im hoping this is not a bellwether for the U.S election
totally hadn't expected the tories to win a clear majority.
the car crash continues.

niggas are COWARDS, and the media is absolute dog shit.

there is no reason for anyone to vote Conservative, ever.

and now we're gonna hear endless pap about how "progressives can't win" and people slurping it up.

shit's rigged.

the Scarecrow was right. you can't win.

These white people don’t want progress

to mitigate the combination of lies (either told, or aided and abetted by the corporate media), voter suppression and other cheats, and unforced errors that are sure to ensue in an anti-Trump campaign.

Obama was... in 2008. and they threw the kitchen sink at him. including the Clinton campaign in the primaries. him even getting past Iowa was a long shot.

in this UK campaign, niggas basically ran a whole bunch of lies about Corbyn, who mostly ran a positive campaign. stuck to the issues.

but he has a "Hillary"-esque rep there despite having infinitely better politics than she does.

because niggas lie.

Folks who typically break their arms congratulating themselves for a nuanced political understanding are going to take the easy Corbyn/Sanders:Johnson/Trump comparison, and they're right that this was a devastating blow for the socialist politics. But the looming Brexit issue doesn't have an analogy in America and that's really going to make the above comparison fall a bit flat.

Labour activists like Owen Jones were helpfully candid last night for those of us who try to follow this stuff but don't have the broad familiarity with British politics. His view was that the coalition they tried to build to float Labour turned out to be too heavy a trick, and it wasn't a coalition that mimes American Dem Left and American Dem Center, it was around Brexit. A Labour coalition that brought together the remain position and the Brexit position in the demand for a new referendum based on a specific deal was too tough to pull off.

It's a political failure, to be sure. But there have been successful left/liberal coalitions in some other western European elections lately (Portugal, for instance) but they don't speak English there so we aren't as likely to view them as a close approximation of our political culture.

I think my bias there is pretty well established, and I'm not particularly confident in my grasp of British politics - but if we want to pad those caveats out with some context here's what I got for you to do what you want with:

-The LibDems exist as an option and it doesn't seem like they got support that Labour bled. Shit, Jo Swinson went down.

-My understanding is the Labour Manifesto was pretty much the same as it was in 2017, with the exception of the new referendum for Brexit, and they had a huge gain that election.

-Labour hasn't had a majority since like 2010, and have been taking it on the chin in most elections besides 2017. And it's not like Gordon Brown and Ed Milliband were particularly far left.

-Their response to the biggest issue of the election was kind of a compromise position: negotiate a new Brexit deal and put the specifics of that deal up for another referendum. The idea was a coalition that could please remainers and the not-small amount of responsible brexiters.

Somebody with some more specific expertise on this (I got nothing - just some British friends who talk a lot) can weigh in on all of these, but I'd actually love some over-the-pond insight on my most ignorant claim: the big gain by SNP kind of verifies that this election was mostly about Brexit, not some broader idea of too-left or moderate that dominates American politics. The bump in support for SNP is a nod toward Scotland's right to figure out their own part in Britain's changing relationship with Europe. Or not. Again, I'd love somebody smarter to tell me about that one.

I worry about the role that disinformation played in the UK election and if it turns out that disinformation played a decisive role in conservatives win then we have ALOT to be worried about.

And the fact is further left candidates are hurt more by disinformation if Facebook allows ads to run that says Bernie or Warren are going to be radical socialist experimenters who are going to raise everyone's taxes 1000% and get rid of private property.


**********
"Everyone has a plan until you punch them in the face. Then they don't have a plan anymore." (c) Mike Tyson

"what's a leader if he isn't reluctant"

more austerity, more poor people duped into supporting the bullshit, and no one but a handful of turdbuckets and their servants actually "win". things are about to get ridiculous.

all because of the Brexit shit and motherfuckers lying.

calling dude an antisemite without proof. media going along with it. if they don't tell the lie outright, they aid and abet it by putting it in the headlines.

actual proof of the Tories being racist and antisemitic is real and copious.

does Dan Reed's bellend ass actually direct fucking elections TOO? God damn.

I don't get why Corbyn is hated so much aside from the lies. I don't blame him so much as I do that annoying centrist liberal wing that wanted a Brexit redo over this shit and forced that issue.

fuck Nigel Farage in the goat ass.

another day, another hard-right ethnostate enforced by austerity. this sucks ASS.

and still is. if they leave by jan 2020 their economy will shrink so not sure where they are going to get the billions of sterlings to spend

the welfare cuts under the tories have been pretty severe
i dont understand how any rational adult in the U.K looked at the past ~10 years and was like, more of the same please.

i also dont quite understand how labour pretty much lost its heartlands.
i also dont understand how unpopular corbyn is - not sure how much of that is disinfo and the media bias toward the conservatives
at least they seem to triple check and highlight everything corbyn does and says but they let bojo hide in fridges

the brits are something else

regarding Corbyn as scapegoat:

pre-Corbyn, Labour had become a London-centric, pro-war, pro-austerity centrist party. Notoriously, Tony Blair (who was their leader at the time) collaborated with George W. Bush on the Iraq war.

By 2010, Labour had lost millions of votes.

Comparatively, Corbyn had more actual votes cast for Labour in 2019 versus 2010 and 2015...and that's WITH the Brexit BS.

The loss of seats speaks to a political realignment.