2015 UK General Election campaign & aftermath discussion thread.

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.

Keep thinking about the Labour leadership question and I'm sort of wondering whether it really is mostly a case of having a leader who doesn't come across as an introverted weirdo.

Gove/Human Rights act: https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/on-the-referendum-1-gove-and-the-human-rights-act-cool-yer-boots-man/

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.

He could bloody well turn up for his job in Europe, like.

xxp he's still an MEP! There was a letter to him doing the rounds on Facebook earlier saying hey Nige, your health seems to have improved and you're not bothered by the election any more, surely this tosh about you taking the summer off was some sort of typo, you're not one of those lazy slack MEPs you're always railing against, right?

Oh, Grant Scnapps has been demoted...

let's see if anyone can think of a new uk politics thread title before matt dc

actually that 'why did you vote conservative' one should do

"why did evil cunts vote conservative"

That thread should really just be allowed to die a quiet death.

Christ, 2020 is a long way away.

Leave it for a few days then lock it. Waste of time.

Spoke too soon, another customer!

thread title: 'Have you ever kissed a Shy Tory?'

Jesus.

https://twitter.com/50ShadesOfTory

keep the meme alive turrers

Was listening to Dave Mili on R4 earlier, he was sounding deluded and bitter. Like he thinks his version of opposition would have been a roaring success in comparison to his bro's because it includes "aspirational people", what a fucking worthless turd. Does he really think that in the labour heartlands people would love to vote for someone threatening to throttle you with both hands rather than just the one? And he would have bombed just as badly as bro in the tory marginals.

there may be truth in their argument that a "left of centre" (bitter, bitter lols) Labour party can't win an election. their conclusion - that you just keep moving right, chasing those votes, because that's what a political party does - is base cynicism.

blaming the electorate is a terrible thing, they are millions of nice people who just want what's best for their families and to live in relative security and comfort and the warm glow of knowing that every undeserving human being - which is basically everybody who is different to them who they have no understanding or knowledge of - gets nothing from the government but punishment.

That's the thing, "aspirational" is just code for a certain kind of voter, in reality most people are aspirational in one way or another, ways that aren't always about naked acquisitiveness.

But it isn't really about aspiration, it's about fear. Even relatively well off people feel insecure, especially post-2008. You can take any socialist or for that matter several right-wing policies and wave them under the electorate's nose and they'll say they like them in isolation. But if, fuelled by the media, they ultimately worry that you'll wreck everything either through mendacity or basic incompetence then they won't vote for you. It's why they rejected Brown and Major and it's much of the electorate took a look at Miliband and Balls and for that matter Hague and Howard and IDS if they'd had the chance and decided no.

Miliband just wasn't good enough at deflecting that fear, if anything he compounded it, while the SNP were able to convince people that they could both run Scotland competently AND give enough of a shit to show a way out for the thousands of people to whom the worst might already be happening.

There are many other factors at play, but the more the Tories run down the welfare state the worse these feelings of insecurity are going to get, and conversely they will probably continue to benefit from them, until such point as they suddenly don't.

One of the few surprising things to have come out of Labour over the past few days was Blair admitting he hasn't paid enough attention to inequality, and Miliband was right to focus on it. No senior Labour figure should even think about talking about "aspiration" without also talking about inequality and poverty. Aspirations don't mean shit if the government is systematically removing any means you might have to achieve it.

David Miliband just comes across like Harry Redknapp shaking his fist, oblivious to the fact he would have done just as badly. The tabloids would have printed that banana photo every day for five years and he'd have been ridiculed just like his brother.

Also they have to actually be honest about the fact that the aspirations and interests of different voters constantly clash with one another and stop pretending to be all things to all people. Actually it seems like they're already making that choice while ignoring the flood of people abandoning them from the other direction.

if one accepts the concept of poverty of aspiration does a central focus on the aspirational mean focusing on the privileged I guess so

the more the Tories run down the welfare state the worse these feelings of insecurity are going to get, and conversely they will probably continue to benefit from them, until such point as they suddenly don't

this is what this 'blue collar conservatism' thing is all about right? a vision of everyone treading on each others heads to get in to the lifeboat, which then starts sinking anyway

UGH. David Miliband was such a dick yesterday. It must have been difficult growing up as London's answer to Alex P. Keaton.

i liked what the Compass fella said on Newnight last night, that the Labour party needs to be about collective aspiration: the aspiration for good wages, an education, an affordable place to live, a fair society, for clean air to breathe

UGH. David Miliband was such a dick yesterday.

yeah - agree.
nagl.
but hey he now works for a big global charity raising millions etc, so, its all good.

"Blue collar conservatism" is probably a bit of reheated divide-and-rule Thatcherism aimed at winning back parts of the working class Labour vote, but particularly in hoovering up the voters who have defected to UKIP.

In my lifetime at least, the Tory view has usually been that there are two working classes, the ones who are interested in social mobility who should be helped (as long as it doesn't hinder the people with actual money), and the others, who policy makers basically shouldn't bother with. I don't really believe that "poverty of aspiration" is as widespread as these people say it is, certainly not among kids, but it is a useful tool if your aim is to decide who you should allow to basically starve.

We were sitting in the garden of David Miliband's local in Primrose Hill yesterday when news of that actual incident of filial backstabbery came through.

was it really back-stabbing? the newspapers had it as "blasts" ed but when i read the article it seemed there was nothing in there to justify the headline, as per usual.

Agree - in the bbc interview I saw he chose his words really carefully and took great pains not to be backstabbing. Tbh I think the interview was more to leave him open to come back at a later stage than to settle a score with Ed.