Verbal

The idea of "taking back control" over immigration has been one of the biggest lies of all in the whole Brexit campaign. Britain has always been able to exercise control, even under the term of the EU's freedom of movement. It - and this applies especially to Theresa May's Home Office - has just chosen not to exercise it, and the blame has fallen, wrongly, on the EU. The rules are that EU immigrants can come for three months, but after that "must have sufficient resources not to be a burden on the benefit system of the country." The UK has never enforced this rule, in part because it doesn't have the ID card system that would make tracking possible, and also in part because the benefits of EU immigration outweigh the costs of monitoring. But also partly because the Home Office is so utterly useless. When the great fudge comes, and we slide back into the not-Brexit-at-all Brexit of membership of the single market and of the customs union, something we already have will be trotted out as a major new concession from the EU to the migrant-controllers of the Tory party. All they'll need to do is to introduce ID cards and spend heavily on monitoring the three-month rule. Which they will still be too incompetent to enforce. This is all aside from the fact that non-EU immigration, which is running at around the same rate as EU immigration, is completely within the control of the Home Office. And it's certainly aside from the fact that the NHS, for one, would simply collapse - and is already in serious trouble - without both EU and non-EU migrants.

This is pretty much right. In the US, violent incidents of right wing extremism far outnumber those by Jihadists. According to a US congressional report just two months ago, between September 2001 and December 2016 there have been 23 fatal Islamist extremist attacks in the US, compared with 62 fatal far-right attacks. In Europe, a joint report by the Royal United Services Institute, Chatham House, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Leiden University examined 'lone wolf' attacks (which could include up to three co-conspirators) over the last 15 years. 38% were religiously inspired and 33% labelled right-wing extremists. In the 72 successfully launched attacks, 'religiously inspired attacks accounted for 8% of deaths. Far-right attacks were fewer in number but accounted for just under half of deaths. Given today's arrest, it's interesting that the report identified the typical far-right violent perpetrator as around 40 years old and as socially isolated. So 'just as big a problem' is a reasonable, approximately balanced statement.

Corbyn is much more like an FDR democrat than a socialist, as much as his devotees would hate that idea. He and Bernie Sanders have become politically like twins separated at birth. Both their campaigns - though they'd never say this - were aimed substantially at middle class voters. Corbyn's big ticket item was student fees - a magnet for young middle class voters. And he drew on the same economic sources as Sanders - Krugman, Stiglitz, et al., all very much in the broad church highlighting the economic and social damage done to working AND middle classes by vast wealth inequality. Corbyn also nicked 'for the many, not the few' from the 1997 Blair manifesto. So no, the extremist or state socialist tag doesn't fit. It's patently absurd to paint him into the same picture of state socialist mass murderers as Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. Or even Chavez. What Corbyn won't be able to do is deliver his programme, but that's another question...

The defenestration of Brexit is going to take place meeting by meeting, over the next two years minimum, so here's a place - the post post EU thread - for tears and schadenfreude. To kick off, a meeting took place today between Michel Barnier (EU's chief negotiator) and Oliver Robbins (UK's chief negotiator). It did not go well. Barnier's staggering conclusion was that the UK government 'does not get' Brexit. He also flatly rejected Robbins' attempt to start 'technical' talks at senior civil servant level before negotiators get down to business. Round one to the EU. Roll on Monday, when it all (allegedly) starts in earnest. Not that anyone should worry that it's taken almost exactly a calendar year to get from the referendum result to the beginning of meaningful talks, or that three months have already been needlessly wasted after Article 50 was triggered... https://twitter.com/JenniferMerode/status/874684977954291713 Oh, and since my predictions are terrible, I'm forecasting a resounding last-gasp win for the Brexit jihadis.

They won't. Nothing but the Brexit-Jihadi Nirvana of WTO would satisfy them. So why bother, especially after an election that has given them all a lemon to suck? Whatever immigration 'brake' May manages to come back with, it'll sound a bit like the cod brakes Cameron returned with after his pre-referendum negotiation. One other inviting consequence of the election is that it's arguable whether the Salisbury convention now applies - the rule that the House of Lords doesn't vote against later stages of government bills on the grounds that the ruling party are carrying out their manifesto which has been been endorsed by the electorate. A minority government has no such endorsement. And this means the Lords can, in principle, oppose Brexit-related bills in a way it's been constrained not to do with a government having a majority.

From various rumblings from Cabinet members and others, it seems the not-really-Brexit-at-all Brexit is coming along nicely. Also, where the Scots Tories and the DUP unite is in having a strong preference for an 'open Brexit', with membership of the single market and the customs union. Which would leave May with some negotiating to do around the margins of freedom of movement, to arrive at the sort of minor restrictions that the Swiss and Norwegians have. She could also avoid a big divorce bill by agreeing - as she'll have to - to contribute, minus voting rights, to the EU budget. Everyone's a winner!

You're right, it's hypocritical, although I don't think Hezbollah have become so enamoured of St Jeremy that they've renamed themselves Jezbollah. But the real problem with the DUP is that any alliance - even the informal one that's been announced - throws the Good Friday Agreement under a bus. Central to the durability of the GFA was the idea that the British government would always be rigorously impartial between the two sides. Getting into bed with DUP is anything but impartial. https://twitter.com/Barristerblog/status/873860720491995136

That would be 28, captain. The UK parliament's assent is still part of the ratification process. Just to wind up our flailing Brexiteers, if Brexit happens after ratification of CETA, Britain will be subject to the 'investment provisions' of the agreement (effectively the Canada/EU disputes court) for a further twenty years. So we may escape the EU but we'll be stuck with the EU in trade with Canada, regardless of some hoped-for bilateral deal. And just to wind them up still further, the EU has just said this evening that they may have to delay the start of negotiations...for a year! All because of May's attempt to insist on negotiating divorce and trade agreement simultaneously. The EU's position seems to have hardened considerably since the election - they are pretty amused and amazed at the feebleness of May, even to the extent of trolling her by saying the idea to hold a snap election was actually Juncker's idea. Anyone get the sense that Brexit isn't looking so likely any more?

This is a hypothetical that isn't even hypothetically possible. A deal better than membership that also benefited the EU? What on earth could that be? Could you outline it?

Absolutely not. Watching the Tories twist in the wind is way too funny. Watching them attempt to achieve the most difficult legislative and negotiating challenge since rearmament - all as a minority government - is going to be even funnier. May's fantasy 'no deal' Brexit, outside the single market and the customs union, is now off the table - brilliant! The people have spoken. Deal with it.

I hear this often, and I have no idea where it comes from. In Ireland, Corbyn sought not peace but the victory of the Republican side - a Republican side led by the IRA, with its penchant for bombs, bullets and kneecappings. It is not a necessary condition of siding with the Palestinians to talk to the hyper-violent Hamas, although it probably IS a necessary condition to talk to the other side. Peace, after all, can't be declared unilaterally when there are two warring sides. So I challenge you to find a single instance of Corbyn talking to Protestant leaders in NI or Jewish leaders in Israel. Just one link will do... But to give just one specific instance of Corbyn's predilection for siding with violent extremists, here's an incident from 1984. There's a famous photo of Corbyn being arrested at an anti-Apartheid protest in London. All very worthy, you might think. Except that this protest was organised not by the official anti-Apartheid movement, which had Mandela's blessing and support. It was organised by something called the 'City of London AAM', which was actually expelled from the official movement. This splinter group was well known for being a front for the Workers' Revolutionary Party - a fringe Trotskyist organisation financed by Gaddafi and noisily supportive of Saddam Hussein. The WRP has since been exposed as a cult in which rape was used systematically as a means of control. This group for which Corbyn was marching supported the Pan African Congress and its slogan of 'one settler, one bullet'. Some pacifist. Everyone' entitled to a past they regret, and shouldn't be held accountable to it forever more - and Corbyn himself has come close to apologising for referring to Hamas and Hezbollah as 'friends.' However, when false claims are made for his lifelong pacifism, it's only right they should be called out - right?

Davidson won't stand for a Westminster seat until at least 2022. Her ambition is to be top dog at Hollyrood. Corbyn has had a brilliant election, far better than anyone - including most around him - expected. There are at least three questions about his and Labour's future, though: 1. Can he be the leader many people who supported him think he is, or will he be unable to break free of his dismal 30-year record as a do-nothing virtue-signaller with dubious friendships. 2. Can Corbyn acquire some Westminster party-organisational skills to counter his tendency to date to foster chaos all around him, and to alienate large sections of the PLP? In other words, will he, finally, come to the realisation that the PLP is vital for any traction, given how much talent was left squandered on the back benches while ludicrously poor politicians like Abbott were promoted to some of the most sensitive and senior positions on the front benches. 3. Can Corbyn control the grievance-soaked stupidity of some of his most painfully cultish supporters? We had a little textbook example of that on here with Fanboy, trashing anyone who had a critical opinion of Corbyn for having been less than fawning, and accusing them of being 'Blairites', Red Tories, etc., etc. Fanboy and fellow acolytes in the real world will have to get used to the idea that people - especially those who actually voted Labour despite strong reservations about Corbyn - are voters, and they don't take kindly to being labeled as class traitors for being broadly but not wholly supportive of Labour under its present management. Winning elections is about creating a broad church, not about whittling down the 'acceptable' electorate to those in slavish adoration of the Great Leader. Am I optimistic that all three can happen? Not especially. But Labour have a fantastic opportunity. May has proved throughout the election campaign, and in her reckless alliance with the DUP, that she will be a disastrous negotiator of Brexit. The political fall out of that will be immense, and presents Labour with a real opportunity to regain power in 2022, if not before. The first signs of green shoots post-election will be if the real talents on the back benches not merely are promoted to the front benches, but have an active and collegial say in how Labour plots its way through the next two-to-five years.

Worse. Protestants. Knuckle-dragging, Bible thumping medievalists. Vote Tory, get DUP.

May's debt to Ruth Davidson is huge. Without the mould-breaking upswing in Scottish Tory fortunes (and some extraordinarily narrow squeaks), May would barely haver reached 300. The single most damning measure of how badly May did in England is that Kensington and Chelsea, by far the richest constituency in the country, is too close to call. EU Brexit negotiators must be relishing the chance to talk about a deal with someone this incompetent.

Just to put fanboy out of his misery, I voted for the coalition of chaos.

There was no Brexit in 2010. Brexit will be off the scale, compared even to the credit crunch - and the Tories will be the proud owners of it. Both parties - Labour actually more than the Tories - have been utterly dishonest with the electorate about falling tax receipts in the coming years, and the huge cuts and tax rises that will be needed to try to keep things - especially a rapidly sinking NHS - afloat. But the Tories won't be able to escape a disaster of their own making. And May will be gone within the next parliament.

Theresa May (and the barely mentioned Conservative party) will win comfortably tomorrow, with a substantial majority. Corbyn will have an increased share of the vote over 2015 but with fewer seats than Miliband. Then the real problems will begin. By winning with MPs to spare, May will own Brexit, and as the true scale of the disaster unfolds, it'll be the last election the Tories win for a decade. You heard it here first.

So your idea of reasoned discussion is to post the ravings of an Infowars far-right conspiracy loon who believes in chemtrails and the unseen hand of the Illuminati?

Corbyn won't win, so you can stop panicking. Corbynistas are going to be one solid bunch of unhappy bunnies on 9 June because they're convinced that Labour is going to shade it. May will have an overall majority - and much bigger than the one she has now - despite the fact that she's run a campaign so uniquely awful that she's frittered away most of a 20-point lead. And she'll win on hard demographic facts rather than political argument - for example that Corbyn appeals to people where Labour votes are already piled high (the cities), and to younger people whose apparent enthusiasm for Corbyn isn't matched by an inclination actually to go into a polling station. Anyone who thinks of May's victory as a good thing will have been warned. Her incompetence and spinelessness will have been noted by EU negotiators for the start of Brexit talks on 19 June, when the 'terrible deal is better than a bad deal' nonsense will be tested to destruction. Terrible deal it is - with the free trade jiahists behind her on the Tory backbenches screaming their approval.

I hear that a lot - that somehow a big majority will mean she is free of the free trade jihadists on her backbenches. I don't buy it. Far too many of what's likely to be the intake are hard, no-deal Brexit enthusiasts. The only way of negotiating a decent Brexit - and I never thought I'd say this - is with a Corbyn win. That won't happen. But his Brexit team of Starmer and Gardiner are far superior to BoJo, Fox, et al. The former want a deal that is somewhat close to a Swiss or Norwegian arrangement - something, in other words, that will work without crashing the economy. The latter are too economically and legally illiterate to buy a packet of biscuits. As for Corbyn and the 'geography teacher' label - none of this works any more. Creeping back into British electoral politics is a desire for authenticity, no matter where it's found. The appallingly robotic May is a perfectly constructed ideal of a politician who's push-button-select-answer inauthentic. That's why she's running the worst Tory campaign since the execrable IDS (clue: he was knifed before he was ever allowed to run one).

On that subject, we should get a few predictions in, now that we're in the last weekend before the election. I'll go for a May majority of 30+. Corbyn is on something of a surge, but the polls are doing what they always do - over-estimating the scale of a Labour vote that depends disproportionately on younger voters and those who are less likely to vote. Of course, the consequences of this will be the worst, economically, in living memory, with the 'a terrible deal is better than a bad deal' slogan driving May over the Brexit cliff, with the free trade jihadists in her party ready to push her if she even this of faltering.

She's in York. And she's just turned down another request from Corbyn to have an actual debate instead of a solo grilling.

Sorry, but this is gibberish. Did you mean the opposite of what you've written here? Either way, it's beside the point. If we on a football message board can work out that May is either stupid or utterly devoid of any leverage in the negotiations, I'm pretty sure that EU trade negotiators know the score. It's like the scene in Blazing Saddles...you know the one. And as if May couldn't look any more useless: she's not only run a campaign so bad it's made Jeremy Corbyn look competent; she's managed to say precisely not one word yet about Trump's withdrawal from the Paris agreement. There's been a flurry of statements and urgent consultations this evening, with France, Germany and Italy saying they will spearhead the EU's pursuit of the Paris accord's key objectives; The Chinese and Russians have made strong statements criticising the decision. And Merkel has been on the phone to Trump to tell him what an idiot he is. From May, absolutely nada - and you can guess why. Spineless.

How did you get that past the swear filter? Let me try. **** bugger Brian. Okay, one out of three. Wait, so you actually DON'T see the tiny flaw with that plan? They KNOW - they ****ing KNOW!

What the hell does May's latest slogan even mean? 'No deal is better than a bad deal' is axiomatically ridiculous. It's worse than a bad deal. If the overall point of negotiations is to be part of a trading agreement in which borders are relatively 'frictionless', a non-deal means total friction. In other words, everything freezes up in the customs hall, from cars to insurance. How does that translate into anything other than chaos and collapse, and some very ****ed off economic sectors?