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 .
Kentonio said:
It's the kind of thing political heads like to discuss, but forcibly replacing a leader immediately after an election win would be incredibly difficult and politically dangerous.
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They have to know they would never get the votes. They couldn't get them when the world was saying he would be crushed. If he won they would be even more embarrassed than they were last time.
 
Rudd's lined up to replace Hammond per the Westminster rumour mill.
 
Brexit explained...

DBppuI_XgAE-Fbr.jpg
 
Great piece by Chris Cook here charting the various constituencies that party leaders have been to of late

 
Jippy said:
We were the top-performing G7 economy last year!
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Pfft, 1 year! 7 countries! Germany returned to a budget surplus in 2012. We have a bigger budget today than they did at their worst point, post crash.

What's Germany's growth over the last 5 years like and how does it compare to ours? Can't work out our at moment but i think it's much better than ours
 
Bear in mind though that those figures were from a survey for the month up to May 28th. So whilst their sample may be far more representative, could still have missed a more recent enthusiasm jump. But still looks about right to me even with that.
 
Prediction Competition - Enter to win nothing (as of right now)
Competiton Sorted now - Enter here:

https://goo.gl/forms/2t3HRH2ZGSyYAY1A2

Predict the size of the Tory majority come Friday morning. Tiebreaker is # of seats won by Labour.

No prize at the moment but if we get enough people we could have a think.

I will close the survey to new entries Thursday at 5pm. Then will post everyone's prediction to keep track of. Might make the depressing inevitability a bit more fun...
 
rcoobc said:
Pfft, 1 year! 7 countries! Germany returned to a budget surplus in 2012. We have a bigger budget today than they did at their worst point, post crash.

What's Germany's growth over the last 5 years like and how does it compare to ours? Can't work out our at moment but i think it's much better than ours
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They have a far bigger and better balanced economy than us- comparing us to Germany will always back us, and pretty much any country, look bad.
 
Oh god, there's another May interview on ITV. Thought all of these had finished.
 
Channel 4's Michael Crick just said Corbyn is getting bigger crowds at his rallies than any party leader since Churchill.
 
Jippy said:
They have a far bigger and better balanced economy than us- comparing us to Germany will always back us, and pretty much any country, look bad.
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Indeed, but the only point was, we can't claim we are the best nation in the G7.

I'm trying to find a decent chart going up to 2016. We were top of the G7 a couple of years ago. We are bottom now.
 
I just entered the predictor contest, went for a hung parliament and at the end it said 'You have voted for Theresa May'!! Fake news!! Sad!! :mad:
 
By the way this is the first election I am ever voting in, wonder if there are others doing the same due to the Corbyn factor.
 
Damien said:

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This is how it starts isn't it? Slowly you start losing your rights in the name of security and protection.

She said: “But I can tell you a few of the things I mean by that: I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.

“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.

“And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”
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https://www.theguardian.com/politic...man-rights-laws-impede-new-terror-legislation
 
rcoobc said:
Indeed, but the only point was, we can't claim we are the best nation in the G7.

I'm trying to find a decent chart going up to 2016. We were top of the G7 a couple of years ago. We are bottom now.
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Not sure raising corporation tax by a third will help our economy grow!
 
Not paying much attention to this debate on BBC News, but Sarah Champion is doing well for Labour. From a quick Google search she appears to have some baggage, despite that she's far more competent than Corbyn's best buddies like Diane Abbott.

I mean Ken Livingstone would be more competent, basically she's saying the right things.
 
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Jippy said:
Not sure raising corporation tax by a third will help our economy grow!
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Me either. But, as Labour like to point out
  • We would still have the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7
  • We would still have a middling level of corporation tax in Europe.
Also, I know you know this, but corporation tax is a tax on profits. Cutting it doesn't help the small/medium sized businesses that may not make a huge profit, that are the backbone of Germany's economy (I keep bringing up Germany, don't know why).

But Corporation Tax receipts only accounted for 6% of Government revenue in 2016. This is what the IFS has to say in 2015
https://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf
There have been a large number of changes to corporation tax since 2010. We calculate that, taken together, policy changes announced between 2010 and Budget 2016 (including those that are due to come into place before the end of the parliament) have cost £10.8 billion a year in 2015–16 terms.26 In previous work, cited at the end of footnote 26, we calculated that the cost of measures announced by the coalition government (2010– 15) only was £7.9 billion. The majority of the revenue cost is due to cuts to the corporation tax rate. The coalition government reduced both the main corporation tax rate (from 28% in 2010) and the small profits rate (from 21% in 2010) to 20% in 2015–16. In 2013, it also introduced a new lower 10% rate for the income derived from patents (the Patent Box).

The current government plans to reduce the main corporation tax rate even further to 17% by 2020–21. Corporation tax rates across the developed world have declined substantially since the 1970s as countries have attempted to remain competitive locations for mobile activities and profits. The desire to attract and retain mobile activity has been important in the UK, which, since 2010, has cut rates further and faster than other countries, such that the rate is now the lowest in the G20.27 Alongside rate cuts, there have been a large number of other corporation tax changes since 2010, including moves that raise revenues by broadening the tax base and by preventing avoidance opportunities.

The mix of policy changes is such that some companies will gain more than others. Broadly, highly profitable and mobile firms will see the most benefit from lower rates, although some will be affected by anti-avoidance measures, such as a new restriction on interest deductions.28 Those businesses with high levels of investment or losses and multinationals with high levels of debt in the UK will benefit the least. A permanent decline in onshore corporate tax revenues would mark a break with the previous trend, highlighted above, under which the effect of lower rates was offset by a larger, more profitable corporate sector (and, to a smaller extent, a broader tax base). It is possible that corporate revenues will be higher than currently forecast either because corporate rate cuts boost corporate activity by more or because anti-avoidance measures are more successful at raising revenues than is currently predicted. However, in the longer run, there is also likely to be continued competitive pressure on corporate taxes.
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https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN_182.pdf
 
http://election2017.ifs.org.uk/article/two-parliaments-of-pain-the-uk-public-finances-2010-to-2017

  • The financial crisis led to a sharp reduction in national income. Even more striking is the weakness of the subsequent recovery.
  • Official forecasts suggest that GDP per adult in 2022 will be 18% lower than it would have been had it grown by 2% a year since 2008 – broadly the expected rate of growth at that time.
  • The UK’s public finances compare unfavourably with those of other advanced economies, although this is also the case for other very large economies such as France, Japan and the United States.
  • In 2016, the UK had the fifth-largest deficit out of 35 advanced economies and the sixth-largest debt out of 26 advanced economies
  • On the spending side, the striking fact is that after seven years of austerity, public spending is only broadly back at pre-crisis levels as a fraction of national income.
  • Cuts to large parts of government spending have only resulted in the size of the state being broadly unchanged.


bn199_fig1.jpg
 
Rado_N said:
FFS my old man must let slip he's voting Tory :mad:
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It's just impossible to get over the generation gap and how people from each, generally speaking, see the parties. There was a great thread on Twitter a while ago in which a woman explained everything from the perspective of her parents. Kind of opened my eyes to just how embedded it is and will remain.
 
Fener1907 said:
It's just impossible to get over the generation gap and how people from each, generally speaking, see the parties. There was a great thread on Twitter a while ago in which a woman explained everything from the perspective of her parents. Kind of opened my eyes to just how embedded it is and will remain.
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Asked him why and he gave me a load of media spoon fed bollocks about Corbyn. I broke down the bullshit and what the actual full quotes were and he just "we'll have to agree to disagree".

So fecking disheartening.
 
Jippy said:
Not sure raising corporation tax by a third will help our economy grow!
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Raising it back to average levels though. We've had plenty of growth historically with the proposed rate and even higher.

I don't see the argument to have it below 20%
 
rcoobc said:
Me either. But, as Labour like to point out
  • We would still have the lowest corporation tax rate in the G7
  • We would still have a middling level of corporation tax in Europe.
Also, I know you know this, but corporation tax is a tax on profits. Cutting it doesn't help the small/medium sized businesses that may not make a huge profit, that are the backbone of Germany's economy (I keep bringing up Germany, don't know why).

But Corporation Tax receipts only accounted for 6% of Government revenue in 2016. This is what the IFS has to say in 2015
https://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn09.pdf

https://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/bns/BN_182.pdf
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Interesting, but you'd have to net that off with additional investment from businesses, eg R&D, and potentially increased employment, as companies invest more here, with the subsequent benefits of additional income tax and other revenue streams. No idea how you calculate that though...
Rado_N said:
FFS my old man must let slip he's voting Tory :mad:
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:lol:Remember, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, Nick.
Smores said:
Raising it back to average levels though. We've had plenty of growth historically with the proposed rate and even higher.

I don't see the argument to have it below 20%
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We weren't previously on the brink of leaving the world's biggest trading bloc though, I guess.
 
Rado_N said:
Asked him why and he gave me a load of media spoon fed bollocks about Corbyn. I broke down the bullshit and what the actual full quotes were and he just "we'll have to agree to disagree".

So fecking disheartening.
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Yep, you're going up against a brick wall. They're from an age where things were very different and don't want to and/or can't ever see things from your perspective. You can keep plugging away and thinking you've found a gap in the defenses, but you'll find it's fortified by another line of reasoning that acts as a fail-safe.

For example, my dad's voted BNP in the past as a "protest vote." Seeing as I know he's not a vile racist scumbag, it's hard to explain to a stranger how that works. I can spend all night going over why it's wrong to vote for them under any circumstances. He'll still come out as certain of himself as he was at the beginning.
 
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