As an English Conservative voter, I believe the Scots should be given their second referendum. I can’t understand why we would or should deny it. Its a win win. The Scottish electorate get their say. If they vote to remain in the UK, they prove pretty decisively they want to stay as there would be two confirming votes in a decade, and Sturgeon would have to leave it alone. If they vote to leave, good on them and good luck, it’s their decision. I personally think it would ruin them, but it’s not my say and if its what they want, go for it. It won’t hurt England at all if they do leave (certainly not in the long run), if anything we’ll probably be slightly better off thanks to the Barnet formula.

Good call.
Yes, Scotland should have their 2nd referendum and whatever the result so be it.
Good luck to Scotland either way.

The party who wouldn’t shut up about IndyRef2 was the Tories. Voters deserted them.

But Sturgeon said on telly just now it is an indication of IndyRef2? Yes?

If Boris goes the full 5 years it will be half a century since any Labour leader apart from Tony Blair won a UK general election. Maybe someone more like Blair and less like Corbyn needed?

Maybe someone more like Blair and less like Corbyn needed?

Labour will have Keir Starmer as their next leader 🤔

v8ninety

Basically it was the thickies and feeble-minded who don’t understand what they are doing

Don’t forget the terminally selfish and nasty, and sadly decent people who’ve been misled in their droves. Which category do you put yourself in? Seriously, as you only feel able to join the political discourse from the safety of having won, how DO you justify voting for the dishonest, self serving, nasty bunch of **** that you did? Have you got a friend who’s a nurse in Leeds hospital by any chance?

It’s supercilious people like you that make people like me feel that they have to come and let the World know that not everyone is as misguided as you. Who made you Lord high and mighty?

No more politics posts from me, I’m out.

It’s every man for himself and **** everyone else. The Tory way.

This was ‘our’ last chance to avert the car crash. No way out now. No Brexit will be hard enough for the racists, no Brexit will be soft enough not to be economically damaging. This fantasy bollocks will not last five minutes when it comes to real negotiations. The only question now is ‘how **** are we?’

The world has given up laughing at us, we aren’t worth it any more.

Especially if you’re russian ^

Totally stunned, but sadly not surprised, by the gloaters and taunters crawling out now they’ve ‘won’.

Take a look at yourselves FFS. Unless you’re actually five years old this behaviour just makes you look ridiculous…

Just another reflection of the new normal I guess. Welcome to 1930 everyone.

As a teacher I often come here to take my mind off having dealt with kids and their lack of social awareness all day, but in all seriousness I’ve had many more thoughtful political discussions with 14 year olds today than I’m seeing here from some posters.

(FWIW, in our mock election this week my year group (10) voted 69% Labour, 11% Lib Dem, 11% Green, 8% Conservative and 1% spoiled ballots).

Johnson may be untrustworthy, but on the issue of Brexit he had earned the trust of the electorate and that was all he was selling – he had ruthlessly pursued it by proroguing parliament and expelling MPs – and that showed his determination to deliver. Having developed that trust, all he had to do was ask permission from the electorate to pursue his aims and he got it. He didn’t need to do anymore because his opposition hadn’t bothered to do the spade work of earning trust and contented itself with lecturing in platitudes, who would trust them to achieve anything?

This doesn’t make it a Brexit election, he just didn’t need to do more because he was lucky in his opponents.

It’s supercilious people like you that make people like me feel that they have to come and let the World know that not everyone is as misguided as you.

Well, there’s some learning for me right there. Hard to know how not to come across as ‘supercilious’ when I’m just so gobsmacked and saddened that so many decent and good people (I’m talking people I know rather than on here, but I’d imagine it’s across the board) can be persuaded by the blurred, non specific mirage of a message offered by the Cons that they offer actually anything at all for them. I GET why people haven’t been enthused by Labour, but I don’t get how people can be so unenthused by them that the think the Tories are better.

New Years resolution; be less supercilious…

I very much feel an alien in my own country. I thought better of us.

This is how I feel too.

To me it is just more of the same. Thatcher got in when I was 11 and all I have seen since then are tory governments and a pretend labour government. The country is clearly a tory voting country and that explains why we have the issues we have.
The current tory government won’t be any worse than thatcher, yes they will do different things but equally bad with very, very little good.

I am very protected from it all which is why I still live here I suppose.

Self inflicted?

And there we are, selfishness knows no bounds.

Worth remembering that Tory voters are very much in the minority, given that only about two-thirds of the electorate bothered to vote and of those who did vote, the majority did NOT vote for Fridgeboy.

Johnson may be untrustworthy, but on the issue of Brexit he had earned the trust of the electorate

… by considering backing Remain before the referendum? By voting for May’s WAG when it suited his personal ambition to do so, having voted aginst it (alongside the Remainers) twice?

Take a look at yourselves FFS

Both sides need to take a look at themselves.

The Tory lot gloating, Labour saying it was because everyone is ‘thick’ or ‘poorly educated’

Politics of finger pointing; it’s low

Why are you all struggling to understand that nobody wanted Corbyn? It was said lots of times in this thread yet you wouldn’t listen.

Many people I know that wouldn’t ever talk about politics would actually mention how they were disgusted and feared what Corbyn and his followers could cause whilst in power.

You lot are supposed to be tolerant, but at the moment are acting like bigots.

Did you enjoy the recent hung parliament? Fringe nutters as king makers and nothing getting done?

Admittedly when they can’t do anything they can’t balls as much up. You might be on to something…

Did you enjoy the recent hung parliament? Fringe nutters as king makers and nothing getting done?

Admittedly when they can’t do anything they can’t balls as much up. You might be on to something…

To be honest, given the way the main parties have moved towards the extremes of left and right, a hung parliament was the best I could hope for. Surely that just highlights my point though.? Throughout the world system of PR have forced politicians to (re)learn how to work together to get things done, FPTP has encouraged this kind of confrontational, territorial politics where the winner does what they want, no-one else gets a say, eventually they become unpopular and are voted out only for the newly elected party to act exactly the same way and spend most of their time undoing what was done by the previous government and so it goes, on and on. Doesn’t FPTP simply encourage a system where effectively nothing gets done, it’s just better hidden than a PR elected Parliament that hasn’t yet learned to work together and represent everyone.?

No party that has just won by FTP wants PR. It will never happen.

I’d rather get rid of government entirely. We don’t need more laws. If anything crops up in the future we can have a vote to see if we need one again.

The PR numbers in an article about that petition are what prompted my thinking. But you are right, the chances of actually getting a fair voting system are very low when coming from our current system as, by design, the winner of a general election feels that they best represent the country and that the system that got them voted obviously works. Until it becomes enough of an issue that a party can get elected in the current system on a manifesto of changing the current system then it won’t ever happen. Even if (in some alternate universe) the LibDems managed to get elected on another issue (lets say, as a thought experiment, that Brexit turns out to be a disaster, the LibDems organise sufficiently to be able to turn the ultimate instance of ‘we told you so’ into an election win. They still have PR as a bullet point on their manifesto although I believe it gets pushed further and further down the list every election). Does anyone actually believe that a newly elected government would change the very system that got them elected.? That takes some serious political morality.
The only way I can see it happening is by it being the main issue in an election or a separate referendum (to be clear I think referenda in a representative democracy are a terrrible, terrible idea), and what are the chances of something as mundane as the system of voting being the main concern of government in any of our lifetimes..?