'So overall perhaps a B+ .... I hope adherents of the ARSE punted well, you really should have and now PBers for one final time may I express the view, much derided by many, that :
Ed Miliband Will Never Be Prime Minister'#
Jack, a big thank you for your predictions, a very profitable evening.
All the Labour pundits and MPs I've seen on the news have said that the party needs to reflect on its mistakes in order to develop a strategy for revival and then they go on to say it was all down to the Tories using fear to scare the voters into voting for them. Some LDs, including Cable and Clegg have said much the same. Excellent - the more they follow this line of reasoning the longer it will take them to recover. Basically it's all the voters' faults for being gullible and bigoted.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
The Conservatives were clinical with their targeting. Labour must be in shock at such ruthless sniping.
Ironic, considering the obvious Labour party staffers bigging up their 'superior ground game, worker numbers and algorithms' in posts here over the last week.
There has NOT been any big shift in Scotland in attitudes towards independence.
YES got 45% in the indyref on an 85% turnout. The SNP got 49.97% in the general election yesterday, on a much lower turnout, 71%. Add the Green vote, and you find that 51% of people yesterday voted for pro-independence parties.
Presumably a few of the people who dragged themselves to polling stations to vote NO in the indyref didn't vote yesterday.
The SNP were slightly better at getting YES voters to vote yesterday than the Unionists were in getting votes out of NO voters. Which isn't surprising, given how fired up some of their supporters still are. That's all. There's no case for saying yesterday's result indicates a need or a tidal wave of feeling for a second referendum. A second referendum would be a waste of public money.
Having won 95% of the Scottish seats in the British parliament with slightly less than 50% of the vote, hopefully the SNP will stop whinging about how the system is stacked against them.
I have a feeling many former Lib Dem voters decided to plump for the Tories or Ukip rather than Labour.
Many of the results I saw had the Lib Dems falling by double-digit amounts but Labour were picking up only a sliver in most seats.
Red Libs went from LD to Labour, but WWC went from Labour to Ukip. So it's hard to disambiguate.
Just look at the vote shares compared to the polls.
The Lib Dems are down 15% across the country and the Labour share up only 1.5%, Ukip up 10% and the Tories up 0.8%.
While the final ICM poll showed Labour picking up a third of former Lib Dems, the Tories roughly 14% and Ukip roughly 11%.
The former Lib Dem voters just didn't vote Labour in any great numbers
One third is large, and the Greens took a huge chunk too. Add them and you get most of the 2010 LDs. The problem for Labour was EdM's losing a completely different Labour demographic to Ukip, not just a straight Lib Dem to Ukip swing.
What happened was that we failed to offer a compelling vision of the future which married a social democratic future to the personal aspirations of voters in Britain. And when we now begin to think about the future of the party, we have to think about the new landscape in Britain, the self-employed, the small business owner, the owner/occupier, and how our messages to them will make them think that their families’ future, their material aspirations, their personal aspirations, will find a home in the Labour party. The Labour party needs to speak to a growing national identity in Scotland and also, crucially, a national identity in England. The loss of Rowenna Davis, for example, our candidate in Southampton, or Lucy Rigby in Lincoln, or our candidate Lee Sherriff in Carlisle, these are areas where a sense of Englishness and pride in English identity somehow did not find an expression through the Labour party. And it did find an expression, certainly in Stoke on Trent as elsewhere, through Ukip. And that is part of the framing we have to think about.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
Very much the two topics here in the boozer were fear of SNP domination of the agenda and UKIP
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
The urban swings were interesting in your part of the world.
'Posh' Exeter saw a big Con to Lab swing. Middle class Plymouth Sutton saw a small Con to Lab swing. Working class Plymouth Moor View saw a big Lab to Con swing.
Has everyone noticed the huge majorities Labour piled up in London and other conurbations ?
But their problem is there's not enough guardianista and non-white dominated constituencies.
Now take a take a look at the constituencies Labour lost to the Conservatives:
Bolton W Derby N Gower Morley & Outwood Plymouth Moor View Southampton Itchen Telford Vale of Clwyd
All rather wwc.
Its UKIP's wwc vote which won it for the Conservatives.
You cannot have a viable political party based on Guardianistas and ethnic minorities, not least because Labour cannot necessarily rely on the latter (David Goodhart has discussed this) and ethnic minorities cannot all be lumped together as one group. There is some evidence - according to Goodhart - that Hindu and Sikh voters are beginning to abandon Labour partly because they see it as too close to Muslim voters.
This is the cul de sac political parties get to when they think that you can create a majority by clumping together this group and that group and this other group by handing out some community-specific bag of sweeties to each. You end up with an incoherent and irreconcilable mess. And you risk putting off quite a lot of others e.g. EdM's proposed anti-islamophobia law told me quite a lot - none of it good - about his approach to a much wider range of matters.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
You were entirely correct. I think your father and mine are very similar in outlook, and representative of many voters.
There has NOT been any big shift in Scotland in attitudes towards independence.
YES got 45% in the indyref on an 85% turnout. The SNP got 49.97% in the general election yesterday, on a much lower turnout, 71%. Add the Green vote, and you find that 51% of people yesterday voted for pro-independence parties.
Presumably a few of the people who dragged themselves to polling stations to vote NO in the indyref didn't vote yesterday.
The SNP were slightly better at getting YES voters to vote yesterday than the Unionists were in getting votes out of NO voters. Which isn't surprising, given how fired up some of their supporters still are. That's all. There's no case for saying yesterday's result indicates a need or a tidal wave of feeling for a second referendum. A second referendum would be a waste of public money.
Having won 95% of the Scottish seats in the British parliament with slightly less than 50% of the vote, hopefully the SNP will stop whinging about how the system is stacked against them.
Not likely. The SNP winning a landlside ties the hands of Cameron in what he can do in Scotland as surely as if Ed had won, and results in Scotland being treated, in effect, like a separate country in more ways. The more that is the de facto reality, the more de jure independence will follow at some point I fear.
It's just occurred to me that FFA will free up a few billion for the UK government to spend elsewhere in the UK. The downside, of course, is that once you have FFA what's the point of the Union? The SNP will want it to come with the ability to borrow, which - of course - the Tories will not agree to. So there's your betrayal and your second referendum.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
The demise of the Lib Dems is interesting. I actually think the coalition was more popular than a Conservative government alone. However that didn't stop left of centre coalition supporters from finding Lib Dems hand in glove with their Tory partners as deeply unattractive.
A total conundrum for the Libs which they were never able to deal with. Perhaps there were ways of being in government without being so intertwined?
They needed to have a couple of big manufactured rows with the Tories and to have voted down some stuff like the tuition fee increases and then getting their own version through afterwards (which is what happened anyway).
that's exactkty wrong.
They needed to be fully collegiate and supportive and on any issue when this was not possible, such as tuition fees, to abstain as the coalition agreement allowed.
Not snipe from the sidelines.
Instead they wanted to play it both ways; to be in government and op position at the same time. In short, they were not grown up enough.
When Miliband became leader I knew Labour couldn't win and never wavered from that position. The historical record was against them anyhow, but Miliband just cemented that result in stone (sorry about the pun!)
I said on here in 2010/11 they would be looking at best at a Kinnockesque (1987) or Hagueian (2001) result.
And that was before the SNP lit a bonfire under Scottish Labour.
But it just got worse. The "wrong brother" tag never left him, and his comedy value as the helpless dork who couldn't even eat a bacon sarnie (or remember not to try with the cameras around) just confirmed that he was genetically unfit to be PM.
The idea of this man stumbling into office, the prisoner of angry Scottish separatists no doubt caused Middle England to take fright.
Delusional stunts like supplicating before Brand and unveiling the EdStone merely added a feeling of the surreal to the already absurd.
I didn't vote for Ed in the leadership contest. He grew on me during his 5 years because he seemed to have a different take on politics. He occasionally threw out an interesting idea or an unorthodox position (e.g. Murdoch).
Unfortunately these never really consolidated into a strategy or an election winning platform. But there was always something intriguing about him and what might have been a very different take on the PM role.
I hope he stays in politics, works on his ideas and one day experiences a Hague style renaissance.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
You were entirely correct. I think your father and mine are very similar in outlook, and representative of many voters.
Thank you JackW,I went to sleep last night with very negative thoughts, but kept thinking you were always so positive. Before you get carried away, I do not dream of JackW, but his eternal determination that Ed will not be PM was a hope. Fantastic analysis and prediction, and to think some thought your ARSE was just full of S... Thanks for all your posts,go and have a well earned break.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
The Labour Party is not unpopular because of Muslims, in the way that it was allegedly unpopular because of trade unions. It has no clause glorifying Muslims in its constitution. It is six points less popular than the Conservative Party, which just won an overall majority. Above all, rounding on one ethnic group will guarantee the desertion of other elements of its BME base, who won't wait in turn to be called out for whatever it is WWC don't like about them. So it is not clear that any kind of Clause IV moment is needed.
It's just occurred to me that FFA will free up a few billion for the UK government to spend elsewhere in the UK. The downside, of course, is that once you have FFA what's the point of the Union? The SNP will want it to come with the ability to borrow, which - of course - the Tories will not agree to. So there's your betrayal and your second referendum.
All the Labour pundits and MPs I've seen on the news have said that the party needs to reflect on its mistakes in order to develop a strategy for revival and then they go on to say it was all down to the Tories using fear to scare the voters into voting for them. Some LDs, including Cable and Clegg have said much the same. Excellent - the more they follow this line of reasoning the longer it will take them to recover. Basically it's all the voters' faults for being gullible and bigoted.
That's just what they are saying in public. In private, the post-mortem will probably be a lot deeper - although, while I do think fear was probably a factor in the results, it wasn't the driving factor.
It's just occurred to me that FFA will free up a few billion for the UK government to spend elsewhere in the UK. The downside, of course, is that once you have FFA what's the point of the Union? The SNP will want it to come with the ability to borrow, which - of course - the Tories will not agree to. So there's your betrayal and your second referendum.
I don't think any country in the world has FFA for a sub-region. We should just have federalism with certain tax and spending at the UK level, and the rest at the home nation level. If a nation overspends and goes bust, it has to deal with the consequences, while federal tax and spending in that geography continues.
There has NOT been any big shift in Scotland in attitudes towards independence.
YES got 45% in the indyref on an 85% turnout. The SNP got 49.97% in the general election yesterday, on a much lower turnout, 71%. Add the Green vote, and you find that 51% of people yesterday voted for pro-independence parties.
Presumably a few of the people who dragged themselves to polling stations to vote NO in the indyref didn't vote yesterday.
The SNP were slightly better at getting YES voters to vote yesterday than the Unionists were in getting votes out of NO voters. Which isn't surprising, given how fired up some of their supporters still are. That's all. There's no case for saying yesterday's result indicates a need or a tidal wave of feeling for a second referendum. A second referendum would be a waste of public money.
Having won 95% of the Scottish seats in the British parliament with slightly less than 50% of the vote, hopefully the SNP will stop whinging about how the system is stacked against them.
Nah the Nats will just whinge that at 49.9 % of the scottish vote they should have 650 UK seats
All the Labour pundits and MPs I've seen on the news have said that the party needs to reflect on its mistakes in order to develop a strategy for revival and then they go on to say it was all down to the Tories using fear to scare the voters into voting for them. Some LDs, including Cable and Clegg have said much the same. Excellent - the more they follow this line of reasoning the longer it will take them to recover. Basically it's all the voters' faults for being gullible and bigoted.
I really cannot see them holding their hands up and admitting that they have badly let down the working class vote in the north. I have mentioned this previously only to be attacked for not understanding the working class.
I imagine there will be lots of attacks on the "biased" right wing media for demonising their progressive policies. Politicians like Harriet Harman are not going to change their beliefs which they have held for decades.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Labour may have more boots on the ground, but the Conservatives targeted more effectively. And half of Labour's activists live in Greater London, where attitudes rare very different to those of England and Wales as a whole.
I presumed it was a trap for the SNP. Give them FFA and then they have to live within their means - they'll come unstuck eventually and support will fall away to something a bit more mixed Party wise.
It's just occurred to me that FFA will free up a few billion for the UK government to spend elsewhere in the UK. The downside, of course, is that once you have FFA what's the point of the Union? The SNP will want it to come with the ability to borrow, which - of course - the Tories will not agree to. So there's your betrayal and your second referendum.
FWIW the whole stabbing his brother in the back things was bullshit IMO. DM never had any divine right to the leadership. EM was perfectly in his rights to stand. He no more stabbed his brother in the back than the other way around.
What they probably should have done is worked it all out over their mum's kitchen table in a Milliband household primary. Clearly only one of them could ever be leader. It would have served them well to recognise that and minimised the damage. The problem was probably that DM was unable to address his weaknesses.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Nah - Nick and Anna would have put in roughly the same effort to the ground game I reckon. Nick had an implausible leader, nothing to do with him or Anna.
If Labour go for any of these they will be like the Bourbons of Spain - learning nothing, forgetting nothing.
They are part of the problem not the solution. The first 3 are empty-headed and/or too connected with the current Labour party. I can't comment on Jarvis.
They are not the people to rethink what Labour is about. They are not the people to persuade people in 5 years time to vote Labour.
They need to go back to first principles: - They need to understand what liberal and progressive mean, really mean. Shacking up with segregationists is not progressive. - They need to rediscover the best of their Methodist, Christian socialist roots - the desire to help those at the bottom end better themselves. - They need to stop worshipping the state or any emanation of it (the NHS) as an end in itself rather than a means to an end. - They need to remember that the state, public servants are there to serve the people not the other way around. - They need to understand that economic competence is the sine qua non of every government. - They need to remember that they are spending taxpayers' money and that they need to spend it wisely and effectively. - They need to believe in Britain and British values rather than view them, in an de haut en bas way, with disdain. - They need to abandon the patronising and racist identity/community politics shtick. - They need to remember that it is what you do and not how you describe yourself which tells voters what your values are. - They need to stop behaving as if anyone who disagrees with them is evil. - They need to remember that decency and fairness and honesty are the monopoly of no-one.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Labour may have more boots on the ground, but the Conservatives targeted more effectively. And half of Labour's activists live in Greater London, where attitudes rare very different to those of England and Wales as a whole.
can't remember who said it but the air war beats the ground war in modern elections.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
Hendon was a very impressive Conservative performance - reminiscent of the strong vote for Boris there in 2012.
I don't doubt that there was a religious element to it.
nd NPXMP was one of the worst - smugly telling us all what a walk in the park it was, how the polls hadn't changed, how Labour were cruising to Number 10.
If his attitude was typical of Labour candidates then it's no wonder they lost. Delusional and complacent. I wish him well in his next career, I've no doubt he's basically a good egg, but I'm glad he was defeated.
FWIW I believe that EM and the shadow cabinet also had a problem reaching certain potential Labour voters and getting them in the red camp. It impacted my family, where a traditionally red voter found themselves in the purple camp. A more charismatic Labour leadership with broader reach would have stopped that. It simply would not have been an option.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
You were entirely correct. I think your father and mine are very similar in outlook, and representative of many voters.
What happened was that we failed to offer a compelling vision of the future which married a social democratic future to the personal aspirations of voters in Britain. And when we now begin to think about the future of the party, we have to think about the new landscape in Britain, the self-employed, the small business owner, the owner/occupier, and how our messages to them will make them think that their families’ future, their material aspirations, their personal aspirations, will find a home in the Labour party. The Labour party needs to speak to a growing national identity in Scotland and also, crucially, a national identity in England. The loss of Rowenna Davis, for example, our candidate in Southampton, or Lucy Rigby in Lincoln, or our candidate Lee Sherriff in Carlisle, these are areas where a sense of Englishness and pride in English identity somehow did not find an expression through the Labour party. And it did find an expression, certainly in Stoke on Trent as elsewhere, through Ukip. And that is part of the framing we have to think about.
The Labour party need to take some time out to regroup themselves and come back with a new offering to the British people.
There is room to offer a left-wing programme of more tax and spending, but they need to be honest about the first of those.
My vote went blue because the Conservatives stuck me as being honest about the big things, the need to be prudent and careful about how money is spent, and sound management of the economy through the difficult times since 2010.
Labour struck me as having abandoned their working-class roots in favour of London intellectualism and disingenuous belief that only 1% of the population needed to contribute to motherhood and apple pie for all. The NHS-as-religion was also massively overplayed when we can see what happened in Stafford and continues to happen in Wales.
If I were betting with my heart (always a stupid idea, I know!), I would put money on Dan Jarvis as next leader.
FWIW the whole stabbing his brother in the back things was bullshit IMO. DM never had any divine right to the leadership. EM was perfectly in his rights to stand. He no more stabbed his brother in the back than the other way around.
What they probably should have done is worked it all out over their mum's kitchen table in a Milliband household primary. Clearly only one of them could ever be leader. It would have served them well to recognise that and minimised the damage. The problem was probably that DM was unable to address his weaknesses.
Friends of mine, not given to talking about politics, talked about this as their main reason for disliking Miliband. What kind of person would forever disrupt his family, terminally upset his mother etc just for the sake if his career?
FWIW I believe that EM and the shadow cabinet also had a problem reaching certain potential Labour voters and getting them in the red camp. It impacted my family, where a traditionally red voter found themselves in the purple camp. A more charismatic Labour leadership with broader reach would have stopped that. It simply would not have been an option.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
You were entirely correct. I think your father and mine are very similar in outlook, and representative of many voters.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Have the IOS / Surbiton / Mukesh gang appeared today ?
I would like to hear their explanation as to why Finchley wasn't in reality a certain Labour gain or why Wimbledon didn't turn out to be within reach.
Perhaps they and their 1600 strong team are still celebrating in Hornsey and haven't noticed that elections aren't decided in Inner London.
In spite of the Lib Dem posters on my estate the safe Lib Dem ward of Hermitage and Knaphill South on Woking has just gone Tory. I don't know about this stuff, but do parties that do well in a General Election get a boost in locals that take place at the same time?
The constant over analysis of opinion polls crippled this site for months in the lead up to the election, cheering throw ons as I said...and it was all bullshit anyway
I based my betting on them being bullshit, and on Ukip getting 11-14% w a lib dem collapse
It's just occurred to me that FFA will free up a few billion for the UK government to spend elsewhere in the UK. The downside, of course, is that once you have FFA what's the point of the Union? The SNP will want it to come with the ability to borrow, which - of course - the Tories will not agree to. So there's your betrayal and your second referendum.
Who says the Tories wouldn't agree to it? There are plenty of sub-national governments that have borrowing powers in other countries. What would need to be made clear is that the UK government did not underwrite any borrowing that a devolved parliament or assembly engaged in.
FWIW the whole stabbing his brother in the back things was bullshit IMO. DM never had any divine right to the leadership. EM was perfectly in his rights to stand. He no more stabbed his brother in the back than the other way around.
What they probably should have done is worked it all out over their mum's kitchen table in a Milliband household primary. Clearly only one of them could ever be leader. It would have served them well to recognise that and minimised the damage. The problem was probably that DM was unable to address his weaknesses.
Yes, but it was about how it looked. And it looked like he stabbed his brother in the back. They should have discussed between them in private which would stand, then both have been on the same side in the race, supporting each other like, well, brothers.
FWIW the whole stabbing his brother in the back things was bullshit IMO. DM never had any divine right to the leadership. EM was perfectly in his rights to stand. He no more stabbed his brother in the back than the other way around.
What they probably should have done is worked it all out over their mum's kitchen table in a Milliband household primary. Clearly only one of them could ever be leader. It would have served them well to recognise that and minimised the damage. The problem was probably that DM was unable to address his weaknesses.
David Milliband's biggest weakness was that Unite did not put his gurning mug on the front of the voting envelopes.
But I guess that passes for democracy in some Labour circles.
As for thebackstabbing: it is primarily a family tragedy. But if it is true that Ed persuaded David not to run against Brown a year earlier, then it is understandable how David might think that Ed did it just so he had time to improve his own chances.
Still, the Milibands - Ed, David and Ralph - will now be consigned to a small and inglorious footnote in British political history. A small paragraph - or two if they are lucky - about failure and the perils of bananas, blank sheets of paper and hunks of monumental stone.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Have the IOS / Surbiton / Mukesh gang appeared today ?
I would like to hear their explanation as to why Finchley wasn't in reality a certain Labour gain or why Wimbledon didn't turn out to be within reach.
Perhaps they and their 1600 strong team are still celebrating in Hornsey and haven't noticed that elections aren't decided in Inner London.
I am heavily involved in Wimbledon. Labour never canvassed. All their resources were focussed on Croydon Central. That and they all hate the Labour candidate in Wimbledon. Evil man.
The turning up of 500 in Battersea doesn't work because these people love Labour, not care about the voter. Just don't do it.
Labour failed because they thought they knew better than the people and never listened. Sensible people would like a ref on EU. And they know there is not a magic money tree.
We aren't back to seriously consider David Miliband for Leader of Labour Party are we?
He might have well done better than Ed, but his abilities are far far overrated. Also, this "stabbed in the back" nonsense, David had chance to get rid of Gordon Brown and he didn't do it. He had the support to do so at the time...
Then we got a contest and he lost to his brother, because David wasn't able to command enough support from all areas of the party i.e the unions.
So overall perhaps a B+ .... I hope adherents of the ARSE punted well, you really should have and now PBers for one final time may I express the view, much derided by many, that :
Ed Miliband Will Never Be Prime Minister
Obviously you turned out to be right, but out of interest, why did you keep trotting out the line? It has been quite annoying. Was that the point? Or did you have other motives?
Would have loved to have engaged you discussion, but you seemed to have the certainty of a religious zealot. So what's the point.
Let us not forget that PB is a betting site and you try to pick out winners at the best value at the earliest possible opportunity.
I kept "trotting out the line" because I knew it was true and I certainly wasn't going to mislead PBers into thinking Ed had a chance - He didn't .... and you'll forgive me but I was completely vindicated.
I am always happy to engage other PBers but where I am certain I say so and JackW is not for turning.
I think you're entirely allowed to gloat today, but I hope you return to normal mode tomorrow. It might start to grate.
Like you've never posted about the Dutch e-book sales charts...
Fair point. I have actually reined in the exultations as I realised that even with an ironic *cough* beforehand, they were probably a little too irksome.
I'm gonna gloat the F out of this Tory election victory though. The lefties beforehand were so bloody annoying, and NPXMP was one of the worst - smugly telling us all what a walk in the park it was, how the polls hadn't changed, how Labour were cruising to Number 10.
If his attitude was typical of Labour candidates then it's no wonder they lost. Delusional and complacent.
I wish him well in his next career, I've no doubt he's basically a good egg, but I'm glad he was defeated.
Labour really need to do some navel-gazing. They can't take ANY voters for granted any more. If they're not careful their Scottish disaster will be repeated in Wales and the North.
Has everyone noticed the huge majorities Labour piled up in London and other conurbations ?
But their problem is there's not enough guardianista and non-white dominated constituencies.
Now take a take a look at the constituencies Labour lost to the Conservatives:
Bolton W Derby N Gower Morley & Outwood Plymouth Moor View Southampton Itchen Telford Vale of Clwyd
All rather wwc.
Its UKIP's wwc vote which won it for the Conservatives.
I think this is exactly correct. Labour's mindset is entirely coming from a London point of view. They came up with a policy platform that resonated a lot with ethnic minorities, who tend to be very left wing, and student/young professional Guardian readers. The result was that they actually did pretty well in other places that have these demographics: Luton, Bristol, Oxford etc. In the rest of the country, they got hammered. They carried on in the hope that increasing immigration will make the rest of the country more like their London base. But it will take another 20 years at high immigration levels for us to get there. And the Conservatives will reform the immigration system to prevent it happening in the next five.
Ethnic minorities tend to be quite (small "c") conservative in their outlook and attitudes. They vote Labour because they perceive Labour to be on the side of the immigrant and more immigration or, perhaps, because they perceive the Tories to be against this and, in some cases, because Labour promise them specific goodies. But their attitudes tend to be a world away from the average Guardianista.
And so you end up with the cogntitively dissonant spectacle of a Labour party being in favour of gay marriage while at the same time turning a blind eye to the repellently anti-gay views of a significant proportion of those minorities. Or a Labour party implementing the HRA on the one hand while at the same time trying to make criticism of a religion a crime. (Who on earth within Labour thought it a good idea - at a time when we have had the grotesqueries of Jihadi John and Cage Prisoners and the Trojan Horse affair and young Muslim men/women going off to Syria and Charlie Hebdo and attacks on Jewish supermarkets and Rotherham and Tower Hamlets - to associate Labour with being seen to want to protect Islamists? The contempt for Muslims who do not agree with the Islamist ideology implied by such a move is staggering.)
And if the Tories detoxify in relation to their approach to ethnic minorities - not least by treating them as British rather than as ethnic minorities - then Labour risk finding that these voters will move to a party more naturally attuned to their views and aspirations.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
An interesting view. Yes, it needs to happen.
Seeing Labour tie themselves in knots about that segregated meeting was to me one of the defining points of the election. I spend loads of time in the Middle East (see my name) and we don't see segregated meetings there outside of prayers in the mosques. The hypocrisy of pandering to this type of importing third-world values from Pakistan while simultaneously preaching equality and feminism has cost Labour millions of votes outside London.
1. Great value for toss of a coin. 2. Pb hodges 3. Pb tories always wrong and never learn. 4. Basil 5. Squirrel 6. EICIPM 7. Tick 8. Tock 9. TPD 10. new thread
If we had to choose the three summary images of the night what would they be for you?
Mine are: the Douglas Alexander declaration and Mhairi Black's face. Simon Hughes standing blank throughout his count while you could see the hurt inside. Cameron smiling when his number of votes were read out.
The constant over analysis of opinion polls crippled this site for months in the lead up to the election, cheering throw ons as I said...and it was all bullshit anyway
I based my betting on them being bullshit, and on Ukip getting 11-14% w a lib dem collapse
How did I lose?!!
I'd certainly agree that the daily you gov has obscured the overall picture.
FWIW I believe that EM and the shadow cabinet also had a problem reaching certain potential Labour voters and getting them in the red camp. It impacted my family, where a traditionally red voter found themselves in the purple camp. A more charismatic Labour leadership with broader reach would have stopped that. It simply would not have been an option.
Norfolk MP confirming what I'd heard second hand - Scotland was coming up on the doorstep unbidden in Chloe's seat and Yarmouth in the run in (and I'd say it saved her because until weds evening I was convinced she was gone) - that campaign obviously worked for them.
I can scarcely recall a political message that I have overheard being discussed spontaneously so often. I was baffled that it wasn't showing up in the polls.
You were entirely correct. I think your father and mine are very similar in outlook, and representative of many voters.
Fwiw, I think there is a great core of formerly natural labour voters - the working class, working men and women of England especially in whom runs twin strands of pride in work and strife and equally pride in their country. Labours failure has been not just to allow, but to actively channel (by abandoning these core voters) this pride into frustration and then nationalism. UKIPs rise, as seen by where they are coming from as opposed to being blue kippers, is entirely at their doing, there's and the utter failure of Scottish Labour to protect unionism from a position of strength. They have to go back to what they were - Keir Hardies party of the workers. Anything else now leads to them losing second place to UKIP, or the horror that will come after UKIP if it fails.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
An interesting view. Yes, it needs to happen.
Seeing Labour tie themselves in knots about that segregated meeting was to me one of the defining points of the election. I spend loads of time in the Middle East (see my name) and we don't see segregated meetings there outside of prayers in the mosques. The hypocrisy of pandering to this type of importing third-world values from Pakistan while simultaneously preaching equality and feminism has cost Labour millions of votes outside London.
Bearing in mind that the Labour vote rose in England, do you think that meme caused many people who would consider voting for Labour to refrain from doing so, never mind millions?
If we had to choose the three summary images of the night what would they be for you?
Mine are: the Douglas Alexander declaration and Mhairi Black's face. Simon Hughes standing blank throughout his count while you could see the hurt inside. Cameron smiling when his number of votes were read out.
3. Douglas Alexander losing to a 20 year old undergrad student, 2. Farage. Close but no cigar.
Number one, no doubt, this election's (and this generation's) Portillo Moment
BALLS.
I was still up (with a glass of something sparkling), were you?
Ethnic minorities tend to be quite (small "c") conservative in their outlook and attitudes. They vote Labour because they perceive Labour to be on the side of the immigrant and more immigration or, perhaps, because they perceive the Tories to be against this and, in some cases, because Labour promise them specific goodies. But their attitudes tend to be a world away from the average Guardianista.
And so you end up with the cogntitively dissonant spectacle of a Labour party being in favour of gay marriage while at the same time turning a blind eye to the repellently anti-gay views of a significant proportion of those minorities. Or a Labour party implementing the HRA on the one hand while at the same time trying to make criticism of a religion a crime. (Who on earth within Labour thought it a good idea - at a time when we have had the grotesqueries of Jihadi John and Cage Prisoners and the Trojan Horse affair and young Muslim men/women going off to Syria and Charlie Hebdo and attacks on Jewish supermarkets and Rotherham and Tower Hamlets - to associate Labour with being seen to want to protect Islamists? The contempt for Muslims who do not agree with the Islamist ideology implied by such a move is staggering.)
And if the Tories detoxify in relation to their approach to ethnic minorities - not least by treating them as British rather than as ethnic minorities - then Labour risk finding that these voters will move to a party more naturally attuned to their views and aspirations.
The Conservative party is (largely) in favour of gay marriage while at the same time turning a blind eye to the repellently anti-gay views of a significant proportion of its base. Is that unworthy of discussion because they're white?
Nobody proposed to make criticism of religion a crime. If you were already committing an assault, say, against a Jew because he was a Jew, you could be got for aggravated assault. This is a bit like rent control, a Lynton meme let into the wild to raise the blood pressure of the Ukip-leaner and incite a vote for Conservatives to stop Ed.
And as for those who conflate Islam and Islamists, it is like conflating the Irish and the IRA. Not that I'd put that past some here.
First of all, congrats to the Tories on a hand well played. Their approach of targeting the right people in the right seats paid off handsomely. They took full advantage of the dislike the English and Welsh have for Scottish nationalists, and hammered home a negative, and very successful, message. Lynton Crosby has more than earned his salary.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
An interesting view. Yes, it needs to happen.
Seeing Labour tie themselves in knots about that segregated meeting was to me one of the defining points of the election. I spend loads of time in the Middle East (see my name) and we don't see segregated meetings there outside of prayers in the mosques. The hypocrisy of pandering to this type of importing third-world values from Pakistan while simultaneously preaching equality and feminism has cost Labour millions of votes outside London.
Bearing in mind that the Labour vote rose in England, do you think that meme caused many people who would consider voting for Labour to refrain from doing so, never mind millions?
A Labour party that went back to its roots and cared about those who actually work, would have seen a mass of votes from the Tories and especially UKIP in England.
I think this dispels a lot of this bullshit about Labour's superior ground game, Labour losses in places like Broxtowe and Hendon show that this is no longer the case. Nick Palmer was telling anyone who would listen that the Tories had given up and his team was x many times larger than the Tory team. All bullshit.
Labour always always confuse size with quality. We've spent this much, we've got a large team, we've had x million conversations. It's how well you spend it, what your team does and whether you listen intelligently that count.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
The Labour Party is not unpopular because of Muslims, in the way that it was allegedly unpopular because of trade unions. It has no clause glorifying Muslims in its constitution. It is six points less popular than the Conservative Party, which just won an overall majority. Above all, rounding on one ethnic group will guarantee the desertion of other elements of its BME base, who won't wait in turn to be called out for whatever it is WWC don't like about them. So it is not clear that any kind of Clause IV moment is needed.
It's not a question of rounding on any one group but not being seen to be particularly protective of one group or, more accurately, a section of one group in a way which seems to go counter to what the party is meant to stand for. And, if you read David Goodhart's analysis, other ethnic groups are beginning to peel away from Labour because of this.
It wasn't unions per se which made Labour unpopular. It was the way unions behaved as if they were above the law and could do anything they wanted and Labour's unwillingness to confront them which made Labour unpopular.
It would do Labour good if it stopped pandering to appallingly illiberal and anti-democratic views within some of its supporters and stood up for British values instead.
This should not have to be a Clause IV moment. It should be the basic default mode of every party in the UK.
(My daughter who voted for the first time yesterday was appalled at the gender-segregated Labour rally. That's one new voter lost.)
Coming up on PB - a guest slot by ex ICM boss Nick Sparrow on the polling
Grab your pitchforks!
An article on how polling's failed to evolve since 1992?
I suspect that it's not that polling hasn't evolved (we know it has); it's that the electorate has evolved too and remained a step ahead.
My comment was very tounge-in-cheek. It will be interesting to see how the pollsters and academics analyse what happened.
Basically the phone polls a week or two out were right, and despite the reticence of Prof Curtice the exit poll was pretty good too.
The big question is why did all the polls converge on a dead head in the last 24 to 48 hours, missing what was happening out in the real world. A few PhD theses will be written in the next year or two on this one!
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
I wonder if the "Clause 4" moment for the next Labour leader is calling out some of the backwards views in the Muslim community, perhaps on something like feminism or gay rights.
The Labour Party is not unpopular because of Muslims, in the way that it was allegedly unpopular because of trade unions. It has no clause glorifying Muslims in its constitution. It is six points less popular than the Conservative Party, which just won an overall majority. Above all, rounding on one ethnic group will guarantee the desertion of other elements of its BME base, who won't wait in turn to be called out for whatever it is WWC don't like about them. So it is not clear that any kind of Clause IV moment is needed.
It's not a question of rounding on any one group but not being seen to be particularly protective of one group or, more accurately, a section of one group in a way which seems to go counter to what the party is meant to stand for. And, if you read David Goodhart's analysis, other ethnic groups are beginning to peel away from Labour because of this.
It wasn't unions per se which made Labour unpopular. It was the way unions behaved as if they were above the law and could do anything they wanted and Labour's unwillingness to confront them which made Labour unpopular.
It would do Labour good if it stopped pandering to appallingly illiberal and anti-democratic views within some of its supporters and stood up for British values instead.
This should not have to be a Clause IV moment. It should be the basic default mode of every party in the UK.
(My daughter who voted for the first time yesterday was appalled at the gender-segregated Labour rally. That's one new voter lost.)
Ms Cyclefree, do you happen to have a link to David Goodhart's analysis that you refer to above?
I sat on my sofa at 10pm last night thinking, like many, it would be a hung parliament with weeks of wrangling, or even a Labour minority.
16 hours later, when I finally stirred from the sofa for an hour's kip, Farage, Clegg and Miliband had all resigned, the Tories had romped home with a majority, Cameron had seen the Queen, and had re-entered No.10.
Anecdote alert: I have a couple of Labour-supporting friends who live in Barrow (they are signatories on the MP's nomination papers). They are a couple on nmw-type jobs. They loved the benefits cap because, despite both working full-time, they don't bring in £26k between them. I presume they would have voted Labour yesterday. But my point is that some of the policies that the "Guardianista" types see as being dreadful may well be viewed very differently by more traditional wwc Labour voters. And vice-versa.
Hi, gang. Hope you all had a good time last night. Commiserations to the lib/lab/ukip posters here, congrats to the con/snp ones. For time and cowardice reasons I did not place a bet, and am of course now kicking myself. The next elections are, what: spain 2015, holyrood 2016, potus 2016, france 2017, EUref 2017? I'll try to pluck up the courage to lay down something. Has everybody congratulated RodCrosby yet? Even Lebo and Norpoth gave up on thier model eventually, retrofitting a LD element to it.
Really hope that Hugh Edwards doesn't get the main election presenting duties next time - he's awful. So many ums and ers - he just doesn't make anything interesting. I know Dimbleby is getting on but he's still so much better.
Comments
The Lib Dems are down 15% across the country and the Labour share up only 1.5%, Ukip up 10% and the Tories up 0.8%.
While the final ICM poll showed Labour picking up a third of former Lib Dems, the Tories roughly 14% and Ukip roughly 11%.
The former Lib Dem voters just didn't vote Labour in any great numbers
'So overall perhaps a B+ .... I hope adherents of the ARSE punted well, you really should have and now PBers for one final time may I express the view, much derided by many, that :
Ed Miliband Will Never Be Prime Minister'#
Jack, a big thank you for your predictions, a very profitable evening.
YES got 45% in the indyref on an 85% turnout.
The SNP got 49.97% in the general election yesterday, on a much lower turnout, 71%.
Add the Green vote, and you find that 51% of people yesterday voted for pro-independence parties.
Presumably a few of the people who dragged themselves to polling stations to vote NO in the indyref didn't vote yesterday.
The SNP were slightly better at getting YES voters to vote yesterday than the Unionists were in getting votes out of NO voters. Which isn't surprising, given how fired up some of their supporters still are. That's all. There's no case for saying yesterday's result indicates a need or a tidal wave of feeling for a second referendum. A second referendum would be a waste of public money.
Having won 95% of the Scottish seats in the British parliament with slightly less than 50% of the vote, hopefully the SNP will stop whinging about how the system is stacked against them.
What happened was that we failed to offer a compelling vision of the future which married a social democratic future to the personal aspirations of voters in Britain. And when we now begin to think about the future of the party, we have to think about the new landscape in Britain, the self-employed, the small business owner, the owner/occupier, and how our messages to them will make them think that their families’ future, their material aspirations, their personal aspirations, will find a home in the Labour party.
The Labour party needs to speak to a growing national identity in Scotland and also, crucially, a national identity in England. The loss of Rowenna Davis, for example, our candidate in Southampton, or Lucy Rigby in Lincoln, or our candidate Lee Sherriff in Carlisle, these are areas where a sense of Englishness and pride in English identity somehow did not find an expression through the Labour party. And it did find an expression, certainly in Stoke on Trent as elsewhere, through Ukip. And that is part of the framing we have to think about.
I agree with the points upthread about Labour's campaign being aimed at building a Rainbow Coalition, and its backfiring with Middle England. I suspects Milliband's proposal to outlaw "Islamopohobia" went down badly, not just with White British voters, but also with Jewish, Sikh, and Hindu voters in North West London.
'Posh' Exeter saw a big Con to Lab swing.
Middle class Plymouth Sutton saw a small Con to Lab swing.
Working class Plymouth Moor View saw a big Lab to Con swing.
This is the cul de sac political parties get to when they think that you can create a majority by clumping together this group and that group and this other group by handing out some community-specific bag of sweeties to each. You end up with an incoherent and irreconcilable mess. And you risk putting off quite a lot of others e.g. EdM's proposed anti-islamophobia law told me quite a lot - none of it good - about his approach to a much wider range of matters.
Guess how many they won? Only 1
Out of the remaining 9 guess how many they increased their vote share? Only 1
The seats:
Warwickshire North
Thurrock
Hendon
Cardiff North
Sherwood
Stockton South
Broxtowe
Lancaster & Fleetwood
Amber Valley
Waveney
And a thank you in return for your Scottish posts.
They needed to be fully collegiate and supportive and on any issue when this was not possible, such as tuition fees, to abstain as the coalition agreement allowed.
Not snipe from the sidelines.
Instead they wanted to play it both ways; to be in government and op
position at the same time. In short, they were not grown up enough.
Unfortunately these never really consolidated into a strategy or an election winning platform. But there was always something intriguing about him and what might have been a very different take on the PM role.
I hope he stays in politics, works on his ideas and one day experiences a Hague style renaissance.
This was from all sections of the voters I met. I was really Ooh.
Before you get carried away, I do not dream of JackW, but his eternal determination that Ed will not be PM was a hope.
Fantastic analysis and prediction, and to think some thought your ARSE was just full of S...
Thanks for all your posts,go and have a well earned break.
We discussed this canard not two days ago and dismissed it.
the media, the media they're all agin us
I imagine there will be lots of attacks on the "biased" right wing media for demonising their progressive policies. Politicians like Harriet Harman are not going to change their beliefs which they have held for decades.
What they probably should have done is worked it all out over their mum's kitchen table in a Milliband household primary. Clearly only one of them could ever be leader. It would have served them well to recognise that and minimised the damage. The problem was probably that DM was unable to address his weaknesses.
Lebo-Norpoth facts on the ground.
https://twitter.com/NCPoliticsUK/status/596722614334320640
I don't doubt that there was a religious element to it.
There is room to offer a left-wing programme of more tax and spending, but they need to be honest about the first of those.
My vote went blue because the Conservatives stuck me as being honest about the big things, the need to be prudent and careful about how money is spent, and sound management of the economy through the difficult times since 2010.
Labour struck me as having abandoned their working-class roots in favour of London intellectualism and disingenuous belief that only 1% of the population needed to contribute to motherhood and apple pie for all. The NHS-as-religion was also massively overplayed when we can see what happened in Stafford and continues to happen in Wales.
If I were betting with my heart (always a stupid idea, I know!), I would put money on Dan Jarvis as next leader.
Ouch
He is proud to be WWC and feels Labour aren't interested him. Or his small business.
He'd love to come home. He thought Gordon was a bruiser with impact but EdM an embarrassment.
I would like to hear their explanation as to why Finchley wasn't in reality a certain Labour gain or why Wimbledon didn't turn out to be within reach.
Perhaps they and their 1600 strong team are still celebrating in Hornsey and haven't noticed that elections aren't decided in Inner London.
I based my betting on them being bullshit, and on Ukip getting 11-14% w a lib dem collapse
How did I lose?!!
But I guess that passes for democracy in some Labour circles.
As for thebackstabbing: it is primarily a family tragedy. But if it is true that Ed persuaded David not to run against Brown a year earlier, then it is understandable how David might think that Ed did it just so he had time to improve his own chances.
Still, the Milibands - Ed, David and Ralph - will now be consigned to a small and inglorious footnote in British political history. A small paragraph - or two if they are lucky - about failure and the perils of bananas, blank sheets of paper and hunks of monumental stone.
Which is probably where they deserve to be.
The turning up of 500 in Battersea doesn't work because these people love Labour, not care about the voter. Just don't do it.
Labour failed because they thought they knew better than the people and never listened. Sensible people would like a ref on EU. And they know there is not a magic money tree.
He might have well done better than Ed, but his abilities are far far overrated. Also, this "stabbed in the back" nonsense, David had chance to get rid of Gordon Brown and he didn't do it. He had the support to do so at the time...
Then we got a contest and he lost to his brother, because David wasn't able to command enough support from all areas of the party i.e the unions.
And so you end up with the cogntitively dissonant spectacle of a Labour party being in favour of gay marriage while at the same time turning a blind eye to the repellently anti-gay views of a significant proportion of those minorities. Or a Labour party implementing the HRA on the one hand while at the same time trying to make criticism of a religion a crime. (Who on earth within Labour thought it a good idea - at a time when we have had the grotesqueries of Jihadi John and Cage Prisoners and the Trojan Horse affair and young Muslim men/women going off to Syria and Charlie Hebdo and attacks on Jewish supermarkets and Rotherham and Tower Hamlets - to associate Labour with being seen to want to protect Islamists? The contempt for Muslims who do not agree with the Islamist ideology implied by such a move is staggering.)
And if the Tories detoxify in relation to their approach to ethnic minorities - not least by treating them as British rather than as ethnic minorities - then Labour risk finding that these voters will move to a party more naturally attuned to their views and aspirations.
Both reputations are made for the next 5 years and the grumps just need to suck it up for a while.
Seeing Labour tie themselves in knots about that segregated meeting was to me one of the defining points of the election. I spend loads of time in the Middle East (see my name) and we don't see segregated meetings there outside of prayers in the mosques. The hypocrisy of pandering to this type of importing third-world values from Pakistan while simultaneously preaching equality and feminism has cost Labour millions of votes outside London.
1. Great value for toss of a coin.
2. Pb hodges
3. Pb tories always wrong and never learn.
4. Basil
5. Squirrel
6. EICIPM
7. Tick
8. Tock
9. TPD
10. new thread
Mine are:
the Douglas Alexander declaration and Mhairi Black's face.
Simon Hughes standing blank throughout his count while you could see the hurt inside.
Cameron smiling when his number of votes were read out.
too much wood not enough trees
They have to go back to what they were - Keir Hardies party of the workers. Anything else now leads to them losing second place to UKIP, or the horror that will come after UKIP if it fails.
2. Farage. Close but no cigar.
Number one, no doubt, this election's (and this generation's) Portillo Moment
BALLS.
I was still up (with a glass of something sparkling), were you?
Nobody proposed to make criticism of religion a crime. If you were already committing an assault, say, against a Jew because he was a Jew, you could be got for aggravated assault. This is a bit like rent control, a Lynton meme let into the wild to raise the blood pressure of the Ukip-leaner and incite a vote for Conservatives to stop Ed.
And as for those who conflate Islam and Islamists, it is like conflating the Irish and the IRA. Not that I'd put that past some here.
For Labour size is everything. It's not a question of rounding on any one group but not being seen to be particularly protective of one group or, more accurately, a section of one group in a way which seems to go counter to what the party is meant to stand for. And, if you read David Goodhart's analysis, other ethnic groups are beginning to peel away from Labour because of this.
It wasn't unions per se which made Labour unpopular. It was the way unions behaved as if they were above the law and could do anything they wanted and Labour's unwillingness to confront them which made Labour unpopular.
It would do Labour good if it stopped pandering to appallingly illiberal and anti-democratic views within some of its supporters and stood up for British values instead.
This should not have to be a Clause IV moment. It should be the basic default mode of every party in the UK.
(My daughter who voted for the first time yesterday was appalled at the gender-segregated Labour rally. That's one new voter lost.)
Basically the phone polls a week or two out were right, and despite the reticence of Prof Curtice the exit poll was pretty good too.
The big question is why did all the polls converge on a dead head in the last 24 to 48 hours, missing what was happening out in the real world. A few PhD theses will be written in the next year or two on this one!
I sat on my sofa at 10pm last night thinking, like many, it would be a hung parliament with weeks of wrangling, or even a Labour minority.
16 hours later, when I finally stirred from the sofa for an hour's kip, Farage, Clegg and Miliband had all resigned, the Tories had romped home with a majority, Cameron had seen the Queen, and had re-entered No.10.
Was it all a dream? If not, how did it happen?
I presume they would have voted Labour yesterday. But my point is that some of the policies that the "Guardianista" types see as being dreadful may well be viewed very differently by more traditional wwc Labour voters. And vice-versa.