No no no…I was just channel-hopping while the interviewed the man-child, Ruth Kelly.
(and I wouldn’t miss Boris for the world!!)
Well it’s official, the grinning buffoon is back for another four years, although with a much reduced majority. There are still 27 seats left to declare as I write, so the expected majority is about 66 seats.
Good news for non Blairites, he has had the smallest number of votes of any winning party in UK election history. Labour 36% , Tories 33%, everyone else the rest.
Unfortunately due to our first past the post system, actual percentage of the vote does not translate into seats, otherwise we would most likely be looking at a hung Parliament.
Another four years will finish the country, looks like it’s TTFO. What’s Canada like to live in?
Some facts and figures :-
The The Lib Dems got 22% of the vote but only 10% of the seats
The Tories have 33% of the vote , which is the same as they had in 1997 and 2001.
Labour have got in with the lowest popular vote (37%) of any government on record.
Michael Howard has announced he is to stand down as Tory leader as soon as a new mechanism for choosing his successor is decided on.
On the face of it the Tories have done well. But if you look more closely , most of the seats they have picked up are in London and the South-East. In the rest of the country, apart from the odd seat, they have not done well at all .
Most of Lib-Dems’ gains have been at the expense of Labour, and they have managed to hold on to most seats they took from the Tories in 2001.
How did the Raving Monster Loony party do? Anything?
Anyone like to guess what the result would have been if Tony had jumped (or been pushed) and left happy Gordon as Labour Leader?
I don’t follow the reasoning of a lot of the analysis***** Which seems to me missing the fact that the Labour party have won in spite of having a leader who is about as popular as donkey puke?
*****OK, I only listen to Radio 4 but that’s what counts innit?
I can’t give any specific details but I would guess that they have only picked up a handful of votes in the few places they stood in. Since the death of Lord Sutch they are a spent force.
I get the impression that a lot of people jumped to the LibDems because of Iraq and Blair in particular. Blair is almost certainly a drag on Labour’s popularity nowadays. Once the dust settles I really can see the pressure building up on him from the Brown camp. They’re smelling blood now.
They totalled 157 votes against Blair in Sedgefield. snif
Help this Yank, please.
If Blair(or his party) has a majority and it looks like he does-why are his days numbered? Why would he have to stand down at some future point?
Here (USA) it is winner take all for the next 4 years (sadly). But I am confused by the comments that Blair’s days are numbered. Can’t he still get bills (or whatever you call legislation) thru? Doesn’t he have enough votes to still govern?
go slow, and speak loudly. I barely understand my own civics… 
And who are the Lib/Dems–are they left of Blair or more Tory-ish (I think they are more liberal?). Could they cobble together a government? When is the sticking point for Blair to call an election after this–2 months, 1 year? How is that determined?
And to think I took British history in college–your Kings et al were easier to follow and understand! 
Blair has a majority of ~66 seats.
This means that if every Labour MP votes for a a bill and every other MP votes against the bill will pass by 66 votes.
However Blair had a 160+ majority before the election so could absorb some of his MP’s voting against him.
There have been some big revolts recently and with this new lesser majority Blair would have actually failed to get some bill through.
There are a lot of MP’s who are loyal to Gordon Brown. They want him as leader. They will do anything to discredit Blair.
The LibDems are left of Labour who are slightly left of the Tories(All are left of the Democrats BTW 
)
Blair has stated he won’t be running again so there is pressure for him to stand down in good time for a successor to get a good run in for the next election.
Blair has been so damaged by Iraq that a sizeable chunk of his own party hate his guts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Brown, is the most likely successor and he is both more popular and more in tune with the parliamentary party so would be able to handle the smaller majority better.
blair is basically a busted flush. No-one, from his colleagues to the electorate see him as anything but a liability and he knows it. His party know they won narrowly, despite him and because the Tories are still not a credible party. Next election they know they’ll probably lose with him so they need him gone.
Blair now is not in a position to force through policies his party doesn’t like. In the past he had a big enough majority for even major rebellions (like over the war) not to stop him. Now it only takes 30 or so rebels to block him. New Labour is itself an uneasy coalition of the older socialist orientated party and the Blairite, free-market new labour party.
The Lib-Dems are probably now to the left of Labour, but only because New Labour were dragged so far to the right. They occupy an uneasy position really - they have to appeal to the right in the south because they have to win seats of the tories and to win in the rest of the country they need to appeal to Labour voters.
They have no chance of ever forming a government in a first past the post system. They have no significant natural bedrock support and live and die on protest votes outside of the South-West. The best they can hope for is a hung parliament and a junior partnership and this rarely happens. The main parties know that come hell or high water they’ll have 30% of the vote, handily concentrated in constituencies. the LD’s have 20% or so - but spread out and so doesn’t convert to seats.
In most places a vote for them is wasted. A vote for them in my place is a vote for the tories.
A PM can ask the monarch to dissolve parliament just about any time they like in theory. In practice they choose a time they think tactically suits them, generally 4 years. Only if a PM finds their majority too small to enable them to pass their legislation will they call one before then. Stable governments being one of the advantages of first past the post - no elections every time some poxy little part of a coalition throws a strop.
Strickly speaking they aren’t, he could hang on for the whole term (and has said he will) but no-one believes that. Blair’s real problem is that he is rather (read: extremely) unpopular with a lot of his own party.
Not all Labour MPs need support the government, there are several bills that probably will not get enough support within the Labour party to get into law (ID cards for one).
Ah, a trick question. It depends who you ask
No. But they have had influence in the past. Anyone care to explain the old Lib-Lab pact?
Aw, man, Lord Sutch died? Bummer.
He committed suicide in 1999. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screaming_Lord_Sutch The OMRLP is now run by Alan “Howling Laud” Hope and his dead cat, Mandu. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Official_Monster_Raving_Loony_Party#Sutch.27s_death.2C_and_after
So, does this election raise the possibility that the British will pull out of Iraq any time soon?
What does it mean for the UK’s place in the EU and replacing the pound with the euro?
What does it mean for the prospects of a PR referendum?
What’s up with Northern Ireland anyway? Why do results take longer from there?
Not too sure but they are starting to come in now.
Adams has kept his seat. It looks like the UUP will be destroyed by the DUP 
The SDLP leader will most likely be saved by unionists voting for him to keep out the Sinn Fein man. It looks like elsewhere the SDLP won’t do very well.
SF v’s DUP. Fuck it. That’s just a pain in the arse. Extremists on both sides.
Blair won’t go soon because:
1/ Pride
2/ Committments: Presidency of G8 and Europe this year
3/ The referendum on the European Constitution that Labour has promised.
4/ Wanting to go out on a high.
Look for the two presidencies to be over, Tony’s ego being less battered, and the referendum won or lost. If it is won, then Blair gets his swan song, if it is lost, it is a reason to go without loss of face.
Think Brown in late 2006.
With Brown as Prime Minister, the back benchers will be less restless and he will be seen to have more credibility than Blair who is now a busted flush.
Look for an unspoken, (or possibly spoken) Brown/Kennedy understanding of some kind- anything from friendliness to an agreement about future elections- if the Tories look like recovering to a reasonable place in the polls.
I predict:
Tories will go back to an amended MPs vote for leader- cutting out the aging, anti europe, pro social authoritarian, right wing membership.
The Tories will then manage to elect a younger moderate Conservative who will push to the middle ground.
The Brownite Labour party will start to panic when the Tories are regularly 5-10% ahead in the polls.
It will be too late to amend the voting system for the 2009/2010 election but Labour and LibDems will come to some sort of understanding that will ensure a centre left hegemony for another ten years to keep the Tories out; this will involve a move to PR by the 2013/2015 election which will entrench centrist policies for a generation.
Of course, that would also be my preferred outcome, but I do think that it is a reasonable prediction.
Thanks.
So, essentially, Blair has another 4 years-unless he gets a track record of not getting legislation passed, whereby he will be forced to hold an election (didn’t this happen to John Major?).
It sounds to me like there is alot of grooming to be done and deals to be made to ensure some viable candidates on the part of the Torys and the Lib/Dems, as well as Labor, and having Blair in allows for that. Is that about right?
The Dems are conservative over there? :eek:
I do wish we had a viable three party system here…(sorry for the tangent).
With both Blair and Howard standing down it’s quite probable that all 3 main parties will have new leaders in place for the next General Election(only I don’t want to think about that right now!). Kennedy (Lib/Dems) really doesn’t come up to scratch- his party should have taken better advantage of the protest vote against Labour.