Mrs May calls snap General Election

http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/snp-to-abstain-in-commons-vote-on-snap-general-election-1-4423079

SNP MPs will abstain in the House of Commons vote on whether there should be a snap general election. The position was confirmed by the party’s leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson.

Mr Robertson said his party believed in fixed-term parliaments but would not stand in the way of an early election. TThe next general election had been due to be held in 2020, but the Fixed Term Parliaments Act allows for one to be held earlier if two-thirds of MPs are in favour. MPs are expected to approve Prime Minister Theresa May’s plan to hold an 8 June poll on Wednesday. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have already said they support the move.

Someone's running scared. Never mind, when Angus (the 'g' is silent) is booted out of his seat, I am sure he will be allowed to take the 100" flatscreen TV he claimed on expenses, with him.

https://order-order.com/2017/04/19/13-mps-voted-election/

Oh look! It includes:

Michelle Thomson
Natalie McGarry

Just can't think why those two would be scared of an election.

Gina Miller to launch tactical voting initiative against hard Brexit.

Campaigner whose legal challenge forced No 10 to seek parliamentary approval for article 50 sets out Best For Britain plan.

Gina Miller, the pro-EU campaigner behind a successful court challenge over article 50, is planning to launch a tactical voting initiative to support election candidates opposed to hard Brexit.

In a possible sign of appetite among progressives to put party affiliation aside on 8 June, a crowdfunding page set up immediately after Theresa May called the snap election quickly exceeded initial financial targets on Wednesday.

The group, called Best For Britain, will formally launch next week. It eventually aims to endorse a slate of candidates who back its preference for a “meaningful” vote by MPs at the end of the EU negotiation period. More at link.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/19/gina-miller-best-for-britain-tactical-voting-against-hard-brexit

Ironic, considering that if she hadn't stuck her smug, rich, nose in, we probably wouldn't be having a General Election in the first place. I wonder when it's going to dawn on her that, away from Islington chatterers, she's about as popular as Tony Blair?

Thrilling election news!

Some bloke pretending to be a fish finger is standing against LibDem leader Tim Farron:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/VoteFishFinger?src=hash



http://www.itv.com/news/border/2017-04-20/fish-finger-to-take-on-tim-farron-in-election/

Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron has triumphed in many elections throughout his political career... but looks set to face an unusual challenge in his next one.

A man dressed as a fish finger is reportedly going to stand against him, in order to "knock him off his perch and put him in his plaice".

A crowdfunding page has been set up to raise the £500 needed for Mr Fish Finger's deposit, which will allow him to stand in the General Election taking place on 8 June.

So far, more than £1,200 has been raised.

Mr Fish Finger, whose real identity has not been revealed, has pledged to change his name by deed poll for the election, and to dress as a fish finger throughout his campaign.

It is unclear whether Tim Farron, who has held the Westmorland and Lonsdale seat since 2005, will take part in any official debates with Mr Fish Finger

Better not - Farron would probably lose.

Minty‏ @MintyBaubles 4h4 hours ago
More
You know the country's politics are a mess when you look at each party & the only sensible candidate is a fishfinger
#VoteFishFinger

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15236974.Sturgeon_confirms_meeting_George_Osborne__39_s_US_fund_manager/

NICOLA Sturgeon has confirmed a previously secret meeting with the US fund manager paying George Osborne £650,000-a-year after it leaked in the press.

The First Minister’s office rushed out a parliamentary answer acknowledging a “business meeting” with BlackRock in New York earlier this month.

The firm pays the former Tory Chancellor £162,500 per quarter for a day’s work a week.

Ms Sturgeon also met global finance giant Morgan Stanley in the city “to further develop the relationships with key inward investors”.

BlackRock and Morgan Stanley have bases in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively.

The Tories accused the First Minister of secrecy, as the meetings were first revealed by the financial journalist Iain Martin.

Mr Martin wrote on his blog that while Ms Sturgeon had boasted of other meetings in the US, she had been silent on the financial firms, “almost as though they don’t ?quite fit with Sturgeon’s progressive image aimed at her left of centre base in the West of Scotland”.

He said the SNP government also initially refused to confirm or deny the meetings took place, saying some meetings with “stakeholders” that were “not media-facing”.

The episode has echoes of Ms Sturgeon’s collapsed £10bn investment deal with a Chinese huckster last year, which appeared in the Chinese press before being confirmed at home.

Tory economy spokesman Dean Lockhart said: “Nicola Sturgeon raced to every camera available in America when it suited her.

“Yet now, just like the Chinese investment shambles, we only find out about important meetings between the First Minister and potential investors through leaks and media reports."....etc.

I bet Jezza wishes the internet would 'forget' things.....

Nikla, oor Queen of Scots, will be smashing the Bute House crockery when she sees that. Especially because it's true.

Corbyn is rushing to embrace Labour’s annihilation.
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian (Labor, defected to SPD then when they became LD, switched back to Labor.)

The shockingly inept opposition leader will preside over catastrophe for his party. Politics has rarely looked grimmer.   Wrong, wrong and wrong again. Was ever there a more crassly inept politician than Jeremy Corbyn, whose every impulse is to make the wrong call on everything? It’s not excitingly flamboyant red radicalism that has done for Labour, but his sluggish incompetence at the absolute basics of leadership.

How rarely he has had the chance to wield any power, but on Wednesday he had the very real authority to stop certain calamity for his party and call out Theresa May’s game-playing chicanery. The mother of all bombs is about to drop on Labour, but what does he do? He says: “I welcome the prime minister’s decision to give the British people the chance to vote for a government that will put the interests of the majority first.” What?

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was designed to stop prime ministers dashing opportunistically to the polls when momentarily at the peak of their popularity. May can only gain two-thirds majority in the Commons if Labour agrees to its own annihilation – which he welcomes. Will this be the last disastrous disservice he does to his party?

Who knows what other clumsy damage he may inflict during the campaign. And afterwards, he might not go. Remember Tony Benn celebrating the millions of votes for “socialism” under Michael Foot’s 1983 political suicide manifesto, though Labour had crashed to epic defeat? Fantasy politics reign again when Momentum responds to May’s announcement by tweeting about the “path to victory for Labour”.

Among a few of the three-quarters of Labour MPs – 172 – who voted no confidence in Corbyn last year, I hear strange sounds. Thank God! This will put them out of their misery, as if shooting the sick dog Labour party would put it out of its misery. This election could purge the party’s mortal disease, like a toxic dose of mercury. Never mind if the cure is worse than the illness, at least it ends this time of total paralysis. But that’s another kind of fantasy politics.

Since last September’s failed challenge to Corbyn’s leadership, most of Labour’s senior people languish, uselessly immobilised, while a largely insignificant shadow cabinet makes no impact – Keir Starmer the one exception. Another putsch was planned by some MPs for the autumn out of desperation – even they fared no better than last time.

Waiting for the 60% of Labour party members who voted for Corbyn to come to their senses looked like a very long wait indeed. Talk of a new party to break away from the suicide party was heard only from those long out of parliament and out of touch. The fate of the SDP should be salutary warning to anyone trying to break the wicked first past the post stranglehold on all political innovation.

The prospect of losing scores of seats should temper any self-harming glee among Labour’s anti-Corbynites. Electoral Calculus predicts Labour could lose around 50 seats. Alan Johnson’s flight is a bitter blow, following that of Tom Blenkinsop, MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, who would have been defending a thin majority in a heavily pro-Brexit area. Labour’s fate will be well and truly sealed if other non-Corbynites jump ship: their duty is to stand and fight.

Labour’s manifesto may not contain much all MPs couldn’t campaign on: Corbyn has been no firebrand after all. His recent cascade of minor policies are fine in themselves: £10 a week more for carers by abolishing inheritance tax cuts, a £10 minimum wage, free school meals paid for by private school VAT, obliging companies to publish their tax returns, and more. But elections are rarely about policies. Elections are won by the best-led party; YouGov finds just 15% put Corbyn as best leader, against May’s walloping 49%.

Just watch those reasonable policies twist in the wind under Lynton Crosby’s fiendish hand: Labour will snatch your inheritances, kill parents’ private school aspirations, punish business with compulsory unionisation, and so on. Labour can only make radical policies fly when floated by a trusted leadership. Nothing Corbyn proposes is as radical as Blair and Brown’s £5bn windfall snatched from privatised utilities – but by then they had earned economic credibility the hard way. If you are near Manchester, visit the People’s History Museum’s timely exhibition on Labour’s 1997 winning election campaign to see how it was done. Corbyn may offer the casebook study in how to lose.

This election will be pure Brexit, up to the blood and guts hilt. One paradox is May’s belief it will set her free to rule with an estimated 126 majority; it will be her curse. Not captain of her party, but its captive, she will be in thrall to a virulent rightwing rock-hard set of new Brexit MPs, nasty party through and through.

A Brexit election has Tim Farron crowing with relish, the Lib Dem’s crystal clear pro-EU stance destined, thinks Crosby, to regain 27 seats lost to Tories in 2015. Brexit and Labour? Corbyn mumbling into his beard, conflicted.

The 48% confront the prospect of May, imperial and imperious demanding “unity” where there is none, badging all opposition as unpatriotic in the face of Brexit negotiations. All they can do is choose whichever anti-May candidate is best placed to deny her a monstrous majority lasting all the way to 2022. With no further say on whatever deal May retrieves from Brussels, politics has rarely looked grimmer.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act was designed to stop prime ministers dashing opportunistically to the polls when momentarily at the peak of their popularity

I don't think that's right, LL. My understanding was that Cameron did it when he was in coalition with the LibDems so he couldn't be forced out of office if he lost important Commons votes. Happy to be corrected if I'm misremembering!

I don't know, that's Toynbee's spiel, not mine. I looked it up. LL

What is the Fixed-term Parliaments Act ?

The conditions for when a snap election can be called were significantly restricted by the Fixed-term Parliaments Act of 2011. The Act of Parliament, which was part of the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement produced after the 2010 general election, was introduced fixed-term elections to the Westminster parliament.

Under the provisions of the act, parliamentary elections must be held every five years, beginning on the first Thursday in May 2015, then, 2020, 2025 and so on.

A snap election can only be called when the government loses a confidence motion or when a two-thirds majority of MPs vote in favour.

Thanks, LL, I didn't think for one minute that Cameron did it out of the goodness of his heart. I didn't agree with it at the time, anyway, it does no harm for politicians to have the threat of snap elections hanging over their greedy heads.

Meanwhile, look who's standing for Parliament!

https://twitter.com/LettucePrey101/with_replies

Anna Raccoon‏ @LettucePrey101 3h3 hours ago
More
@Holbornlolz Have decided to stand myself. Islington North. Have own string vest and Marrow. Am just organizing signatures and agent.

Anna Raccoon‏ @LettucePrey101 3h3 hours ago
More
Replying to @drlavertyx
Indeed. Find myself standing for parliament - Islington North from this bed. Novel. Have string vest - will stand.! http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/deposit-to-allow-me-to-stand-for-election/ …

Oh my!!  It is wonderful to see that Ms. Raccoon's sense of humor is still intact.  Bless her.

Braden Davy‏ @BradenDavy 12h
More
Braden Davy Retweeted Lord Ashcroft
Looks like ignoring 2million No voters & calling 1million Leave voters 'Xenephobic' wasn't the best election strategy for the SNP. #GE2017

Lord Ashcroft‏Verified account
@LordAshcroft

Follow
More
Opinium National Poll in Scotland SNP 43% CON 32% LAB 14% LDEM 8%

Survation.‏ @Survation 40m
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NEW POLL: Our first Scottish #GE2017 VI
SNP 43%
CON 28%
LAB 18%
LD 9%
Other 2%

Backstabbing fishermen, farmers, etc., to chase the Glasgow Sinn Fein vote was a stroke of genius, too.

Tony Blair has hinted he could try for a stunning return to Parliament to lead the fight against Brexit as he said Labour voters should consider backing pro-EU Tories.

The former Prime Minister, who quit Westminster 10 years ago after a decade in No 10, admitted he felt 'motivated' to return to the front line.

He insisted Brexit was 'bigger than party allegiance' and said while he would vote Labour on June 8, voters should look at the choice on their own patch and back the best anti Brexit candidates - even if they were Tories.

The remarks prompted a former senior aide to Jeremy Corbyn to call for Mr Blair to be expelled from Labour.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4437320/Blair-hints-run-Parliament-fight-Brexit.html#ixzz4f6l30LBc
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

It's astounding that Blair still doesn't grasp how utterly hated he is, right across the political spectrum.

Guess who's in a panic because she knows she's fouled up everything she's touched? And instead of bleating about Toaries! Referendum! Toaries! constantly, she'd be better employed explaining how she managed to throw away £500,000,000 of taxpayers' money on failed IT projects.

Casually wrecking our police, fire, school, health service, etc., along the way.

LibDem chances in Scotland:

https://stephendaisley.com/2017/04/24/rennies-ram-raid-raised-a-laugh-but-his-lib-dems-must-be-taken-seriously/



Willie's latest encounter with a farm animal.

Britain Elects @britainelects
Welsh Westminster voting intention:

CON: 40% (+12)
LAB: 30% (-3)
PC: 13% (-)
LDEM: 8% (-1)
UKIP: 6% (-7)

(via YouGov)
Chgs. w/ Jan
1:03 PM - 24 Apr 2017

Oh!  

Labour antics aren't terribly inspiring:



For starters, he's mis-spelled Jezza's surname....

Just as well because what could he say about a Y?  Young?  Youthful? 

lily wrote:Just as well because what could he say about a Y?  Young?  Youthful? 

Yucky?? LL

Ba BOOM!  You win the prize.  :hug:xxxxxxxxx