Any theories as to how long May can delay a new election?

[Denzil_DC]

22. Now you REALLY are trying my patience, as if you hadn't already.

I haven't even mentioned in this thread the SNP or the situation in Scotland or how I would vote - you have!

And this thread wasn't even about Brexit, so I don't know why you brought it up.

This is your perennial fucking problem right there.

The issue of Brexit would be absolutely inescapable in any "snap election" such as you seem so keen on. That's why I brought it up.

It overshadows the lives of we who actually LIVE in the UK, rather than having the luxury of observing and passing opinion on it from an ocean away.

Everything else hinges on it, and Labour has no answers to the problems we face at the moment, which is why people like T_i_B above feel "they don't look a whole lot more competent than the Tories".

That's a major problem, as even with the utter clusterfuck among the Tories at the moment, Labour is barely polling ahead, no matter how rosy you imagine the situation.

You and Labour can produce wishlists of all these lovely social programmes, nationalization, de-privatizing the NHS (in England and Wales, that's already almost a lost battle, BTW) etc., but if the economy's on the rocks because we don't have a pre-Brexit strategy as a country, let alone a post-Brexit one, and crops are literally rotting in the fields (as they already are) because of shortage of labour, then none of it can happen and the country faces unprecedented economic disaster and being at the mercy of the likes of Trump and any number of predatory overseas investors and prospective trade partners.

And - as with the 2008 crash - guess which party might have to carry the can if there is another election before final Brexit. Only this time, the blame might be more fairly attributed.

All these pressures are only going to get worse as Brexit approaches ever closer by the day and neither of the parties with any prospect of taking power shows any sign of getting to grips with the many, probably irresolvable, challenges it poses.

Hell, my brief suggestion earlier up there about seeking a justifiable reset to the Brexit process by a new government so that the proper preparations can be done (I suspect the EU would be all in favour, as the EU negotiators' incredulity and impatience at the lack of any plan at all from the UK beyond "no deal is better than a bad deal" and "we want to have our cake and eat it" is obvious) is a hell of a lot more coherent than anything I've heard out of Labour.

I don't expect coherence from the Tories, but then they don't need it, as they're in power, and at the moment show signs of being quite relieved at the prospect of not being in government as the shit finally hits the fan.

Labour can only fudge this issue - as it did at the last election and has done since - for so long before it starts to drop in the polls again. It can't rely solely on Tory incompetence to be elected. If it could, it would be rocketing ahead of them at the moment. It isn't.

Deal with it. Oh. You don't have to, because you live in a different country.