They’ve recently been talking about selling off the Post Office, the Met Office, the Mint, the temporarily renationalised East Coast Mainline, in Scotland the forrestries, and the last government sold off both the Commonwealth Development Corporation (for trade-based aid to the third world) and the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (to the Carlyle Group, no less), and the current government have flogged off the Forensic Science Service and spun-off British Waterways as a quango.
Anything the government owns is likely to be on the block at any time.
Well, having now experienced both in the last few decades, it can conclusively be said that the railways, water, gas and electric boards should all be renationalised immediately. The PFI, private provision and competition in public services have also all been horrendous and incredibly expensive failures. The current government have also given out billions of unofficial tax-breaks to big companies, like the infamous Vodafone deal, as well as cutting their tax rates. So there’s plenty of room to the Left without going into “renationalise Land Rover” territory. Just takes some guts.
The Lib-Dems will be hammered in the next general election - to 1950s levels. It won’t be complete extinction, as people still value strong constituency MPs and they have several time-served characters in this category. But their performance in the coalition has undermined any political reason to vote for them - why would you? Unless you’re making a Tory proxy-vote there cannot be any reason to think they can deliver major Lib-Dem policy as part of a government.
Nigel Farage is in clover at the moment. Influencing policy positions of the two main parties, the UK press in his back pocket and all this without having to work for a living. If you said to him he had to actually go to Westminster and sit as an MP he’d run a mile.
I think that people are quick to brush off Ukip’s chances of having a big impact on 2015 - when you look at share at the vote in a range of important Westminster seats, they got the biggest share in the vote or came pretty close. Even more importantly, though, is the fact that the Tories are losing support in droves at the minute to Ukip, which could let Labour through in many seats that have usually been safely Tory. Labour got the highest share of the vote in both Kettering and Gravesham, two rock solid Tory seats that would see Labour get a 1997-style landslide if they won them.
I think it’s a bit naive to say that it’s only a protest vote, and that everything will return back to normal at the general election. Ukip are now expected to win the European elections next year, and are bound to pick up a by-election win between now and then having gone so close recently.
Indeed. And it’s not like Westminster MPs actually have to show up all that often.
I’m trying to think of the seats UKIP might win in 2015, and drawing a blank. They might well affect the outcome in a good number, but actually end up with a majority? Where? And how?
Well, the people who vote in European elections tend to be the people who care about Europe - one way or another. Turnout tends to be very low compared to General Elections, indicating that only the committed, the stubborn and the passionate actually bother.
But anecdotally, I moderate a UK forum that deals with, amongst other things, welfare and benefits issues. You would not believe the number of people who, appalled by the current welfare reforms and Labour’s startling acquiescence, have decided that UKIP should get their vote next time around.
Of course, many of them won’t bother to check UKIP’s actual policies about these matters and will vote for them anyway, but it will be an ill-considered protest vote.
Well, Boston and Skegness (where they had their best non-Farage showing in 2010) must have a good chance of turning purple in 2015; they now have a majority of councillors in that area and beat the Tories by about 3% on vote share. Due to FPTP, it’s possible that they could win in all sorts of seats. They would have won Harlow if they had have taken 2% off each of Labour and the Tories, and would have only needed a 3% Conservative -> Ukip swing to win Epping Forest, which is one of the Tories’ safest seats in the country at Westminster. If Ukip can win seats like this it would be a doomsday scenario for the Tories, and Ukip could win lots of seats.
It’s unlikely that they could achieve this at a general election, but it’s certainly possible. The public are in a foul mood with the three main parties.
In the last election Farage stood against Bercow, the Speaker. As he was the Speaker, all of the major parties withdrew from that constituency. Bercow was so unpopular that the local Tories refused outright to have anything to do with his reelection.
Farage came third. Even after the HIGNFY bump. Second were the local Tories’ grassroots anti-Bercow group. UKIP will never get anywhere.
But Ukip got a 3% share of the national vote in 2010,and were polling at around that level, too. They’re now polling in the high teens. They’re a consensus choice for getting the highest share of the vote in the 2014 European elections, too. They might not pick up many seats in the 2015 general election (although they might), but they certainly could have a massive impact on the election by splitting the right-leaning vote and letting Labour win in lots of supposedly safe Tory seats.
The Conservatives know this, of course, and are having to tack right on a range of issues like the EU referendum pledge. Ukip now have a large presence in local government and in the European parliament, and are able to exert enormous leverage over the government. What happened in 2010 doesn’t really have any relevance anymore.
They still get a block vote in internal labour leadership elections, not sure of the percentage but that’s how we ended up with Ed instead of David, but that obviously has no bearing on parliamentary or local elections.