@Matthew495: @bbclaurak@leicesterliz Won't be voting for her - disappointed that she's jumped on bandwagon in saying Lab was spending too much pre-2008
The corollary of her admission is that she should actually support the governments cuts and disown Balls (and by association Cooper). Will she? Could she? The level of increase in spending was an increase of 50% in real terms between 2000 and 2010. A huge unparalleled increase that could not be supported. So its not something that can be sneezed away.
There would still be an argument to be made about the speed of the deficit reduction. She could also propose cuts elsewhere, or raise taxes.
Aknowledging that Labour overspent = endorsing Tory cuts is a false dichotomy.
The increase in spending was huge and thats why its not easy to cut back. Osborne has been very sensible in timing his cuts. The speed of deficit reduction has been cautious. Labour cannot argue about the increase in debt and at the same time criticise the cuts needed t stop it.
There is no false dichotomy - what we will probably get is a denial of the actual real level of overspending.
Seems inevitable. I don't really see how replacing the HRA is treated by various people and organisations as though we are getting rid of the idea of protection of Human Rights - and this wouldn't even be an issue if the ECHR didn't keep seeming like an organisation with an agenda above just following the law - but it has seemed like a lot effort and anguish for what doesn't appear a great deal of gain. The majority already too slim perhaps?
Would this have been one of the items dropped in the event of another coalition agreement I wonder?
This, and £12 billion welfare cuts definitely was! Oops!
A difficult one for Cameron to play really - he's been talking up implementing the entire manifesto, when he knows even in the best of times a party will have some rebels on some issues, and with a slender majority he would encounter that as an issue sooner rather than later as even a few rebels could scupper things.
So what's his line for the first time he is defeated by rebels or forced to back down?
Did they fail to read the manifesto? How can Grieve and Clarke stand on the Conservative ticket. That said the DUP are in favour so the vote can cope with half a dozen wets that are in the wrong party.
And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply cannot believe how you scumbags could have got it so wrong last Thursday, you morons. You vindictive, selfish morons. That has been the general response from all of the people, the liberal middle-class lefties, who have cheerfully contributed towards making the once-great Labour party effectively unelectable. You lot voted Tory out of fear — because you are stupid, stupid people. The Conservatives ran a ‘negative’ campaign and, because you are either simply horrible human beings, or just thick, you fell for it.
That’s been the subtext of most of the bien-pensants, when they’re not out screaming with fury in the streets, stamping their little feet and daubing ‘Tory scum’ on war memorials. It was the subtext of Ed Miliband’s magnificently patronising and deluded analysis that Labour (i.e. Ed Miliband) lost the election but ‘did not lose the argument’. No Ed, you lost both. You lost the election because you lost the argument. And also because lots of people, including members of your family, thought you were a ludicrous creature increasingly resembling one of those confections in a Dr Seuss book for kiddies. My favourite little temper strop, though, came from a woman called – Rebecca Roache, who is a lecturer at Royal Holloway. Tory voters are akin to racists, sexists and homophobes, she asserted on her blog, before adding that she had ‘defriended’ people on Facebook who had posted links to pro-Tory pages. ‘I’m tired of reasoned debate,’ she added.
O'Flynn says Farage must adopt “a much more consultative and consensual leadership style”.
Not surprising. Over the past 10+ years we have had at least 6 major series of groups of senior UKIP people falling out with Farage over his Leadership style. This is the single biggest reason why they always lose MEPs to defections. Farage never learns.
I wonder if this time he might have bitten off more than he can chew though. He might think chasing out fellow MEPs - paticularly when he is leader - is a straightforward matter. But to try and chase out the party's sole MP when it appears he is supported by other senior members would be another matter entirely.
Anything can happen but Parliament hasn't even resumed yet and this revolt is happening. Five years is a long time but at least let a week pass generally.
I think the BlueLabour vote is severely under threat if Mr Kellner is right here
From Mr Liddle's piece upthread
According to the pollster Peter Kellner, Ukip’s support base is 61 per cent working class — way more than Labour, the party that was set up to represent the working-class. This is a very recent development; according to the same set of statistics, ex-Labour voters migrating to Ukip trebled over the last couple of years. Bear that in mind when you look at the polling results in such constituencies as Nuneaton, Stockton South, the Vale of Clwyd, Sunderland and countless, countless others.
O'Flynn says Farage must adopt “a much more consultative and consensual leadership style”.
Not surprising. Over the past 10+ years we have had at least 6 major series of groups of senior UKIP people falling out with Farage over his Leadership style. This is the single biggest reason why they always lose MEPs to defections. Farage never learns.
I wonder if this time he might have bitten off more than he can chew though. He might think chasing out fellow MEPs - paticularly when he is leader - is a straightforward matter. But to try and chase out the party's sole MP when it appears he is supported by other senior members would be another matter entirely.
A brilliant piece of writing, especially coming from a Labour supporter. Basically arguing in favour of what I was saying last night on here, that Labour can't win unless they annoy their most fervent current supporters in inner London.
And so now we have to suffer the epic delusions, temper tantrums and hissy fits of the metro-left. They simply cannot believe how you scumbags could have got it so wrong last Thursday, you morons. You vindictive, selfish morons. That has been the general response from all of the people, the liberal middle-class lefties, who have cheerfully contributed towards making the once-great Labour party effectively unelectable. You lot voted Tory out of fear — because you are stupid, stupid people. The Conservatives ran a ‘negative’ campaign and, because you are either simply horrible human beings, or just thick, you fell for it.
That’s been the subtext of most of the bien-pensants, when they’re not out screaming with fury in the streets, stamping their little feet and daubing ‘Tory scum’ on war memorials. It was the subtext of Ed Miliband’s magnificently patronising and deluded analysis that Labour (i.e. Ed Miliband) lost the election but ‘did not lose the argument’. No Ed, you lost both. You lost the election because you lost the argument. And also because lots of people, including members of your family, thought you were a ludicrous creature increasingly resembling one of those confections in a Dr Seuss book for kiddies. My favourite little temper strop, though, came from a woman called – Rebecca Roache, who is a lecturer at Royal Holloway. Tory voters are akin to racists, sexists and homophobes, she asserted on her blog, before adding that she had ‘defriended’ people on Facebook who had posted links to pro-Tory pages. ‘I’m tired of reasoned debate,’ she added.
That's why election night is so exciting: it has the potential to consign all sorts of received wisdom to the dustbin of history. Another example is the canard that the current boundaries are inherently biased against the Tories. They appeared to be before the election, certainly, but I'm not sure they are any more because Labour performed so abysmally in the marginals. If that's indeed the case Cameron may not be so keen on reducing the number of MPs to 600.
I thought this was a killer paragraph - it's the whole Kipper demographic from Old Labour.
If Labour is to continue to exist as a major force, rather than as a gradually deliquescing rump, it needs to adopt policies which bring those people back. The Blairites are correct that Miliband alienated the aspirational working class — largely, I think, because he felt no liking or empathy for them. But that is not the half of it. A clear understanding that there is a deserving poor and an undeserving poor is crucial; people who do the right thing, but are nonetheless impoverished, and watch others who do not do the right thing thrive on benefits, dislike Labour’s lazy and ignorant amalgamation of the two groups.
A brilliant piece of writing, especially coming from a Labour supporter. Basically arguing in favour of what I was saying last night on here, that Labour can't win unless they annoy their most fervent current supporters in inner London.
Barrow was the biggest Lab - Con swing I think - Trident = Fear of the SNP on steroids.
Labour weren't expecting their majority to be reduced to less than 1,000 votes in seats like Barrow and Newcastle-under-Lyme. In fact UKIP were thought to be the main challenger in the latter until recently.
Barrow was the biggest Lab - Con swing I think - Trident = Fear of the SNP on steroids.
Labour weren't expecting their majority to be reduced to less than 1,000 votes in seats like Barrow and Newcastle-under-Lyme. In fact UKIP were thought to be the main challenger in the latter until recently.
These could potentially be targets for Tory gains next time if they can squeeze the UKIP vote. Who could have thought that?
Barrow was the biggest Lab - Con swing I think - Trident = Fear of the SNP on steroids.
Labour weren't expecting their majority to be reduced to less than 1,000 votes in seats like Barrow and Newcastle-under-Lyme. In fact UKIP were thought to be the main challenger in the latter until recently.
Lab to Con swing in Newcastle-under-Lyme was only 1%?
Looking through Scotland - there was a general expectation amongst even the SNP bulls on thios forum that alot of seats held by the SNP would be marginals.
They aren't.
There are now alot of safe SNP seats all across Scotland.
One of the best things about election night is hearing the phrase "want of official mark" being repeated 650 times. I'm guessing that phraseology dates back to Victorian times or thereabouts.
Barrow was the biggest Lab - Con swing I think - Trident = Fear of the SNP on steroids.
Labour weren't expecting their majority to be reduced to less than 1,000 votes in seats like Barrow and Newcastle-under-Lyme. In fact UKIP were thought to be the main challenger in the latter until recently.
Lab to Con swing in Newcastle-under-Lyme was only 1%?
Yes but it was supposed to be an area where either Labour or UKIP would do well, not the Tories.
"Ed Miliband was an idealist until the end. He surrounded himself with academics, took inspiration from political textbooks and had an extraordinary ability to detach himself from the hue and cry of daily politics. He created his own world and lived in it. This explains his preternatural calm and his astonishing self-belief — but it also explains why he drove his party over a cliff."
Happy warrior...happy warrior....hell yeah....sounds like the country got a very lucky escape, Gordon MK II.
Looking through Scotland - there was a general expectation amongst even the SNP bulls on thios forum that alot of seats held by the SNP would be marginals.
They aren't.
There are now alot of safe SNP seats all across Scotland.
Plato: slightly disappointing results for UKIP in the Norfolk and Suffolk area where Labour seems to have retained second place. I'd have guessed UKIP would come second in most seats in that area.
Plato: slightly disappointing results for UKIP in the Norfolk and Suffolk area where Labour seems to have retained second place. I'd have guessed UKIP would come second in most seats in that area.
Plato: slightly disappointing results for UKIP in the Norfolk and Suffolk area where Labour seems to have retained second place. I'd have guessed UKIP would come second in most seats in that area.
I don't think anyone had the idea of doing a second-place map in 2010. You don't often come across original ideas but I think this is one of them. (I may just have missed it of course). It seems obvious now that a second place map would be an interesting thing to do, but then new ideas always do once they've happened.
Plato: slightly disappointing results for UKIP in the Norfolk and Suffolk area where Labour seems to have retained second place. I'd have guessed UKIP would come second in most seats in that area.
I don't think anyone had the idea of doing a second-place map in 2010. You don't often come across original ideas but I think this is one of them. (I may just have missed it of course). It seems obvious now that a second place map would be an interesting thing to do, but then new ideas always do once they've happened.
Jim Murphy won a lot of respect for standing up for the union in the no debate, in the face of some rather poor behaviour from yes advocates.
The problem is, those he won respect from were largely English Tories.
Really? Calling for the return of alcohol to football grounds and then campaigning with Eddie Izzard in tow seemed guaranteed to annoy two separate groups of his core supporters.
Exactly, and the NHS will still be there in five years time despite another round of scare stories from the Labour party claiming they have only hours, days, weeks or months to save the NHS all over again. C4 Ballot Monkey's hit the nail on the head, the NHS has become Labour's anti-Tory default position. For Sturgeon and the SNP its now become Tory Tory Tory with end austerity added in occasionally to break up the monotony.
My local newspaper has a very bitter letter from the defeated Labour candidate in a constituency she thought she would win. In it she warns of the tough times ahead with the Tories in power - beggars in the street, schools and the NHS sold off, benefit claimants forced to eat gruel -( I slightly over-egg the pudding but not by much). She finishes with the words 'la luta continua' - the slogan of the former Italian Communist Party. And her day job - she works for Christian Aid.
My local newspaper has a very bitter letter from the defeated Labour candidate in a constituency she thought she would win. In it she warns of the tough times ahead with the Tories in power - beggars in the street, schools and the NHS sold off, benefit claimants forced to eat gruel -( I slightly over-egg the pudding but not by much). She finishes with the words 'la luta continua' - the slogan of the former Italian Communist Party. And her day job - she works for Christian Aid.
They've said the same thing over and over. Every election we have 24 hours to save the nhs, etc etc.
I think it's really unfair to blame Jim Murphy. He took on a decade long problem and had a few months to tackle it - he took a total hospital pass.
When he took over, he said that Labour wouldn't lose a single seat. In January he was boasting about how he was wiping the floor with the SNP. Either he failed to solve the problem, or he was delusional about how solvable it was.
I expect SLAB will keep him, though. Since he's already damaged, they might as well use him to soak up next year's defeat and ditch him after that.
Interesting fact: Francis Maude has just been appointed as a trade minister, but at the present time he is neither a member of the Commons nor the Lords. That's because you don't actually need to be a member of either house to be appointed a minister, something which is maybe a bit surprising. (It was to me the first time I heard of it happening a few years ago).
Comments
Labour cannot argue about the increase in debt and at the same time criticise the cuts needed t stop it.
There is no false dichotomy - what we will probably get is a denial of the actual real level of overspending.
LD disasters...I think the 2 biggest falls are Brent Central and Sheffield Central
I know we were both interested in the Market Towns Effect but we didn't get to discuss it on a thread this time around.
Do you have any stats handy to see if this was a factor in 2015?
From Mr Liddle's piece upthread
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14000743
They aren't.
There are now alot of safe SNP seats all across Scotland.
Maybe less than 10 marginals.
Wales is 41% right-wing, while NI is 48%, a plurality there.
UK as a whole 51% right-wing.
https://twitter.com/Sunil_P2/status/598497117380939776
Just look at Kipper votes now as challengers.
https://twitter.com/PlatoSays/status/598636688563380224
http://www.itv.com/news/2015-05-07/watch-itv-news-election-night-live/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3LdMAqUMnM
I'm trying to find the nice 2010 graphic - do you have it handy?
https://twitter.com/kncukier/status/596982794435321856
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/politics/constituencies/E14001005
I expect SLAB will keep him, though. Since he's already damaged, they might as well use him to soak up next year's defeat and ditch him after that.
http://www.wscountytimes.co.uk/news/local/former-horsham-mp-francis-maude-named-trade-minister-in-new-government-1-6739030