25 Hour News and 5 Days to Choose
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Unless you’ve been inhabiting a cave over the past month (granted, not an unappealing notion), then what is scheduled to take place this coming Thursday won’t have escaped your attention. Whether or not you intend to exercise your democratic right, the fact remains that it will happen with or without you. With this in mind, I’d be curious to hear what you actually believe the outcome will be.
I ask not what you want to happen, but what you think will happen. If you can put partisan concerns to one side just this once and listen to your head rather than your heart, it’d be interesting to see if there’s a common consensus amongst commentators.
Personally, I think whoever grabs the most seats may well go it alone and eschew coalition. As much as the Lib Dems fancy themselves as kingmakers and holders of the balance of power, I have a feeling they won’t retain or win enough seats to even be in that position this time round. If either Labour or the Tories are as little as three or four seats ahead, I reckon they’ll have a crack at it with a tiny majority. It’s happened before, of course; Wilson and Callaghan kept a Labour Government in power for five years with the slimmest of majorities in the 1970s, even as successive by-election losses whittled down those majorities even further, leaving them in a perpetual state of imminent collapse. It’s far-from ideal, but it’s clear this would be the preferable option for the two largest parties.
Despite his denials, Miliband could well do a few deals with the SNP on the quiet just to give him breathing space, but I don’t see any form of official partnership being on the cards. Both he and Cameron are desperate to govern in their own right, however hard the road ahead will be without the cushion of coalition. Depending on how the smaller parties perform, Miliband could concoct a rough agreement of sorts with the Lib Dems and the Greens; and Cameron could well do likewise with the Lib Dems and UKIP. And both may court favour with the DUP. Beyond that, I think the two leaders would consciously avoid any close ties with those that generate toxic nationalism.
None of that is necessarily what I want to happen, but I’ve a feeling it’s what will happen. How about you?
Petunia Winegum
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May 2, 2015 at 9:36 am -
I think that this will be a year of two elections. A minority Tory administration could struggle on until hampered by their own awkward squad as well as being sniped at by everyone else. Scottish Tories (25-30%) will vote tactically to attempt to split the left north of the border, but to little avail, as despite the public spats between the SNP and Labour, both are determined to sabotage the country, but merely using different means. So I doubt the clean sweep which polls are predicting.
The Lib Dems will not be slaughtered, as Tories will vote for them in Labour marginals. UKIP will struggle – a lot – as, again, Tory voters will not back them in Labour marginals. The actual vote numbers will be revealing. Nothing will change in Wales, as the principality is undergoing a collective Stockholm syndrome.
Milly no-mates will attempt to cook up a deal with the SNP and will fail at this, as he will be dealing with the egregious Alex Salmond
Likewise, in N.I., little will change. But I hope Sinn Fein suffers. Unlikely…
So, net/net, The Tories will probably survive as the largest party and attempt to do what needs to be done. When the full horror of the surgery required is unveiled, there will be upset and the smellysocks will start speaking Greek.
Round two in October?
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May 2, 2015 at 9:48 am -
Robert, I have to say that in the main I agree. Alternatively, if Milli no mates scrapes over the line, that will mark the end of the Union within 2 years.
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May 2, 2015 at 9:59 am -
Yes, I agree. If the Tories or Labour go it alone, I think a second election would probably be forthcoming within twelve months, ala 1974. Is that ‘The Dark Side of the Moon’ I can hear on the turntable?
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May 2, 2015 at 10:09 am -
“Dark Side Of The Loons” perhaps?
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May 2, 2015 at 12:07 pm -
I had a visit from the Lib Dem offering last week. Initially I assumed that they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and lurked behind the curtains, but no! Very intense, very insistent. Very wrong. The outgoing sitter is a nice guy, and would be a Tory, had he not been educated (snork) at Bedales.
The prospective incomer attended Cheltenham Ladies’ (rather smarter that the Tory hopeful’s alumnus). I recall CLC (in my own schooldays) as being an ever-ripening prospect of some serious length…
Because the LibDems will show you their knickers in return for a lick of your toffee-apple.
Anyway, we have a new heir to the Throne! This may serve to drive this soap opera off the front page…
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May 2, 2015 at 3:10 pm -
I’ve had none knock at my door, but they seem to avoid multi-occupancy properties. They prefer hanging around the shopping parades in the manner of ladies of a certain age with clipboards enquiring what hairspray you use – and consequently most people cross the road to avoid them!
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May 2, 2015 at 3:28 pm -
I’ll see your ‘multi-occupancy’ and raise you ‘very long driveway’ – there’s nothing like the prospect of a wasted 300yd walk uphill to deter even the most committed Jehovah or party-canvasser.
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May 2, 2015 at 3:29 pm -
Hah! Who needs a moat?
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May 2, 2015 at 3:58 pm -
I’d prefer sandbags and heavy machine-guns on a fixed line. The trouble is, I don’t live in the USA…
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May 3, 2015 at 11:35 am -
I prefer a bloody big dog or two; keeps all sorts of undesirable away from Chez Wray. Nothing like several stones worth of bounding muscle and large teeth filled, slobbering maws to keep away those pesky varmints.
A sign on the gates informing adventurous visitors that they will get bit also helps when fido and pals are elsewhere …
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May 2, 2015 at 9:46 am -
My view is that the only party with the possibility of gaining a true majority is the Conservatives – and that’s not impossible when you consider the distribution of the non-Tory votes. However, the most likely result seems to be ‘hung’ with the Tories, as largest single party, getting first crack at staying in power with some cobbled-together assistance from others – I think this is the most likely overall outcome. The Lib-Dems will not be wiped out, maybe halved – their apparently miserable poll-rating does not reflect their local power in selected established seats. UKIP will struggle to convert votes into seats. I suspect Tory/Lib-Dem/UKIP/DUP will be the most likely ‘alliance’ initially.
However, such an arrangement would not have a 5-year life, so we could expect another invitation to vote sooner rather than later – how this may clash with Cameron’s latest ‘cast-iron’ EU Referendum promise ‘before the end of 2017′ remains to be seen.
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May 2, 2015 at 10:04 am -
Ah, yes; the referendum. This, I fear, may go the same way as ‘the Great Repeal’. Remember that? The wishful thinking that, at one stroke, the nightmare of the Blair/Brown years could be consigned to the dustbin. It is a Tory claim that the LDs prevented this. I don’t think so, as the control-freakery introduced by New Labour (spit) is useful to all governments, of whatever kidney. I can think of few administrations which have voluntarily reduced grip on the electorate.
Also, do not discount the right wing of the Labour party as having a role to play in the metrics.
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May 2, 2015 at 10:36 am -
The biggest franchise in this election will be the same one as in the last five elections: those who abstain. That’s my solid prediction.
My second prediction is this: anything could happen – but nothing will change.
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May 2, 2015 at 10:42 am -
It seems unlikely that any party will achieve an overall majority. Beyond that, I don’t think anyone has a clue what is going to happen, and attempting to forecast the result seems pointless.
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May 2, 2015 at 10:51 am -
The SNP have made great play of forming an anti-tory alliance. Regardless of any formal deal, they could not vote against a Labour Queen’s Speech nor in favour of a Conservative one. (Not if they want to retain a shred of credibility, anyway. That said, they can be pretty unbelievable!)
The LibDems have made it clear they are on anybody’s side. They say they would prefer the party with the most seats, dressing it up as a matter of ethics. We all know, though, that it is really a matter of arithmetic. So if Miliband gets more seats than Cameron he will be propped up.
I think, however, that the Tories will get the most seats and most votes. Much then depends on how much damage the LibDems suffer: if they hang on to most seats, then we will probably get a Conservative administration with LibDem confidence and supply; if they are wiped out, it will be Labour with the tacit support of the SNP.
I really can’t see Ukip or the Greens getting enough MPs to play a significant role.
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May 2, 2015 at 10:59 am -
I suspect the same – Conservatives top but not overall majority.
I predict that Labour will regroup and fashion itself as both ‘the young persons party’ and ‘the victims party’. Old Mother Izzard will be joined by other celebrities in order to appeal to the Reality TV uber-morons of the 21st Century – with one in particular, Joey Essex, primed as Leader. They will win by landslide in 2020, and Tony Bliar & Peter Mandelson’s 1994 plan for their “New Britain” will be complete. By this point the definition of ‘sexual abuse’ will be just looking at someone, and old age & wisdom will be a crime in itself for any commoner as legislation is passed for random ‘house checks’ by PCSO’s to be compulsory in order to protect the nation from subversives, “paedos” and ‘people who know stuff’. Paul McMullan will given a job as Government “Privacy Tzar” as reward for his mantra “Privacy Is For Paedo’s” and someone will accuse Lord Leveson of touching their ankle in 1978, and he will be hung from Tower Bridge amidst rumours “Hackgate” was invented in order to stop journalists tapping Jimmy Savile’s phone.
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May 2, 2015 at 12:06 pm -
Miliberk in No 10 with the same number of MPs as the Ex Con Party . He will be propped up by a loose arrangement with the Sporran mob .
Toxic Nationalism ? How about Internationalism ? That is looking pretty toxic IMO . The International Community is a particularly puke inducing phrase . -
May 2, 2015 at 12:25 pm -
Very hard to forecast the outcome. Things that I think will happen are, the Liberals will be down to less than 10 MP’s, UKIP will come second in several constituencies and maybe take a few seats, somewhere between 5 and 10, and if Miliband gets close he will certainly do a deal with the SNP. Other than that, I agree with others that the Conservatives could just scrape in with the largest number of seats, for me that would be better than a Labour majority. Any road up, whoever becomes PM, it will be like it said on a placard I once saw held by an American, “Same shit, different asshole”.
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May 2, 2015 at 1:01 pm -
The last thing that the SNP would want is to be part of the UK government.
At the moment they can take the credit for anything that goes right in Scotland and push the blame down south for anything that goes wrong.
The LibDems deserve to be destroyed because for far too long they have played ‘all things to all men’ at the local level leaving them with no coherent policies at the national level. As for petulant Clegg and his betrayal of the principle of boundary reform, well he is beneath contempt, neither a liberal or a democrat.
I expect the Conservatives will win the most seats and Cameron as incumbent PM will attempt to form a government.
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May 2, 2015 at 1:31 pm -
I know what I’d like to happen, but what actually will happen I have no idea. I can’t remember an election with so little discussion of the really important matters, and so much analysis of relative trivia. No wonder people feel disenfranchised. I don’t think the broadcast media have helped either; turning the serious business of how the country should be governed into a series of television game shows has done nobody any favours.
I’m not sure whether I fear a sort of electoral stalemate leading to governmental paralysis, or a Labour/SNP stitch-up more. I don’t think either would be at all desirable given the situation the country is in.
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May 2, 2015 at 2:06 pm -
CON – The Tories will be the largest party – just. Their failure to handcuff boundary changes to the LibDem PR vote being the single most egregious example of Cameron incompetence of this Parliament.
LAB – Millipede will fail to arrive home one evening and his clothes will be found folded on a Fife beach. Nobody will care.
SNP – will indeed all but sweep Scotland but to no purpose as an alliance of any kind with them is toxic to everyone else.
UKIP – their vote will stand up but they will not win any seats to speak of. Farage will creep home.
GREEN – The Australian Green Party will continue to hold their lonely but colourful, nice-to-be-nice beachhead.
It will be in the interests of both the main parties to keep the minor party devils away from polite discourse. So a minority business as usual government would be sensible. The five-year Parliament is now a law. So an autumn election will require that law to be repealed or amended by Parliament in majority. That could be an interesting night. I am not sure that it will happen. I think not on balance but it depends on the tightness of the numbers.
For the Tories to recover in the long term, the EU as it is must be shut up in the attic so that the Ukippers can come home. They’ll be bringing many of Thatcher’s white van men with them, one suspects. Labour cannot just substitute the union block vote with the ethnic, inner city block vote without great danger to itself. (eg Scotland.) Both parties must now woo real, breathing, new voters as people. This will be easier for the creed-free Blues than the dogmatic Reds. It is further in the short-term tactical interest of Labour if the evil Tories can be seen to be the with-holders of Scottish Freedom. That would be a misstep. The SNP must be skewered by the Labour and the pain taken. English and Scottish nationalism/independence alike are sides of the same coin – a frustration with schoolyard politics sound-bitten from bien pensant GCSE scripts.
The rise of SNP and UKIP both stem from the EU. That was part of the plan – silly but not wholly ignoble – of trying to make a regional Europe one of the Great Powers. This could all come to grief in remarkably short order if Greece falls. Anything might then happen to the Euro, and to the EU. If you think we are skint, Spain, Greece and Italy teeter on the edge of proper 193o’s poverty. UK domestic politics this Spring is small beer.
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May 2, 2015 at 6:39 pm -
“That was part of the plan…”
Nailed it in one!
But even “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain.”
I live in hope now, as voting is just an illusion of democracy. -
May 2, 2015 at 8:24 pm -
I also think the splitting up of the country is a real possibility.
Perhaps in ignorance, I feel that there is no price our leaders won’t pay to maintain the union. This is a bad message to send to any part of the country with existing separatist movements, there has to be an understanding mutual benefit is the objective, subjugation went a long time ago.
I’ve made the suggestion before; I think we need a way for England to ask for commitment from the rest or we get on with our lives alone, & that may be outside the eu. We don’t I think want the people of NI, Wales & Scotland to go or give up their identity, but they either want to be with us or they don’t.
Better to get this debate put behind us by taking the initiative.
Just an idea.
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May 2, 2015 at 2:21 pm -
I won’t be wasting the cost of a flight back to the UK to vote, I’ve washed my hands of the place, and it’s perhaps rather hypocritical all of me to meddle in UK affairs from afar. That said, I’m in general agreement with the consensus, Tories will be forced to deal with whatever rag tag collection of allegiances they can form in a hurry, and the whole shooting match will crumble into disarray within months.
The optimum solution of course is that the whole HOC is hit and wiped out by a falling Russian spacecraft or meteor and we start again from the ground up.
Regardless, I predict record lows in turnout
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May 2, 2015 at 2:48 pm -
Tricky. Reading Mathew Parris in The Times today, he seemed to be suggesting there is a clear thirst for opposition on the Tory backbenches. Then to oust Dish Face and replace him with someone more to the right, after letting in a Labour – SNP coalition which would inevitably bugger up everything, and go for an outright win next time round.
But I seem to be in agreement with most that Tories will get most seats but no overall majority. A new pact with the Flib Flems seems out of the question. They have more red lines than a London Tube map, so it looks like a lame and hamstrung minority Tory government which will have to struggle along from day to day and vote to vote.
Another 5 year Parliament seems very unlikely, so that’s going to be a mess.
On the whole, a shambles. However, with the rise of the SNP in Scotland I can only foresee that they will get there wish, not least because of rising English “nationalism” or resentment.-
May 2, 2015 at 3:18 pm -
They would be unwise to anticipate an outright win in a quick ‘next time’ poll. In previous times, that would have been the expected pattern (e.g. Wilson et al) but now, with so many minor parties collecting so many votes (not necessarily many seats, but lots of votes which de-stabilise the ‘norm’ in each seat), the n each ‘hung’ result actually increases the probability of the next ‘hung’ result.
We have already seen the impact that minor parties can have, from the SNP locally, the Greens banging on about windmills/CO2 and UKIP scaring both Tory and Labour shitless into finally mentioning the taboo word ‘immigration’ – people have noticed this and they will now be more likely to vote on ‘issues’ than the big-party ‘composite’ policies, because they know the politicians are listening. That then has huge implications for the Westminster seat-count – with or without PR, I suspect the days of majority government are now history.
The Labour Party is at great risk of fatal fracture, with the SNP, Greens, Lib-Dems, other left-leaning splinters and parts of UKIP all gnawing away on different limbs of the corpse of Kier Hardie’s original down-trodden workers’ club. The Tories are less at risk, with fewer vultures on their cadaver, but still seem unlikely to accumulate a full majority in the foreseeable future. We live in interesting times.
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May 2, 2015 at 3:34 pm -
An interesting analysis. I think you are right about one hung result leading to another. It’s a bit like a PR system without PR, very reminiscent of Israeli or Italian politics. Once upon a time the joke was don’t go to Italy in a group of more than 10, otherwise they’ll ask you to form a government.
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May 3, 2015 at 6:58 pm -
Israeli or Italian? It is pretty much like politics anywhere else in Europe. There is nowhere I can think of nowhere on this continent where only two parties have dominated the politics for so long (the nearest parallel is Sweden or Belgium where one party was in government for pretty much fifty years after the war).
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May 2, 2015 at 6:18 pm -
Before the European elections I thought that those who predicted that UKIP would top the poll were deluded. We have seen a similar but more subtle smear campaign this time. Only now it is along the lines of a vote for UKIP (as well as proving what a nasty, racist, homophobic little Englander you are) is simply a protest vote, support is ebbing and it will only split the Tory vote. Well, we shall see. But I think and certainly hope the UKIP result will be far better than predicted.
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May 2, 2015 at 6:26 pm -
What will happen, is what the ‘hidden powers’ want to happen. This is all a pantomime, the lines have been written. The entrances and exits have all been planned with an occasional trip up or even cock up. The ‘goodies’ and the ‘baddies’ have been lined up, the ‘jester’ is there and even the ‘wicked witch’. A nice Rainbow Coalition is just what the EU ordered and everything is going just fine. A mixed bad of different coloured Jelly Babies or Jelly Beans (they are certainly not Smarties) will get nothing done that the public voted for. Just as the Limdumbs offered an ‘excuse’ to Camoron in the last coalition to back down on his manifesto, after May we will have the ‘Worst of Everything’ and the ‘Best of Nothing’.
“Oh no we wont!”
“Oh yes we will!”
“Look out! Common Purpose is behind you!”
“Oh no it isn’t!”
“OH YES IT IS!” -
May 2, 2015 at 7:58 pm -
This is really difficult; it’s more about what people don’t want than what they do, a point that seems to have missed horn of plenty party leaders with their barely credible offers, & people aren’t as stupid as the pols think
Because I live in an area where a blue baboon would get elected, and in council elections sometimes is, there’ll be no change. I guess that’s why many people I know are happy to use a UKIP vote to express their true feelings, there’s no downside. A decent MP will still be returned, & a message sent with no risk of the odious Libdems getting in, & nobody else even close.
I reckon, as many here, a small Commons margin in the Tories favour, unsustainable for long because of the difficulty in getting stuff agreed & done, but also because the Tory members own diverse views will test the govt’s frailty to destruction.
I think the local elections are a different issue; without parliamentary elections the turn out would be poor, with no surprises. This time the turn out will be much higher & I think there will gains for UKIP & Greens, at the expense of the mainstream. We shouldn’t underestimate the Libdems; they have significant local party machinery. Hard to tell how the targeting of marginal parliamentary seats & neglect elsewhere will affect local elections, not much I guess.
All bets are off if Greece, domino, #1, falls off the edge in the next couple of days.
That’s my view. -
May 2, 2015 at 8:17 pm -
Don’t vote,it only encourages them.
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May 4, 2015 at 10:29 am -
Perhaps we will have a “pragmatic parliament” in which enough of the more sensible elements of the Labour and Tory parties will vote together to (a) flatten the loonies (aka the SNP) and (b) do what needs to be done for the good of the country, e.g. on defence expenditure, renewal of Trident, and so on.
One can hope. The numbers will easily work, and we’ve had National Governments before.
Or do they hate each other so much that they’re willing to see the country torn apart rather than co-operate?
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May 8, 2015 at 6:03 pm -
Well, I got that wrong!
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