UK General Election - May 7th 2015

[Filuwaúrdjan]

UKIP beats the Lib Dems in the popular vote. but gets 1 seat at best. Hopefully electoral reform ensues.

Why would it?

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Have the Lib Dems in Montgomery any chance of recovering from the Opik debacle?

They got smashed in the Assembly elections (but then they were under another cloud for that election as well; Mick Bates, the retiring incumbent, had a conviction for attacking a paramedic while really, really drunk) despite a decent candidate, which is not a good sign. But they showed some signs of recovery in Newtown in the local elections a year later. It needs to be remembered that LibDem strength in Montgomery owes more to the association of the party label with well-regarded local MPs than genepool loyalty to said party label; a century ago when the Liberal Party dominated Welsh political life, Montgomery was not exactly a stronghold.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Cabinet ministers who lost their seats in 1997 and their 1992 majorities...

Michael Forsyth, Secretary of State for Scotland, Stirling (1.5%)
Iain Lang, President of the Board of Trade, Galloway & Upper Nithsdale (5.6%)
Malcolm Rifkind, Foreign Secretary, Edinburgh Pentlands (9.6%)
William Waldegrave, Chief Secretary to the Treasury (11.5%)^*
Roger Freeman, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Kettering (20.0%)
Tony Newton, Lord President of the Council, Braintree (26.6%)
Michael Portillo, Defence Secretary, Enfield Southgate (31.8%)

_{*But 17.5% over the party that he lost to in 1997.}

Basically it's just the Scots, and there were reasons for that. Newton and Portillo had the sort of majorities (when from a competitive election) that ought to be safe even against a very large swing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They wouldn't leave (wouldn't even consider doing so, actually) so the question is moot. The tendency within the Labour Party is to believe that its real soul lies entirely within whatever faction or tendency you happen to align yourself with. And as far as the Left (and the more... er... workerist, I guess, strands of the Right) goes, there's also a massive betrayal complex, which goes back to 1931 and which was further reinforced by 1981.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Just to add something else...

I suppose it would be closer to the Scandinavian "Socialist Left" parties than Die Linke in Germany or the French left wing. So undogmatic on economics and emphasis on green issues and pacifism.

The harder Left is not exactly green, for the most part.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Okay, so the Arthur Scargill types are still there?

Well Scargill isn't (though he came from a CPGB background anyway; very different mentality), but, basically, yes.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Oh, I'm sure that there would be such a party, or at least attempts to form one. But hardly anyone would actually vote for it. The basic problem the far-left has - beyond the lack of any tradition of that type of thing outside the various Little Moscow's - is that they use words that now mean nothing and don't seem to realise that that's what they do.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Which matters because it means that there's no connection between people's grumblings, discontents and fears, and whatever it is that insert-far-left-candidate-here happens to be spouting. The only real exception - George Galloway and Respect are something different - to that would be Tommy Sheridan before his own personal Fall, and I wonder how much of that was just personality cult politics (c.f. the occasional Midlands oddball - Dave Nellist, those weirdos in Walsall and the like - who can still sometimes win a seat on the local council) writ large.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Yes, it's been the case since the Soviet Union decided to point nukes in the general direction of Great Britain. The CPGB's subsequent electoral collapse in the Little Moscow's in 1950 was pretty spectacular; the same also being true for Denis Pritt (who might as well have been a member) and the rest of the 'Labour Independent' group of fellow travellers.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The collapse of the ideology of Scottish Unionism¹ as a result of postwar social change², relative economic difficulties in the West of Scotland (everywhere benefited from the 'Golden Age of Capitalism' but some places benefited more than others, and the West of Scotland less than just about everywhere. Structural economic reasons) and the end of the Empire. Something very similar happened in Liverpool.

1. Until the middle of the 1960s the Tories in Scotland were not Conservatives but Unionists and had more in common (ideologically at least) with the Ulster Unionists (themselves still an integral part of the Conservative Party at this point) than with most English Tories. Scottish Unionism was actually a sort of Scottish Nationalism, much as Ulster Unionism is a form of Ulster Protestant Nationalism.

2. Which weakened the sectarian pillarisation of society and led to the surprisingly swift end of the 'Orange vote' (i.e. voting Tory out of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The problem with trying to 'presidentialise' the election would be that Cameron is not popular, and there would then be a risk of the election turning into a referendum on him. Much more likely is a campaign based around personal abuse, ala 1992.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

We should also not forget that the DUP are openly corrupt: they put themselves on sale quite willingly at times and are happy to be bought.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Most likely he runs in Folkestone or one of the Thanets.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I would be surprised if their vote isn't comparatively evenly distributed again; it was in the locals last year, even, if you remember.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Watching Neil Hamilton on the BBC the other night was the final confirmation for me that satire is dead.

I'm amazed that no one waved a brown paper envelope about when replying to him.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

FDP-style classical liberalism is unlikely to win many if any seats under FPTP, least of all the type of seats that the Lib Dems currently hold.

Well, maybe Twickenham. LOL

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Belfast pronunciation of 'flag' is 'flegg'.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Peter Hain is standing down in Neath.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bootle MP Joe Benton has given up trying to fight his constituency party, and has opted to retire. He is 81 years old and has held the seat since the second Bootle by-election of 1990. Given that Bootle is one of the safest seats in the country for any party no matter how safety is defined, expect a truly absurd number of applications.

Bootle CLP tends to favour locals and tends to favour social conservatives, but that's not quite a sure thing: in 1979 it selected Allan Roberts who was extremely left-wing and from a suburb of distant Manchester.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Peter Hain is standing down in Neath.

Neath has been Labour since 1922 and has had just four MPs during that period. Longest tenure was twenty six years or so, shortest around nineteen. There has only been one succession in a General Election (in 1964).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Salford & Eccles was just made AWS, which may reduce the chances of Bootle being so. Though it has never had a female MP.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interestingly enough, though, some recent AWS decisions have been on seats held by a retiring female MP (i.e. Cynon Valley, Swansea East, Salford & Eccles) rather than chosen on the 'never before' basis.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Northern Ireland is 98.2% white. The largest non-white group is Chinese at 0.3%.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Belfast has major hospitals (Belfast City Hospital in particular is huge) and a couple of universities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

David Blunkett is also retiring at the election. Expect many applicants. For those on AWS watch, Brightside had a female MP in the 70s and 80s (Joan 'Stalin's Granny' Maynard).

[Filuwaúrdjan]

General Elections are not local elections with a high turnout. And even if they were, it wouldn't be advisable to take just one year's results.