Inverted

It's like in many real life laws - it's not really ideal for them to be applied 100%. Very few rules can actually work in such a scenario. Imagine a world where everyone who illegally downloaded a film or a song could be charged with theft, where every driver a fraction of a mph over the limit got charged with speeding, and every person who's ever tried a drug got caught and jailed. There's a reason police have their enforcement guidelines. It's much easier just to enforce a seemingly black and white rule sensibly, than it is to write-in a bunch of exceptions.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/the-reason-keir-starmer-sounds-middle-class-is-that-he-is-in-fact-working-class/ Hate linking to the spectator, but this makes an important point about class and the leadership. Starmer is derided as the London elite while Jess Philips is held as the peak of mince and potatoes Northern authenticity, when the exact opposite is the case. I've felt the exact same pressure described in the article when amongst classmates in law school, in job interviews, in internships, speaking to people who come from generations of lawyers and professionals, or internationally esteemed academics. Because I'm the first generation to go to uni, and because my dad was a taxi driver and my grandad was a delivery driver, I end up acting more "properly" than others. I'm constantly policing my accent, falling into silence while I make sure that what I'm planning to say doesn't sound stupid, and trying to fit into a place that nobody I've ever known has been before. The idea that a working class person is always a jovial, uninhibited, straight-talker with a strong regional accent, is an elitist stereotype, one that middle-class people like Philips are every eager to exploit.

Yeah, a country spends decades delivering crushing defeats to a party, to no avail, and then the one moment when it relents in the slightest, enables a crucial victory for said party. The tragic exception which proves the rule.

Most left-leaning people in Scotland are pro-indy for the reason that they feel the only chance of ever getting a left-wing gov is outside the UK. We elected a few Tory MPs out of almost 60, and they still get a crushing majority. The last time Labour got a majority, it was Labour's least ever left-wing leadership, and Scotland didnt even matter in the overall result. They would have won without us. There no longer really is a "British politics". There's Scottish politics, and then there's English politics, and no matter what happens up here, it's ultimately the latter which is decisive for us all. It's complex because Labour afaik are the most popular party amongst young Scots, but we also tend to support independence. Most people my age seemed to understand that even if you want independence, an SNP presence in Westminster doesn't really make that any more likely, and we like Labour's policies. If the SNP have a Holyrood majority, they can demand independence, and if Westminster wants to block it they will, no matter how many SNP MPs are there.

Everton have the ability to put out a strong 11 at full strength. Not world class but as you say they have an industrious core, they have really talented players who can cause issues going forward like Richarlison, Digne, Sidibe and Bernard, and they have central defenders who can be useful if they're screened properly. Iwobi, Schneiderlin, Walcott, Sigurdsson etc are not bad players. They're not stars but they certainly can have a place in a good team. They don't need as much of an overhaul as Arsenal. Arsenal need to make major sales as well as signings because their squad is fundamentally top-heavy. Everton are maybe lacking a reliable holding midfielder - Gbamin has been a loss in that sense, a quality centre forward (though who knows what Ancelotti could do with Kean?), and maybe a more composed centre back to pair with Mina or Keane.

I actually think that weirdly, Ancelotti is better suited to Everton than to Arsenal. Arsenal are a complete mess, squad-wise and need a substantial amount of balancing and recruitment. Everton actually have a good squad which has already been very expensively assembled, but they're tactically confused and brutally low on confidence.

It's difficult because of a few dilemmas. 1 - Brexit-focused candidates for tactical reasons couldn't have been leader before, but we have no idea what role Brexit will play in 5 years in campaigning. 2 - A lot of the more moderate candidates like Starmer and Thornberry who would appeal to centrists are also part of the London-based part of the party who supposedly alienated white northerners. 3 - It's not clear whether an actual northern, working class candidate would appeal to "working class" voters. Voters in England tend to have a certain degree of worship for their social superiors. Many would turn their noses up at a school drop-out like Rayner in favour of their pal Boris. 4 - Any candidate who isn't critical enough of the party before will be accused of being a puppet. Any candidate who is too critical of the last two campaigns will be a slap in the face to the tens of thousands of members who trudged for hours in the cold, dark and rain arguing for the party. Idealistic, young left wingers give you boots on the ground - Twitter centrists don't.

Have they changed that much though? Britain is not that socially mobile a country. If your dad was a miner then you're not likely going to be much further up in society than he was, particularly in these remote post-industrial slagheaps. What do the Tories have to offer to the people near the bottom of the pyramid? If anything, their absolute disdain for ordinary people has been made even more obvious than ever. They're voting for themselves, but what do they want? Again - Brexit, seemingly. And what benefit to themselves will Brexit bring? The absolute square root of fuck of all. As for the disdain about the two party system, it's a reasonable gripe, but fundamentally you're never going to change it until you win within a two party system. If you hate being forced to pick between two, that's reasonable, but nonetheless if you want to change it, you'll have to pick between the two. Once you win, you can put in whatever electoral system you like.

The entire problem is that every idea of political logic no longer seems to apply in England. You have miners' sons going out and voting for the people who sent military men out to batter and brutalise their fathers. And why? Ultimately, to get Brexit done. And why do they want Brexit? You'd get a million different answers and I'm not sure any of them would make sense. Labour had the challenge of needing to strategise a way of appealing to these people, without being an outright pro-Brexit party. They had to think of why they were so determined about Brexit - what the root causes of their ideas were. The Tories didn't have to think about the why, they just focused on selling them Brexit.

Not really. They could have won every seat in Scotland and we'd be staring at exactly the same situation today.

My seat went SNP, think SNP have them them all bar a few Tory and one Lib Dem and one Labour. I dont think Scottish and English people are similar enough any more to be in the same country.

Labour keep Newcastle Central. WEVE GOT A GAME TROOPS

Well he played a blinder managing to convince a lot of people that UKIP and Brexit, and then his Brexit party, was not a fundamentally Tory project.

Please god, just let Swinson lose her seat. That would be at least one consolation.

I'd be curious to see if someone more PR-friendly and inoffensive could avoid a complete media ravaging, whilst also keeping the grassroots energy that Corbyn generates. Thats the combination that the party needs to find. Not sure if it's attainable. Rayner would be a good candidate but would be savaged for being a school dropout and single mum. Starmer is extremely smooth and highly competent but is also a vocal Europhile and would tie the party's hands tactically. However if Brexit fatigue does eventually set-in that might not be an issue in future. Philips is a make-believe working class gal from a comfy background, and for those who hear her often enough, a very easily hateable person. The press could have her on toast if they saw her as enough of a threat.

The fundamental issue was Labour miscaculated in trying to offer a future beyond Brexit. A milquetoast centrist leader might have meant a slightly easier time from the press, but it wouldn't have made a difference this huge. Even if they're a minority, determined Brexiters make up a majority-winning chunk of the electorate. The Tories being able to position themselves as the only credible pro-Brexit option was always going to happen when Farage bowed out, and then they had the win in their hands. Labour gambled that the only way to negate that advantage was to shift the narrative. Would the Remain electorate have likewise snapped behind Labour with a europhile leader on a platform of revoke? That would have been an equally huge gamble. Brexiteers tend to be politically unengaged on matters besides Brexit and are easier to rally behind one party. Remainders tend to be more diverse in their opinions - as shown by the Lib Dem attitude to Labour.

Tbh Labour has been trying to un-Brexify the election since day one. If anything, it's a sign that the Tory focus on Brexit has paid-off.

Lol we're fucked.

I'll pour a drink and watch some early coverage, try and get a few hours, and then watch from around 3am. Im off work anyway.

I thought being an Everton fan would be more than enough masochism for one person.

Neither. Not sure how you could measure BBC reporting's effect when it is essentially imposed on every citizen. There is no control sample you could find. As for quantity, the BBC's focus on quantitative balance in the coverage is a large part of the problem. Quantitative analysis is essentially meaningless in terms of pure volume of stories. Bias lies not only on treating like cases differently, but also in treating different cases in a like manner.

The point about organisational bias is that generates a biased effect regardless of the opinion of any individual. Institutions are shaped not just by personnel but also history, tradition, culture, and external pressure. Even if its personnel were mostly progressive in their personal beliefs, the fact that the BBC advantages the Conservatives regardless is exactly the nature of instutional bias.

There is nothing more to do if the Tories win. Either moderate Tories will panic and take Johnson's pathetic deal, or we crash out eventually. Either way we'll look back at the horrors of the last 10 years with nostalgia.

Today/tomorrow is going to be very ugly. The Tories will almost surely get the landslide as arranged, and we will have to deal with the reality that our already horrific situation is going to get a lot worse. If they don't get a majority by some miracle, every instrument of power in the country will go into panic mode. There will be accusations of electoral fraud, intimidation, some new antisemitism revelation will surely arise, concerns about national security will be raised, and hate against Scots will stoked to try and pressure Labour not to deal with the SNP.

It's like Orwell said: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine the same right-wing Facebook copypaste stamped on a smartphone screen - forever".