UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[You kip if you want to...]

Presumably if Lib Dem pressure in 2010 had got a PR referendum, it would have faced exactly the same Tory misrepresentation as the AV referendum did. At least there is still the remote chance that at some future date PR will re-emerge on to the agenda, which would have been prevented if a PR referendum had been lost.

AV was lost because it was too complicated a system and it looked desperately self serving on the part of the LibDems.

[ChrisDR68]

Presumably if Lib Dem pressure in 2010 had got a PR referendum, it would have faced exactly the same Tory misrepresentation as the AV referendum did. At least there is still the remote chance that at some future date PR will re-emerge on to the agenda, which would have been prevented if a PR referendum had been lost.

PR for Westminster elections is probably inevitable given the ongoing decline in the Tories' and Labour's vote share. That decline generally makes hung parliaments more likely and as all the smaller parties are in favour of it the two big parties will come under ever increasing pressure to adopt it as a condition of their support in a potential coalition government.

My prediction is we'll have FPTP for the next three UK general elections then some form of PR thereafter (with probably something similar to the system used to elect the Scottish parliament).

[Gary J]

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AV is much simpler than any system of PR. The pro AV campaign probably failed to explain it adequately. It also failed to provide an emotional case for why people should support it (ie the Tory fat cats do not like it, so it must be good).

If the AV system was perceived as self serving for Lib Dems, then the anti-AV campaign did succeed in making an emotional case against the change.

In fact many Lib Dems were distinctly lukewarm about AV because it was an inadequate move towards change/fair votes, which would have provided minimal benefit at best and might have been less favourable to the party than FPTP in other circumstances. Certainly AV would have been less favourable to the Lib Dems than any form of PR.

However in an environment where there are multiple medium sized parties, an argument based on antipathy to any one of them is less likely to be persuasive than if there was only one which seemed likely to benefit. If we continue to have a series of inconclusive elections then electoral reform may eventually come back on the agenda.

[doktorb]

Presumably if Lib Dem pressure in 2010 had got a PR referendum, it would have faced exactly the same Tory misrepresentation as the AV referendum did. At least there is still the remote chance that at some future date PR will re-emerge on to the agenda, which would have been prevented if a PR referendum had been lost.

AV was lost because it was too complicated a system and it looked desperately self serving on the part of the LibDems.

AV was lost because of self serving media manipulation and a spineless, bitter, timid Labour Party. There is nothing complicated about AV. There is nothing duplicitous or suspicious about it.

I can never, ever, forgive Labour for their role in killing off constitutional reform.

[DL]

Ipsos-MORI:

Labour - 36% (+2)
Tories - 34% (+1)
UKIP - 9% (-2)
Greens - 7% (-1)
Lib Dems - 6% (-2)

So UKIP may be showing signs of decline, but it doesn't seem to be helping the Tories.

One poll. No one else is showing this.

Still no maj for Labour though.

Actually a lot of recent polls have shown UKIP declining bit by bit...some of that would be anti-Tory voters going back to Labour

[Filuwaúrdjan]

AV was lost because of self serving media manipulation and a spineless, bitter, timid Labour Party. There is nothing complicated about AV. There is nothing duplicitous or suspicious about it.

I can never, ever, forgive Labour for their role in killing off constitutional reform.

lol

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's still early enough to test a few ideas out, so here's something. Would people here find this kind of thing useful or not?

[afleitch]

It's still early enough to test a few ideas out, so here's something. Would people here find this kind of thing useful or not?

Sudoku?

[YL]

Here is a list of seats (excluding the Speaker's seat and Northern Ireland) where Labour currently has no candidate, based on the list of candidates compiled by andyajs of the VoteUK forum.

Arundel & South Downs
Banff & Buchan
Beaconsfield
Bradford West
South Cambridgeshire
North Cornwall
South East Cornwall
East Devon
Edmonton*
Grantham & Stamford
Halifax*
North East Hampshire
Orkney & Shetland
Midlothian*
East Surrey
Torfaen*
Truro & Falmouth
Yeovil
York Central*

Seats marked with an asterisk have had their sitting Labour MPs announce their retirements fairly recently.  I think it's fair to say that all the others, with one exception which is related to some recent posts, are no hopers for the party (even if one of them had a Labour MP fairly recently due to a defection).

[King of Kensington]

Providing stable government when the country needed it, not foolish

Even at the cost of the Lib Dems losing 2/3 of their vote?

[EPG]

It will be quite a stretch for Labour to win Bradford West with a candidate in the field for less than twelve weeks. Are there internal selection disputes?

[You kip if you want to...]

Presumably if Lib Dem pressure in 2010 had got a PR referendum, it would have faced exactly the same Tory misrepresentation as the AV referendum did. At least there is still the remote chance that at some future date PR will re-emerge on to the agenda, which would have been prevented if a PR referendum had been lost.

AV was lost because it was too complicated a system and it looked desperately self serving on the part of the LibDems.

AV was lost because of self serving media manipulation and a spineless, bitter, timid Labour Party. There is nothing complicated about AV. There is nothing duplicitous or suspicious about it.

I can never, ever, forgive Labour for their role in killing off constitutional reform.

Right.

[EPG]

Can we just be happy with the irony that, under AV, the Conservatives would be heading for a much better result, if not a majority, and the Lib Dems would be completely shattered by hostile transfers?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It will be quite a stretch for Labour to win Bradford West with a candidate in the field for less than twelve weeks. Are there internal selection disputes?

In that constituency? When haven't there been?

[Хahar 🤔]

Bradford West will be the most interesting result in England, at least for me.

[ChrisDR68]

Providing stable government when the country needed it, not foolish

Even at the cost of the Lib Dems losing 2/3 of their vote?

Absolutely.

If they had flunked the responsibility of government when the country needed political stability they would have been seen as a complete irrelevance and cowardly to boot.

My own view is that this election will be a set back (perhaps even a big one) but only a temporary one. The public will likely view them more seriously after May 2015 because of their time in government and in the medium term they could recover quite strongly. For that to happen though they need a period on the opposition benches and a new leader.

The other thing looking beyond this election is that the current UKIP and SNP surges may well turn out to be temporary. If we have an in/out EU referendum in 2017 that will shoot UKIP's fox, and once the afterglow of the Scottish independence referendum dies down the SNP could regress back to their long term poll average of between 20-30% in Scotland.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

This cannot be real

[joevsimp]

This cannot be real

that'll go down well...

are the Christian Party not still going then? and the papers don't usually bang on about his music career do they?

[EPG]

It's Ukip, the party that chose Neil Hamilton as its deputy chairman.

[You kip if you want to...]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/02/13/milly-dowler-row-over-mil_n_6676728.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

You've gotta feel at little bit sorry for EdM.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

wtf

[bore]

This cannot be real

It's kind of appropriate that in the last general election he stood in Barking.

[afleitch]

This cannot be real

that'll go down well...

are the Christian Party not still going then? and the papers don't usually bang on about his music career do they?

Entryist tactics. They have done it before.

[BaconBacon96]

This cannot be real

Yuck.

[YL]

It's Ukip, the party that chose Neil Hamilton as its deputy chairman.

OK, I realise that UKIP's judgement on such matters has been shown to be questionable (to put it mildly) before, but why parachute Hargreaves into a seat (not a particularly good seat for them, I wouldn't have thought) where they already had a candidate?  Is there some hotbed of fundies in Earlsdon or something?