Some interesting takeouts of the election in Scotland – politicalbetting.com

1) The collapse of the SNP. They lost half a million votes (42% of their 2019 total) and with it 39 seats. Its remaining 9 seats are not remotely safe – 7 of them are in the top 10 most marginal seats in Scotland.
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Alex Salmond has admitted voting for the SNP at the General Election despite being the leader of the rival Alba Party.
The former SNP leader and Scottish First Minister said his party did not field a candidate in Aberdeenshire North and Moray East.
https://news.stv.tv/politics/alba-leader-alex-salmond-admits-voting-snp-at-general-election-in-aberdeenshire-north-and-moray-east
2007 - 0 Seats.
2012 - 2 Seats.
2017 - 8 Seats <- We in the UK are Here.
2022 - 89 Seats.
2024 - 142 Seats.
Le Pens Lot will sit happily on the opposition benches munching popcorn as the rest try and form a coalition of chaos offering all sorts of free owls and pensions at 60 that the country dosen't have the money to fund.
I don't think this bodes well for France.
At least we have a stable goveenment for the next four and a bit years.
Sorry to hear you didnt quite make it, will you be up for another go in 5 years time ?
The take off had its origin in Le Pen (dad) shoving the more obvious types in a cupboard and draping suits over the rest.
See the results in 1986….
So far the French stock and bond markets have not taken fright at the result.
Presumably Macron will be trying to prise apart the left wing coalition and govern with the saner parts of it.
It sets up an interesting Holyrood election in the not too distant future. Are you running in that one?
Anyone know how many of the 36 new SLab MPs have political experience as former MPs?
The Conservatives did badly, but their vote is a lot more effiicent than in the past. In 1997, they won no seats on 16%. This time, they won 5 on 13%.
I did advise him to seek out French Tacos (that weird hybrid of Algerian and Mexican food) and see the other side of France.
Time to admit our electoral system is finished
First past the post is now a threat to our political stability
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/07/first-past-the-post-is-over/
But really good news about this is that I will have even more opportunities to do PB threads on AV/electoral reform over the next few years.
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4887180/#Comment_4887180
until they win and then they will quietly drop the whole idea
This was before "vote for the crook not the Nazi" and before this week, but it still applies. The hard right continues to have two big problems. The first is that you can't add mainstream right to hard right and get a win. The wets tend to peel off, and you can't stop them by telling them off. The other is that the Great Leader is so important. Hard right parties led by nobodies don't work, and once you have an obvious Furher, people notice and a fair few run away
It's all about the xG now which is just like PR.
Hat 1 - "Let's Cosplay, Ernest Hemingway"
Hat 2 - "North London's answer to Frank Spencer"
Hat 3 - "Good Morning Madam, I'm PT Barnum"
I'm sure there are more, including one about being a reviewer of slate dildos.
Melenchon's supporters say he's still in the running for PM
Allez Jezza
https://www.lefigaro.fr/elections/legislatives/legislatives-2024-elections-second-tour-deputes-premier-ministre-gouvernement-lfi-parti-socialiste-rassemblement-national-20240708
No.
Leon was even wrong than usual when ramping the far right?
Still he was very quiet on the thread pointing Matt Goodwin's firm was the most inaccurate pollster.
I gave away my tickets a month ago after my operation thinking I wouldn't be able to go.
I was fine to go.
You can't say that I am a sore loser.
I’m not sure that bodes well. It’s a bullet dodged but the RN scored by far the highest number of votes (over 10% more on my understanding?). That would be a bit like Labour falling short of a majority on Thursday 10 points ahead of the Tories. It’s the electoral system and alliances that have caused the result.
What they mean is that it's become a threat to the political right, which had previously benefitted from its vagaries.
Political stability/instability is a fact of life under any electoral system.
The point is rather that PR is more democratic.
I'd argue that it's also much less likely to discourage political participation in the way which is inevitable under FPTP.
Mr. Rentool, that's a fair comment. You are consistently wrong, and do not alter your views based on victory or defeat.
Depending on the weather, it could be another nail biter.
You wouldn't need tactical voting in a PR system because you start voting for what you want, not what you don't want.
The French will not put a Le Pen into the Elysee.
Current Budapest weather looks persistently hot which may be bad for Mercedes.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/07/stop-trump-not-kamala-but-gretchen-whitmer/
In Scotland it's going to be unionists v SNP.
STV was actually the work of an English lawyer, Thomas Hare.
And we know TSE's line on lawyers.
There are 3 bogus elements:
1) Bogus: we continue to reduce debt by further borrowing
2) Bogus: There is no plan to reduce or pay off debt at all
3) And worst bogus: The five year target moves forward a year every year. It has no meaning except as a future projection for a date which never arrives.
Expect the plan to become 'falling in the 10th year' in due course. Labour have adopted a catastrophic policy.
While not a great night for Scottish Tories it was certainly better for them relatively than their English counterparts. they held over 3/4 of their seats and avoided the wipeout they got in 1997. Indeed the Tories still have more MPs north of the border than they did for the whole 2 decades from 1997-2017.
The huge change from 2019 is shown by the fact there are now more Scottish Conservative MPs than Conservative MPs from the redwall and the same number of Conservative MPs in Scotland as there are in Surrey
So in 2017 you are an LD in a Tory/Lab marginal where the LD gets 8% of the vote. You dislike Jezza but you dislike May even more. Under AV you vote (1) LD (2) Labour, and your vote counts. You can omit the second choice if you like.
(a) more votes count
(b) it gives a chance to new parties with stickability.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/07/politics/house-democrats-biden-out/index.html
It does seem like a lot of people want Biden to step down, and it's now a matter of can he be persuaded to do so.
"Who can now stop Trump? It’s not Kamala, but there is a woman who can
It’s time to bring in the cavalry, the kind with good cheekbones and luscious brown locks."
Which seems insane even by telegraph standards. Also seems probable there is another respect in which whitmers personal appearance trumps Harris in telegraph eyes. I don't know but I been told that Dems would lose a massive proportion of the black vote by sidelining KH.
The important point is RN is extremely transfer unfriendly. Almost everyone will choose anyone other than RN if their preferred candidate is not available. Le Pen has more votes than anyone else but she can't work a coalition. She can only win if she is the biggest party and gets a majority under FPTP.
The message from this election is the two thirds of the French population who don't support Le Pen have given all the other parties a mandate to sort something out between them. Whether they do or not remains to be seen.
I'm quite taken by her term "Grey Belt" for mess ^ scrub in the Green Belt.
Putting housing targets back on local authorities is a good move.
I wonder if she has a "little list" of Rishi's Hail Mary Passes to consider reversing?
Lewis’s interview with Sky afterwards https://x.com/lh44_insights/status/1809987209891619116
Firstly, I think there was a dynamic of voting for Labour in order to be part of replacing the Tory government in London with a Labour one. That dynamic won't exist in the Holyrood elections, and so it reduces somewhat the impetus to vote Labour.
Secondly, however, the drop in the SNP vote does look a lot like the drop in the Tory vote. The SNP have been in government at Holyrood for a long time. They are mired in scandal and have begun to change leaders a bit too often to inspire confidence. They are incumbents at a time of dissatisfaction. Like with the Tories and the split of the vote with Reform, they face the potential of their vote splitting with the Greens. This could particularly hurt them with the AMS in use in Scotland, if they lose the FPTP seats to Labour, and shed votes to the Greens for the top-up seats.
Thirdly is the matter of timing. A 2025 Holyrood election might have suited Labour better than 2026. There is potential for the SNP to recover their position somewhat by feeding off accumulating disappointment with Starmer's government in London.
Biden certainly won't be dropping out for Sanders
The problem now is how to deal with Kamala Harris, who’s polling is even worse than Biden’s, but she was a diversity hire so can’t be swapped out easily without upsetting people.
Meanwhile, some of us first mentioned Gretchen Whitmer a long time ago
And I will never vote for the opponents of STV, and certainly not for those who assert their opposition in theological terms.
And yes, that's why I said it was a joke. Unless...?
Politics isn't like a football game - it should be an expression of the public's desires, not an expression of skills of a team / individual. If you look at the results and the vote distribution you see a clear story - people wanted to kick the Tories out and, in areas where there was no risk of the Tories winning, Labour underperformed. This bodes well for the left.
Why are folk on the hard right *such* fragile snowflakes?
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/john-curtice-general-election-labour-victory-results-7cpgvbrcs
Going into this election the suggestion was Starmer would have wrapped up the left wing for good and will get on with "sensible, grown up, politics". Well, the left is alive and well - sure, nowhere near power - but not cowed.
The other parties can only agree upon opposing RN, nothing else. And, the Republicans are on the point of disappearing as a force.
The rustbelt swing states would prefer Whitmer or even Biden still to Harris too
RN clearly are too toxic to get anywhere near a majority in France or to win the Presidential election without centre right support, at present LR voters clearly still prefer Macron's party in runoffs to RN. LR voters will only hold their nose and vote for RN to keep out Melenchon and the far left
What I think they would like is a slow-burn stealth money raiser like Gordon Brown's hit on pensions early on which was hardly noticed.