UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Beezer]

Poor old Ed.



http://news.sky.com/story/1361710/ukip-hits-new-poll-high-after-1-7bn-eu-bill

[Beezer]

Labour set for a bloodbath in Scotland in general election, poll says

Traditional Labour heartlands turning to SNP, which could win 45 of 59 Scottish Westminster seats, Guardian/ICM survey finds

The Scottish National party, which took only 20% of the vote in the 2010 general election, has subsequently more than doubled its vote to reach a commanding 43% of the prospective poll next May. Scottish Labour, which secured a very strong 42% in Gordon Brown’s homeland last time around, has since tumbled by 16 points to just 26%.

The Conservatives sink from 2010’s 17% to 13%, while the great bulk of the 19% share that the Liberal Democrats scored last time around is wiped out as they fall by 13 points to 6%.



On a uniform swing, these results – which are reinforced by a recent Survation poll for the Daily Record – would entirely redraw the political map. Labour’s band of 41 Scottish MPs would be reduced to a parliamentary rump of just 10 members, underlining that the Scottish party’s newly elected leader, Jim Murphy, has a mountain to climb.

The SNP, meanwhile, would storm ahead from the mere six MPs it returned in 2010 to take a crushing majority of 45 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies. The Lib Dems, who currently hold 11 seats, would lose all but three, and the Tories would continue to languish with the single seat they currently hold.

Such dramatic Labour losses north of the border could easily offset the gains Ed Miliband hopes to make in England and Wales and potentially put Downing Street beyond his reach next year. But a unique analysis, conducted for the Guardian by Prof John Curtice, of Strathclyde University, suggests that the crude assumption of a uniform swing could actually be understating the catastrophe facing the party.



By breaking ICM’s data into four different categories of seat, Curtice reveals Labour’s decline is sharpest in those supposedly heartland seats where it previously trounced the SNP by more than 25 points.

Whereas Labour’s Scotland-wide vote drops by 16 points, it falls by 22 points in these constituencies while the SNP surges by 26. That combination is sufficient to wipe out majorities that were always assumed to be impregnable, and Scottish Labour’s Westminster caucus is left shrivelling to just three MPs.

“We are prospectively looking at the collapse of citadels that have always been Labour since the 1920s,” said Curtice. “That will seem incredible to some in England, but to those of us who paid close attention to Alex Salmond’s 2011 landslide at Holyrood, it would merely be the next chapter in the political transformation of a nation.”

...

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/dec/26/labour-bloodbath-scotland-general-election-2015-snp-westminster

[Beezer]

Here is the interview for those who haven't seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dFn8RIXOBE

Would have made more sense for Andrew Neil to just have a look at the Greens' website for 15 minutes.