Just read a tweet asking how with the polls suggesting a hung parliament and Johnson hiding in a fridge and ignoring a child on a hospital did they win by so many seats,being booed everywhere he went. The firm that counts postal votes is called Idox and a senior Ex Tory called Peter Lilley is a director of this company. Laura Kuenssberg announces that postal votes are disastrous for labour before the poll is closed thereby potentially breaking the law. How did she know? She says it was an anonymous tip off. The media have said that they would never let Corbyn into number ten. Result a Tory landslide.
If true there's something not right there. Laura Kuenssberg says it was an anonymous tip-off and still reported it on politics live to that nasty Jo Coburn as if it was true this reporter must be working on behalf of the Tory party reporters like her should report on true facts not anonymous tip-offs.
But chaps it's the person passing on the anonymous tip-off that is the real law breaker here, surely? The MP's expenses scandal was only exposed because journalists reported unlawfully-leaked information. The real elephant in the room is Corbyn's disastrous leadership. He was utterly unelectable to the more centrist swing voters. You can point to unfair media treatment, and that would be right. But it doesn't hide his lack of leadership ability, his failure to stamp on the anti-Semitism issue and the utter lack of credibility of his supposed programme for government. And yet there looks every chance that a younger successor in his image will be elected, which will further extend Labour's period in the wilderness. Until Labour sees the world as it is, rather than as it wants it to be, then it will remain irrelevant in British political life. Barnsley would likely have returned two Conservative MP's but for the arch-idiot Farage and his rabble of a guerrilla party.
You keep repeating things about Labour policies ignoring the fact (and a post from me to you saying as much) that they are popular here and elsewhere in Europe. Will they all make it into the next manifesto, no but with a better leader many of them will get the airing they deserve.
Not saying that labour didn’t deserve to lose with a shambles of a campaign, but I’m raising the point about the size of the defeat. If MI5 considered Corbyn to be a security risk as they did with Wilson, what price democracy then?
The newspapers did a job on Corbyn - but who reads newspapers these days? Rest of the media - including most television stations threw everything and the kitchen sink at undermining Boris. Then Boris wins with an 80 seat majority. And things could have been much much worse for Labour - for example - Nigel Farage saved the jobs of 2 Barnsley MPs.
The problem with most political polling is that it’s done on a national scale. if you look at the votes cast, they’re not a million miles from the pre election polls. people on the streets across the ‘red wall’ all understood which Labour seats were at risk. But polling those seats and then assuming that was the National picture would have given the Tories a 200 seat majority. The lessons to be learned from this election are many and complex: Yes Corbyn was toxic, but that didn’t hurt labour in metropolitan areas where a more media savvy electorate better filter this stuff. Brexit was the absolute huge factor that swung the ‘red wall’ seats. All the ‘members’ here who slag off Corbyns policies wouldn’t have voted Labour no matter who the leader / what the policies. Brexit itself and the ‘distrust’ of politicians is the great puzzle. How does a prime minister who’s voted against the governments Brexit bill get away with that, yet an anonymous backbench opposition MP gets to lose their seat? some of that is due to the popularity of a known liar and cheat!! Add to that a wilful ignorance of the workings of parliament; the country really are sleepwalking into potential disaster. The notion of blindly trusting a known liar because his lies are easy to understand but the truth is complicated baffles and worries me in equal measure.
It’s both of them! She seems to have been a Tory insider and almost wet herself when the result was announced. Be interesting to see what her next job is. Promoted to the Lords and in the cabinet?
The postal votes aren't counted....but both parties send observers to watch them being opened and stacked....seeing that tells them reasonably accurately if they're in trouble and need to canvas harder...or winning handsomely in which case they can send teams elsewhere.
People keep saying this, but I don't think it's entirely true. The Brexit Party got most of its voters from Labour. They took enough votes from Labour in some constituencies to tip the balance in the Tories favour and in others not quite enough. Some of those people wouldn't have gone as far as to vote Tory. Some might not have bothered to vote at all without the Brexit Party option.
To achieve a more reflective and fair picture of the votes cast we would have to change the electoral system. Can't see that happening any time soon.
