[Politics] The General Election Thread

[theonlymikey]

If you're a true patriot, look after our lads.

[tweet]1193541356045643776[/tweet]

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[nicko31]

I have a lot of family in the North.

All traditional voters. All have said they are voting Conservative.

Are they what you would call "Work Class Labour", just curious what an earth the Tories have got in their arsenal apart from saying they will Brexit..

 

[Stat Brother]

Sadly plenty of people will be pulling themselves ragged at this description of Boris.

[tweet]1193424699860115456[/tweet]

 

[Pretty pink fairy]

Any change in the polls ?
Regards
DF

 

[Lincoln Imp]

Jo Swinson has ruled out supporting Jeremy Corbyn as prime minister in the event of another hung parliament, even if he promises to hold another Brexit referendum.

The Liberal Democrat leader “absolutely, categorically” dismissed suggestions that her party could help the current Labour leader into No10, insisting he was “not fit for the job or prime minister”.

Launching her party’s election campaign in Westminster, Ms Swinson insisted that she was campaigning to be prime minister and dismissed questions about potential support for other parties.

Asked whether she could help Mr Corbyn cobble together a Commons majority if the 12 December election delivers a hung parliament and he promises a Final Say vote, Ms Swinson said: “I am absolutely, categorically ruling out Liberal Democrat votes putting Jeremy Corbyn into No10.

“On so many grounds, Jeremy Corbyn is not fit for the job of prime minister.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ion-brexit-referendum-coalition-a9185896.html

You may be right, she may be misleading and lying to the electorate, a position you unsurprisingly endorse but let's hope she proves us both wrong and there are still some Lib Dems who have a scintilla of integrity (unlikely I know).

Obviously, Brexit isn't irreversible any political party can campaign to rejoin the Eu and/or promise a referendum, campaign to rejoin.

Thanks for this report. Please tell me where it suggests she is lying. It simply shows her repeating her previous and well-publicised position that while the LibDems would consider entering an agreement with Labour and others to keep The Entitled Ones away from the levers they would not do so if it meant putting Corbyn into No10. In other words, the price of Liberal Democrat support would include Corbyn's head.

I am sure widespread amusement will be generated by the fact that you of all people, the man who appears to be in a state of permanent audition for a job as a Central Office PR officer, should come over all sniffy about the possibility of the LibDem leader saying something that might (but only might) in future be proven to be untrue when your favoured party is led by a long-term, well-evidenced serial liar with all the apparent integrity of Diego Maradona.

 

[beorhthelm]

Nurses look after you, your children, your friends and your family. It's time you looked after them, not the bankers.


https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1193458344096342017?s=09


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not only a straw man (they targeted deficit, not debt reduction), its odd to focus on Tory debt increase when Labour is promising to increase it another 30%. who can spend our future the fastest isnt for either of them.

 

[Hampster Gull]

Any change in the polls ?
Regards
DF

Poles or polls? None on the former, still great people who add a huge amount to our society when they live here. And I suspect a minor tweak in the polls to remain and therefore Liberals and Labour

 

[Flex Your Head]

"Forty percent of Conservative party members surveyed said Britain should lower the number of Muslims entering the country, compared to just five percent who said the same for Christians or Jewish people."

How come this was allowed to pretty much slip under the radar? Endless coverage about anti-semitism in Labour, and yet these figures display huge levels of Islamaphobia in the Tory party, but are hardly ever referred to by the media.

https://www.politicshome.com/news/u...104777/almost-half-conservative-members-would

Just 8% of the Conservative party's members "would be proud of Britain if we were to elect a Muslim as our Prime Minister", whilst 43% agreed that they "would prefer to not have the country led by a Muslim".

Replace 'Conservative' with 'Labour, and 'Muslim' with 'Jew', and we'd never hear the end of it.

 

[clapham_gull]

"Forty percent of Conservative party members surveyed said Britain should lower the number of Muslims entering the country, compared to just five percent who said the same for Christians or Jewish people."

How come this was allowed to pretty much slip under the radar? Endless coverage about anti-semitism in Labour, and yet these figures display huge levels of Islamaphobia in the Tory party, but are hardly ever referred to by the media.

https://www.politicshome.com/news/u...104777/almost-half-conservative-members-would

Just 8% of the Conservative party's members "would be proud of Britain if we were to elect a Muslim as our Prime Minister", whilst 43% agreed that they "would prefer to not have the country led by a Muslim".

Replace 'Conservative' with 'Labour, and 'Muslim' with 'Jew', and we'd never hear the end of it.

There is a massive problem within both parties. Labour has tried and failed to deal with it, the Tories have brushed it under the carpet.

You don't have to look much further than the leadership in either to understand why. I'm not suggesting either are traditionally racist but both have views that are nuanced enough to allow others below to see it as a green light to express extreme views.

Corbyn's defence of that mural, given a forward to a dodgy economist's book, Boris article on what muslim women wear etc...

Loads of examples.

 

[Flex Your Head]

... the Tories have brushed it under the carpet.

And so has everyone else, including the media who rarely, if ever, ask Tories about this issue. And yet, someone who apparently sang 'Hey Jew' instead of 'Hey Jude' on a coach 20 months ago features in every newspaper.

 

[clapham_gull]

And so has everyone else, including the media who rarely, if ever, ask Tories about this issue.

It does get highlighted albeit not enough. The difference being that you would expect pockets of it in a party that has lurched to the right, but never in a party that has lurched to the left.

I use my words carefully, but the Palestine issue has became somewhat of an "obsession" with the grass roots left educated wing. A worthy cause that has unfortunately become fused with much older conspiracy theories in some.

The Tory problem is somewhat more "straightforward", old school right wing racism, ignorance, bigotry and a fear of immigration. As for the Labour party, far more complex to deal with where "academic" debates take place as to what antisemitism is.

 

[theonlymikey]

large parts of the discussion were devoted not to discussing those allegations, but to extremists, and how Islamophobia should not be defined too tightly to avoid restricting free speech.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/transcript-tory-conference-islamophobia-fringe-20375360


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[Raleigh Chopper]

I see the Tories are yet again concentrating on slagging off the opposition with a mixture of assumption, fake news and lies before a manifesto is even published, rather than concentrate on what they are actually going to do and this time, unlike last time actually accurately cost it.
I would wait for properly costed manifestos before launching an attack.
Why do they always do this, it makes them look so desperate and looking as if they have something to hide that they don't want us to know about.
Including the report on Russian money.

 

[highflyer]

its is annoying, been going on for years across many policy areas. odd she needs to highlight it now.

Hardly odd? Left leaning economist pointing out utter bobbins being splashed all over right wing press to discredit the Labour party during an election campaign.

The attempts to point out that the UK economy doesn't operate 'like a household' and that not everybody has an equal share in 'our' economy have been going on for quite a while now. But the timing of this reminder seems quite appropriate!

 

[Kalimantan Gull]

And so has everyone else, including the media who rarely, if ever, ask Tories about this issue. And yet, someone who apparently sang 'Hey Jew' instead of 'Hey Jude' on a coach 20 months ago features in every newspaper.

Shall we highlight it a bit more? Here's some examples collated for our Monday morning:

In 2012, Lynton Crosby was reported as saying that Boris Johnson's mayoral campaign should not get try to gain support from "****ing Muslims", instead focusing on wavering voters in the outer suburbs.

The Conservative Party faced criticism for running an Islamophobic campaign promoting Zac Goldsmith for London mayor by smearing Labour's mayoral candidate, Sadiq Khan (campaign also led by Crosby). Concerns were first raised that Goldsmith's campaign was attempting to divide communities after flyers targeting Hindu voters suggested Khan would implement a tax on jewellery. As the campaign progressed, Goldsmith questioned Khan's associations with alleged extremists before he became an MP. Baroness Warsi said Goldsmith should receive "mandatory diversity training" following his comments and the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said the campaign was an example of Tory "dog whistle anti-Muslim racism".

Prime Minister David Cameron used parliamentary privilege to link Sadiq Khan to Suliman Gani, who Cameron alleged was a supporter of the terrorist Islamic State. Gani was in fact a Conservative supporter who opposed the terror group and instead was a supporter of an Islamic state based on Islamic principles. Cameron later apologised for the slur and former Defence Secretary Michael Fallon also apologised and paid compensation for making similar remarks about Gani.

Shaun Bailey, the Conservative candidate for the 2020 London mayoral election, wrote a pamphlet in 2005 for the Centre for Policy Studies complaining that immigrants to the UK being allowed to "bring their culture, their country and any problems they might have with them" and observing non-Christian festivals has turned Britain into a "crime-ridden cesspool" and "robs Britain of its community". In September 2018, he shared a tweet referring to Labour's incumbent Mayor of London Sadiq Khan as "mad mullah Khan of Londonistan".

Michael Gove's 2014 accusation of a "Trojan Horse" Islamist conspiracy in Britain's schools was criticised by Tahir Alam (head of the Park View Educational Trust at the centre of the controversy), who said Gove had a "profound mistrust of Islam"

In 2018, Conservative MP Michael Fabricant apologised for tweeting a photoshopped image depicting a balloon caricature of Sadiq Khan (mimicking the Trump baby balloon during the president's visit to the UK) having sex with a pig.

Current Prime Minister Boris Johnson was criticised for his comments in an appendix added to a later edition of his 2005 book about the Roman empire, The Dream of Rome, which said that Islam caused the Muslim world to be "literally centuries behind" the west.

Writing in a column in The Daily Telegraph in August 2018, Johnson made comments about Islamic full-face coverings (i.e. the burqa and the niqab). He said women wearing them look like "letterboxes" and "bank robbers". Research by Tell MAMA in 2019 revealed that Islamophobic incidents increased 375% following the article's publication.The Equality and Human Rights Commission and Prime Minister Theresa May criticised these remarks, which led to Johnson facing an investigation by the party to determine whether his remarks breached the Tory code of conduct on Islamophobia. Johnson was accused of "pandering to the far right" saying the comments were "particularly regrettable in this current climate, where Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred is becoming worryingly pervasive".

Johnson's comments led to a number of Islamophobic messages being left on his Facebook page by his followers. At the same time, The Times revealed that "Tory councillors, officials and agents" were also found to be members of anti-Islam Facebook groups. Four cabinet ministers backed Johnson's comments and have criticised May and the party leadership for a "cack-handed" investigation into his comments.

Conservative MEPs supported the Hungarian leader, Viktor Orbán, against a motion to censure him in the European Parliament. The Board of Deputies of British Jews accused the Conservative government of defending Hungary's "appalling track record" of "vivid antisemitism" and Islamophobia, saying: "we are very alarmed by the messages at the heart of Orban's election campaign, including his comments about 'Muslim invaders', calling migrants poison, and the vivid antisemitism in the relentless campaign against Jewish philanthropist George Soros". The Conservatives were the only governing conservative party in western Europe to vote against the censure.

In 2016, Ben Bradley (then a Conservative councillor in Nottinghamshire) defended Conservative councillor Michael Murphy – who had shared a string of anti-Muslim memes on Facebook one year previously – as an "honest" man who "says what he thinks"

In March 2019, it emerged that Martyn York, a Conservative councillor for Wellingborough, and Dorinda Bailey, a former Conservative Party council candidate, had facilitated or supported Islamophobic Facebook comments, including calls for mosques to be bombed. York was suspended from the party, and Bailey did not remain a member.

In the same month, Peter Lamb (parliamentary candidate for the Staple Tye ward of Harlow District Council) left the party (despite being reinstated as a candidate) after it emerged that he had tweeted in 2015: "Islam [is] like alcoholism, the first step to recovery is admit you have a problem", "Turkey buys oil from ISIS. Muslims sticking together ... Do they want us to call ISIS Daesh now so that we don't associate them with Islam?"

In March 2015, 14 Conservative Party members were expelled after they were found to have posted Islamophobic comments in a pro-Jacob Rees-Mogg Facebook group; Conservative chairman Brandon Lewis was aware of offensive posts 5 months before the suspensions took place.25 Conservative activists on the same group were suspended following anti-Muslim comments on Facebook: one activist posted a comment about committing mass murder against Muslims in a mosque; others had shared content from the far-right anti-Islam British National Party and called for the sinking of migrant ships.

Len Milner and Chris Smith of the East Staffordshire council quit the party in March 2015 after they liked a cartoon on Facebook which depicted a mock beheading of London mayor Sadiq Khan.

In 2018, the government announced conservative philosopher Roger Scruton to be its housing adviser. Scruton described Islamophobia as a "propaganda word" in his 2017 book Conservatism: Ideas in Profile, saying "There has been in official circles a deliberate silencing of discussion, a refusal to describe things by their proper names, and the adoption of the propaganda word 'Islamophobia' to create a wholly imaginary enemy." The government issued a statement in support of the professor and denied all accusations of Islamophobia. In April 2019 the government announced Scruton had been dismissed from this role, after an interview was released where he stated that Islamophobia was "invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in order to stop discussion of a major issue", as well as further comments relating to George Soros that the government described as "unacceptable".

In March 2019, Warsi accused Home Secretary Sajid Javid of anti-Muslim "dog-whistle politics", and claimed that members of the Conservative Party opposed his leadership ambitions as he was perceived to be "too Muslim" by senior Conservatives. That same month, Andrea Leadsom, the leader of the House of Commons, was criticised from both sides of the aisle after suggesting that addressing abuse in Britain against British Muslims was a matter for the Foreign Office.

A 2019 poll of Conservative party members found 69% believed “there are areas in Britain that operate under Sharia law”, 45% believed “there are areas in Britain in which non-Muslims are not able to enter” and that 39% believed “Islamist terrorists reflect a widespread hostility to Britain amongst the Muslim community”. 76% thought the party was already doing everything it needed to combat Islamophobia, with only 15% thinking more action was required. Another poll found 56% of members surveyed said Islam was “generally a threat” to the British way of life,

The Muslim Council of Britain said the level of prejudice within the party was "astonishing" and that "We've seen MPs, councillors and members engage in bigotry that should have no place in a modern Conservative Party. Yet the constructive call by Muslim communities for an independent inquiry into the issue has been ignored again and again. Instead we hear excuses, denials and the responses we would expect when there is an institutional problem."

 

[highflyer]

Sadly plenty of people will be pulling themselves ragged at this description of Boris.

[tweet]1193424699860115456[/tweet]

Owen Jones doing what he does, and he does it well.

There is a serious point here though. Do you genuinely believe that Johnson gets the same level of scrutiny and publicity regarding his own dodgy past compared to Corbyn from the UK media? Because, (doing my best to put my obvious bias aside) I don't think he does.

People that are paying attention will have some sense of the entitled, morality-free personality behind the 'loveable buffoon' exterior. But most people are not paying attention (and who can blame them), they get their information from headlines and it's the buffoon act that is presented to them in thiose headlines. Corbyn simply can't do that act - he is what he is, and always has been. Flawed, guilty of poor judgement at times, possibly naive, possibly lacking strength as a leader. But certainly principled and certainly able to look beyond his own self interest. And you can't say THAT about Johnson.

And if they are treated differently, why might that be and is it right that this difference in scrutiny could have an impact on the election outcome?

 

[highflyer]

OK, I accept that every sweeping generalisation will be met with anecdotal exceptions I would guess also that Brexit not THAT important in your vote then, which is fair enough.

I just don't think that the swathes of Labour Leave voters that will certainly switch to Brexit Party are in the south. I assume the vast majority of southern leave voters are already Tory, perhaps excellent constituency MP's like Kyle are an exception that proves the rule.

Looks to me as though the key factor in those numbers is the growth in Lib Dem votes, presumably hard core 'revoker's? I'd imagine once it becomes obvious that Lib Dems cannot win in that seat, the number will dwindle considerably - with votes switching to Labour as the only viable 'chance of remain' option.

I'd imagine both parties will lose a few to Brexit party, but probably not enough to make the difference.

All guesswork and assumption of course, like every other prediction so far. So many factors at play!

 

[deletebeepbeepbeep]

Extreme slobishness from Johnson yesterday disheveled hair unbottoned coat looked like he'd just got up from a week long bender. Disgraceful lack of respect.

 

[theonlymikey]

Stay calm and listen to Danny Devito

https://twitter.com/Corbynator2_0/status/1193274701503709192?s=09

We have to look after each other...

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[highflyer]

Extreme slobishness from Johnson yesterday disheveled hair unbottoned coat looked like he'd just got up from a week long bender. Disgraceful lack of respect.

'Slobbishness' only applies to left wing politicians. Rich, right wing, men are 'rakishly dishevelled'.