Posted                          

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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No. And it's perfectly possible for an "everyone except the DUP, UKIP and the Tories" arrangement to enable Miliband to form an administration. He doesn't need a majority, nor even to lead the largest party to do this; he just needs to be able to survive a vote of no confidence and get the Queen's Speech through, AIUI.

Personally, I think this is the most likely outcome next week, although I suspect Miliband will in fact have a slightly higher number of seats than Cameron.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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I suppose what worries me is it's possible next week for the Tories to have a majority of the seats in England, and the plurality of the overall vote... How long's a government going to last that *doesn't* include them, in the teeth of the press at its finest?

And before someone says, "well the SNP could have every seat in Scotland and be ignored, why's it different?" - because the SNP could have every seat in Scotland on 4% of the overall UK vote... Try ignoring what the majority of England might think they've voted for and watch the fireworks - that way chaos lies.

Next week is going to be interesting...

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Originally posted by Matt Black:

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Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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No. And it's perfectly possible for an "everyone except the DUP, UKIP and the Tories" arrangement to enable Miliband to form an administration. He doesn't need a majority, nor even to lead the largest party to do this; he just needs to be able to survive a vote of no confidence and get the Queen's Speech through, AIUI.

Personally, I think this is the most likely outcome next week, although I suspect Miliband will in fact have a slightly higher number of seats than Cameron.

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Miliband may not be as 'vulnerable' as some are painting him should that be the case: all he has to do is say to whatever assortment of the SNP, LibDems, Plaid and the Greens that he needs to have a majority, "either back me up or I'll resign and hand the country over to the Tory-UKIP-DUP axis of evil on the other side of the House - do you really want that?"

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
By the way, I'm still waiting for the data tables behind today's Ipsos-Mori poll that puts the Tories 5 points ahead on a 7 points swing from labour. By my reckoning I think that's the Conservatives ahead by 1-6 points in virtually every poll this week; does anyone really know what's going to happen next week, or is everyone (and I include the pollsters in this) just guessing?

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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I suppose what worries me is it's possible next week for the Tories to have a majority of the seats in England, and the plurality of the overall vote... How long's a government going to last that *doesn't* include them, in the teeth of the press at its finest?

And before someone says, "well the SNP could have every seat in Scotland and be ignored, why's it different?" - because the SNP could have every seat in Scotland on 4% of the overall UK vote... Try ignoring what the majority of England might think they've voted for and watch the fireworks - that way chaos lies.

Next week is going to be interesting...

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I would think that Labour would cite Churchill in 51, who had fewer votes, but more MPs, or of course, 1924.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
There is also the myth that people don't like second elections, and will punish whoever causes one. Maybe, it's correct, quite a gamble though to bring down a minority govt.

But Cameron may get his late swing, or is getting it now.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I would think that Labour would cite Churchill in 51, who had fewer votes, but more MPs, or of course, 1924.

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

Personally, my hunch is that Cameron is indeed getting his late swing. But the polls are so febrile that if I was being totally honest I'd have to say I'm suspicious of anyone, including me(!), that claims to have a clue!

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Robert Armin:
Suppose the Tories are the largest party after the election, but well short of an outright majority (my own prediction). Would any party want to form a coalition with them? The Libs were well and truly shafted from day one, so I can't see anybody willing to take the risk of going in with them.

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:
The difference between now and 1974 is that whoever forms a minority government does not have the opportunity to go to the public again to shore up his position, as Wilson did in October 1974. In order to generate an early election, a minority government first has to lose a confidence vote, which is a very different dynamic from the small positive swing that Wilson achieved on the back of "we're making progress."
[/QB]

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
how hilarious if it gave the dweeb 5 years as PM.

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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Originally posted by Jay-Emm:
could you have a situation where the government party desperately tries to vote itself incompetent and the others are desperate to shore up the governments support.

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• To have some early successes, or have the other guys implode
• For the public mood to swing strongly in favour of the government
• For the government to somehow maneuver the opposition parties in to a no confidence vote
• ...even though the opposition would know that they were pretty unpopular withe the public
• And for pretty much every one of the opposition MPs to show up and vote the government down.

Posted                      

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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The first is possible. The second I simply cannot envisage. Ten years of that twat and the country will have gone so far to the dogs that it'll be a case of "last one out turn off the lights".

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Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
I think one advantage of open primaries is that it allows the natural supporters of a party have their say on the candidate, rather than limiting that say to the relatively small number of paid-up members of the party.

If that decision is limited just to the paid-up members that's a form of dis-enfranchisement for those for who even a $10 annual membership fee would be a considerable investment, not to mention the time commitment that membership or active support of a party would often entail.

On the other hand, an open primary could result in the selection of a candidate that those who will actually be actively campaigning for may not have prefered.

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Originally posted by Sober Preacher's Kid:

First, I have never seen a membership fee be a barrier to party membership. My own party will knock the fee down to $5 for "unwaged" (polite way of saying unemployed and broke). For an entire year.

Second, membership in a political party in Canada (and in every other Westminster system in the Commonwealth) entails no time commitments, no requirement to volunteer and no requirement to contribute further monetarily. I will ensure you receive copious fundraising appeals though!

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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The first is possible. The second I simply cannot envisage. Ten years of that twat and the country will have gone so far to the dogs that it'll be a case of "last one out turn off the lights".

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
So now Miliband has said he won't cut a deal with the SNP, where does that leave us with a hung Parliament in a week's time?

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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The first is possible. The second I simply cannot envisage. Ten years of that twat and the country will have gone so far to the dogs that it'll be a case of "last one out turn off the lights".

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This says more about you than it does about Ed Milliband. EM is significantly brighter than George & Dave (he has taught at Harvard, not just studied there), he is the first UK politician for 30 years to have the guts to tell Rupert Murdoch where to stick it, and he prevented David "Dave" Cameron form involving us in another ruinous foreign war in Syria. These to my mind makes him better qualified to lead the country than the present shower of entitled posh boys.

EM is popularly supposed to have an image problem. This IME is only the case among those who are silly enough to believe what they read in the papers. He does not look remotely weird, he looks very much like many people I know and work with. He has an unusual voice, this may be at least partly due to his highly peripatetic upbringing (a good preparation for political leadership in globalised world IMO). He also may have been subject to misguided efforts to make him sound more authoritative.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
So now Miliband has said he won't cut a deal with the SNP, where does that leave us with a hung Parliament in a week's time?

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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The first is possible. The second I simply cannot envisage. Ten years of that twat and the country will have gone so far to the dogs that it'll be a case of "last one out turn off the lights".

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This says more about you than it does about Ed Milliband. EM is significantly brighter than George & Dave (he has taught at Harvard, not just studied there), he is the first UK politician for 30 years to have the guts to tell Rupert Murdoch where to stick it, and he prevented David "Dave" Cameron form involving us in another ruinous foreign war in Syria. These to my mind makes him better qualified to lead the country than the present shower of entitled posh boys.

EM is popularly supposed to have an image problem. This IME is only the case among those who are silly enough to believe what they read in the papers. He does not look remotely weird, he looks very much like many people I know and work with. He has an unusual voice, this may be at least partly due to his highly peripatetic upbringing (a good preparation for political leadership in globalised world IMO). He also may have been subject to misguided efforts to make him sound more authoritative.

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I'm not sure we can draw inferences about Miliband and Cameron's relative intelligence from the fact that Miliband has taught at Harvard. Has Cameron ever tried to teach at Harvard?

However, they did both do the same degree at Oxford, where, IIRC, Miliband scraped a 2.1 and Cameron got a first.

I wait with bated breath to see where a Miliband govt takes us with regard to the Murdoch press. He stood up to them, although, again if you believe the rumours, that was only *after* he'd tried unsuccessfully to ingratiate himself with Murdoch. What is clear though is that the SNP are completely in bed with Murdoch (see this week's Private Eye, no link online, and the endorsement of the SNP yesterday by the Scottish Sun), so in a world where he needs the SNP's votes on everything is he going to be able to do anything about Murdoch in reality?

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

quote:

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Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
You can imagine Tory faces if Miliband got 5 years in power because of their law. And if he was popular, another 5!

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The first is possible. The second I simply cannot envisage. Ten years of that twat and the country will have gone so far to the dogs that it'll be a case of "last one out turn off the lights".

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This says more about you than it does about Ed Milliband. EM is significantly brighter than George & Dave (he has taught at Harvard, not just studied there), he is the first UK politician for 30 years to have the guts to tell Rupert Murdoch where to stick it, and he prevented David "Dave" Cameron form involving us in another ruinous foreign war in Syria. These to my mind makes him better qualified to lead the country than the present shower of entitled posh boys.

EM is popularly supposed to have an image problem. This IME is only the case among those who are silly enough to believe what they read in the papers. He does not look remotely weird, he looks very much like many people I know and work with. He has an unusual voice, this may be at least partly due to his highly peripatetic upbringing (a good preparation for political leadership in globalised world IMO). He also may have been subject to misguided efforts to make him sound more authoritative.

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I'm not sure we can draw inferences about Miliband and Cameron's relative intelligence from the fact that Miliband has taught at Harvard. Has Cameron ever tried to teach at Harvard?

However, they did both do the same degree at Oxford, where, IIRC, Miliband scraped a 2.1 and Cameron got a first.

I wait with bated breath to see where a Miliband govt takes us with regard to the Murdoch press. He stood up to them, although, again if you believe the rumours, that was only *after* he'd tried unsuccessfully to ingratiate himself with Murdoch. What is clear though is that the SNP are completely in bed with Murdoch (see this week's Private Eye, no link online, and the endorsement of the SNP yesterday by the Scottish Sun), so in a world where he needs the SNP's votes on everything is he going to be able to do anything about Murdoch in reality?

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You are quite right to take issue with my rather sketchy argument, I was reacting hastily to a revolting piece of invective. however I do believe that Cameron has unthinkingly ridden the escalator of privilege; his abilities were polished up to their maximum potential at Eton and he hasn't moved on from that milieu. Milliband also had a relatively privileged upbringing, of course, but he strikes me as someone who has seen more of the world and thought more about what he has seen.

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Posted                         

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
So now Miliband has said he won't cut a deal with the SNP, where does that leave us with a hung Parliament in a week's time?

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:
... One's a privileged stockbroker belt upper middle class Tory, the other's basically Hampstead Labour royalty. How far, genuinely, can either of them really relate to anyone outside their own differently gilded spheres? ...

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Originally posted by Enoch:

I have to admit that I do remain uneasy about fratricide. Admittedly it's metaphorical fratricide and not the actual criminal sort, but I'm not the only person who hasn't forgotten. [/QB]

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by rolyn:
... I am though reminded of the short-lived Labour leader Michael Foot, a truly principled and seemingly good chap. ...

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Originally posted by Touchstone:
I don't think it' very fair to hold against EM the fact that he won a free and fair democratic election in which his brother was another candidate.

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Posted                      

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

I have to admit that I do remain uneasy about fratricide. Admittedly it's metaphorical fratricide and not the actual criminal sort, but I'm not the only person who hasn't forgotten.

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I don't think it' very fair to hold against EM the fact that he won a free and fair democratic election in which his brother was another candidate. [/QB]

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Enoch:

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Originally posted by rolyn:
... I am though reminded of the short-lived Labour leader Michael Foot, a truly principled and seemingly good chap. ...

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How old are you?

He may have been delightful as a person, but as a party leader, as a person to inspire those who weren't Labour voters to vote Labour, and as potential PM material, he was hopeless.

Never, never, forget that in the 1983 election, his party may have held onto 269 seats, but that was on just over 27% of the vote. That is to say, he and his party hardly managed to persuade a quarter of those that voted to vote for them.

He's not by any means, the only duff party leader who never became PM, but as duff ones go, he was pretty duff.


Nor were his principles quite as pristine as they're made out to be. The prejudices of his lifelong political allegiances either blinded him or wilfully closed his eyes to levels of bullying by union magnates of the workforces they claimed to represent that objectively nobody should have been prepared to stomach.

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Originally posted by Matt Black:
209 seats for Labour in '83, IIRC.

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I don't think it' very fair to hold against EM the fact that he won a free and fair democratic election in which his brother was another candidate.

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Thanks for that - I needed cheering up!

Which bit about the leadership election in 2010 escaped your notice:

• that Ed Miliband didn't win a majority among either MPs or MEPs
• that he came only third among constituency parties
• that his union backers broke the party's own rules about sending out a voting recommendation with ballot papers
• that party rules were broken so the same union backers - GMB and UNITE - had people on the panel tasked with looking at the breach
• that there was good evidence of phantom voters among the union votes - that is, people 'voting' who weren't members

Posted                      

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Originally posted by betjemaniac:

quote:

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Originally posted by Touchstone:

quote:

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Originally posted by Enoch:

I have to admit that I do remain uneasy about fratricide. Admittedly it's metaphorical fratricide and not the actual criminal sort, but I'm not the only person who hasn't forgotten.

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I don't think it' very fair to hold against EM the fact that he won a free and fair democratic election in which his brother was another candidate.

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No it wouldn't be, but where the charge does stick rather more damningly is the allegation in the Miliband biography that the stab in the back came rather earlier on, when he apparently counselled David in the name of party loyalty not to oust Brown because the time wasn't right, but all the time because he was calculating that he wasn't ready to mount his own challenge, which he kept very quiet about. John Cruddas' advice to David was to belt him one when it all came out, although the language he allegedly used was rather more colourful...

The biog was written by a couple of New Statesmen staffers, so shouldn't really otherwise be regarded as hostile. [/QB]

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And anyone who thinks that by voting for Ed they'll persuade David back into UK politics in some role can think again: the bitterness is still there, still very raw and particularly between the two wives.

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Originally posted by L'organist:
posted by touchstone

quote:

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I don't think it' very fair to hold against EM the fact that he won a free and fair democratic election in which his brother was another candidate.

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Thanks for that - I needed cheering up!

Which bit about the leadership election in 2010 escaped your notice:

• that Ed Miliband didn't win a majority among either MPs or MEPs
• that he came only third among constituency parties
• that his union backers broke the party's own rules about sending out a voting recommendation with ballot papers
• that party rules were broken so the same union backers - GMB and UNITE - had people on the panel tasked with looking at the breach
• that there was good evidence of phantom voters among the union votes - that is, people 'voting' who weren't members

.

And all that before you get to the "gentleman's agreement" he had with the brother he stabbed in the back.

You can choose to believe that the relationship between Ed and David is on the mend - I can tell you that it took powerful arm-twisting to get David to go to Ed's wedding and he and Louise didn't go to the party afterwards.

And anyone who thinks that by voting for Ed they'll persuade David back into UK politics in some role can think again: the bitterness is still there, still very raw and particularly between the two wives.

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Posted                       

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Originally posted by Callan:
Originally posted by l'Organist:

quote:

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And anyone who thinks that by voting for Ed they'll persuade David back into UK politics in some role can think again: the bitterness is still there, still very raw and particularly between the two wives.

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Oh, good point! I totally base what small leverage I have in the affairs of the realm on considerations as to whether or not the wives of two politicians see eye-to-eye. Personally, I withdrew my support from the Tories in 1996 when I heard that UTTER BITCH Mrs Caroline Waldegrave had inadvertently spilt Pimms over the dress of Lady Mackay of Clashfern and then FAILED TO APOLOGISE. The subsequent defeat for the Conservative Party and the loss of William Waldegrave's Parliamentary seat was apt retribution for her total disrespect for Lady Mackay and, indeed, Laura Ashley.

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