The 2015 General Election

[HanoiVillan]

 

 

Not sure what to do, have concerns with all the parties really. Major one currently being Labour borrowing us in to oblivion again claiming the good times. However, seems to change from day to day, i'll hate the Tories tomorrow, Lib Dems day after etc...

I'm no Labour supporter but did you realise that this Tory Govt has borrowed more than every Labour Govt ever, combined.

 

But unemployment is down, economy is improved, jobs created (whether they are zero hours), crime down from five years. Had that not been the case that point would be valid

 

 

Points one and three are basically the same - employment has been going up, but mostly because of an increase in part-time, casual and especially self-employment. These jobs are precarious, and generally don't last for very long. There has also been a slight decline in living standards over the lifetime of the parliament. The reality is if people were materially better off than five years ago, we'd be looking at a Tory majority not a hung parliament. 

 

Point two is true, but only up to a point. The recovery has been extremely weak by any reasonable historical standards. Normally coming out of a recession, growth spurts, and economies 'make up for lost time' - that hasn't happened, we've only recently reached trendline growth and as noted above, people haven't felt much if any personal benefit. 

 

Point four is very misleading - crime rates have fallen everywhere throughout the developed world for the last twenty years, in basically all developed countries, irrespective of the type or ideology of government they have. 

[Ads]

Add improvements to education with a million more pupils now at schools rated good or outstanding.

[tonyh29]

 

 

 

Not sure what to do, have concerns with all the parties really. Major one currently being Labour borrowing us in to oblivion again claiming the good times. However, seems to change from day to day, i'll hate the Tories tomorrow, Lib Dems day after etc...

I'm no Labour supporter but did you realise that this Tory Govt has borrowed more than every Labour Govt ever, combined.

 

But unemployment is down, economy is improved, jobs created (whether they are zero hours), crime down from five years. Had that not been the case that point would be valid

 

 

Points one and three are basically the same - employment has been going up, but mostly because of an increase in part-time, casual and especially self-employment. These jobs are precarious, and generally don't last for very long. There has also been a slight decline in living standards over the lifetime of the parliament. The reality is if people were materially better off than five years ago, we'd be looking at a Tory majority not a hung parliament. 

 

Point two is true, but only up to a point. The recovery has been extremely weak by any reasonable historical standards. Normally coming out of a recession, growth spurts, and economies 'make up for lost time' - that hasn't happened, we've only recently reached trendline growth and as noted above, people haven't felt much if any personal benefit. 

 

Point four is very misleading - crime rates have fallen everywhere throughout the developed world for the last twenty years, in basically all developed countries, irrespective of the type or ideology of government they have. 

 

I thought crime rates dropped because in some instances they don't get reported \ treated as a crime any longer  ...

[chrisp65]

There's a whole thread there on its own - crime statistics!

 

If ever stats could be used to say absolutely whatever you want them to, it would be the multiple variations on crime statistics. From whether people still bother to report their car being scratched, whether the police even show up at some burglaries, to the number of people in prison and how long they stay there and whether they re offend on release.

 

My limited knowledge tells me to ignore any and every crime stat.. Why? I reported a burglary in progress and the police did nothing (not strictly true, they phoned me over an hour later and asked if they were still there! Then wouldn't come out to visit the shop owner next day). Then more recently, police came to my door and asked if there had been any car crime, I mentioned the badge on my car had been nicked, they told me off for not reporting it, and a week later I had a letter from victim support offering counselling (it was a nice badge, but I'm pretty much over it now to be honest).

 

So I tend to ignore any claim from any side on crime. 

[Nabby]

Latest Poll

 

LAB 32 per cent (-1)

CON 33 per cent (-1)

LIB DEM 8 per cent (+1)

UKIP 14 per cent (-1)

GREEN 6 per cent (+1)

OTHER 6 per cent (+1)

Turnout is projected at 69 per cent

[lapal_fan]

Looking forward to it all being over now.

[villaglint]

Anybody been watching Ballott Monkeys? (not sure if here or TV thread is best spot but nevermind).

 

I have really enjoyed it and it is a shame it wouldnt really work out of an election period.

 

Especially love Ben Millers Lib Dem character. 

 

"CAN'T YOU SEE I'M DOING MY F$%$ing MINDFULLNESS" - Brilliant, brilliant line.

[chrisp65]

Looking forward to it all being over now.

 

ah, you beautifully naive person

[PaulC]

Latest Poll

 

LAB 32 per cent (-1)

CON 33 per cent (-1)

LIB DEM 8 per cent (+1)

UKIP 14 per cent (-1)

GREEN 6 per cent (+1)

OTHER 6 per cent (+1)

Turnout is projected at 69 per cent

which one, YouGov has it level

Edited May 6, 2015 by PaulC

[Nabby]

 

Latest Poll

 

LAB 32 per cent (-1)

CON 33 per cent (-1)

LIB DEM 8 per cent (+1)

UKIP 14 per cent (-1)

GREEN 6 per cent (+1)

OTHER 6 per cent (+1)

Turnout is projected at 69 per cent

which one, YouGov has it level

 

 

 

TNS

[lapal_fan]

 

Looking forward to it all being over now.

 

ah, you beautifully naive person

 

This thread I mean

[chrisp65]

ugghhh, then the majority of 'traffic' will return to 'wrestling' and in depth dissection of batman movies.

 

I get enough of that on my accounts where I pretend to be 14.

[omariqy]

Wrestling you say?  How about a money in the bank ladder match with the winner getting the keys to number 10?

[StefanAVFC]

14% UKIP

 

yuck.

[mjmooney]

14% UKIP

 

yuck.

 

Under PR that would be a catastrophe. Under FPTP it could be a huge bonus. Ideal scenario - UKIP take massive numbers of votes from the Tories, but not enough to get any actual seats. 

 

That said, they will also take quite a few from Labour, but I think less so. 

[chrisp65]

I'm not going to source this, because I'm a maverick and I can't remember where I was when I made it up.

 

But I'm sure I saw somewhere that because the LibDems have had years of honing their support in their winnable seats, whereas UKIP is new and general there was likely to be a scenario where UKIP get twice as many votes in total as the Libs, but with the Libs getting 20 or so seats and the Kippers getting 2 or 3 seats.

 

it wasn't this, but it'll do

[Jon]

I'm not going to source this, because I'm a maverick and I can't remember where I was when I made it up.

 

But I'm sure I saw somewhere that because the LibDems have had years of honing their support in their winnable seats, whereas UKIP is new and general there was likely to be a scenario where UKIP get twice as many votes in total as the Libs, but with the Libs getting 20 or so seats and the Kippers getting 2 or 3 seats.

 

it wasn't this, but it'll do

Highly likely, I'd guess. The kippers are kind of starting from 0 in almost every seat (same as the Greens). They've got to take votes off the incumbents and others, so the 'swing' then need to actually win a seat is off the scale (though they do have significant financial backing to help with that). The Lie Dems are targetting specific, 'winnable' seats this time, due to a potential wipeout. They know the publoci, on the whole, don't thank for the betrayal of 2010, as the polls suggest. So they've pooled all of their resources into their 20 or so winnable seats, and have cast adirft the rest of their candidates, giving them little to no financial or physical support. Damage limitation, if you will. I so hope Clegg goes. He's been in trouble in Sheff for a good while, and whilst he's clawed some support back, it's not been enough to get ehead of the Labour guy (who is a local candidate, and a good one at that) in recent polls, though it's close. Will Judas get his comeuppance?

[Nabby]

I'm not going to source this, because I'm a maverick and I can't remember where I was when I made it up.

 

But I'm sure I saw somewhere that because the LibDems have had years of honing their support in their winnable seats, whereas UKIP is new and general there was likely to be a scenario where UKIP get twice as many votes in total as the Libs, but with the Libs getting 20 or so seats and the Kippers getting 2 or 3 seats.

 

it wasn't this, but it'll do

 

 

Not sure how it works but on Polls I keep seeing UKIP at over 10% but people say they will be lucky to get 2 seats ..

[Jon]

Hawking endorses Labour:

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/stephen-hawking-endorses-labour-in-the-general-election-10206818.html

 

Stephen Hawking, argued to be the most intelligent man on the planet, thinks that Ed Miliband is the best person to be Prime Minister.

The physicist who was the subject of Oscar-winning film The Theory of Everything, has confirmed he is voting Labour and has backed Cambridge candidate Daniel Zeichner.

"We’re really pleased and we hope that people will take note," said Zeichner

"I think he fully appreciates the huge investment that the last Labour government made in science and you can see that in a lot of the buildings and laboratories around Cambridge.

 

"And many other scientists understand the city needs a Labour government to get the kind of investment we need again."

 

Hawking has previously spoken out against the privatisation of the National Health Service.

He described the NHS as "Britain's finest public service".

 

In 2013, he said: "Only last summer, I caught pneumonia, and would have died, but for the NHS hospital care. We must retain this critical public service, and prevent the establishment of a two-tier system, with the best medicine for the wealthy, and an inferior service for the rest."

 

Hawking has been politically vocal in recent years, refusing to attend a conference in Israel in protest against the state's treatment of Palestinians in 2013.

 

[mjmooney]

 

“No firing squads, no torture or retribution, no bloodshed. A very British coup, wouldn’t you say?” Amid an election campaign that has become ever more 

ominous in tone, I find myself remembering these words, uttered by Sir Percy Browne, the head of MI5 in the former Labour minister Chris Mullin’s epic 1980s political drama A Very British Coup. Harry Perkins, a leftist ex-steelworker from Sheffield, has swept to power on a radical programme, only to face co-ordinated establishment sabotage. In a climactic scene, Sir Percy blackmails Perkins into resigning on grounds of ill-health.

 

Ed Miliband is no Harry Perkins. A commitment to raise the top rate of income tax to the same level as Japan’s, to levy a tax on the top 0.5 per cent of homeowners and to cut public expenditure every year is not exactly parliamentary socialism in our time. But long ago, most of the media and other powerful forces in British society decided that the prospect of Miliband as prime minister was simply unacceptable. His leadership represents a modest departure from three decades of consensus established by Thatcher’s governments, but any departure is deemed intolerable. The highly personalised “Get Ed” campaign has taken a sinister turn. The Tories and their media allies are now declaring that a government led by Miliband would be illegitimate. A very British coup of our own. Although openDemocracy has been warningabout this possibility for weeks, discussion has been all but banished from the mainstream media.

 

Our parliamentary system is quite straightforward. A government needs to be able to muster the support of the majority of sitting MPs in order to be legitimate. If it can survive a vote of no confidence, and most MPs back its Queen’s Speech – the government’s legislative programme – then its democratic legitimacy is unimpeachable. The magic number in order to govern – given Sinn Fein’s boycott of the Westminster parliament – is 323. But the Tories and their allies are arguing otherwise. They have told newspapers that they will “declare victory” if the party wins “most seats and votes”, and that Labour will have no “legitimacy” if it is the second party in terms of seats and needs to rely on the SNP. When Theresa May and the Mail on Sundaysuggested that an SNP-backed Labour government would represent “the worst crisis since the abdication” – eclipsing the minor blip of the Nazi conquest of Europe – it was rightly mocked on Twitter. But this may well prove a mild foretaste of what is to come.

 

We are sleepwalking into a dangerous moment. If there is a left-of-centre, anti-Tory majority in parliament then the Tories must fall, however many seats they have won. Left-wing parties will have won the election and a left-of-centre government led by Labour must take office. And yet it would be deemed “illegitimate” by the Tories and most of the media. That really would be a situation with few precedents in an advanced democracy: where the opposition and media refuse to accept the democratic legitimacy of the national government.

 

The “unionist” Tories have been fanning English nationalism over the past few weeks for two obvious reasons: to boost the SNP in Scotland, in order to increase the likelihood that the Tories will emerge the biggest single party; and to damage Labour in key English marginals. They may well succeed, ensuring a Tory triumph in the general election and leaving this whole scenario redundant. But it never was just a strategy aimed at winning on Thursday. It is a scorched-earth policy, all aimed at what happens after 7 May. The plotters will attempt to administer a fatal blow to the Union, whether they see it as such or not: they will tell the Scottish people that the MPs they have elected are political pariahs who have no rightful say over the governing of the country. And then they will wage the mother of all campaigns against the legitimacy of a Labour-led government.

 

Our very British coup will surely unfold this way. The Tories declare victory if they have the most seats, regardless of the parliamentary arithmetic. Key supportive newspapers endorse this line and pressure is put on the broadcasters to follow suit. The Tories begin publicly reassembling their coalition with the Lib Dems within hours of the polls closing, despite knowing they have no majority in parliament, in order to cement the image that they remain the legitimate government.

 

In the run-up to the Queen’s Speech on 27 May – with David Cameron remaining as Prime Minister – the media campaign against the SNP will make the current onslaught look timid. Amid political uncertainty, a falling stock market and the value of  the pound are used to build an atmosphere of national emergency. A handful of right-wing Labour MPs – the likes of Rochdale’s Simon Danczuk, perhaps – are wheeled out on TV to echo the line of illegitimacy, helping to construct a narrative of growing Labour turmoil. Moves to depose Miliband are encouraged. The aim will be straightforward: to make it politically impossible for Labour to form a government even though left-of-centre parties have a parliamentary majority, and to pave the way for new elections against a backdrop of right-wing hysteria.

 

As I say, the Tory campaign of fear or smear over Scotland could prove a success, allowing Cameron to return to No 10. If not, a very British coup will begin to unfold as soon as the polling stations close. It will have few opponents in the mainstream media. The left and the Labour movement will have to mobilise in great numbers. The health of our democracy and the future of our country will be at stake. 

 

New Statesman

Edited May 6, 2015 by mjmooney