Well who saw that coming?

MonkeyMonster

elbowloh wrote:

The majority of the UK are currently for an exit..

Actually I think atm there is more pro europe thoughts than not across uk - but we will see how it all pans out anyway

greg66_tri_v2.0

BigMat wrote:

Il Principe wrote:

jamesco wrote:

Cameron has chosen a policy of austerity which has wrecked the UKs chance of an economic recovery. That is a failure of leadership. What is the strike against Miliband? That he was photographed looking awkward eating a sandwich?

Erm We are undergoing an economic recovery, perhaps not as quickly as we'd like but the economy is on the up. Certainly most of the employees at our small business were hoping Balls & co did not get in (and the bike trade is notoriously badly paid!).

Strikes against Miliband:

1. He's not his Brother
2. He worked in the treasury team under Brown and never won the Financial Crisis argument
3. He has no Charisma (shouldn't be relevant but I'm afraid it is in 2015 Britain)
4: He's as privileged as the Tories - Primrose Hill, Oxford, Harvard, LSE, career politician (again this shouldn't really matter but it does). He's no more in touch with 'hard working families' than Dave & George are.

4. doesn't really make sense. I had schoolmates end up at Oxbridge. Juts because you are bright enough to get there without being from a top public school doesn't make you "privileged". The fact that half, probably more, of the Tory front bench went to Eton or similar is a far more relevant differentiator than what University they managed to get into. Anyway, it only becomes a negative if it looks like they have progressed to where they are by dint of background rather than ability, which isn't necessarily always the case.

The hard working families thing is a tired old cliché and one that I wish Labour had avoided, it would have been nice if Miliband could have had free reign to say what he really believes and not pander to the anti-welfare, anti-immigration brigade. Make them at least seem like a credible alternative that actually stands for something.

I think it (4) makes sense. Primrose Hill is *very* expensive. And whilst Oxbridge isn't per se a mark of privilege, post grad at Harvard and the LSE indicates a chunk of money was available to him to pursue those options.

OTOH I never really understand why Eton is so demonised over any other fee paying public school. None of them are cheap (and even then there are plenty of families who make genuine financial sacrifice to send their children to fee paying schools; not everyone has a magic money tree in the garden). Is it the clothing?

The Rookie

Surrey Commuter wrote:

no need to be inflammatory when he merely guilty of not giving some background. There has been a big movement for an Independent Scotland (they would be very upset at you comparing them to other regions) which is resisted by nearly all major parties. The fact that the SNP (in favour of independence) have nearly every seat in Scotland but no power, greatly strengthens their argument for independence. And so greatly increases the chances of another referendum.

This isn't a Scottish referendum, or a vote for a Scottish Parliament, or had you missed that, it was for the UK government, as such they have the power their number of seats deserve and arguably more than the number of votes does if you compare to other parties.

If any other region wanted independence (Cornwall for example) would you think the same, how many minority independence parties would you then give extra powers to just to keep them happy, before long every region would be asking for independence just to people like you treat them as a special case, oh but then they would all be a special case and thus the same and not a special case - Don't think you thought that out did you? Stupid argument does sound entirely fair.

rick_chasey

Thought Clegg's resignation speech was good, though maybe I would say that.

It was a lot of hard work and long hours for the liberal cause, and pretty frustrating that early mistakes and errors totally eclipsed the decent achievements (given the number of seats) the party made over the last 5 years. I found it sad that when helping the campaign I heard again and again responsibility for tuition fees at the door of Clegg, despite it being a tory policy lib dems conceded on, and yet the wins in gay marriage, apprenticeships, tax breaks at the bottom end of the scale - not the top, mental health progress were totally overlooked.

Those were costly mistakes in 2010/11. Costly costly mistakes.

I can't blame the Lib Dems for getting into the coalition. What's the point of being a party if you don't take the chance to govern? They got taken to the cleaners in that first 12 months, and with hindsight leaving some of the big beasts out of the government was more of a mistake than we thought at the time.

I don't think the current campaign helped all that much with hindsight (we'll go left or right, we're flexible - rather than focussing on the liberal values) but I guess we can now see the writing was on the wall for a lot longer than we'd thought.

I've endured a lot of smug faces from my entirely tory office today. *sighs*

TheStone

I expect Ed to resign today.

Labour need a major rethink and that should be (for them) a shift to the left. They need to dump these ideological career politicians and focus back on their union/worker roots. Their problem is that they're really no different to the Tories. Even the Tory 'cuts' were less than Labour had planned. Ed/Cameron/Gideon .. they're all the same people.

Not sure who they have in their ranks to fill that roll?

gbsahne001

dhope wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

The fact that a party with 94.9% of the seats in Scotland will yield little or no power in the government doesn't sound awfully democratic to me.

The point could also be made that a party with only 5% of the country's vote shouldn't be able to dictate policy

Or about 12.6% of the votes UKIP got.
Not that I favour UKIP in the slightest, but their 3.7m votes for 1 seat vs 56 seats for 1.5m votes is slightly silly.

agreed but with figure corrected above

TheStone

Rick Chasey wrote:

Those were costly mistakes in 2010/11. Costly costly mistakes.

They were a minor partner, but had a lot of power. Traded it all in for that stupid voting referendum, rather than things that actually mattered.

But really, they've always been the alternative/protest vote and UKIP filled that space.

ddraver

Rick Chasey wrote:

Thought Clegg's resignation speech was good, though maybe I would say that.

It was a lot of hard work and long hours for the liberal cause, and pretty frustrating that early mistakes and errors totally eclipsed the decent achievements (given the number of seats) the party made over the last 5 years. I found it sad that when helping the campaign I heard again and again responsibility for tuition fees at the door of Clegg, despite it being a tory policy lib dems conceded on, and yet the wins in gay marriage, apprenticeships, tax breaks at the bottom end of the scale - not the top, mental health progress were totally overlooked.

Those were costly mistakes in 2010/11. Costly costly mistakes.

I can't blame the Lib Dems for getting into the coalition. What's the point of being a party if you don't take the chance to govern? They got taken to the cleaners in that first 12 months, and with hindsight leaving some of the big beasts out of the government was more of a mistake than we thought at the time.

I don't think the current campaign helped all that much with hindsight (we'll go left or right, we're flexible - rather than focussing on the liberal values) but I guess we can now see the writing was on the wall for a lot longer than we'd thought.

I've endured a lot of smug faces from my entirely tory office today. *sighs*

Well put! I think at the end of the day the GB political system - on a national scale at least - simply isn't mature enough to be able to handle coalition government. The LDs have taken a punishment which far outmatched the crime.

rick_chasey

TheStone wrote:

But really, they've always been the alternative/protest vote and UKIP filled that space.

P!ss off.

Lib Dems lost the majority of their seats to Tories and SNP. Nothing to do with UKIP.

Don't confuse the two. Just because UKIP are the third biggest party and Lib Dems were, doesn't mean people who voted Lib Dem turned to UKIP. Ridiculous comment.

dhope

gbsahne wrote:

dhope wrote:

gbsahne wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

The fact that a party with 94.9% of the seats in Scotland will yield little or no power in the government doesn't sound awfully democratic to me.

The point could also be made that a party with only 5% of the country's vote shouldn't be able to dictate policy

Or about 12.6% of the votes UKIP got.
Not that I favour UKIP in the slightest, but their 3.7m votes for 1 seat vs 56 seats for 1.5m votes is slightly silly.

agreed but with figure corrected above

I meant that the SNP got approximately 40% of the number of votes that UKIP got

surrey_commuter

The Rookie wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

no need to be inflammatory when he merely guilty of not giving some background. There has been a big movement for an Independent Scotland (they would be very upset at you comparing them to other regions) which is resisted by nearly all major parties. The fact that the SNP (in favour of independence) have nearly every seat in Scotland but no power, greatly strengthens their argument for independence. And so greatly increases the chances of another referendum.

This isn't a Scottish referendum, or a vote for a Scottish Parliament, or had you missed that, it was for the UK government, as such they have the power their number of seats deserve and arguably more than the number of votes does if you compare to other parties.

If any other region wanted independence (Cornwall for example) would you think the same, how many minority independence parties would you then give extra powers to just to keep them happy, before long every region would be asking for independence just to people like you treat them as a special case, oh but then they would all be a special case and thus the same and not a special case - Don't think you thought that out did you? Stupid argument does sound entirely fair.

I have not told you what I think and am not sure who you think I am when you suggest I am in a position to give them more - for what it is worth I would happily see them leave the Union and would encourage them to do so.

For the SNP everything is about independence and devolving more powers.

I will refrain from responding to your provocative tone but maybe you could explain why you are so aggressive and angry about this subject.

UndercoverElephant

The Rookie wrote:

UndercoverElephant wrote:

The Rookie wrote:

Interesting stat' with only a few more to declare, SNP with less than 1.5M votes got 56 seats, UKIP with 3.75 currently have only one.

SNP may have lots of seats, but their share of the Scottish vote isn't that big, Berwickshire nearly went Tory (SNP won by 328 seats out of circa 45000 votes cast) which would have been amusing had they had more seats in Scotland than Labour after all that Labour have been saying about Scotland.

Saving grace is that the SNP will not be wielding an amount of power out of all proportion to anything that could be considered democratic.

The fact that a party with 94.9% of the seats in Scotland will yield little or no power in the government doesn't sound awfully democratic to me.

Well what about any other region, North East (labour), North West (labour), Home Counties (Conservative), what a stupid argument that was! They have 56 seats of 650 and get the same powers as that deserves, the fact they are in one region amongst many others you could use is irrelevant.

I could be even more churlish and point out that to have less than 9% of the MPs representing 32% of the land mass of the UK is also unfair, but I guess we can go with population since that suits you better.

The simple fact is that out of the 59 seats worth of people who *could* vote for the SNP, 56 did. Is that because we're all pro-independence? No, but 45% of us were in September. Perhaps it's because up here we have a real alternative to the same-old politics. We don't just have multiple shades of similar policies like England. Would the North East and North West have voted for policies like these if they were available? Possibly. Wales and Northern Ireland? Again possibly.

rick_chasey

ddraver wrote:

Well put! I think at the end of the day the GB political system - on a national scale at least - simply isn't mature enough to be able to handle coalition government. The LDs have taken a punishment which far outmatched the crime.

The same happens in Continental Europe to be fair.

The smaller parties of bigger coalitions (which has often been the liberals recently) have taken a battering.

Brits like to think they're different to Europeans, but they're a lot closer then they'd ever admit to.

ddraver

yup! don't I know it...

elbowloh

I do think that Labour need to actually stand for something rather than just go with whatever thinks will win them votes, even if it means they don't win the next election either. They just come across as Tory-lite.

Very pleased that Farage has resigned. Think Clegg is actually a decent bloke, but they are really playing the price for jumping into bed with the tories. The same way that Labour has suffered for being seen as on the Tories side during the Scottish independence referendum. Tbh, I never really had much faith in Milliband as a leader, the party screwed up when they picked him rather than his brother. Who's going to succeed Ed? Who knows, but don't really like the look of any of the potential candidates.

craker

One scenario I heard on the radio this morning is

EU Referendum -> UK leaves EU -> Scottish Independance Referendum #2 -> Scotland leaves UK and remains in EU.

What a crazy five years this will turn out to be.

OTOH I overheard a conversation between our receptionist and one of the managers here where she was explaining why she voted UKIP. It just sounded racist. Said manager could be heard squirming in his shoes and shuffled away without getting into the debate as that's how we do politics in a software house.

Anonymous

I voted conservative but I am very much with RC on this. I am not a dyed in the wool blue and am probably more of a champagne socialist (more of a Prosecco socialist, really). The conservatives played a blinder by taking all the credit and a palming all the blame to Lib Dems for all the good or bad policies. I think they did a great job (except cable who is frankly, awful) of keeping some of the Conservative policies in check.

The complaints that the economy didn't grow quicker don't really resonate with me. I think that slow and steady probably wins the race in the long run.

anonymousblackfg

Well, it got rid of that Lemon Ed Davey, i'm not sure the new chap will be any better though.

As for the EU, surely Cameron must be pretty happy, I beleive his referendum was a sop to try and keep UKIPers on board, now he has all of Scotland, his normal opposition, the champaign socialist and defecting lib dems to keep him in without loosing too much face.

Hopefully the leadership campaigns can give us someone with a bit of leadership instead of these upper class career politicians.

rick_chasey

coriordan wrote:

The complaints that the economy didn't grow quicker don't really resonate with me. I think that slow and steady probably wins the race in the long run.

Have a read of Paul Krugman (Nobel prize winning economist - well respected) on his take of the UK recovery.

Google throws up plenty of results.

He wrote this, this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/opini ... nking.html

jedster

"I think it (4) makes sense. Primrose Hill is *very* expensive. And whilst Oxbridge isn't per se a mark of privilege, post grad at Harvard and the LSE indicates a chunk of money was available to him to pursue those options. "

Of course it does. His father was a close mate of all the labour aristocracy. The boys were bounced on the knees of cabinet ministers in their Primrose Hill dining room. It's a different sort of privilege but it is definitely privilege and detachment from the "real" world.

"OTOH I never really understand why Eton is so demonised over any other fee paying public school. None of them are cheap (and even then there are plenty of families who make genuine financial sacrifice to send their children to fee paying schools; not everyone has a magic money tree in the garden). Is it the clothing?"

A bit the clothing but it also that Eton has an outstanding record of producing British Cabinet Ministers - some of that is an admirable focus on public service but it does feel like a secret network.

(FWIW I went to bog standard comps)

jedster

BTW - I was gobsmacked. thought the polls would understate the tory vote a bit but nowhere near that much

turbotommy

I've avoided talking politics in this forum so far but I just wanted to chime in to say how truly gutted I am with the result. In some moments I feel labour have failed dreadfully in getting their message out, and in other moments I feel the electorate have failed dreadfully for not looking beyond the thin veneer and actually seeing how the cogs are turning.

My only consolation is in knowing that for good or bad, I think the next few years are going to be very interesting on many different fronts.

jedster

" I feel labour have failed dreadfully in getting their message out, and in other moments I feel the electorate have failed dreadfully"

Well I totally disagree. I think voters saw through the garbage economic policies Milliband proposed. They realised that his instincts are that of an interventionist statist which are doomed to failure in the modern world

davmaggs

Rick Chasey wrote:

coriordan wrote:

The complaints that the economy didn't grow quicker don't really resonate with me. I think that slow and steady probably wins the race in the long run.

Have a read of Paul Krugman (Nobel prize winning economist - well respected) on his take of the UK recovery.

Google throws up plenty of results.

He wrote this, this morning: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/opini ... nking.html

Krugman is always that name posted up, and yet his own predictions have often been very wrong.

For example according to him Greece and Ireland were days from dropping out of the Euro, it was a dead cert and he absolutely knew, but sadly for him several years have gone by. His own memory is often selective to.

rick_chasey

Sure, but his comment on counter cyclical fiscal policy, and this:

"Mr. Wren-Lewis suggests that it has a lot to do with the power of misleading analogies between governments and households, and also with the malign influence of economists working for the financial industry"

is hardly controversial by any standard of conventional mainstream economics.

Even his comment that Britain in 2010 wasn't even that fiscally profligate holds up to scrutiny.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/0 ... egion=Body

What he's saying isn't particularly novel. And he's right that he echoes the comments of most economists.

He says it in the context of the slowest economic recovery for 300 years, and when we look at the economy that rebounded the quickest - guess what - it was the country that had the biggest fiscal stimulus package.

greg66_tri_v2.0

Rick Chasey wrote:

Thought Clegg's resignation speech was good, though maybe I would say that.

It was a lot of hard work and long hours for the liberal cause, and pretty frustrating that early mistakes and errors totally eclipsed the decent achievements (given the number of seats) the party made over the last 5 years. I found it sad that when helping the campaign I heard again and again responsibility for tuition fees at the door of Clegg, despite it being a tory policy lib dems conceded on, and yet the wins in gay marriage, apprenticeships, tax breaks at the bottom end of the scale - not the top, mental health progress were totally overlooked.

Those were costly mistakes in 2010/11. Costly costly mistakes.

I can't blame the Lib Dems for getting into the coalition. What's the point of being a party if you don't take the chance to govern? They got taken to the cleaners in that first 12 months, and with hindsight leaving some of the big beasts out of the government was more of a mistake than we thought at the time.

I don't think the current campaign helped all that much with hindsight (we'll go left or right, we're flexible - rather than focussing on the liberal values) but I guess we can now see the writing was on the wall for a lot longer than we'd thought.

I've endured a lot of smug faces from my entirely tory office today. *sighs*

Much as I enjoy the revered sport of Chasey-baiting, this isn't the time for it.

As I've said before, Clegg did the right thing and showed enormous integrity in 2010 in siding with the largest party rather than his party's more natural idealogical partners. I think the LDs were a good moderating influence on the Cons during government at a time when the country was simply not ready to have full blown Con policies. I suspect history will judge him very favourably.

This time, the LDs were piggy in the middle but without the novelty factor/Clegg mania off the back of the TV debates. They must have acquired a large volume of floating voters in 2010 and frankly they were never going to stick. To a degree they have suffered from tactical voting to block the dreaded Lab/SNP axis of evil; to a degree they're lost some of their core support because they sided with the Tories, but to be fair they've lost support because this time around the country has an appetite for a Con maj govt. They'll be back. One day.

surrey_commuter

Why does nobody seem to think that debt matters - that is a serious question as nobody seems to have a plan for paying off the £1.56 trillion. The annual cost in interest is £43bn. Instead they get the annual deficit down a little and all start talking about spending more money.

To me it seems obvious that if you keep increasing the total debt it will only end badly. So if max total tax take is limited to 45% it will require a major rethink in what we expect the state to provide. The sooner these decisions are made then the less painful they will be.

bompington

Rick Chasey wrote:

Paul Krugman (well known lefty prophet with a knack for making predictions that turn out to be nonsense) on his take of the UK recovery.

FTFY

rick_chasey

Greg66 Tri v2.0 wrote:

some stuff.

I hope it isn't quite like that.

Deep deep down I still hope that there are more 'liberal' voters out there, who need to be persuaded to connect their liberal values with an X in the right box, rather than there just not being many potential liberal voters out there.

It's too soon and raw to consider the possibility that there aren't enough liberal voters out there, and that the vote reflects their natural political persuasion, rather than the issues beyond that.

(If that makes sense, I'm quite tired).

bompington

anthdci wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

Having gone through this process a number of times I can assure you that none of the above will happen....

Well put it this way, the charity I used to work for had 15 people there when I was there 5 years ago and had been expanding, doing more great work in the community and jobs. We had been providing subsidized services to other charities, (finance, IT support etc), whilst doing community development and regeneration projects, paid for through various grants.

Roll forward to today, there are 3 members of staff and look to be closing up in the next few months because there is no funding for those projects, other charities that were supported have either gone or scaled back and can't afford services.

5 years of more of the same will lead there being nothing left.

At least the election result means that there are likely to be a few less zero hours contracts around...

I do have genuine sympathy for your charity - I was made redundant from a 3rd sector employer a couple of years ago, for the usual reasons: we weren't getting the income we used to, so something had to give... but since when did charities have the automatic right to the taxpayer's money?
There is a fair bit of evidence that the Tory approach has actually more successful at reducing poverty.