General Election, December 2019

[Lang Spoon]

So do you think Ayr will stay Tory? I doubt the IRA angle has much play in NE Scotland, but maybe visceral Fish People Unionism/hatred of Sturgeon/anti Central Belt Hegemony/irrational love for eejits like Ross Thompson/that linesman cunt will let the Tories outperform expectations up there.

im still hoping at least 45 SNP seats but, especially as the election will be prior to the Salmond trial. Also I think the Nats have a v good chance of taking between 4 to 6 of the SLab seats in Scotland, the useless and worthless shadow Scotch Sec Lesley Laird in my hometown looks fucked already, reduced to pleading for family members to leaflet for her on the Facebook.

[multipleman78]

Ayr, Dumfries and East Renfrewshire. I would love to see the SNP sweep the lot of them but i am a pessimist on this one. I have a terrible feeling that even up here, the Tories will find gains somewhere. I have no data to back that up whatsoever, just a hunch.

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/barneyfarmer/status/1189320798537998336?s=21[/URL]

[Lang Spoon]

East Renfrewshire is natural Tory by income, Dumfries and G by forelock tugging culchieness, and Ayr seems to have loyalist bams/middle class golfers as a natural constituency so aye, can see all three staying True Blue in a worst case. Hope tae fuck the Nats can get out the vote despite the Wings over Transphobia cunt chipping away at the harder of thinking.

[Nefertiti2]

Labour Video

[URL]https://twitter.com/dawnhfoster/status/1189278587481985024?s=21[/URL]

[Lang Spoon]

I do struggle to see where the Tory gains could come from for the bastards though multipleman, bar maybe Perthshire South (and Pete Wishart is such a pig awful Runrig Nat wank MP). Hopefully the chinless inbred Tory Hair fucker in Angus is toast, and with a bit of luck the even more chinless prick in Aberdeenshire also.

[Lang Spoon]

I've lost hope for the Borders being anything but forelock tuggers.

[Nefertiti2]

The Tories will gain seats in Stoke and the Midlands will lose to Lib Dems in the South west and parts of the Home Counties and to the SNP in Scotland.

Labour should be winning Hastings and Worthing the suburbs and overspill towns. They need to hold on to the North East & Yorkshire & Lancashire

[multipleman78]

I've lost hope for the Borders being anything but forelock tuggers.

Yes, any future independence referendum will hopefully see lots of lost postal votes from those in the borders.

[Lang Spoon]

If they were any way rational they'd have eviscerated the Duke of Buccleuch by now. Or at least have withdrawn labour till the Crofters Acts and secure tenure applied to the Borders and Clydesdale and not just the Highlands and Islands.

[Lang Spoon]

Is Jess Fucking Phillips at risk of losing her homespun Salt of the Earth, Tells it Like It Is, Brummie and Proud seat? That'd be a real shame.

[Lang Spoon]

The Tories will gain seats in Stoke and the Midlands will lose to Lib Dems in the South west and parts of the Home Counties and to the SNP in Scotland.

Labour should be winning Hastings and Worthing the suburbs and overspill towns. They need to hold on to the North East & Yorkshire & Lancashire

The chances are Labour will lose almost as many seats in Scotland to the Nats as the Tories will. Which shouldn't be a deciding factor if UK labour ignores Slab bleatings and works with the Nats in return for Indyref2, if it's able to form a minority Govt.

[David Agnew]

A particularly icy day might dissuade the grey vote from venturing out.

A lot of the grey vote have postal votes, and vote the day they get their vote through the post (postal voting turnout at the last election was 85%), hence the Tories bringing their manifesto featuring the Dementia Tax the day after most postal votes will have arrived.

[Satchmo Distel]

Unless there's a well-timed postal strike.

[Janik]

Put me in the deeply pessimistic, we are getting a fascist government in six weeks time group. And feeling quite nauseous about what the future holds.

[Satchmo Distel]

We can only go with gut feelings because I think the scientific attempts to crunch numbers (e.g. John Curtice in the UK, Nate Silver in the US) can't account for how people's minds can be swayed by all kinds of irrational scaremongering shit and the manipulation of social media, all of which push the vote rightwards.

Expecting the worst is probably the sanest approach: you can prepare mentally for the kick in the stomach on election night and may get a pleasant shock if Labour build on their 2017 result and emerge as the largest party (although a majority seems mathematically highly improbable).

If the Tories get a majority, however, OTF will be even more needed as a place of solace than it was the nights after Cameron and Trump got in and Brexit won the referendum. The only light at the end of the tunnel is that the Tories will have to own the massive economic damage Brexit will do, but even that will be blamed on someone else by the compliant media.

[Nefertiti2]

So what are you going to do in the next 6 weeks, Janik?

[Sporting]

How important, really, is the university vote? In a handful of constituencies I'd surmise. Is there any evidence yet of social media being widely used to discuss questions such as whether to vote in their uni addresses or at their family home; tactical voting; etc? Some posters here will have kids doing degrees, or some of you will teach/work with them. Any pointers?

[ad hoc]

How important, really, is the university vote? In a handful of constituencies I'd surmise. Is there any evidence yet of social media being widely used to discuss questions such as whether to vote in their uni addresses or at their family home; tactical voting; etc? Some posters here will have kids doing degrees, or some of you will teach/work with them. Any pointers?

I think the idea is that there are a lot of students, and many/most of them are fairly middle class. In the constituencies where their parents live, which are often Tory their votes get diluted and don;t count. In the urban areas where the universities tend to be situated they can have an influence (and students tend to be more Labour voting in general). The last election saw safe Tory seat Canterbury swing to Labour for example and the sense is that this was down to a large student vote which normally doesn't appear.

[Snake Plissken]

https://twitter.com/Peston/status/1189314986650324993

[Nefertiti2]

[URL]https://twitter.com/jacklewisevans/status/1189448302137413632?s=21[/URL]

[Simon G]

As much as I look forward to an election - I wish I lived in a constituency where my vote counted for something.

I can only see the Tories increasing their, already, huge majority in Tewkesbury. And that is a very depressing thought.

[Nocturnal Submission]

Would anyone care to speculate as to what might happen if the election presents us with a hung parliament, let's say one with the Tories and Labour neck-and--neck and the LibDems and the SNP each with 50 or so seats?

A Labour/LibDems/SNP coalition or pact which promises second EU and Scottish independence referenda?

The Tories don't seem to have any potential allies if they fall short.

[ad hoc]

I certainly wouldn't trust a Swinson-led LibDems to not cosy up to the Tories in that situation.

[Sean of the Shed]

If the Libs align with the Tories in a hung parliament, when you consider their diverse views of Brexit then they may as well shut the party down. Their credibility would be even lower than when Clegg chose to fag for Cameron.