Neverending Story 3: The Ongoing Brexit Thread

I know. That's why I said it.

They're NOT substance free. They're the very essence of the problem we're having as a country as shown in this disagreement.

Your argument consists of saying that politics means the public now think along the lines of 'Hulk, Smash!' and any dissembling means you've 'failed' in some nebulous way.

I disagree.

I think they are PERFECTLY capable of figuring out what's a good idea and what isn't but that becomes a LOT more difficult when the bloody liberals and greens aren't deliberately setting out to confuse the issue as Swinson did today.

Following your logic, this newspaper...



Is more then 10 times as 'good' as this newspaper...




Quite honestly, when simply stating the truth is considered 'unclear', political discourse, as such, becomes almost impossible.

You want me to accept something, (that this is all down to Corbyn), when I KNOW, for a fact, that's not true. He's just representing the position of the half a million party members which was arrived at democratically.

It's not our fault the liberals and tiggers voted AGAINST the customs union back in March, is it. If we DO 'crash out' at the end of October it will be largely down to them

How come you're not arguing THEY'RE 'bad at politics'???

Face it, there has been political failure across the board but at least our leader is genuinely representing the views of the majority of his party members and they want a compromise to unite people AFTER brexit.

The liberals, tories and greens are quite happy to sow division and extremism.

 

I need only answer your question with another question: Where were the LibDems polling in January 2019, and where are they polling today?

 

Leaving aside the obvious point (that that implies 'The Sun' is a 'good' paper and the Guardian is a 'bad' one), you're assuming they're telling the truth in polling about a future GE which, by definition, is at least 2 months away.

It also ignores the fact that if they were elected and simply reversed A50 they'd destroy what little trust people have in their politicians.

Of course, what's most likely is that they'd do what the liberals always do... fail to get elected themselves but let in a hard right tory government to do enormous damage to ordinary people. Oh... sorry, I forgot... that's being 'good at politics', isn't it

This is the point you're studiously avoiding. Politics is about alternatives and the meeja's saturation coverage of the right-wing of the tories 'no deal' threat and the Liberals 'Crush the saboteurs' nonsense, whilst entertaining and attractive, isn't a real answer if we want to maintain a cohesive society.

In honesty, that's the sort of thinking that says fascists across the world must be 'good at politics' because they keep being selected by the electorate.

I mean, it's kinda true... but misses the point.

 

Look it's painfully clear you do not understand how democracy works. Even if you didn't trust public opinion polls themselves (and why would you - they're pretty accurate, even in the UK), there's all the elections that have happened.

1) There were the EU elections, which showed Labour collapsing to the LibDems and Greens. But you don't hold much stock in them, so:

2) Labour lost seats in the local elections earlier this year; since Corbyn has taken over, he has lost hundreds of councillors. Even Chaos with Ed Miliband was able to pick up council seats in opposition. And further,

3) By-elections reinforce this trend. The LibDems won a few council by-elections this past week, and are set to win the Brecon seat on Thursday.

God has sent you a radio report, a rowboat, and a helicopter.

What the hell are you doing here?

 

Boris wants the backstop removed, otherwise it's a no deal exit.
Does his environment believe that scares the EU? They're preparing for months now for the no deal situation, as they're convinced given the brain dead actions from the UK, actually from England, the last few months convinced them a no deal is going to be the inevitable outcome. So Boris is threatening with something the EU is expecting to happen anyway?

 

I don't know what the Conservatives are thinking. I imagine they're thinking that they can avoid an electoral defeat by cutting the Brexit Party off at the kneecaps, but a no-deal scenario restarts a war in Ireland, ensures Scotland will move for independence, and causes a depression. None of those things looks good for the incumbent party.

Just imagine how popular Boris will be if he sends the tanks into Edinburgh to stop a secession movement, while the economy craters, while criminal gangs make a mockery of the Northern Irish border, and the IRA re-arms.

 

The problem is I'm guessing this lady had a team of 'experts' behind her as well...



Unfortunately some people seem to understand the 'science' bit without understanding the 'politics' bit.

You can measure things until you can't.

What I do is irrelevant... the voting public don't hold much stock in them, as shown by the fact the proportion of people voting in them has been dropping pretty consistently since they started happening.

Well, we lost around 80 in the May elections this year. Some of the biggest gains have been among 'independents' and the greens and that just goes back to the fact that local councils have got in the neck for all the cuts created by the austerity measures they've had to impose. The parties in power in those areas suffered the backlash from the public.

As it happens we had a specific, very 'national' issue around here which was the NHS intentions to close the local A&E so we did well.

But, more generally, what cutting back brambles and clearing up dog shit has to do with Corbyn, (or even national politics as a whole), isn't very clear to me, tbh.

Who then failed to get elected in one of our poorest results for decades... getting 30% as opposed to 40% last time with 'disastrous, joke candidate' Jeremy Corbyn.

Are you including the Peterborough by-election, (an election where people thought the result would actually matter?), where we were polling nationally at about 19% and then got 31%?

Also, the Brecon seat was traditionally Liberal anyway, (from 1992 to 2015), so that's hardly any great achievement, is it. I'm pretty certain the labour effort there will be, shall we say, 'less than vigorous'. We do the same thing around here in strong liberal areas because we don't want the tories to get in.

But, more generally, your position implies that politics is JUST about getting elected even if you drive the country apart in the process and can't do anything when you get there or, if you do, it's something utterly disastrous. I mean, on that basis, every single fascist or nazi that initially had a democratic basis on which to claim legitimacy can claim they're 'good' at politics.

If that's the case you and I must have a very different understanding of the word, 'good' means in the phrase, 'good at politics'

The plain truth is that this issue had always been one of asking a simple question to an incredibly complex question. To cause social division and conflict unnecessarily, with little democratic mandate, is unconscionable IMO.

 

Watched this the other day about Dominic Cummings, (the 'Career psychopath'), as Cameron called him...



Quite why it takes 'brilliance' to simply update and regurgitate Der Angriff is anyone's guess.

 

Cummings, along with Elliot and Westley from the TPA, being at the heart of government just shows exactly where Johnson's priorities lie.
And then add in that Nadine Dories is a minister!!

 

This is nonsense.

 

@rslfanboy but in all seriousness, it is. The notion that Rachel Maddow - a cable news talk show host - is comparable to any political scientist, economist, sociologist, psychologist, or other social scientist is laughable. The idea that you can suddenly stop being able to measure things is insane.

Our side ought to be the ones who embrace science and use it to guide our decisionmaking, but when it comes to so many things, we abandon it when our guts and instincts tell us to embrace pseudoscience.

Jeremy Corbyn has halved Labour's support in the last twelve months. Representative democracy is about winning elections. A No-Deal Brexit would violate the Good Friday Agreement and allow the IRA to re-arm. These are just facts. How on earth can we craft policy while ignoring facts? How can left-wing voters make changes to stop the collapse when people deny the basics right in front of their eyes?

It's shameful.

 

Yes, because that's exactly what I said, isn't it

I said, if you bothered to read it, that she presumably has contact with political scientists and polling companies and, (again, presumably), it was THEY who were making predictions as to the likely outcome.

OK. So what do you make of the FACT that before the last general election, (in an ACTUAL election where people ACTUALLY cared about the result), we were 24 points behind but came within a whisker of winning, increasing our vote by MORE than a third in the process?

What do you make of the FACT that the Peterborough by-election, (where people ACTUALLY cared about the result), showed us 12 points behind the final figure.

We're ignoring those, are we?

Isn't it obvious that the data is confused and conflicted and that your cherry-picking of the bits you like, isn't very 'scientific'?

Of course, none of the has anything to do with my main point which is that our attempt to try and come to a sensible compromise is the best outcome for the political cohesiveness of the UK and this Liberal/Tigger obsession with 'Crushing the saboteurs' could be DISASTROUS in the long run.

If they'd got their collective heads out of their collective arses back in March we could have got through all this, as a relatively united country, at that point.

As it is we're faced with Boris bloody Johnson and his alt-right, libertarian nonsense of 'Britannia Unchained'.

 

Nadine Dorries is at least identifiably human. What about this guy...

 

1154808280415444992 is not a valid tweet id

Please, please, PLEASE stop responding to me until you have taken a few minutes to obtain some basic statistical numeracy. This article is a start.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/uk-election-hung-parliament/

Here's another:

https://www.theguardian.com/comment...why-polling-got-the-australian-election-wrong

 

While a 4-point error would be fairly large in the context of a U.S. presidential election, it’s completely normal in the case of the U.K. ​

So a 4 point move is normal for the UK? How about a 12 point or a 24 point one. Is THAT normal?

This is the problem. You're like Kellyanne Conway. You like your own facts and ignore data that doesn't agree with you. That doesn't sound very 'scientific'

 

Did I stutter? Was there something unclear about what I said? Did you have trouble grasping my request?

When you have obtained even the slightest bit of statistical numeracy, I think we can continue our conversation.

Until then you will just have to continue to come up with reasons why Labour under Jeremy Corbyn are underperforming in most of the contests in which they compete.

 

And you can't seem to grasp the basic realities at play, either.

Do you know what we and the tories did in the European elections? NOTHING! Literally, nothing.

Before the GE AND the Peterborough by-election we did an enormous amount of legwork, knocking on doors, putting leaflets through letterboxes, making phone calls, etc. etc.

Now a sensible way of viewing that information, (dare I say, a 'scientific' way), we be to conclude that might possibly alter the result.

Yeah, let's ignore the FACTS of real results in ACTUAL ELECTIONS that people care about and concentrate on...er... something.

Come on!!!

Let's be realistic. There is simply no way you can ignore THIS much data from general elections and parliamentary by-elections and JUST rely on polling and votes in largely meaningless and irrelevant european and council elections where there are notoriously low turnouts unless they coincide with a general election.

Well, you can, obviously... you are! But that's because you're cherry picking your date to try and make a point.

That's just not being 'scientific' is it.

A realistic analysis of the data (so NOT just an 'opinion'), would lead one to conclude that BOTH major parties have suffered from the political impasse of brexit but that, when push comes to shove, (as shown by the data from elections), people are just as likely to vote labour in a general election, (as opposed to wasting their vote on the liberals or greens), to try and avoid a hard-right tory government, PARTICULARLY in specific seats where the liberals and greens are nowhere near being a realistic option to get elected.

What Prof. John Curtice says at the end of this is the important point, IMO.



But, still... he's only a Professor, isn't he

 

The difference between you and I is that I am ignoring absolutely no data and you are ignoring a ton of data. Corbyn gained votes and seats in the 2017 election, but has failed to perform well in any other contest. Polling shows his party is in decline.

You don't understand what an average is. You don't understand what a polling error is.

Please stay down.

 

Question who did better in the EU elections the Tories or Labor and by how much.

I know the Brexit party did the best, but I can not remember who came second, was it the Lib dems?

 

A vapid and idiotic phrase... almost as meaningless as your 'good at politics' mantra because BOTH major party's results have been poor, ('in decline', to use your phrase), and yet, oddly, SOMEBODY has to win parliamentary elections in the different constituencies.

Apparently you seem to think a general election is some sort of 'outlier' event which can be safely ignored. The parliamentary elections where we stand a chance of being in contention, we HAVE been in contention, including the by-elections THIS year which includes one where our sitting MP was in the clink, IIRC . This, also, you apparently ignore.

As I've repeatedly made clear, I AM NOT saying we're guaranteed a win at the next GE. I'm saying the data points in different directions and what happens in the end remains to be seen.

All this meaningless claptrap you're coming out with, using phrases like, 'bad at politics', (unlike that nice mister Putin, Bolsanaro and Erdogan who are, presumably, 'good at politics' ), means precisely nothing.

Unlike the Liberals and Green, who stand NO chance of forming the next government, we're going to have to make some very difficult decisions if we win the next election.

Like the yank Liberarian idiots who can mouth platitudes about being 'leaner and fitter', (or whatever is the phrase du jour with you guys), knowing they'll never have to face the decisions, we'll have to piss somebody off one way or another... either our north and midlands voters who vote labour but wanted brexit or our southern/London ones who want to remain.

 

The Lib Dems were second. Our vote was split by them and the Liberals, Greens and, in Scotland, the SNP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_European_Parliament_election_in_the_United_Kingdom#Opinion_polls

Of course, the turnout was about half what it is in a general election.

The Liberals worked very hard on the ground and there was some tactical voting across the regions, (it's a proportional representation election, broken down into regions which are massive compared to constitutions), and I know or a fact that some of our voters voted liberal or Green in certain areas.

As I say, we did nothing at all, unlike the GE and the various parliamentary by-elections where we work extremely hard, using our wealth of data to leverage our vote in different constituencies.

In the upcoming Brecon by-election, for instance, I'd imagine we won't be busting gut

Put it this way... for both the Newport West and Peterborough by-elections I was contacted to make some effort to help the party... for Brecon? Nothing!!!

 

Ok, so for EU elections Labor did slightly better than nothing.

 

Both major parties did badly but we did 'less badly' than the tories, is the point. This is why I keep saying that voters vote in the elections based on the issues in front of them, as you'd expect.

That's relevant because, in the vast majority of constituencies in the UK, labour or the tories are the 2 parties liable to be able to win that, specific, constituency.

I've mentioned before on here that Corbyn, as an individual, isn't popular around here but the party, as a whole, generally is. That's why people coming from the US background of presidential elections have difficulty understanding our politics... people vote both for the party as a whole AND the party 'brand' to a greater extent than in the US.

 

Such revealing entitlement.