General Election 2017 | Cabinet reshuffle: Hunt re-appointed Health Secretary for record third time

How do you intend to vote in the 2017 General Election if eligible?

  • Conservatives

    Votes: 80 14.5%
  • Labour

    Votes: 322 58.4%
  • Lib Dems

    Votes: 57 10.3%
  • Green

    Votes: 20 3.6%
  • SNP

    Votes: 13 2.4%
  • UKIP

    Votes: 29 5.3%
  • Independent

    Votes: 3 0.5%
  • Plaid Cymru

    Votes: 2 0.4%
  • Sinn Fein

    Votes: 11 2.0%
  • Other (UUP, DUP, BNP, and anyone else I have forgotten)

    Votes: 14 2.5%

  • Total voters
    551
  • Poll closed .
It's weird, the Tory-owned YouGov that were making up massive leads to deter Labour voters a couple of weeks ago are suddenly showing Labour doing well, and now Tory Kuenssberg is putting the PM under pressure when she was supposed to be a mole put there by CCHQ.

Maybe they didn't get their paypackets this week.
 
There are making mistakes with the NHS and then just out-right annihilating it. The only question is will it collapse before or after it is sold off due to May's plans? It rather ironically needs emergency financial surgery, surgery the tories are going to do by selling the NHS property and assets, or removing public funding from the trusts that refuse to do so. If you can afford private health-care, then fair enough, everyone else will be fecked.

These weren't minor mistakes or isolated cases, but rather a premeditated and ongoing policy of government. Hospital trusts were left with billions of pounds worth of debt, a burden which they have carried with them for years. And as i am sure you would acknowledge, once services are withdrawn they rarely return. You can't criticise Lansley one minute and give Labour a pat on the back the next.

As for privatisation - the NHS has proportionally less dependency than many of its western contemporaries, even today. And while the situation with agency staff has gotten way out of hand, not all company involvement is bad.


Not really sure what relevance this has to Corbyn and this election if I'm honest with you.

Because such failures and breaches of trust influence how people will consider Labour's pronouncements in the present. The party's reputation has more to do with the 1940s than some glorious success in the 2000s.


Yeah im not sure how anyone can argue that labour NHS mistakes are even comparable at this point

The various scandals notwithstanding, Labour's reign was not without its damage to patient care.
 
What do you mean 'Poor Labour'? That chart isn't positive for the conservatives.
"Poor" as in unfortunate, that they got slated for their pre-recession deficit when it was historically pretty low.
 
It's weird, the Tory-owned YouGov that were making up massive leads to deter Labour voters a couple of weeks ago are suddenly showing Labour doing well, and now Tory Kuenssberg is putting the PM under pressure when she was supposed to be a mole put there by CCHQ.

Maybe they didn't get their paypackets this week.
I don't understand people saying YouGov is Tory owned just because it happened to have been founded by two Tories, with one of those still being CEO of the company. Oh did I miss Kuenssberg doing her job? Did she put pressure on The Appeaser by editing the interview so she was answering a completely different question, then make a point of saying the views that the edited version implied she held couldn't be more different to Jeremy Corbyn's? I do hope she remembers how to do that.
 
Owen Jones on today's Guardian podcast says that Labour's internal polling ("doorstep data") suggests a 12-15 point Conservative lead.

He then qualified that by pointing out how the Tory campaign has moved from campaign stops in Labour seats they think they can win to a more defensive strategy.

The overall tone of the discussion on the yougov report was fairly negative. A clear argument that I've heard from multiple places is that Labour are winning in the cities, and in places with large numbers of former Green and Lib Dem voters, i.e. parts of the country where Labour are either already very strong or very weak. So even a bump in the polls isn't going to be an obvious help for them, on current trends. Where they appear to be weak is in the towns and villages of the country, obviously meaning the areas that voted for Brexit and moved Conservative in a huge way in May's local elections. It remains to be seen what needs to be done to win over that constituency.
 
What do you mean 'Poor Labour'? That chart isn't positive for the conservatives.
Poor Labour, as in, they get taken apart on their Fiscal record, including by me, but the Tories don't get nearly enough stick

Edit - Ubik'd again
 
It's weird, the Tory-owned YouGov that were making up massive leads to deter Labour voters a couple of weeks ago are suddenly showing Labour doing well, and now Tory Kuenssberg is putting the PM under pressure when she was supposed to be a mole put there by CCHQ.

Maybe they didn't get their paypackets this week.
Irrelevant.
 
Owen Jones on today's Guardian podcast says that Labour's internal polling ("doorstep data") suggests a 12-15 point Conservative lead.

He then qualified that by pointing out how the Tory campaign has moved from campaign stops in Labour seats they think they can win to a more defensive strategy.

The overall tone of the discussion on the yougov report was fairly negative. A clear argument that I've heard from multiple places is that Labour are winning in the cities, and in places with large numbers of former Green and Lib Dem voters, i.e. parts of the country where Labour are either already very strong or very weak. So even a bump in the polls isn't going to be an obvious help for them, on current trends. Where they appear to be weak is in the towns and villages of the country, obviously meaning the areas that voted for Brexit and moved Conservative in a huge way in May's local elections. It remains to be seen what needs to be done to win over that constituency.
They were campaigning in Bolsover a week or two back (Dennis Skinner's seat), they were properly believing their own hype.

12-15 feels about right in my head now but the Tories' feels like a campaign that's completely stalled and they don't know what to do about it. There's usually a bit of a swingback to the government in the stretch but that feels far from assured for them. Read from old Labour campaign bods recently about a single day in the 2001 campaign when Jack Straw got slow hand-clapped by the police federation, Prescott punched an egg-thrower and Blair got shouted at by a member of the public about the NHS, all on the day they were launching their manifesto. They got through it because it was such a well drilled unit and Blair could brush this stuff off. You really don't get that feeling about the Tories.
 
Leanne Wood hammering Labour. That's a good start for progressives. Idiot.
 
http://news.sky.com/story/pound-under-pressure-as-poll-points-to-hung-parliament-risk-10899129

Anyone know why this is so? I'd have thought a hung parliament would increase the likelihood of a softer Brexit or second referendum which the markets would approve of, unless they're going with the increased majority = hardline Tories less influential chain of thought?
I think there is significant logic to that latter claim, but there's a couple of things I'd say affecting the pound there.

Firstly, a hung parliament means risk which worries investors which hurts the pound.
Secondly, the suggested parliament from today's poll didn't really point towards any stable government. If neither the Tories + Lib Dems, or the "rainbow coalition" could actually get a majority of seats then I don't see how we'll have a government.

Plus - the pound really hasn't fallen that much. But I'm sure it will if there's actually a hung parliament.
 
Tories back to coordinated tweeting