UK - Election 2015

[MikeG]

It might be an important vote, too, Glenn. Marginal Lib/ Con seat.

Aside.....I got my first ever century at Wells, in that constituency.

 

[Darat]

Anyone want to update or share their prediction ? I'm still getting that 1992 feeling, Tory majority , albeit a small majority .

 

[Peter May]

Anyone want to update or share their prediction ? I'm still getting that 1992 feeling, Tory majority , albeit a small majority .

I would tend to agree with that conclusion, SNP sidelined, shot their bolt if you like.
Milliband without hope retreats to avoid being replaced, and comes to terms with the Tories.
I doubt if the Welsh vote is going to make much difference.

 

[MikeG]

OK, neck-on-block time.......

Tories 300 seats
Labour 255 seats
Lib Dems 25 seats
SNP 50 seats
UKIP 3 seats

Cons/ Lib coalition government, lasting less than 2 years.

 

[welshdean]

I don't get why a possible future government needs to promise to pass a law to do what it's promising to do anyway?
Presumably any promises they make that are not backed up by promised laws are promises that everyone can expect them not to keep.

I agree. Promising to legislate or instituting legislation for a manifesto promise is laughable. How can we trust any party that's prepared to do that.

Labour manifesto April 2001 p20
We will not introduce ‘top-up’ fees and have legislated to prevent them

We all know what happened just a few short months later.

 

[The Don]

Anyone want to update or share their prediction ? I'm still getting that 1992 feeling, Tory majority , albeit a small majority .

My gut is hung parliament with the Conservatives the largest single party. The Conservatives, LibDems and Unionist parties form a minority coalition which limps along with support from UKIP.

 

[anglolawyer]

Well, we are in uncharted waters. Scotland to be an SNP landslide, obviously. The Conservatives often seem to pick up votes from those who aren't comfortable admitting their support openly. So maybe that will help. I fancy the last few days of campaigning may prove to be very important. How much damage will UKIP do?

I'll go:

Conservatives 324
The rest 324
The speaker 1
The Greens 1

giving the Greens the balance of power and ushering in a new age of environmental awareness with policies aimed predominantly at the polar ice caps and the rain forests.

 

[Craig B]

My gut is hung parliament with the Conservatives the largest single party. The Conservatives, LibDems and Unionist parties form a minority coalition which limps along with support from UKIP.

Various predictions here.

 

[Craig B]

Well, we are in uncharted waters. Scotland to be an SNP landslide, obviously. The Conservatives often seem to pick up votes from those who aren't comfortable admitting their support openly. So maybe that will help. I fancy the last few days of campaigning may prove to be very important. How much damage will UKIP do?

I'll go:

Conservatives 324
The rest 324
The speaker 1
The Greens 1

giving the Greens the balance of power and ushering in a new age of environmental awareness with policies aimed predominantly at the polar ice caps and the rain forests.

No, it gives the Speaker the balance of power ushering in a new age of people shouting "Order, order!"

 

[ceptimus]

I'll take a risk on on some outside bets.

Nigel Farage will be an M.P. after the election but Nick Clegg won't. The Lib Dems will have an embarrassing time trying to negotiate a coalition while simultaneously electing a new party leader.

UKIP will get a larger share of the national vote than the Lib Dems, despite which the Lib Dems will have ten times more seats than UKIP in the House of Commons (twenty-odd compared to two).

 

[Andy_Ross]

UKIP seem to have been forgotten in the new enthusiasm for the Scot Nats.
I think the Tories will lose out to Labour in a lot of seats as they lose votes to UKIP.

 

[LondonJohn]

UKIP seem to have been forgotten in the new enthusiasm for the Scot Nats.
I think the Tories will lose out to Labour in a lot of seats as they lose votes to UKIP.

UKIP are being forgotten as regards potential coalition partners for the simple (and obvious) reason that they will not win more than a few seats maximum. Therefore they will have very little weight or influence in any post-election coalition horse-trading.

And there are also sound reasons why neither Labour nor the Conservatives are worried to any great degree about Ukip stealing enough of either party's vote to affect the outcome adversely. That's because none of the key marginals feature Ukip as a serious player. The Conservatives are already reconciled to losing one or two Kent/S Essex seats to Ukip, and it's not worth them using time, energy and resources to fight that battle - those resources are far more effectively spent focussing on the key marginals.

Miliband's extraordinarily bold - and unequivocal - statement on the QT show last night about refusing to do any coalition (or C&S) deals with anyone, least of all the SNP, was clearly made very deliberately as a direct message to the Scottish electorate (and them alone). The current Labour Strategy Team view is that a large number of previous Labour voters in Scottish constituencies are considering voting SNP (and telling this to the pollsters) because they would like to see Labour in power in Westminster but in a coalition with the SNP (thereby putting Scotland policy issues fairly far forward in the next Labour/SNP government). The strategy decision which resulted in Miliband's announcement is therefore intended to persuade this cohort of voters that they need to vote Labour rather than SNP.


My current seats prediction:

Conservative: 315
Labour: 270
SNP: 40
LibDem: 12
Others: 13

Next government: another Con/LibDem coalition, but with significantly less LibDem representation and influence than previously.

 

[MikeG]

UKIP seem to have been forgotten in the new enthusiasm for the Scot Nats.
I think the Tories will lose out to Labour in a lot of seats as they lose votes to UKIP.

I worried about this previously, but their poll numbers are heading consistently down, and I think they will suffer last-minute as people ponder the dangers of wasting a vote on them and letting in a Europhile Labour candidate in the process.

 

[MikeG]

......Next government: another Con/LibDem coalition, but with significantly less LibDem representation and influence than previously.

My prediction too, but I don't think such a coalition will survive the European referendum proposed for 2017, nor the pent-up fury of the Tory right who resent the steadying influence the Lib Dems had on the last government.

 

[malicus]

Anyone want to update or share their prediction ? I'm still getting that 1992 feeling, Tory majority , albeit a small majority .

Tory-LD minority government..........for now.

I just don't think Lab have done enough in England to allow anyone else to become kingmakers.

Interestingly I read yesterday that the word from the Palace is that Queenie will not deliver the Queen's Speech unless a deal has already been reached, and it is sure to pass. Now, apparently there are three weeks for this to get done. If neither large party can broker an agreement (there would need to be some hefty abstentions I suspect) then is that a new election?

 

[Stee]

The strategy decision which resulted in Miliband's announcement is therefore intended to persuade this cohort of voters that they need to vote Labour rather than SNP.

This is what I see going on here, and I don't think it will work, more likely after all these debates for me is a larger conservative chunk of the seats and as already stated several times yet another con/dem coalition...and I see it as no bad thing personally

 

[LondonJohn]

Tory-LD minority government..........for now.

I just don't think Lab have done enough in England to allow anyone else to become kingmakers.

Interestingly I read yesterday that the word from the Palace is that Queenie will not deliver the Queen's Speech unless a deal has already been reached, and it is sure to pass. Now, apparently there are three weeks for this to get done. If neither large party can broker an agreement (there would need to be some hefty abstentions I suspect) then is that a new election?

This partly depends on the precise interpretation of the situation. The Queen gave a Queen's Speech in November 1978, for example, when there was a minority Labour government propped up by a so-called "confidence and supply" pact with the Liberal party.

The point about the Queen's position is very likely to be moot. Pure minority government (i.e. without any deals or pacts with other parties to ensure a working majority, particularly in regard to no-confidence votes) really cannot work in the UK. Therefore, if we got to a point after next week's election where a) no single party had an overall majority, and b) neither the Conservatives nor Labour could form a government with a working majority, there would be an automatic stalemate and a new election anyhow - regardless of what the Queen thinks. It would, in other words, never come to a position where a government was asking the Queen to deliver a QS, and she refused to do so on these grounds.

 

[Nessie]

During the run to the Scottish independence vote I was constantly told my desire for devo max was a pipe dream. With the predicted huge SNP majority in Scotland there is no doubt more powers and a form of devo max is now guaranteed.

This outcome shows what the majority of Scots want is a powerful Scotland within the UK.

 

[Craig B]

During the run to the Scottish independence vote I was constantly told my desire for devo max was a pipe dream. With the predicted huge SNP majority in Scotland there is no doubt more powers and a form of devo max is now guaranteed.

If the "Vow" is fulfilled, there will be a "form of devo Max", indeed.

This outcome shows what the majority of Scots want is a powerful Scotland within the UK.

But is that what the Westminster establishment wants? They want the UK, but do they want a powerful Scotland?

Norman Tebbit was in the press recently bewailing the creation of the Scottish Parliament, which he said (perhaps accurately) was agreed by Labour simply to stop the independence movement in its tracks once and for all; but in fact it has had if anything the opposite effect.

Would the granting of devo max have a different outcome?

 

[MikeG]

.......But is that what the Westminster establishment wants? They want the UK, but do they want a powerful Scotland?......?

It's already overly-powerful. Too many MPs, too much influence for its size and importance. Clearly no-one down here relishes the prospect of even more power going to Scotland, one of the reasons that Scottish independence has generally been more popular in England than it is in Scotland.