General election results 2015

[Barbirollians]

For journalists / media people, this was like a particularly exciting FA Cup Final they can tell tales about for ever.

For us as a nation, we stand on the edge of effective banishment from Europe with huge ramifications; our own union is about to be more or less fractured permanently; our welfare and medical services are about to be torpedoed. We have just become a much smaller, much less confident place, and the supreme irony of all this is that we are being led into this dangerous cave system, not by Labour, or Ukip, but by of all parties, the Tories. The nation I once thought I knew is teetering on the edge of irrelevance, insignificance and fragmentation.



Vote SNP and we will lock Cameron out of Downing Street? Oh, really?

Somehow, unlike those locked into the Westminster village, the media bubble, I don't see this as much of an exciting laugh. I'm frightened as to where my country is going, and what it is about to be turned into.

Hear hear . Very interesting to hear labour's private pollsters always had them behind but after non-dom and other well received policy announcements that they were sneaking ahead in marginals only to fall back as the panic about a Labour minority with strings pulled by the SNP led to fear all round . So the foolish Scottish left voting for the SNP with their illiberal Blairite policies and fake promises on fixing austerity have delivered a Tory government .

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

I changed it, smart A.

I'd check again...

[teamsaint]

Hear hear . Very interesting to hear labour's private pollsters always had them behind but after non-dom and other well received policy announcements that they were sneaking ahead in marginals only to fall back as the panic about a Labour minority with strings pulled by the SNP led to fear all round . So the foolish Scottish left voting for the SNP with their illiberal Blairite policies and fake promises on fixing austerity have delivered a Tory government .

..... but labour are deeply complicit in moves towards NHS privatisation, moving control of the economy to the Bank of England, failure to control the banks, failures to build enough housing, compliance with and plans for austerity, military aggression etc, so maybe it is a case of" reap what you sow", with the Scottish left and elsewhere.

[Flosshilde]

It's a populist party and isn't scared of talking about immigration. That inevitably draws some of the wrong people. And as you note, the UKIP expels those sorts of people.

When they make public announcements & become an embarrasment they do, but who knows how many are lurking in the woodwork?

[Flosshilde]

..... but labour are deeply complicit in moves towards NHS privatisation, moving control of the economy to the Bank of England, failure to control the banks, failures to build enough housing, compliance with and plans for austerity, military aggression etc, so maybe it is a case of" reap what you sow", with the Scottish left and elsewhere.

I rather agree with both Barbi and team. A backlash against Labour in Scotland has been brewing for some time - the SNP won a majority in Holyrood in the last election, in a system that had been designed not to allow that to happen. People were disillusioned by Blairite New Labour (as they were in England - the majority in Westminster fell with each election). The SNP has had four years to don 'progressive' clothing & adopt populist policies, all the time saying how much better they were than the Westminster government (not borne out when you look at it in detail). The independence campaign was the icing on the cake - they might not have won it but they certainly cemented their position as the radical alternative. Unfortunately their rather strident campaign to be able to 'hold the government's feet to the fire' (an unpleasant image - redolent of Tom Brown's Schooldays bullying) over the Smith Commission, and to be Labour's conscience played into the Tories' hands and I think the Tories' scare mongering about the SNP tail wagging the Labour dog had an impact in England.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

So the foolish Scottish left voting for the SNP with their illiberal Blairite policies and fake promises on fixing austerity have delivered a Tory government .

No they haven't. If every single seat in Scotland had been won by Labour - if 100% of the electorate in Scotland had voted Labour, there would still be a Tory government. 232 + 56 = 288, still fewer than the Tories' 331. If everybody who hadn't voted Tory had voted Labour there'd still be a Tory government - add all the opposition seats together and the Tories still have a majority of 12 seats. Stop blaming the Scots, Barbi - it's the English and Welsh who got us where we are.

[MrGongGong]

. So the foolish Scottish left voting for the SNP

Foolish?

I think they voted for something other than the Tories or the Pseudo-tories.

[Beef Oven!]

I'd check again...

You get typos with modern electronic equipment, it's not a grammar issue - get up to date.

[Anastasius]

So to sum up the consensus of the forum, it's a big vote for PR but not if UKIP get 80+ seats.

So much for democracy, then. Smacks more of bigotry.

[MrGongGong]

You get typos with modern electronic equipment, it's not a grammar issue - get up to date.

It is 1956 isn't it?

[MrGongGong]

So to sum up the consensus of the forum, it's a big vote for PR but not if UKIP get 80+ seats.

So much for democracy, then. Smacks more of bigotry.

"Democracy" ?

All depends on what you mean by that word.
(Not wanting to invoke Godwin by referring to 'democratically' elected regimes from the past....)

[Beef Oven!]

When they make public announcements & become an embarrasment they do, but who knows how many are lurking in the woodwork?

Some lovely prejudiced thoughts about people here.

[Beef Oven!]

It is 1956 isn't it?

No, back then we had two big, well supported political parties that would vie for power and the outcome was decided by a sizeable group of people known as 'floating voter'. And Gong hadn't even been invented yet.

Now the UKIP are a brand new significant political force. The biggest party in the UK in the EU, and gaining the the third highest number of votes in the most recent general election. This would have given a whopping 83 seats under PR.

I imagine that the UKIP is so pleased that people want to talk about them so much!

[french frank]

The standards are dropping here. Can we get back to more specifically analytical posts?

One of the points that I would argue, from local experience (it may be different elsewhere) is - and Jean won't like this, I'm afraid - the insignificance of the Green rise. Here in Bristol they have been making inroads on the council. But they've done this by taking Liberal Democrat-held seats. These seats had been won over 30 years of community campaigning and have been lost because the LibDems slumped, for the obvious reasons. In Bristol there were rich pickings because many of the Lib Dem seats hadn't been long held. When they've all been won by the Greens (or whoever), what then?

Parliamentary seats have traditionally also been won on the back of successful local campaigning - such as the ring of S. London/Surrey seats where the Lib Dems successfully ran councils: Sutton, Kingston, Twickenham - and Bristol West, where the Lib Dems briefly took control of the city council (and were eventually replaced by minority Labour when the Conservative councillors voted them in).

The point is that many parliamentary seats were won because of decades of hard work by local volunteers and the successful running of their councils. The bad news for the Greens is that having held the parliamentary seat in Brighton they also lost 9 council seats, and minority control, at a time when the party was held to be doing well. But there were no Lib Dem seats to be won anyway. There will come a time when there will be not enough LibDem seats anywhere where they can build up their vote and win.

Liverpool council, I take it, was eventually lost by the Lib Dems because they were unpopular? I forget the circs - a whiff of scandal?

[Flosshilde]

Stop blaming the Scots, Barbi - it's the English and Welsh who got us where we are.

But as I said above the SNP campaign played into Tory hands. There is evidence that the 'fear' of the SNP led some English voters to abandon Labour & vote either UKIP or Tory.