General Election 2019

Slightly worrying trend that both Labour and Conservatives seem to be shipping former MPs who are more central than their leaders. Going to make a hung parliament very messy and cross-party talks harder.

Door-knocking training was last night with momentum.
Overall a really positive and encouraging meeting. Canvassing is going to be hard I reckon - entrenched views on Corbyn personally and obviously brexit are the difficult talking points. I would encourage anyone feeling impassioned to try and get to a meeting/training session and get involved, the people running the session wanted to emphasise that one of the biggest strengths the left has is numbers at a grass-roots level.

It's my first time at anything like that, other than a Young Greens meeting or two in undergrad, so all kind of exciting.
There was a very welcome anti-anti-semitism feel too.

Nice one. I've sent of an email to Labour to see what I can do to help. I'm not convinced I'll be an ally if it comes to door-knocking, but we'll see.

It's been said during every election I've lived through and in every country I've lived in, but this really is the most important election most of us have probably been a part of. Seems like a pretty good reason to get involved considering we've all got skin in the game.

In Manchester it seems like the main comms is on fb and whatsapp, I'd search for local momentum-y groups on those too

Tentatively excited for getting out of my echo chamber and hearing how awful some people are

Are you in Manchester? I would like to get involved, planning on going door knocking a week on saturday near Hebden Bridge but would like to do some sort of training as have never done it before.

I am, will pm

Lib Dem, Greens, Plaid pact underway. Looks like I won't even have to feel guilty for not voting Green here in Richmond Park.

https://twitter.com/adampayne26/status/1192381242165137410

It will be interesting to see the analysis of the seats. It looks like they're targeting at least one Labour seat (Stroud) which was won over the Tories by 600 votes. There's strategic voting and then there's this.

The way they're marketing that is frustrating. They aren't parties that can realistically be in a position to form a government post-Dec and therefore can afford to form an alliance on a single issue. I don't want to see this election fought exclusively on Brexit, it's only going to benefit the lib dems and brexit parties - the ones who want to ignore half of the electorate.

Every issue in this GE is subject to Brexit - it's the defining event of this decade, possibly longer.

Any campaign that doesn't have it as the most important issue is failing to grasp its severity.

The Tories can be voted out in four years, but environmental conditions, workers rights*, the NHS, UK agriculture and manufacturing may all be done for good.

* Depending on what trade deals we sign these could come back, but would we have the money to re-institute for e.g. 25 days of holiday once it's gone down to 10 and we're in a bitter recession?

I think the Green's can't have that many seats they really think they are going to win - but would like to start getting more of a base - and Stroud makes sense for that as it has a surprising hippy/eco vibe.

Are they really going to pinch seats off Labour? I doubt it. The greens can perhaps pinch one more seat this way - Isle of Wight perhaps...could equally help labour in that seat if they take conservative votes that can't abide Corbyn, while leavers are split between cons and bxp.

It's the Lib Dems that will really gain from this. Tory/Lib Dem swing seats where the Lib Dems can mop up a few% who would have been tempted to go Green. If they did this last time round, they would have won my seat.

I imagine the Green's will have asked for some other influence at a party level too. They will be challenging the LDs to be more ambitious on climate change related issues as part of this deal. Perhaps in the long run, the FPTP system will be better served if an existing major party becomes the de facto Green Party, rather than waiting for the parliamentary arithmetic to catch up - that could take decades.

Are they really going to pinch seats off Labour?

That's not the point. The worry is they'll take enough votes to let the Tories in. No complaints about a green victory. Many against a Tory victory c/o green/libdem alliance.

Surely climate change trumps brexit as the the defining event of the decade, possibly longer.
Any campaign that doesn't have it as the most important issue is failing to grasp its severity.

So I suppose the question is, why would someone who was going to vote Labour now vote Green on the basis there is no Lib Dem candidate? Or am I missing something? Or are you just saying they should all have stood aside where labour has a chance? Perhaps Labour should have got involved in the pact...

There is a green candidate, no libdem. And people may do that because there is a lot of press about the alliance, claims that labour are actually Pro-brexit, they're putting up a candidate with a lot of publicity, etc.. it's only 600 seats. Why are they trying to make it more difficult for a progressive mp to get elected. That's the question.

It's a bit late for this discussion Oliver, I'm afraid as usual you are King Canute in the face of a tide of linguistic change.

The fact is it doesn't really matter what words we use to describe misinformation presented as news, as long as the it is semantically clear.

I tend to watch a bit of sky news for some sub fox news style right wing lunacy for "balance" just to get myself out of my centrist dad echo chamber.

Sky News is a lot more balanced than most people think. Empty chairing the chairman of the Tory party is not exactly sub right wing lunacy, surely?

And having read Burley's account of what happened in the Times I say good for her.

I've set up a lot of TV interviews in my career and either side can cancel on the other without much notice based on fairly weak excuses, but cancelling at the very last minute then doing an interview with TalkRadio just down the corridor is very bad form.

Sky News is a lot more balanced than most people think

True of a lot of the media, once you get past the headlines and can filter out some of the absolute sh*te that gets put out.

This is interesting from yougov polls

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/brexit-these-four-charts-show-how-the-uk-election-could-play-out.html

I combined with cohort population data (from statista) to get the expectation of actual votes per party which lumped together comes out at Conservative/Brexit/UKIP (48.6%) Labour/Lib Dem and the rest (51.4%)

The take-away is that the cohorts 18-49y, particularly below 39y hold a huge potential for swing vote if their voting intention is correct as they are heavily under-represented relative to the older cohorts

Increasing their turnout to the same level as the older cohorts swings that split to 46.4% vs 53.6% so Labour et al would do well to focus very hard on mobilising those age groups to actually vote if they don't won't to be disenfranchised

NB The survey itself indicates a likely significant under-intention to vote as a whole as the turnout intention overall is 59.8% compared to 68.8% for last GE and 72% for the referendum and previous surveys suggest a higher likelihood of turnout (see https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jul/09/young-people-referendum-turnout-brexit-twice-as-high) which would suggest that split is more likely to widen to the survey result

This is doing the rounds on Facebook, and apparently it isn't a parody.

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"The 24-storey tower block was designed in 1967 in the Brutalist style of the era by Clifford Wearden and Associates, and the Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council approved its construction in 1970. The building was constructed by contractors A E Symes of Leyton from 1972-74."

Johnson was the mayor that took the axe to the fire service. I suspect the rest is bollocks also.

Also, Jeremu

Inslallation sounds a bit muslim so it was probably there fault.