eastrunner

France and Germany are having elections, so may as well


May to seek snap election for 8 June - BBC News


ER

dominoman

Golly!

Well it's a gamble for Theresa May but I'm sure it'll pay off. Labour will lose plenty of seats, and with a bit of luck the SNP will lose a few in Scotland too.

It certainly helps Brexit negotiations if there is a decent majority.

Exciting times.

eastrunner

@dominoman...hope your right........I have a crap record of calling elections based on opinion polls etc... so I will not make any punts to not jinx the result

Meow

No gamble. May wouldn't have called it if she didn't think it was a shoe in.

Sadly, the opposition is in pieces and that's bad for the country overall. Politics needs checks and balances.

Miss Ann Thrope

I agree to a point (though shouldn't that be shoo-in? ).

However, voters can sometimes react unexpectedly if they feel they are being manipulated. And this is a very cynical calculation from the PM who has consistently said no election was needed. Of course the Tories will romp home but there will be a few twists along the way. At least hopefully this will hasten the departure of the Corbynistas and Momentum and allow Labour to rebuild so they can lead a progressive government back to power in the early 2020s to pick up the pieces of the post-Brexit mess.

I don't follow the argument about how this election helps Brexit negotiations in any way and I would like to understand the logic of that view. Certainly the outcome will make no difference to the EU with whom the UK government is supposed to be negotiating. The rest is all silly internal party politics. Despite the relentless brain-dead cheer-leading of the right-wing media in the UK, the UK government approach to the Brexit negotiations so far has been a shocking shambles with contradictory positions from blustering ministers and pointlessly provocative statements which make it harder for the UK to achieve a sensible result. You'd almost think they'd blundered into this accidentally without having a real clue where they were going or what they were doing...

DXBtoDOH

Leaving aside the bitterness that only shows the deep state of denial you live in regarding the institutional failures of 'progressive parties' of the past decades and the mess they left behind, and the changing realities of the world and politics (how can the UK government's approach to the Brexit negotiations be called a shocking shambles when they haven't even begun the negotiations? - a large majority rather than a razor thin majority makes May appear much stronger during the negotiations, especially as it was a majority built in part by supporting her vision for Brexit.

If she only had a very small majority and was dependent on winning support from the left parties, the EU could be tempted to offer piss-poor deals in the hopes that Parliament would reject it and force a cancellation of Brexit, or acceptance of a Brexit so very light that it's meaningless. A strong majority sends signs to the EU that Britain is serious about the withdrawal and is also serious about playing its cards to its advantage and also quite serious about its abilities to walk away with no deal, which is just as damaging to the EU as it would be to the UK.

In other words, a large majority is a solid ****** you to the EU because British voters would have rejected one last chance at undoing Brexit by delivering a large (and hopefully gigantic) majority to the pro-Brexit party.

LouisB

It could backfire but, yes she has timed this as optimum for success (for Tories) no matter how bad brexit looks in a year or two as the fixed term GE (and maybe new stronger Labour Party) surface, they will already be in power with a 'mandate'.

The GE is all about the tories, not the people, power grabbing games.

And what would have been good for the people and the UK is a decent opposition party to balance out the politics, after all the opinion poll was virtually 50/50.

Use you vote wisely, who really knows what the tories will deliver, it might be a pile of crap served up on an 'we'll you did vote for it' silver platter.

If brexit was really as good as people pretend, we'd have the news rammed in our faces daily and there would be no need for all this gaming.

DXBtoDOH

Dunno mate. The steady stream of bullish economic news coming out of the UK over the past year despite the forecasts of crashing economies should Britain vote to leave is about as good as it gets.

But it doesn't matter, does it? Nothing will ever satisfy hardcore remainers. We could have an amazing boom following Brexit but the Remainers would still be pissed off. And what the hardcore remainers don't get is that it doesn't matter if Brexit is a 'pile of shit,' because to the Brexiteers all that matters is Britain leaving the EU. Most of them already accept some economic consequences. It won't change the minds of the Leavers. Which is one reason why Madame May is polling so well.

LouisB

Which bullshit?

The tanked £
The Uk doing well since joining the EU?
The growth reports of the Eurozone?
The cost push driven inflation?

Or that

Turkey is joining the EU?
The invasion of immigrants?
The NHS millions 🤦‍♂️
And so on?

Bullshit, yes it is there but take the blinkers off to see it ALL

Meow

A play on her kitten heels...

(Nothing to do with typing in a hurry and not having slept properly for day. No, not at all.)

Miss Ann Thrope

More deluded nonsense. The EU authorities have all publicly accepted that Brexit is happening and that they are committed to negotiating a dignified split in good faith albeit in a manner that sees the UK honour its treaty commitments. The way the EU works precludes the kind of silly buggers game-playing about second guessing the course of UK parliamentary votes and procedures that seems to so obsess the right-wing commentariat including our own BE pompous Peregrine Worsthorne wannabees. It's all irrelevant.

May as Prime minister and her government already have full authority to negotiate. The state of affairs in the UK parliament makes no difference at all to the EU position in the negotiations. It's purely a domestic affair. The election result will change nothing in that respect (unless the Tories somehow contrive to lose). Even if every MP were a Tory it would not strengthen May's hand one iota: if you disagree, please just explain exactly how that would play out in the mechanics of the negotiations?

This is what bemuses me: the Brexit bombast has created such a fog of delusion that the blow-hards don't realise they won and are still fighting some non-existent war. That's the shambles: all this idiotic posturing is just poisoning the well for the process that will have to be followed.

Miss Ann Thrope

Good recovery - i'll buy it!

LouisB

😂

dominoman

Your name says it all really.

misanthrope - ˈmɪz(ə)nθrəʊp,
noun
a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society.

The poison is coming from the hardcore of bitter Trotskyists. You will never see the EU for what it is; a corrupt, undemocratic protectionist block imposing federalist ideals on members that never signed up for that.

I'm proud to be European, and proud to be British too.

Meow

Oh wow, I bet the OP had never even thought of the meaning of their user name and really needed that explanation.

Trotskyists? Let's assume you mean Trotyskites, as you don't seem to know what Trotskyism is. Not being a Tory supporter, or a hardcore Brexiter, or even someone who doesn't buy into the surrounding rhetoric, does not mean someone is a Trotskyite. There is a world of difference between that and being a hard core Communist.