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A comment on UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold general election. Parent comment

Re:UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold... by nthcolumn on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @07:22AM (#14137884)
Surely this is a Tory own-goal? Petitioning the people again (whilst ignoring the inconvenient ones)? You'd have thought Cameron's dodgy success rate would have put paid to that. Of course your lot fell for the PR one... that worked so we got one on Scotland - ooh squeaky - and then he tried it again on Europe:'not so great' as POTUS would say. How easy will it be to make this an anti-Brexit vote, a vote to keep Scotland, a vote on the NHS, on social care, an anti-Trump vote, a pro-status quo, conservative with a small 'C' anti-change vote, an anti-war vote, an anti-elitist grammar schools, a kick the arrogant Tory toffs of Johnson, Gove and Hunt... the Tories are hugely unpopular in spite of the Lab-Con polls (Labour are just even more unpopular)

We live in interesting times!

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Re:UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold... by dagw on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @07:47AM (#14138039)
Surely this is a Tory own-goal?

Labour is in a bit of leadership dispute and the Article 50 negotiations haven't had time to go bad. Now is probably the best possible time to call an election. This time next year Labour might have gotten their house in order and the first results of the negotiations with the EU will be in and under close scrutiny, and it is very likely the the government will have been forced to make some tough concessions. Both of those things are likely to make winning an election much harder.

Also if they win now they can conduct the Article 50 negotiations in peace and with clear mandate. Trying to win an election and negotiate Brexit at the same time will be much harder, if for no other reason than the fact that the person across the table won't have any idea if the person they're talking to now will be in charge when it comes time to actually sign the papers.

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Re:UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold... by nthcolumn on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @10:21AM (#14139002)
Not a two party thing at all though eh? They won't get a majority. There will be no winner at all. They will have to carry on with a minority government trying to negotiate a Brexit they no longer have a mandate for - LOL!
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Re:UK Prime Minister Theresa May announces intention to hold... by dagw on Tuesday April 18, 2017 @10:43AM (#14139190)
They won't get a majority. There will be no winner at all.

That is certainly one possible outcome. However the Tories seem rather convinced that they can keep and even increase their majority (although the Tories do seem to have a thing for taking big bets with the country on election outcomes). And if they end up even just keeping their majority it will remove the whole "Theresa May has no public mandate to negotiate Brexit" argument from the table. It will also give them 5 more years to ride out the Brexit storm before having to face the voters again.

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