In fairness, in many scottish and london constituencies, you could put in jesus (or insert other famous benovolent figure as suits) for the tories, and pedobear leaving a victim trail instead of a campaign trail for Labour, and the reds would still get in...
Poll: *** 2010 General Election Result & Discussion ***
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In fairness, in many scottish and london constituencies, you could put in jesus (or insert other famous benovolent figure as suits) for the tories, and pedobear leaving a victim trail instead of a campaign trail for Labour, and the reds would still get in...
The scottish Stalin lost the plot after he didn't call a snap election in 2007, and slowly went loopy especially after the wheel feels off his "prudent" economy.
Even more amazing after Labour had a couple of attempts at redrawing the constituency boundaries in their favour...
the conservatives should appeal more to Scots, the Welsh, ethnic minorities but they don't
they only needed another 10 or so seats across the UK and they could have hooked up with the orange men
You miss the point, there are irrational constituencies all over the UK that always vote a certain way no matter what is on offer, it's just that the Welsh and the Scots suffer from the issue more than others (as shown by the zero change in scotland from 2005).
Offering extra to them will make no difference at all, because they aren't voting on policies or facts, but hatred from 25+ years ago.
watching the discussions this morning, I would say absolutely no chance of a lib/con deal. The libs have too many constitutional barriers. Unless the tories offer very quick guaranteed PR.
I would say lib/lab, no GB and PR within a few months is the only way it can possibly go.
I would say lib/lab, no GB and PR within a few months is the only way it can possibly go.
Not strictly true Dolph, in Scotland it's changing but slowly to the Lib Dems and SNP, the Tories haven't been seen to do much in Scotland for a long time other than the poll tax, which was bloomin ages ago. If they do get power this time they'd have an opportunity to start helping, but not necessarily by being unfairly kind to Scotland, but just treating it the same as the rest of the UK. The fear up here is (and is it fear) that we'll have the same tory treatment a s before, leading to strikes, riots and the SNP sneaking in with a vote on independence. The poll tax was trialed on Scotland before going out to the rest of the UK. I'll be honest I was too young to remember or care - but many seem to remember it like that.
I'd much rather see people voting for the LD or Tories than the SNP up here, but until the Conservatives stop being only interested in the south of England nothing will change. The LD have been quite canny by appealing to everyone and not having an obvious slant to one area of the UK or another which is why they're slowly growing their vote share.
It'll be interesting to see what happens, I'm hoping for a Con/LD alliance of some kind, I just hope the SNP don't jump at the first opportunity to try and split the UK - I love this country and don't want it wrecked by opportunists.
How, Lib/Lab wouldn't have a majority, and the Lib Dems would thoroughly annoy the electorate if their political infighting and barriers lead to another election.
There is also no way to get PR through that quickly, given that it requires a wholesale redrawing of electoral boundaries (last time that was done it took 6 years) along with a referendum that (if the Lib Dems went Labour) they would likely lose as every dire warning about the problems of PR would have already come true (namely that the politicians, not the people, will chose the government).
If Lib/Con won't work, I'm expecting a minority conservative government and another GE in the autumn.
Edit: Good article about the practicalities of bringing in electoral reform:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/may/08/electoral-reform-one-parliament
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The thing is, with Devolution, all parties have to be more interested in England than Scotland, because they don't have the power over scotland to make a great many changes.
As for only being interested in the south of england, the big problem is whether the north of england, scotland etc should be propped up with public money and public jobs. This is what's crippled those areas, not what benefits them, but weaning them off the state dependency is a painful process, and they don't want to do it...
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A serious coalition would be nice but I can't see it happening, the lib dems have too many internal barriers to coalition which need to be overcome and half their MPs have just spent the last month in vicious battles with the conservatives and need to calm down before they consider a deal.
That's before you get onto how the tory right would feel, they've already started the recriminations I see, moaning about the campaign with precious little awareness of how unpopular their party still is with many people.
There's merit to Nick Robinson's point, in a coalition Cameron might find the lib dems more reliable than his own back benchers...
I hope I'm wrong but I can't seriously see it happening.
So yes, it'll be another election in the autumn I fear - maybe that's cameron's plan, he'll look terribly reasonable after this offer...
yeah, but the stakes are very,very high, and strong ideologies are at stake here. The libs will never get another chance and if con win the next election the unions and labour supporters will be hit very, very hard.
The minority parties are in favour of pr as well. When it all comes down to it, whatever they say in public this is extremely serious.
If the libs go in with tories without massive concessions from tories they (libs) will be finnished.
PR can be introduced in phases.
Christ, I've been on reddit for a long time but recently discovered their "ukpolitics" subreddit.
It's so funny watching a few hundred people attempt to write hateful posts like "The Tories only care about the cigar chomping toffs, posh twit Cameron, they despise the poor, etc" and then trying to rationalise their views in any way they can, usually attempting a logic based on "Right vs Left" politics.
Looks like 90% of these redditors on "ukpolitics" are complete and utter morons. I despair, as I used to hold reddit in such high esteem
It's so funny watching a few hundred people attempt to write hateful posts like "The Tories only care about the cigar chomping toffs, posh twit Cameron, they despise the poor, etc" and then trying to rationalise their views in any way they can, usually attempting a logic based on "Right vs Left" politics.
Looks like 90% of these redditors on "ukpolitics" are complete and utter morons. I despair, as I used to hold reddit in such high esteem
I would also think that the longer these backroom negotiations go on, the more sour the taste of a potential PR system would be, given that it would essentially result in a lot of similar backroom meetings where the politicians decide what policies to actually go for, rather than the electorate.
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It's simples. The Conservatives have 36.1% (bigger than winning Labour in 2005) and Labour have 29.0% (lower than the losing Conservatives in 2005). If the Labour/Conservative vote share was swapped, then Labour would have a clear majority, because of the unfair constituency boundaries. 'Democracy' rocks.
Cameron needs to form a minority government, with another election if defeated. To jump into bed with the 3rd place and LibDems (who have done nothing but criticise Cameron's party) is criminal. However, given the economic crisis (and investments in the UK falling) - any party that defeated him would be serving their own interests, not the people's.
I thoroughly support David Cameron, and the Conservatives, and hope he rushes through constituency size standardisation.
Cameron needs to form a minority government, with another election if defeated. To jump into bed with the 3rd place and LibDems (who have done nothing but criticise Cameron's party) is criminal. However, given the economic crisis (and investments in the UK falling) - any party that defeated him would be serving their own interests, not the people's.
I thoroughly support David Cameron, and the Conservatives, and hope he rushes through constituency size standardisation.
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Well said. If the Lib Dems form a coalition with Labour, their credibility will be destroyed overnight and their claim to offer a new direction will be exposed as a lie.
Corrected.
Soldato
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Indeed. But they will. New politics was a lie. They're all self serving.
They cannot achieve anything on their own, if they form with the Tories they will be able to achieve some of their pledges. You're more likely to see polices in the best interest of the majority with a coalition.