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May 7th | UK General Election 2015 OT - Please go vote!
- Thread starter Volotaire
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By the time 2020 rolls around the status of Scottish MPs at Westminster will probably be diminished under the Conservatives "English Votes for English laws" commitment. Either that or Scotland gets devo max, or outright independence.
I fear that what Alan Johnson says is true and that Labour faces a 10 year task to rebuild themselves, so they have to think bold and long-term unfortunately.
I have had a brief read of it - I will read it fully later - and like I said he seems to tick all the boxes. The one big thing going against him is that he is very fresh faced, but, as I have noted above, Labour needs to think bold and long-term now.
It is the right of the party that are likely to cause trouble - so if anything DC will have to go further to the right to keep that section quiet. It will come down to how strong their whips are.
If UKIP die a death then in 5 years there will a lot of right wing friendly voters looking for a home.
Conservative whips are known for being especially nasty. Those seats they took from the LibDems could evaporate very quickly and lets not forget majority of the nation did not vote for them so they'll only take so much.
I don't remember the party right causing too much fuss for the Coalition... You'd have thought that they would.
I think with the numbers as they are it is very likely to be a 3rd term tory government, there would have to be a huge swing back, we are talking 1997 style swing
impossible no...
Johnson was spot on, Labour have to be centre left.... but crucially as one commentator got it spot on
the whole of middle England came out and said 'NO' to more left policies, so unless the Labour party can woo them they wont stand a chance
Well I suppose you cannot predict what the country will be like in 5 years time, but we are indeed looking at a 1997 style reversal in order for Labour to get back into government. Which is why Labour needs to redefine the centre left - no point going more to the right, they need to be a valid alternative - and sell it much better in order to woo 'soft' tory voters over, and this will take longer than 5 years.
That's because the Tories needed Lib Dem votes to get legislation through, so the Tory right knew they could not kick much of a fuss as the Lib Dems would not vote for it. Now David Cameron has a majority and does not need the Lib Dem votes, so that right wing group will be, more than likely, making demands now. It is also said that there are around 20 MPs from the Tories who are basically unimaginable.
jamieson87
Member
Kicking off down Whitehall.
PJV3
Member
There was plenty of muttering about the Libdem's holding them back and Cameron trying to freeze them out it's why he had to accept a 1922 committee member if they needed to form a coalition again.
And I'm not predicting anything, just pondering.
Its not only that. If Cameron is speaking the truth and will only serve this term they'll put someone new up and I'd be surprised it it wasn't Boris. Labour will have even more work to do because Boris is someone people actually think they know more than just about any of the others. So they've got to sort themselves out, their message and have someone that is strong enough to do well in 5 years against an as yet unknown Tory candidate.
Did they really? What was particularly left wing about Labour's proposals? They were still advocating bogus, radically right-wing, austerity policies, cutting down on immigration, and some vague, albeit watered-down, rhetoric disparaging people out of work.
They offered something marginally to the left of the Tories, delivered it badly and without conviction, and this at the end of five years of near invisibility as an 'opposition' party.
How anybody could draw the conclusion from this that voters said 'No' to progressive policies is a bit mind boggling. There was barely anything progressive about what Labour offered, and they hadn't laid any of the groundwork beforehand to get people interested in anything vaguely progressive either.
Meanwhile, the SNP offered something to the left of Labour and they blitzed Scotland. Does everyone become right wing as soon as you cross the border heading South? Or have the Labour party simply become so apparently ashamed with being progressive that they've merely taken on all of the Tory party's policies, knocked 2% off all the cuts and called it 'left wing'?
electroshockwave
Member
Cameron had only been an MP for 4 years when he was selected as leader too. Labour needs fresh faces too, although I'm not happy with the general election result I was quite happy to see Balls go.
jamieson87
Member
Audioboxer
Member
Out if interest, has any of English GAF changed their mind on Scottish independence? Either going from go for it to no, or no to go for it?
do you not think the Scotland vote was more about losing the referendum?
Audioboxer
Member
To clean up as easily as they did with some of the huge margins I think it was more about they came across as party that cared most about Scotland. The other parties focussed more on scare tactics and saying shit about Nicola Sturgeon. That impresses no one.
As I have mentioned before, I am with Alan Johnson and fear it will be 10 years of rebuilding before Labour are in a position to get into government. Thursday was an absolute disaster for Labour: They lost Scotland, actually lost a seat in Wales, and did not make any inroads into the English marginal seats. When the result came in I went to my brother and said, "This is Michael Foot level." You do not recover from an election like Thursday in just 5 years, especially as the Conservatives will change the boundaries so it now favours them.
In regards to Boris, yes he is well known and a lot of people think they know him, but this election was somewhat shaped by personalities of the two leaders, but the next one will probably not be. In any case, I have given my reasons why Labour will not win the 2020 election and need to think more long-term.
I don't think it is too much of a big deal, but some people will do.
You see this is where Sturgeon's rhetoric does not match precisely with the details of the SNP's spending policy, as even what the SNP were proposing wasn't exactly 'anti-austerity' and in fact was not that much different to what Labour were proposing. It is just the SNP were much better selling it than Labour's - which did sound 'austerity light.'
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
The words cherry picked come to mind.
Oh and where did you get this from?
Not yet, I think we're better together even at odds politically. I'll change that stance if the UK ever decides to get out of the EU.
The Conservative manifesto?
"We will deliver a stable economy and £12bn of welfare cuts".
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
Because that is the tory position?
It's Reyn Time!
Member
From ATOS, from ESA changes, from the DWP, from the DLA to PIP switch, from bedroom tax, from the shutting down of God knows how many systems which were in place for poor and disabled people under Tory leadership.
Not really, but I am coming round to the UK becoming federalised in some way, as England definitely lurched more to the right on Thursday and Scotland did not.
War Peaceman
You're a big guy.
It shouldn't be controversial at all to suggest the conservative position is the most punitive towards welfare spending (non-elderly welfare specifically where they are very progressive)
i mean it is quite sensible because when you cut support for those in need it doesn't increase costs in any other way. the disabled never need medical help and the poor will just keep spending the same anyway so it is cool. there are literally no benefits to benefits
i mean it is quite sensible because when you cut support for those in need it doesn't increase costs in any other way. the disabled never need medical help and the poor will just keep spending the same anyway so it is cool. there are literally no benefits to benefits
They still need votes to get legislation through.
Every party does, Labour will have MP's who are borderline communists in their ideology.
Sir_Crocodile
Member
9000 are protesting today in London against austerity.
RobotNinjaHornets
Banned
What makes this even better is that austerity doesn't work. So not only does it seem like they don't care about the welfare of the vulnerable, they're also not actually helping the economy. Fun all round.
That's true, but when your majority is slim - which the Tories' majority is - the more extreme ends of your party starts to become more of a problem. You only need to look at John Major's government from 1992 to see how this can happen.
One of the benefits of a productive economy with low unemployment is a smaller welfare bill.
PJV3
Member
Because their vote becomes more powerful, they Start demanding concessions etc.
That's true to a point, but it's not what the Tory strategy has been. They think they can grow the economy by cutting the welfare bill.
It failed, the economy struggled, the recession was deepened, and the welfare bill went up because a lot of people lost their jobs.
9000 hey, yep that will get the point across, I would suggest it is more about people being pissed off the tories won, and as it was not even close in the slightest, these people will feel very disenfranchised
I think you will find that letter was orchestrated by a doctor who was then confirmed as a member of the Labour party
Not only that but if most of the new jobs being created are low paid etc, the welfare bill will not come down as much, as those workers will probably be entitled to tax credits etc.
So, what, it's false? It's a pack of lies?
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands of doctors.......without a valid statistical method I fail to see how this is anyway representative of what the NHS employees in general are feeling.
Did you not read what I said? How do you know this is the reason a lot of the 11 million people who voted for Tory had in mind when choosing?
It was a hatchet job to weaponize the NHS.
Also,hate to break it to you regarding an earlier post but there wasn't a recession in the last parliament. There was stagnation for the first year or so, which itself is quite amusing as like the department I work in, was still under Labours spending plans till just before 2012. Even then the coalitions policy would take some time to fully bed in (though still paying through the fucking nose with Labours PFI's)
Well they have voted for it whether they know about it or not, haven't they?
How do you know it isn't?
All I can do is point out what the Conservative economic ideology says, which is "in order to deliver a stable economy, we need to slash the welfare bill".
So that's what people voted for.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Does that mean that it was the reason they voted for them? -___-
Okay. So officially the double dip was revised away to mere stagnation. It was still a fucking disaster. They inherited growth and instead managed to drag out the recession.
I'm beginning to feel like most people in this thread voted Tory for the sole purpose of imagining Guardian readers weeping into their falafel.
Nope, it just means that is what they have voted for.
What exactly did you expect. A deficit larger than the cost of the NHS and Education combined and you expect there to be a magic money tree?
Honestly, I'm through arguing with people who still think that the most pressing issue in 2010 was the size of the deficit. After five years of trying to explain why that's wrong, and just going in circles, I'm just bored and fed up of it.
Nothing personal, it's just that the time for that fight is passed.
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