General Election 2019

And still be governed by these arseholes?

For now...

The irony of this is that the state of the market was the Tory's fault. They have weakened the pound and economic growth in the wake of the referendum they called, then further weakened confidence with their handling of it.

This is just a surge because a lot of people were speculating on the pound.

It would be nice if the Tories were actually held to account. A lot of their campaign promises were in essence to repair the damage they had done since 2010 but somehow they are not to blame. Somehow their Islamophobia was not nearly as serious as Labour anti-Semitism. Somehow their unprincipled leader wasn't as bad as Labour's principled one.

I say somehow but I know how. Because of Rupert Murdoch and a biased media. Because the money wanted them to win. Because the status quo in the country is geared towards making sure the Tories win. Because of a expensive and dubious propaganda machine which normalised the whopping lies they repeatedly told. Because of Farage backing off and not running against Tory incumbents.

But then Labour failed, Corbyn failed, it was an interesting experiment for a while and they was just a glimmer of hope he had pulled it off in 2017, then that unholy pact with the DUP scuppered their chance. And for me mostly because we never really knew what Labour's position was on Brexit.

You're joking right?

Also

Without execution I don't see the benefit in what he's done; the 'national conversation' has gone further right during his tenure.

All key Labour manifesto pledges recieved high approval ratings across the board. A party that has ground work and momentum on those issues should probably stick to their guns and find a more appeasing leader, now that Brexit will (hopefully) be off the agenda and the Tories own the shit show in it's fetid entirity.

This history of this election is being written very quickly. And the overall theme appears to be either "Brexit" or "Corbyn done fucked it." But can we at least have a chapter on the lib dems and their role as useful idiots for the Tories? Fuck me.

Which seats would Labour have won if the LD's didn't exist?

Jo Swindon called it on true enough

There's a lot of stuff that potentially blocks it like the 4th railway directive.

In theory there are no blocks to the nationalisation but tenders, etc have to be open so the government bids would have to be the best ones but without subsidies.

In reality the UK was probably big enough to do what they wanted though.

Which seats would Labour have won if the LD's didn't exist?

This is a task which I do not have the emotional fortitude to take up.

https://interactive.guim.co.uk/2019/12/ukelection2019-data/prod/snap/full.json is one dump of the data

Will try and quickly knock something up to work it out.

One silver lining perhaps mentioned on the radio this morning, with such a majority the government won’t be so beholden to the ERG and their significance in parliament will dwindle.

For me, it feels better to win. i enjoyed watching harper/howard lose and believe that the alternative was objectively better

Which seats would Labour have won if the LD's didn't exist?

Mine, Chipping Barnet.

Tory majority of 1,212. 5,932 LibDem votes. Also 1,288 Green votes so one could point at them equally.

And chingford. And city and Westminster. Greens in the libdem alliance cost labour Stroud - as everyone said they would. I'm sure there are many more.

This Government is the ERG.

79 but...

25 were taken by Labour and if the LD votes had gone to the Tories the Tories would have won in those constituencies

6 were taken by SNP and the LD votes could have helped the Tories in 4 and Labour in 2

1 were taken by PC and the LD votes could have helped the Tories take it (Ceredigion)

Which leaves 47 taken by the Tories. 3 where the votes could have helped the SNP overcome the Tories, 44 where the LibDem's votes could have helped Labour win.

Another pinch of salt is that the Lib Dems were sometimes the largest runner up, e.g.

Cambridgeshire South taken by Con (31015) with majorty of 23212 and Lib Dem took 28111 votes, next party was Lab with 7803 votes

[The (majority) quoted is the majority over the next non-LibDem party.]

Dangerous to play what if but...

364 - 47 = 317 (i.e. below 326 seats needed to win)

(1 seat still to come in, St Ives in Cornwall, which will probably remain Tory, even though it was only a 312 majority in 2017.) [EDIT] St Ives declared and is a Tory win with a majority big enough that one other party's votes wouldn't have helped.

The 47 are: berdeenshire West & Kincardine, Birmingham Northfield, Blyth Valley, Bolton North East, Bridgend, Burnley, Bury North, Bury South, Cambridgeshire South, Carshalton & Wallington, Cheadle, Cheltenham, Chingford & Woodford Green, Chipping Barnet, Cities of London & Westminster, Clwyd South, Delyn, Derby North, Dewsbury, Dumfries & Galloway, Durham North West, Esher & Walton, Finchley & Golders Green, Gedling, Guildford, Hazel Grove, Hendon, Heywood & Middleton, High Peak, Hitchin & Harpenden, Keighley, Kensington, Leigh, Lewes, Moray, Reading West, Rushcliffe, Southport, Stoke-on-Trent Central, Truro & Falmouth, Warrington South, Watford, Wimbledon, Winchester, Wolverhampton South West, Wycombe, York Outer

LDs invited Labour to go fully tactical in certain seats. Labour said no. Blaming the Lib Dems for Corbyn's election failure is ridiculous.
I do give joint blame for their failure 2 months ago, when Johnson had a negative majority, to work together to pull us out of this before the election.

Whilst we're talking Jo Swinedon, lest we forget the Tories essentially had to become the actual Brexit Party to get this across the line - ironic really that Dave the Pig fucker called it on to try and deal with the UKippers who morphed into the BxP

I say ironic - a fucking catastrofuck

LDs invited Labour to go fully tactical in certain seats.

Same libdems who repeatedly said they'd never do anything to aid Corbyn getting into no. 10. Same libdems who sent out misleading pamphlets claiming they were the only party able to prevent Tory wins in areas they had no chance.

I'm not blaming the libdems for the results. Just spreading the blame.

There are also seats like Cheltenham where Labour voters could have had Lib Dem win.

Both Labour and The Lib Dem’s dropped the ball. Trying to blame just the Lib Dem’s is total jokes

Eeeh 'appen it looks like they're closing the fookin' factory what I as worked in man and boy fer nigh on thirty years, 'cos its no longer profitable to try and export t'goods to t'EU on t'WTO terms or summat.....

Fookin' forrin bastards......

Is this necessary? Is there something funny about the way northern people speak?

https://www.whiteandcompany.co.uk/moving-to-spain-from-uk/

SNP got a seat for every 26,000 votes

Green 864,743 votes, 1 seat.

hmmm

yeah you never encounter socially conservative or racist opinions in spain

$ ./ld.pl Green | grep taken.by.Con
Blyth Valley taken by Con (17440) with majorty of 712 and Green took 1146 votes, next party was Lab with 16728 votes
Bolton North East taken by Con (19759) with majorty of 378 and Green took 689 votes, next party was Lab with 19381 votes
Bury North taken by Con (21660) with majorty of 105 and Green took 802 votes, next party was Lab with 21555 votes
Bury South taken by Con (22034) with majorty of 402 and Green took 848 votes, next party was Lab with 21632 votes
Carshalton & Wallington taken by Con (20822) with majorty of 629 and Green took 759 votes, next party was Lib Dem with 20193 votes
Chipping Barnet taken by Con (25745) with majorty of 1212 and Green took 1288 votes, next party was Lab with 24533 votes
Durham North West taken by Con (19990) with majorty of 1144 and Green took 1173 votes, next party was Lab with 18846 votes
Gedling taken by Con (22718) with majorty of 679 and Green took 1097 votes, next party was Lab with 22039 votes
Heywood & Middleton taken by Con (20453) with majorty of 663 and Green took 1220 votes, next party was Lab with 19790 votes
High Peak taken by Con (24844) with majorty of 590 and Green took 1148 votes, next party was Lab with 24254 votes
Kensington taken by Con (16768) with majorty of 150 and Green took 535 votes, next party was Lab with 16618 votes
Stoke-on-Trent Central taken by Con (14557) with majorty of 670 and Green took 819 votes, next party was Lab with 13887 votes
Stroud taken by Con (31582) with majorty of 3840 and Green took 4954 votes, next party was Lab with 27742 votes

So that's 13 seats that the Green votes could have gone to someone else to stop the Tories.

Again it's a huge what if.

(There's also lots of double counting as 12 of those 13 could also have been won with the Lib Dem votes, the only one that is specifically Green was Stroud)