Re: The U.K. Election thread

[lardbucket]

Paul Downton.

[Basil]

Won't change the views of the small minded, all of whom will vote for him regardless

Aye, seriously hung parliament coming up.

Not because of UKIP though, under this system they will get a handful of seats at most. It's the likely SNP clean sweep in Scotland that will make it next to impossible for either of the main parties to get a majority or workable coalition.

Aye, I think a minority government is on the cards.

[Bradman]

Won't change the views of the small minded, all of whom will vote for him regardless

Aye, seriously hung parliament coming up.

Not because of UKIP though, under this system they will get a handful of seats at most. It's the likely SNP clean sweep in Scotland that will make it next to impossible for either of the main parties to get a majority or workable coalition.

Aye, I think a minority government is on the cards.

You and just about everyone on the planet.

[beamer]

When was the last UK minority government? More recent than you might think... John Major's Tories saw their small majority after their 1992 election win whittled away by defections and by-election defeats, and by the end of 1996 they were a minority administration effectively propped up by a handful of Ulster Unionists, a situation which lasted until they were swept aside by the Labour landslide of the following year.

The prospect of one lasting 5 years as opposed to 5 months is somewhat different though...

[horace]

UKIP is a great admirer of the Oz liberal party

[PeterCS]

All right, I might as well put my neck above the parapet and say I think Miliband is okay, DESPITE the technocrat suits and the heavy, toxic burdens of Blair.

He's had to put up with a lot of shit from all sides. Most obviously from the morally turpid "dead cat" Crosby - what an endless scumbag HE is - directing the PR puppets of the Tory front bench.

He's had to put up with a lot of mendacity and fast ones from the SNP leadership as well. The latest is the blackmail last night by Ms S to join the "anti-Tory front coalition" bandwagon - under Ms S's terms and leadership, y'understand. As if she and the other High Heidyins REALLY felt that the only thing that really mattered in this election and in politics generally was to wedge out the Thatcherites ("Toreys"). When it's clear that the main, glittering prize for the SNP machine is Indy for those living in Scotland (ethnically known as "we Scots"), under dominant SNP leadership, at virtually whatever economic cost to the population of Scotland.

Miliband started off this campaign widely derided as a feckless muppet and only slightly less toxic version of the plutocrat technocrat Bliar.

He has emerged as a figure of some substance - again, despite the straitjacket suits, and also some light- and deadweights on his front bench. Genuine in his social and socialist values (not state-socialist, but for fairness, social solidarity, and fairness of opportunity) but with a proper eye to economic stability - aftr an economic tsunami not caused by Brown btw, but that's another issue - and I have to say I like him.

How long before Crosby blows the anti-Semitic dog whistle again? Or the "father was a Communist traitor" line? Oh, sorry, he's blowing them all the time.

It's a couple of years too late for Miliband to show his true colours, and values, and better qualities. And I guess this election will be a Tory-dominated coalition of some sort. But hey, ..... try to switch off. The lying bunches get me agitated.

[Winkle Spinner]

I'm simultaneously sick of and addicted to election coverage, greedily slurping it up as I become only more nauseous. Judging by my targeted advertising on youtube, and in the post, I've been identified as someone who might be willing to vote Tory, although I have to say their campaign disgusts me. There's only so many times you can listen to them sanctimoniously tell scroungers to ****** off before you develop a deep affection for scroungers. I'm also unconvinced how much of the recovery has been their doing and to what extent they got lucky being in power as things were going to pick up anyway.

The sad thing is, there's nothing really to choose between them and Labour for insidious dismantling of privacy and basic rights - bloody authoritarians the lot of them with their ID cards and terrorism acts and snooper's charter and 'we only spy on your metadata, honest!'

Which leaves the lib dems, who frankly I quite like and seem to have broadly quite sensible policies, especially in the energy sector where the whole thing's a crapshoot to see who can get it the most wrong (looking at you Greens and UKIP). Given how vital it is to prosperity I'm surprised it doesn't get more attention but there you go. Unfortunately, no one's going to vote for them because they feel so betrayed at being lied to by, get this, a politician! Who would have thought, the profession being such a paragon of virtue and wholesomeness? How can we put this unprecedented betrayal behind us? Better vote for someone worse to show how annoyed we are.

Makes me sick.

[Lindsay no.2]

All right, I might as well put my neck above the parapet and say I think Miliband is okay, DESPITE the technocrat suits and the heavy, toxic burdens of Blair.

He's had to put up with a lot of shit from all sides. Most obviously from the morally turpid "dead cat" Crosby - what an endless scumbag HE is - directing the PR puppets of the Tory front bench.

He's had to put up with a lot of mendacity and fast ones from the SNP leadership as well. The latest is the blackmail last night by Ms S to join the "anti-Tory front coalition" bandwagon - under Ms S's terms and leadership, y'understand. As if she and the other High Heidyins REALLY felt that the only thing that really mattered in this election and in politics generally was to wedge out the Thatcherites ("Toreys"). When it's clear that the main, glittering prize for the SNP machine is Indy for those living in Scotland (ethnically known as "we Scots"), under dominant SNP leadership, at virtually whatever economic cost to the population of Scotland.

Miliband started off this campaign widely derided as a feckless muppet and only slightly less toxic version of the plutocrat technocrat Bliar.

He has emerged as a figure of some substance - again, despite the straitjacket suits, and also some light- and deadweights on his front bench. Genuine in his social and socialist values (not state-socialist, but for fairness, social solidarity, and fairness of opportunity) but with a proper eye to economic stability - aftr an economic tsunami not caused by Brown btw, but that's another issue - and I have to say I like him.

How long before Crosby blows the anti-Semitic dog whistle again? Or the "father was a Communist traitor" line? Oh, sorry, he's blowing them all the time.

It's a couple of years too late for Miliband to show his true colours, and values, and better qualities. And I guess this election will be a Tory-dominated coalition of some sort. But hey, ..... try to switch off. The lying bunches get me agitated.

Admire your bravery of being prepared to 'go over the top' for Miliband. Don't think I'd be prepared to do that for him or any of them - in fact I'm not sure I'd even piss on any of them if they were on fire to be honest.

Don't agree with you that he is a figure of substance (and I'll forego the cheap shot opportunity of suggesting the substance I think he resembles). He's way too lightweight for my liking - and whilst I guess it's tolerable from a domestic point of view to imagine him being in charge, I wince at the thought of him on the world stage.

Brown may not have caused the global financial meltdown but he and others (Ed Moribund being one of them) in New Labour allowed, indeed perhaps created the environment for the City to have a pretty much unregulated and unchecked existence. And that 'light touch' ended up being a significant contributory factor to the mess that ensued in the UK although I'm pretty sure if it had been the Tories in the hot seat at the time it would have seen the same scenario play out. But he can't escape the fact that he was part of the inner circle around Brown that had an opportunity to do something about it at the time but chose not to. I know that most people didn't see it coming, but there were some voices that did speak up to warn of impending danger - and surely it is the role of those in government to seek to question orthodoxy occasionally and to listen to different perspectives.

On the personal attack front, I agree with you wholeheartedly that the likes of Crosby are low-life scum, so yes he's had to put up with a lot of shit - but that goes with the territory so I feel little to no sympathy for him on that front. And he did after all indulge in a bit of Cain and Abel behaviour with his brother so he's prepared to get down and dirty to satisfy his own ambition when required.

Worst of all he's just another Westminster 'lifer'. These guys and girls go from Uni where they typically study PPE - and from that moment on it's all about following the correct steps to enter politics, so it's onto political research departments, to advisory roles, to safe seats, to cabinet.

[taipan]

Is the substance contained in a bucket?

[JGK]

Is the substance contained in a bucket?

Only if it's a Lardbucket.

[PeterCS]

L#2:

Similarly, FWIW, I think it was a fair and decent counter from you. Bits and pieces....

1) I did carefully say "of some substance". I am certainly not going to claim he has the gravitas of a Mandela, a Churchill, or even an Obama (Obama's problems are of a different kind, so let's leave that there). But then, very few are. And worse: often beware those politicians of granite, marble, iron or steel (supposedly) colossal status .... such as Josef Djugashvili. Or Iron Ladies.

The point I was trying to make is that I am (pleasantly) surprised how he appears to have grown to "to-be-taken-seriously" stature. That may not be very much, but it's a distance. Don't take my word for it: Crosby and team have eased back on the punch-a-contemptible-muppet campaign, not because they have come to any moral sense(s), but because it was losing not winning votes: and emphasising Miliband's resilient and resolute qualities rather than his obvious suited-and-booted shortcomings.

2) "Cain & Abel". Well, that's the point of Fallon's "knifed his brother in the back, so will knife the country in the back" smear. (Incidentally, precisely echoing the Nazi myth of the glorious homeland being knifed in the back by ... you've guessed it, the treacherous Jew-Communist-Democrat which they poisoned the political air and water with in the early 1920s. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stab-in-the-back_myth ).

As far as I see it, the competition for the Labour leadership after Brown was very much out in the open. You can jib at the Trade Unions' preference for Ed over David, and the unacceptability of the Unions having any such political power. But it was clearly profiled as a contest between a foursquare staunch Blairite, David, who clearly expected to be anointed leader (with what seems to me an Eton old-boy type of sense of entitlement more often associated with the Conservative Party: Cameron, Osborne, BoJo, etc.), and his brother, who made it clear he wanted to break with the more Thatcher-orientated aspects of Blair's "New Labour" Project. The fact that he was part of the Brown government, doesn't necessarily label his learning from major mistakes as slimily opportunistic - call me naive, if you like.

That David lost, might well mean that Labour loses this election - probably more complex causes and reasons, though.

But that the rift between two brothers has clearly still not entirely healed, to me, from all I've seen, and all I've seen of David's attitudes, demeanour and statements, says far less about Ed's (as the Tories would have you believe) skulking, birthright-stealing subterfuge - the Tories know a lot about the "divine" rights of primogeniture - than about David's presumptive arrogance and personal immaturity in an ability to accept first the contest, then that he was not Labour's crowned prince after all. ~ He stated he was off, and off he went. It still seems like a monster sulk.

3) I can't really accept that Miliband (Ed) simply needs to man up in the face of any shit thrown at him. That tends to blame him excessively: further insult to injurious insult. If Ken Clarke and Michael Portillo call Crosby's tactics "distasteful" and "unacceptable" (they bit their tongue on "disgusting", but their faces said it), I think you can take it that Crosby's shit is not the standard fare of dodgy electioneering. It brings politics into further disrepute. And is a toxic brand.

4) "Westminster lifer". Well, that's precisely the line the SNP leadership has indoctrinated itself to pump out at every available opportunity. The SNP as a machine is certainly very thoroughly drilled in its "lines": but admiring rigid discipline in party organisations as an end in itself has a rather ambiguous history, I think.

To me, it's less about a diseased location - "Westminster" - than a style of politics: too party-line, too dogmatic, not representative enough, not responsive enough, ruthless in pursuing its own power interests as a party, careerist also individually, devious, mendacious. The problem then is that, to me, the current SNP leadership itself falls down on at least 6 of those 8 points. And falls down very badly on five of them.

If you think I am barking up strange trees, I could give evidence, but not here.

5) I similarly can't go into Brown guilt, tsunamis, subprime mortgages, excessive levels of credit, insufficient regulation of financial institutions, and all that here. Vincent Cable saw it all coming (book "The Storm", 2008), and had many of the remedies. Sadly, he's been a lamed duck in the last five years. Whatever you think of him. Personally, I think he's one of the UK's finest economic minds - he wasn't Shell's chief economist for nothing - and if I could suggest one thing to Labour at the moment, it would be to have Ed Balls kidnapped and locked away for 5 years, and offer Cable a monumental bribe to take his place. (jk)

[PeterCS]

Apologies to anyone put out by that long post.

It's a big issue. Or rather a big set of big issues. For what they are worth. It's a forum.

And remember folks - you CAN always hop, skip, or eschew!

[Guest]

Still amazed how Labour chose Ed instead of David. This election would have been a piece of piss for them with him in charge.

[beamer]

If they fail to gain power will he be back, in a safe by-election seat in time for the leadership contest?

[Guest]

Don't think he could ever live losing to Ed down. He's done.

[beamer]

Not just like the political equivalent of KP awaiting the downfall of Shabby (one down), Choccy and co. for his triumphant return?

He could have formed a breakaway party, that would have been interesting! New New Labour?

[lardbucket]

[taipan]

Apologies to anyone put out by that long post.
!

Apology accepted.

[eowyn]

Still amazed how Labour chose Ed instead of David. This election would have been a piece of piss for them with him in charge.

It was the Union vote, Ed was the Unions candidate. I think they've change the proportion of votes they have now.

[eowyn]

John Cooper Clarke in Manchester in 1980. Could be a northern city in 2015 no change in 30 years for us poor industrial industry based sods:-( I'll be voting women in the past suffered (less than a 100 years ago) for me to be able to but I don't hold out much hope of getting a government that looks after me and mine, The sooner upper middle class and upper class men aren't the majority of politicians the better...

[Basil]

Here's a thought - Sinn Fein could end up holding the balance of power.

[beamer]

But they don't take up their seats, so all they do is reduce the number required to hold an effective majority.

[PeterCS]

Ah, but that's the thing. If power is involved, there's nothing to stop them changing their minds and "adapting" their principles to the changed situation of revolutionary opportunity.

The same sort of possibility, I suppose, for the odd couple of Independents, DUP, SDLP, Greens, or the Monster Raving Loony Party at a gallop, with a following wind.

Admittedly, Sinn Fein will probably have more seats than any one of those.

[beamer]

DUP are the largest NI party at the moment, most likely to be potential Tory allies.

[Basil]

But they don't take up their seats, so all they do is reduce the number required to hold an effective majority.

They were interviewed today - they did not explicitly rule out taking up their seats.

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