May's Mistake (UK Election)

While, at the time of writing, there are still a few seats left to declare, it would seem that the Prime Minister's bet has backfired badly.
The combination of a lackluster (being rather generous, here) campaign by the Tories, Brexit wobbles, BBC Bias (yes, it happened) and not one but two Islamic Extremist attacks have combined to cut the Tories to the level where they could form a Minority government, but will have to make an alliance with another party (almost certainly the Democratic Ulster Party) in order to reach the 326-seat level needed to form a non-minority government.

On the plus side, the Scottish National Party has been pruned back in a warning that it needs to get its s*** together with both Tories (13) and Labour (7) taking seats away from it.

May rolled the dice and scored... well, a 2 when she needed a 3+.

Yeah, the Tories blew it, but at least we probably aren't having Corbyn as the next PM. He's a man with strong beliefs and morals, but who would be a total disaster as Prime Minister (He's voted against anti-terrorism laws every time since he started politics...)

Michael Everett wrote:Yeah, the Tories blew it, but at least we probably aren't having Corbyn as the next PM. He's a man with strong beliefs and morals, but who would be a total disaster as Prime Minister (He's voted against anti-terrorism laws every time since he started politics...)

And May talking about abolishing human rights laws in the same breath as anti-terrorism laws is better?

EDIT:

Oh, and if you're talking about media bias, be sure to mention the massive anti-Labour and anti-Corbyn bias the mainstream press were revelling in.

This is a duplication of what happened here, at our last election. Our conservative Prime Minister called an early election using a quirk of our Constitution called a Double Dissolution. This enables him to call for every seat in our Parliament and Senate (unlike the House of Lords they are elected) to be reelected.
Very similar result. Converted a handy lower house majority to only one, and completely lost control of the Senate.
My theory is that some leaders only hear what they want to hear from their advisors, ignoring any contrary opinions.

Michael Everett wrote:Yeah, the Tories blew it, but at least we probably aren't having Corbyn as the next PM. He's a man with strong beliefs and morals, but who would be a total disaster as Prime Minister (He's voted against anti-terrorism laws every time since he started politics...)

Risible. Corbyn has performed better than Miliband or Brown. His detractors said it would have been worse than 1983. So imagine just what would have happened had Corbyn not been stabbed in the back and undermined constantly by his own party.

As for anti-terrorism laws - we have plenty of those. The Tories pruned back several of those during their previous coalition government. Mainly cutting 28-day detainment allowances back down to 14 - because the longest they've ever had to hold a terror suspect without charging in 16 years was 13 days.

Michael Everett wrote:On the plus side, the Scottish National Party has been pruned back in a warning that it needs to get its s*** together with both Tories (13) and Labour (7) taking seats away from it.)

There were 59 seats in Scotland up for grabs. Two Westminister elections ago, the SNP won six. Their most successful result pre-2015 was a peak of 11 in the eighties.

SNP - 35
Tory - 13
Lab - 7
Lib Dem - 4

Or in other words:
SNP - 35(60%)
Unionists - 24(40%)

Had May won 60% of the seats, she would have 390 seats. We're still trying to work out what happened, but it looks like a large number of younger Yes voters decided to vote for Corbyn in spite of Scottish Labour. This, perversely, has created enough of a SNP slump to allow May to just scrape over the line relying upon Scottish Tory seats, as well as those DUP ones.

Incidentally, using DUP seats to prop up a hard brexiteer government probably isn't going to play well in Northern Ireland. Don't forget they've likely got another Stormont election coming up if power-sharing talks do not provide something conclusive.

Speaking of May making horrible mistakes: Apparently, her choice of coalition party is such a monumental display of idiocy that it:
1. Threatens to undermine the Good Friday Agreement
2. Threatens to split the Tories between the Scottish and rest-UK (The leader of the scottish conservatives is a woman who would very much like to marry her irish roman-catholic girlfriend; the DUP is very much of the opinion that non-protestants, LGBTQ people, and other undesirables should burn in hell)
3. Binds her to the person responsible for this
4. Undermines conservative rhetoric about Corbyn being a terrorism sympathizer by getting terrorism sympathizers into her coalition.