And yet there is no evidence that any leader would be able to get a significant lead in the polls, a Labour leader committed to a 2nd ref risks losing significant enough numbers of Labour leavers to UKIP and without those voters they lose. Then when you consider just how well Labour performed against their initial polling starting point it starts to look a bit more complicated than you would have people believe.

Is that really the case? I find it amazing that he is considered so much worse than May that there isn't someone that Joe Bloggs would think is a better option.

What evidence can you provide that it isn't the case and there is a leader that would be trouncing the Tories?

I'm sure there is some Joe or Jane Bloggs out there that would vote Labour under someone else but the question is whether all those who would vote for Labour under Corbyn would also vote for them, especially the Brexiters that returned from UKIP.

I can't, that's why I put the question mark at the end of my first sentence.

The people furthest to the left and furthest to the right make for a curious mix.

Yeah I get I was answering your question with a question but you were the one making the case that it shouldn't be hard for me to see why a different leader would be better for Labour. The absence of evidence makes it harder.

Under FPTP the main parties are necessarily broad churches, both in terms of party makeup and in how this is reflected in appeal to the electorate. This is why, given such a polarising referendum, both parties are in conflict. This would be the case with Labour regardless as the membership and the PLP are clearly out of step. But even when there is agreement on political preferences there is scope for disagreement on how those preferences should be prioritised. Two people can hope for a Labour government and wish to remain in the EU, they can disagree however which of these takes priority.

It was only coined in the late 20th century per the OED, which would be why Americans haven't picked up on it. But it means 'like a shambles', a medieval meat market or slaughterhouse, i.e. a bit messy. Well, very messy. And of course, since The Thick Of It, we can now upgrade to an 'omnishambles'.

pepper thine anuses, blokes

This should have been the message immediately after the vote.

Yep. Should have been starting point for everything.

Red:

Thanks for the clarification. I occasionally meet a British citizen here in the U.S. A Brexit conversation usually ensues. (Brexit does seem to be the topic de jour over in the UK - especially among Londoners.) I always make a point of concluding the conversation by noting that, in my mind, the country that gave us William Shakespeare will always be a great nation.

Prior to December 7, 1941 the U.S. dithered about whether or not to enter World War II while Britain bravely stood up [virtually alone] to Adolph Hitler. Brexit is certainly "messy" and there's likely to be pain and unpleasantness ahead, but your country has survived much worse.

No, it should have been the message before the vote. Vote for spam and beans.

Perhaps it could have been written on the side of a bus?

Party memberships are a tiny fraction of the population and they don't win elections. But, as it happens, Labour members are almost 90% Remain and Corbyn, who's a communist Lexiteer, is deliberately betraying them in league with his Stalinist posh-boy staffers Milne and Drummond-Murray (both longtime members of the Stalinist 'Straight Left' faction of the Communist Party of Britain, who should have been barred as entryists under normal Labour rules). Corbyn thinks he's being clever, but he's thick and he isn't being clever at all. And he'll pay, in the end.

This line carried more weight prior to June 2017 before Labour took away the tory majority and forced May to pay off the DUP to stay in power. You can argue they should or could be doing better under different leadership but winning 40% of the electorate does not suggest being unelectable, this vote share is usually enough to win.

Usually the government isn't in total disarray and threatening it's own people with massively reduced living standards.

The Tories presided over 5 years of austerity and increased their vote share and MPs in 2015. The reason 40% wasn’t enough last year was the continued irrelevance of the LibDems the major national party that ran on a explicitly remain platform. Peoples voting preferences are a lot more complex than you seem to think and you haven’t got an answer for what potential leader doesn’t hemorrhage the leave voters Labour needs to be elected.

Dan Jarvis? I mean, are Brexiteers voting Labour because of Corbyn or despite him?

I'm a Corbyn supporter, or at least I was at the last election. I despair at his hopeless stance on Brexit but I maintain that his overall social and economic vision could be great for this country. But seriously, wtf is he playing at here? The UK needs a strong opposition right now more than ever and he just isn't delivering. Labour ought to be hammering the tories relentlessly and he puts forward this half-arsed no confidence motion in the PM but refuses to pull the trigger on an actual no confidence against the government? jfc

How can you hammer this government? What can anyone say that makes them look worse?

People talk about calling a no confidence vote as if it's somehow synomynous with getting rid of the tories or making them weaker in some way. But that's only true if May does badly and as the dup and erg have said they will back May, it doesn't look like a good gamble.

Then if she does manage to lose we most likely end up with another tory who is more acceptable to the dup/erm - marvolous! Most likely the only she could lose is if the dup/erm decide to use it as an opportunity to replace her i.e. use this as a mire effective version of the tory leader no confidence vote


Beyond that, labour and it's supporters are hopelessly split on brexit as well.

Why would he call it when he is going to lose. He needs the DUP or ERG to back the no confidence vote to win. If he loses then it just makes May and the tories stronger and more united.

That said, yesterday was a total ****show I agree - and (ignoring Brexit) I also believe his policies are what the UK needs right now.

I'm liking the no deal preparations are finally properly underway.
I'm not liking the talk of not paying the EU their money. That seems irresponsible if that's owed money.

I'd be interested to know how much of that is proper 'we need to pay this cos we signed to it' and how much of it is negotiated on top though. That negotiated bit would rely on the old 'nothing is agreed till everything is agreed' imo - and there's grounds for reopening that as we got locked out of Galileo after it was agreed, IIRR.

EU needs to buy us out on that, otherwise I call foul play.

Can anyone please explain to this yankee why Brexit is good?

I overheard in a coffeehouse today (in America) that May is going to economically destroy Britain if she hangs around. Is that the sentiment [over there]?

I guess the most rational argument for leaving is that UK voters simply don't want to be part of an ever closer union and prefer to separate now, before the UK becomes even more integrated, even though an "United States of Europe" type structure is still decades away at the very least, if we are even headed that way.

Then there is the immigration aspect where people were led to believe that it's necessary to leave the EU in order to control immigration. This is mostly bs because UK policy has been strongly encouraging EU immigration up until this very point, instead of using the existing levers within the EU framework to reduce it. UK politicians from both parties were always happy to blame EU rules when it comes to immigration, but if they truly wanted to discourage immigration then they had options to do so within the EU.

The rest is basically just blatantly made up bs in order to rationalize a leave vote. e.g. The idea that the UK could negotiate more effective trade deals on its own is quite ridiculous.

Fwiw, none of the major actors really wanted Brexit, the referendum was essentially a power play within the conservative party gone wrong.

Your underestimate how glacially slow the EU are to negotiate deals (and how delegating the deal making process to a central authority is a total surrender of trade policy)

One massive upside of leaving is getting that back.

It's not necessarily about 'better', its more about having one at all. Once free, we can be getting on with business rather than waiting. And waiting. And waiting....

Both, thinking that some group whether brexiteers or remainers are voting as some homogeneous group is a mistake. However we know that Labour did not lose significant numbers to the LibDems in 2017 but did to UKIP in 2015.