Qassändra

Not really true though. The BNP's support went up after their Question Time appearance. And the idea that the Nazis took hold in Germany because the likes of Otto Wels just weren't good enough at rational argument is...well, do you really think a movement gets that much widespread support when it lies in the darker corners of the internet, as fascism did for a solid couple of decades? Because it's not as if free speech alone did much to stop Trump. The man and his views had plenty of exposure. You don't kill weeds with sunlight.

LMAO. What the fuck are you on?

1. What do you think the protests were? If everyone on those protests had got 'aggressive and violent' Washington wouldn't exist anymore. 2. "Most people want liberalism and socialism out" doesn't really stack up given, once again, 3 million fewer Americans wanted Trump than wanted Clinton.

...did you miss the entire Tea Party movement? I didn't see anybody seriously calling for a genocide of Nazis or a wall to keep Donald Trump voters out. Richard Spencer can give you an equivalent for the first, Trump can give you an equivalent for the latter.

I DUNNO ABOUT YOU LOVES but I'm PUTTING DOWN MY WEAPONS as we SPEAK

I Don't Wanna Fight is the DOG'S BREASTS QUITE FRANKLY *.*

I imagine the only advantageous expectation management here will be "we're going to lose anyway so let's get it priced in way beforehand", given holding it would've been seen as a success either way.

Attention was UTTERLY FOUL! If I wanted to be shouted at for three minutes over a tuneless electro racket I'd BREAK INTO A POWER PLANT

Copeland projected as an easy win for the Conservatives by Labour canvass returns, according to the Telegraph.

First prediction of the year shattered for me! A prediction that Montebourg would be the PS candidate has fallen as he seems to have done an Andy Burnham and been ruthlessly outflanked to the left by Benoît Hamon, who is currently leading the first round of the Socialist primaries (34%) over Manuel Valls (31%) after a campaign based around ideas like the universal basic income and drug legalisation. I can't see any way Hamon doesn't win next week's run-off on those figures - Valls gets very few second preferences as the unreconstructed centrist. All of which is tremendous news for Emmanuel Macron, who is also doing a tremendous job of killing off my predictions on the French election and seems to actually be doing quite well. If Bayrou drops out and Melenchon/the Greens don't, there's a real chance at this stage that Macron could make it to the second round over either Fillon or Le Pen according to polls. Although who knows how much that could be brought short by Hamon? All four major candidates are running on a platform of change and as it stands Macron's looks the most vulnerable to the charge of "erm...is this actually change?". Macron's pitch basically seems to be "keep everything the same but make an app for it".

I don't think it's likely, but the pool of Remain votes in every by-election means it can't really be ruled out so long as it's a seat where Labour's vote likely predominantly voted Leave (and ergo is having to compete for that vote with Ukip and the Tories). Especially somewhere where the winning post can conceivably be as low as a third of the vote, which means the Lib Dems would notionally only need to unite about, say, 7,000 votes out of the ~20,000 that voted Remain in the Stoke seat (assuming a potentially optimistic turnout of about 21k for the by-election, given they only manage about 30k for general elections).

Oh of course there'll always be. But 'old Labour' often gets conflated with 'Bennite Labour'. A lot of people forget that most of the time, old Labour was closer the Labour "old right" position now of being eye-wateringly hardline on things like crime and immigration but broadly redistributive on the economy. That isn't Theresa May's position by any means, but I wouldn't be surprised if an old Labour voter who voted Leave and has only paid passing notice to the news would be perhaps more inclined to vote Tory when the comparison is her vs Corbyn, at least compared with when it was Cameron vs Corbyn. For a quick illustration of that you only need to go back to Danny's cautious positivity on Theresa May when she first got in and general non-chalance/luke-warm approval of her Brexit position.

The winning post has been 38% for the last two elections. If it craters even more the winner could conceivably do it with just a third of the vote. Also I wouldn't be quite so sure. There hasn't been a more Old Labour-friendly Tory leader than Theresa May in quite some time.

I mean surely if ANYWHERE counts as 'SOME RANDOM COUNTRY' that rarely pops out an essential it surely IS Lithuania?!

Paper is wonderful but - and I know this is UTTER HERESY - for my sins I actually prefer Hypnotised.

I do like Greta (and a lot of this year's selection actually - add in Sasha Son and I Love My Phone and you have a bizarrely high quality selection from the country that had that laughable A Million Voices rewrite genuinely contending most of the weeks last year), but Eurovision really is ALL THE POORER without at least one entry of LOLITA'S ILK anymore

I need it to win so badly.

Oh my GOD - this (which won the televote last night of whatever heat out of the SEVENTEEN THEY HOLD FOR THIS every year) has just been brought to my attention and I am HEAD OVER HEELS! *o* v_2ZtGO2ysE I AM FRIGHTEN

My point being: would she have likely *only* won by 3 million votes without the 'dynasty' charge against her?

I'd make Labour slight favourites to win Stoke-on-Trent Central, but I could genuinely realistically see any of Labour/Ukip/Conservatives/Lib Dems taking it. Which is the first time I think that's ever been the case. I don't think Ukip will win though. What reason to vote Ukip is there over the Conservatives at the moment? Theresa May is showing no signs whatsoever of needing her feet held to the fire as far as hardcore Leave voters would be concerned.

Oh definitely, but Lynton stayed out and apparently the campaign was weakened a lot from being run as almost a parody of what a Crosby campaign is supposed to be. In the words of Mandelson, "as one of the so-called proponents of focused messaging, even I never ran it to the stage where it meant literally talking about one thing over and over and saying absolutely nothing else". And of course as you say, it's impossible to run an 'economy is safer this way' campaign without the media onside.

Lynton Crosby didn't do anything on the EU referendum.

From the little notice I've paid to Northern Irish politics the UUP seems to have clued in recent years that just being a more placid version of the DUP isn't going to get them anywhere. A switch to a more small-l liberal unionism seems to be the first noticeable thing they've done to differentiate themselves, but I don't know how widespread that is within the party (or how recent a development that is) -x- I'm voting Liberal Democrat and I'm not going back to Labour until they firmly stand for re-entry to the Single Market and this anti-immigration fug within the party has gone away.

How is it clueless and ignorant? Berlin is literally running ad vans around the City of London encouraging financial institutions to move.

Which would hurt us far more than it would hurt any of the EU27 individually. Saying "we trade with the EU more than it trades with us" is about as persuasive of an argument to the EU to go out of their way to give us a good deal as "we get a net economic benefit from immigration" is to individual voters in the UK. It may well be the case collectively. But the sum benefit on an individual level is completely gulfed by how much more damaging it would be for their economies for the EU to be dismantled piecemeal.