I’m not sure you’re correct. Absent shenanigans, PMs remain in office until they resign. If an election occurs with no overall majority, then the PM (like Gordon Brown in 2010) stays in office until someone who can command a majority in the House of Commons. If nobody can do that then the PM can advise a dissolution, and remains in office until after the second election when (hopefully) someone can command a majority. They might even take the gamble that after the second election they might have an absolute majority and remain PM outright.
Generally positive for UKIP. This was not the most natural UKIP territory.
OK-ish for the Conservatives. It could have been better, it could have been worse. It probably lessens the likelihood of many more MP defections to UKIP.
For Labour it was neutral *until * the Thornberry story broke. Though her resignation may be a blessing in disguise. I think she is atrocious on television. It may be good for the party if she is nowhere near our screens.
LibDems, can it get much worse?
Not necessarily. Last time a coalition was formed before Brown resigned admitedly, but that was becasuse there was still a chance for a rainbow coalition under Brown or another Leftist candidate. Therefore while the situation was fluid Brown had not been defeated or in a position where there was obviously no way forward. As soon as it becomes obvious that the current PM has no chance of forming a government, convention says that the PM should resign. The same happened in 1974 when Heath held on hoping for a coalition.
Should the next election result in Labour and SNP and Liberals possibily having the chance to form a coalition or organise a confidence and supply arrangement, but the Tories and UKIP and Unionists obviously could not, Cameron would have to resign and HMQ would ask Miliband to form a government. At that point Cameron would cease to have any office and Miliband would be appointed PM but having to survive a confidence motion in the commons before being able to go ahead and form a government. Such an unsupported administration would by convention have limited ability to change laws or act by royal prerogative. If no confidence vote was passed, it would be Miliband as PM who would go to HMQ and request a dissolution, although HMQ could refuse this (which she cannot do for a substantive PM) and might ask a third person to try to form a government.
HMQ only has to accept a request or a dissolution from a substantive PM who has had support of the commons- a defeated PM or one appointed but not confirmed can advise, but their advice does not need to be accepted.
This could result in the PM at a new election being a less known figure should the Queen seek to form a less than obvious government.For instance after the last election it would have been possible for Labour to have had an extra twenty or so seats and the chance of forming a government with the LibDems but the LibDems refused to have Brown as PM. Brown would have had to resign and inform HMQ that a potential Labour LibDem government was possible with another less contentious PM. Should this have been attempted and failed, the lesser known person would be PM pro tem after losing a vote of confidence and proceeding to a subsequent second election.
Currently and historically there are even better ones than Rochester and Strood. Often because of local rivalries the name chosen does not even indicate where the constituency is if Alpha Town and Beta Town are equal size in a planned constituency, a shared feature such as a little heard of valley or other feature will be chosen instead of a much more recognisable name. That together with other strange names give:
Na h-Eileanan an Iar
South Holland and The Deepings
Haltemprice and Howden
Upper Bann
Chipping Barnet
Ynys Môn
Ochil and South Perthshire
Penrith and The Border
Cynon Valley
Wirral West
Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East
The Wrekin
Dwyfor Meirionnydd
Weaver Vale
East Ham
Ross and Cromarty
Ceredigion
Bassetlaw
Redcar
Clwyd South
Slough
Bexhill and Battle
Holborn and St Pancras
Newton Abbot
Bishop Auckland
Penistone and Stocksbridge
Bootle
Brigg and Goole
Forest of Dean
Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey
I’m becoming more convinced that Labour are intentionally trying to throw this General Election. The tweet was bad enough. Resigning immediately from the Shadow Cabinet was even worse as it turned a largely ambiguous tweet that could have been spun into political dynamite.
Incidentally, we have a district council by-election here on Thursday. The only party to put a leaflet through our door so far has been UKIP. They narrowly lost out on the seat, by 500 votes, to a Tory when contesting a seat against our town’s former mayor last time. This is how UKIP win. Both major parties have their heads up their arses when it comes to taking voters for granted. I can imagine UKIP will win here easily on Thursday.
Reckless will lose the seat in May , the bookies have the conservatives odds on at 2/5 to win the seat in may.
It’s as if they think that “what people I follow talk about on Twitter” is the same as “what the nation really cares about”.
Some polls taken before Thornberry’s resignation show Labour with a 5 point lead (what you might expect after the Tories publicly lose a seat). It will be interesting to see what happens to that lead in more recent polls. (Disclaimer: only a few polls, polls fluctuate anyhow, many things affect them.)
Also quite funny: White Van Dan’s manifesto as published in the Sun contained the phrase “send them back”. Plus, he flies the flags despite the fact that he “knows ethnic minorites don’t like it”. So if Thornberry’s tweet was meant to imply that the photo showed the house of an anti-immigration borderline racist zoomer, she wasn’t that far off the mark.
On the other hand large swathes of the country hold similar views to this guy many of whom are decent people not racist. No offence meant to you but defenders of Thornberry (and her ilk) just can’t help themselves at times. One minute hers was not an attack on white working class voters then the very next paragraph hers was an attack on white working class voters. Again, no offense meant at you personally but this type of attitude has in part alienated a section of voters with Labour.
I also rather doubt Dan had the slightest input into “his manifesto”. He may have retained the right of ultimate veto but the wording won’t have been his. I did think the manifesto was part serious, part fun, part trolling. Why else would it contain the statement “Better discipline, kids are too mouth now, not like when I was a kid and we got the cane”. This is pure gold. It is a national newspaper trolling its supporters and detractors.
Oh, I’m sure the Sun sandpapered his interview up nicely. But at some point a hack had to say “so, would you say we should send people back if we don’t want them?” and Dan had to say “yeah, I suppose so”. I have had journalists try to put words in my mouth before, and it’s surprisingly easy not to fall for it.
But there is a bigger picture here. Rochester and Strood just elected an MP who, in an interview a few days before the vote, said that he thought Britain should leave the EU and then deport EU immigrants with established jobs and families. “Send them back to where they came from” was, not so long ago, the caricature of far-right BNP thugs. Now it’s an electable position, while posting an arguably-but-not-explicitly sneery picture of a van and some flags is a sackable offence.
UKIP exists explicitly to thrive (and fuel) old white men’s ignorance and fear about foreigners. It’s not a coincidence that it polls highest in areas with the least immigration. (They’re not racist, they just have baseless fears about foreigners they’ve never met.) But the Tories, and Labour, have decided there’s nothing to be done but agree with UKIP about people’s “very real concerns” while failing to do anything other than pander to them. “UKIP are right, please don’t vote for them”, to quote Alex Massie, is an abjectly craven political position but it seems to be the best the main political parties can come up with.
True respect for white working class voters who hold “similar views” doesn’t involve biting your tongue when you find their views wrong, or even repellent. That’s just two-faced, which is why Miliband is getting no credit for sacking Thornberry, still less for his “When I see a white van, I feel respect” interview.
NB that isn’t to say that I think Thorberry’s tweet was a good idea. It wasn’t, because it seemed to show that she thought of her potential electorate as somehow weird and alien. But it’s at best just symptomatic of a deeper unwillingness to actually persuade the electorate of anything they don’t already agree with.
This is amazing: Ashcroft poll being released tomorrow shows UKIP are in second place just behind Labour in Doncaster North, meaning if Tories in the constituency vote tactically UKIP win. The kicker? Doncaster North is Ed Miliband’s constituency.
For reference, in 2010 in Doncaster North: LAB 47.3, CON 21, LD 4.9, UKIP 4.3. For Ashcroft’s claim to be true Labour have had to had had a monumental collapse in the constituency and UKIP have had to make monumental gains.
That is astonishing. The temptation to unseat Miliband - even among disenchanted Labour voters, still less Tories - will/must be overwhelming. Normally I’d expect Labour’s lead to restablish itself somewhat as the election nears as people realise that a joke’s a joke, but with this election I wouldn’t like to say.
Ashcroft stuff here
The collapse of the Labour vote in Doncaster North seems a mite exaggerated.
Yeah, I’ll say:
is a far cry from:
This would still have been a major story if he hadn’t hyped it up and implied it was something it wasn’t. Weird. Anyway, that’s a 51% right-wing majority in one of the safest of the safe Labour seats. It’s been a Labour seat since creation in 1983, and the surrounding seats that were reduced in size to make way for Doncaster North have been Labour since the 1920s.
The 2010 results are here.
Conservatives, UKIP, BNP and English Democrats combined got 37% of the vote in 2010, up from 27% in 2007. Labour’s vote has fallen from 51% in 2007 to 47% in 2010 to a hypothetical 40% now. So it’s rapid, but not an overnight shift.
So UKIP are presumably benefiting in part from a consolidation of the right-wing fringe vote, as well as picking up some votes from Tories and Labour. This is embarrasing for Labour, but also for the Tories, who should be better able to appeal to right-wing voters. I wonder if there’s an understandable reluctance to try to win BNP/English Democrat voters among the main parties.
Interestingly, looking at the polling results Milliband has a local boost: 37% would vote Labour generally, (Q1) but 40% vote for Ed specifically. Conversely, UKIP score 31% in general, but only 28% when people consider the specific constituency and candidates.
Newton’s Law of nasty party politics: “For every action, there is an almost equal and opposite reaction.”
Im fairly sure that if the Doncaster public saw some kind of carve up between UKIP and the Conservatives going on they would react accordingly. As you say, this story may be of slight interest but I cannot see any ousting of Miliband taking place in his seat. If it was to happen it would be of a natural grass roots nature. The publishing of this story makes it already appear to be a top down process. A process that Labour voters will naturally kick back against.
Ashcroft has had to correct the Doncaster polling - there was a sampling error. Ed is 29 points ahead of UKIP, not 12.
Ah well, he got some publicity out of it anyway. :dubious:
Oops!
Must write out 1000 times: I will always check the sample, I will always check the sample.
Interestingly, this has all been a distraction from another finding of the poll: Cameron only has a 5% lead over UKIP in his constituency.
Really? Got a link to that Cameron v. UKIP poll?