Tomorrow.

“Boris Johnson made his final plea for voters to help him 'get Brexit done' tonight hours before the ballot boxes open - and with polls showing the result is still on a knife edge.
……
He told voters: 'This election is our chance to end the gridlock but the result is on a knife-edge.
……
Separate Panelbase and BMG polls both gave the Tories a steady nine point lead.

But Conservative nerves have been set on edge after a huge YouGov analysis overnight suggested a hung parliament is still a very real possibility…”

https://mol.im/a/7782375

A swing of just 1% would change everything ...

“Boris Johnson is on track to secure a staggering landslide in the election battle tonight as Labour's 'red wall' of Brexit-backing strongholds implodes.

The hotly-awaited exit poll shows voters handing the Tories a massive 368 seats, with Labour languishing on 191 - down 71 on 2017 and the worst performance in modern history. The SNP are predicted to get 55 and the Lib Dems 13.

The bombshell numbers - which would give a huge Commons majority of 86 - comes after a month of brutal political struggle, as Jeremy Corbyn tried to sell his hard-Left agenda to the UK public…”

https://mol.im/a/7786809

More…

“Jubilant Brexiteers are celebrating tonight after the exit poll showed that the Conservatives are set for a huge general election victory.

Brexit has dominated this year's election with the phrase 'Let's get Brexit Done' becoming Boris Johnson's mantra.

And with the exit poll showing a significant majority for the Tories, the UK looks set to finally leave the EU on January 31.

According to the poll, released at 10pm, the Conservatives will get 368 seats, a majority of 86 seats…”

https://mol.im/a/7787045

It's good for them, and good for us.

Reading the same news at the Daily Mail’s website, it says that the Scottish National Party (SNP) is expected to take 55 out of 59 of the riddings. It was my understanding that the SNP wanted to stay in the EU, so will this mean that the Scottish independence movement will be back on track when Britain (England and Wales) exit the EU?

How will this affect the situation in Northern Ireland with the Republic, since the South is part of the EU, and the tariff system is a concern there.

I could see that Britain would then be free to set its own economic and trade policies with the USA, instead of the EU calling the shots.

Maybe Tac will be along to help sort this out for us on this side of The Pond.

I've stayed well away from political opinions here, both US, since I have no say, and UK, where I do, but it's private, just like Mrs tac's is private.

However, the thought of Mr Corbyn having a majority presence in ANY British Parliament is unthinkable. This is the man who sees himself as the G*dchild of Lenin every time he looks in the mirror. My own Member of Parliament lives about ten minutes walk from here, and a former PM about a mile. I've never met my MP face-to-face, except when he drove wrong way up a one-way street in town to get a parking place, and I was somehow in his way. The former PM and I have exchanged pleasantries a couple of times, and that's about it.

I sincerely hope with all my heart that a Tory win will bring about the major change that a MAJORITY of the voting population voted for, and that the UK gets out of the shackling stiflement that is the EU.

For those of you on this forum who wish us well, I thank you deeply.

And I'll leave it at that.

I think Scotland will have to leave the EU with the UK. They may choose to break with the UK and return to the EU after.

And the status of Northern Island, and maintaining the open border between Northern Island and the Republic has been a huge sticking point in the negotiations between the UK and EU. If the UK goes ahead with a no deal Brexit, that border could very well end up being closed.

I'm sure they'll be a deal between the UK and US fairly quickly. But with no deal between the UK and EU, and if that leads to significant trade barriers between the UK and EU, the UK economy will get crushed.

quote:

Originally posted by 2BobTanner:
Reading the same news at the Daily Mail’s website, it says that the Scottish National Party (SNP) is expected to take 55 out of 59 of the riddings. It was my understanding that the SNP wanted to stay in the EU, so will this mean that the Scottish independence movement will be back on track when Britain (England and Wales) exit the EU?

How will this affect the situation in Northern Ireland with the Republic, since the South is part of the EU, and the tariff system is a concern there.

I could see that Britain would then be free to set its own economic and trade policies with the USA, instead of the EU calling the shots.

Maybe Tac will be along to help sort this out for us on this side of The Pond.

With 646 of 650 seats officially determined, it’s:
Conservatives: 364
Labour: 203
SNP: 48
Lib Dems: 11
others: 20

PIERS MORGAN:

“'What an earthquake we have created!' cried a jubilant Boris Johnson after his stunning UK election triumph last night.

Unusually, the British Prime Minister wasn't either wildly exaggerating or speaking with forked tongue.

Johnson's victory was a genuinely seismic moment, and one whose forceful tremors will be felt most keenly across the Atlantic in America.

Because make no mistake, the lessons from this election carry extraordinary pertinence for next year's US election.

Like Donald Trump and his 'Make America Great Again' mantra in 2016, Boris Johnson won with one very simple message that he rammed home every minute of every day of the six-week campaign.

'GET BREXIT DONE!' he bellowed ad nauseum, and this relentless three-word mission statement worked spectacularly well…”

https://mol.im/a/7789231

quote:

Because make no mistake, the lessons from this election carry extraordinary pertinence for next year's US election.

There are similarities, aren't there?

December 13, 2019

Aftershocks from UK election earthquake should rattle US Democrats
By Thomas Lifson

Socialists, globalists, and Jew-haters were soundly rejected by British voters yesterday, and that has got to worry United States Democrats, many of whom have embraced these political positions. Pollsters who had warned that the race was tightening were repudiated by voters who handed a historic landslide outcome to Boris Johnson’s Conservative party, which is now reckoned to end up with an 86 seat majority when all the results are tabulated. Even more pointed for the Democrats is the fact that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party has dipped below 200 seats for the first time in almost a century and has lost seats in the industrial Midlands and North that have been secure for it for over a century.

To be sure, the United Kingdom and the United States are not identical, so there are limits to the parallels that can be drawn, but there are plenty of reasons to believe that similar tectonic forces are at work in both nations. If you think this is mistaken conservative triumphalism, don’t take it from me, take it from lefty Jonathan Chait, writing in the New Yorker that “American Leftists Believed Corbyn’s Inevitable Victory Would Be Their Model.”

The British election results, like any election result, is the result of unique circumstances and multiple factors. It is also, however, a test of a widely articulated political theory that has important implications for American politics. That theory holds that Corbyn’s populist left-wing platform is both necessary and sufficient in order to defeat the rising nationalist right. Corbyn’s crushing defeat is a decisive refutation.

Many writers, not only on the left, detected parallels between the rise of Corbyn and the movement around Bernie Sanders. The latter is considerably more moderate and pragmatic than the former, and also not laden with the political baggage of Corbyn’s widely-derided openness to anti-Semitic allies. And yet many leftists have emphasized the similarities between the two, which are indeed evident. Both built youth-oriented movements led by cadres of radical activists who openly set out to destroy and remake their parties. Both lost in somewhat close fashion, Sanders in 2016 and Corbyn the next year. And fervent supporters of both men treated their narrow defeats as quasi-victories, proof of victory just around the corner.

Chait is ignoring the strain of Jew-hatred that has infected the Democrats but he does get it that socialism’s appeal has been greatly exaggerated.

Another factor that ought to give Democrats pause is the sheer frustration and anger that animated British voters over the delays in implementing the Brexit initiative that they passed two years ago. Mark Steyn:

…put crudely, historically Labour working-class constituencies in northern England that voted Leave and were then screwed over by the subversives of a Remainer Parliament abandoned century-old tribal loyalties to Labour and shifted to pro-Brexit parties.

Democrats have done their level best to stall and frustrate President Trump at every stage of his presidency. They have no positive program (except for the socialists who want to destroy the economy) and seem to waking up that going before the voters in 11 months with no accomplishments is a recipe for disaster, hence Nancy Pelosi’s sudden endorsement of a USMCA vote just an hour or so after announcing that the House would proceed with impeachment.

There are a lot of peculiarities in the British system, especially Scottish nationalism and the fate of Ulster after Brexit, that drained away support from Labour to local parties. But the Democrats could well face challenges themselves. Democrat Representatives and Senators who vote against impeachment or convection could well be primaried by the Justice Democrats that recruited and sponsored Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, for instance. If a Sanders or Warren gets the presidential nomination, non-socialist Dems could bolt either to Trump or to a third party nominee. Or if doddering Joe Biden is the nominee, lefties could well sponsor a third party candidate. They are animated by anger, after all, not by love of give and take compromise.

https://www.americanthinker.co...le_us_democrats.html

Very encouraging.

Good to see the people of the UK had, had enough of the arrogance and scolding of London and like-minded metro areas.

you can only mess with people for so long. People just don't want to be told what to do. The government and in particular the EU is not your mother. It's that simple.

And the Globalist left is starting their playbook.Looks like the same old tired song.Fusion GPS and Glen Simpson.


Britain needs its own Mueller report on Russian ‘interference’
Glenn R Simpson and Peter Fritsch

https://amp.theguardian.com/co...tter_impression=true

Conservative-leaning media in the UK and US see little mileage in exposing meddling that helped their own side
Thu 12 Dec 2019 06.17 EST


The British political system has become thoroughly compromised by Russian influence. It’s high time its institutions – including the media – woke up to that fact. In 2016, both the United Kingdom and the United States were the targets of Russian efforts to swing their votes. The aim was to weaken the alliances that had constrained Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, such as the European Union and Nato.

The efforts in both countries had much in common. They were aided by a transatlantic cast of characters loosely organised around the Trump and Brexit campaigns. Many of them worked in concert and interacted with Russians close to the Kremlin. The outcome in both countries was also eerily similar. Both countries have been at war with themselves in the three years since, pulling them back from the international stage at a time when Putin has consolidated his position in Crimea, Ukraine, Syria and beyond.

Our Washington-based research firm, Fusion GPS, conducted much of the early investigations into Russia’s support of the Trump campaign, aided by our colleague Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk. While our initial focus was on Russian meddling in US politics, it has since become increasingly clear that Britain’s political system has also been deeply affected by Russian influence operations.

There the similarities end. For the past three years, the US has undergone a messy and boisterous effort to understand the extent of Russian influence on the 2016 election and beyond. There have been multiple congressional investigations with the power to compel documents and testimony from witnesses. There was a two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller.

After mostly ignoring the issue during the election campaign itself, the US media have made up for lost time by digging deeply into Russian interference and the extent of the Trump campaign’s complicity.

All of these investigations have been imperfect. The congressional investigations often devolved into farce as Trump’s political allies decided to investigate the investigators instead of Russia’s attack. The Mueller report’s damning findings were obfuscated by lawyerly language and twisted beyond recognition by Trump’s loyal attorney general. Mueller interpreted his mandate narrowly, leaving crucial questions unanswered.

But the process did produce an avalanche of documents and testimony, a great deal of it public, that has aided understanding of what occurred. That makes it harder for Russia to reprise its attack. The Mueller report’s main finding – that Russia had engaged in a “sweeping and systematic” campaign to elect Trump – was unambiguous and thoroughly documented. So too was Mueller’s clarion call for Americans of all political persuasions to wake up to the continuing threat of Russian interference in its politics.

In Britain, the official response has consisted largely of denial. Consumed by bitter divisions over Brexit and public spending, it took years longer than it should have for parliament to conduct an investigation of Russian penetration of British politics. Even now, the government has suppressed its findings until after the election – an unconscionable decision given the importance to the democratic system itself.

Many US institutions have shown more backbone and independence than their UK counterparts. Some of those who served in the Trump administration, such as the British-born Fiona Hill and Lt Col Alexander Vindman, have been willing to stand up in public and tell the truth, despite intimidation from the president and his allies. In the UK, the courageous whistleblowers needed to expose Russian influence have yet to emerge.

The UK media have started prying into these issues and important work has been conducted shedding light on the actions of Russian-backed groups such as the Conservative Friends of Russia. But, in general, news organisations have been slow off the mark, stymied by dwindling resources and overloaded by the hurricane of Brexit news. Britain’s onerous libel laws and its culture of official secrecy have only made matters worse.

In both the US and the UK, there’s an understandable tendency by those helped by Russian efforts to minimise the perception of this influence. Conservative-leaning media in both countries see little advantage in uncovering Russian meddling that would appear to undercut their own political preferences. In the US, some of Trump’s defenders have even resorted to parroting Russian propaganda that falsely shifts the blame for their interference to rivals in Ukraine.

The British official instinct to handle these unpleasant matters in private has not served it well. The public cannot have confidence that the political establishment will deal with these thorny issues any better than it has with Brexit.

In short, Britain needs its own Mueller report: a full, independent and public accounting of Russian efforts to interfere in its politics. Few people will look forward to this process in a country already exhausted from fighting over Brexit. But it’s essential to halt Russia’s attack on Britain’s democracy and restore confidence in its politics.

Putin will not be easily deterred. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s, with little prospect of growth so long as it suffers under his kleptocracy. The only option to become relatively stronger, Putin believes, is to divide and weaken his adversaries. However, Putin is not the Wizard of Oz. He cannot invent underlying political currents; he can only intensify them.

This is the biggest danger we face: that we cannot escape our partisanship long enough to face down our common enemy. Putin is not a Conservative; nor is he a Republican. The next time he interferes it could easily be in favour of their political opponents. Britain’s institutions must wake up to the Russian threat before Putin seriously damages the country’s centuries-old democracy.

• Glenn R Simpson and Peter Fritsch, both former journalists, are the founders of the research firm Fusion GPS. Their new book is Crime in Progress: The Secret History of the Trump-Russia Investigation


"F**k Boris" - Antifa Protesters Clash With Police Outside Downing Street As Furious Leftists Revolt

https://www.zerohedge.com/geop...ious-leftists-revolt

As we warned earlier, despite the Conservatives winning their largest majority since the 1980s, bitter leftists furious at the defeat of their spiritual and political leader, Jeremy Corbyn, are rallying in London, and across the country, to protest the outcome of a democratic election.

Those who still need an excuse to try and pretend like they haven't wholly abandoned their support for Democracy (the West's primary form of government for the past few centuries) have latched on, once again, to the Russia narrative. The notion that Russian intelligence threw its support behind Boris Johnson and Brexit, and deliberately tried to sway both the referendum and the 2019 vote has no basis in fact, yet certain American political figures are publishing op-eds trying to discredit the British electoral process.

On Friday evening, video appeared on social media of the "Not My Prime Minister" march in London, which brought protesters almost to the front steps of No. 10 Downing Street one day after their fellow Britons rejected Labour's hard-left policies by handing it its biggest defeat since 1935. As always, legions of police were brought in to keep the peace.

As they always seem to do, a mob of Antifa thugs clad in black masks and black outfits have descended on the London rally and provoked skirmishes with the police.

Video footage shows the group of radicals clashing with police while waving a huge Antifa flag near Downing Street.

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
On Friday evening, video appeared on social media of the "Not My Prime Minister" march in London, which brought protesters almost to the front steps of No. 10 Downing Street one day after their fellow Britons rejected Labour's hard-left policies by handing it its biggest defeat since 1935. As always, legions of police were brought in to keep the peace.

As they always seem to do, a mob of Antifa thugs clad in black masks and black outfits have descended on the London rally and provoked skirmishes with the police.

Video footage shows the group of radicals clashing with police while waving a huge Antifa flag near Downing Street.

The vote was held, the results have been tallied and the results are in. With a margin of defeat that big, these clowns still believe everybody else who voted in favor of the Tories, are a bunch of dupes to outside influence So much for these clowns believing in everyone's right to voice and vote.

The usual suspects on the left, including Antifa, are out protesting the election results. That's where the left is these days. Anytime they lose an election, they consider it illegitimate. I think this is a mild preview of what will happen here in 2020 when the left realizes they have to live with Trump for 4 more years.

Democracy can only survive as long as the losers agree to live with the results. If the left think that only they are allowed to win elections and refuse to be peaceably governed by the other side when it wins, then a real civil breakdown is not far behind.

It brought a smile to my face to read this morning of Boris's truly amazing landslide.....

Happy day for our British cousins


This vote means they will once again be a sovereign nation....free of the EU.

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

So much for these clowns believing in everyone's right to voice and vote.

Leftists don't truly believe in "everyone's voice and vote" - only those with whom they agree.

Interesting to see the first-past-the-post system at work again. Both the Conservatives and Scottish National Party gained only one point or so in the popular vote, but increased their seats by about a fifth and a third respectively, breaking into traditional strongholds of other parties.

By contrast, the Liberal Democrats gained more than four points, but actually lost a seat compared to the last elections (and half of the total number swelled by anti-Brexit defectors from both Tories and Labour). So far they have been the go-to group for the Remain camp, but I saw a suggestion that they went too far by proposing to cancel Brexit without a second referendum, which was considered undemocratic even by most Remainers.

Not much to say about Labour. Jeremy Corbyn was wishy-washy on Brexit, has the personality of a 70s Soviet apparatchik,* and ran on a program even leftist German media described as turning the UK into "Cuba without the sun", and the party was roundly trashed for it at the polls.



* This in a race where the following is not satire.

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: They wanted a People's Vote. They got one! 

“This wasn't just a defiant reaffirmation of the EU referendum result, it was a damning repudiation of those who have spent the past three and a half years trying to Stop Brexit.

It also served as a timely reminder that there is life outside the Westminster bubble, that social media is not the real world.

As late as Thursday lunchtime, political commentators were confidently predicting a hung parliament on the evidence of a handful of photos on Twitter showing a few dozen young people queueing at polling stations in London.

Like children chasing a football round a school playground, they all rushed to follow the herd.

We were told that not only would the Conservatives fail to secure an overall majority, but there was a real chance Boris Johnson would lose his own West London seat.

In the event, Boris romped home, not just in Uxbridge, but across the country, in constituencies which had never previously returned a Conservative MP.

The Corbynistas were crushed. The self-deluding Remain Alliance, which thought it could bully the British people into reversing the referendum result, was routed.

That gurning gargoyle John Bercow, the ex-Speaker who has done more than most to frustrate the will of the people, turned up as a pundit on Sky News.

When the official exit poll predicting an 80-seat Tory majority dropped at 10pm, he looked as if he'd just heard through his earpiece that his wife was having an affair with his cousin Alan.

Order, order!

Bercow, nominally a Tory, appeared devastated by the scale of the projected Conservative victory. He wasn't alone. The outcome of this election was an even greater defeat for the forces of Remain than the original referendum in 2016…”

https://mol.im/a/7790961

Steel. The Brits still have it.