Trains, Banks and Public/Private Ownership - Prev.Predict UK Gen.Election Result

[alfred russel]

Conventional wisdom aside, I'm not sure the Conservatives made such a bad call here. They are in a minority, but are close to a majority--just 8 seats shy. They are the largest party by a significant margin, in the first post Cameron/post Brexit election. That situation will persist for 5 years unless they decide to call for early elections.

For whatever reason this is being seen as a vindication of Corbyn. Labour just lost its 3rd straight election to a weak candidate and with incumbents that don't seem to have many successes to brag about. Long term, I don't think that is so bad for the conservatives.

[Fate]

Conventional wisdom aside, I'm not sure the Conservatives made such a bad call here. They are in a minority, but are close to a majority--just 8 seats shy. They are the largest party by a significant margin, in the first post Cameron/post Brexit election. That situation will persist for 5 years unless they decide to call for early elections.

For whatever reason this is being seen as a vindication of Corbyn. Labour just lost its 3rd straight election to a weak candidate and with incumbents that don't seem to have many successes to brag about. Long term, I don't think that is so bad for the conservatives.

Their government won't last 5 years. The Conservative party is divided on hard vs soft Brexit. Without the leverage provided by a larger majority you're going to have a harder time reaching a united position and even more so since they have to cater to the DUP.

[Barrister]

Conservatives plus DUP only are 2 over the majority line.  That's razor-thin.  Any two rogue MPs can threaten to bring down the government.  Plus in a group of 600+ middle aged to elderly people, you never know who might get sick or be unable to perform their duties.

[mongers]

So a weak and vacillating politician campaigned under 'Strong and Stable' was found out by the electorate, now she's trying to foist on us the 'idea' that her presidency is the best choice for certainty, amidst the chaos she and a clique of advisers created in the first place. 

[alfred russel]

Conservatives plus DUP only are 2 over the majority line.  That's razor-thin.  Any two rogue MPs can threaten to bring down the government.  Plus in a group of 600+ middle aged to elderly people, you never know who might get sick or be unable to perform their duties.

Conservatives were only a majority of about 4 in the last parliament. You also have a bunch of other parties in parliament, which you can work with or can have members get sick. Don't you need an actual majority vote to bring down parliament?

Is it razor thin? Yes. It still seems like a better situation than the conservative - lib dem coalition of Cameron / Clegg.

[Jacob]

Well, I thought this was all quite remarkable. Obviously any time the party of the feral rich gets a kick in the teeth, I'm always delighted but there were a couple of components to this election that I thought were particularly noteworthy. The young actually voted, that doesn't happen very often. The Labour party was able to get a strong showing (an extremely unexpected strong showing) at the polls with a manifesto that was identifiable and unapologetically left wing, rather than the Tory manifesto without the overt racism and xenophobia that we've been offered for the last 25 years or so.

The hated geography teacher and his unacceptable views from the 70's has apparently pulled off something quite confounding. what now Blairites? Double down on the hate I expect.

Yeah, super interesting that.

Also, looks like the Scottish Tories may split off from the English ones: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/09/ruth-davidson-planning-scottish-tory-breakaway-challenges-theresa/

[Josquius]

Corbyn and the Blairites - as someone from right of Corbyn... I don't think the right of the Labour Party necessarily hate him and his views.
We all want the same thing fundamentally.
It's just slow and steady tends to be the way to get it. Corbyn seemed much too radical. Attempting to do too much at once and bound to fail.
We don't hate Marxists the way we do the right. We just think they're naive and out of touch.
Luckily the manifesto got the input of the party as a whole and was really quite nicely moderate.

Conservatives plus DUP only are 2 over the majority line.  That's razor-thin.  Any two rogue MPs can threaten to bring down the government.  Plus in a group of 600+ middle aged to elderly people, you never know who might get sick or be unable to perform their duties.

The DUP also have a notoriously awful attendance record on average.

[Jacob]

Conventional wisdom aside, I'm not sure the Conservatives made such a bad call here. They are in a minority, but are close to a majority--just 8 seats shy. They are the largest party by a significant margin, in the first post Cameron/post Brexit election. That situation will persist for 5 years unless they decide to call for early elections.

For whatever reason this is being seen as a vindication of Corbyn. Labour just lost its 3rd straight election to a weak candidate and with incumbents that don't seem to have many successes to brag about. Long term, I don't think that is so bad for the conservatives.

I'm sure your point of view will be a comfort to May as she continues providing a "strong and stable government" from a minority position where she previously had a working majority.

[garbon]

Not election related, but very loosely Corbyn related, I'm offended by a new tube ad:

Have you been to Islington? Because you look like an angel.

[dps]

I do think it's pretty obvious that you don't spur growth by taking money out of the pockets of working class families.

What kind of a conservative are you?

An American one. They don't believe in balanced budgets.

The hell we don't.

Though I've just about given up on the idea.  At this point, we're just going to keep running up the national debt until the whole system collapses. 

[Jacob]

The hell we don't.

Though I've just about given up on the idea.  At this point, we're just going to keep running up the national debt until the whole system collapses.

With interest rates this low, there's no real reason to pay down debt.

Investing in things that are good for the economy - education, health, infrastructure, etc seems pretty economically prudent at at time like this.

[Valmy]

The hell we don't.

Well it is not like it is an impossible issue. Every other conservative party on the planet knows how to do it.

Though I've just about given up on the idea.  At this point, we're just going to keep running up the national debt until the whole system collapses. 

We did it before. We raised taxes and cut spending and somehow it was fixed. It just needed to stay fixed for a few decades. How lucky were we? Thanks to the tech boom and the free trade agreements we were able to do this while still having big economic growth.

Then the Republicans decided to fuck that when they got into power in 2000 and we have been fucked ever since. And in the last election I couldn't help but notice that massive increases to spending along with massive tax cuts was pretty much a commonality among all the platforms of the Republican candidates. The only person who actually promised something sane budget wise was Hillary. So you are certainly not alone among American Conservatives in making destruction of the country as part of the platform.

[Valmy]

With interest rates this low, there's no real reason to pay down debt.

I am not talking about the debt I am talking about the deficit. It is slowly coming down but Trump's proposals would quickly reverse that trend. I can only hope the Republicans are not uniformly insanely suicidal.

Investing in things that are good for the economy - education, health, infrastructure, etc seems pretty economically prudent at at time like this.

We spend money on entitlements and the military. Those other things are ripe for the cutting.

[Admiral Yi]

On the other hand the Tories stand for mean-spirited austerity, which has also not really been successful anywhere ever as it is hard to even define what a success of such a policy could look like.

It's very easy to define successful austerity: either avoidance of default/IMF program/EU bailout/downgrade or graduation from same.

[dps]

The hell we don't.

Well it is not like it is an impossible issue. Every other conservative party on the planet knows how to do it.

Though I've just about given up on the idea.  At this point, we're just going to keep running up the national debt until the whole system collapses. 

We did it before. We raised taxes and cut spending and somehow it was fixed. It just needed to stay fixed for a few decades. How lucky were we? Thanks to the tech boom and the free trade agreements we were able to do this while still having big economic growth.

No we didn't.  The Clinton administration claimed to have balanced the budget, but that was done by declaring Social Security spending "off-budget", which was bullshit.