Politics

[Makom 0]

2007 Labour lose control of Holyrood and say they will listen and learn from their mistakes.

 

2011 SNP gain majority in Holyrood. The voting system for which was specifically designed to avoid. Labour say they will listen and learn from their mistakes.

 

2014 Labour look bad in referendum cosying up to tories seen as working hand in hand. After the result Labour say they will listen and learn from their mistakes.

 

2015 .........

 

Add to this the fact that the Scottish Labour leader in post before Murphy resigned after just a year because she realised that an SNP uprising of post-referendum anti-Labour anti-being taked for granted sentiment was on its way, and the Millbank leadership didn't/couldn't/wouldn't do anything about it to help her put up a fightback.

 

The only people to blame for Labour losing Scotland, are fucking Labour. It's a total and utter disgrace to see the entire city of Glasgow turned over to the Nats.

 

That said, fuck 'em. If that's what they wanted, then they can fucking have it. You made your beds, you lie in it. I can't see why anyone thinks that 1.5m porridge munchers should be dictating what a Westminster government does, when 9m Labour supporters can't. They can stick their 'nation' up their arse if they think that's what democracy is all about.

[Makom 0]

You've just described New Labour with points 1 to 3. And yet, that is exactly what has lost Scotland according to many. Labour are between a rock and a hard place now. Once (inevitably) Scotland fucks off, they'll have to drift even further right to survive, as that's what the larger southern based population demands.

 

Whichever way I look at it, the north, but in particular the north east, is fucked. Meanwhile CT grins like a Cheshire cat on speed.

 

As others have already said, the SNP didn't lose this election for Labour. Tony Blair would have won in all three elections without Scotland. All this 'Scotland never gets the government it votes for' shite is just that - neither do lots of other large parts of the UK, like the NE. It's called a majority government for a reason, parties that don't recognise that and adopt an appropriate strategy, will never win. We just seem to be doubly fucked because we don't have a credible alternative to vote for now it's becoming clear they're taking our vote for granted just as much as they did the Scots. In all three Newcastle seats, the Tories are now the 2nd party. That's just fucking insane. Can anyone ever imagine that happening in Glasgow?

[Gemmill 44882]

Measured, diplomatic response from would-be MP KCG incoming.

[Makom 0]

As an aside - the Fixed Term Parliament Act. You know the date of the election 5 years out. And yet they still decided to hold it the day before the VE day anniversary, thereby totally overshadowing what should be the only focus of the media for today. It wouldn't be so ironic if the victory wasn't for our democratic right to vote. Bastards.

[Renton 21627]

 

As others have already said, the SNP didn't lose this election for Labour. Tony Blair would have won in all three elections without Scotland. All this 'Scotland never gets the government it votes for' shite is just that - neither do lots of other large parts of the UK, like the NE. It's called a majority government for a reason, parties that don't recognise that and adopt an appropriate strategy, will never win. We just seem to be doubly fucked because we don't have a credible alternative to vote for now it's becoming clear they're taking our vote for granted just as much as they did the Scots. In all three Newcastle seats, the Tories are now the 2nd party. That's just fucking insane. Can anyone ever imagine that happening in Glasgow?

Completely agree Tbh. Although iirc, there was a tory MP for central Newcastle in the early 80s (piers merchant?) And there's as many conservative as Labour mps in Scotland now.

[ChezGiven 0]

Neville Trotter the evil rotter was your Tory MP when I was a kid Rents.

[Renton 21627]

Neville Trotter the evil rotter was your Tory MP when I was a kid Rents.

Aye, he was. Much fun was had cutting specific letters out his placards on posts to change his name to that. He was obliterated in the 97 Blair landslide for Alan Campbell (a decent if not inspirational mp), think there was boundary changes, and its never changed since. I'm living in cullercoats at the moment, have seen literally dozens of Labour posters, and hardly any conservative. It's a very affluent area, its a little consolation to me that the Tories are no longer tolerated anywhere here.

[Makom 0]

Ed's 'Nasty Party' rhetoric turned out to be pretty ironic actually, given what happened. Looking at it extremely simplistically, the Tories won this election by completely wiping out their coalition partners, and by focusing people's minds on what the enemy of their enemy might do. If this was their strategy, then it's pretty nasty. But effective.

[Renton 21627]

Negative campaigning is probably more effective than positive I guess , especially for the incumbent.

[Makom 0]

The raw seat count is interesting.

 

Conservatives:

Gained 26 seats from Liberal Democrats

Gained 8 seats from Labour

Lost 10 seats to Labour

Lost* 1 seat to UKIP

 

Labour:

Gained 12 seats from Liberal Democrats

Gained 10 seats from Conservatives

Lost 40 seats to the SNP

Lost 8 seats to the Conservatives

 

SNP:

Gained 40 seats from Labour

Gained 10 seats from Liberal Democrats

 

Liberal Democrats:

Lost 26 seats to the Conservatives

Lost 12 seats to Labour

Lost 10 seats to the SNP

 

Plaid Cymru & Greens

no change

 

* for some reason they count this as a loss, even though it was already held by UKIP due to the by-election

[Makom 0]

The Greens though, what a bunch of deluded fucks. Trying to spin their measly gains in vote share as progress. After getting huge exposure in a campaign where everybody was talking as if the little parties would have influence in the coalition era. Outcome? No change in seats. They have no more influence now than they ever had. Of course, they try to blame this on the fact we don't use PR, meanwhile not having an answer to Andrew Neill when he points out that both the Lib Dems and the SNP have proven that it's possible for 'third way' parties to gain significant amounts of seats if they actually have something to offer voters that's different to Lab/Con. And if we did use PR, they would still be only the 6th largest party by seats, behind UKIP, the SNP, and even a massacred Lib Dem party. Their influence in a PR system would therefore be the same as it is in FPTP - i.e. they only matter in the extremely unlikely even that their small seat count is still influential once all the other parties had done their negotiations. They really must be high if they're at all positive right now.

[Makom 0]

PR would actually be no better for anyone, based on this election. On a quick look, it seems that if seats were divvyed up by vote share alone, then all the Tories would have to do to gain power is to go into coalition with UKIP. They would then have more seats than the entire left block of Lab/Lib/SNP/Green. It might make people feel better represented, but it would seem to me to actually not only result in a Tory government, the same result as FPTP, but a more right wing one.

 

And that's the result in an era where no one party seems to be dominating, the very same situation PR is supposed to fix. This seems to gel with the experience of other countries which use it, where it always seems to result in the extremists holding sway when there's no one single outright winner. And as far as I know, nobody has yet come up with an AV system that has any other ultimate result either - these so called fairer systems only seem to affect the edge cases - none of them really get around the fact that whatever system you use, it's always the people who get the most votes who get to play government.

[Dr Gloom 21924]

Well, other than underestimating the collapse of the LibDem's, I pretty much nailed it - Ed totally fucking it up because his campaign strategy was non-existent, the shy Tory effect showing the polls up as total wank, and with the Greens/UKIP/Plaid making absolutely no difference to the result whatsoever.

 

Completely accepting blame for this disaster is the first sensible thing Ed has done in the last 5 years. If Labour want to win an election in the next 20 years, they need to wake up and smell the fucking coffee, namely:

 

1. You don't win a UK election by campaigning on behalf of the poor/disadvantaged. You must do what you have to do to win, then do what you can for them once you have.

2. You don't win a UK election by casting yourselves as the party of hard working people. Anyone who denies the level of support the Tories has amongst the 'ordinary working people', are just denying reality.

3. Labour will never win a UK election with a core voter strategy. Worry about winning first, then worry about what your core support wants you to do. It's that fucking simple, numbnuts.

4. Labour will never win an election if their sole strategy is that 'we're not the Tories'. It's pretty fucking obvious that there are enough swing voters who are quite happy to vote Tory if they don't believe/trust/like what you're trying to get them to vote for.

 

If Labour's sole strategy for the next 5 years is to blame the SNP and the press scaremongering over a Lab/SNP pact for this miserable result, then we could be looking at the first of several Tory governments. In case any of those stupid fucks have forgotten, that's what your're supposed to be preventing!!!!11

Ed should have done what Ashley Out failed to do and listened to your plan!

[Tooj 17]

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2015/05/08/the-only-way-is-down/

 

Great read and much to think about.

[NJS 4386]

Random thoughts:

 

Well apart from my first chat of the day at work which involved a cunt who was glad "the socialists" had been kept out as they would have wasted all the money again on paying benefits which caused the financial crisis last time (and the fucker actually works in banking!), I had some almost constructive discussions.

 

We have a few young lads/graduates on our team and they agreed that firstly the result unfortunately means the prospect of electoral reform is a non-starter and secondly another thing I'd like to see - the use of much more technology (online voting etc) will have to wait again.

 

I agree with the recent posts that Labour are in a complete quandry - I'd like to see a much more radical approach but one thing Kinnock (and Mako) got right was that principle without power is pointless. I almost like Mako's suggestion of a stealth Blairite campaign with a radical agenda but that was almost what I thought was happening this time.

 

I do think Milliband was a factor - as with Foot an obviously decent bloke was just completed unsuited to inspiring shallow cretins - trouble is I don't see an inspiring candidate for leader at the moment.

 

I also disagree with Mako that the greens and UKIP had no affect on Labour - I think there were a few seats - not enough admittedley - where they did affect the result - Ed Balls' for a start.

 

It's sad that the best hope now is to rely on Tory self-destruct over Europe - that's what happned post 92 and I think his promise of a referendum might be Cameron's undoing.

Edited May 8, 2015 by NJS

[Kevin Carr's Gloves 3894]

I liked Chuka Umunna's suit this morning.

[Dr Gloom 21924]

Random thoughts:

 

Well apart from my first chat of the day at work which involved a cunt who was glad "the socialists" had been kept out as they would have wasted all the money again on paying benefits which caused the financial crisis last time (and the fucker actually works in banking!), I had some almost constructive discussions.

 

We have a few young lads/graduates on our team and they agreed that firstly the result unfortunately means the prospect of electoral reform is a non-starter and secondly another thing I'd like to see - the use of much more technology (online voting etc) will have to wait again.

 

I agree with the recent posts that Labour are in a complete quandry - I'd like to see a much more radical approach but one thing Kinnock (and Mako) got right was that principle without power is pointless. I almost like Mako's suggestion of a stealth Blairite campaign with a radical agenda but that was almost what I thought was happening this time.

 

I do think Milliband was a factor - as with Foot an obviously decent bloke was just completed unsuited to inspiring shallow cretins - trouble is I don't see an inspiring candidate for leader at the moment.

 

I also disagree with Mako that the greens and UKIP had no affect on Labour - I think there were a few seats - not enough admittedley - where they did affect the result - Ed Balls' for a start.

 

It's sad that the best hope now is to rely on Tory self-destruct over Europe - that's what happned post 92 and I think his promise of a referendum might be Cameron's undoing.

It'll be Cameron's undoing perhaps, but not the Tories. They've for Boris in the sidelines. And boy, does this country love a celebrity. The cretins will vote for him in theI droves because he's funny and charismatic. A very dangerous politician.

[Dr Gloom 21924]

Andy Burnham could be a good shout Labour leader. He's from a trade union background, not an intellectual career politician like miliband. He's young-ish, a good talker. Possibly tarnished for links with miliband opposition. Otherwise it could be miliband senior to ride in as a white knight. That'd be a story the electorate might lap up.

[Makom 0]

Ed should have done what Ashley Out failed to do and listened to your plan!

 

It is a curse, this gift of mine.......

[Makom 0]

On a brighter note, the BNP have been wiped out, coming way behind even the Monster Raving Loony Party. While the racist vote might have moved across to UKIP, this election sees a record 41 non-white MPs elected, up from 27, including the first 'chink', a Tory no less, who won with 51%. There's also more women, including 1 in 3 MPs in Scotland.

[Makom 0]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2015-32650417

 

This comprehensive list of what BBC analysts think raises a couple of questions:

 

1. Who knew the BBC had so many political analysts? I thought there was just Robinson and that was it....

 

2. Why the hell are they ignoring the possibility boundary changes? If they can ignore something as obviously important as that, what else are they missing? Maybe the reason they failed to spot things like the fact the polls had a systematic Con-Lab error is because they're not so much analysts, as just re-tweeters?

[JJ 0]

 

Masochist!

 

Do you know new MP Calum Kerr?....I hear he may be from round your way?...

Aye I know him. He ran the Yes Scottish Borders campaign for the referendum. Good lad. He'll do well. Really pleased he got elected.

[Makom 0]

Just said as much in the Trident thread, but now I think about it, I'm wondering if the Lab/Cons (or even the Cons on their own?) forcing through a Trident replacement even though the SNP now has an almost universal mandate in Scotland might not count as one of those exceptional circumstances that Nicola Sturgeon said would make her revisit the issue of an independence referendum - she's been at pains to say that in ordinary circumstances she wouldn't be using support in this election as support for another referendum. But people who voted SNP can hardly say they didn't know about or agree with their position on Trident, and if they do they're idiots. It was obviously going to be one of their red lines if they'd had the chance to go into coalition with Labour. This seems to be another major issue that is notably missing from all this supposed 'analysis' of what this result means for the next parliament.

[Christmas Tree 4725]

Having stayed up all night and day to watch the election coverage (sad I know), it was lovely to get a good nights sleep last night.

 

Driving around this morning and thinking about the last 24 hours, I can only compare election night to one of these gruesome episodes of Game of Thrones.

[Gemmill 44882]

Cameron playing the role of Joffrey.