The etiquette of a general election requires opposition parties to welcome it.
It’s supposed to bring to a head years of public animosity with the governing party, allowing the opposition to channel the hopes and desire for change of frustrated voters.
Fat chance of any of that happening on June 8th.
Theresa May’s snap general election is a chance to grind Labour’s face into the dirt.
This is a bid for naked political advantage. Party before country.
Alas, it was made inevitable from the moment Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party.
Labour’s lurch to the barren shores of the hard left made this election an irresistible prospect.
Sure, Theresa May has a point about wanting a strengthened mandate from the voters for the tough Brexit negotiations to come, but it’s a fig-leaf. A secondary excuse.
Despite the public front that it welcomes the election, Labour is reeling. There is no prospect of anything other than a drubbing.
And everyone knows it.
Indeed, insult will be added to injury midway through this campaign when we’ll see the twentieth anniversary of Labour’s 1997 landslide on May 1st 1997. Back then, Labour won a parliamentary majority of 179.
Now, it will now be lucky if it can now hold that number of seats.
Plenty perfectly decent Labour MPs are about to pay the price for Jeremy Corbyn’s personal unpopularity and eager embrace of the desiccated corpse of hard left gesture politics.
Although the party has claimed to be on election footing for a while – and with the influx of new members is financially well placed to fight a campaign – Labour candidates are marching headlong into the Valley of Death.
Even Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, recently conceded it will take two years for the party to rebuild in the polls from two years of infighting.
Labour now has less than two months.
There is only one thing the party can realistically hope for; that its core vote is stronger than Westminster chatterers assume.
And the only glimmer of hope is that Labour’s existential psychodrama is now brought to a head.
Instead of waiting until 2020, Labour has the chance to rebuild earlier than predicted. Cold comfort.
Other than that, this is Labour’s darkest hour.
Tags: Brexit, General election 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Theresa May
Jeremy Corbyn’s chief goal had been to remain as leader until the left had secured permanent control of the party.|
That meant staying on until the ‘McDonnell amendment’ had passed at conference and until the moderates in Labour HQ had been purged and replaced by Corbynistas
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May’s miscalculated on that one.
This will be a General Election fought over one single issue – BREXIT, and she will win with a staggering majority. The net result of that will be that we will go for hard BREXIT and will be out faster than 2 years. There will be no further consultation with regional governments, no further cross party consultation and the Commons Brexit Committee will be scrapped. She won’t need any of that, she will have a mandate from a General Election instead.
Not only that, but creatures like Gina Millar won’t be able to launch anymore court challenges because no court will rule against both a referendum AND a single issue General Election.
There will be no ‘final deal’ brought to Parliament and Lords will be firmly made to wind it’s neck in or face disbandment.
You will have three very clear choices at the poll:-
Hard fast Brexit – Tory/UKIP
Soft slowly cuddly Brexit with sugar on – Labour.
No Brexit – Lib Dem/Plaid/SNP/Green
The party candidates from those parties will also have to campaign on those positions whether they agree with their party over the matter or not. People will have to vote with how they think over that single issue and nothing else and not how they normally vote.
And just think you Remoaners, if you hadn’t constantly whibned and bitched and interered then you wouldn’t be ib the position now of ‘put up or f**k off, winner takes all.’
The answer to Tafia’s challenge, for anyone living in a Tory-held seat, is clearly to vote LibDem. The best Labour can hope for – as the next article spells out – is to hold what it has; there aren’t going to be any gains. So your Tory MP will win unless everybody of a different opinion gets behind the LibDem candidate.
“Vote Labour so they can carry on fighting each other”
Why ?
Ian, what part of 37% of labour voters voted Brexit,don’t you understand
The answer to Tafia’s “challenge” is to remember that we are better than that and treat the UKIP stooge with the contempt he deserves.
It won’t help to have Kezia Dugdale etc supporting the tories will it?