy; the EU takes 55% of our exports. There's no great frontier for us to explore new options and trading partners; we don't have a great manufacturing centre or a corner on any particular substantive market. Our finance sector is envied by various EU countries, and since our finance sector will want to continue to trade with the EU, they can easily move the market of pure maths basically anywhere they like; various financial institutions are already planning to leave the UK once Brexit occurs.

I say "in a sane world", because just like Trump supporters, I have literally never encountered a brexiteer who came out with a coherent idea of what they expect from brexit and why that happens to actually tally up with the available evidence. The closest I encountered to something coherent was based on an assumption that the EU is imminently about to die, which of course there's little evidence for, but at least the rest of his logic was sound. Most brexiteers are acting exactly like Trump supporters, shouting "get over it" and ignoring anything that criticises their thinking, gleefully riding a roller coaster (one supporter I've encountered has likened it to that in a positive way) whose construction isn't complete yet, and won't be complete by the time their car flies off the end of the tracks. I honestly think that if Brexit goes as badly as it looks like it will, most Brexiteers will blame the EU for not giving us everything we want in the negotiations while we give nothing in return.

For me personally, the long-term has some pretty scary uncertainties: I'm on the cusp of signing up for a mortgage because I'm old enough that it's either that or rent for the rest of my life, my wife is German and there's a lot of uncertainty over whether she will be allowed to stay when Brexit occurs, and then there's the economy - if it gets fucked as badly as it looks like it might, then we'll likely have another recession, and during the last one my business was close to going under.
 
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KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
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Based on past experience, I'd say no. Based on the full-derp that the Conservative party has been exhibiting since the referendum, I'd say 90% yes.

My reasoning is that in the recent past (more than once between 2010-2017), the government went to the EU and said "guys, we need you to throw us a bone to feed our people so we look all tough and powerful". Every time the answer was basically no, except for a couple of scraps that literally no-one in the UK puts any stock in whatsoever. The EU held all the cards in any case and the UK government had little to bargain with. Furthermore, the UK government wasn't in the habit of doing anything particularly crazy like threatening to leave for the obvious reasons being that we have a lot more to lose from leaving than to gain and the party would eat itself alive for doing something like that without some kind of mandate.

So, the referendum was announced as promised (a bone that David Cameron threw the electorate in the 2015 election because he thought he wouldn't have to honour it as he expected another coalition government - instead the conservatives won an effective majority in that election), and the government played both sides of the fence in that referendum (though really their remain campaign was little more than the character Fiver out of Watership Down saying "we're all in a mist! I have a funny feeling in my toe if we leave the EU!": Yet another thing the opposing parties should flay them alive for, for lacking any kind of grit or principle that they can't even get their party to back one side), and brexit won.

So now the conservatives feel they have some kind of mandate, but what does this mean? Does it alter anything about the UK's bargaining position, apart from giving them a 'get out of jail free' card as far as the UK populace is officially concerned if they want to go full-derp and go through with what they've threatened to do and consider leaving the negotiations with no deal whatsoever for trade and everything else from the EU? In my opinion, no.

In a sane world, they would have come to the same conclusion, and furthermore concluded if they went full-derp then the UK public would want them flayed alive for destroying at least half of our economy; the EU takes 55% of our exports. There's no great frontier for us to explore new options and trading partners; we don't have a great manufacturing centre or a corner on any particular substantive market. Our finance sector is envied by various EU countries, and since our finance sector will want to continue to trade with the EU, they can easily move the market of pure maths basically anywhere they like; various financial institutions are already planning to leave the UK once Brexit occurs.

I say "in a sane world", because just like Trump supporters, I have literally never encountered a brexiteer who came out with a coherent idea of what they expect from brexit and why that happens to actually tally up with the available evidence. The closest I encountered to something coherent was based on an assumption that the EU is imminently about to die, which of course there's little evidence for, but at least the rest of his logic was sound. Most brexiteers are acting exactly like Trump supporters, shouting "get over it" and ignoring anything that criticises their thinking, gleefully riding a roller coaster (one supporter I've encountered has likened it to that in a positive way) whose construction isn't complete yet, and won't be complete by the time their car flies off the end of the tracks. I honestly think that if Brexit goes as badly as it looks like it will, most Brexiteers will blame the EU for not giving us everything we want in the negotiations while we give nothing in return.

For me personally, the long-term has some pretty scary uncertainties: I'm on the cusp of signing up for a mortgage because I'm old enough that it's either that or rent for the rest of my life, my wife is German and there's a lot of uncertainty over whether she will be allowed to stay when Brexit occurs, and then there's the economy - if it gets fucked as badly as it looks like it might, then we'll likely have another recession, and during the last one my business was close to going under.
Very informative, thank you.
 

K1052

Elite Member
Aug 21, 2003
53,004
47,063
136
For me personally, the long-term has some pretty scary uncertainties: I'm on the cusp of signing up for a mortgage because I'm old enough that it's either that or rent for the rest of my life, my wife is German and there's a lot of uncertainty over whether she will be allowed to stay when Brexit occurs, and then there's the economy - if it gets fucked as badly as it looks like it might, then we'll likely have another recession, and during the last one my business was close to going under.

Consider moving to Germany and buying a house there?

In your place the UK government would not be giving me the slightest bit of comfort that Brexit will be well managed or that the EU is in a mood to be accommodating. Intervening political events seem to have had the effect of further strengthening the EU's resolve. Our idiot president will probably be the best thing to happen to EU unity in decades.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
21,137
16,347
136
Consider moving to Germany and buying a house there?

In your place the UK government would not be giving me the slightest bit of comfort that Brexit will be well managed or that the EU is in a mood to be accommodating. Intervening political events seem to have had the effect of further strengthening the EU's resolve. Our idiot president will probably be the best thing to happen to EU unity in decades.

Economically, Germany does sound like the better bet in general, though my wife would very likely have to retrain and I would need to abandon my business. I'd be in a better position if mandatory German education didn't include a practical grasp of English (ie. if my native grasp of English was to my general advantage in Germany), but as it is my German sucks. I am improving it, but my learning tends to take the back seat to whatever else is going on in my life. I would also need to be sure about coverage for my chronic illness (which AFAIK sounds reasonable at a glance in Germany, though perhaps different rules apply to immigrants), which was the main reason why I took up self-employment in the first place, and IMO my grasp of German to do the same business would need to be very fluent to allow me to give nuanced and targeted advice.

What I am doing as a fallback option is applying for dual citizenship by right of my mother's birthplace which is an EU country.