Sandpit..There are always fools willing to part with their money..Just look at Blairs income . Balls is not a good economist .. he is wonderful at hand jiving across the Despatch Table but that wont get him a job in the City where most of the companies there seem to work on a profit making basis. ..and in recent years he has not gone out of his way to endear himself to them.
I wasn't thinking of the city of London. Various US and Mid-East universities, NGOs and governments love paying silly amounts of money to former UK cabinet ministers for advice and lectures - no matter how nutty we may think they are in the UK.
Where to begin in rejecting you comments on the SNP 56?? I will restrict myself to a couple of areas in which I think you are well wide of the mark.
"Probably contrary to prevailing opinion, but I think this whole situation could go very sour for the SNP very quickly. First of all, the obvious point to make is that their main slogan in the election was "vote for us and lock the Tories out". Well there's no doubt Scotland voted for them and,...er, didn't really work, did it? Some explaining to do."
Going "sour very quickly" is what SLAB believed after Holyrood 2007 when the SNP led Labour 47-46. It just will not happen.
As to the SNP having to explain failing to lock the Tories out. They will just point out that it was Labour's failure outwith Scotland that caused that. This has the advantage of being patently true.
"And finally, do they all want to be there? Many will have chosen to stand to give them experience of campaigning with an eye to moving through the party in Holyrood (and hopefully, later, an independent Scotland). Being in Westminster was not part of the plan. But they now need a plan for Westminster. "
That is actually complete and utter nonsense. All the candidates were selected by the SNP after the Referendum, so that they would be clear whether they were there for a short time just before independence, or for a long time after a referendum defeat.
Given the opinion polls, the vast majority of the candidates thought that they had a great chance of being elected, and sought their adoptions on that basis. It is completely wrong to believe that "being in Westminster" was not part of the plan.
Precisely because the plan was to become Westminster MPs, the quality of the SNP MPs is high as time will prove. If that were not the case, the individual attacks by the MSM etc. on these candidates would have occurred en masses. As it was, the only successful attack allowed Ian Murray to hold the one SLAB seat-even that attack was not wholly true.
Better tell that to the Germans they've been a running a federal state for nearly seventy years where only a handful of the states are self funding. Internal transfers do the rest.
On canvassing I agree that the quality of the canvassers is an issue but I also frankly wonder if the belief in the merits of the "ground war" are substantially overstated. For me delivering that 3rd of 4th leaflet of the campaign might make some of the activists feel good but is almost certainly otherwise counterproductive. People just get annoyed.
The Tories invested huge amounts into the virtual war in this campaign. I understand that they were spending over £100K a month on Facebook alone. Was that more effective?
I only saw the Tory e-mails and (other the SamCam one which I continue to believe was deeply personal) they were fairly generic and rather obsessed with looking for money. Each and every one encouraged me to spread the message on social media. It would be interesting to see how much that actually happened.
My guess is that this election was something of a watershed between the emphasis being on actual and virtual campaigning but it is only that.
Agree about the raft of personal e-mails from senior party figures. Tiresome. They need to be cut right back. Do they think that I think that George Osborne or William Hague was really writing just to me?
And I didn't share one.
But for example it was the actual campaigning that showed up just how toxic Nicola Sturgeon was to the voters, that was quickly fed back into the system so specific leaflets could be going out in 24 hours. There is no better way to judge the mood than to ask a few hundred thousand!
If UKIP is seriously aiming to take on Labour it needs to shift its centre of gravity well to the left. That means a philosophical journey, not just a few lefty sounding policies like getting rid of the bedroom tax. Whether a party led by Thatcherites can do that is open to question.
Not sure you are correct. Thatcher did quite well.
There was always a strong Tory working class vote and Thatcher got it, as did Major. It disappeared in 1997 and has never returned. UKIP is very well placed to get it back.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
There are also many more acts to this play.
The separatists thought they had won last year, and it didn't work out like that.
They thought they would be writing Ed Miliband's first budget, and it didn't work out like that.
Now Cameron is apparently offering FFA giving the Nats Hobson's choice of saying "no, we didn't really want it" or accepting a financial black hole they then have to explain to the Scots. Neither of those options seems on the surface likely to endear them
LOL, only a turnip like you could say that with a straight face , they scrape 1 MP again out of 59 and you think all is well.
Take your head out of your own navel for once. We "scraped" 330 out of 650.
On canvassing I agree that the quality of the canvassers is an issue but I also frankly wonder if the belief in the merits of the "ground war" are substantially overstated. For me delivering that 3rd of 4th leaflet of the campaign might make some of the activists feel good but is almost certainly otherwise counterproductive. People just get annoyed.
The Tories invested huge amounts into the virtual war in this campaign. I understand that they were spending over £100K a month on Facebook alone. Was that more effective?
I only saw the Tory e-mails and (other the SamCam one which I continue to believe was deeply personal) they were fairly generic and rather obsessed with looking for money. Each and every one encouraged me to spread the message on social media. It would be interesting to see how much that actually happened.
My guess is that this election was something of a watershed between the emphasis being on actual and virtual campaigning but it is only that.
The numbers of views for each of the main parties' Youtube channels shows the Conservatives were better at sharing them, presumably with established and more importantly potential supporters, and via email, Facebook and other social media.
To keep the length of this post down, here are those over 10,000 in the past four weeks. The figures on the end show the length of each video.
For Labour: 22,170 views A decent society looks after its people 2:46 23,467 views Ed's Mystery Guest 1:36 27,137 views Look at what David Cameron has done in five years... 0:27 94,887 views Steve Coogan on the choice in this election 2:46 104,631 views Ed Miliband: A Portrait 4:39
For Conservatives 11,690 views David Cameron: Let's finish what we've begun 16:05 14,856 views Salmond Alert 0:25 53,402 views Alex Salmond: "I'm writing the Labour Party budget" 0:29 61,966 views David Cameron: Vote Conservative on Thursday 1:58 67,014 views David Cameron: Vote Conservative today 0:49 84,380 views Our note to you: let's keep going 1:45 88,876 views Don't risk it with Ed Miliband and the SNP 0:14 89,097 views The SNP propping up Ed Miliband: you'll pay for it 0:19 174,548 views What type of country do we want to be? 2:41 420,080 views It's working - don't let them wreck it. Vote Conservative on Thursday. 2:46
As an aside, notice how many are what the Americans call "attack ads" that would not be allowed on television.
I may just be old but unless they were embedded in an e-mail to me or linked to on here I didn't even see any of these. I do think that politics is changing though and this is where the effort will be in the future.
Yes, I think that is the point, and the links would have been sent to previously identified (potential) voters.
There will surely be another referendum on Scottish independence, as you say, and this time it will surely vote "yes" - Cameron will secure his niche in history as the last PM of the UK. One thing he might do, to pave the way for his English (& Welsh, or maybe not) is to arrange for Northern Ireland to become a Scottish-Irish condominium. It's got nothing to do with England.
As to English regionalism, it's not even in the oven yet, let alone cooked. The only part of England that may want to go it alone is London (there'll surely be a "London First" candidate in the Mayoralty contest next year) and if they have a plausible left-of-centre platform they could even split the vote and let another Tory in!
the inevitable triumph of nats is about as inevitable as the inevitable triumph of communism
in both cases the economic numbers don't stack up.
Alan, you are not following the game, trying to say the team that is 3 goals behind has the best players does not change the result. They will not be scared a second time. If Cameron does not bite the bullet and get federal it will happen.
Sandpit Golden opportunity for the two Eds to join up as an economic tag team...go out and milk the daft Yanks for shedloads of money by speaking gibberish.They could always point to their astonishing successes when they were part of the UK Gov.
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
There will surely be another referendum on Scottish independence, as you say, and this time it will surely vote "yes" - Cameron will secure his niche in history as the last PM of the UK. One thing he might do, to pave the way for his English (& Welsh, or maybe not) is to arrange for Northern Ireland to become a Scottish-Irish condominium. It's got nothing to do with England.
As to English regionalism, it's not even in the oven yet, let alone cooked. The only part of England that may want to go it alone is London (there'll surely be a "London First" candidate in the Mayoralty contest next year) and if they have a plausible left-of-centre platform they could even split the vote and let another Tory in!
the inevitable triumph of nats is about as inevitable as the inevitable triumph of communism
in both cases the economic numbers don't stack up.
Alan, you are not following the game, trying to say the team that is 3 goals behind has the best players does not change the result. They will not be scared a second time. If Cameron does not bite the bullet and get federal it will happen.
malc I've been on we'll go federal since 2011. And actually agree we ought to.
but I don't agree we'll end up with Indy as by the time anew vote comes round oil will be on it's last gasp and the Nats have no plan for what will replace it. So how do you pay your bills ?
Cue someone spouting bollocks from GERS from 10 years ago.
At a personal level, retiring from front-line politics (which I'm doing, unless something unexpected turns up) feels very, very odd. I'm used to a daily routine: Check out YouGov's entrails, post on PB, answer 50 emails, draft a leaflet, maybe write a local blog, juggle priorities. None of that is necessary now, and at 65 it actually makes sense to scale back to two jobs (animal welfare and translation) and have some free time to do...er...something.
There's a liberating effect - I no longer need to even try to be interested in local issues that engage maybe 100 potential voters (Should disused chapel X be refurbished partly or more expensively? Should former police station Y get a conservation order?): I can cheerfully think, or even say, that I don't give a toss. And I do have some other interests which it'll be nice to have more time for (board games, poker, big DVD series like Homeland) as well as things that I'm aware that "normal" people enjoy and I've never taken the time for - e.g. looking round all these foreign cities that my work takes me to.
But it feels odd, and slightly pointless. No doubt I'll get used to it.
Cycle the UK Coastal Path, if necessary in bits! 4000 miles.
Where to begin in rejecting you comments on the SNP 56?? I will restrict myself to a couple of areas in which I think you are well wide of the mark.
"Probably contrary to prevailing opinion, but I think this whole situation could go very sour for the SNP very quickly. First of all, the obvious point to make is that their main slogan in the election was "vote for us and lock the Tories out". Well there's no doubt Scotland voted for them and,...er, didn't really work, did it? Some explaining to do."
Going "sour very quickly" is what SLAB believed after Holyrood 2007 when the SNP led Labour 47-46. It just will not happen.
As to the SNP having to explain failing to lock the Tories out. They will just point out that it was Labour's failure outwith Scotland that caused that. This has the advantage of being patently true.
"And finally, do they all want to be there? Many will have chosen to stand to give them experience of campaigning with an eye to moving through the party in Holyrood (and hopefully, later, an independent Scotland). Being in Westminster was not part of the plan. But they now need a plan for Westminster. "
That is actually complete and utter nonsense. All the candidates were selected by the SNP after the Referendum, so that they would be clear whether they were there for a short time just before independence, or for a long time after a referendum defeat.
Given the opinion polls, the vast majority of the candidates thought that they had a great chance of being elected, and sought their adoptions on that basis. It is completely wrong to believe that "being in Westminster" was not part of the plan.
Precisely because the plan was to become Westminster MPs, the quality of the SNP MPs is high as time will prove. If that were not the case, the individual attacks by the MSM etc. on these candidates would have occurred en masses. As it was, the only successful attack allowed Ian Murray to hold the one SLAB seat-even that attack was not wholly true.
Fair point putting me right on the Westminster selection process. I didn't realise the selections were done so late.
I don't think the comparison with Holyrood in 2007 is at all relevant though. The basic thrust of my argument is that the SNP at Westminster have no actual power. No ability to do, or even try to do, anything beyond oppose. And opposition without the power to prevent. It is from that starting point that most of my imagined problems follow.
Dan Jarvis is tumbling in on Betfair, he's shorter than Burnham !
One of his main problems could be that I tipped him a while back ;-)
The longer the leadership election process is the better it is for him. What he lacks is a strong base in the party, though he does seem to be working on that.
Sandpit Golden opportunity for the two Eds to join up as an economic tag team...go out and milk the daft Yanks for shedloads of money by speaking gibberish.They could always point to their astonishing successes when they were part of the UK Gov.
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
One of the things I'll enjoy watching is the euro-ref and SNP\Tories.
This is one of the Nats dividing lines and probably the biggest boost BOO will get in the campaign
US politics for all its faults is very local. We could learn a lot from devolving power down closer to the people, where cities and states can compete with each other on tax rates and spending priorities.
Sounds great in theory, but it's worth reading this is piece on how badly this works in practice. The core of the problem is that the voters still vote almost entirely based on the national brands, so the local office-holders end up wielding power without responsibility.
And thanks once again Mr Herdson, for your thoughts. – Not sure if setting ‘Scottish parties free’ at this point would achieve a great deal quite honestly, apart from hastening an entirely independent Scotland, although I appreciate the concept. – The trouble surely would be that if affiliation with a mother party was actively discouraged, or broken entirely for the sake of nationalistic integrity, time and natural evolution would morph it into something else entirely.
That would be the whole point. The Scottish parties - but the Scottish Conservatives particularly - have a need for a rebranding exercise that is meaningful. And to be meaningful, that *has* to evolve it into something else. This is not a bad thing; indeed, it's a democratic one.
If there is something like symmetric devolution then differing policies on health, education, transport and the like really won't matter, and to the extent that there's a clash, there can always be negotiation. It would be helpful if UK-wide policies on Europe, foreign affairs and defence were in sync but given the shared ideological inheritance, that's fairly likely and again, if not, it should firstly give both sides pause for thought and secondly, opportunity to talk.
The party with the major problem in Scotland is Labour who really suffered under the SNP branch office taunts and the way that Johann Lamont was treated. They have to rebuild from scratch and try to find a reason to exist when a centre left SNP has already taken over nearly all of their territory both physical and political.
We have a situation where our two largest parties in Scotland think public spending is the answer to all problems, that the job of the state is to regulate and control any private sector that remains into the ground and that those who are skilful and able enough to survive such hostility are simply a resource to be plucked to feed the voracious state. It seems inconsistent with such a mindset that there should be two parties like that.
For the tories I think having an independent party would be a waste of time. For the Lib Dems this election may well prove to be an extinction event. I really don't see them playing a major role in Scottish politics again for a very long time, if ever. To personalise again a Ruth Davidson led Tory party gives them very little room to operate in. The above mindset also surely creates some opportunities. The 2016 election will be interesting.
The difficulty we will have on PB for the next few months is that it is dominated by the victors Tories and Nats both of whom will re-write history as is their privilege. More interesting is when the losers drift back on and tell us how it looks from their side and what comes next.
Since you're in the odd position of being a winner\loser ( Tory but Scotland ) I'd be interested in how you see the position in Scotland develop for the blues. Is it hunker down and wait for the tide to turn against the Nats when the hubris wears off or is there something now the Tories should be doing ?
For me the big disappointment of the night was not getting Berwickshire, 2 seats and bigger than SLAB would have been tremendous.
Alan, the Tories are at their peak , they are going nowhere in Scotland. They would have a chance of growing if they were not a London sockpuppet regional party but the old duffers who run the show will not get rid of their union jack underpants. The only way for them is down as either SNP keep on upward trend or labour recover. They are far too right wing for Scottish tastes.
Dan Jarvis is tumbling in on Betfair, he's shorter than Burnham !
One of his main problems could be that I tipped him a while back ;-)
The longer the leadership election process is the better it is for him. What he lacks is a strong base in the party, though he does seem to be working on that.
Interesting point. It's difficult to see how the party works from outside, do you think that someone like Jarvis can build up enough support for a serious run at it, or will the remains of the party reflect internally and pick another of their own?
It would be weird for the Scottish Conservatives to have two separate parties considering they are the most unionist bunch.
It would be interesting for Scotland to have FFA so they actually have responsibility for raising taxes rather than just spend spend spend
But...what is FFA? To the Nats, it requires them to have all the oil taxation revenues.... Until they get that, they will say they don't have true Scottish FFA. And giving them oil taxation revenues only happens when they get full independence, not fiscal autonomy.
FFA means all our revenues, not the kid on pocket money ones that Westminster allocate to us. It is every penny that is raised in Scotland for all taxes , oil , etc , etc. Given we have subsidised England for 30 years it is time we got our own money to spend as we wish.
Oil is in British waters, there's no such thing as Scottish waters in international law. If you want that, go independent. But you don't.
All revenues and expenditures in Scotland, that's fair enough.
Oil is in Scottish waters as defined by UK law. The boundaries are laid out.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
There are also many more acts to this play.
The separatists thought they had won last year, and it didn't work out like that.
They thought they would be writing Ed Miliband's first budget, and it didn't work out like that.
Now Cameron is apparently offering FFA giving the Nats Hobson's choice of saying "no, we didn't really want it" or accepting a financial black hole they then have to explain to the Scots. Neither of those options seems on the surface likely to endear them
LOL, only a turnip like you could say that with a straight face , they scrape 1 MP again out of 59 and you think all is well.
Take your head out of your own navel for once. We "scraped" 330 out of 650.
errr you're at the same level you were in 1992 when 23 years with no majority stood in front of you. Maybe you should be thinking about how you go forward rather than slip back.
If UKIP is seriously aiming to take on Labour it needs to shift its centre of gravity well to the left. That means a philosophical journey, not just a few lefty sounding policies like getting rid of the bedroom tax. Whether a party led by Thatcherites can do that is open to question.
Not sure you are correct. Thatcher did quite well.
There was always a strong Tory working class vote and Thatcher got it, as did Major. It disappeared in 1997 and has never returned.
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
You have complete ownership of the economic issue now - no more blaming Brown.
And I know that you at least are under no illusions about the economy.
Meanwhile the country still believes in and has been promised the magic money tree.
I still can't believe how poorly Labour did especially considering the Lib Dem collapse. Use the excellent BBC website to search constituencies across the country, you will find many marginals where Labour have basically stood still and most of the movement is from the Lib Dems to Ukip and, to a lesser extent, to the Tories depending on the seat.
I am an Orange booker rather than a Fallonite, but even so I will be voting for Fallon as LD Leader.
Fallon was always arms length from the coalition so can win back a lot of those former LD voters gone to kippers and Tories. His northern roots and social conservatism make him ideal for this, and he is a good tub thumper to rouse the rather battered troops. Despite being a strong Christian he voted for repeal of blasphemy laws.
No way will the LDs merge with Labour; though I think there is some merit in a joint ticket in Scotland with the Conservatives in the style of the National Liberals for Westminster elections.
The LDs and Labour may not need to merge, but they certainly need to remember that bashing seven bells out of each other only work in the Tories favour. Unless something radical happens; the LDs have the power to reach the parts of the country Labour can't and vice versa.
Shame SLAB couldn't remember bashing the hell out of the Tories only helps the SNP.
Maybe it really started the re-launch of Scottish nationalism when Scots Labour, Scots Lib Dems joined with the SNP against the "Westminster Govt" of John Major. This anti-UK alliance led us to where we are today. Independence for Scotland is inevitable. Just a matter of time now, after all is said, the Scottish anthem is "to be a nation again". Bedding that into the minds of each generation as a goal, will ensure that the goal is met.
Federalism is inevitable Independence isn't.
Federalism could only work if Scotland and Wales are self funding. May be only supported out of the English overseas aid budget?
You seriously think England is self funding !!!!!!!!!!!!
The party with the major problem in Scotland is Labour who really suffered under the SNP branch office taunts and the way that Johann Lamont was treated. They have to rebuild from scratch and try to find a reason to exist when a centre left SNP has already taken over nearly all of their territory both physical and political.
We have a situation where our two largest parties in Scotland think public spending is the answer to all problems, that the job of the state is to regulate and control any private sector that remains into the ground and that those who are skilful and able enough to survive such hostility are simply a resource to be plucked to feed the voracious state. It seems inconsistent with such a mindset that there should be two parties like that.
For the tories I think having an independent party would be a waste of time. For the Lib Dems this election may well prove to be an extinction event. I really don't see them playing a major role in Scottish politics again for a very long time, if ever. To personalise again a Ruth Davidson led Tory party gives them very little room to operate in. The above mindset also surely creates some opportunities. The 2016 election will be interesting.
The difficulty we will have on PB for the next few months is that it is dominated by the victors Tories and Nats both of whom will re-write history as is their privilege. More interesting is when the losers drift back on and tell us how it looks from their side and what comes next.
Since you're in the odd position of being a winner\loser ( Tory but Scotland ) I'd be interested in how you see the position in Scotland develop for the blues. Is it hunker down and wait for the tide to turn against the Nats when the hubris wears off or is there something now the Tories should be doing ?
For me the big disappointment of the night was not getting Berwickshire, 2 seats and bigger than SLAB would have been tremendous.
Alan, the Tories are at their peak , they are going nowhere in Scotland. They would have a chance of growing if they were not a London sockpuppet regional party but the old duffers who run the show will not get rid of their union jack underpants. The only way for them is down as either SNP keep on upward trend or labour recover. They are far too right wing for Scottish tastes.
I always enjoy the Nat view that things can't change. On that basis you'd be three weirdos in kilts and Labour would be rampant same as in the 1960s.
Politics goes in cycles, you're coming to the peak of yours, currently you've had the benefit of authority without responsibility, that won't last.
On the polling debacle - lots of people talking about "shy Tories" on the Media. But surely it's not "shy Tories", it's the adjustments that pollsters put in place post 1992 to account for "don't knows/shy tories". If actual shy Tories was an issue, why were the Exit Polls so much better? (people forget that the Exit Polls were also a failure in 1992).
Can you tell us now whether Labour understood that the polling was so far off. There was the odd "mood music" that was talked about here so much at the time and largely discounted by me and others as Romney delusion. There was Ed going to Warwickshire which seemed odd but in fact they didn't take it either. And there was Cameron furiously campaigning in the south west going on about just needing 23 more seats and frankly sounding just a little mad.
In short there were clues that the Tories thought they were doing much better and Labour thought they were doing much worse than the polls indicated and they were both right.
I think so - the East Midlands regional party didn't seem to know about the notorious Labour Uncut report on the PVs (or maybe just weren't admitting it to me) but the evidence looks that way to me too. That said, I think everyone was surprised by the strength of the final shift.
V On ground games, one lesson of the election is that the "human wave" approach to winning seats doesn't work - most marginals had masses of Labour activists (although, amusingly, UNITE refused to send me any towards the end of the campaign because I was against Trident - too left-wing for Len McCluskey!) and we buried the voters in leaflets, but the Tory leaflets were better quality (physically, with better pictures and a nicer look) and as Marquee Mark says more effectively targeted....
Nick, for some obscure reason I have an image of an army of Ewoks vainly taking on an Imperial Death Star....
Good luck with your animal welfare work. If you think any of us on here can help in any capacity, then no doubt you only have to ask.
EDIT: and you and I are agreed on Trident! Bloody useless things. Give me an extra regiment of highly-equipped rapid-deployment special forces every time. Trident doesn't scare the crap out of ISIS.....
At a personal level, retiring from front-line politics (which I'm doing, unless something unexpected turns up) feels very, very odd. I'm used to a daily routine: Check out YouGov's entrails, post on PB, answer 50 emails, draft a leaflet, maybe write a local blog, juggle priorities. None of that is necessary now, and at 65 it actually makes sense to scale back to two jobs (animal welfare and translation) and have some free time to do...er...something.
There's a liberating effect - I no longer need to even try to be interested in local issues that engage maybe 100 potential voters (Should disused chapel X be refurbished partly or more expensively? Should former police station Y get a conservation order?): I can cheerfully think, or even say, that I don't give a toss. And I do have some other interests which it'll be nice to have more time for (board games, poker, big DVD series like Homeland) as well as things that I'm aware that "normal" people enjoy and I've never taken the time for - e.g. looking round all these foreign cities that my work takes me to.
But it feels odd, and slightly pointless. No doubt I'll get used to it.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
There are also many more acts to this play.
The separatists thought they had won last year, and it didn't work out like that.
They thought they would be writing Ed Miliband's first budget, and it didn't work out like that.
Now Cameron is apparently offering FFA giving the Nats Hobson's choice of saying "no, we didn't really want it" or accepting a financial black hole they then have to explain to the Scots. Neither of those options seems on the surface likely to endear them
LOL, only a turnip like you could say that with a straight face , they scrape 1 MP again out of 59 and you think all is well.
Take your head out of your own navel for once. We "scraped" 330 out of 650.
errr you're at the same level you were in 1992 when 23 years with no majority stood in front of you. Maybe you should be thinking about how you go forward rather than slip back.
In 1992 we fell to that level, in 2015 we rose to this level. The direction of travel is very positive as well as the result.
Still I'd rather be a supporter of the party that won the election with 330/650 seats than a losing party like malcomg's teeny tiny 58/650. 58/650 lost, lost, lost
US politics for all its faults is very local. We could learn a lot from devolving power down closer to the people, where cities and states can compete with each other on tax rates and spending priorities.
Sounds great in theory, but it's worth reading this is piece on how badly this works in practice. The core of the problem is that the voters still vote almost entirely based on the national brands, so the local office-holders end up wielding power without responsibility.
What Jarvis must do if elected is clean out what is left of the front bench and the sooner the better.. and that includes Mrs Balls, the Robot, the Raptors
On the polling debacle - lots of people talking about "shy Tories" on the Media. But surely it's not "shy Tories", it's the adjustments that pollsters put in place post 1992 to account for "don't knows/shy tories". If actual shy Tories was an issue, why were the Exit Polls so much better? (people forget that the Exit Polls were also a failure in 1992).
Yes, poor sampling followed by complex weighting to try to adjust for the sampling errors. Problems then come when the subsets that have responded diverge from the groups they are weighted to represent.
The problems with online panels and street polling are clear but it beggars belief that the phone pollsters still rely on final-digit randomisation.
At a personal level, retiring from front-line politics (which I'm doing, unless something unexpected turns up) feels very, very odd. I'm used to a daily routine: Check out YouGov's entrails, post on PB, answer 50 emails, draft a leaflet, maybe write a local blog, juggle priorities. None of that is necessary now, and at 65 it actually makes sense to scale back to two jobs (animal welfare and translation) and have some free time to do...er...something.
There's a liberating effect - I no longer need to even try to be interested in local issues that engage maybe 100 potential voters (Should disused chapel X be refurbished partly or more expensively? Should former police station Y get a conservation order?): I can cheerfully think, or even say, that I don't give a toss. And I do have some other interests which it'll be nice to have more time for (board games, poker, big DVD series like Homeland) as well as things that I'm aware that "normal" people enjoy and I've never taken the time for - e.g. looking round all these foreign cities that my work takes me to.
But it feels odd, and slightly pointless. No doubt I'll get used to it.
Cycle the UK Coastal Path, if necessary in bits! 4000 miles.
(snip)
Matt W
Cycling the coast is for lightwesights. Walk it instead: it's longer (4,500 to 6,500 miles), and you see so much more. Especially if you ignore the new 'official' trails and make your own route. ;-)
(The new English Coastal Path is turning out just as brain-dead as I feared).
Ironically, that article is incredibly self-righteous and personifies everything it accuses the 'left on social media' of. And while undoubtedly the Conservatives have had a very successful election, 36% does not constitute the 'country', unless 11.5m is now a bigger figure than 60+ million people.
@SouthamObserver SLab have a clear way back. It's Holyrood and providing effective opposition there.
Except since 2007 they haven't.
If I take our Nats at face value the only ones they mention giving them a run for their money have been Annabel Goldie and Ruth Davidson.
Alan, They are rank rotten in Holyrood as were the Lib Dems, Davidson at least can string a sentence together even if she picks crap topics for her questions.
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
You have complete ownership of the economic issue now - no more blaming Brown.
And I know that you at least are under no illusions about the economy.
Meanwhile the country still believes in and has been promised the magic money tree.
Sorry the damage inflicted between 1997 and 2010 will take generations to fix so your ownership jibe is bollox. It's what Labour will try to use at any point things get difficult though but at least we will be spared the hand gestures across the despatch box now from the SCOTE.
It'd be really helpful if you could summarise the Q1 vs Q2 divergence. It struck me as deliberately introducing a Are You Really Sure You Want To Vote For Them??? factor that wasn't accurately reflecting how they'd vote on the day.
I was also very bearish on the LibDems. I think I was the lowest in the original competition entry with 17 seats - although pretty sure some brave souls went lower during the second iteration. That required saying there were long-held seats with large majorities - Bath, Cheltenham, Yeovil, Twickenham for example - that again required battling against the emotional brake that "surely, the LibDems can't go that low?". And there was some support for that scepticism in the shape of Lord Ashcroft's Q2 in the seat polls. I never understood the divergence between responses to Q1 and Q2. In the Torbay poll for example, the LibDems losing by a few thousand turned into a safe hold? Why?
The later regional South-West poll (for ITN?) was much more in line with Q1. And (correctly) devastating for the LibDems. It was also in line with reports of those who were actively campaigning. I reported back on here that the Tories were throwing their big names into defeating their erstwhile Coalition colleagues. (Why else was May going to Yeovil? I think JackW suggested it was a courtesy call - to have afternoon tea!) When asked about seats they had visited, folks on the Tory's Team 2015 Battle Bus told me (again, reported back here) that Yeovil was close and that Cheltenham was VERY much in play. These were a hard-core flying squad of seasoned canvassers, for a week at a time getting up at 6 and going to bed at 11 - they knew what they were doing, and knew what they were hearing on the ground.
This plays into another issue. Labour convinced themselves that Tory seats had been hollowed out of activists by defections to UKP. There was no-one to fight their wave upon wave of (union) activists, no-one left to fight a ground-war.
Wrong.
There were leaflet teams on the ground. But there was also a huge behind-the-scenes effort in the 40:40 seats to find the voters, profile the voters, send those voters targeted letters, get those voters to the polls - an effort like never before. I suspect posters here like IOS and Compouter had no idea of the scale of this operation. Even Nick Palmer seemed blithely unaware of the efforts being made in his own constituency.
If there is one lesson to take away from this general election, it is this: never, EVER under-estimate the desire of the Conservative Party to get into and hold onto power.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
There are also many more acts to this play.
The separatists thought they had won last year, and it didn't work out like that.
They thought they would be writing Ed Miliband's first budget, and it didn't work out like that.
Now Cameron is apparently offering FFA giving the Nats Hobson's choice of saying "no, we didn't really want it" or accepting a financial black hole they then have to explain to the Scots. Neither of those options seems on the surface likely to endear them
LOL, only a turnip like you could say that with a straight face , they scrape 1 MP again out of 59 and you think all is well.
Take your head out of your own navel for once. We "scraped" 330 out of 650.
errr you're at the same level you were in 1992 when 23 years with no majority stood in front of you. Maybe you should be thinking about how you go forward rather than slip back.
In 1992 we fell to that level, in 2015 we rose to this level. The direction of travel is very positive as well as the result.
Still I'd rather be a supporter of the party that won the election with 330/650 seats than a losing party like malcomg's teeny tiny 58/650. 58/650 lost, lost, lost
The Nats thought this was the election they'd finally get the power they 'deserved', that Ed Miliband would be in Alex Salmond's top pocket. They must have all gone to bed happy with the win, only to wake up yesterday to the reality of the result across the rest of the UK.
It also shows clearly the left have still learnt nothing and that is why they will not secure a left wing government again for a very very long time.
An example is as follows
"The people have spoken. The bastards."
Conrad Cork Leicester
Indeed, Scotland might well soon be the only place to be for Britons of a left-progressive persuasion. Don’t be surprised if a mini-stampede to north of the border soon begins.
My last word on the election. After sleeping on it the reason for Labour's obliteration was the impression given that Ed was plucking policies at random out of his backside.
Cameron was doing the same but he at least had something of a track record to fall back on.
On the morning of the election I was talking to Tyson and neither of us could fathom what was underpinning Labour's support.
Standing as the 'Not Tory Party' might be good enough for us but surely not for a risk averse politically disinterested public?
Ed was a dreadful choice for leader. His thought's weren't coherent. He policies were leaps between gimmicks. And worst of all he was inarticulate
If Labour are looking for templates for their next leader look at Nicola not Dave. Someone who can inspire and someone who understands that no sentence beginning with 'hard working families' will ever sound passionate
Content analysis on our panelists’ unprompted “daily diaries”, sent in via their mobile apps, shows that the economy was mentioned four times as often as the next nearest policy area, the NHS. This turned out to be critical. Given the backdrop of uncertainty, our voters relied on a small number of touchstones. In Dewsbury, when asked what the Conservatives’ key policy was, they chorused “improving the economy” without skipping a beat. The same question about Labour was initially met with silence.
This is why the next Labour leader must NOT be any member of Gordo's cabinet (Sorry Andy), and their very first statement as leader must be "Yes, we spent way too much money"
Have Labour fixed the rules so the sensible choice for leader can't be undone by Len McLuskey?
This post sponsored by ToriesForBurnham™ and brought to you by NewsSense™ Inc.
Please let it be Burnham
Burnham would be hillarious. Mr Stafford Hospital himself.
Yes it has to be a completely new face, someone who's lived in the real world and had a real job. Apart from Dan Jarvis, who else fits the bill from the 2010 intake?
Liz Kendall! Fits most of your criteria and is an excellent communicator.
DavidL "For the Lib Dems this election may well prove to be an extinction event. I really don't see them playing a major role in Scottish politics again for a very long time, if ever." Agreed. There is no room for another left of centre party in Scotland.
There is room for a more centrist one though, and centrist in Scotland may look left wing from England.
It looks to me at first sight that the SLD vote held up better than SLAB but not as good as SCUP. The extinction event could be as much SLAB, or even more so, particularly if a tacit or even overt SLD SCUP ticket could emerge. It would also make both parties distinct from their English sibs.
But 2/3 of the LD members are on the left. Farron is and may be the new Leader. Nationally can the LD alliance hold? The MPs are now down to a personal vote with a brand name in the gutter.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
Philip - To enable me to settle my GE bet with you, please email peterfromputney@gmail.com with your bank account details, i.e. Name of Account, Account Number and Sort Code and I'll arrange a prompt payment.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Agreed to a certain extent - will be much harder for Cameron to govern in this Parliament than the last. However, I think the Tory party is much more united now that it was in the 90s. Time will tell I guess...
Content analysis on our panelists’ unprompted “daily diaries”, sent in via their mobile apps, shows that the economy was mentioned four times as often as the next nearest policy area,
This is why the next Labour leader must NOT be any member of Gordo's cabinet (Sorry Andy), and their very first statement as leader must be "Yes, we spent way too much money"
Have Labour fixed the rules so the sensible choice for leader can't be undone by Len McLuskey?
This post sponsored by ToriesForBurnham™ and brought to you by NewsSense™ Inc.
Please let it be Burnham
Burnham would be hillarious. Mr Stafford Hospital himself.
Yes it has to be a completely new face, someone who's lived in the real world and had a real job. Apart from Dan Jarvis, who else fits the bill from the 2010 intake?
Liz Kendall! Fits most of your criteria and is an excellent communicator.
Liz Kendall could be a good one, will do a little more research on her before betting. Thanks.
Those suggesting Lucy Powell or Rachel Reeves are probably Tory members!
She is ambitious and fairly ruthless too. Was quite an active campaigner, trade union links but pretty dry on spending. Would give Dave a very hard time at PMQs. One of the best TV performers on the Labour front bench.
Thanks for that quick summary. Getting on at 16/1, along with Jarvis who's getting much shorter.
My concern is that I don't know enough about the internal workings of the party and they'll choose someone seemingly baffling from the outside - just as they did with Ed.
There is that! I am a LD and Lab party workings can be Byzantine in their intricacies. Henry Manson is a good tipster on the candidates, hopefully he will do a thread.
Liz Kendall is a local MP and quite dynamic in how she works her patch. She has had quite a lot of dealings with public sector unions so has quite a strong background there. She is now settled in yhe Midlands but is from the home Counties rather than Islington so can reach out to people sympathetic to Labour without frightening the horses too much in the Unions. Importantly she is one of the quickest to be promoted to the front bench from the 2010 intake. Her talents are recognised, and not just by me!
The difficulty we will have on PB for the next few months is that it is dominated by the victors Tories and Nats both of whom will re-write history as is their privilege. More interesting is when the losers drift back on and tell us how it looks from their side and what comes next.
settlement.
I don't think we have time for yet another commission tbh. We have the Smith Commission as a basis and Cameron would be well advised to implement that with a generous hand, having sensible discussions with the SNP about where they think there are good reasons to go further and making some concessions.
Cameron needs to respect the views of the Scottish people and the rights of their elected representatives to take a full role in the UK Parliament but he also needs, bluntly, to shaft Labour once and for all. This means reaching agreements bilaterally with the SNP and getting their consent for EVEL as the quid pro quo of a much enhanced devolution settlement. EVEL cannot be imposed unilaterally or Scotland will end up leaving but an agreement between the two main parties is surely possible.
David, It will need a lot more than the crumbs of Smith to be effective. Partial control of road signs will not cut the mustard.
On the polling debacle - lots of people talking about "shy Tories" on the Media. But surely it's not "shy Tories", it's the adjustments that pollsters put in place post 1992 to account for "don't knows/shy tories". If actual shy Tories was an issue, why were the Exit Polls so much better? (people forget that the Exit Polls were also a failure in 1992).
Yes, poor sampling followed by complex weighting to try to adjust for the sampling errors. Problems then come when the subsets that have responded diverge from the groups they are weighted to represent.
The problems with online panels and street polling are clear but it beggars belief that the phone pollsters still rely on final-digit randomisation.
Do they all even do this though? The number of times the limited number of people on here claim to have been (phone) polled by some phone pollster for a political poll, which seems out of all proportion to what probability would imply, gives the impression that even with the phone polls there is de facto self selection going on (not just, obviously, in the sense that they are completed by people who don't hang up the phone, but in the sense that the pollsters are consistently repolling the same people on the basis that they're a receptive audience).
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Sure it'd be nice to have a great big majority, but that was never on the cards and we never had one to lose. We never even had a majority. To even have a majority is a great success.
Apologies to malcomg though, I mistakenly said you had 58/650 seats. I realise now you actually got 56 out of the 650. Less than the Lib Dems used to have.
As he urged Labour supporters to dig in for the election fight, he said: "The Tories have got a tonne of money for posters and their campaign - they have got more than us.
"But they are virtual party - and like holograms, they exist, but they do not as people.
"You are going to make the difference in this election. We know that people are more likely to have spoken to someone from Labour on their doorstep than they have from the Conservatives."
There are only seven weeks left to go until the general election - and Labour will be looking to fare much better than in 2010.
Last time, the party lost 91 seats and relinquished its 13-year grip on power.
Labour convinced themselves that Tory seats had been hollowed out of activists by defections to UKP. There was no-one to fight their wave upon wave of (union) activists, no-one left to fight a ground-war.
I suspect posters here like IOS and Compouter had no idea of the scale of this operation. Even Nick Palmer seemed blithely unaware of the efforts being made in his own constituency.
Ed Miliband even added it to his stump speech, claiming that they didn't exist.
Can you tell us now whether Labour understood that the polling was so far off. There was the odd "mood music" that was talked about here so much at the time and largely discounted by me and others as Romney delusion. There was Ed going to Warwickshire which seemed odd but in fact they didn't take it either. And there was Cameron furiously campaigning in the south west going on about just needing 23 more seats and frankly sounding just a little mad.
In short there were clues that the Tories thought they were doing much better and Labour thought they were doing much worse than the polls indicated and they were both right.
I think so - the East Midlands regional party didn't seem to know about the notorious Labour Uncut report on the PVs (or maybe just weren't admitting it to me) but the evidence looks that way to me too. That said, I think everyone was surprised by the strength of the final shift.
Why are you so convinced that it was a 'final shift'?
Many of the pollsters and talking heads on TV have jumped on this as an 'easy' answer to why they got it wrong, but it is just as likely that the shift happened much earlier. Or, indeed, that there was no real shift and the polls have been out for yonks.
I'd put my money on the latter. And if the pollsters try to fix a 'late shift' problem when there was no such thing, then they're going to be in even more trouble.
EDIT: and you and I are agreed on Trident! Bloody useless things. Give me an extra regiment of highly-equipped rapid-deployment special forces every time. Trident doesn't scare the crap out of ISIS.....
Too many Marillion concerts MM? Please define how "an extra regiment of highly-equipped rapid-deployment special forces" will work.
Elite formations are 'special': They are not the norm....
[16th Airborne and the Royal Marines fulfill the role and are 'light' infantry.]
"The basic thrust of my argument is that the SNP at Westminster have no actual power. No ability to do, or even try to do, anything beyond oppose. And opposition without the power to prevent. It is from that starting point that most of my imagined problems follow."
Watch for the continuity (he writes cynically, but I suspect accurately) of Teflon SNP :-)
Without the responsibility of government, or holding the balance of power, the SNP cannot be blamed for the problems coming down the track :-)
Also, if your analysis were correct, no opposition party could ever advance, because by definition they have no power.
Dan Jarvis is tumbling in on Betfair, he's shorter than Burnham !
One of his main problems could be that I tipped him a while back ;-)
The longer the leadership election process is the better it is for him. What he lacks is a strong base in the party, though he does seem to be working on that.
Interesting point. It's difficult to see how the party works from outside, do you think that someone like Jarvis can build up enough support for a serious run at it, or will the remains of the party reflect internally and pick another of their own?
He was very active in a number of northern constituencies leading up to and during the GE, and he has the necessary links with the unions there. What he has yet to do, though, is make a real mark nationally. That's why a longer campaign suits him. Policy-wise, he is pretty mainstream, I'd say, but pragmatic in a way that being a soldier in conflict situations for a decade or so makes you pragmatic. For me, he completely changes the terms of Labour's conversation with the electorate.
Probably contrary to prevailing opinion, but I think this whole situation could go very sour for the SNP very quickly. First of all, the obvious point to make is that their main slogan in the election was "vote for us and lock the Tories out". Well there's no doubt Scotland voted for them and,...er, didn't really work, did it? Some explaining to do. And the fact is that they don't have a monopoly on Scottish opinion, but they have a near monopoly on expressing what they think Scottish opinion is.
More practically, I think after the initial euphoria, I think the 56 MPs are not going to find it at all easy. There are no ready made induction/support networks for SNP MPs at Westminster which are going to have to be put in place very quickly. The sensible ones might try and form personal links with MPs from other parties, but for many I imagine that will require a different mindset from the default. Especially from a party who's mandate is to oppose/change the way Westminster operates - "slotting in" will, for many, not be an option.
Then there is the issue of what they are all going to do. There will obviously be resistance to putting them on "English" committees, and anyway there will only be so many posts to go round. The media will quickly focus on a few key individuals for quotes/reaction (Salmond, basically), resentment among the rest could quickly build up. And then there is the human reality that many of these people simply won't like each other on a personal level. 56 is a good number for factions to build up pretty rapidly. Salmond talks about how much trouble the SNP were allegedly able to cause Thatcher in the 80s, but it is easier to do that sort of thing when just a close knit small group of MPs. Corelling 56 MPs to cause trouble on a consistent basis is I imagine not such a simple matter.
Will they do pairing? How will the whipping work? How will day to day party management work and who will be in charge? I'm quite certain we will find all the controversial/close votes, especially ones on arguably "English" matters will be scheduled for Thursday evenings. The enthusiasm for sticking around in Westminster for those may quickly die away.
Add to that that Scotland is the remotest area from Westminster. Maintaining constituent contact is harder than anywhere else. There may be turf wars with MSPs on the same patch.
Holyrood election may be interesting and unexpected.
And finally, do they all want to be there? Many will have chosen to stand to give them experience of campaigning with an eye to moving through the party in Holyrood (and hopefully, later, an independent Scotland). Being in Westminster was not part of the plan. But they now need a plan for Westminster.
LOL, I am sure they are really as stupid as you think and have never given it a thought. What planet are you on.
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
You have complete ownership of the economic issue now - no more blaming Brown.
Why?
Many on the left still blame Thatcher and she hasn't been in office for nigh on a quarter century.....
The central narrative of 'Labour spent too much' - nor the failure to learn from it - still hasn't gone away.....
As a friend's mum said, “I’m very happy the country is apparently more intelligent than social media makes it seem.”
Quite. The bleating that anyone not supporting unlimited immigration and bread & circuses for all was somehow evil incarnate probably helped swing a few votes at the end - but not they way they wanted them to swing.
When was Miliband ever promoting 'unlimited immigration'? If anything, rather unconvincingly, he was trying to sound 'tough' on the issue. I haven't also ever seen many online actually assert that anyone who didn't support unlimited immigration was evil. I saw more of a reaction against the rhetoric of UKIP - and given that they only have one MP, who has a reduced majority, I'd hardly say they are alone in that. I understand this website vehemently disagrees with the centre-left nature of twitter, but for having a different view to those on the right doesn't suddenly make someone 'unintelligent'. Besides, if you all here hate twitter, you could always try Facebook. Down there, they are very much of a centre-right disposition....
I was also very bearish on the LibDems. I think I was the lowest in the original competition entry with 17 seats - although pretty sure some brave souls went lower during the second iteration.
I think I had the Lib Dems down to 4 seats on the original competition ( I was thinking just Orkney, Ross etc, Sheff Hallam & Eastleigh!!!) and then revised them upwards to double figures on the second go. I was wildly out on the SNP in both cases though - I think I had them somewhere in the low 20s.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
Philip - To enable me to settle my GE bet with you, please email peterfromputney@gmail.com with your bank account details, i.e. Name of Account, Account Number and Sort Code and I'll arrange a prompt payment.
Thanks for the swift message Peter. I'll be honest, I thought I was going to lose this bet a few days ago. I've sent an email.
Mr Herdson - your analysis is interesting but I feel that it would be a sticking plaster solution. To give any degree of autonomy to the scots just reinforces the SNP view that they are doing everything right. The independence issue us still very much alive.
It is time for a fully federal UK with the scots organising their own politics. Any less will lead to full independence
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Agreed to a certain extent - will be much harder for Cameron to govern in this Parliament than the last. However, I think the Tory party is much more united now that it was in the 90s. Time will tell I guess...
'If you don't do what I want I'll defect to UKIP' hasn't got the potency it once had......
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
There are also many more acts to this play.
The separatists thought they had won last year, and it didn't work out like that.
They thought they would be writing Ed Miliband's first budget, and it didn't work out like that.
Now Cameron is apparently offering FFA giving the Nats Hobson's choice of saying "no, we didn't really want it" or accepting a financial black hole they then have to explain to the Scots. Neither of those options seems on the surface likely to endear them
LOL, only a turnip like you could say that with a straight face , they scrape 1 MP again out of 59 and you think all is well.
Take your head out of your own navel for once. We "scraped" 330 out of 650.
errr you're at the same level you were in 1992 when 23 years with no majority stood in front of you. Maybe you should be thinking about how you go forward rather than slip back.
In 1992 we fell to that level, in 2015 we rose to this level. The direction of travel is very positive as well as the result.
Still I'd rather be a supporter of the party that won the election with 330/650 seats than a losing party like malcomg's teeny tiny 58/650. 58/650 lost, lost, lost
The Nats thought this was the election they'd finally get the power they 'deserved', that Ed Miliband would be in Alex Salmond's top pocket. They must have all gone to bed happy with the win, only to wake up yesterday to the reality of the result across the rest of the UK.
Exactly. Salmond was even joking that he was going to write the budget.
You see the Nats here in somewhat stunned denial. They were convinced they were going to win the election, only to discover that there were 591 non-Scottish seats that counted too. Winning a near clean sweep of Scotland is no more significant than the Tories winning a near clean sweep of the South West of England. The picture over the whole United Kingdom that Scotland chose to remain a part of is what matters and we won, SNP lost.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Agreed to a certain extent - will be much harder for Cameron to govern in this Parliament than the last. However, I think the Tory party is much more united now that it was in the 90s. Time will tell I guess...
A majority of 12 against a vastly divided opposition with a hundred seat lead over the next highest party is an emphatically better position than Major had in 1992. Also as has been pointed out his majority was a substantial drop, Cameron's is a rise with prospect of increases in future to come. And Major had ERM to come which destroyed him.
Also whilst "the right" of the party will be an issue in the sense of their ability to deny him votes, surely they are not such an issue in the sense of force of electoral argument? UKIP have just polled over 10% of the vote and the damage to the Conservatives was arguably zero. This will undoubtedly embolden Cameron to face down his critics on the right, and he will have the evidence to justify it.
I'd leave Farron as a Party President sort - he's a campaigning not a leader IMO. Not that it matters but he sets off my gadar/but is missing at key votes.
If he is gay, surely the LDs wouldn't mind at all?
A Tory + SNP parliament is probably one that has the best chance for a better constitutional settlement for the English and the Scots.
Cameron can deliver EVEL and keep the English happy, whilst giving enough to the Scots to prevent breakup.
Both the SNP and Conservatives will be good with this, and Labour (thankfully) can be ignored.
Can Cam give the Nats enough rope to hang themselves ?
Let's hope he does. They way to nail the Nats is to give them more of the responsibility they crave and stand back as the screw it up. Buy popcorn.
Alan, they said that in 2011 and last time , but those pesky Nats keep implementing popular policies and getting more popular so it may not pan out as you think.
Dan Jarvis is tumbling in on Betfair, he's shorter than Burnham !
One of his main problems could be that I tipped him a while back ;-)
The longer the leadership election process is the better it is for him. What he lacks is a strong base in the party, though he does seem to be working on that.
Interesting point. It's difficult to see how the party works from outside, do you think that someone like Jarvis can build up enough support for a serious run at it, or will the remains of the party reflect internally and pick another of their own?
For me, he completely changes the terms of Labour's conversation with the electorate.
And he knows 'leadership' is more than making a speech at a policy think tank......
The wonks will hate him 'it works in practice, but does it work in theory?' - so much the better....
As a friend's mum said, “I’m very happy the country is apparently more intelligent than social media makes it seem.”
Quite. The bleating that anyone not supporting unlimited immigration and bread & circuses for all was somehow evil incarnate probably helped swing a few votes at the end - but not they way they wanted them to swing.
When was Miliband ever promoting 'unlimited immigration'? If anything, rather unconvincingly, he was trying to sound 'tough' on the issue. I haven't also ever seen many online actually assert that anyone who didn't support unlimited immigration was evil. I saw more of a reaction against the rhetoric of UKIP - and given that they only have one MP, who has a reduced majority, I'd hardly say they are alone in that. I understand this website vehemently disagrees with the centre-left nature of twitter, but for having a different view to those on the right doesn't suddenly make someone 'unintelligent'. Besides, if you all here hate twitter, you could always try Facebook. Down there, they are very much of a centre-right disposition....
not the facebook I read - any attempt at rational discourse leads to evil tory scum responses - I would be a happy Blairite Labour voter (and was) but I think Labour has allowed itself to move away from the Wilsonian type party I could support to be a mirror image of the froth-mouthed shrieking of the tory right - more Southam Observers and fewer IOSs would help the Labour party a lot
It would be weird for the Scottish Conservatives to have two separate parties considering they are the most unionist bunch.
It would be interesting for Scotland to have FFA so they actually have responsibility for raising taxes rather than just spend spend spend
But...what is FFA? To the Nats, it requires them to have all the oil taxation revenues.... Until they get that, they will say they don't have true Scottish FFA. And giving them oil taxation revenues only happens when they get full independence, not fiscal autonomy.
FFA means all our revenues, not the kid on pocket money ones that Westminster allocate to us. It is every penny that is raised in Scotland for all taxes , oil , etc , etc. Given we have subsidised England for 30 years it is time we got our own money to spend as we wish.
Oil is in British waters, there's no such thing as Scottish waters in international law. If you want that, go independent. But you don't.
All revenues and expenditures in Scotland, that's fair enough.
So the city of London is in British land , we will take our share of that as well then. Doh !!
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Sure it'd be nice to have a great big majority, but that was never on the cards and we never had one to lose. We never even had a majority. To even have a majority is a great success.
Apologies to malcomg though, I mistakenly said you had 58/650 seats. I realise now you actually got 56 out of the 650. Less than the Lib Dems used to have.
It's definitely a great electoral success for the Conservatives to a majority partly because no one expected it, and because they are the governing party. But in the long-term I think having such a small majority could prove problematic for them.
Burnham would be hillarious. Mr Stafford Hospital himself.
Liz Kendall! Fits most of your criteria and is an excellent communicator.
Thanks for that quick summary. Getting on at 16/1, along with Jarvis who's getting much shorter.
My concern is that I don't know enough about the internal workings of the party and they'll choose someone seemingly baffling from the outside - just as they did with Ed.
There is that! I am a LD and Lab party workings can be Byzantine in their intricacies. Henry Manson is a good tipster on the candidates, hopefully he will do a thread.
Liz Kendall is a local MP and quite dynamic in how she works her patch. She has had quite a lot of dealings with public sector unions so has quite a strong background there. She is now settled in yhe Midlands but is from the home Counties rather than Islington so can reach out to people sympathetic to Labour without frightening the horses too much in the Unions. Importantly she is one of the quickest to be promoted to the front bench from the 2010 intake. Her talents are recognised, and not just by me!
Interesting, could be in with a shout then, maybe!
I've never joined a party, would consider myself a little right of centre. Pretty Cameroon, would never have voted for Ed in a million years. Labour need to attract people like me if they are to win a majority.
I would love to see the debate had on a more adult basis, rather than the abuse and insults that seem to dominate political discourse at the moment. We have to look at the major issues and how we deal with them and see our place in the world. Some of the language used now, especially by the left is uncomfortable at best, absurd and offensive at worst. We have a time bomb coming up due to an aging population, health, social care and pensions have to be seriously reformed if they are not to become a massive money pit.
I'd like to think that someone like Jarvis or Kendall would be a sensible option, those left in Labour need to remember that only Blair won an election for them in the last 40 years. He gave the impression of being on the side of those who wanted to make their lives better, Ed and the 2015 Labour party give the impression of being on the side of the not-working, the immigrant and those who hold segregated meetings.
Some interesting debates to be had in the coming weeks and months, will be interesting to see what is in the Queen's Speech.
@SouthamObserver SLab have a clear way back. It's Holyrood and providing effective opposition there.
Except since 2007 they haven't.
If I take our Nats at face value the only ones they mention giving them a run for their money have been Annabel Goldie and Ruth Davidson.
Alan, They are rank rotten in Holyrood as were the Lib Dems, Davidson at least can string a sentence together even if she picks crap topics for her questions.
coming from you malc, I'll take that as she's doing a cracking job !
There is one little thing that will drive the nails further in Labour coffin.
Chilcot
Another reason to go for Jarvis - having served in Iraq, he can't remotely be held responsible for the decision to go in....but can reply 'as a soldier'......
This election was Nicola Sturgeon's honeymoon and the referendum hangover. As such it was not a normal election. Before we make any predictions about the future of Scotland we need to wait to see the results of the election next year.
The Scottish Conservatives are based around their MSPs and not their MP and have benefited from this. Ruth Davidson knows the SNP weaknesses and is always on TV up here. Labour will go the same way and may even benefit from not having MPs to get in the way of policy.
The fiscal battle between Cameron and Sturgeon will be brutal. I see this as more of a risk to the union than the European referendum.
More practically, I think after the initial euphoria, I think the 56 MPs are not going to find it at all easy. There are no ready made induction/support networks for SNP MPs at Westminster which are going to have to be put in place very quickly. The sensible ones might try and form personal links with MPs from other parties, but for many I imagine that will require a different mindset from the default. Especially from a party who's mandate is to oppose/change the way Westminster operates - "slotting in" will, for many, not be an option.
Then there is the issue of what they are all going to do. There will obviously be resistance to putting them on "English" committees, and anyway there will only be so many posts to go round. The media will quickly focus on a few key individuals for quotes/reaction (Salmond, basically), resentment among the rest could quickly build up. And then there is the human reality that many of these people simply won't like each other on a personal level. 56 is a good number for factions to build up pretty rapidly. Salmond talks about how much trouble the SNP were allegedly able to cause Thatcher in the 80s, but it is easier to do that sort of thing when just a close knit small group of MPs. Corelling 56 MPs to cause trouble on a consistent basis is I imagine not such a simple matter.
Will they do pairing? How will the whipping work? How will day to day party management work and who will be in charge? I'm quite certain we will find all the controversial/close votes, especially ones on arguably "English" matters will be scheduled for Thursday evenings. The enthusiasm for sticking around in Westminster for those may quickly die away.
Add to that that Scotland is the remotest area from Westminster. Maintaining constituent contact is harder than anywhere else. There may be turf wars with MSPs on the same patch.
Holyrood election may be interesting and unexpected.
And finally, do they all want to be there? Many will have chosen to stand to give them experience of campaigning with an eye to moving through the party in Holyrood (and hopefully, later, an independent Scotland). Being in Westminster was not part of the plan. But they now need a plan for Westminster.
LOL, I am sure they are really as stupid as you think and have never given it a thought. What planet are you on.
Where did I say they hadn't given it a thought? I'm sure they have, and will more so now. Although I don't think they were expecting to be facing a Tory majority Government. I think the possible problems outlined will still exist though. The question is how well they will be overcome.
@Aidan_Kerr1: Despite tactical voting the Scottish Conservatives are up 20,000 votes and finish 3rd for the 1st time since 1992.
It doesn't seem to me there is any need for a major rebranding just yet.
Scottish turnout was up a lot so adding 20,000 votes is moving backwards.
Not in Scott's Tory dreamland though.
330/650 isn't dreamland in your ideas?
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
I think Dreamland for the Conservatives is a medium sizes majority, where they aren't held hostage by the right.
Sure it'd be nice to have a great big majority, but that was never on the cards and we never had one to lose. We never even had a majority. To even have a majority is a great success.
Apologies to malcomg though, I mistakenly said you had 58/650 seats. I realise now you actually got 56 out of the 650. Less than the Lib Dems used to have.
It's definitely a great electoral success for the Conservatives to a majority partly because no one expected it, and because they are the governing party. But in the long-term I think having such a small majority could prove problematic for them.
Absolutely we need to be careful. We need to ensure we stick to the centre ground which is how we won the election and not the siren calls of UKIP and the right. But I'd rather deal with a risk in five years from now with a majority between now and then, than be in opposition to a far left alliance of EICIPM+SNP.
I did a little digging on the old Scottish Unionist Party:
"Compared to the Conservative Party's pre-1886 record in Scotland, as well as the post-1965 Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, the 1912-1965 Scottish Unionist Party's electoral record stands out as a success"
One key advantage they may have had over Labour was "Scottish" (trans "not London") - which they threw away.
I think Labour has the trickier problem. A party that is dominated by London membership cannot but have a different world view to that from the housing schemes encircling Glasgow and throughout the central belt - or a rather condescending view of what people there should think.......
For the Tories on the other hand, a 'small state' is a 'small state' either side of the border, as is a 'help up, not hand out'
A problem with that historical comparison is that these Tories were proclaiming their ULSTER Unionism (which is where the name came from) not Union-with-England unionism (admittedly the latter was a given, but not that given). They were emphatically, sometimes ferociously, Protestant (as to some extent too were the SNP) in opposition to the often RC and often Irish incomer/extraction nature of Labour. Thus the Tories got a lot of their strength automatically from the Kirk goers and the nativist working classes. Scotland is a very different country now, some parts of the West Central Belt excepted, and so are these parties, despite the attempts by at least one Labour pol to reclaim the sectarian element.
Relevant to this, but also bringing us back to the thread topic of the present day, there's a very nice historical analysis of the death of Labour Scotland by Tom Devine in the Herald today -
A Tory + SNP parliament is probably one that has the best chance for a better constitutional settlement for the English and the Scots.
Cameron can deliver EVEL and keep the English happy, whilst giving enough to the Scots to prevent breakup.
Both the SNP and Conservatives will be good with this, and Labour (thankfully) can be ignored.
Can Cam give the Nats enough rope to hang themselves ?
Let's hope he does. They way to nail the Nats is to give them more of the responsibility they crave and stand back as the screw it up. Buy popcorn.
Alan, they said that in 2011 and last time , but those pesky Nats keep implementing popular policies and getting more popular so it may not pan out as you think.
if you've got popular policies good luck to you malc, let me know how you're going to keep paying for them.
A majority of 12 against a vastly divided opposition with a hundred seat lead over the next highest party is an emphatically better position than Major had in 1992.
....
And with the implicit backing of DUP/UUP/SF("bankers")/UKIP then the majority looks better. Add in the 'Orange-bookers'; a Labour Party defined by Wales and 'Oop-Norf'; and a totally irrelevant Scottish contingent then - :breathe: - Westminster is safe.
Labour will not support the SNP as they are no longer relevant in Scotland. Instead the SNP will be like Voilet from 'Just William': "Screem, screem until I make myself sick".
I suspect there will be at least one female candidate other than Yvette. Harman will surely ensure that. I rather wonder about her role in getting Ed in, and keeping the unions quiet.
Comments
Where to begin in rejecting you comments on the SNP 56?? I will restrict myself to a couple of areas in which I think you are well wide of the mark.
"Probably contrary to prevailing opinion, but I think this whole situation could go very sour for the SNP very quickly. First of all, the obvious point to make is that their main slogan in the election was "vote for us and lock the Tories out". Well there's no doubt Scotland voted for them and,...er, didn't really work, did it? Some explaining to do."
Going "sour very quickly" is what SLAB believed after Holyrood 2007 when the SNP led Labour 47-46. It just will not happen.
As to the SNP having to explain failing to lock the Tories out. They will just point out that it was Labour's failure outwith Scotland that caused that. This has the advantage of being patently true.
"And finally, do they all want to be there? Many will have chosen to stand to give them experience of campaigning with an eye to moving through the party in Holyrood (and hopefully, later, an independent Scotland). Being in Westminster was not part of the plan. But they now need a plan for Westminster. "
That is actually complete and utter nonsense. All the candidates were selected by the SNP after the Referendum, so that they would be clear whether they were there for a short time just before independence, or for a long time after a referendum defeat.
Given the opinion polls, the vast majority of the candidates thought that they had a great chance of being elected, and sought their adoptions on that basis. It is completely wrong to believe that "being in Westminster" was not part of the plan.
Precisely because the plan was to become Westminster MPs, the quality of the SNP MPs is high as time will prove. If that were not the case, the individual attacks by the MSM etc. on these candidates would have occurred en masses. As it was, the only successful attack allowed Ian Murray to hold the one SLAB seat-even that attack was not wholly true.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYf_TaNUOvk
writing just to me?
And I didn't share one.
But for example it was the actual campaigning that showed up just how toxic Nicola Sturgeon was to the voters, that was quickly fed back into the system so specific leaflets could be going out in 24 hours. There is no better way to judge the mood than to ask a few hundred thousand!
By then:
Cameron will have gone weakening the tories. I don't see anyone who is likely to be as successful as he has been in broadening the brand.
Boundary reform will give the Tories an advantage of 10-15 seats on what they have now.
The Tories are already 100 seats ahead of Labour.
Labour will probably not have the massed regiments of SLAB again.
Unless the Tories tear themselves apart on the Euro referendum (which is of course possible) they may well ingather votes from a deflated ex Farage post referendum UKIP.
It is going to be a very, very long way back for Labour.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/letters/letters-sickened-by-another-five-years-of-misery-10237510.html
It also shows clearly the left have still learnt nothing and that is why they will not secure a left wing government again for a very very long time.
An example is as follows
"The people have spoken. The bastards."
Conrad Cork
Leicester
but I don't agree we'll end up with Indy as by the time anew vote comes round oil will be on it's last gasp and the Nats have no plan for what will replace it. So how do you pay your bills ?
Cue someone spouting bollocks from GERS from 10 years ago.
Or build another eco-house, but smaller.
Apologiesnfor missing your do.Family intervened.
Matt W
I don't think the comparison with Holyrood in 2007 is at all relevant though. The basic thrust of my argument is that the SNP at Westminster have no actual power. No ability to do, or even try to do, anything beyond oppose. And opposition without the power to prevent. It is from that starting point that most of my imagined problems follow.
The longer the leadership election process is the better it is for him. What he lacks is a strong base in the party, though he does seem to be working on that.
This is one of the Nats dividing lines and probably the biggest boost BOO will get in the campaign
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/ferguson-worst-governments.html
If there is something like symmetric devolution then differing policies on health, education, transport and the like really won't matter, and to the extent that there's a clash, there can always be negotiation. It would be helpful if UK-wide policies on Europe, foreign affairs and defence were in sync but given the shared ideological inheritance, that's fairly likely and again, if not, it should firstly give both sides pause for thought and secondly, opportunity to talk.
Tories are up 26 councils and 231 seats.
And I know that you at least are under no illusions about the economy.
Meanwhile the country still believes in and has been promised the magic money tree.
Politics goes in cycles, you're coming to the peak of yours, currently you've had the benefit of authority without responsibility, that won't last.
What comes round goes around.
Good luck with your animal welfare work. If you think any of us on here can help in any capacity, then no doubt you only have to ask.
EDIT: and you and I are agreed on Trident! Bloody useless things. Give me an extra regiment of highly-equipped rapid-deployment special forces every time. Trident doesn't scare the crap out of ISIS.....
If you haven't seen it - its the 101 of successful public relations, as well political campaigning when you need to win hearts and minds.
https://youtu.be/H_YareK6WKk
"How well do you think London Labour copes with that?"
They don't. To them, it's a foreign country.
And keep on posting at PB.
Still I'd rather be a supporter of the party that won the election with 330/650 seats than a losing party like malcomg's teeny tiny 58/650. 58/650 lost, lost, lost
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/09/ferguson-worst-governments.html
That's a very interesting article, Thanks.
I can see some debate about tax and representation coming up here, especially given what's happened in both England and Scotland at the election.
One thing for sure though, the USA is in places seriously screwed up.
Maybe you'd rather 58/650? Yeah that's "winning". Oh no, its not. You'll be sitting on the losers side of the house.
The problems with online panels and street polling are clear but it beggars belief that the phone pollsters still rely on final-digit randomisation.
(The new English Coastal Path is turning out just as brain-dead as I feared).
Ironically, that article is incredibly self-righteous and personifies everything it accuses the 'left on social media' of. And while undoubtedly the Conservatives have had a very successful election, 36% does not constitute the 'country', unless 11.5m is now a bigger figure than 60+ million people.
It'd be really helpful if you could summarise the Q1 vs Q2 divergence. It struck me as deliberately introducing a Are You Really Sure You Want To Vote For Them??? factor that wasn't accurately reflecting how they'd vote on the day.
They must have all gone to bed happy with the win, only to wake up yesterday to the reality of the result across the rest of the UK.
Cameron was doing the same but he at least had something of a track record to fall back on.
On the morning of the election I was talking to Tyson and neither of us could fathom what was underpinning Labour's support.
Standing as the 'Not Tory Party' might be good enough for us but surely not for a risk averse politically disinterested public?
Ed was a dreadful choice for leader. His thought's weren't coherent. He policies were leaps between gimmicks. And worst of all he was inarticulate
If Labour are looking for templates for their next leader look at Nicola not Dave. Someone who can inspire and someone who understands that no sentence beginning with 'hard working families' will ever sound passionate
It looks to me at first sight that the SLD vote held up better than SLAB but not as good as SCUP. The extinction event could be as much SLAB, or even more so, particularly if a tacit or even overt SLD SCUP ticket could emerge. It would also make both parties distinct from their English sibs.
But 2/3 of the LD members are on the left. Farron is and may be the new Leader. Nationally can the LD alliance hold? The MPs are now down to a personal vote with a brand name in the gutter.
My concern is that I don't know enough about the internal workings of the party and they'll choose someone seemingly baffling from the outside - just as they did with Ed.
There is that! I am a LD and Lab party workings can be Byzantine in their intricacies. Henry Manson is a good tipster on the candidates, hopefully he will do a thread.
Liz Kendall is a local MP and quite dynamic in how she works her patch. She has had quite a lot of dealings with public sector unions so has quite a strong background there. She is now settled in yhe Midlands but is from the home Counties rather than Islington so can reach out to people sympathetic to Labour without frightening the horses too much in the Unions. Importantly she is one of the quickest to be promoted to the front bench from the 2010 intake. Her talents are recognised, and not just by me!
Apologies to malcomg though, I mistakenly said you had 58/650 seats. I realise now you actually got 56 out of the 650. Less than the Lib Dems used to have.
Many of the pollsters and talking heads on TV have jumped on this as an 'easy' answer to why they got it wrong, but it is just as likely that the shift happened much earlier. Or, indeed, that there was no real shift and the polls have been out for yonks.
I'd put my money on the latter. And if the pollsters try to fix a 'late shift' problem when there was no such thing, then they're going to be in even more trouble.
Elite formations are 'special': They are not the norm....
[16th Airborne and the Royal Marines fulfill the role and are 'light' infantry.]
"The basic thrust of my argument is that the SNP at Westminster have no actual power. No ability to do, or even try to do, anything beyond oppose. And opposition without the power to prevent. It is from that starting point that most of my imagined problems follow."
Watch for the continuity (he writes cynically, but I suspect accurately) of Teflon SNP :-)
Without the responsibility of government, or holding the balance of power, the SNP cannot be blamed for the problems coming down the track :-)
Also, if your analysis were correct, no opposition party could ever advance, because by definition they have no power.
Many on the left still blame Thatcher and she hasn't been in office for nigh on a quarter century.....
The central narrative of 'Labour spent too much' - nor the failure to learn from it - still hasn't gone away.....
When was Miliband ever promoting 'unlimited immigration'? If anything, rather unconvincingly, he was trying to sound 'tough' on the issue. I haven't also ever seen many online actually assert that anyone who didn't support unlimited immigration was evil. I saw more of a reaction against the rhetoric of UKIP - and given that they only have one MP, who has a reduced majority, I'd hardly say they are alone in that. I understand this website vehemently disagrees with the centre-left nature of twitter, but for having a different view to those on the right doesn't suddenly make someone 'unintelligent'. Besides, if you all here hate twitter, you could always try Facebook. Down there, they are very much of a centre-right disposition....
Chilcot
You see the Nats here in somewhat stunned denial. They were convinced they were going to win the election, only to discover that there were 591 non-Scottish seats that counted too. Winning a near clean sweep of Scotland is no more significant than the Tories winning a near clean sweep of the South West of England. The picture over the whole United Kingdom that Scotland chose to remain a part of is what matters and we won, SNP lost.
Also whilst "the right" of the party will be an issue in the sense of their ability to deny him votes, surely they are not such an issue in the sense of force of electoral argument? UKIP have just polled over 10% of the vote and the damage to the Conservatives was arguably zero. This will undoubtedly embolden Cameron to face down his critics on the right, and he will have the evidence to justify it.
If he is gay, surely the LDs wouldn't mind at all?
The wonks will hate him 'it works in practice, but does it work in theory?' - so much the better....
not the facebook I read - any attempt at rational discourse leads to evil tory scum responses - I would be a happy Blairite Labour voter (and was) but I think Labour has allowed itself to move away from the Wilsonian type party I could support to be a mirror image of the froth-mouthed shrieking of the tory right - more Southam Observers and fewer IOSs would help the Labour party a lot
I've never joined a party, would consider myself a little right of centre. Pretty Cameroon, would never have voted for Ed in a million years. Labour need to attract people like me if they are to win a majority.
I would love to see the debate had on a more adult basis, rather than the abuse and insults that seem to dominate political discourse at the moment. We have to look at the major issues and how we deal with them and see our place in the world. Some of the language used now, especially by the left is uncomfortable at best, absurd and offensive at worst. We have a time bomb coming up due to an aging population, health, social care and pensions have to be seriously reformed if they are not to become a massive money pit.
I'd like to think that someone like Jarvis or Kendall would be a sensible option, those left in Labour need to remember that only Blair won an election for them in the last 40 years. He gave the impression of being on the side of those who wanted to make their lives better, Ed and the 2015 Labour party give the impression of being on the side of the not-working, the immigrant and those who hold segregated meetings.
Some interesting debates to be had in the coming weeks and months, will be interesting to see what is in the Queen's Speech.
Relevant to this, but also bringing us back to the thread topic of the present day, there's a very nice historical analysis of the death of Labour Scotland by Tom Devine in the Herald today -
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/how-scottish-labour-came-to-be-routed-in-the-general-election.125566758
Labour will not support the SNP as they are no longer relevant in Scotland. Instead the SNP will be like Voilet from 'Just William': "Screem, screem until I make myself sick".
What a false-victory for Sturgeon