Now more than 50 MPs not standing for re-election.
What impact will that have – any indication of voting intentions in their constituencies? Summary of how marginal the seats were last time?
Will they be active in supporting their party’s candidate?

I haven’t felt this level of antipathy towards a politician since Michael Howard.

Sounds like animosity to me.

Its not about Corbyn its the policies stupid.
Your choice is do you want to live in a Socialist society where your contribution is valued and supported or as a neo con serf? Unfortunately its a binary choice voting LD or yellow tory wont save you.
Leaders come and go and unless you live in his constituency the name Corbyn will not appear on your ballot paper. Its only the values and policies that you have to chose between everything else is froth designed to divert you away from that.

I see the tories have a fracking advocate drawing up their manifesto.

Looks like the Brexit Party will be pulling lots of candidates to improve the chances of the Conservative Brexit Party winning seats. Scottish Greens have done the same with the opposite intention.

I was feeling far too much sympathy for the MPs stepping down… many have worked hard and tried to be fair to their opponents, while getting their points across. So… good to see a clip that reminds us that some MPs are… well… you judge…

Labour trying to stamp out the Green Party vote by saying Corbyn has more credentials because he ‘has an allotment’. pic.twitter.com/LrLSaakvW2

— Matt Haig (@matthaig1) October 30, 2019

Hopefully Labour do go after the green vote hard. Positive, ambitious green policies please.

That’ll be an extra 26 votes per constituency.

Exactly what I was thinking and I support the Green party. Any left wing person who puts environmental polices higher on agenda than other parties is already voting Green yet the numbers are so low as not to matter which suggests people are generally not that concerned about environmental policies as they don’t directly impact them in the same way as other stuff (yet).

When the Green party start to get a serious number of votes we will start to see teh bigger parties mirror those policies. I estimate that will be around 2045.

That’ll be an extra 26 votes per constituency. 🙂

Labour need to be more central to get into power. They can’t chase even more marginal policy

Agree, but they’ve alienated centrists so scavenging for votes in the margins is all they’re left with. No doubt they’ll start shouting “Green Tory” abuse at them to turn them away as well.

it goes without saying that we need a fairer system than FPTP, but if you think we can suddenly adopt the German model then you have more faith in our politicians then I have. We’re about as far from that as it’s possible to be.

Thats my point.

Politicians in this country need to grow up and stop acting like children. Unfortunately we’re heading in the oppsoite direction as both main parties become more entrenched in their idealogical bumkers, and just hurl abuse at anyone that they label ‘the enemy’ which now seems to include pretty much everyone.

Thats why the likes of Amber Rudd and Nicky Morgan are leaving the Tory party and Owen Smith is calling enough on the labour party. ‘Good riddence!’ the hardliners will (somewhat predictably) cry after them, but unfortunately we’re all the poorer for it as both parties hunker down in their echo chambers and are wilfully blind to how unappealing they’re becoming to the vast majority of the electorate

but unfortunately we’re all the poorer for it as both parties hunker down in their echo chambers and are wilfully blind to how unappealing they’re becoming to the vast majority of the electorate

The flaw there is the the vapid “centrist” model with its curious mix of hard right economics with a quick veneer of more social policies is unappealing to a large proportion of the electorate.
It just suited a very small subset of swing voters whilst telling the majority of the voters to piss off since their votes were being taken for granted.
Just look at the complaints about the professional political class and those who voted for a change, any change because of the centrist model had completely and utterly failed them.
Whilst admittedly the tories seem to have gone a bit far just now we do need a clear left wing and a clear right wing party to represent the different offerings. Replace it with a bunch of centrists and lots of people will feel discontent and thats leaving aside the minor detail the centre doesnt hold but drifts. Without pressure it will go one way or another as, indeed, it did under new labour.

That’s no way to run a country/economy.

Your use of “extreme” is interesting.
It is also badly flawed since the two countries which really pushed the centrist model have ended up with extreme leaders. Whereas before we had this push for “centrists” we had a far more balanced system.

Corbynite Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle is trailing the Labour Manifesto in front of Jezza’s speech today. He’s on Five Live, Emma Barnett now.

Its frankly embaressing. He sounds like a ranty sixth-former, preaching to everyone, banging on about Rupert Murdoch and all the other lefty bogeymen. If this is the level of ‘debate’ that we can look forward to from labour, then Joris Bohnson must be counting how big his majority is going to be already. This kind of thing is just gifting this election to the Tory’s. Its absolutely pathetic!

An interesting point was, when he was railing against ‘the elite’, in his juevenile-level tirade, Emma Barnett asked:

“When you say ‘elite’, would that include Seamas Milne, the privately-educated son of the director general of the BBC, and Jeremy Corbyns chief advisor?”

Apparently Labour isn’t against that kind of ‘the elite’ but some vague other sort of ‘the elite’

God help us! We’ve got 6 weeks of this shit.

Corbynite Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle is trailing the Labour Manifesto in front of Jezza’s speech today. He’s on Five Live, Emma Barnett now.

Its frankly embaressing. He sounds like a ranty sixth-former, preaching to everyone, banging on about Rupert Murdoch and all the other lefty bogeymen. If this is the level of ‘debate’ that we can look forward to from labour, then Joris Bohnson must be counting how big his majority is going to be already. This kind of thing is just gifting this election to the Tory’s. Its absolutely pathetic!

He’s my MP and I’m really wondering whether I can face voting for him as it would appear possibly the best way of stopping the seat reverting to the Tories. Not going to be easy but probably the best long term option.

Also, on a point of order, can people (Kelvin mostly), stop using the @ sign before names? I’m getting deluged with email notifications. I’m on here most of the time, I don’t need my email telling me to spend more time here.

Open one of the email notifications, click the “Unsubscribe” button and you will get them no more. And yes they were annoying.

Labour policies should appeal to the average person more than Tory policies and that has always been the case yet we just get Tory governments voted in.

That’s because you’re in a bubble, “they should appeal” is based on thinking you know what people want, that people’s idea of what’s good for them is either the same as yours or wrong, that tory bad Labour good.

We keep getting tory governments because a large number of people don’t think what you expect them to, their idea of what’s good for them isn’t the sams as yours, they don’t have some tribal outlook that suggests there’s a good and evil option on their polling card and they don’t like the fact that the left so often pitch the right and their support as nasty, greedy, spiteful people. Yes there’s plenty who vote tory because they always have but that’s at least as true on the other side of the divide)

(I’ve not watched the speech as I’m “working” and it seems the labour website doesn’t have the text yet – poor show to be honest, that should go live within about 10 seconds of the end of his pulpit piece – but I’d be amazed if it contained anything significantly different on a broad appeal base than BJ’s will, the stuff which is genuinely Labour policy will have down sides for plenty of people as well as upsides for plenty of others)

Lots of people are currently looking to vote LibDem here, and we have to persuade them it is a two horse race and back Labour.

If you can’t offer people anything more than “we’re only the 2nd worst option” you really don’t deserve to win.

Alliances eh?

pic.twitter.com/kc9PfOij52

— Mark19 (@markconner64) October 31, 2019