General election results 2015

[Anastasius]

Or a posh river?

Can you be both an "anarchist" and "left" ?
surely anarchism is a rejection of that paradigm?

They don't seem to make the distinction.

[Anastasius]

Austerity only seems to apply to the less well off.

Not at all. I had to sack my butler the other week [winkeye]

With reference to PR, I'm all for it as according to this website UKIP would have done rather well. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32601281

But then we wouldn't have the excellent result we have. Can't win it all, I guess.

[vinteuil]

Mme v has found a good map of the recent election -

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/multimedia/archive/01148/10_NWS_22_ACCURATE_1148862a.jpg

[MrGongGong]

Be very afraid

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/our-new-justice-secretary-michael-gove-wanted-to-bring-back-hanging-10239681.html

[jean]

Andy Slaughter, our Labour candidate, got elected on 50% share of the total vote (+6.1% change in share of the votes)
Charlie Dewhirst, Conservative, came second with 36%

Lib Dems and Greens got 4.6% and 4.4% respectively.

We do have leafiness here, but not really the sort than serves as a class marker. The whole city of course suffered more than anywhere from cuts imposed by central government, which is probably why all five constituencies returned Labour MPs - ours, Louise Ellman, was elected with 67% of the vote. Martin Dobson (Green) came a distant second with 12%, Jackson Ng (Tory) had 10% and Joe Chiffers (UKIP) 6%.

Not a LibDem in sight!

[teamsaint]

We do have leafiness here, but not really the sort than serves as a class marker. The whole city of course suffered more than anywhere from cuts imposed by central government, which is probably why all five constituencies returned Labour MPs - ours, Louise Ellman, was elected with 67% of the vote. Martin Dobson (Green) came a distant second with 12%, Jackson Ng (Tory) had 10% and Joe Chiffers (UKIP) 6%.

Not a LibDem in sight!

hard to gerrymander five rock solid labour seats, I suppose, unlike Southampton where Swaything , including the Unversityi, was nicked and put into something called " Romsey and Southampton North", which is an utter nonsense, as an entity.
It worked, as Southampton Itchen went Tory.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

But then we wouldn't have the excellent result we have. Can't win it all, I guess.

Gove as Justice Secretary! Looking on the bright side (with some difficulty) he can't know less about this than he did about education.

[jean]

He knows plenty - see the article Mr GG links to in #259. In 1998 he was arguing for the return of the death penalty.

[subcontrabass]

IDS back in office: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/...n-welfare-cuts

[Serial_Apologist]

Mme v has found a good map of the recent election -

http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/...E_1148862a.jpg

:big grin:

[MrGongGong]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CEoX8kfWEAAOSNn.jpg

[jean]

I don't know much about this site, but I like their analysis:

Chief losers of the 2010-2015 U.K. coalition was the Liberal Democrat party, whose numbers of Members of Parliament (MPs) plummeted from 57 to 8. The party acted like a bodyguard for the Conservatives, taking the blows delivered by a population angry at coalition policies, but at a huge cost for itself. Just 10 years after the Liberal Democrats secured a record number of MPs due to its opposition to the Iraq war and its promise to scrap tuition fees, the heavy price paid for propping up a right-wing coalition has left it with a parliamentary wing small enough to fit inside a minibus, with plenty of places to spare. It was the Conservatives that mainly gained from this. Of the 35 extra seats the Conservatives won (it lost others), 27 came from the Liberal Democrats. These were either in seats where the Conservatives were previously in second place behind the Lib Dems and gained from the later’s collapse. Or in areas where Labour looked set to win the seat from the Conservatives but where former Lib Dem voters rescued the Conservatives. Either way, the Liberal Democrats’ historic role appears to be nothing more than to have resurrected the corpse of the Conservative Party...

The main opposition party Labour had a humiliating night with the results leading to the resignation of leader Ed Miliband. It was undeniably a very bad performance, but again not necessarily for the reasons that the mainstream media has projected. Miliband did not lose the party any votes. In fact, Labour increased its vote share by 1.5 percent, more than the Conservative party managed and it gained almost 800,000 votes. That increase reversed the constant fall in votes that the party had seen since Tony Blair was first elected in 1997, losing five million votes through to 2010 due to its adherence to war, free market economics and illiberal social policies on immigration and civil rights. This reversal, however insufficient, in the number of votes won by Labour is being downplayed by Tony Blair and his loyal disciples who have gone onto the media post-election to urge the Labour Party to adopt even more right-wing policies.

[ahinton]

Place your bets as to whether Beef Oven! or MrGongGong will get the P&CA forum closed.

Oh, no! We don't have to vote AGAIN, do we?...

[MrGongGong]

I don't know much about this site, but I like their analysis:

Chief losers of the 2010-2015 U.K. coalition was the Liberal Democrat party, whose numbers of Members of Parliament (MPs) plummeted from 57 to 8. The party acted like a bodyguard for the Conservatives, taking the blows delivered by a population angry at coalition policies, but at a huge cost for itself. Just 10 years after the Liberal Democrats secured a record number of MPs due to its opposition to the Iraq war and its promise to scrap tuition fees, the heavy price paid for propping up a right-wing coalition has left it with a parliamentary wing small enough to fit inside a minibus, with plenty of places to spare. It was the Conservatives that mainly gained from this. Of the 35 extra seats the Conservatives won (it lost others), 27 came from the Liberal Democrats. These were either in seats where the Conservatives were previously in second place behind the Lib Dems and gained from the later’s collapse. Or in areas where Labour looked set to win the seat from the Conservatives but where former Lib Dem voters rescued the Conservatives. Either way, the Liberal Democrats’ historic role appears to be nothing more than to have resurrected the corpse of the Conservative Party

Makes the whole "win" thing seem a little fragile

[ahinton]

One thing that seems to have been given very little attention relates to the SNP landslide. "The Scottish people" gave a thumbs down to "independence" onl a few months ago, yet all but three Scottish seats have gone to SNP and, as none of the other three have gone to the same party, on other party holds more than a single seat in Scotland. Why is this? Is it because

(a) a large swathe of the Scottish electorate have somehow been persuaded to change their minds on "independence" since last September's referendum?

(b) a large swathe of the Scottish electorate wanted to support something that they could recognise and accept as a "Labour" party and so voted SNP rather than Labour itself in order to try to get it?

(c) support for SNP is not synonyous in all cases with a desire to secede from the remainder of UK and that many who voted SNP did so for the purpose of registering their desire to put Scottish interests first rather than because they seek "independence" (which they don't believe to be in Scotland's interests)?

To my mind, (a) seems most unlikely, (b) has some credibility but nowhere near enough to represent the answer and (c) seems the most plausible, especially to a Scot like me who knows several SNP supporters who'd voted SNP before the referendum, voted against "independence" in the referndum itself and remain opposed to "independence" on the grounds of their belief that it's not in the Scottish interests that they seek to support.

As to PR / FPTP and the rest, there's not just one single possible alternative and, in any case, now that the two-party + also-rans system has has finally bitten the dust, I doubt that any voting system yet devised could be guaranteed to produce a credible and fair result for all, not least because none could ensure an end to tactical voting. Yes, FPTP has demonstrably been unfair to supporters of the Greens and UKIP, but I'm not sure that any other system could do much to reduce such unfairness without replacing it with another kind.

It's interesting that Plaid Cymru has done nothing to improve or reduce their hold in Wales yet SNP has almost wiped the board in Scotland. Had the Welsh in England and Scotland been able to vote Plaid Cymru I somehow doubt that it would have made much difference to that party's success; Had the Scots in England and Wales been able to vote SNP, the outcome might even have been the closure of no. 10 and Westmonster, a relocation of the seat of government to Holyrood and possibly even a subsequent referendum on English/Welsh "independence"...