The 2015 Popularity Contest (aka UK General Election )

Who will you be voting for?

  • Tory

    Votes: 38 9.9%

  • Diet Tory (Labour)

    Votes: 132 34.3%

  • Tory Zero (Greens)

    Votes: 44 11.4%

  • Extra Tory with lemon (UKIP)

    Votes: 40 10.4%

  • Lib Dems

    Votes: 9 2.3%

  • Other

    Votes: 31 8.1%

  • Cheese on toast

    Votes: 91 23.6%
  • Total voters
    385
  • Poll closed .
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chewee said:
I predict the Tories will be the biggest party by 10 seats. Ed after 5-7 days of negotiating will cobble a deal together to get him over the line.

How many big hitters do we think will go? A few at risk include heavyweights like:

Clegg - could be the Portillo moment of this election.
Danny Alexander is as good as gone
Jim Murphy on the brink
Douglas Alexander very likely to lose his to.
Esther McVey - Massive seat/scalp for Labour
Charles Kennedy - Held his seat since 1983

Seen a stat that made me feel very old. If you turned 18 today you were born the day of New Labours landslide.
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I see the Tories holding about a 20 seat lead over Labour in the end but well short of a majority even with LD help. They'll turn to the crazies on the right and see if that gives them the arithmetic. Bascially, Cameron is looking to retain power with the help of a bunch of political pariahs, one of the political arms of Ulster paramilitarism, and a bunch of neo-fascists. Classy.
 
sd_1992 said:
There is so much wrong that I will start from the top, you are making massive assumptions that suit your argument, there is no indiction that as part of an international coalition with no boots on the ground that we would have sustained any amount of damage ourselves, and recent events in Syria where entire cities are bomb sites hardly suggests that we would have done anything as bad, as for the international legitimacy, the SNC is the recognised government by most people (with the exception of Russia), including the Arab league who supported the action and would have been a leading member of the coalition, so there was plenty of legitimacy for intervention and a perfectly legitimate succession plan.

If you are asking about us having no national interest in it then you are essentially saying we have no right to outside help if we are ever in trouble as a nation, and that if it were happening to us you would have absolutely no interest in another nation coming to our aid. Our interest is and should be that we are all people of this world and have a moral obligation when it comes to the mass murder of innocent civilians to act and do whatever we can to stop it and anyone who disagrees with that should be ashamed of themselves.

What this comes down to in the end is Labour party politics being more important than peoples lives (which has become more common in recent years unfortunately), I have never been so angry about anything to do with politics as I was with that in my entires life and it will be a long long time before I will be able to bring myself to vote Labour again (and I voted for them in the last few elections and supported Blair's decision to go into Iraq before you think this is a partisan point).
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Classic example of the humanity card, being used only when it suits.
 
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davek said:
I see the Tories holding about a 20 seat lead over Labour in the end but well short of a majority even with LD help. They'll turn to the crazies on the right and see if that gives them the arithmetic. Bascially, Cameron is looking to retain power with the help of a bunch of political pariahs, one of the political arms of Ulster paramilitarism, and a bunch of neo-fascists. Classy.
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Dave, I see the Conservatives perhaps having a 6-10 seat lead over Labour, but with that they have zero chance of forming a minority Government regardless of any protests they make about being the largest party with probably the largest aggregate vote.

Ed will be PM because more MPs will vote against the Conservatives than will vote with them.

It will not necessarily be democracy's best moment even if ultimately the country will benefit from 5 years of a Labour Government.
 
If it's a 20 seat lead Ed is toast.

The poll of poll projections suggest 280 - 268 in the Tories favour, this is fine for Labour. (Maths clearly in their favour because of the left leaning block of other parties). Surprised it's still so close after adding up the averages.

Given the Ashcroft marginal results today and yesterday's ITV ComRes marginal polling some of the 3/4/5 point tory leads seem way out. There is of course the possibility the Tories are racking up tons of votes in safe seats but failing to make similar inroads in the marginals, the evidence does hint at this.

Worth pointing out those polls which have shown significant tory leads have almost exclusively been via phone, online ones have it level pegging with a few showing small Labour leads. Guess it boils down to which type poll you trust more. Another big difference is the % increase in the UKIP vote online, maybe just maybe some of those intending to vote UKIP feel uncomfortable admitting that on the phone but happy to do so online.
 
the esk said:
Dave, I see the Conservatives perhaps having a 6-10 seat lead over Labour, but with that they have zero chance of forming a minority Government regardless of any protests they make about being the largest party with probably the largest aggregate vote.

Ed will be PM because more MPs will vote against the Conservatives than will vote with them.

It will not necessarily be democracy's best moment even if ultimately the country will benefit from 5 years of a Labour Government.
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I hope that's right, mate. Nearly all forecasters are suggesting a gap less than 20 seats, so you're in decent company. I just think the Tories will get that 20 seat gap with a combination of UKIP vote decline and capturing Lib Dem seats. That said, I believe it'll leave the potential Tory led bloc still way short of 323. It could well be that as the largest party they'll go for minority rule. In that case they can be voted out on a vote of no confidence and then a successor government form within a fortnight or we go again with another election...which no one will want. The question is whether after all the SNP denials of Miliband he could go on to form a minority government himself - counting on the SNPs tacit support - and still be seen to legitimately keep his promise of no truck with the separatists north of the border. That'd be a massive gamble putting his own and his party's reputation on the line, and the media would be all over it like rabid dogs.

More likely, IMO, will be to let the Tories form their minority government and let it implode under the weight of its own contradictions - which will be legion - and then Labour will get their chance. I think that's what they'll do actually, and EMs QT statement about not selling out the Union for short term party gain underlined it as a strategy for me.

I've said al along we'll end up with a dogs breakfast of centre right/extreme right parties holding the balance of power initially this time around, and then a Labour government in the near future with a solid foundation after this soon to be formed mess of a government is formed and cleared out the way.
 

UKIP Racism News:

http://www.theguardian.com/politics...idate-jack-sen-over-racially-charged-comments

Ukip has suspended another of its parliamentary candidates a week before the general election after he made a series of racially charged comments.

Jack Sen, who was to stand for the party in West Lancashire, said that minorities in South Africa were being ethnically cleansed.

And he laid the blame for a “genocide” in western Europe at the door of the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, and other prominent Jewish figures across the world. He also included Labour’s Emily Thornberry, who is not Jewish.

Sen made the comments in an interview with the far-right South African website the European Knights Project (EKP) published on 12 April. He said on Friday that he stood by them.

Separately, antisemitic comments about Labour’s candidate for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger, were posted on his Twitter account on Thursday.

Echoing language often used by antisemitic groups, Sen linked Miliband to a “shadowy elite bent on [the west’s] destruction” and said that his father, Ralph Miliband, who arrived in the UK after fleeing Nazi persecution of Jews, “did his utmost to destroy his host nation”.

The comments on Twitter accused Berger of having “divided loyalties” – a common antisemitic slur meant to suggest that Jews are loyal to Israel, rather than to the country in which they live.

Berger said that those comments were clearly antisemitic. She said: “Remarks like these have no place in our politics. I am glad that Ukip has taken action.”

Speaking to the Guardian on Friday, Sen said that they had been tweeted by a party activist, not by him. But he failed to provide any further details.

Referring to his EKP interview, Sen said that he was neither aware that the people he had attacked were Jewish, nor that his comments about them echoed well-known antisemitic jibes.

The apparent implication that there was a group of Jewish people across the world that was culpable was accidental, he said. He said the link he was trying to draw between the people he mentioned was not their Judaism, but what he saw as their shared political views.

In the EKP interview, Sen said: “The minority South African, and Afrikaner in particular, is an endangered species in my estimation. It is being systemically hunted into extinction by a people we were told wanted to live in democratic harmony back in 1994.

“Remember the rainbow nation propaganda campaign? Hard to reach that lofty ideal when people are being gunned down for sport from Joburg to Capetown. It’s still hunting season from what I can see.”

He also said that there was a “common thread” that bound two prominent Jewish figures in South Africa and Miliband. “Your audience will have to decide what that is,” he told the website.

A series of tweets were directed at Berger from his account. One read: “If you had it your way you’d send the £ to Poland/Israel.”

Berger was accused of having “divided loyalties” and one of the tweets read: “Britain’s youngest Jewish MP, Luciana Berger, is facing criticism over her record of … loyalties”.

The Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, apologised for the comments attributed to Sen and those posted on his Twitter account. He told ITV News: “We’ve got over 5,000 people standing for us at this election, and less than a handful have caused us a problem.

“Ukip is a non-sectarian, non-racist party and we’ve actually got a remarkable number of people standing for us from every single walk of life, from every religion and every ethnic group in this country.”

In a statement, the party said: “Jack Sen, a Ukip candidate, has expressed views that in no way reflect the views of the party and any other of our hard-working dedicated candidates.

“In the light of these and other comments, Mr Sen has been suspended from Ukip with immediate effect.”

A party source indicated that he would have two weeks to appeal against the suspension and would be expelled from the party either at that point or if his appeal failed.

Sen said he felt he had been let down by the party, which he said had offered him no support over these allegations, nor over earlier claims that he had received death threats.

He told the Guardian that he had found out about his suspension from the media and that no one from Ukip had called him.

The news of his suspension comes after Janice Atkinson, one of the leading figures in the party and a parliamentary candidate, was expelled from Ukip over fake expenses claims.
 
"Best laid plans ..." Whatever brilliant strategy Miliband has in mind if the Tories have the first shot at a Queen's Speech, Cameron can scupper them with the content of that speech. He also has the benefit of knowing that neither Labour nor the Lib Dems can really afford to fight another election within a year / eighteen months.

If Miliband has a shot, he can quite easily propose legislation which none of the left parties could possibly not support. It might, initially, give the Tory media food for attack (said one thing but depended on Nats in the end) but even halfway decent spin would see him through it IMO and might even increase his popularity.

After that, keep it anodyne till the party's coffers have recovered sufficiently for him to go all out, because after a year of power, he will have gained that almost indefinable mantle of power which leads to the old saying, "Oppositions don't win elections; Governments lose them."

One thing is certain. The very little respect I have left for the Lib Dems will disappear if they have anything to do with that bunch of bigots in the D U P.
 
In the wake of Gove apparently flogging the party line that child poverty has been miraculously reduced under the Coalition, the Director of the Child Poverty Action Group has written this article:

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/04/how-has-coalition-done-child-poverty

She takes a different view, oddly enough:

"The analysis shows that it is children who have been hit hardest under the outgoing government. Not only do children remain the group most likely to be in poverty – twice as likely as pensioners – but the rise in the later years of this Parliament has been highest for children. The last two years show the tide turning on poverty – in the wrong direction, and to the detriment of children in particular."
 
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Not mentioned anywhere but what if the royal birth gives Cameron and co a boost in the polls with the potential "feel good" factor of a royal birthday?
 

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