DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

quite.

They're facacta no matter when the election is, IIRC.

(Mark I think you confused me with calling an election in 5 years' time a "snap" election)

(don't worry, I confused myself also. I think...)

Why would Cameron call a snap election when the Tories are on 38% and Labour on 40%?

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, 5 January 2011 11:24 (40 minutes ago) Bookmark

Because the Labour Party war fund currently stands at £16.25 and an IOU note signed by Len McCluskey.

Also it would require Ed Miliband to actually come up with some policies way before he ever expected to, Labour would have to rush something out and they'd look useless in an election campaign.

But he can't call a snap election, so this is irrelevant.

If the last General Election results had been reversed between Nu-Nu-Lab and the Tories, and Clegg had took the Lib Dems into coalition with a Brown-led government, how much different would their poll ratings look today?

Probably a bit better I'm guessing, since 1) Labour would have been in a weaker negotiating position and 2) the LDs would have had to do fewer policy U-turns.

Why weren't they able to predict this situation before they entered into the deal? Nothing totally unforseeable has happened between then and now, has it?

Well quite. Every deal they've done, everything that's happened since they coalitioned up, shd've been obvious from the outset. And yet they took the decision. Which begs some questions.

Also I don't think they'd've got mad respect from the electorate for propping up any kind of Brown govmint. The big question here is: has their support slumped because

a) they're somehow taking the brunt of the blame for the Coalition's exciting new look no-welfare State
b) they're fundamentally a leftist/social democratic party with a significant but v. much minority slice of soft-Right/anti-Labour voters
c) they're fundamentally an angry protest vote party who've blown up their raison d'etre by being in power

and each of those answers begs its own set of questions which mostly boil down to they need to decide quickly-ish what a Lib Dems is for

The LibDems have studiously avoided the question of what they're for for so long, but I'd say what you're getting at is a combination of a) and c).

They'd be in a worse position had they propped up a Labour government. The Tories are at least willing to pay lip-service to the idea of actually working with them, the ignominy of Labour big beasts who are used to having their own way in government then having to work with Clegg would have led to some disastrous rows, would be my guess.

And Labour would still have rammed home any authoritarian legislation they wanted to, even if it sat badly with the LibDems' soft left vote. There'd be little chance of those people switching to the Tories, but the right-leaning LibDem vote evaporating would possibly outweigh that.

It all comes down to hung parliament = not proper coalition government, because next time it'll be business as usual and the electoral interests of the coalition parties will still be diametrically opposed.

Not as big a story as Samantha Womack leaving Eastenders, but nearly.

ehhh doesn't this happen pretty often? A lot of council departments have the same 'if you don't spend your whole budget you won't get the same amount next year' system iirc.

A lot of departments, full stop.

indeed i saw an episode of star trek:voyager last week wherein this very phenomenon occurred.

It's a universal problem

Latest net government approval: minus 20 (33% approve, 53% disapprove)

Lib Dems 7%

VAT 20%

Bankers salaries up 40%

rock and roller cola wars, i can't take it any more!!

Hate to say I told you so, but it looks like that racist cunt Jack Straw is back in the game.

The Government was urged today to introduce a £2.50 an hour training wage for internships lasting for three months or longer.

The idea was part of a number of measures suggested by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) aimed at boosting the UK's economic recovery.

Also, surprise surprise, the Tories are moving to "create jobs" by making it easier to sack people.

Straight doublespeak from the Mail on this:

David Cameron plans to get Britain back to work by making it easier to sack staff in the first two years of their employment.

uh....

you sack someone, you hire someone else, bingo, two jobs for price of one.

Bad news for Nick Clegg that.

Love the idea that employers are too scared to employ people in case they suddenly stop doing any work after 366 days.

Hilarious commenters on the Telegraph site worried about how this affects white middle-aged males.

You could say that about any story on any newspaper website, I know, but still.

An amazing piece of mad brainstorming disguised as a policy proposal from yesterday: killing two birds with one stone by making parents pay for the administrative costs of arranging child support, in order to cut costs and encourage couples to stay together for the kids!

"The aim would be to be act as a deterrent and help convince parents that splitting up should be an option of last resort when all other avenues had been taken. The whole system needs to be made more family friendly."

In fact, there should be a tax break for marriages to involve three people. One to work (main job), one to also work and raise kids, and one to act as spare child care, and sexual substitute for when the other two are too busy for it.

the easy-to-sack-within-first-two-years* is a lot like the french rule that a bunch of cars got flipped over, and was then repealed/not enacted, no?

* also i have never had a job for two years, feel like i'm not alone in this.

Lib Dems up one point

Lib Dems support up 9%! :)

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/features/3341539/Well-help-the-Alarm-Clock-heroes-keep-Britain-ticking.html

Every time Clegg talks about taking the poor out of income tax altogether I picture a load of Tory MPs standing behind him and guffawing.

According to ComRes, the Tories trail Labour among voters in every age group below 55 and in every region of Britain except the Midlands

That has to be bollocks, doesn't it? Surely the Tories would be ahead of Labour in the south-east (outside of London) and the south-west.

all depends how you draw the boundaries (which is why the tories want to redraw them)

Snap election for May? http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2011/01/12/a-snap-election-promises-cameron-the-glory-he-craves/

Seems mental on the face of it, but could the Tories benefit more than Lab from the strange death of the Lib-Dems?

A snap election leading to another hung parliament would be *awesome*

That could possibly (even probably?) lead to a centre-left/centre-right split in the LDs attempting to form separate coalitions with Lab & Con. Or we could keep going around till enough people on one side give up voting altogether.

the self-imposed five-year rule would make that hard for lib dem mps to swallow

i think they'd reject it on principle

;)

I'd say the Tories are more likely to benefit from LibDem meltdown. Unless I'm mistaken the majority of Liberal seats have the Tories in second place, so it depends how the candidates had previously been presenting themselves in those seats (ie fluffy lefties or fluffier Tories).

being serious, i don't know how the tories could justify it, given the five-year thing

they'd need to engineer a split in the lib dems, or some kind of crisis, to be able to say the coalition isn't working therefore we must break our own rule

there's more than one they, of course, and whoever leaked this must have had their own purpose in mind

Gleefully introducing a ridiculously unpalatable right-wing policy would help achieve that end.

war

Wars are kind of expensive though. Needs to be something that doesn't cost money.