CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Do we need a GE2015 thread?
(619 posts)-
Posted 9 years ago #
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Posted 9 years ago # -
<melodrama>
My sense of foreboding has not lifted. It feels like May 1979 all over again, but this time they're properly prepared professionals ready for blitzkrieg against the last shreds of the settlement our grandparents won after July 1945.
I really can't see the next five years being easy for many of us. Surely the English electorate didn't mean to do this to us and to themselves? For my part I'm starting to bitterly regret not working harder to win our referendum. I'd still have been worried today, but there's nothing like a common goal to cheer you up.
</melodrama>
Posted 9 years ago # -
On the plus side a pensioner in Glasgow has won £210,000. Bookies were offering 7-1 for a Tory majority. Though the article mentioned he has not picked up his winnings yet.
A common enemy is a good thing.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"pensioner in Glasgow has won £210,000"
I saw that gembo and wondered what kind of 'pensioner' has the cash to speculate £30,000.
Presumably not one living in chateau au lait :-)
Posted 9 years ago # -
This is interesting.
https://flipchartfairytales.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/how-different-is-scotland/
It agrees with my own preconceptions/biases: I've always thought that Scotland pretty much matches the rest of the UK in its attitudes and make-up, but the FPTP system and constituency boundaries have obscured this. Scotland being a more left-wing nation has never struck me as being accurate.
Also makes the (possibly) contentious claim that the SNP are trying to be all things to all people. When the left-wingers and right-wingers come to push for their own policies then it could get even more interesting. Sturgeon and Salmond won't be able to keep consensus with 60-odd MSPs,56 MPs and tens of thousands of new members.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Stickman
Interesting article, ends with -
"
There is nothing to suggest that Scotland is a different country other than the electoral performance, under a skewed system, of a party that has promoted that exceptionalism almost unchallenged. If it isn’t challenged, though, it will become true. If Scotland believes it is different it will eventually become different. The other parties seem to be accepting this almost without question. If they carry on like this, Scotland really will become another country.
"
Part of the argument is that most countries have defined left/right/centre parties - which (subject to electoral systems) broadly reflect the views of the populace.
I think it's clear that any notional centre has moved to the right in the UK (perhaps marginally less so in Scotland) due to Thatcher/Blair/etc. OR that they captured a changing mood/demographic and were just beneficiaries (social engineering like 'right to buy' will have been a 'maintenance factor' but not necessarily a cause.)
The current success of the SNP owes rather a lot to FPTP but it also managing to attract - as members and voters - people across a wide spectrum, which is (I think) relatively unusual in the UK in recent decades.
Until this election(!) it has been viewed that the LibDems held the 'centre ground' between Lab and Con. That can no longer be said to be the case - north or south of the border.
Now the Tories can drift (or rush) to the right while Labour works out how much it wants to follow (in England at least!)
However DC seems to want to be Harold Macmillan. That could work with the electorate, but perhaps not with his backbenchers. I suspect Sturgeon/Hosie will have an easier time.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Eric Joyce has an interesting article about the kind of wonks that are the rulers of Labour now.
http://ericjoyce.co.uk/2015/05/labour-must-behead-its-failed-aristocracy/
@Stickman - I saw that article too, & it crystallised my vague thoughts that there are amounts of conservatism, socialism and liberalism sloshing round both Scotland and England but somehow the SNP has managed to find a home for them all, with the magnet of nationalism. Sooner or later it must crack - but nationalism is a fairly strong glue.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Stickman
My limited experience has shown the SNP to be half political party, half national movement, half man, half biscuit.
Scotland is maybe just culturally distinct from England, not more left or right wing. Ken?
Posted 9 years ago # -
@IWRATS:
"... Half man, half biscuit"
This may amuse you:
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Stickman
I could be on that map a while. Swafham, New Mills (no frills, handy for the hills)....the Quantocks!
No labour votes on Knoydart though.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@nelly, the silver haired pensioner was described as Glaswegian, this rules out Lord Ashcroft, unless he can do a Rab C accent? He would have the cash and indeed the data to place the bet. Even the bookies got this one wrong.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Polling Purdah.
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/george-foulkes-wants-to-ban-polls-1-3771232
LABOUR peer and former Lothian MSP George Foulkes wants an independent regulator to ban opinion polls in the run-up to elections.
Posted 9 years ago # -
A lot of talk about how FFTP needs to be changed.
Media are animated by the fact that Nigel Farage 'popularity' didn't get him a seat.
Someone though came up with these adjusted stats.
Are these right though or am I being unfair?
I know it is a UK election and each part has its bias - Scotland more so as it swung towards one party this time.
SNP got 1.4million votes but contested 59 seats.
UKIP got 3.8million votes (47,000 in Scotland) but contested 624 seats.When you then divide this the average vote per party is claimed to be this:
SNP - 24651
Tory - 17519
Labour- 14814
DUP - 11516
Sein Fein - 9791
UUP - 7662
UKIP - 6220
SDLP - 5545
Plaid Cymru - 4542
Lib Dem - 3829
Green - 2152As I say - I've merely cribbed this from a FaceBook post and the statisticians on forum will no doubt tell me it's all wrong!.
FFTP has been considered by many (including the SNP) to be unfair for years but UKIP's failure to win with Farage has brought it back to be media worthy.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Laidback
I'm surprised the Libdems are so high...
Posted 9 years ago # -
What does "average vote per party" mean? Per candidate? If that's the case then those figures are meaningless. On that basis, Al Murray with his 318 votes in South Thanet should get 15% of the number of MPs that the Greens would have got...
Also, stats based on GE2015 are all very well, but they fail to take into account the effect of tactical voting, and the impact that PR might have on the political landscape (more parties getting a look in) and voter apathy (an end to "my vote doesn't count").
Posted 9 years ago # -
What does "average vote per party" mean?
I understood it as average votes per party / per seat. Not sure if that helps. Al Murray would be listed lower down as he only stood in one seat.
I'm only quoting something that was posted elsewhere ... to see what people here make of it.
Posted 9 years ago # -
No chance of the first past the post system being replaced. The Conservatives formed a majority government, Labour are the official opposition and the SNP swept the board in Scotland - all using FPTP. UKIP currently has one MP (word on the street is that he is thinking about re-defecting to the Conservatives). No-one would seriously push for this, particularly after the last AV referendum result.
I'm not really sure what the statistics Laidback reproduced show - other than it isn't really worth most parties standing candidates in seats they don't have a hope of winning.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Al Murray would be listed lower down as he only stood in one seat."
I assume there are rules requiring individuals to only stand for one seat. Does the FUKP have any other members?
Posted 9 years ago # -
"...other than it isn't really worth most parties standing candidates in seats they don't have a hope of winning."
Someone on some sort of media somewhere posted the totalled lost deposits per party, which looked quite significant for some.
Posted 9 years ago # -
The@libdemdeposits Twitter account suggested that they had lost £170k.
Posted 9 years ago # -
I understood it as average votes per party / per seat
It looks like average votes per seat the party stood in [SNP c1.4m divided by 59 = 24651 / UKIP c3.8m divided by 624 = 6220], hence my (facetious) Al Murray comment.
I'm guessing the Facebook post was pro-SNP seeing as this use of
lies, damned lies,statistics is heavily slanted in the SNP's favour? ;-)Posted 9 years ago # -
I saw a version each from Scottish Green, SNP, notably-anti-SNP-pro-Labour-Scottish and anti-SNP-probably-Tory-English sources, with varying degrees of remembering-to-take-account-of-the-fact-that-the-SNP-only-contested-Scottish-seats. None noted that there's no way of recording alternative voting preferences on a FPIP ballot. It's a shame that there's probably no better occasion to ask people to fill in a prototype alternative ballot using a non-FPIP method than at a general election but that it would possibly be considered too complicated/confusing to organise.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Wingpig, you forget that the electorate are morons who are easily confused by a piece of paper, a box and being asked to put a cross or a number in it, and any change would lead to them accidentally voting for the communists or something. Or so think certain politicians, out to protect us from our own stupidity.
I think the Scottish electorate pretty quickly got a grip of the PR system in 1999 (had a bit of fun voting in minority parties and then have slowly found a comfortable point of equilibrium between voting for the big parties first and minor parties on the second vote). I'm pretty sure the UK electorate as a whole could manage.
There will be some rumblings about the list system in the Holyrood 2016 elections as there are bound to be some recently de-throned LibLab big name MPs clamouring to get on the list to get an easy ticket back to politics. It won't be too long before you get someone complaining along the lines of "Vote SNP, get Curran" etc.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"There will be some rumblings about the list system in the Holyrood 2016 elections"
Posted 9 years ago # -
— Tom Sutcliffe (@tds153)
May 12, 2015Genuinely impressed that UKIP, a party with only one MP, has already managed a backbench rebellion. Respect.
Posted 9 years ago # -
Let's not forget the immense confusion also caused by simultaneous council/parliamentary elections, especially when long pieces of paper are involved. Whilst the EEN running a story about CHAOTIC VOTER MAYHEM when people didn't fully unfold a long ballot paper can usually be taken as a sign that there is no problem at all an associate who usually does polling-place duty has recently recorded some instances of genuine voter confusion, at the level of being mistaken as to the purpose of an election event, though the relatively high media profile of the indyref versus the lower profile of the 2014 europarliament vote can't have helped.
Posted 9 years ago # -
"Wingpig, you forget that the electorate are morons who are easily confused by a piece of paper, a box and being asked to put a cross or a number in it, and any change would lead to them accidentally voting for the communists or something."
Or, according to a lot of commentators, the English electorate are morons who voted Conservative.
Posted 9 years ago # -
@Stickman
"...the English electorate are morons who voted Conservative or UKIP"
FIFY
Posted 9 years ago #
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