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

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.

Reintroduction of fox hunting innit

life sentences for all drug dealing

shot on spot for heroin

hanging for liberals

say they can't prove that the labour cabinet may or may not be pedophiles

Education Secretary Michael Gove says he wants parents to "go compare".

shit miliband joke about meerkats at next week's PMQs then

Crazy idea off the top of my head here, but what about if the Gov made the shit schools not shit, then there wouldn't be any need for parents to shop around eh?

You are a dangerous revolutionary, set on upending the structure of our society, obv.

Oh, come on, Edna, we both know these children have no future!

Crazy idea off the top of my head here, but what about if the Gov made the shit schools not shit, then there wouldn't be any need for parents to shop around eh?

― Tinker Tailor Soulja Boy Tell 'Em (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, January 12, 2011 8:42 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

wtf is wrong with you? trying to give ALL kids a decent education?

Peston is totally dripping with insinuation about Jeremy Hunt here...

comments to that story are very depressing.

like, the BBC has its moments of being shit, many of them in fact (thinking of the wonderful justin webb on the today programme this morning, arguing that violent talk in american politics was equally a problem for both sides, and defending this point with the words "and some years back someone [who?] famously said "I hate george bush""). but i think most of these anti-BBC commentators would hate the world under murdoch's purview.

Labour hold a seat they've held since the 1950s, every political journalist goes overboard about "what this means for the coalition". It doesn't really mean anything.

it's not rly insinuation is it? just saying "look at this effing corrupt tory cunt"

Yeah, there needs to be a big noise made about this.

xp - it doesn't mean much but a bigger majority than 1997 is probably worthy of some comment.

Suppose - I'd put that down to core vote out in force plus collapse in working class Tory vote? Labour can expect far more of their supporters to vote in the next election than they did in 2005 or 2010.

Labour 14186 14718 3.8%
Lib Dem 14083 11160 -20.8%
Tory 11773 4481 -61.9%
Lib+Con 25856 15641 -39.5%
Other 4478 4571 2.1%

Slight increase in Labour and 'other' votes, big drop in Lib Dem vote, HUGE drop in Tory vote, combined drop of just under 40% for the coalition

I suspect some Tory voters saw they came third last time and just couldn't be bothered this time round.

or voted lib dem in an attempt to keep labour out as instructed by the underwhelming tory campaign

Or watching LarkRise to Camelford on iplayer.

downturn abbey u mean

They don't buy "Private Eye", or they do but read it in secret...

I like that the consensus among talking heads on telly last night was that the LD vote only held up at all because all the Tories voted for them.

If the coalition holds together it'll be interesting to see how this pans out in a GE - whether they'll each take back seats in constituencies they can't win in order to try to keep Labour out.

The LibDem vote only held up in the sense that their share of the total vote held steady, but the total vote was significantly lower, largely because the Tory vote disappeared. In other words, it's not so much that Tories switched their votes to Lib Dems, it's that they just didn't vote at all, and this reduced the turnout by so much that even though the Lib Dems substantially lost votes, they managed to keep the same share of the vote.

I mean, it's still good news for the Lib Dems in that their vote didn't collapse on the scale it has done nationally in opinion polls.

They're going to have to pull the same trick in Barnsley in a few months, right? Labour must be hoping that more of their MPs turn out to be liars and expenses fiddlers.

it may be good news for lib dem selfmeasurement and they can try to tell people about it but it only really looks bad - second place and instead of a matter of I think less than two hundred votes against p woolas it's like over three thousand? so you can tell people that you maintained your proportion of the vote despite a smaller turnout or whatever but just sounds embarrassing and like you're deluded like nick clegg did on the news this morning.

This result means dick btw

Some Fabian Society type was saying today that Miliband is more likely to be next PM than most people recognise, because Cameron would have to become more popular by the end of his first term, and that never happens to Prime Ministers, especially in difficult economic times. He obviously didn't notice that this was exactly what happened to Margaret Thatcher.

She did murder a bunch of random Argentinians to achieve the dream tho

war

― legerndrymayne (acoleuthic), Wednesday, 12 January 2011 13:36 (2 days ago)

Keep your head down for the next few years if you live on the Spanish side of the Gibraltar border, just sayin'

the UK has kind of shot its load in that respect

war on criminals, like with actual guns and remote mines and shit

we'll be fine as long as we can con a bunch of lesser nations into supporting whatever empire-building adventures we decide to embark on in the next oh hang on

I was reading somewhere (I can't remember where, probably the Guardian website) earlier, that polling figures suggest that of people who voted Lib Dem at the last election, virtually all of them whose second preference was for Labour have now switched their (first-choice) support to Labour. So what's left of the Lib Dem support now is basically people who would consider the Tories their second-preference (and who are presumably quite happy with the coalition arrangement). So ironically, AV would actually be quite useful for the Tories in seats like Oldham.

because Cameron would have to become more popular by the end of his first term, and that never happens to Prime Ministers, especially in difficult economic times. He obviously didn't notice that this was exactly what happened to Margaret Thatcher.

Not sure about that Matt- I think the tory vote was a little down in 1983 from '79. It was a fragmented opposition that made those eighties majorities so big. Don't know what effect a fragmented government will have.