Its a tough call that actually, I think Farage maybe made a mistake in saying he'd resign if he failed in South Thanet - it certainly motivated his opposition to beat him there. I suspect South Thanet and Morley & Outwood got a disproportionate amount of support and targeting.
But having said he'd resign if he failed to win his seat, he'd have been a lying politician to not then resign.
Unfortunately for Farage/UKIP and Clegg/Lib Dems we don't have a system that's kind to third parties - and neither the electorate nor the two main parties will be in any hurry to change that. I think coming from no seats, UKIP would be lucky to get as many seats as Jeremy Thorpe's Liberals did. In fact with the Lib Dems down to single figures, we may see a true return to two party politics in England especially.
Well he has resigned. But if he stands again and is re elected if be v happy
It's like Ronald koeman quitting Southampton for only finishing 6th. Fair enough if wenger or van gaal quit for not achieving 4th place but this isn't the same
Anyway we'll see.. I don't see anyone in Ukip able to do a better job, although I am 200/1 w LADBROKES
Indeed, my only point was that he said he'd resign before the election - to not do so would destroy his credibility. It would be thrown back at him every time he met a hostile person (which is fairly often in his line of work).
If Koeman had said he'd resign if Southampton didn't finish at least fifth, then they finish sixth but runners up in the FA Cup then he should resign. He said he would if something happened and it did, you lose all credibility if you don't honour your pledges. Maybe linking his career to being better than sixth was wrong, but once done he should stand by it.
Peerages Hague, Cable anyone else who has retired/ lost and not blotted their copybook?
One that immediately springs to mind for a job somewhere in government if not a peerage was the one personal disappointment of an ecstatic night - Esther McVey in Wirral.
She was subjected to a quite horrible and personal campaign against her from some quite horrible people. Cameron himself could really do with a Northern woman in his office, would offer him a usefully different perspective on life.
I hope not: she's got a lot to offer and to make her a peeress would be to condemn her to a sub-optimal role. Find her some position for now, and then get her back into the Commons in the next good by-election.
Yes, that was one of the sad outcomes of Friday morning - get her a safe northern seat. Tatton spings to mind :-)
George got over 50% of the vote though.
Are you saying a majority of your neighbours are nutters?
And thanks for your support in North Warwickshire
merely suggesting George should go out on a high , it won't get better than this for him :-)
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".
What a false-victory for Sturgeon
For all your faults Fluffy , you are at least consistent in your posts.
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. ... But it feels odd, and slightly pointless. No doubt I'll get used to it.
Best of luck, Nick.
At least in your case you knew you might well lose in 2010, and you've had the last five years to develop other aspects of your career. It must be really difficult for MPs (such as many of the LibDem senior figures) who have suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves moved, at the whim the electorate, from the centre of events to irrelevance. It's a rough game.
Question: Will the SNP get places on Select Committees?
Select Committee Chairs and members are chosen for the new Parliament. The party composition of the committees will reflect that of the new House of Commons.
@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 !
Alan, Despite personally thinking she is crap , I was being objective. The questions they put every week are just pathetic. They do not seem to understand what matters in Scotland, completely out of touch with reality.
but most things in Scotland are completely out of touch with reality atm.
Cameron needs to make a bold and comprehensive offer going considerably further than the sophistries of the Smith Commission. In essence, the wrong starting point has been adopted, namely should be devolved to Edinburgh in light of the referendum. The right starting point is what is the minimum that can be reserved to Westminster which is consistent with the vote of the Scottish people to remain part of the United Kingdom. There is no real need to reserve much more than defence, foreign affairs, national security, immigration/nationality, monetary policy and value added tax. The list of current reservations in schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 reflects the Labour Party's desire that there should be no competition on employment, industry, taxation, consumer protection and professional regulation between England and Scotland. Other miscellaneous reservations such as those on abortion, the misuse of drugs, animal testing and equality law are unnecessary.
If Cameron grasps this opportunity, he can maintain the Union. Such an offer would be impossible for the SNP to refuse, and can be accompanied by serious political reform in England.
Scott think Tories winning seats in England whilst being also rans going backwards in Scotland is very funny. I care not a jot how many there are in England and Wales, my interest is in Scotland and unlike Scott I do not want reflected glory but local. Tories going backwards in Scotland as ever and lucky to hold on to their single seat.
Your interest may be Scotland but this was a UK election not a Scottish one.
I also hate to break the news to you, but you voted to stay in the UK. So I care not a jot how many there are in Scotland it is no more relevant than how many there are in the North East.
What I still find totally mystifying is that Labour did have oodles of policy review teams and every variety of [insert colour]Labour potential strategies - and EdM chose to go back to the 70s.
BlueLabour was such a blindlingly obvious good way to go and Maurice Glasman got a Lordship for it, then was dumped immediately afterwards because he suggested that *immigration* was an issue.
Well he was right wasn't he given all those Labour voters who went Kipper.
The self-harm Labour indulged in under EdM was a wonder to behold.
That's funny! The left-wing press will be something to behold in the coming days and weeks, as they try and work out what the hell just happened!
One thing missing from all their analysis will be that Labour lost because they have forgotten their roots as the party of the working man and become too dominated by the metropolitan elite - the elite that includes all the journalists and their total lack of self-awareness!
It's perfectly clear that labour, even 5 years after the 'blank piece of paper' have no idea what they are:
They have 3 main choices
Tax 'n' Spend social democrats backed up by unions/Blue labour Public sector union pressure group Urban progressive multicultural cheerleaders
They've done a bit of all three, but it's just turned into 'mush', they set-up and attend sex-segrated british asain meetings, and then say they 'share the concerns' of immigration.
Until they work out what they are, they won't get anywhere
Are they the party of Blair, the party of Beven or the party of Owen Jones?
They are the party of "what do you want me to be?".
Cons got 16.7 % of the vote in 2010, this time they got 14.9% their lowest total ever i think, they got 17.5% in 1997 and they got zero MPs then.
For the Tories on here that counts as a surge
Tory vote share was always going to drop slightly this time with a few misguided tacticals. Now Labour has been purged from Scotland, no need for Tories to vote Labour any more in places like E Renfrewshire.
LOL, is that the plan for next Tory surge , we will stop voting Labour.
There hasn't been any profound change since the referendum, and no there won't be another referendum.
The SNP won 49.97% of the vote in Thursday's election, on a turnout of 71%. They literally won 95% of the Scottish seats at Westminster on less than 50% of the votes.
System stacked against them? Yeah right. They'll probably keep whinging to that effect though.
Let's not underestimate the role played by naive young voters who vote SNP because of something to do with not having English people tell them what to do. Politics isn't about the intellect.
YES won 45% of the vote in the referendum, on a turnout of 85%. The gap between 45% and 49.97% is small, and it's explicable by more NO people staying at home on Thursday than YES people, which itself is explained by the fact that more YES people are still fired up from the referendum that they lost.
There isn't a story here. If the SNP manage to get a majority at Holyrood next time - which I doubt - that will be because of an even lower turnout.
They have no leverage to make another referendum more likely. All they can do is give people the impression that because they have so many MPs at Westminster, that means there's a big majority in favour of independence.
There isn't. And any serious poll will show that there isn't.
If either the Tory or the Labour leaderships, either at a Scottish or a British level, had any serious leadership calibre, they would come up with a visionary plan for improving the Union. Not FFA or wonk stuff. Vision.
I'm aware of a very small knot of people who've got a visionary plan for improving the Union up their collective sleeve. They may go public later in the year. Whether they'll get anywhere with it is open to doubt, to say the least.
Don't xpect the SNP to show any vision for the Union whatsoever. First, the Union isn't their thing. Second, all they're interested in is money.
Around half of Scots wanted home rule - proper devomax - which Mr Cameron refused as an option. All that Unionist campaigning simply changed some of them to add to the quarter in favour of independence to make a near-majority for Yes. And the other pro=Devomax voters voted no on sufferance - to give the union a further chance. The issue is - as you effectivey say - unresolved. Tom Devine's article today is also highly relevant - see his conclusion:
The other point is that I noticed that the age distribution - at least from pre-election polling (admittedly an important qualification) of the SNP vote was actually lower in the young as well as the very old, so 'being told what to do' is not an explanation that convinces.
I don't buy shy Tories for a minute. The Tory vote was well within the MOE of most final polls and was also accurately forecast by some phone polls earlier in the campaign. It's the Labour vote share they got wrong. And I'd say that's down to weighting issues with turnout and, maybe, registration. Also, within England maybe more thought needs to be given to regionalisation. UKIP is clearly more popular in the East, Labour in big cities, the Tories in the smaller cities and towns, etc.
If you refuse to buy into the "Shy Tory" theory, how about the Russell Brand factor -
I mean he's the ultimate Marmite personality.As a result of his carefully stage-managed chat with E Miliband a few days before the GE, how many voters would have been definitely persuaded to vote Labour, compared with those for whom doing so would subsequently be absolutely out of the question (answers to the nearest hundred thousand please). I can't help but think that whilst cosying up to Delia may be one thing, becoming best mates with the charming Russell is quite another!
I watched Brand's follow-up video yesterday, which seemed to basically say:"The 'establishment' was too powerful. We couldn't beat them."
There was no hint of him even considering: "did my contribution do more harm than good?"
I don't buy shy Tories for a minute. The Tory vote was well within the MOE of most final polls and was also accurately forecast by some phone polls earlier in the campaign. It's the Labour vote share they got wrong. And I'd say that's down to weighting issues with turnout and, maybe, registration. Also, within England maybe more thought needs to be given to regionalisation. UKIP is clearly more popular in the East, Labour in big cities, the Tories in the smaller cities and towns, etc.
If you refuse to buy into the "Shy Tory" theory, how about the Russell Brand factor -
I mean he's the ultimate Marmite personality.As a result of his carefully stage-managed chat with E Miliband a few days before the GE, how many voters would have been definitely persuaded to vote Labour, compared with those for whom doing so would subsequently be absolutely out of the question (answers to the nearest hundred thousand please). I can't help but think that whilst cosying up to Delia may be one thing, becoming best mates with the charming Russell is quite another!
No, I don't think anything much changed. Labour was never going to get the actual votes the polls indicated.
Only a couple of days ago you described the Tory position as " unsustainable ", when do you think this unsustainability will make itself manifest ?
No, I didn't. I said a situation in which a tiny minority enjoys ever increasing wealth while the majority experiences stagnation or decline is not sustainable. The Tories do need to find a solution, but so do all other parties.
Mr. Slackbladder, the paper may be blank, but the limestone's brimming with promises
For me that stone was a defining moment. People looked at that and thought it would take me 2 years to earn that amount to buy such a stone (based on Labours low wages statements) Yet..... Yet they blow this on some vanity project to put a 9 foot high stone outside his office window??? What will they do with the economy then?
*moves pencil to blue team box and inserts cross*
I can't see what possessed him to do it and then within 24 hours along comes Lucy saying "yeah but just coz it carved in stone dose t mean some might be broken" I mean ....wait ?.what??
TBH Why did he not just print it on A4 paper, frame it and nail it to the office wall above his computer and below his photo of Karl Marx.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
I think I had 2 bets with you (the 4x LD/UKIP seats and a£10 charity bet the other day). Can you PM me the details [can't put my hands on them right now] and we can settle up. Ta
Hi Charles. I now owe you £25 from my bet with you re UKIP percentage. Can I send you cheque via Peter the Punter or do you want me to send to direct, and if so where?
Mr. Jessop, Brand's making lots of money. If he actually believes what he says, then he's a moron (albeit a wealthy one). I suspect he doesn't. He's method-acting.
The SNP's feeble 56 will have nothing to occupy themselves with over the next half decade except gross eating, drinking and troughing. This already unhealthy looking cohort could well experience astronomical levels of morbidity and mortality. So there should be quite a number of by elections to mark the Nationalists' decline.
I don't buy shy Tories for a minute. The Tory vote was well within the MOE of most final polls and was also accurately forecast by some phone polls earlier in the campaign. It's the Labour vote share they got wrong. And I'd say that's down to weighting issues with turnout and, maybe, registration. Also, within England maybe more thought needs to be given to regionalisation. UKIP is clearly more popular in the East, Labour in big cities, the Tories in the smaller cities and towns, etc.
If you refuse to buy into the "Shy Tory" theory, how about the Russell Brand factor -
I mean he's the ultimate Marmite personality.As a result of his carefully stage-managed chat with E Miliband a few days before the GE, how many voters would have been definitely persuaded to vote Labour, compared with those for whom doing so would subsequently be absolutely out of the question (answers to the nearest hundred thousand please). I can't help but think that whilst cosying up to Delia may be one thing, becoming best mates with the charming Russell is quite another!
I watched Brand's follow-up video yesterday, which seemed to basically say:"The 'establishment' was too powerful. We couldn't beat them."
There was no hint of him even considering: "did my contribution do more harm than good?"
I've been thinking much the same thing overnight - the SNP managed a huge but pointless win now the Tories have a overall majority.
I think FFA will be the most entertaining thing coming up to pop their balloon. And your point about the *only allowed* opinion isn't a recipe for success.
Look how shy even English Tories are. I wouldn't want to be in Scotland.
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.
Mr. Jessop, Brand's making lots of money. If he actually believes what he says, then he's a moron (albeit a wealthy one). I suspect he doesn't. He's method-acting.
You might well be right: the 'raving idiot' persona might just be an act. In which case, I wonder if he secretly raises a glass of his favourite tipple at night and smirks at the fans he deceives? ;-)
Something to ponder for a Saturday morning - Has there been an election campaign that Eddie Izzard has been involved with that's turned out successful for Lab?
The upcoming fun of SLAB.....they have to decide the rules for candidate selection for Holyrood regional lists....given they are set to lose all their remaining Holyrood constituencies, their only MSPs will be decided by the rules they will apply to list candidates selection
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
He resigned because he didn't win South Thanet, didn't he? Thurrock was irrelevant. Anyway he hasn't really resigned - I'm sure he'll be extolling his record when he joins the contest after his summer holiday!
Hope so
I mention Thurrock only because it was a more likely Ukip seat than South Thanet, which didn't even make it in the list as a good one without Farage as candidate. Hypothetically if he won that and we got 7% I would say he did a worse job than the state of play
Reading between the lines I reckon he thought he couldn't be leader if Ukip had 4-5 MPs and he wasn't one of them... But as we only have one, nothing's changed other than 3.8m people voted for us. He should stand again win easily and carry on the good work.
I bet the other parties hope he is no longer Ukip leader
I saw Farage "off-duty" ten days ago or so (he lives pretty close to me). He looked absolutely knackered and like someone with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He needs a break but I'm sure he'll be back.
FWIW, I think he made a mistake in announcing he would resign if he didn't win his seat. It simply gave his detractors even more reason to try to ensure he was not elected in South Thanet.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
Indeed you do... I think we were at £10 a point on UKIP share below 17.5% with an actual result of 12.6%. I assume we had a rounding agreement in place as well, so I make that £50 to me
The difference is that unlike Labour the 56 SNP's will be seen to be voting against Tory cuts back in Scotland. They will be seen putting Scotland's interests first and it will show clearly that we just get sh** upon. So will be the exact opposite of what you believe.
Whether its 56 SNP opposition MPs voting no while the country says yes, or 56 Labour MPs voting no while the country says yes - what difference do you think that will make?
Labour voted against every cut last time too, but are still in opposition in Westminster as much as you are.
You just cannot be as dim as you are making out. It matters not a jot at Westminster , it is how it is seen in Scotland. Labour MP's going down and voting with their pals has got them their just desserts. The SNP will not be ordered which way to vote by London Leaders. I cannot make it any simpler for you.
Mr. Slackbladder, the paper may be blank, but the limestone's brimming with promises
For me that stone was a defining moment. People looked at that and thought it would take me 2 years to earn that amount to buy such a stone (based on Labours low wages statements) Yet..... Yet they blow this on some vanity project to put a 9 foot high stone outside his office window??? What will they do with the economy then?
*moves pencil to blue team box and inserts cross*
I can't see what possessed him to do it and then within 24 hours along comes Lucy saying "yeah but just coz it carved in stone dose t mean some might be broken" I mean ....wait ?.what??
TBH Why did he not just print it on A4 paper, frame it and nail it to the office wall above his computer and below his photo of Karl Marx.
For me, it was when Ed was in that Newsnight audience debate, after Cameron had performed strongly, and the crowd turned on him when he said 'Labour didn't overspend'.
The SNP's feeble 56 will have nothing to occupy themselves with over the next half decade except gross eating, drinking and troughing. This already unhealthy looking cohort could well experience astronomical levels of morbidity and mortality. So there should be quite a number of by elections to mark the Nationalists' decline.
is there a collective term for a group of eunnuchs ?
Compares Labour seats in England to coal mining areas.
Seems plausible, it would mirror the growth in heavy industry and urban areas that used the coal. Kent seems to be kipper obsessed and they seem to be moving after the old coal miner vote now.
Morning all. An excellent article by David as usual. I agree with his main point about the separate identities for Scottish parties, but the problem faced by Labour is much bigger than that faced by the Tories, or even the LibDems. The reason is very simple: Labour badly needs a large cohort of Scottish MPs if it is to have a decent chance in Westminster. It's hard to see how they could rely on a genuinely separate Scottish Labour party, pursuing a significantly different agenda, as a core part of their electoral arithmetic.
On a separate matter, can I echo the point MarqueeMark made upthread about how Labour were underestimating the scale, focus and determination of the Conservative ground operation? I was baffled by the suggestion, often seen here, that Labour were hugely out-gunning the Conservatives. It certainly didn't look that way to me - the whole Tory campaign was much better run than 2010, and they made good use of telephone canvassing and very well-targeted letters. Although I had no knowledge of what was happening in Broxtowe, I simply couldn't believe Nick's comments that Anna Soubry's team wasn't doing much. Looks like I was probably right.
Never underestimate your opponent, or assume that just because you can't see what they are doing, they aren't doing anything.
Nick's posts about the campaign on here and elsewhere (e.g. about Soubry giving up) strayed well out of the put-an-optimistic-face-on territory and into the land of tell-an-outright-lie.
Worse, it was obvious.
I mean, 'Tick tock' ?
I took Nick Palmer at his word that he never posted anything he knew not to be true.. otherwise I would have upped my bet with him when he offered it.
Those who value his input to the site might remember this diversion from the true path.
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.
Surely you listened to the PB brains trust several weeks ago stating unequivocally that EICIPM and this would be really bad for the EssEnPee as they would be stuck propping up Labour without any influence. What the SNP really wanted was 5 more years of the Tories in charge to push against in Scotland.
Of course I can understand any confusion as many of the same brains are now saying 56 SNP mps and the Tories in power is, wait for it, really bad for the EssEnPee.
TUD, at least they are consistently stupid on here.
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
You really are a silly billy. I bet you support football teams hundreds if not thousands of miles away so that you can say your team won. Time to "Get a life" I think.
Maybe you shouldn't make stupid assumptions about people you don't know then.
I was born in Birkenhead and like my father support and many from Birkenhead I support two football teams. My very local one, Tranmere Rovers, and a local top flight one, Liverpool. I live now in Warrington which is inbetween Liverpool and Manchester. I wouldn't think I'm glory hunting in my support. Liverpool have had a disappointing season, while Tranmere got relegated for the second season in the row and are now relegated from the Football League. I still support them though and always will.
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.
There would have to be some common funding for UK-level spending: defence, national debt (perhaps limited to pre-FFA implementation), international aid and so on. That could be done by a dedicated level of income tax or whatever mix of taxes might be agreed.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
Mr. Slackbladder, the paper may be blank, but the limestone's brimming with promises
For me that stone was a defining moment. People looked at that and thought it would take me 2 years to earn that amount to buy such a stone (based on Labours low wages statements) Yet..... Yet they blow this on some vanity project to put a 9 foot high stone outside his office window??? What will they do with the economy then?
*moves pencil to blue team box and inserts cross*
I can't see what possessed him to do it and then within 24 hours along comes Lucy saying "yeah but just coz it carved in stone dose t mean some might be broken" I mean ....wait ?.what??
TBH Why did he not just print it on A4 paper, frame it and nail it to the office wall above his computer and below his photo of Karl Marx.
For me, it was when Ed was in that Newsnight audience debate, after Cameron had performed strongly, and the crowd turned on him when he said 'Labour didn't overspend'.
No one was with him there.
I have just been talking to a friend who told me he thought the stone was a spoof and he couldn't believe it wasn't.
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 !!
You get more than your fair share of the City already - through Barnett....
That will be why we have received less than we input for most of last 30 years then. Using fake numbers from false revenue numbers and kidding on we are subsidised is what got the country to where we are. Hopefully the nasty party will stay true to form and we can get out of the corrupt union.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
I think I had 2 bets with you (the 4x LD/UKIP seats and a£10 charity bet the other day). Can you PM me the details [can't put my hands on them right now] and we can settle up. Ta
Hi Charles. I now owe you £25 from my bet with you re UKIP percentage. Can I send you cheque via Peter the Punter or do you want me to send to direct, and if so where?
Cool: do you do online banking, or would you prefer to use a cheque. Will PM you the relevant details once confirmed.
(Don't remember whether it was £10 or £5 a point - per my other post - so happy to take your word for it).
What I still find totally mystifying is that Labour did have oodles of policy review teams and every variety of [insert colour]Labour potential strategies - and EdM chose to go back to the 70s.
BlueLabour was such a blindlingly obvious good way to go and Maurice Glasman got a Lordship for it, then was dumped immediately afterwards because he suggested that *immigration* was an issue.
Well he was right wasn't he given all those Labour voters who went Kipper.
The self-harm Labour indulged in under EdM was a wonder to behold.
That's funny! The left-wing press will be something to behold in the coming days and weeks, as they try and work out what the hell just happened!
One thing missing from all their analysis will be that Labour lost because they have forgotten their roots as the party of the working man and become too dominated by the metropolitan elite - the elite that includes all the journalists and their total lack of self-awareness!
It's perfectly clear that labour, even 5 years after the 'blank piece of paper' have no idea what they are:
They have 3 main choices
Tax 'n' Spend social democrats backed up by unions/Blue labour Public sector union pressure group Urban progressive multicultural cheerleaders
They've done a bit of all three, but it's just turned into 'mush', they set-up and attend sex-segrated british asain meetings, and then say they 'share the concerns' of immigration.
Until they work out what they are, they won't get anywhere
Are they the party of Blair, the party of Beven or the party of Owen Jones?
They are the party of "what do you want me to be?".
Its all politics of envy stuff. They need to move away from claiming their opponents are only in it for their rich friends and want to destroy the NHS. But frankly I am not interested in giving them advice on this subject, rather hoping to listen to a Labour politician without my blood boiling.
I can honestly say that I didn't send any CCHQ emails on - but I did share some fun things on Twitter and added a couple of things to Facebook to point out that not everyone votes Labour.
It's fringe stuff as most of us know others with similar opinions/have similar contacts on echo chambers like Twitter.
Getting charismatic, involved people who can rally troops and change hearts and minds is hard. But not impossible - you just need to know how to listen and make it fun. And importantly keep the weirdos off the doorstep!
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.
On the future labour leaders, Jarvis is the most interesting, as he's 'mostly' an unknown, with an interesting back story.
The others are all knowns, and come with baggage, I can't see how Burnham or Cooper will transform the party, and are just more of the same old Brown/Blair continuity.
Jarvis would be an interesting choice, as would Liz Kendall. My own favourite would be Stella Creasey, if she's interested in having a go - she does attract jealousy for being too ambitious from some MPs, but really they need to get over themselves if they want to win next time.
The difference is that unlike Labour the 56 SNP's will be seen to be voting against Tory cuts back in Scotland. They will be seen putting Scotland's interests first and it will show clearly that we just get sh** upon. So will be the exact opposite of what you believe.
Whether its 56 SNP opposition MPs voting no while the country says yes, or 56 Labour MPs voting no while the country says yes - what difference do you think that will make?
Labour voted against every cut last time too, but are still in opposition in Westminster as much as you are.
You just cannot be as dim as you are making out. It matters not a jot at Westminster , it is how it is seen in Scotland. Labour MP's going down and voting with their pals has got them their just desserts. The SNP will not be ordered which way to vote by London Leaders. I cannot make it any simpler for you.
You can't be as dim as you are making out. It matters not a jot how it is seen in Scotland, it matters at Westminster.
What are you going to do, try and take our one MP off us? Oh no, we'll only have 329 MPs then, whatever are we going to do?
I don't expect SNP to be ordered by Cameron on how to vote, any more than I'd expect Labour to be ordered by Cameron. You're our opponents sat on the opposition benches, not our allies. There's nothing wrong if you're treated as any other opponent would. Nothing wrong with you being treated how you treat Tories.
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.
Surely you listened to the PB brains trust several weeks ago stating unequivocally that EICIPM and this would be really bad for the EssEnPee as they would be stuck propping up Labour without any influence. What the SNP really wanted was 5 more years of the Tories in charge to push against in Scotland.
Of course I can understand any confusion as many of the same brains are now saying 56 SNP mps and the Tories in power is, wait for it, really bad for the EssEnPee.
So all the people who don't like the SNP think all outcomes are bad for the SNP, and all independence/SNP supporters think all outcomes are... good for the SNP! That's tribalism for you
Still think the SNP MPs are going to get rapidly bored/disillusioned. To have a role which basically amounts to lobby fodder opposing the Tories, to bolster the SNP govt in Holyrood isn't particularly inspiring.
With all those subsidised restaurants , bars and the high life in London. You really are barking , it sounds like 5 years of serious fun to any normal person. Even if only one term , you leave with bulging bank account , a big pay off and good pension , how could anyone think other than they had won the lottery.
The reason for the seat gap is that the Tory vote share went up a little and became more efficient, while the Labour vote also went up, but became far less efficient. The Tories will get another small boost with the new boundaries. In a multi-party, FPTP system, though, relatively small voting shifts can make big differences in seat returns - as this election has shown. On that basis, a 99 seat difference may not actually be that hard to overcome - or to build on - in 2020. What happens to the UKIP vote post-referendum, for example?
Agreed, and I also don't see UKIP doing well in 2020 - the main reasons for their existence would have been pretty much resolved one way or another after 2017.
A bit like the way the SNP fizzled out after the Scottish referendum, you mean?
On the future labour leaders, Jarvis is the most interesting, as he's 'mostly' an unknown, with an interesting back story.
The others are all knowns, and come with baggage, I can't see how Burnham or Cooper will transform the party, and are just more of the same old Brown/Blair continuity.
Jarvis would be an interesting choice, as would Liz Kendall. My own favourite would be Stella Creasey, if she's interested in having a go - she does attract jealousy for being too ambitious from some MPs, but really they need to get over themselves if they want to win next time.
Hey Nick,
Not sure if you saw my post yesterday, but hard luck on your defeat.
Did you see the Con surge happening in the day's leading up to the vote or was it a complete surprise on the night?
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
There hasn't been any profound change since the referendum, and no there won't be another referendum.
The SNP won 49.97% of the vote in Thursday's election, on a turnout of 71%. They literally won 95% of the Scottish seats at Westminster on less than 50% of the votes.
System stacked against them? Yeah right. They'll probably keep whinging to that effect though.
Let's not underestimate the role played by naive young voters who vote SNP because of something to do with not having English people tell them what to do. Politics isn't about the intellect.
YES won 45% of the vote in the referendum, on a turnout of 85%. The gap between 45% and 49.97% is small, and it's explicable by more NO people staying at home on Thursday than YES people, which itself is explained by the fact that more YES people are still fired up from the referendum that they lost.
There isn't a story here. If the SNP manage to get a majority at Holyrood next time - which I doubt - that will be because of an even lower turnout.
They have no leverage to make another referendum more likely. All they can do is give people the impression that because they have so many MPs at Westminster, that means there's a big majority in favour of independence.
There isn't. And any serious poll will show that there isn't.
If either the Tory or the Labour leaderships, either at a Scottish or a British level, had any serious leadership calibre, they would come up with a visionary plan for improving the Union. Not FFA or wonk stuff. Vision.
I'm aware of a very small knot of people who've got a visionary plan for improving the Union up their collective sleeve. They may go public later in the year. Whether they'll get anywhere with it is open to doubt, to say the least.
Don't expect the SNP to show any vision for the Union whatsoever. First, the Union isn't their thing. Second, all they're interested in is money.
The Merseyside kicking granny won here with a majority of 20,000 plus. If Cameron says anything she doesn't like, she'll be round the Dispatch Box and she'll give him one in the goolies.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on .
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I do my betting elsewhere Mike, but even I think Cameron will do a vote, albeit on a renegotiation that delivers little.
However I'll do you a £20 site bet proceeds to PB.com ?
The reason for the seat gap is that the Tory vote share went up a little and became more efficient, while the Labour vote also went up, but became far less efficient. The Tories will get another small boost with the new boundaries. In a multi-party, FPTP system, though, relatively small voting shifts can make big differences in seat returns - as this election has shown. On that basis, a 99 seat difference may not actually be that hard to overcome - or to build on - in 2020. What happens to the UKIP vote post-referendum, for example?
Is there a detectable regional explanation for this or is just incumbency? You'd expect incumbency to do this at the end of a first term, and IIRC Labour efficiency also increased in 2001, before declining somewhat in 2005.
On the future labour leaders, Jarvis is the most interesting, as he's 'mostly' an unknown, with an interesting back story.
The others are all knowns, and come with baggage, I can't see how Burnham or Cooper will transform the party, and are just more of the same old Brown/Blair continuity.
Jarvis would be an interesting choice, as would Liz Kendall. My own favourite would be Stella Creasey, if she's interested in having a go - she does attract jealousy for being too ambitious from some MPs, but really they need to get over themselves if they want to win next time.
There is seemingly something of a consensus building here from all sides reagrding what Labour should do. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the party respond as positively to defeat as you do yourself, Nick.
The SNP's feeble 56 will have nothing to occupy themselves with over the next half decade except gross eating, drinking and troughing. This already unhealthy looking cohort could well experience astronomical levels of morbidity and mortality. So there should be quite a number of by elections to mark the Nationalists' decline.
is there a collective term for a group of eunnuchs ?
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.
Surely you listened to the PB brains trust several weeks ago stating unequivocally that EICIPM and this would be really bad for the EssEnPee as they would be stuck propping up Labour without any influence. What the SNP really wanted was 5 more years of the Tories in charge to push against in Scotland.
Of course I can understand any confusion as many of the same brains are now saying 56 SNP mps and the Tories in power is, wait for it, really bad for the EssEnPee.
So all the people who don't like the SNP think all outcomes are bad for the SNP, and all independence/SNP supporters think all outcomes are... good for the SNP! That's tribalism for you
Still think the SNP MPs are going to get rapidly bored/disillusioned. To have a role which basically amounts to lobby fodder opposing the Tories, to bolster the SNP govt in Holyrood isn't particularly inspiring.
With all those subsidised restaurants , bars and the high life in London. You really are barking , it sounds like 5 years of serious fun to any normal person. Even if only one term , you leave with bulging bank account , a big pay off and good pension , how could anyone think other than they had won the lottery.
Glad to hear it. I was a bit worried they couldn't be turned. Hopefully they'll go the full hog and model themselves on the UKIP MEP example
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!
How do you split the vote in an SV election, unless it's by letting two alternative and disliked candidates into the final round? I wouldn't have thought that would be an issue for the centre-left in London?
The problem with SV is that the voter has to correctly judge which candidates will be in the final two - otherwise their second vote is wasted. It's one of a small number of electoral systems that are worse than AV.
I agree that SV is worse than AV (and indeed, worse than just about anything else).
However, for a centre-left voter in London, that's surely not a problem. Even if there were two strong centre-left candidates and a strong centre-right one, then you just vote for the two lefties as first and second preference.
If both left-wingers finish in the top two, the first preference counts. If its a right/left split then the preference system works. Only if neither makes it through is there a problem, and I can't see how that would come about: you'd need at least four serious challengers for the second round and London's nowhere near that at the moment; it's about the clearest two-party system in the country.
@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.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on .
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I do my betting elsewhere Mike, but even I think Cameron will do a vote, albeit on a renegotiation that delivers little.
However I'll do you a £20 site bet proceeds to PB.com ?
He may do a vote but it wont be a straight in/out ref. £20 seems good to me.
Mr. Pulpstar, I agree. Umunna may play well with metropolitans, but he'll not go down well in northern England.
Con Gain Derbyshire NE if Labour choose the wrong leader. And the economy stays on track.
Speaking of which: Mastermind !
" Lammy considers Labour leadership bid David Lammy says he will consider standing for Labour leader if colleagues want him to do it as Alan Johnson warns it could take the party 10 years to recover from its election defeat. "
@RepublicanTory - believe we had a £20 charity bet that the Tories win more votes than Labour in 2015. Can you send the money to the pb.com site fund please
@Pulpstar we had a £5 charity or OGH bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
@LucianFletcher [if you still post] we had a £5 Dirty Dicks drinks bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
What we've seen is that politics is highly unpredictable. UKIP may have vanished by 2020, or it may be a very big force.
Back in 2010, who would have predicted 56 SNP, 8 Lib Dems, four million UKIP voters, a Conservative majority, and the defeat of Ed Balls?
@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 !
Alan, Despite personally thinking she is crap , I was being objective. The questions they put every week are just pathetic. They do not seem to understand what matters in Scotland, completely out of touch with reality.
but most things in Scotland are completely out of touch with reality atm.
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.
David, why do you not move to Scotland and breathe some life into the moribund Scottish sub regional going nowhere Tory party. You could get rid of the backward looking dinosaurs that are ensuring the Tories are on a continual downward trajectory.
Happy doing my bit in Yorkshire. I do like Scotland though - we holidayed there this February - and feel there's is (or ought to be) a strong natural affinity between the two.
Re. Lab leader, I have a feeling Labour is now looking at a decade out of power.
2020 will be about recovering the damage that's been inflicted during this election (especially in Scotland) and generally getting themselves in the position to have a succcesful run in 2025.
So, I would say bring in someone like Burnham to play the Michael Howard role of getting the Party working again and try to rebuild the foundations in Scotland, then have a real push towards Number Ten with someone like Dan Jarvis after that.
Cameron needs to make a bold and comprehensive offer going considerably further than the sophistries of the Smith Commission. In essence, the wrong starting point has been adopted, namely should be devolved to Edinburgh in light of the referendum. The right starting point is what is the minimum that can be reserved to Westminster which is consistent with the vote of the Scottish people to remain part of the United Kingdom. There is no real need to reserve much more than defence, foreign affairs, national security, immigration/nationality, monetary policy and value added tax. The list of current reservations in schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 reflects the Labour Party's desire that there should be no competition on employment, industry, taxation, consumer protection and professional regulation between England and Scotland. Other miscellaneous reservations such as those on abortion, the misuse of drugs, animal testing and equality law are unnecessary.
If Cameron grasps this opportunity, he can maintain the Union. Such an offer would be impossible for the SNP to refuse, and can be accompanied by serious political reform in England.
Another sensible person on here, could things be changing.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on Farage for it's existence is over. That the party is now strong enough to stand on it's own two feet without him is his best legacy. I have a feeling that after a long needed break, Nigel will throw his hat in the ring at the leader elections in the Autumn.
You know nothing #kjohnw UKIP is now a major party with e range of policies of it's own. Grappling with the EU problem is now just one of it's many tasks. You will find that this Tory election victory will prove pyrrhic.
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
What we've seen is that politics is highly unpredictable. UKIP may have vanished by 2020, or it may be a very big force.
Back in 2010, who would have predicted 56 SNP, 8 Lib Dems, four million UKIP voters, a Conservative majority, and the defeat of Ed Balls?
ceratilny not me Sean.
However if Cameron does go a head with the Euroref I think the problem is UKIP are stuck with their political baggage from 5 years campaigning rather than being a straightforward pressure group. None of the big parties owe them any favours so it looks like a tough camapign.
Scott think Tories winning seats in England whilst being also rans going backwards in Scotland is very funny. I care not a jot how many there are in England and Wales, my interest is in Scotland and unlike Scott I do not want reflected glory but local. Tories going backwards in Scotland as ever and lucky to hold on to their single seat.
Your interest may be Scotland but this was a UK election not a Scottish one.
I also hate to break the news to you, but you voted to stay in the UK. So I care not a jot how many there are in Scotland it is no more relevant than how many there are in the North East.
It is impossible to debate with a fool , I refuse to waste any further time.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on .
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I do my betting elsewhere Mike, but even I think Cameron will do a vote, albeit on a renegotiation that delivers little.
However I'll do you a £20 site bet proceeds to PB.com ?
He may do a vote but it wont be a straight in/out ref. £20 seems good to me.
A good article until I got to the line about Jim Murphy, who on all possible measures has been a complete and utter failure, as predicted by most Scots on this site. If SLAB are to revive their fortunes before Holyrood 2016, they need to dump Jim Murphy, McTernan and McDougall - these guys and their MSM buddies managed to lose Scotland. My sense is that unless these guys go voluntarily the Labour party will leave them in place and they will then walk SLAB into the path of the SNP juggernaut in 2016.
I think the SNP surge will continue to grow, I would not be surprised if by May 2016 SNP membership surpasses that of Labour i.e. over 200,000. The SNP will likely win most of the Holyrood constituency seats, leaving SLAB, SLID and SCUP fighting for regional list seats. Unfortunately they will be caught in a pincer movement by the SNP, Greens and even UKIP.
Gosh - the SNP can walk on water? They do not even have to be able to govern well to win votes?
The whole SNP prospectus is based on a fabrication - but that is for the Scots to digest. Pretending otherwise for those people and parties that want to oppose their ideas is not a good idea in my opinion. Just because the current devolution settlement is flawed does not mean that a separate but allied set of political parties would make any difference to anything.
The reason for the seat gap is that the Tory vote share went up a little and became more efficient, while the Labour vote also went up, but became far less efficient. The Tories will get another small boost with the new boundaries. In a multi-party, FPTP system, though, relatively small voting shifts can make big differences in seat returns - as this election has shown. On that basis, a 99 seat difference may not actually be that hard to overcome - or to build on - in 2020. What happens to the UKIP vote post-referendum, for example?
Agreed, and I also don't see UKIP doing well in 2020 - the main reasons for their existence would have been pretty much resolved one way or another after 2017.
A bit like the way the SNP fizzled out after the Scottish referendum, you mean?
Yes, but the SNP had actually done well at an election prior to that - winning a majority in Holyrood in 2011. Labour also shot themselves in foot by siding with the Tories in the Better Together campaign, which also contributed to the SNP surge.
Cameron needs to make a bold and comprehensive offer going considerably further than the sophistries of the Smith Commission. In essence, the wrong starting point has been adopted, namely should be devolved to Edinburgh in light of the referendum. The right starting point is what is the minimum that can be reserved to Westminster which is consistent with the vote of the Scottish people to remain part of the United Kingdom. There is no real need to reserve much more than defence, foreign affairs, national security, immigration/nationality, monetary policy and value added tax. The list of current reservations in schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 reflects the Labour Party's desire that there should be no competition on employment, industry, taxation, consumer protection and professional regulation between England and Scotland. Other miscellaneous reservations such as those on abortion, the misuse of drugs, animal testing and equality law are unnecessary.
If Cameron grasps this opportunity, he can maintain the Union. Such an offer would be impossible for the SNP to refuse, and can be accompanied by serious political reform in England.
Yes - lets hope the courage & generosity he showed towards his prospective coalition partners in 2010 appears again. I think FFA with some transition arrangement (vs 'cold turkey') is the way to go. Both the Scots and English people are fair, even if their politicians frequently emphasise differences which are fundamentally trivial.....
#MikeK said: » show previous quotes I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I'll do that for £50.
Ok! agreed
Now how do I send you the £25 I now owe you: your wording below.
"Do you want to frame a bet on that: let's say a central point of 18% [mid way between Survation's 24% and the top end of my range] and any figure up to £5 per point on the UKIP vote share."
Mr. Slackbladder, the paper may be blank, but the limestone's brimming with promises
For me that stone was a defining moment. People looked at that and thought it would take me 2 years to earn that amount to buy such a stone (based on Labours low wages statements) Yet..... Yet they blow this on some vanity project to put a 9 foot high stone outside his office window??? What will they do with the economy then?
*moves pencil to blue team box and inserts cross*
I can't see what possessed him to do it and then within 24 hours along comes Lucy saying "yeah but just coz it carved in stone dose t mean some might be broken" I mean ....wait ?.what??
TBH Why did he not just print it on A4 paper, frame it and nail it to the office wall above his computer and below his photo of Karl Marx.
For me, it was when Ed was in that Newsnight audience debate, after Cameron had performed strongly, and the crowd turned on him when he said 'Labour didn't overspend'.
No one was with him there.
For me the turning point was the last debate, the Question Time format. An amazingly intelligent and educated audience completely called him out on the spending question. I think he was expecting a friendlier audience and didn't know how to respond to Cameron's bringing up of the letter, that before he literally as well as metaphorically fell off the stage.
I'm not sure how much traction it gained in the past few days as I was out of the country, but to me the real nail in the coffin (with the EdStone on top!) was the segregated meeting. I spend loads of time in Dubai and the wider Middle East, and outside Saudi you'd never see a segregated meeting apart from at prayer time. That event just epitomised who and what Ed's Labour stand for, made me more determined than even to put my cross in the blue box.
Margaret Becket has just said on Sky that the British Public may not have been aware of what they were doing electing a Conservative Gov..Maybe that's why Labour got shafted... total bloody arrogance.
Just watching last nights QT.... Mad Bad Al's really an twat isn;t he.
Indeed but it shows the paucity of Labour's new talent that he was on first in the BBC election night panel as their voice and had such a role in the campaign.... he's so past his sell by.
Real mixed feelings for me re Ukip... 13% of the vote was at the top end of most peoples expectations.... One seat was really disappointing.
But what can you do? Get a big vote share and hope they concentrate enough in a few seats. That didn't quite happen. I'd compare it to backing a tennis player to win a match and they lose 7-6 7-6 6-4.. Fine margins but you're on the right track
IMO though I think Farage is making a big mistake by resigning... Clegg and Miliband have failed in terms of moving their party forward in the last 5 years, Farage has turned Ukip from nobodies into the 3rd most popular party in the UK. I think it's lazy thinking to assume he has taken the party as far as he can, many voters in dagenham talked of him in such glowing terms as their only hope!
The spectacular SNP results have put Ukip in the shade but that doesn't mean Ukip need to press panic buttons, strip it down and start again a la lib dem and labour. The situations sre completely different, and if anything i feel let down that Farage is standing aside
If Ukip had polled 7% and he had stood and won Thurrock so we had 2 MPs, he would have done a much worse job and stayed. As it is he has done a great job and quit. A mistake methinks
UKIP as a political force is finished by the end of this parliament, by the time we get to the next election the EU issue will have been resolved for all time, also one way or the other the uncontrolled immigration issue will have been dealt with either through treaty change/negotiation or BREXIT. The two main reasons for UKIP's existence. In five years its game over for UKIP.
Agree with most of your sentiments #isam, however the days when the party depended on .
And now I have two betting debts to pay............
but you are slightly buggered Mike.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I do my betting elsewhere Mike, but even I think Cameron will do a vote, albeit on a renegotiation that delivers little.
However I'll do you a £20 site bet proceeds to PB.com ?
He may do a vote but it wont be a straight in/out ref. £20 seems good to me.
Just watching last nights QT.... Mad Bad Al's really an twat isn;t he.
Paddy and Al were terrible...
Paddy in particular was clearly very bitter and often visibly upset.
I think given his highly emotional state and probably having been awake for like 36hrs, it would perhaps have been better if he'd declined the invitation to appear...
@RepublicanTory - believe we had a £20 charity bet that the Tories win more votes than Labour in 2015. Can you send the money to the pb.com site fund please
@Pulpstar we had a £5 charity or OGH bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
@LucianFletcher [if you still post] we had a £5 Dirty Dicks drinks bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
@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 !
Alan, Despite personally thinking she is crap , I was being objective. The questions they put every week are just pathetic. They do not seem to understand what matters in Scotland, completely out of touch with reality.
but most things in Scotland are completely out of touch with reality atm.
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).
On the future labour leaders, Jarvis is the most interesting, as he's 'mostly' an unknown, with an interesting back story.
The others are all knowns, and come with baggage, I can't see how Burnham or Cooper will transform the party, and are just more of the same old Brown/Blair continuity.
Jarvis would be an interesting choice, as would Liz Kendall. My own favourite would be Stella Creasey, if she's interested in having a go - she does attract jealousy for being too ambitious from some MPs, but really they need to get over themselves if they want to win next time.
Hope your post parliamentary career goes well. I am sure that your animal welfare work will add more to the sum of good in the world than the frustrations of being an opposition backbencher. You can also let loose on PB a bit more freely without the whips getting upset!
I would also quite like Stella Creasy. She is a bit too London based though. Labour did well there, but if wanting to get back to power needs to move away from the Islington comfort zone, where the rest of the country is just a place to pick up a safe seat.
Liz Kendall is not from Leicester, but like you in Broxtowe has embedded herself in local issues. Her vote went up against regional trend. She perhaps had some first time incumbency benefit. She seems to get the right mix of being ambitious (important in a leader!) yet also a team player. *
Whoever it is, it needs to be from a new generation untainted by the Blair/Brown years.
* I support Fallon even though he is not such a team player as Clegg. A team of eight is not so hard to keep on message, and his energy and ambition outweighs this. Beggars cannot be choosers.
Margaret Becket has just said on Sky that the British Public may not have been aware of what they were doing electing a Conservative Gov..Maybe that's why Labour got shafted... total bloody arrogance.
Lord Kinnock and this unprepossessing woman, Becket, seem to share a contempt for democracy and the British people.
P3 over. Contemplating bets now, hope to have the pre-qualifying piece up before midday.
Interesting that for all that everyone was mentioning development in the past three weeks, the only real improvement seems to be in the McLarens. One of them making Q3 could be a good outside bet, as might one of the RB or Ferrari cars for the front row, they seem a little closer to the Mercs but the silver arrows often don't show their real pace until the heat is on in Q3.
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.
Kellner explicitly ruled out a 'late shift' explanation in the election night programme between 10pm and 11pm i.e. after the exit poll but before the results came in. YouGov did polling day surveys and found no meaningful change in his opinion. Of the four possible explanations, it was the one he dismissed outright. The other three were that the opinion polls were wrong, the exit poll was wrong, or that both were wrong.
Arguably, as we now know that the opinion polls were badly wrong, you could argue that the errors there mean that there findings on polling day are also less legitimate. Possibly. But the argument for a late shift relies on the opinion polls being right, up until election day, which seems a much greater leap of faith.
In 1992, when there may well have been a late shift, there were both political and methodological explanations (Sheffield and all that). This time, particularly given the scale of postal voting, I don't see it.
Comments
If Koeman had said he'd resign if Southampton didn't finish at least fifth, then they finish sixth but runners up in the FA Cup then he should resign. He said he would if something happened and it did, you lose all credibility if you don't honour your pledges. Maybe linking his career to being better than sixth was wrong, but once done he should stand by it.
Leader HoL should keep him happy.
Interesting that the Tories won a majority while being just 9.4% ahead in England when it was said they needed to be more than 11% ahead.
At least in your case you knew you might well lose in 2010, and you've had the last five years to develop other aspects of your career. It must be really difficult for MPs (such as many of the LibDem senior figures) who have suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves moved, at the whim the electorate, from the centre of events to irrelevance. It's a rough game.
http://www.parliament.uk/about/how/elections-and-voting/general/start-of-a-new-parliament/#jump-link-7
Cameron needs to make a bold and comprehensive offer going considerably further than the sophistries of the Smith Commission. In essence, the wrong starting point has been adopted, namely should be devolved to Edinburgh in light of the referendum. The right starting point is what is the minimum that can be reserved to Westminster which is consistent with the vote of the Scottish people to remain part of the United Kingdom. There is no real need to reserve much more than defence, foreign affairs, national security, immigration/nationality, monetary policy and value added tax. The list of current reservations in schedule 5 to the Scotland Act 1998 reflects the Labour Party's desire that there should be no competition on employment, industry, taxation, consumer protection and professional regulation between England and Scotland. Other miscellaneous reservations such as those on abortion, the misuse of drugs, animal testing and equality law are unnecessary.
If Cameron grasps this opportunity, he can maintain the Union. Such an offer would be impossible for the SNP to refuse, and can be accompanied by serious political reform in England.
I also hate to break the news to you, but you voted to stay in the UK. So I care not a jot how many there are in Scotland it is no more relevant than how many there are in the North East.
Compares Labour seats in England to coal mining areas.
Nick - you sound ever so slightly like Nigel Farage!
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/how-scottish-labour-came-to-be-routed-in-the-general-election.125566758
The other point is that I noticed that the age distribution - at least from pre-election polling (admittedly an important qualification) of the SNP vote was actually lower in the young as well as the very old, so 'being told what to do' is not an explanation that convinces.
There was no hint of him even considering: "did my contribution do more harm than good?"
He's a raving idiot.
this count as a canvassing contact....he's a Cllr, she was the PPC and now an MP
https://screen.yahoo.com/storyful-sg/labour-canvassers-stuck-words-doorstep-111039904.html
*moves pencil to blue team box and inserts cross*
I can't see what possessed him to do it and then within 24 hours along comes Lucy saying "yeah but just coz it carved in stone dose t mean some might be broken" I mean ....wait ?.what??
TBH Why did he not just print it on A4 paper, frame it and nail it to the office wall above his computer and below his photo of Karl Marx.
I think FFA will be the most entertaining thing coming up to pop their balloon. And your point about the *only allowed* opinion isn't a recipe for success.
Look how shy even English Tories are. I wouldn't want to be in Scotland.
on paper at least you have a referendum coming up in 18-24 months and are in all likelihood likely to lose it.
FWIW, I think he made a mistake in announcing he would resign if he didn't win his seat. It simply gave his detractors even more reason to try to ensure he was not elected in South Thanet.
How do you want to settle up?
1. Select all the table text from the page.
2. Right-click and COPY.
3. Open Excel, and click PASTE.
4. Tidy up.
I cannot make it any simpler for you.
The UKIP groundgame needs some work though.
Hats off to the Conservative groundgame particularly in the Southwest - That was ruthlessly efficient.
No one was with him there.
Kent seems to be kipper obsessed and they seem to be moving after the old coal miner vote now.
Those who value his input to the site might remember this diversion from the true path.
Maybe it is a Sarf' Luhn'dahn' finck innit....
I was born in Birkenhead and like my father support and many from Birkenhead I support two football teams. My very local one, Tranmere Rovers, and a local top flight one, Liverpool. I live now in Warrington which is inbetween Liverpool and Manchester. I wouldn't think I'm glory hunting in my support. Liverpool have had a disappointing season, while Tranmere got relegated for the second season in the row and are now relegated from the Football League. I still support them though and always will.
Beyond that then yes, there's scope for a deal.
(Don't remember whether it was £10 or £5 a point - per my other post - so happy to take your word for it).
It's fringe stuff as most of us know others with similar opinions/have similar contacts on echo chambers like Twitter.
Getting charismatic, involved people who can rally troops and change hearts and minds is hard. But not impossible - you just need to know how to listen and make it fun. And importantly keep the weirdos off the doorstep!
What are you going to do, try and take our one MP off us? Oh no, we'll only have 329 MPs then, whatever are we going to do?
I don't expect SNP to be ordered by Cameron on how to vote, any more than I'd expect Labour to be ordered by Cameron. You're our opponents sat on the opposition benches, not our allies. There's nothing wrong if you're treated as any other opponent would. Nothing wrong with you being treated how you treat Tories.
Even if only one term , you leave with bulging bank account , a big pay off and good pension , how could anyone think other than they had won the lottery.
Not sure if you saw my post yesterday, but hard luck on your defeat.
Did you see the Con surge happening in the day's leading up to the vote or was it a complete surprise on the night?
If I were Labour, I'd be thinking of either Cooper or Jarvis.
However I'll do you a £20 site bet proceeds to PB.com ?
However, for a centre-left voter in London, that's surely not a problem. Even if there were two strong centre-left candidates and a strong centre-right one, then you just vote for the two lefties as first and second preference.
If both left-wingers finish in the top two, the first preference counts.
If its a right/left split then the preference system works.
Only if neither makes it through is there a problem, and I can't see how that would come about: you'd need at least four serious challengers for the second round and London's nowhere near that at the moment; it's about the clearest two-party system in the country.
As an aside - congrats to those who won supporting the SNP - it was a political earthquake I've rather enjoyed for different reasons.
Speaking of which: Mastermind !
" Lammy considers Labour leadership bid
David Lammy says he will consider standing for Labour leader if colleagues want him to do it as Alan Johnson warns it could take the party 10 years to recover from its election defeat. "
@Pulpstar we had a £5 charity or OGH bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
@LucianFletcher [if you still post] we had a £5 Dirty Dicks drinks bet that UKIP wouldn't win a seat. Where do you want me to send the money? (I assume I lost!)
Back in 2010, who would have predicted 56 SNP, 8 Lib Dems, four million UKIP voters, a Conservative majority, and the defeat of Ed Balls?
2020 will be about recovering the damage that's been inflicted during this election (especially in Scotland) and generally getting themselves in the position to have a succcesful run in 2025.
So, I would say bring in someone like Burnham to play the Michael Howard role of getting the Party working again and try to rebuild the foundations in Scotland, then have a real push towards Number Ten with someone like Dan Jarvis after that.
However if Cameron does go a head with the Euroref I think the problem is UKIP are stuck with their political baggage from 5 years campaigning rather than being a straightforward pressure group. None of the big parties owe them any favours so it looks like a tough camapign.
The whole SNP prospectus is based on a fabrication - but that is for the Scots to digest. Pretending otherwise for those people and parties that want to oppose their ideas is not a good idea in my opinion. Just because the current devolution settlement is flawed does not mean that a separate but allied set of political parties would make any difference to anything.
#Charles Posts: 8,587
11:03AM
#MikeK said:
» show previous quotes
I don't think a simple in or out EU referendum will ever take place under this second Cameron government. And heres £100 evens says it won't. Are you on?
I'll do that for £50.
Ok! agreed
Now how do I send you the £25 I now owe you: your wording below.
"Do you want to frame a bet on that: let's say a central point of 18% [mid way between Survation's 24% and the top end of my range] and any figure up to £5 per point on the UKIP vote share."
Campbell's thoroughly despicable.
I'm not sure how much traction it gained in the past few days as I was out of the country, but to me the real nail in the coffin (with the EdStone on top!) was the segregated meeting. I spend loads of time in Dubai and the wider Middle East, and outside Saudi you'd never see a segregated meeting apart from at prayer time. That event just epitomised who and what Ed's Labour stand for, made me more determined than even to put my cross in the blue box.
Paddy in particular was clearly very bitter and often visibly upset.
I think given his highly emotional state and probably having been awake for like 36hrs, it would perhaps have been better if he'd declined the invitation to appear...
I would also quite like Stella Creasy. She is a bit too London based though. Labour did well there, but if wanting to get back to power needs to move away from the Islington comfort zone, where the rest of the country is just a place to pick up a safe seat.
Liz Kendall is not from Leicester, but like you in Broxtowe has embedded herself in local issues. Her vote went up against regional trend. She perhaps had some first time incumbency benefit. She seems to get the right mix of being ambitious (important in a leader!) yet also a team player. *
Whoever it is, it needs to be from a new generation untainted by the Blair/Brown years.
* I support Fallon even though he is not such a team player as Clegg. A team of eight is not so hard to keep on message, and his energy and ambition outweighs this. Beggars cannot be choosers.
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/spain-pre-qualifying.html
I have yet to lose a bet on this 'political-betting' site. Could someone emphasise with me please....
Arguably, as we now know that the opinion polls were badly wrong, you could argue that the errors there mean that there findings on polling day are also less legitimate. Possibly. But the argument for a late shift relies on the opinion polls being right, up until election day, which seems a much greater leap of faith.
In 1992, when there may well have been a late shift, there were both political and methodological explanations (Sheffield and all that). This time, particularly given the scale of postal voting, I don't see it.