2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

Also, as you might have gathered, I am no supporter of the SNP, but to attribute their success to as down to 'crude appeals to nationalist loyalty' is as stupid and short-sighted as anything he attributes to the Labour Party.

He also doesn't realise that scots 'nationalism' isnt like the english/british kind. He's a friend of a friend on FB so I asked him about Scotland and put across my view of yes voters/snp/independence lets see if I get a reply.

Tom I felt as if this was aimed at ilx ;) (yeah like he's aware of ilx haha)

The universities, left press, and the arts characterise the English middle-class as Mail-reading misers, who are sexist, racist and homophobic to boot. Meanwhile, they characterise the white working class as lardy Sun-reading slobs, who are, since you asked, also sexist, racist and homophobic. The national history is reduced to one long imperial crime, and the notion that the English are not such a bad bunch with many strong radical traditions worth preserving is rejected as risibly complacent. So tainted and untrustworthy are they that they must be told what they can say and how they should behave.

What truth there is in the caricature is lost amid the accompanying hypocrisy. The intellectual left deplores racism but uses “white” as an insult. It lambasts the sexism of the right, but stays silent as Labour candidates run meetings where Muslim women’s inferiority is confirmed by stewards who usher them into segregated seating .

Lost, too, is any notion of how to change a society. Countries are like individuals. They will take criticism from friends and family who have their best interests at heart. If opponents make the same criticisms for the same good reasons, however, they dismiss them as insults from people who only mean them harm.

If the left is going to come back, its first task is to show that, deplorable and stupid though we undoubtedly are, in so many different and disgraceful ways, it doesn’t actually think the English are its enemies.

I don't think that Scottish 'nationalism' is that different from any other kind tbh. But you don't have to be a a nationalist to vote SNP.

yup, tom. you got it (you didn't until last year tbh)

I said that i felt Salmond was a nationalist, probably a centrist and a pragmatic politician whilst I felt that Nicola Sturgeon was a left-leaning Social Democrat and that is why the SNP resonates with 50% of the Scottish electorate who think labour are too right wing.

tbh with the huge intake of new members wanting independence I think its possible that actual nationalists in the SNP are well outnumbered. It's a real new shift in politics in Scotland.
It's not Salmond's lion roaring braveheart stuff anymore.

I hope not. But, here we go again, the Labour Party is absolutely fucking annihilated and humiliated in Scotland and what do the handwringers in the media want to talk about: the Labour Party is too left wing and not paying enough attention to the English.

yup, better together my arse? Scotland didn't do as we want so who cares about them, we don't need them anymore.
They just want to copy Cameron's English nationalism he opted for publicly the day after the referendum.
If that type of person takes over the labour party then its done for and no independent of uk labour party (as has been proposed up here) who will win in scotland either.

Another thing to bear in mind is that a lot of those LibDem seats that went blue are going to remain so for a very long time. One of the reasons that Labour were able to win elections under Blair was that the LibDems were chipping away at the Tories - they doubled their number of seats in 1997. That isn't going to happen for a very long time and the Tories will have a nice cushion over Labour regardless of what happens in Scotland.

Meanwhile Labour and the LibDems currently have a substantial blocking majority in the House of Lords. God, this Parliament is going to be a miserable clusterfuck for so many reasons.

kudos to the blairites. they've been mining their fat rolodexes non-stop since friday morning, delivering their spontaneous (i.e. pre-planned) hot takes on the failures of red ed. trying to socialise the bitter idea that the party has to shift right

nick cohen using the past its sell-by date quirk of english to conflate two completely different philosophies. other european languages have two words for these things. "nationalist": someone who believes their nation / people are inherently superior (whether by race, history, morality etc) & should be pre-eminent amongst nations, have more power than, or power-over other nations. "independista": someone who believes their country is as good as other countries & should be governed by the people who live in it & know it.

the irony during indyref was that it was the unionist side that made a constant appeal to tribal ethnic scottishness: "I'm a proud scot but..." went the line for weeks

It also doesn't help that people think the N in SNP stands for Nationalist.

*some* people, that should say

yeah it's simply 'National' but I gave up a year ago trying to tell people that.

and it wasnt just those with union flag avatars on their profile pics either. it was irl people too. they just believe what they want to believe in some cases

strangely enough, but English friends online, who didn't get it before (and a lot did) , started to get it this week. Most dont want Scotland to leave the UK as they think that will leave with the tories and think federalism is the answer. Ive not seen many people arguing for that up here. It seems to be mostly yes vs no with some on both sides saying devo max, but devo max is not federalism, right?

Anyone care to explain federalism to me?

LOL Guy Incognito?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/nigel-farage-is-odds-on-to-be-next-ukip-leader-10239428.html

was reading up on the new fabulous/fighting/feeble (delete as appropriate) 56 earlier: looks like a higher proportion of them are more experienced than the blair intake of labour MPs. many seem to be mature people who have had a life. there's also at least a dozen experienced MPs incl. just abt the most experienced politician in the UK to guide them on parliamentary processes

Yeah, but everyone's focussing on Mhairi Black and going "lol, teenager acted like a teenager, lol Scotland" etc.

"everyone" being about five people on Twitter and some mates in the pub. I'm all about the generalisations, it must be catching.

mhairi black who won against 1. an incumbent and 2. very experienced and wily career politician 3. whose party were funneling resources at and 4. who was shadow foreign secretary and 5. labour's campaign strategist.

as far as I've seen reported, she won her place in parliament (& in history) by knocking just about every door in paisley. well done & good luck to her

Yeah, and by being passionate, articulate, and sympathetic to the needs of the constituents. But that doesn't stop there being a weird "but she's 20! And she said some stuff on twitter before she went into politics!" narrative surrounding her.

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/10/election-2015-where-the-votes-switched-and-why
"The way forward for Labour is not clear, as the different groups that shunned the party in 2015 make contradictory demands for change....The choice is hard: any shift to appeal to one group risks alienating others. Yet attempting to offer something to everyone, as Ed Miliband’s Labour often seemed to do, risks satisfying no one."

That sums it up pretty well.

school > politics degree > parliament & she describes Douglas Alexander as a career politician

also her SNP biog has an apostrophe in "MPs" - is this the sort of person we want running out country?
xp

Yeah, my sister is always posting shite abt Milliband and Jim Murphy never having had a proper job... and she voted for her!

didnt jim purphy once make a thing about being university educated until people found out he never actually passed his degree course?

Looking forward to her being pulled up for never having had a proper job in 10-15 years time.

I don't think she's passed her degree course yet (xp)

tbf, conversation around these parts does tend to focus on her because, well, she's from round these parts. And because she's very newsworthy, more so than the other - as you say - experienced and mature political bods who are heading for Westminster.

This SNP victory is largely pyrrhic. The Tories will go down the route of devolving more powers not out of the goodness of their hearts or new-found respect for the Democratic choices of Scots. They will use it as a smokescreen to massively reduce central government funding and create a situation where the SNP have to enact their own unpopular policies (either spending cuts or big tax rises).

They want the sheen to come off the SNP's left wing credentials so that when people complain, the Tories can go "see, you asked for this it'll get worse under independence". Not saying everyone will fall for it but probably enough to make a second No vote a likelihood.

I agree. It's ironic enough that they'd have had the better settlement by working with Labour.

Dimbleby was trying to draw John Swinney on that on QT on Friday, "so you want full fiscal autonomy, the Barnett formula scrapped and all the revenue raised in Scotland given to Scotland for them to spend as you see fit?" "no, we want to be able to spend the money Scotland has on the areas we think will best benefit Scotland and stimulate the Scottish economy."

If I was judged on everything I said when I was 15 I would never be allowed to do anything, ever. And I'm definitely all for having better representation of both women and young women. But as an inhabitant of Mhairi Black's constituency I feel troubled that she is my representative. I would love for her to prove me wrong but I'm not convinced that at twenty years old, having only ever been in full-time education or behind the counter of the local chip shop, she has the skills needed to be a day-to-day constituency representative: it's a job that needs tact and diplomacy and understanding yet firmness and confidence and self-belief, and I'm not sure how much she can have of all this at this point in her life. I'm not talking about the standing up in Parliament giving speeches and winning support, I'm thinking of when someone comes to see her in her office about a local concern and she has to say no to something for a valid reason. This is of course based on projecting my experience of being twenty and the students I work with on a daily basis - I'm working from some uncomfortable assumptions and she could be a lot more up to the job than I would expect from what I have seen of her and her potential.

It's not like there are a great deal of MPs who *do* have much more life experience - six months in a law firm seems to be standard training at this point - and I do hope that she is up to it, not just for the sake of my town but for the sake of herself: with all the press spotlight on her distinctive newsworthy character there's a sense that the media are waiting for her first major fuck-up, and that seems really sad regardless of how I feel about the SNP. I really do hope that she's being under-estimated.

The SNP is not short of existing representatives to give her some on-the-job training, though.

didnt jim purphy once make a thing about being university educated until people found out he never actually passed his degree course?

9 years at uni without graduating - spent years of that on NUS duties.

He matriculated at Strathclyde in 1985 and left without a degree in 1997. The nine year thing excludes a number of years out/gap years/whatever.

i agree that nobody under the age of 40 shd be allowed to stand for parliament

I see that Farage is talking about running for the Leadership of UKIP, i.e. what he's just resigned from.

that seemed p likely all along and can be trumpeted as being 'for the good of the party', which tbf it probably would be

The pro-Tea Party pro-debt ceiling Javid gets Business. That'll do wonders for their reputation.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/8677520/Westminster-needs-a-debt-ceiling-too.html

Priti Patel, the junior Treasury minister, was a familiar face on TV during the general election campaign, putting the Conservative party line forcefully, and less robotically than many other frontbenchers put up by CCHQ. We’re going to be hearing more from her. She is replacing Esther McVey, the former employment minister who lost her seat, and she will be on the screens every month when new employment figures come out.
For a party that has historically short of women and minority ethnic figures at the top, Patel’s promotion ticks two boxes at the same time, but she is not someone whose rise has been accompanied by offstage whispers about tokenism. She has had a long background in politics, working for the party as a press officer in the William Hague era, when joining the Tories was not an option for careerists, and she has robust, rightwing views, which she never made much effort to conceal. Before Patel joined the Conservatives, Patel worked for the Referendum party, Sir James Goldsmith’s Eurosceptic party, before the 1997 election. She is also one of the relatively few MPs who has openly advocated the return of hanging.

She is also one of the relatively few MPs who has openly advocated the return of hanging.

Another one being Michael Gove, the new Justice Secretary

I'm sure there must be a few more shy hangers out there.

Considering Cameron's first Justice Secretary was allegedly [CONFIDENTIAL MODERATOR EDIT], Gove represents something of a step up.

is that a gag or are we in super-injunction territory

it's a gag either way amirite

shy hangers

v cute

A man of his word: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2015/may/11/election-2015-live-david-cameron-conservative-cabinet-eu-sccotland

The Daily Express are going with a front page that proclaims: "Hello, Hello, I'm Back Again!" um, ah..

the executive rejects his resignation so he's now... what? staying there as party leader against his will?

He clearly wants to just get down the pub and fuck off on holiday for a few months, and then he realised that there's literally nothing than he would be expected to do for the rest of this year in any case.