A glimmer of hope
Oh look, the Tories may lose their majority.
Following a tumultuous, unpredictable snap election, Prime Minister Theresa May, a Conservative, appeared on the verge of losing her overall parliamentary majority, according to a national exit poll released just after voting ended on Thursday night.
If confirmed by the actual vote count, the result would be a major setback for Mrs. May. She called this election three years early, expecting to cruise to a smashing victory that would win her a mandate to see Britain through the long and difficult negotiations with the European Union about withdrawing from the bloc.
According to the exit poll, Mrs. May may have lost the extraordinary gamble she made in calling the election — and Britain may be headed for a hung Parliament, in which no party has a majority.
Labour is starting to feel more confident about the exit poll. It has just put out this statement, from a spokesperson.
If this poll turns out to be anywhere near accurate, it would be an extraordinary result. Labour would have come from a long way back to dash the hopes of a Tory landslide.
There’s never been such a turnaround in a course of a campaign. It looks like the Tories have been punished for taking the British people for granted.
Labour has run a positive and honest campaign – we haven’t engaged in smears or personal attacks.
Labour’s poll standing and Jeremy Corbyn’s standing surged as people were able to hear our message, policies and Jeremy directly.
Labour poured energy and resources into voter registration – and an extra 3 million people registered in the five weeks between the election being called and the deadline.
It looks like their voice has been heard.
Better than a complete Tory shellacking.
I can’t see how anybody could consider this to be a “glimmer of hope”. However much you hate the Tories, there really is nobody else in the frame with the smallest competence to govern the country. Corbyn favours revolutionary leaders (Castro, Mao, Che,…) no matter how much carnage they perpetrate. He also has no understanding of simple economics and seems to have little faith in democracy. I fear for us all if he becomes PM.
There is more than a glimmer of hope without May. I cannot see how anyone can seriously talk about Tory ‘competence’ after the disasters they have inflicted on British society and its economy in recent years.
It has been refreshing, seeing Labour remember that it started as the socialist party. And it is far more than just a glimmer of hope; regardless of who wins right now, Labour returning to its socialist roots provides the UK with a meaningful choice: mass privatisation and deregulation vs. strong unions and safety net policies.
@RossR, if I may say so, a typical response from a Tory, I suspect.
Mao and Castro fought to release their nations from colonialism. I can see why anyone of the left would admire their struggles while sometimes deploring their methods. Compared to the USofA and the UK, China under Mao and Cuba under Castro invaded very few foreign nations, overthrew very few nascent democracies, and failed to foster terrorism.
Even if the Tories cling on, they have been given a huge kick up the arse by a man who was unafraid to nail his colours to the mast and appeal to the better angels of the British. When even 2 terror attacks during the campaign could not save may, you should realise just how toxic the electorate found her.
Corbyn has given a glimpse of what the USofA could look like had Sanders been given a clear run.
I hope that Labour here in Oz can also dump a talking suit leader and find one with conviction and an ability to espouse true labor values.
Citation very much needed. And nor from one of Murdoch’s right wing rags, thank you very much.
The only things related to revolutionary leaders I can think of is Corbyn’s comments after Castro’s death when he said:
a) That’s a comment made in the wake of Castro’s death. Such comments from one political figure, about another, tend to concentrate on the positive achievements and gloss over the negative, b) are a long way from being an uncritical overall endorsement and c) are factual as far as they go.
The only reference I’ve come across to Mao is the stupid Murdoch press jumping on Corbyn riding a bike everywhere and calling it, “Mao style”.
Che Guevara? Not a hint.
I strongly suspect that Corbyn would be interested in these men who are all associated with ways that socialism has been used (and abused) in different parts of the world. What’s wrong with that? It’s often as useful to know what went wrong in a process as what went right. Not to mention, all these men are “huge figures of modern history”.
Anyway, as of 0548 BST (0448 GMT) the Brirish electorate seems to be pretty appreciative of Corbyn. His leadership of the labour party has led to a gain of 28 seats so far, while the Tories have lost 12. That’s a remarkable result that, I personally think, shows the UK is appreciative of some actual choice in their politics for the first time since Blair turned Labour into the “Tory-lite” party.
We’re heading for a hung parliament, with the SNP as the third largest party… though at this point it looks like a Conservative – Lib Dem coalition would have a majority. Compared to the political landscape a few weeks ago this is an amazing change.
May has gambled and lost. It seems to be a leadership style the conservatives favour at the moment.
In other news, polling agencies will be changing to the coin-flipping method of predicting election outcomes…
And the odious UKIP have taken a pasting. Which is nice.
AoS, that was my thought too, but the commentary from the political journalists I’ve seen suggests that their supporters who wanted Brexit have simply return d to their traditional parties. The judgement was about 1/3 to Conservative and 2/3 to Labour. That thought made me a little sad.
There was a glimmer of hope for a little while, now it has all but faded. The Tories don’t have a majority but Labour couldn’t manage a majority either, even if it teamed up with the SNP and the Lib Dems, so the most likely outcome is that the Tories form a minority government.
It would be nice to think that May will be forced to resign. A lot of people are predicting that, but I’m not sure it’s going to happen. The other likely candidates are hardly credible. I really hope we manage to get rid of her though, she’s a nightmare. The inexplicably cruel dementia tax, the breaking of encryption and therefore the internet (especially as she knows perfectly well it won’t do a thing to protect anyone from terrorism, the discarding human rights despite the fact that she knows it won’t do a thing to…. and so on and on and on.
The mess we’re in now – and it is a mess – is a direct consequence of the arrogance of the last two , Tory, Prime Ministers. They both used the electorate to try and resolve internal party dissent and now the rest of us are paying for it.
Over the course of the campaign, May became ever more strident, a Thatcher-lite, while Corbyn transformed himself, setting out a radical agenda, refusing to descend to the gutter and offering for the first time in years a real radical choice.
Ian:
Yeah, and that’s why Labour did unexpectedly well. May hinged the entire campaign on Brexit and Corbyn took the opportunity to throw in a bunch of things that would appeal to the more idealistic among us. Everyone laughed when the Labour manifesto was leaked, but it obviously appealed to a lot of people.
Steamshovelmama @4,
Ms. May is a bust (I never could understand what exactly she stood for… http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/09/world/uk-election-theresa-may-brexit-strategy-backfired/index.html) but RossR (@1) is probably right about Corbyn: https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/06/07/voting-for-jeremy-corbyn-isnt-just-dumb-its-dangerous/
(P.S., in case you’re unfamiliar with it, “Foreign Policy” is a wonkish magazine published by the liberal-leaning Washington Post)
May has done a deal with the DUP in order to form her minority government. Not a coalition or anything remotely formal, just a pinky swear that they’ll be awful together.
Hope looks like a speck on the horizon right now.
@Helene:
Nobody can understand what May stood for, which was surely part of her problem. But we certainly learned what she stood for after the recent terrorist attacks in London and Manchester and the terrifying policies she pledged as an idiotic knee-jerk reaction. She spoke about making everyone in the world less safe by breaking encryption. She spoke about creating new powers to imprison – without trial – people suspected of being connected to radical islamic groups. She was very open about saying that if human rights laws prevented her from doing terrible things to people, she’d get rid of those human rights laws rather than not do terrible things.
The CNN article you posted is astonishingly simplistic and uninformed. It’s not at all clear that brexit was the defining factor in this election and I’d argue otherwise. It was a lot more complicated than that.
As for the Corbyn URL, I can’t decide whether you’re endorsing or refuting it, because you seem to do both. The article certainly contains a lot of bullshit.
It’s largely irrelevant anyway. May remains, Corbyn out. I’m pleased it wasn’t the whitewash the Tories hoped for, but I’m not sure it means anything. I think May is the most dangerous PM we’ve ever had and we need to find a way to replace her.
latsot @13,
To be clear… had I a vote (I’m Canadian) it would have been for the particular MP, pertty much Labour. But definitely not one of Corbyn’s hardcore. https://obrienpolitics.com/2017/06/06/corbyns-history/amp/
@Helene:
Forgive me if I doubt your objectivity. The article you quote most recently begins:
You might want to do some actual research instead of picking the bullshit sources that say what you want them to say.
@latsot
No need to be forgiven; you have good reason to doubt my objectivity!
(Other things/groups/persons I’m not objective about: Isis, Hezbollah, Khamenei/Khomeini, Assad, Erdogan,Trump, Duerte, Putin, Le Pen, David Duke, The Daily Stomer – a neo-Nazi rag, they endorsed Corbyn!, I won’t provide a link…), &c
Helene:
Yeah, I was being polite. Won’t happen again.
@Helene
Good lord, that’s a partisan, uninformed and downright stupid article. It’s less informed and more hysterical than some of the things I’ve read in Murdoch’s rags over here.
As latsot said, getting your information from something that isn’t a “bullshit” source would be a good idea.
Look, Corbyn is an old fashioned pre-New Labour, non-Blairite socialist. Basically, what the labour party was full of until Tony Blair. That provided a much needed balance against the business oriented-interests of the Tories. They had their faults and their problems – they were as much in the pockets of the Unions as the Tories were (and are) in the pockets of big business, and that led to their downfall in the 90s. But that element of socialism that they brought into UK politics – that pushed through the NHS, that supported the BBC, that said that workers might even have some rights too, that we should actually behave with compassion to the unfortunate – is something that has been missing from British political debate for too long and our current social climate is showing the ill effects of too long (38 years!) under right wing governance (I include New Labour in this as they were in no way a left wing party).
Corbyn’s manifesto looks radical but it’s actually just what was business as usual for the old socialist-influenced Labour Party. Corbyn is an old fashioned conviction-politician, very different from the slick, media friendly members of our newly formed political class – and that’s one of the reasons the right wing press loathe him. He has nothing to offer them.
For the first time in 38 years the UK has had a democratic choice in a General Election. After all, it’s not a choice if both of your options are the same thing merely with different names. Given the gain of 28 seats, it looks very much like I’m far from alone in having missed that choice.
Steamshovelmama @18,
“Bullshit”? Well, de gustibus, etc.
I would have voted for Miliband (as MP and for his Labour), but no way in hell for Corbyn (as MP for Islington North)… though I probably would have voted for any non-SWP Labourite.
Yes, Helen, de gustibus indeed. And some people, alas, have no taste.
So, Helene. let me get this straight:
You weren’t eligible to vote in the UK election but if you were, you’d have voted for someone who wasn’t actually standing anyway based on a couple of articles written by publications known to spread lies.
Perhaps I won’t take your ill-informed, boring trolling seriously.
@21,
“articles written by publications known to spread lies”…?
Hmm, Mr. Trump I presume!
@22: and you reveal yourself fully. It’s not a surprise.
Bye.
The fact the elections resulted in a hung parliament tells us the UK has no real leaders. Corbyn is a paleo who surrounds himself with representatives of the ‘sharia-option’ and various other neo Far Right Islamists. He’s like those Iranian leftists circa 1977.
Theresa May takes herself to be the New Thatcher. Thatcher was the iron Lady. May just lacks irony.
There’ll be new elections shortly. In the meantime, let’s hope some of these leaders come up with an original idea, or two.
Ummm… what? You do realise the SWP is an actual political party, completely separate from both New Labour and old Labour, right? With very different priorities and policies? So… by definition any Labour politician is a non SWP politician?
Do you actually mean you would have voted for a New Labour politician? One of Blair’s group who, with the rise of the current political class – not a part of modern UK politics prior to then – turned themselves into a pale imitation of the Tory Party in order to grab votes away from the Tory hardliners?
Well, lots of people did. And one of the results of that is middle class working families having to use foodbanks, the growth of zero hours contracts, a whole generation of young people who can’t leave their parents because they can’t get a job that even pays for a bedsit (and these – the “boomerang generation” – are the ones who studied hard, worked hard, got A levels, went to red brick universities, got a good degree, came home and ended up working retail and living in their parent’s houses with very little hope of doing anything else), a right wing press that doesn’t even pretend to even handedness – witness the savaging Corbyn, and every other left winger, has had consistantly since he became Leader of the PLP, the growth of religion as a force within UK politics whereas at one point it was of no significance at all… do I have to go on?
Will Corbyn change anything? I don’t know. But after 38 years of government that places business interests ahead of human beings, society and the environment, I’m willing to give him a chance. Will he do better than May and her predecessors?
Well, it’s hard to see how he could do worse.
It gets worse…
Yeah, the glimmer of hope is gone.
May has announced she’s getting into bed with “friends and allies” from the DUP. God help us all.
I can only assume none of the other parties would touch her with a 10 foot barge pole.
For those who don’t know, the DUP is the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. They have 10 MPs (so I assume the Lib Dems (12 seats) told May to bugger off). They’re also one of the most extreme of the UK parties, opposing same-sex marriage and abortion. They’ve got a creationist, climate change denialist MP and were once headed by That Bastard(tm) Ian Paisley.
However, they are hardline anti-Europe so May will get what she wants there and sod the rest of it.
I’m going for a drink.
Ya, I’ve just been reading up on them. Dear god.
A sober take.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/06/the-punishment-of-theresa-may/529791/
And a fairly ignorant one. Reading it, I counted eight factual errors just off the top of my head.
The most entertaining was the one claiming the NHS figure was dropped “within weeks”. It was the same fucking morning. About three hours after the verdict came in. On national television. Whoops, that was a mistake!
And all that crap about Corbyn and “terrorists”. It’s the sort of thing that gets trotted out again and again by Murdoch’s press and similar – with not a single scrap of evidence to back it up. Except that Corbyn seems to actually understand that bombing a country back to the stone age doesn’t win you any friends, and that creating relationships with groups that hate you may be the first step to stopping them trying to blow you up. Oh, and disliking the actions of the state of Israel is not anti-semitic in and of itself. Having some sympathy with the Arab occupants of the region doesn’t mean you think Hamas are cool guys, even if you think opening a dialogue is a good idea.
Look at Northern Ireland. Eventually Britain had to talk to the IRA and when we finally gained some sort of (shaky) peace in the area, we had Sinn Fein leaders as part of the deal. Take Martin McGuinness, deputy first minister of NI for ten years. He was a member of the Provos, second in command of the Derry section. He was implicated in several terrorist acts, though not convicted until 1973. Noone who knows anything about McGuinness is in any doubt he was responsible for the planning and ordering, if not the actual execution, of many of the IRA terror attacks that killed over 3000 people during the Troubles. So, is it bad that Corbyn was willing to talk to Sinn Fein and McGuinness? Or was he just recognising that these terrorists had to be part of the peace solution? A conclusion with which everyone else eventually concurred.
And in a era when we are being told we must accept “austerity”, Corbyn is the only one pushing a manifesto that talks about putting money into services people care about. Like social care, like the NHS – that have been consistently underfunded, criticised, and farmed out to private management by all the right wing governments since Thatcher.
And that kind of thing, along with May embarrassing herself in Europe over Brexit, several times, may well be why the electorate are getting sick of the Tories. Nothing to do with the middle class “punishing May”. What does that even mean? Is there anyone who gets up on polling day and says, “That May’s a bit full of it. I’ll vote not-Conservative to make her feel personally bad.” Seems a bit unlikely to me. Surely it’s more, “I don’t like what the Conservatives are doing. I’m going to vote Party X because they sound like they might do more stuff that I agree with.”
Then there’s the people like me who said, “Fuck me, you mean I get to a choice that’s not right wing? A manifesto that actually talks about the NHS, about restoring social care, about the poor, the disadvantaged? Yes, I’ll give that a go, thanks.”
@30,
You’re welcome to Corbyn. Any “friend of Hezbollah” (do you really need links?) is no friend of mine.
Oh dear, he used the word “friends” in order to try to bring people to the negotiating table. How terrible.
In his own words:
This was the precise point I was making when I talked about the IRA. To broker a peace agreement in NI, we had to accept there would be people at the table who were guilty of heinous acts against innocent people. We accepted that in order to prevent further future atrocities that would kill more people. If Corbyn using the word “friends” to try to bring two sides together to talk is wrong, then we’re never, ever going to see the end to any sectarian conflict.
It’s a perfectly normal thing for a politician to do when he’s trying achieve a particular end. But in this case it was blown up by the press into somehow meaning that Corbyn was personally approving of Hezbollah and the idiot twitterati picked it up without any idea of the context. And people like you read Murdoch’s press and don’t bother to consider nuance or context. I mean, seriously, don’t you think it be a good idea if we could broker a peace deal in the Middle East? And do you think we can achieve that by a guy standing up in Parliament and saying, “I welcome these guys from Hezbollah whom I find perfectly disgusting examples of human beings but, hey, we need them to make a deal so we have to put up with them.”
No, you swallow your personal feelings, try to make them feel that they are amongst friends, that you are someone they can talk to and do business with. Once you have that relationship, then you can start working on a deal. But you won’t get a deal unless all the stakeholders feel they can trust you. If you are in that position, you do not have the luxury of righteous outrage.
Having said that, I have no doubt that part of the process of getting different stakeholders to trust you is learning about their situation and grievances. It’s perfectly possible to empathise with the factors that have motivated the formation of a terrorist group, without condoning their actions. In fact, I’d say it’s an essential thing to do. People don’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide to bomb a shopping centre for shits and giggles. It happens because they feel a deep grievance that, in their eyes, cannot be addressed in any other way. Bringing two sides together means having a go between – or a team of go betweens – who have started by listening to and understanding both sides. And that means seeing people who blow up other people as actual human beings. And, being willing to accord them public dignity and the status of public “friends” is all part of that process.
Yes, I see what you mean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Manchester_Arena_bombing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_2017_London_attack
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hezbollah_involvement_in_the_Syrian_Civil_War
Errr… not sure what point you’re trying to make here. You seem to have interpreted what I wrote as, “people don’t bomb other people,” which is… an interesting interpretation of, “People don’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide to bomb a shopping centre for shits and giggles.”
You’ve linked (and to Wikipedia for godsake!) to a series of terrorist acts. Are you suggesting that the people who carried out these acts woke up one morning and spontaneously thought, “Oooh, I know what would be fun today! I’ll go and kill a bunch of people!”
Do you think that the appalling acts carried out by terrorists are done for fun? Are you trying to say that the human beings who do these things do not feel they are justified? That they don’t have what they feel are valid reasons for doing what they do? It doesn’t matter whether you think they are justified – and that, again, is the point I was making about Corbyn. You can wallow in the luxury of your horror and righteous indignation at what are, undeniably, atrocities, and declare the perpetrators non-human, in need of vilification, and punishment, and nothing else, but that won’t stop the killing. But someone wallowing his distaste and reaching out to the communities and organisations involved in such acts just might.
Swallowing. Swallowing his distaste.
I swear the “s” was there when I previewed the comment…
Steamshovelmama, latsot, I find myself in strong agreement with you. While not in the U.K., our politics are much more strongly modelled on the UK than the USA (despite the best efforts of our National Party to use strategists linked to the Republican Party). Corban reminds me very much of Labour politicians from the 1970’s. As such he will have many of the faults and issues that those politicians did, but at the same time it has to be acknowledged that they were responsible for the creation of institutions and social advancement that no right-ing government has ever achieved.
New Labour was a terrible failure, as ultimately could be said for the Australian and New Zealand Labour parties dalliances with right-wing policies. It has eroded the middle class, enabled the deterioration of conditions for her e working class and a burgeoning level of poverty. It’s not just that when in power these right leaning labour parties enacted policies that created this situation, it also created a climate in which the entire political conversation moved to the conservative end of the spectrum and as a result anything even slightly centre or centre left looked fringe.
I also laugh whenever I hear people describe WaPo or the NYT described as liberal leaning or left leaning. There is no political conversation in the US that is even remotely leftist. The most left leaning US politicians I can think of would slot neatly into our National Party.
I’m not an economic ‘wet’, but by the same token, the existing economic/political system doesn’t even work for the top 10%. It only really works for the top 4-5% and doesn’t start to really fly until you hit the top 1%. That is not sustainable.
Conservative PMs in the UK seem to have a talent for scoring ‘own goals’, amazing.
Rob,
There are encouraging signs that the dalliance with neoliberal ideology is over, at least here in Oz. Both Labor and conservative politicians are proposing publically funded infrastructure projects and the voters are showing increasing resistance to privatisation of public assets. I’m reluctant to categorise any US politician, however my guess is that both Australia and NZ have much a stronger social democratic ethos than the US.
RJW, I suspect you are correct. Unfortunately our current crop of politicians are somewhat insipid and, especially on the right, lacking in moral direction.
Back on the relationship between the Tories and the DUP: https://twitter.com/SiobhanFenton/status/873150282074554369
This is the issue. Make a bargain with demons and you’ll have to agree to terrible things. And I’m not sure yet which side is the bigger coral of demons.
#20 “de gustibus etc”
Backing your opinion up with a source that brazenly lies is not merely a matter of taste. The link that states “Corbyn actively supports anyone who hates the West” for example, is slander. Speaking of slander…
#25
John, show us one part of Corbyn’s platform that remotely resembles Sharia law.
#33
Incredible. It’s extremely obvious that Steamshovelmama’s quoted comment did not mean ‘people never bomb people,’ in part because the wording suggests a different meaning, but also because of how mind-bogglingly stupid Steamshovelmama would have to be to believe such a thing. But as I said, the wording also suggests otherwise:
“People don’t suddenly wake up one morning and decide to bomb a shopping centre for shits and giggles.”
The decision to bomb a public venue is not sudden. It is not a spur of the moment action like a shooting or stabbing can be, a bomb requires planning.
“It happens because they feel a deep grievance that, in their eyes, cannot be addressed in any other way.”
In addition to planning, it also requires some deep-seated anger, it is not a mere whim. And so I consider your misreading of Steamshovelmama’s post quite deliberate.