Qassändra

Give with one hand, take with the other. If grammar schools come back en masse it would do more to harm the less well-off than anything Thatcher or Osborne ever did.

Bristol and anywhere in North London with a Green vote worth writing home about will probably see a Corbyn bonus. In any case, in a snap election in the next six months I think it's extremely unlikely the Tories will be on 30% of the vote.

Correction - 17, not 12. The original story has the Tories gaining 16, Labour losing 17, the SNP losing 1, the Lib Dems gaining 1 and Others gaining 1 (UKIP?). Though that said, 346 seats plus the Speaker would be a majority of 43, so I'm not sure where they're getting 62 from.

God 1992 was SHIT. I can't think of another year where a Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go cast-off could be so flattered by its company.

Said Labour backbenchers will be in for a very nasty surprise if they genuinely think the party will only lose twelve seats. Labour's support is up in inner city stronghold seats and they're down in the polls overall. I guess there's an outside chance the difference will be made up entirely in Labour support going down in Tory strongholds but somehow I suspect that's not on the cards.

There'll be HELL TO PAY if that ROTTEN IRISH BORE is in your top 60! Talk about the most MISERABLE WINNER EVER

Vrede and Ale jestem ARE NOT and NEVER SHOULD be limited to HONOURABLE FUCKING MENTIONS! m9DYL4B8OXA HCuLhGZFqlc

"Judge Curiel cannot judge me fairly as he has Mexican heritage". And it's a remark she's apologised for in any case, but you're twisting her words by implying she said black men were dangerous predators on the basis of their race. You're either an idiot or barefaced liar if you claim to not see any racism from Trump but then cite that quote as evidence that Hillary is the racist candidate.

Dear me.

I do think there may be a potential shy Trump effect in the polls though, given how uniquely shameful it is to be voting for a literal white supremacist.

Not until they run nationally.

Nope. The likes of Chuka Umunna giving in and calling for an end to freedom of movement. When even the so-called Blairites can't even make the case for immigration and avoiding hard Brexit anymore, what am I supposed to be staying and fighting for?

Dunno. Depends whether I can stomach returning to the Ed Miliband years (but moreso) by joining a party led by Tim Farron.

After a lot of thought on it, I've left the Labour Party. And it wasn't Corbyn that made me go.

This is...a creative redefinition of the meaning of the word 'colleagues'. And it takes something to go from '232 MPs don't outweigh 600,000 members' (they don't, but 600,000 members don't support Corbyn - 300,000 do) to 'the overwhelming opposition of the vast majority of his colleagues should count for absolutely nothing'.

Like the Tories breached it in 2003 with Iain Duncan Smith? And it's not really an unwritten rule. At least, no more so than the other unwritten rule that any leader who doesn't carry the confidence of the vast majority of their colleagues recognises the situation is untenable and steps down.

He had some of the worst ratings of any opposition leader before the coup as well. They have become worse since.

In what sense is it ridiculous to declare a vote of no confidence in a leader registering the worst approval ratings of any leader of the opposition? You can argue the toss over the timing and organisation, but it wasn't exactly an illogical course of action.

God I really hope someone shoots the opportunistic little fuck. What is even the difference between Sarkozy and Front National at this point? Give me Macron or Valls.

Hemlock.

It's a false comparison as Thatcher actively sought to play down her gender as something that in any way influenced her politics (beyond the occasional riff on how knowing the cost of Flora meant she knew how a budget hit a household etc). I think the average woman would benefit far more from a woman being Labour leader than otherwise as they're likely to be more mindful of avoiding cuts that hit families, childcare etc. As, indeed, Yvette referenced during her leadership campaign.

The difference being that this isn't at all an issue that makes Labour less electable or contributes to concerns people have about Labour that would stop them voting for the party, so it's not really an accurate analogy. And it's the height of tunnel vision to reduce representation's benefits to just one person.

If you ask the question directly, sure, because male-dominated commentary has persistently denigrated having more women in politics for the sake of it as irrelevant and so few people would agree with the proposition in plain writing of 'a woman over a man and change nothing else', without recognising that most women in practice fundamentally do politics and project themselves in a subtly different way. Try reading Talking To A Brick Wall - in practice, it would probably have much more effect than most people (typically men) carp that it wouldn't. Having a woman as the lead representative of your party, without fail, captures the attention of half the population and makes them more likely to listen than they otherwise would, if only because someone of their gender being leader is not a norm most of them are used to. They're used to politics being self-important men in suits - even today, plenty of the older ones still instinctively think of politics as 'something the husband deals with' or 'not for them'. In any case, most people in the Labour Party bemoaning the embarrassment that in 100 years we still have not had a single female leader despite having had plenty of female candidates better than most that did become leader are not doing so on the basis that we 'need to show we're in touch with the public'. They're doing so because it's a basic moral failing of the party that a female candidate for the leadership has never once finished above a male candidate for the leadership, let alone won. After a while, that stops being a coincidence and starts becoming a symbol of a party looking for excuses to not elect women.

post of the year

* NOT * BEING * A * WHITE * SUPREMACIST * IS * MORE * IMPORTANT * THAN * BEING * AGAINST * THE * 'ESTABLISHMENT' *