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

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.

Yup, wikipedia agrees with this. Tories lost about 700,000 votes between 1979 and 1983 and their share of the vote slightly fell (from 43.9% to 42.4%). The real story is that Labour lost more than 3 million voters and the Liberal-SDP Alliance got 3.5 million more votes than the Liberals got in 1979.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12212240

good work setting the minimum price at about the cheapest level you can buy booze for already. looks like they'll just have to carry on sending missionaries to the poor benighted working classes for a while yet.

The Tories and Lib Dems both opposed SNP's minimum pricing policy in Scotland.

minimum pricing is arse imo but hardly surprised that the Tories agin it. hardly surprised that the LDs are opportunist twats either.

onino, what's the SNPs minimum pricing policy per unit? i think it's 40p per unit at the moment but was supposed to increase, is that correct?

onimo*, sorry.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jan/19/michael-gove-tactical-voting-liberal-democrats

Mostly depressing story, but I liked this bit:

In the debate Gove reacted angrily when Burnham quoted an article by his wife, the Times journalist Sarah Vine, to show the Tories were out of touch.

She wrote last week: "Like all angst-ridden working mothers I live in terror of upsetting my cleaner." Burnham, MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, said: "Now, I can tell you, angst-ridden mums in Leigh talk of little else. I do sympathise with Mrs Gove's predicament. But I wonder if the secretary of state might pass on a bit of advice to all the wives of cabinet colleagues who fret about the same curses of modern living.

"Can I respectfully suggest that the best way to stay on the right side of the cleaner might not be to clean the oven oneself, but instead to press one's other half not to remove the cleaner's kids' EMA."

oh snap

served

That's a mistake from Gove, it makes the LibDems look like complete feebs.

Ugh, the Vine/Gove household. This agnostic-to-atheist couple 'got religion' to get their kids into a C of E state school in Kensington and I'm told Vine is so gung-ho she's now teaching Sunday school there.

Maybe my gaydar is on the fritz, but I am very surprised that Gove is married.

let's not bring michael gove's sex life into play here

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2008/09/27/article-0-02CADB2400000578-486_468x421.jpg

Excellent work there, drunken football fans of Aberdeen.

"leaving Gove and his face to take the rap"

brilliantly put

OMU?

can imagine gove getting his stupid ugly wee face battered by football casuals in aberdeen while his pal legged it as a transformative event in his revolting tory life of the same order as bruce wayne witnessing the murder of his parents

Maybe a typo/slip for OMV, Order of Malta Volunteers?

Jazz Cellar sounds like an Oxonian euphemism for something.

DRUDGE SIREN Alan Johnson's just resigned for "personal reasons". Or Ed Miliband realised what a gigantic mistake he'd made.

http://mhpbooks.com/mobylives/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/google.jpg

Maybe Miliband just wants to wind up Ed Balls a bit more by giving the job to some other no-mark with no understanding of economics.

Apparently, AJ's wife 'just left him'...