Why are they announcing the results of the exit poll in terms of seats rather than vote shares? Surely its far more likely to get the latter right than the former.
So this is one of the crazier possible outcomes, right? Neither the Conservatives or Labour+LD can get a majority. How many seats do we expect for the far right?
I guess it is mostly because how many votes a party gets, or its share of the votes has very little real meaning due to the way the system works. Without trying to use some sort of maths (i.e. the assumption of uniform nation swings) it doesn’t really tell anyone anything.
“Daniel Berman(whom you’ll hear from later) says one of the networks (Channel 4) suggested that raw exit poll results were about Cons 38, Labour 28, LiDems 23.
I don’t think it’s all over for PR. The Labor people on the BBC are very explicitly flagging electoral reform as part of their immediate plans. I guess they think it could be part of a large deal.
This was a new constituency which would have gone Tory with a 12% swing (which would have been very big, but it will take a national swing of something like 9% to return a Tory majority).
On the BBC, Conservative spokespeople are pre-spinning the result, which may well be a hung parliament. The party line is that this is a “massive rejection” of Gordon Brown and the people would be outraged by his continuing as PM.
The other big story of the evening: in some constituencies people were turned away at the polls because the doors closed before they had a chance to vote. There have been protests and threats of lawsuits.
Everyone is shocked that this could happen in the 21st century.
Obviously they didn’t weren’t paying attention to our 2000 and 2004 elections!
That this isn’t a runaway victory for the Conservatives given a long period of Labour in government, and the economic situation, seems to me to be a massive rejection of the Conservatives. Obviously the same can be said of Labour in 1992, when they had a result even worse than this looks to be.
And now the Labour line: If nobody wins an outright majority, the public message is that we should talk to each other. Without a majority nobody has a right to a monopoly of power.
Why do British ballot papers have identifying numbers on them? And why are these numbers recorded by the polling station staff on a sheet when you vote? Surely this creates the possibility for the Government to know how each person votes.
My prediction; next time the British government (whoever that may be) makes a statement about Iranian democracy, they might get a video of these people not allowed to vote played back at them . . .
I’m not sure the queues help electoral reform. One of the (very few) advantages of FPTP is that it is *quick*. I don’t know how US elections could work with a system that took the voter longer than FPTP.
Having said that I think the Labour higher ups are talking as if they think they can make a coalition government work. Maybe they are being over-optimistic, but they aren’t behaving like they think it’s a simple Tory majority. Playing for a coalition is probably a bad move for an opposition.
@Brian Weatherson: You know that, I know that. But I imagine it’d be quite easy to spin a `the-system-is-broken’ line.
Anyway, a minor point. Simon Hughes is on now making the key point about Tory objections to electoral reform, namely that you can’t easily claim that FPTP is decisive when it delivers a hung parliament.
It’s starting to look as if the exit polls are problematic, because the swing is quite non-uniform (so, more precisely, its problematic to conclude much from them). Labour people are talking up the idea of doing a deal with the LDs.
Does anyone understand what’s happening in Northern Island?
Biggest story of the night so far is DUP (i.e. Paisleyite) leader Peter Robinson losing his seat to the cross-community Alliance Party in East Belfast.
This gives me mixed feelings – delighted basically, but also worried that this could destabilise the DUP-SF entente. Obviously all this is being studiously ignored by the UK-wide broadcasters.
Sticking with NI, Sylvia Hermon, the only Ulster Unionist Party MP elected in 2005, but who ran as an independent this time in protest at the UUP’s decision to more or less merge with the Tories (under the wonderfully chosen acronym of UCUNF – Ulster Conservative and Unionist New Force), romps home in North Down, trebles her previous 5,000-odd majority.
It’s starting to look as if the exit polls are problematic, because the swing is quite non-uniform (so, more precisely, its problematic to conclude much from them).
Yes, UNS is more or less accurate when applied to a more or less pure 2 party system, not so much with lots of regional parties and lots of three way fights, tactical voting and indeed tactical voting from last time unwinding in some places potentially, etc. Then again I guess you can’t just expect the TV pundits to just sit there and talk about the results already in, so they have to come up with some sort of guess.
The apparent explanation is that they have been done in by high turnout in relevant marginals — Tories coming out to save their bacon. If they don’t break through this time, I don’t see what their raison d’etre is.
I wonder if Brown does get a chance to do a deal with the Lib Dems on electoral reform, he could end up cursed by the party after that one term as any meaningful reform is going to cost them a lot of seats in every future election surely? You would think strategically it is better for Labour to take a loss here, let a minority Conservative government have to run high tax/low spending to get down the deficit and limit the growth of the debt over the next five years and then they would have a good chance of getting back in as a majority government again.
Instead all an alliance with the Lib Dems would leave them is 5 years at most needing to make deals to make any significant progress, and then at the next election they would likely lose another 50-100 seats and possibly become the third largest party (depending on what type of electoral reform was demanded, and how it played out in terms of changing how people voted as well as how that converted into number of MPs) and at best a semi-permanent coalition with the Lib Dems presumably. Seems like a strange choice to go down, and why I have always been dubious that any meaningful electoral change is likely.
19 Chris Hanretty 05.06.10 at 11:05 pm: Re: Ben Alpers at 14: Will video footage of voters queueing to vote at close of polls at 10pm feed in to a pro-electoral-reform narrative?
It might feed into a pro-mechanisation narrative, unfortunately.
One of the things they’re saying about the Lib Dems is that their support for amnesty for illegal aliens hurt them mightily after the final debate.
I guess they should have learnt from Labour and the Conservatives – its fine to have unpopular policies planned, or even in your manifesto, but you should never talk about them, or allow yourself to get drawn into discussing them on TV.
Stuart, I think the lesson of the last 20 years in the western world for centrist and leftist political pragmatists has been this:
Don’t let the right get a toehold in anywhere or they’ll deliberately break the crucial machinery of democracy and you’ll never ever be able to fix the damage. Ravening entropy in action.
A small bit of good news? Pretty much all of this election has been great from where I’m sitting. No conservative majority, no Lib Dem breakthrough, even no Charles Clarke. And it’s even been exciting! Only the result in Normanton and the BNP’s vote count have really counted as bad news.
Pretty much all of this election has been great from where I’m sitting. No conservative majority, no Lib Dem breakthrough, even no Charles Clarke. And it’s even been exciting! Only the result in Normanton and the BNP’s vote count have really counted as bad news.
Well the lack of a Tory majority is certainly good news, but it’s very close, unfortunately. I consider no Lib Dem breakthrough to be distinctly bad news. I’ll grant you the excitement. Do you really think the BNP did well enough to count as bad news? Their percentage in Barking actually went down.
I originally added that qualification in brackets, but it made the sentence look weird. Technically, given that the BNP are now broke and have no seats to show for it, the results a good thing.
You would think strategically it is better for Labour to take a loss here, let a minority Conservative government have to run high tax/low spending to get down the deficit and limit the growth of the debt over the next five years and then they would have a good chance of getting back in as a majority government again.
Five years? You could give Cameron enough rope to hang himself, knowing that you can potentially pull the plug whenever the Tories at their most vulnerable, and send voters back to the polls in a year. Perhaps Dave is on the phone with Stephen Harper and reading up on strategic prorogation, but it’s not Stockholm Syndrome to think that a hobbled Tory government facing the shit is a deal you’d take.
I think it’s clear, though, that the implied flipside of “Brown has lost the mandate to govern” from the Tories has fallen flat as a fart as dawn breaks. We’ll see what the press and spinmeisters try for their second effort.
Looking at the numbers it seems as if the only stable majority would be Tory+Lib Dems. If so
(1) The Lib Dems would be crazy not to demand PR/STV as an immediate down payment
(2) If they get it, their failure to win a lot of seats this time around won’t be fatal for them
(3) Whatever happens hard to see this Parliament lasting five years, which is, BTW, an absurdly long and anti-democratic term.
The problem with electrol reform is that (at least the impression I get) is that no-one is suggesting anything more than a referendum. And I just don’t see that passing. And if it was lost, it’s off the table for a generation. As a LibDem supporter, it’s all pretty depressing. (I think PR would be great, but I just don’t think the UK public as a whole does).
From my perspective this is close to the best outcome that was realistically achievable. It would have been slightly better if Lab + Lib Dem > 324 (or so), but still. Cameron is toast: the Tory crazies won’t forgive him for not pulling this off.
My own view, btw, is that a referendum on electoral reform would succeed.
As a LibDem supporter, it’s all pretty depressing. (I think PR would be great, but I just don’t think the UK public as a whole does).
Yes, the problem being is even if the secure a referendum on some sort of voting reform, it is basically still asking about 70-80% of the voters to reduce the effectiveness of their own vote. Of course it is more likely to pass than maybe you would think given that, but I would worry lots of people would tell opinion polls they would vote for it, but in the privacy of the voting booth it might not be so clear (similar to how lots of people were embarassed to say they were going to vote Tory in 1992 but they did anyway).
Yes, the problem being is even if the secure a referendum on some sort of voting reform, it is basically still asking about 70-80% of the voters to reduce the effectiveness of their own vote.
How do you figure that? The effectiveness of the vote of anyone not living in a marginal constituency is currently more-or-less zero.
It would have been slightly better if Lab + Lib Dem > 324 (or so), but still. Cameron is toast: the Tory crazies won’t forgive him for not pulling this off.
Unless they calculate that they are better off staying quiet until the present arrangement collapses and they can come back in a year or two’s time with a bigger mandate.
How do you figure that? The effectiveness of the vote of anyone not living in a marginal constituency is currently more-or-less zero.
Except if you vote for Labour, Conservative, or some of the regional parties, while your individual vote might not count, the party you vote for is benefiting from more seats than they are likely to get under a “fairer” system.
They were apparently turning people away from polling stations last night at 10pm, it seems some people have completely miscalculated the expected turnout.
ajay, terms in Australia are closer to 3 years than 4. In any case, the difference between 4 and 5 years is not small; one year is 25% of 4 years (no really, work it out for yourself).
Except if you vote for Labour, Conservative, or some of the regional parties, while your individual vote might not count, the party you vote for is benefiting from more seats than they are likely to get under a “fairer†system.
But what proportion of voters are tribal enough to identify the number of seats their preferred party wins with their own interest. Not many, I suspect. People can see that the parties they support are desperately pandering to target demographics which most of them don’t belong to. I think most people would be happy with their usual party losing some seats if it meant parties had to fight for the votes of people like them.
But I think the Cameron approach has, in fact, been distinctly ineffective. His A-list has, for all intents and purposes, been a complete joke on election night, if not an outright farce. If he couldn’t get a working-class black social worker elected despite intensive campaigning in a pretty good seat, the sort of seat that would have been a dead-ringer for any regular middle-class Tory, there’s something wrong there.
Zac Goldsmith, on the other hand, got elected pretty snazzily. I mean, at the end of the day, the system is about winning seats. And David Cameron is clearly not doing that. If you can win enough seats, whether it be with Home Counties votes or Northern votes, you govern and you get to rule. If you can’t, you don’t get to rule. It’s quite that simple. And I think the electoral calculus is such that the Tories can essentially give up the entire North if they can eat up all the remaining seats in the South, and still have a permanent majority. One noticeable feature as one looks at the votes coming in was how much the Tories are eating into Lib Dem votes, and how little the Tories have eaten into traditional Labour strongholds. As someone who had hoped for the demise of class-war Labourism, supplanted by Lib Dems, it is a somewhat of a disappointment; but the reality of the matter is that the whole effort to make Tory a One Nation party, to win seats in the North or to put up that ridiculous A-list and so on, is a hopeless one, and they might as well focus on just chasing the Lib Dems out of the South for good and just getting a permanent Southern majority, which given the direction of the British economy (more high-end, high-margin, high-skill services, less manufacturing) will just keep growing. After all, it is precisely Labour has governed for decades, despite rarely getting a majority or plurality of any kind in England, or the South, the economic heart of the country since about the late 1800’s.
The basic point is whether for the Tories try to win seats across the country, or just try to lock up all the Southern seats. Given that whatever gains they make outside the South tend to be marginal at best, the most plausible way for a stable Tory majority is through a Southern lock. And in any case, if Labour can’t win any seats in the South, they can’t govern with any sort of effectivenes, given that they will probably be checked by the City and southern institutions every step of the way.
I just don’t see the Cameroons as a winning strategy.
In Sheffield, returning officer John Mothersole apologised to voters who were turned away, saying: “We got this wrong.” (guthrie’s link @ 57)
No shit, Sherlock. People from several constituencies in Sheffield have told me that the number of polling clerks at the stations was half to a third down on the last time. This was a cost cutting exercise where they got burned, pure and simple. I imagine it was the same in other cities.
@64: seems a little harsh; after all, both the other parties and the press did go for Cleggie on that very point. It might not have been a game-changer, but I don’t see why suggesting it was makes you a ‘concern troll’. Fishing in Tory waters is a difficult business for a party with essentially decent instincts.
So let’s see. Labor had more than more than worn out its welcome, yet voters still didn’t give the Tories a majority. And they didn’t reward the Lib Dems either.
From this side of the Atlantic, it seems as though the voters were saying “none of the above” to the whole political establishment (kind of the way I’m tempted to do this November.) Welcome to the club of dysfunctional democracies.
The LD vote is up (by 1%). If seats were allocated proportionally to votes, each of the other parties would have 50 fewer than they have, and the LDs would have almost 100 more than they have. So if their views on immigration were well understood, a non-trivial proportion of voters are not bothered by them.
A non-trivial proportion of people, c. 5% of the total electorate, appear to have shifted from what the pollsters were steadily telling us, up to Wednesday night, was going to be the LD vote, to what it actually was. The kind of ‘shameful’ thoughts about immigration that one might have in the privacy of the polling-booth, but not be prepared to admit to a pollster, are at least a plausible, if not a conclusive, explanation. OTOH, it may just be that lots of Tories came out of the woods, and threw off the pollsters’ models. Turnout may well have been 15% or more higher than last time round, and doubtless unevenly distributed, which will have complicated calculations immensely. Though it’s noteworthy how remarkably accurate the exit polling is turning out to be, presumably on a different methodology.
My own view, btw, is that a referendum on electoral reform would succeed.
I think that’s about right: over the past decade, British voters have had at least one opportunity to vote in a PR election (European Parliament) and often more chances at PR or preferential voting (devolved assemblies, local government) — it’s no longer alien.
This was a cost cutting exercise where they got burned, pure and simple.
Also cost-cutting: the Tory councils that delayed counts till today instead of paying overtime. It reminded me, in an unpleasant way, that while the per-county system of election management in the US is crazy, the British system’s empowerment of local returning officers isn’t that different.
I think you’re going to end up with Cameron assembling a minority government that double-dares the Lib Dems to vote against a somewhat moderated Queen’s Speech, and a relatively quick new election to seek a mandate for the bloodier bits of their manifesto.
ajay, the life of an Australian Parliament is three years. There is a little bit of room to stretch this, because the term is counted from first session to dissolution, so the election period doesn’t count. Howard exploited this in 2007, but in practice the interval between elections is less than three years most of the time.
There is a strong push here (successful in several states) to extend the term to four years. I oppose this, which is one reason I’m criticising the UK five year term.
But at least, the price of a four-year term is a fixed term. The UK has the worst of both worlds. An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
>> An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
Which is why this result is good. Coalition is the correct way forward. The threat of a no-confidence motion is as powerful as the comfort of calling winnable elections.
One noticeable feature as one looks at the votes coming in was how much the Tories are eating into Lib Dem votes, and how little the Tories have eaten into traditional Labour strongholds.
The results from the Peak District and the M62 corridor tell an interesting story. I lost count of the number of Lab-to-Con flips last night that seemed to be from that part of the country.
For all the talk of presidentialism around the debates, the variation in swing from seat to seat suggests that the last week focused voters minds’ on the merits of individual candidates and particularly the incumbent MP (or the party’s replacement for that incumbent). I could have warned Peter Kellner in advance of a few results that surprised him last night.
Well wasn’t that a pointless waste of time? Maybe the next election (in, probably, a year’s time) will have a more important result. Meanwhile there were (IMHO) two important results (and not in themselves, but because they may be straws in the wind), this and this.
Australia’s an outlier on that, though. US has two or six years, France has five, Germany has four, Ireland has five, Canada has four, Israel has four… you’re sort of dismissing every major democracy except Australia and the US House of Representatives as absurd and undemocratic. And having a fixed election every two years means that Congressmen spend about half their terms campaigning for the next term.
The UK has the worst of both worlds. An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
You could end up with the Harper worst-of-both-worlds: passing a fixed-term bill then taking advantage of its escape clause to call an early election.
So it seems that the LibDem’s have a choice to go over the right or over the left (sounds like the results of the Dutch elections). I would guess if they don’t go LAB-LIB they will never ever have a chance of getting to LIB-LAB. To have a Tory government with >60% of the popular vote that leans to the left would be … a typical outcome of elections in Western democracies ;-(
A lot of Tories did, indeed, crawl out of the woodwork, and my impression (based on a quick look) is that a lot of people who said they’d vote UKIP in opinion polls went Tory in the end. The Tories, it has to be said, spent a lot of money.
The LDs have a huge incentive to enter some sort of government, which is that they have the least money to fight another election. The Tories, by contrast, have money, and the leadership must be very uneasy about a relationship with the LDs (despite Cameron’s very inviting speech just finished) because their party is not at all keen on the LDs (or, my guess is, their own leadership right now).
To go Lab-LD requires a ‘grand coalition’ of pretty much every other party in the Commons – precarious to the point of impracticality, alas.
Would also involve the overt bribing of the ‘Celtic fringe’ to an extent guaranteed to alienate English voters into voting Tory more decisively next time…
(despite Cameron’s very inviting speech just finished)
I have to politely ask if we were listening to the same speech. “We’ll promise you a committee to investigate the possibility of potentially considering revising the UK voting system, so long as you agree to let us do everything we want.”
77: And having a fixed election every two years means that Congressmen spend about half their terms are campaigning from the word go for the next term.
Fixed that for you.
(To be fair, the chamber was designed to be closest to the whims of the electorate. On the other hand, the re-elect percentage is still well over 85.)
Campbell is spinning that the new Tory MPs are largely on the nutty wing of the party. No idea whether its true (he doesn’t exactly have a record of 100% accuracy) but it sounds plausible, and if so I don’t see how Cameron can deliver anything worthwhile to the LDs.
Yes, I just posted elsewhere that Cameron’s speech seems to be plenty of impetus for the Liberals to start talking to Labour/Brown, as it made almost no concessions and ruled out many things that will make any deal hard to get past the Liberal membership.
The thing is if a Lib-Lab pact comes in, it will tempted to try and get PR in, as that would mean the Conservatives would need to gain 45%+ of the vote to get in (including regional allies), something they have done in decades – even Thatcher’s landslides would probably be losses. The cost for Labour is permanent coalition for the forseeable future, but maybe that will be a price they are willing to pay if they consider their politics and the Lib Dems close enough to make it workable.
Campbell is spinning that the new Tory MPs are largely on the nutty wing of the party
Anecdotally, the two I knew quite well at college seemed like quite pleasant non-barking Tories, while Dan Hardie (I know, I know) knew Rory Stewart on a personal basis, and has said likewise.
I have to politely ask if we were listening to the same speech. “We’ll promise you a committee to investigate the possibility of potentially considering revising the UK voting system, so long as you agree to let us do everything we want.â€
“Also: we want you to suck it up your manifesto pledge on Trident and your commitment to the EU. So, pretty much everything that’s at the core of your party’s political identity.”
For clarity, the criterion used to assess ‘non-barking’ is primarily ‘didn’t touch OUCA with a bargepole’…
Speaking of which, I’ve seen Dan Hannan on the BBC for the first time since the election was called. Was he on self-imposed purdah, which I find hard to imagine, or did Dave have him locked up in a cellar?
You have to love election night (and now morning, then afternoon) for all the comments from the politicians/partisan pundits grasping at straws – “Greatest Tory gain of seats for x years”, as if this campaign hasn’t been pretty much as disastrous from them as Kinnock’s last outing for Labour, grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
@88 – sometimes having the whip hand doesn’t just refer to what Alan B’Stard does in the bedroom, unfortunately. The Tories have the numbers, nothing else will work except as a tottering pile of votes. LDs have to decide whether they can get any leverage on DC’s nuts [in either sense] now, or face holding a gun to their own head to get concessions a few months down the line.
Tragically, the Tories could probably get 500 votes for renewing Trident, unless Labour want to vote down their own manifesto commitment…
It’s been fascinating watching how every Tory has obviously been briefed to keep on mentioning the same talking points. Cameron’s speech quickly ran through them all (bigger swing than Thatcher in ’79, lowest Labour share since 1931, etc.) in the first five minutes.
You would think Labour should start talking about the projected landslide just after Cameron took over, and how once the electorate has got to know him he has lost more votes/seats than any other conservative leader for some period of time (maybe compare it to Thatcher and the poll tax if appropriate, because that is always a great political stick to bash the Tories with).
I guess that Labour and the LibDems could, if they wanted, govern together with the SNP and the DUP (weird) who are clearly up for it. Remember that 4 MPs are absentees, so that reduces the real arithmetic. The difficulty is that Brown really cannot be the PM, and Labour would have, somehow, to manage the transition by installing an alternative (Miliband, Johnson…) without massive disruption, which I can’t see happening. Give Clegg the PM-ship, now, and you have something the LDs would find irresistible….
81- do you think it will be easier for the darker side of the Tories to work with LIB than for all of the others to work with LAB-LIB (& I really like LAB-LIB and LIB-LAB, it has a nice ring to it – it really has)?
94- it should be possible to get Brown out nicely —> there is such a thing as Europe – Catherine could stand down, couldn’t she?
@93 – why, what good would it do them? It’s not as if it’ll change the result, and for anyone much under 40 at least, Thatch is a fading childhood memory. Or are you just saying it would make them feel better?
JoB – party discipline; it does happen sometimes; whereas a coalition that needed at least five members, three of which were given electorally-divisive sweetheart deals on public spending to keep them on board… not a good recipe with an electorate trending Tory.
LDs have to decide whether they can get any leverage on DC’s nuts [in either sense] now, or face holding a gun to their own head to get concessions a few months down the line.
For what shall it profit a party to give up its key manifesto commitments to gain shared credit with Michael Gove for education reforms?
alex- maybe so but to have only 50 seats more than somebody like Brown is: nothing short of a crushing defeat and the dissenters on the right wing of the Tories are with tens whereas the one green (for instance, if that has been confirmed) will, if not schizophrenic, be predictable if their price was rightly met. Don’t now enough details on the smaller parties but if LAB-LIB goes in an anything-but-Tory mode … nothing holds people together better than a common enemy.
@93 – why, what good would it do them? It’s not as if it’ll change the result, and for anyone much under 40 at least, Thatch is a fading childhood memory. Or are you just saying it would make them feel better?
I was just replying to the idea that the Tories are trying to sell the line this is a record loss for Labour and so on, and that they could just as easily create some talking points along the same lines about how the Conservative vote has crumbled over the last year or less.
I like the coverage on BBC24 just now – “…any alliance, whether it be Clegg/Cameron or Cameron/Brown…”, now that would be a shocking outcome from this election if that was on the cards.
Incidentally, I watched the Monty Python election night sketch during the coverage last night. Amazing how it hasn’t aged a bit: give or take the gizmos the style is exactly the same.
Given that there were a number of independents, this doesn’t mean as much as it might appear to, but Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland 25.5% to 25.0% for the DUP.
Given that there were a number of independents, this doesn’t mean as much as it might on a first glance, but Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland, with 25.5% to 25% for the DUP.
Whatever happens, it’s clear that the Red Tory moment (assuming it was an actual reality, and it probably wasn’t) has passed. I’m of mixed feelings about it all.
One thing that I just noticed is that the DUP is still more or less assumed to be with the Conservatives, given the gay friendly stuff that Cameron has been trying and the DUP’s rather notorious history on that issue, you wonder if any deal there is still possible.
I thought the DUP made it clear that they would consider either party. You might think that a party that had been willing to cooperate with SF is able to swallow its pride on gay-friendly rhetoric; but also willing to work with just about anyone.
None of SNP, DUP and PD have anything to lose from the introduction of PR. Unlike the Tories. But I still don’t see how they can allow Brown to stay as PM, or how Labour can replace him while in power or about to enter power.
Isn’t the sensible option at this stage to have a Lib/Lab coalition (with Brown at the head) that agrees to push through electoral reform (and nothing else) very quickly in order for a second election? I’m not sure that charges of stealing power would stick if they made clear that they were only preparing the ground for another election.
Can’t see that sort of Lib/Lab coalition is all that great for Labour as you describe it, especially as Lib/Lab + SDLP = 218 out of 224 (assuming SF stay absent), although you can probably also add 1 Green/1 Alliance (I think?) and 1 independent (probably?) so that maybe Plaid Cymru (with 3) is just enough, but more likely SNP as well will be needed, so I think such an alliance will probably need something for Labour, and stuff on devolution as well as some sort of serious voting reform consideration for the Lib Dems.
I could see Labour trying to come to a compromise with the Lib Dems on electoral reform – something like a ranking/preference system or approval voting rather than an Proportional system, which could be argued based on the idea that it would avoid a lot of the tactical voting and probably cost the Conservatives some seats to both their parties, and doesn’t need any major reform of the commons or the constituency link of MPs.
We have a monarch to take care of that sort of thing.
And in fact, she, or her representative, has in fact done “that sort of thing” in the not-too-distant past, right? In Australia if not elsewhere? (Just demonstrating in case anyone wondered that my ignorance in 103 was at least partly feigned.)
I have a question: do we really know what impact introduction of PR would have? It seems awfully presumptive to assume that such a big change would leave vote totals as they are and simply change the way those votes translate into seats. For example, turnout is now, it seems, quite uneven (why vote in safe seats?) – that might change. Similarly, it could well be many LibDem votes in safe Labour or Conservative seats are protest votes (or not, I don’t know) that will go differently if PR is introduced… etc. I think it is safe to draw some general conclusions (it will be easier for new parties to get established) but concrete estimates of majorities and such seem risky.
“The results from the Peak District and the M62 corridor tell an interesting story. I lost count of the number of Lab-to-Con flips last night that seemed to be from that part of the country.”
But that’s exactly my point. There were basically suburban, Essex-men votes, and the Tories can win those easy. But Tories are basically never ever going to win the seats in hard-up districts with like 40% unemployment. And they shouldn’t bother trying.
The demographic trend is in the Tories’ favour. The South will get more seats, the North will less, as the economy shifts and people migrate. By 2030 or 2040 the entire North, politically, would probably be expendable and meaningless. It would, essentially, be a permanent Tory majority of some kind, or at least the marginalization and irrelevancy of Labour as it gets shut out of seats in the economic heart of the country and simply becomes the party of ne’er-do-wells.
The harsh reality of the matter is that it’s just impossible for the Tories to succeed as a One Nation party at this point. It is a middle-class party, and it will be as a middle-class party that it will stand or fall. To succeed as a One Nation party would required a modification in Britain’s class system so drastic that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long-term for most Tories (give up the public-school system and so on).
Myles’s scenario is interesting — in the US it’s the *less* conservative party that benefits from demographic trends such as urbanization and immigration.
Do Tories really do better in densely populated areas in England? And if so, why is there such a difference between the politics of urbanization on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
The harsh reality of the matter is that it’s just impossible for the Tories to succeed as a One Nation party at this point. It is a middle-class party, and it will be as a middle-class party that it will stand or fall. To succeed as a One Nation party would required a modification in Britain’s class system so drastic that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long-term for most Tories (give up the public-school system and so on).
Myles’s use of “One Nation” interests me, because–for some who knows Britain mainly through blogs and history books–it sounds to me very Disraeli-ish. Do people still commonly use the language of “One Nation Conservatism” in political discussions in Britain? Is it still (if it ever was) a legitimate tool of argument over what the Tories can or cannot do?
Do Tories really do better in densely populated areas in England? And if so, why is there such a difference between the politics of urbanization on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
No, they lose in the urban areas generally, but there are large swathes with a mix of rural and large towns across the southern half of the country where they do quite well. These places are growing in population but are still relatively affluent mostly, and many are exurbs and commuter belt for highly paid London based professionals and that sort of thing. Not much heavy industry or urbanisation, so you have Con/Lib races in the more rural areas, and more normally Con/Lab races in the large towns (although for all sorts of personality and historical reasons it isn’t always as simple as that, and in some places you also get Lib/Lab races and three way marginals.
Obviously this map is equal size for each consituency so it isn’t totally straightforward to realise where is switching unless you are already reasonably aware of uk geography and population density – something like the following might help a bit here.
@123: Doesn’t that mean that the same demographic trends that increase the population (and thus representation) of those areas will also make them less Conservative strongholds than they used to be?
Sort of like the combined impact of urbanization and immigration on Texas, Florida, or Virginia (except that England doesn’t have our weird state-based-winner-take-all system, so you don’t have to reach 50% of a whole region to start flipping districts within the region — it’ll work more like the House, where all of those states have split delegations).
Probably true in the long term, but for now these places are safe until the Labour vote breaks 40% (i.e. landslide territory), and such a trend will probably make them more vulnerable over time, but it probably won’t change enough for a generation or so, and meanwhile the 2011 census will no doubt increase the amount of seats in those areas of the country (I wonder if that sort of thing crosses politicians minds, i.e. that if the conservatives can muddle along until the census 2011 is available, then the boundaries commission will rearrange things more in favour of the Conservatives vs Labour compared to this time)
“Myles’s use of “One Nation†interests me, because—for some who knows Britain mainly through blogs and history books—it sounds to me very Disraeli-ish.”
Disraeli all the way through to Churchill (the younger), Macmillan, Heath, and so on. Eden was actually on the classical wing of the party, but he didn’t last very long. Had Eden lasted, British politics would likely have taken a much better turn.
“But would you want one whose southern border was with Yorkshire?”
They will probably get the devo-max, which I am fine with. In relation to the North of England; well, they would probably be near the state of abandonment by then, sort of like Michigan of today.
Something I have been mulling over about polling station reform to avoid the problems repeating, not sure how workable it is: have a central database of all registered voters (probably already exists), and each polling station is electronically connected and has a laser printer so a voting slip can be generated for anywhere in the UK. Anyone can turn up at any polling station (and go to another if there is a long queue), hand over the card with your details or provide name/address and so on, and vote at any location (avoiding issues with so many people that don’t work near their polling station, and thus have relatively small windows to vote in). Doing it this way, you can add extra polling stations at train stations, near supermarkets, or whatever because you do away with the single paper list of voters to be checked off in each ward, replacing it with a single electronic list of who has/hasn’t voted yet.
Looking ahead, it’s hard to imagine the Tories accepting electoral reform as the price of LibDem support.
But if Clegg cuts a deal without this (and other policies unpalatable to the Tories), Labour can put forward its own legislation, incorporating LibDem policy and forcing the LibDems to vote against it. That would make life v uncomfortable, I think.
The Tories don’t seem to have as many attractive wedges to use against a LibLab coalition, I think.
I don’t know if this has been mentioned but there are actually 5 seats almost automatically tied into a Lib/Lab deal from NI – 3 SDLP (who are already allied with Labour), 1 Alliance (who I think are tied in to the LDs) and 1 independent unionist (Sylvia Hermon who left the Ulster Unionist Party because of their deal with the Tories because she likes Labour). That gives 320 in total without too much party bargaining, though that could obviously come to grief with any cuts that they are likely to pull in NI – but the chances of that are roughly equal to that of losing some Lib/Lab MPs with austerity cuts anyway and counts as a natural alliance. It could hold surely for a short-term administration that would hold in place until after a PR referendum. It would just take the indulgence of the greens and welsh or scots nats to hold that together given Sinn Fein don’t turn up. And of course there is always the DUP for pork barrel stuff which they have already given Labour recently for a PTA vote. Though it would not look good for any likely abortion vote, which are free anyway and nobody would trade off because it won’t happen under the current arithmetic, but they only need to hold together for a PR referendum.
I’m happy about this. For years Brits have had to put up with a ban on this and regulations on that. We’ve had to put up with the scum of our society being untouchable by the law. The days of Britons being bullied by a bunch of elite Socialists is over. The conservatives may be politically just as far left as labour but it doesn’t matter now, any hung parliament won’t be able to pass laws to further infringe our rights.
The casting vote now is by the international bond market. They will vote for harsh spending cuts. The massive client state labour have created will be left in destitution as they richly deserve.
I would think that Labour would never agree to a change in the electoral system that benefits them enormously, even more than it benefits the Conservatives (in 2005 Labour won a smaller share of the popular vote than Conservatives won now and still won by a very comfortable margin in seats).
It would be best for them to let Cameron have his minority government, and then come back in a few years.
current may be nuts, but monstrous kneejerk authoritarianism is not a charge against Labour that has gone unmade from the left in recent years, either. And too many ‘public servants’ on six-figure salaries likewise…
I promise you, I really am British. But “Elite Socialists” I mean the elite of the Labour party. (What else could I mean?) I suppose this forum is so far left that it doesn’t see them as Socialists, I hadn’t thought of that.
monstrous kneejerk authoritarianism is not a charge against Labour that has gone unmade from the left in recent years, either.
That would include me – take a look at what has happened under Labour: paranoid surveillance state, constant undermining of civil liberties, two aggressive wars, torture, total disregard for the rule of law (e.g. BAE) in favour of “national interest” …
I really don’t give a flying f+++ if they think they are sozialists or that others might be worse, but anybody voting Labour has to explain to me how they can be a-ok with all that crap. And I’m not a libertarian by nature, neither do I have anything in common with the weirdo US version of libertarianism. I just believe in, seemingly antiquated and naive, concepts of democracy and freedom.
That would include me – take a look at what has happened under Labour: paranoid surveillance state, constant undermining of civil liberties, two aggressive wars, torture, total disregard for the rule of law (e.g. BAE) in favour of “national interest†…
But the Tories are not really different in these policy fields.
The liberal democrats could be really useful on civil liberties. I hope they deliver.
Yes, all of the three main parties are against civil rights, for authoritarianism and for the surveillance state.
But, the election result is still good, because there is a hung parliament. All the three main parties are collosal egotists, they may all believe the same things, but they will have difficulty accepting each other’s laws. As a result I think that lawmaking will proceed at a much lower rate than it did in New Labour times, which will give society a bit of a breathing space.
What folks here miss is that Brown and Blair are *consistent* Socialists. They don’t believe in economic freedom or personal freedom. Socialism is inconsistent with personal freedom because economic freedom is so closely tied up with it.
Here’s an argument against PR that hadn’t occurred to me before today.
In a system in which coalitions are a regular occurrence you end up ceding an awful lot of power to Very Important People in the Media to define what counts as a legitimate outcome of an election. Given current patterns of media ownership, that means the plutocrats get to place an even bigger thumb on the scale than they do at the moment.
The Con/LibDem talks have just broken up. Hague said they’d been discussing “political reform, economic issues, reduction of the deficit, banking reform, environmental issues, civil liberties”. He didn’t say they’d been discussing potential responsibilities. So these haven’t been, in any sense, coalition negotiations. They’ve been a general airing of policies. They needn’t have met for that; they could just have read each others’ manifestos.
Still “engels†are they not consistent Socialists?
I don’t know about engels, but I would bet a substantial sum that not one per cent of the British electorate would accept that they are socialists in any sense of the word. American influenced libertarians can play word games as much as they like but it’s neither interesting nor useful to people who prefer robust definitions.
Old Labour, say the Atlee government, could have been described as socialist — on the fringes of Bernsteinian Revisionism. Even by the mid-sixties, though, it was very hard to call the Wilson government socialist. I remember, though, conversations where it was pointed out that the Labour Party was the only mass party of the working class and therefore the only practical vehicle for socialism. That thought led to the attempts by Militant to subvert the party. But with the defeat of Militant and the rise of New Labour, culminating in the symbolic excision of Clause Four (it’s all her fancy, that: they never nationalizes nobody, you know) and, after the victory in 1997, their refusal to renationalize the railways, there were no longer even any connections to socialism or socialists left. Since Blair and Brown led severing those connections, it is perverse, to say the least, to refer to them as socialists.
I suppose on this blog the definition of Socialism is quite narrow, which is reasonable enough. But I don’t think Socialism ever has referred simply to nationalization of industry.
How are we to describe Blair and Brown though. They certainly believe in paternalism. While they have kept business owned privately and quiet free in some areas, but they still believe in controling it by discretionary regulations, taxes and other policies. They have done pretty much the same thing with society attempting to control it be bans and regulations.
No we don’t. It’s neoliberalism with a few local tweaks. You choose to describe as socialism any society where the state has any role whatsoever beyond (I’m guessing) maintaining an army. I also know sectarian Trots who would deny that socialism means anything short of the dictatorship of the proletariat with full workers’ control of the economy.
Neither definition is useful for any imaginable purpose. You have individually and subjectively decided to describe the European centre-right as ‘socialist’. Whoopie-doo. Who do you think cares?
The Tories are never going to offer electoral reform – and if Clegg accepts a deal of any sort without that firmly and unavoidably on the table, he blows his credibility utterly with his own party and any floating supporters. Rocks, hard places, frying pans, fires etc etc. He’d be much better backing off and letting the Tories discover the truth that Tommy Carcetti was warned about some years ago on the Wire about people coming every day to the Mayor’s office with another bowl of sh*t to eat.
Neoliberalism generally means a return to the ideas of classical liberalism. That is:-
* Free enterprise
* Rule of law, rather than discretion
* Personal liberty
New Labour have moved in the opposite direction to the Neoliberal one on all of these areas. Enterprise has to contend with many new regulations, and regulators with greater arbitrary power. The rule of law has been dimnished by removal of trial by jury for many offences and the introduction of ASBOs. Personal liberty has been diminished by things like the smoking ban, and by the campaigns of “denormalisation” against smokers, drinkers and the fat.
If anything I suppose New Labour are a Paternalistic government.
{ 156 comments }
P O'Neill 05.06.10 at 9:27 pm
I for one welcome our new Unionist overlords.
mollymooly 05.06.10 at 9:37 pm
So, that’s PR off the agenda for another 40 years.
Enzo Rossi 05.06.10 at 9:54 pm
The exit poll is preposterous. Let’s just sit tight and wait. Well, the sitting tight might have to give.
James Conran 05.06.10 at 9:58 pm
Why are they announcing the results of the exit poll in terms of seats rather than vote shares? Surely its far more likely to get the latter right than the former.
mpowell 05.06.10 at 10:00 pm
So this is one of the crazier possible outcomes, right? Neither the Conservatives or Labour+LD can get a majority. How many seats do we expect for the far right?
Stuart 05.06.10 at 10:03 pm
I guess it is mostly because how many votes a party gets, or its share of the votes has very little real meaning due to the way the system works. Without trying to use some sort of maths (i.e. the assumption of uniform nation swings) it doesn’t really tell anyone anything.
Chris Hanretty 05.06.10 at 10:14 pm
@James Conran, From 538:
Brian Weatherson 05.06.10 at 10:21 pm
I don’t think it’s all over for PR. The Labor people on the BBC are very explicitly flagging electoral reform as part of their immediate plans. I guess they think it could be part of a large deal.
Matt 05.06.10 at 10:25 pm
A Brian Weatherson sighting on CT! Now if you’d only blog a bit here now and then…
Naadir Jeewa 05.06.10 at 10:26 pm
AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Brian Weatherson 05.06.10 at 10:33 pm
If only I had something interesting to say. CT has very high standards you know.
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:40 pm
Live coverage from the BBC here. It’s all about the swing!
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:43 pm
Sunderland Central reports
LD 7,191
Lab 19,495
UKIP 1,094
Tories 12,770
BNP 1,913
This was a new constituency which would have gone Tory with a 12% swing (which would have been very big, but it will take a national swing of something like 9% to return a Tory majority).
This was a 4.8% swing.
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:46 pm
On the BBC, Conservative spokespeople are pre-spinning the result, which may well be a hung parliament. The party line is that this is a “massive rejection” of Gordon Brown and the people would be outraged by his continuing as PM.
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:48 pm
The other big story of the evening: in some constituencies people were turned away at the polls because the doors closed before they had a chance to vote. There have been protests and threats of lawsuits.
Everyone is shocked that this could happen in the 21st century.
Obviously they didn’t weren’t paying attention to our 2000 and 2004 elections!
Stuart 05.06.10 at 10:50 pm
That this isn’t a runaway victory for the Conservatives given a long period of Labour in government, and the economic situation, seems to me to be a massive rejection of the Conservatives. Obviously the same can be said of Labour in 1992, when they had a result even worse than this looks to be.
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:54 pm
Birmingham Edgbaston, Basildon South and Thurock East, Battersea, Birkenhead, and Belfast West are expected to report next.
Meanwhile, the Olympics Minister (!) is opining on the voting situation. Asked if this is Labour’s fault: “You can say many things are our fault…”
BBC Commentator: “Many things are!”
Ben Alpers 05.06.10 at 10:58 pm
And now the Labour line: If nobody wins an outright majority, the public message is that we should talk to each other. Without a majority nobody has a right to a monopoly of power.
peter 05.06.10 at 11:05 pm
Why do British ballot papers have identifying numbers on them? And why are these numbers recorded by the polling station staff on a sheet when you vote? Surely this creates the possibility for the Government to know how each person votes.
Chris Hanretty 05.06.10 at 11:05 pm
Re: Ben Alpers at 14: Will video footage of voters queueing to vote at close of polls at 10pm feed in to a pro-electoral-reform narrative?
Steve 05.06.10 at 11:13 pm
My prediction; next time the British government (whoever that may be) makes a statement about Iranian democracy, they might get a video of these people not allowed to vote played back at them . . .
Ken Houghton 05.06.10 at 11:16 pm
The ancestors who didn’t get forced out a few centuries ago have given Labour a 100% lead (3-0, basically the halftime score of a Chelsea-Stoke City match).
As with the U.S. Democrats, they should manage to blow this one fairly quickly.
Brian Weatherson 05.06.10 at 11:17 pm
I’m not sure the queues help electoral reform. One of the (very few) advantages of FPTP is that it is *quick*. I don’t know how US elections could work with a system that took the voter longer than FPTP.
Having said that I think the Labour higher ups are talking as if they think they can make a coalition government work. Maybe they are being over-optimistic, but they aren’t behaving like they think it’s a simple Tory majority. Playing for a coalition is probably a bad move for an opposition.
Stuart 05.06.10 at 11:20 pm
The most terrible thing for me is that we won’t be able to make so much fun of the Americans with all their election screw ups next time around…
Chris Hanretty 05.06.10 at 11:23 pm
@Brian Weatherson: You know that, I know that. But I imagine it’d be quite easy to spin a `the-system-is-broken’ line.
Anyway, a minor point. Simon Hughes is on now making the key point about Tory objections to electoral reform, namely that you can’t easily claim that FPTP is decisive when it delivers a hung parliament.
Harry 05.07.10 at 12:21 am
It’s starting to look as if the exit polls are problematic, because the swing is quite non-uniform (so, more precisely, its problematic to conclude much from them). Labour people are talking up the idea of doing a deal with the LDs.
Does anyone understand what’s happening in Northern Island?
How come Andrew Neil is still alive?
James Conran 05.07.10 at 12:24 am
Biggest story of the night so far is DUP (i.e. Paisleyite) leader Peter Robinson losing his seat to the cross-community Alliance Party in East Belfast.
This gives me mixed feelings – delighted basically, but also worried that this could destabilise the DUP-SF entente. Obviously all this is being studiously ignored by the UK-wide broadcasters.
James Conran 05.07.10 at 12:32 am
Sticking with NI, Sylvia Hermon, the only Ulster Unionist Party MP elected in 2005, but who ran as an independent this time in protest at the UUP’s decision to more or less merge with the Tories (under the wonderfully chosen acronym of UCUNF – Ulster Conservative and Unionist New Force), romps home in North Down, trebles her previous 5,000-odd majority.
Steve 05.07.10 at 12:36 am
Loving the guy doing the power salute behind Gordon Brown, who the cameras are now trying to ignore . . . anyone know what that’s about?
Stuart 05.07.10 at 12:36 am
It’s starting to look as if the exit polls are problematic, because the swing is quite non-uniform (so, more precisely, its problematic to conclude much from them).
Yes, UNS is more or less accurate when applied to a more or less pure 2 party system, not so much with lots of regional parties and lots of three way fights, tactical voting and indeed tactical voting from last time unwinding in some places potentially, etc. Then again I guess you can’t just expect the TV pundits to just sit there and talk about the results already in, so they have to come up with some sort of guess.
Steve 05.07.10 at 1:24 am
Can’t believe how badly the Lib Dems are doing. Gonna be a postmortem on this one . . .
Harry 05.07.10 at 1:37 am
The apparent explanation is that they have been done in by high turnout in relevant marginals — Tories coming out to save their bacon. If they don’t break through this time, I don’t see what their raison d’etre is.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 2:22 am
I wonder if Brown does get a chance to do a deal with the Lib Dems on electoral reform, he could end up cursed by the party after that one term as any meaningful reform is going to cost them a lot of seats in every future election surely? You would think strategically it is better for Labour to take a loss here, let a minority Conservative government have to run high tax/low spending to get down the deficit and limit the growth of the debt over the next five years and then they would have a good chance of getting back in as a majority government again.
Instead all an alliance with the Lib Dems would leave them is 5 years at most needing to make deals to make any significant progress, and then at the next election they would likely lose another 50-100 seats and possibly become the third largest party (depending on what type of electoral reform was demanded, and how it played out in terms of changing how people voted as well as how that converted into number of MPs) and at best a semi-permanent coalition with the Lib Dems presumably. Seems like a strange choice to go down, and why I have always been dubious that any meaningful electoral change is likely.
P O'Neill 05.07.10 at 2:40 am
Fermanagh-South Tyrone is making Florida 2000 look like a landslide.
Ben Alpers 05.07.10 at 2:51 am
One of the things they’re saying about the Lib Dems is that their support for amnesty for illegal aliens hurt them mightily after the final debate.
Tim Wilkinson 05.07.10 at 2:55 am
19 Chris Hanretty 05.06.10 at 11:05 pm:
Re: Ben Alpers at 14: Will video footage of voters queueing to vote at close of polls at 10pm feed in to a pro-electoral-reform narrative?
It might feed into a pro-mechanisation narrative, unfortunately.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 3:00 am
One of the things they’re saying about the Lib Dems is that their support for amnesty for illegal aliens hurt them mightily after the final debate.
I guess they should have learnt from Labour and the Conservatives – its fine to have unpopular policies planned, or even in your manifesto, but you should never talk about them, or allow yourself to get drawn into discussing them on TV.
Nick Caldwell 05.07.10 at 3:48 am
Stuart, I think the lesson of the last 20 years in the western world for centrist and leftist political pragmatists has been this:
Don’t let the right get a toehold in anywhere or they’ll deliberately break the crucial machinery of democracy and you’ll never ever be able to fix the damage. Ravening entropy in action.
AlanDownunder 05.07.10 at 4:07 am
Hold your elections on a Saturday like we do.
Ben Alpers 05.07.10 at 4:51 am
Caroline Lucas of the Greens took Brighton Pavilion. A small bit of good news, IMO.
Anon 05.07.10 at 4:59 am
A small bit of good news? Pretty much all of this election has been great from where I’m sitting. No conservative majority, no Lib Dem breakthrough, even no Charles Clarke. And it’s even been exciting! Only the result in Normanton and the BNP’s vote count have really counted as bad news.
Ben Alpers 05.07.10 at 5:21 am
Pretty much all of this election has been great from where I’m sitting. No conservative majority, no Lib Dem breakthrough, even no Charles Clarke. And it’s even been exciting! Only the result in Normanton and the BNP’s vote count have really counted as bad news.
Well the lack of a Tory majority is certainly good news, but it’s very close, unfortunately. I consider no Lib Dem breakthrough to be distinctly bad news. I’ll grant you the excitement. Do you really think the BNP did well enough to count as bad news? Their percentage in Barking actually went down.
Anon 05.07.10 at 6:22 am
I originally added that qualification in brackets, but it made the sentence look weird. Technically, given that the BNP are now broke and have no seats to show for it, the results a good thing.
nick s 05.07.10 at 6:30 am
You would think strategically it is better for Labour to take a loss here, let a minority Conservative government have to run high tax/low spending to get down the deficit and limit the growth of the debt over the next five years and then they would have a good chance of getting back in as a majority government again.
Five years? You could give Cameron enough rope to hang himself, knowing that you can potentially pull the plug whenever the Tories at their most vulnerable, and send voters back to the polls in a year. Perhaps Dave is on the phone with Stephen Harper and reading up on strategic prorogation, but it’s not Stockholm Syndrome to think that a hobbled Tory government facing the shit is a deal you’d take.
I think it’s clear, though, that the implied flipside of “Brown has lost the mandate to govern” from the Tories has fallen flat as a fart as dawn breaks. We’ll see what the press and spinmeisters try for their second effort.
John Quiggin 05.07.10 at 6:44 am
Looking at the numbers it seems as if the only stable majority would be Tory+Lib Dems. If so
(1) The Lib Dems would be crazy not to demand PR/STV as an immediate down payment
(2) If they get it, their failure to win a lot of seats this time around won’t be fatal for them
(3) Whatever happens hard to see this Parliament lasting five years, which is, BTW, an absurdly long and anti-democratic term.
Doormat 05.07.10 at 7:34 am
The problem with electrol reform is that (at least the impression I get) is that no-one is suggesting anything more than a referendum. And I just don’t see that passing. And if it was lost, it’s off the table for a generation. As a LibDem supporter, it’s all pretty depressing. (I think PR would be great, but I just don’t think the UK public as a whole does).
chris y 05.07.10 at 7:43 am
Whatever happens hard to see this Parliament lasting five years, which is, BTW, an absurdly long and anti-democratic term.
True. Forward to 1694! Long live the Triennial Act!
ajay 05.07.10 at 8:21 am
But four years is just perfect, right? That’s a very nice distinction there.
Scott Martens 05.07.10 at 9:21 am
BBC says Cameron needs 35 more seats to form a government and there are only 34 seats left undeclared. Hung parliament it is.
Chris Bertram 05.07.10 at 9:25 am
From my perspective this is close to the best outcome that was realistically achievable. It would have been slightly better if Lab + Lib Dem > 324 (or so), but still. Cameron is toast: the Tory crazies won’t forgive him for not pulling this off.
My own view, btw, is that a referendum on electoral reform would succeed.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 9:38 am
As a LibDem supporter, it’s all pretty depressing. (I think PR would be great, but I just don’t think the UK public as a whole does).
Yes, the problem being is even if the secure a referendum on some sort of voting reform, it is basically still asking about 70-80% of the voters to reduce the effectiveness of their own vote. Of course it is more likely to pass than maybe you would think given that, but I would worry lots of people would tell opinion polls they would vote for it, but in the privacy of the voting booth it might not be so clear (similar to how lots of people were embarassed to say they were going to vote Tory in 1992 but they did anyway).
Alex Gregory 05.07.10 at 9:44 am
Clegg just seemed to more or less say they’d support the Tories on the condition of electoral reform.
Matt Heath 05.07.10 at 9:53 am
How do you figure that? The effectiveness of the vote of anyone not living in a marginal constituency is currently more-or-less zero.
Chris E 05.07.10 at 9:55 am
Unless they calculate that they are better off staying quiet until the present arrangement collapses and they can come back in a year or two’s time with a bigger mandate.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 10:06 am
How do you figure that? The effectiveness of the vote of anyone not living in a marginal constituency is currently more-or-less zero.
Except if you vote for Labour, Conservative, or some of the regional parties, while your individual vote might not count, the party you vote for is benefiting from more seats than they are likely to get under a “fairer” system.
Chris S 05.07.10 at 10:08 am
George Galloway finishes 3rd place in Poplar & Limehouse.
guthrie 05.07.10 at 10:21 am
They were apparently turning people away from polling stations last night at 10pm, it seems some people have completely miscalculated the expected turnout.
Neil 05.07.10 at 10:29 am
ajay, terms in Australia are closer to 3 years than 4. In any case, the difference between 4 and 5 years is not small; one year is 25% of 4 years (no really, work it out for yourself).
guthrie 05.07.10 at 10:31 am
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8666338.stm
has more on the turning people away.
Matt Heath 05.07.10 at 10:42 am
But what proportion of voters are tribal enough to identify the number of seats their preferred party wins with their own interest. Not many, I suspect. People can see that the parties they support are desperately pandering to target demographics which most of them don’t belong to. I think most people would be happy with their usual party losing some seats if it meant parties had to fight for the votes of people like them.
Myles SG 05.07.10 at 10:53 am
But I think the Cameron approach has, in fact, been distinctly ineffective. His A-list has, for all intents and purposes, been a complete joke on election night, if not an outright farce. If he couldn’t get a working-class black social worker elected despite intensive campaigning in a pretty good seat, the sort of seat that would have been a dead-ringer for any regular middle-class Tory, there’s something wrong there.
Zac Goldsmith, on the other hand, got elected pretty snazzily. I mean, at the end of the day, the system is about winning seats. And David Cameron is clearly not doing that. If you can win enough seats, whether it be with Home Counties votes or Northern votes, you govern and you get to rule. If you can’t, you don’t get to rule. It’s quite that simple. And I think the electoral calculus is such that the Tories can essentially give up the entire North if they can eat up all the remaining seats in the South, and still have a permanent majority. One noticeable feature as one looks at the votes coming in was how much the Tories are eating into Lib Dem votes, and how little the Tories have eaten into traditional Labour strongholds. As someone who had hoped for the demise of class-war Labourism, supplanted by Lib Dems, it is a somewhat of a disappointment; but the reality of the matter is that the whole effort to make Tory a One Nation party, to win seats in the North or to put up that ridiculous A-list and so on, is a hopeless one, and they might as well focus on just chasing the Lib Dems out of the South for good and just getting a permanent Southern majority, which given the direction of the British economy (more high-end, high-margin, high-skill services, less manufacturing) will just keep growing. After all, it is precisely Labour has governed for decades, despite rarely getting a majority or plurality of any kind in England, or the South, the economic heart of the country since about the late 1800’s.
Myles SG 05.07.10 at 10:57 am
The basic point is whether for the Tories try to win seats across the country, or just try to lock up all the Southern seats. Given that whatever gains they make outside the South tend to be marginal at best, the most plausible way for a stable Tory majority is through a Southern lock. And in any case, if Labour can’t win any seats in the South, they can’t govern with any sort of effectivenes, given that they will probably be checked by the City and southern institutions every step of the way.
I just don’t see the Cameroons as a winning strategy.
chris y 05.07.10 at 11:07 am
In Sheffield, returning officer John Mothersole apologised to voters who were turned away, saying: “We got this wrong.” (guthrie’s link @ 57)
No shit, Sherlock. People from several constituencies in Sheffield have told me that the number of polling clerks at the stations was half to a third down on the last time. This was a cost cutting exercise where they got burned, pure and simple. I imagine it was the same in other cities.
dsquared 05.07.10 at 11:15 am
One of the things they’re saying about the Lib Dems is that their support for amnesty for illegal aliens hurt them mightily after the final debate.
what I’m saying about people who are saying that is that they’re the kind of concern trolls that plague the LibDems year in and year out.
novakant 05.07.10 at 11:43 am
Anybody who needs convincing that the UK electoral system is totally undemocratic crap, please take a look below:
Conservative: 10,296,598 votes = 294 seats
Labour: 8,335,311 = 251
Liberal Democrat: 6,518,970 = 52
alex 05.07.10 at 11:54 am
@64: seems a little harsh; after all, both the other parties and the press did go for Cleggie on that very point. It might not have been a game-changer, but I don’t see why suggesting it was makes you a ‘concern troll’. Fishing in Tory waters is a difficult business for a party with essentially decent instincts.
mds 05.07.10 at 12:19 pm
It didn’t appear to work very well for the Liberal Democrats, either.
Steve LaBonne 05.07.10 at 12:20 pm
So let’s see. Labor had more than more than worn out its welcome, yet voters still didn’t give the Tories a majority. And they didn’t reward the Lib Dems either.
From this side of the Atlantic, it seems as though the voters were saying “none of the above” to the whole political establishment (kind of the way I’m tempted to do this November.) Welcome to the club of dysfunctional democracies.
Harry 05.07.10 at 12:25 pm
The LD vote is up (by 1%). If seats were allocated proportionally to votes, each of the other parties would have 50 fewer than they have, and the LDs would have almost 100 more than they have. So if their views on immigration were well understood, a non-trivial proportion of voters are not bothered by them.
alex 05.07.10 at 12:34 pm
A non-trivial proportion of people, c. 5% of the total electorate, appear to have shifted from what the pollsters were steadily telling us, up to Wednesday night, was going to be the LD vote, to what it actually was. The kind of ‘shameful’ thoughts about immigration that one might have in the privacy of the polling-booth, but not be prepared to admit to a pollster, are at least a plausible, if not a conclusive, explanation. OTOH, it may just be that lots of Tories came out of the woods, and threw off the pollsters’ models. Turnout may well have been 15% or more higher than last time round, and doubtless unevenly distributed, which will have complicated calculations immensely. Though it’s noteworthy how remarkably accurate the exit polling is turning out to be, presumably on a different methodology.
nick s 05.07.10 at 1:00 pm
My own view, btw, is that a referendum on electoral reform would succeed.
I think that’s about right: over the past decade, British voters have had at least one opportunity to vote in a PR election (European Parliament) and often more chances at PR or preferential voting (devolved assemblies, local government) — it’s no longer alien.
This was a cost cutting exercise where they got burned, pure and simple.
Also cost-cutting: the Tory councils that delayed counts till today instead of paying overtime. It reminded me, in an unpleasant way, that while the per-county system of election management in the US is crazy, the British system’s empowerment of local returning officers isn’t that different.
I think you’re going to end up with Cameron assembling a minority government that double-dares the Lib Dems to vote against a somewhat moderated Queen’s Speech, and a relatively quick new election to seek a mandate for the bloodier bits of their manifesto.
Pete 05.07.10 at 1:11 pm
I think the LD undervoting was mostly due to tactical voting. It ought to be possible to detect this with some statistical analysis of marginals..
John Quiggin 05.07.10 at 1:13 pm
ajay, the life of an Australian Parliament is three years. There is a little bit of room to stretch this, because the term is counted from first session to dissolution, so the election period doesn’t count. Howard exploited this in 2007, but in practice the interval between elections is less than three years most of the time.
There is a strong push here (successful in several states) to extend the term to four years. I oppose this, which is one reason I’m criticising the UK five year term.
But at least, the price of a four-year term is a fixed term. The UK has the worst of both worlds. An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
a.y.mous 05.07.10 at 1:17 pm
>> An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
Which is why this result is good. Coalition is the correct way forward. The threat of a no-confidence motion is as powerful as the comfort of calling winnable elections.
nick s 05.07.10 at 1:20 pm
One noticeable feature as one looks at the votes coming in was how much the Tories are eating into Lib Dem votes, and how little the Tories have eaten into traditional Labour strongholds.
The results from the Peak District and the M62 corridor tell an interesting story. I lost count of the number of Lab-to-Con flips last night that seemed to be from that part of the country.
For all the talk of presidentialism around the debates, the variation in swing from seat to seat suggests that the last week focused voters minds’ on the merits of individual candidates and particularly the incumbent MP (or the party’s replacement for that incumbent). I could have warned Peter Kellner in advance of a few results that surprised him last night.
Hidari 05.07.10 at 1:20 pm
Well wasn’t that a pointless waste of time? Maybe the next election (in, probably, a year’s time) will have a more important result. Meanwhile there were (IMHO) two important results (and not in themselves, but because they may be straws in the wind), this and this.
ajay 05.07.10 at 1:21 pm
Australia’s an outlier on that, though. US has two or six years, France has five, Germany has four, Ireland has five, Canada has four, Israel has four… you’re sort of dismissing every major democracy except Australia and the US House of Representatives as absurd and undemocratic. And having a fixed election every two years means that Congressmen spend about half their terms campaigning for the next term.
nick s 05.07.10 at 1:22 pm
The UK has the worst of both worlds. An unpopular government can hang on for the full five years, but the PM can call a snap election anytime it looks winnable.
You could end up with the Harper worst-of-both-worlds: passing a fixed-term bill then taking advantage of its escape clause to call an early election.
JoB 05.07.10 at 1:22 pm
So it seems that the LibDem’s have a choice to go over the right or over the left (sounds like the results of the Dutch elections). I would guess if they don’t go LAB-LIB they will never ever have a chance of getting to LIB-LAB. To have a Tory government with >60% of the popular vote that leans to the left would be … a typical outcome of elections in Western democracies ;-(
Harry 05.07.10 at 1:51 pm
A lot of Tories did, indeed, crawl out of the woodwork, and my impression (based on a quick look) is that a lot of people who said they’d vote UKIP in opinion polls went Tory in the end. The Tories, it has to be said, spent a lot of money.
The LDs have a huge incentive to enter some sort of government, which is that they have the least money to fight another election. The Tories, by contrast, have money, and the leadership must be very uneasy about a relationship with the LDs (despite Cameron’s very inviting speech just finished) because their party is not at all keen on the LDs (or, my guess is, their own leadership right now).
alex 05.07.10 at 1:51 pm
To go Lab-LD requires a ‘grand coalition’ of pretty much every other party in the Commons – precarious to the point of impracticality, alas.
Would also involve the overt bribing of the ‘Celtic fringe’ to an extent guaranteed to alienate English voters into voting Tory more decisively next time…
Richard J 05.07.10 at 1:57 pm
(despite Cameron’s very inviting speech just finished)
I have to politely ask if we were listening to the same speech. “We’ll promise you a committee to investigate the possibility of potentially considering revising the UK voting system, so long as you agree to let us do everything we want.”
Doug 05.07.10 at 2:07 pm
77: And having a fixed election every two years means that Congressmen
spend about half their termsare campaigning from the word go for the next term.Fixed that for you.
(To be fair, the chamber was designed to be closest to the whims of the electorate. On the other hand, the re-elect percentage is still well over 85.)
Harry 05.07.10 at 2:08 pm
Where’s that irony operator?
Campbell is spinning that the new Tory MPs are largely on the nutty wing of the party. No idea whether its true (he doesn’t exactly have a record of 100% accuracy) but it sounds plausible, and if so I don’t see how Cameron can deliver anything worthwhile to the LDs.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 2:10 pm
Yes, I just posted elsewhere that Cameron’s speech seems to be plenty of impetus for the Liberals to start talking to Labour/Brown, as it made almost no concessions and ruled out many things that will make any deal hard to get past the Liberal membership.
The thing is if a Lib-Lab pact comes in, it will tempted to try and get PR in, as that would mean the Conservatives would need to gain 45%+ of the vote to get in (including regional allies), something they have done in decades – even Thatcher’s landslides would probably be losses. The cost for Labour is permanent coalition for the forseeable future, but maybe that will be a price they are willing to pay if they consider their politics and the Lib Dems close enough to make it workable.
Richard J 05.07.10 at 2:13 pm
Campbell is spinning that the new Tory MPs are largely on the nutty wing of the party
Anecdotally, the two I knew quite well at college seemed like quite pleasant non-barking Tories, while Dan Hardie (I know, I know) knew Rory Stewart on a personal basis, and has said likewise.
Richard J 05.07.10 at 2:15 pm
For clarity, the criterion used to assess ‘non-barking’ is primarily ‘didn’t touch OUCA with a bargepole’…
nick s 05.07.10 at 2:17 pm
I have to politely ask if we were listening to the same speech. “We’ll promise you a committee to investigate the possibility of potentially considering revising the UK voting system, so long as you agree to let us do everything we want.â€
“Also: we want you to suck it up your manifesto pledge on Trident and your commitment to the EU. So, pretty much everything that’s at the core of your party’s political identity.”
nick s 05.07.10 at 2:19 pm
For clarity, the criterion used to assess ‘non-barking’ is primarily ‘didn’t touch OUCA with a bargepole’…
Speaking of which, I’ve seen Dan Hannan on the BBC for the first time since the election was called. Was he on self-imposed purdah, which I find hard to imagine, or did Dave have him locked up in a cellar?
Stuart 05.07.10 at 2:30 pm
You have to love election night (and now morning, then afternoon) for all the comments from the politicians/partisan pundits grasping at straws – “Greatest Tory gain of seats for x years”, as if this campaign hasn’t been pretty much as disastrous from them as Kinnock’s last outing for Labour, grasping defeat from the jaws of victory.
alex 05.07.10 at 2:34 pm
@88 – sometimes having the whip hand doesn’t just refer to what Alan B’Stard does in the bedroom, unfortunately. The Tories have the numbers, nothing else will work except as a tottering pile of votes. LDs have to decide whether they can get any leverage on DC’s nuts [in either sense] now, or face holding a gun to their own head to get concessions a few months down the line.
Tragically, the Tories could probably get 500 votes for renewing Trident, unless Labour want to vote down their own manifesto commitment…
Richard J 05.07.10 at 2:37 pm
It’s been fascinating watching how every Tory has obviously been briefed to keep on mentioning the same talking points. Cameron’s speech quickly ran through them all (bigger swing than Thatcher in ’79, lowest Labour share since 1931, etc.) in the first five minutes.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 2:49 pm
You would think Labour should start talking about the projected landslide just after Cameron took over, and how once the electorate has got to know him he has lost more votes/seats than any other conservative leader for some period of time (maybe compare it to Thatcher and the poll tax if appropriate, because that is always a great political stick to bash the Tories with).
Harry 05.07.10 at 2:58 pm
I guess that Labour and the LibDems could, if they wanted, govern together with the SNP and the DUP (weird) who are clearly up for it. Remember that 4 MPs are absentees, so that reduces the real arithmetic. The difficulty is that Brown really cannot be the PM, and Labour would have, somehow, to manage the transition by installing an alternative (Miliband, Johnson…) without massive disruption, which I can’t see happening. Give Clegg the PM-ship, now, and you have something the LDs would find irresistible….
Well, this is going to be fun.
JoB 05.07.10 at 3:09 pm
81- do you think it will be easier for the darker side of the Tories to work with LIB than for all of the others to work with LAB-LIB (& I really like LAB-LIB and LIB-LAB, it has a nice ring to it – it really has)?
94- it should be possible to get Brown out nicely —> there is such a thing as Europe – Catherine could stand down, couldn’t she?
alex 05.07.10 at 3:13 pm
@93 – why, what good would it do them? It’s not as if it’ll change the result, and for anyone much under 40 at least, Thatch is a fading childhood memory. Or are you just saying it would make them feel better?
alex 05.07.10 at 3:16 pm
JoB – party discipline; it does happen sometimes; whereas a coalition that needed at least five members, three of which were given electorally-divisive sweetheart deals on public spending to keep them on board… not a good recipe with an electorate trending Tory.
nick s 05.07.10 at 3:19 pm
LDs have to decide whether they can get any leverage on DC’s nuts [in either sense] now, or face holding a gun to their own head to get concessions a few months down the line.
For what shall it profit a party to give up its key manifesto commitments to gain shared credit with Michael Gove for education reforms?
JoB 05.07.10 at 3:23 pm
alex- maybe so but to have only 50 seats more than somebody like Brown is: nothing short of a crushing defeat and the dissenters on the right wing of the Tories are with tens whereas the one green (for instance, if that has been confirmed) will, if not schizophrenic, be predictable if their price was rightly met. Don’t now enough details on the smaller parties but if LAB-LIB goes in an anything-but-Tory mode … nothing holds people together better than a common enemy.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 3:32 pm
@93 – why, what good would it do them? It’s not as if it’ll change the result, and for anyone much under 40 at least, Thatch is a fading childhood memory. Or are you just saying it would make them feel better?
I was just replying to the idea that the Tories are trying to sell the line this is a record loss for Labour and so on, and that they could just as easily create some talking points along the same lines about how the Conservative vote has crumbled over the last year or less.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 3:41 pm
I like the coverage on BBC24 just now – “…any alliance, whether it be Clegg/Cameron or Cameron/Brown…”, now that would be a shocking outcome from this election if that was on the cards.
Chris Bertram 05.07.10 at 3:49 pm
Incidentally, I watched the Monty Python election night sketch during the coverage last night. Amazing how it hasn’t aged a bit: give or take the gizmos the style is exactly the same.
roac 05.07.10 at 3:54 pm
I’m American. I don’t understand all this. Why can’t your Supreme Court just decide who gets to run the country?
Harry 05.07.10 at 4:02 pm
We have a monarch to take care of that sort of thing. You could have had the same one if you hadn’t been so careless.
partisan 05.07.10 at 4:18 pm
Given that there were a number of independents, this doesn’t mean as much as it might appear to, but Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland 25.5% to 25.0% for the DUP.
partisan 05.07.10 at 4:19 pm
Given that there were a number of independents, this doesn’t mean as much as it might on a first glance, but Sinn Fein is now the largest party in Northern Ireland, with 25.5% to 25% for the DUP.
Steve LaBonne 05.07.10 at 4:21 pm
Well, we wanted services without having to pay taxes for them. Some things never change.
Russell Arben Fox 05.07.10 at 4:29 pm
Whatever happens, it’s clear that the Red Tory moment (assuming it was an actual reality, and it probably wasn’t) has passed. I’m of mixed feelings about it all.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 4:39 pm
One thing that I just noticed is that the DUP is still more or less assumed to be with the Conservatives, given the gay friendly stuff that Cameron has been trying and the DUP’s rather notorious history on that issue, you wonder if any deal there is still possible.
Harry 05.07.10 at 5:14 pm
I thought the DUP made it clear that they would consider either party. You might think that a party that had been willing to cooperate with SF is able to swallow its pride on gay-friendly rhetoric; but also willing to work with just about anyone.
None of SNP, DUP and PD have anything to lose from the introduction of PR. Unlike the Tories. But I still don’t see how they can allow Brown to stay as PM, or how Labour can replace him while in power or about to enter power.
Harry 05.07.10 at 5:16 pm
Oh, and SDLP take the Labour whip, so DUP isn’t really necessary.
Alex Gregory 05.07.10 at 5:19 pm
Isn’t the sensible option at this stage to have a Lib/Lab coalition (with Brown at the head) that agrees to push through electoral reform (and nothing else) very quickly in order for a second election? I’m not sure that charges of stealing power would stick if they made clear that they were only preparing the ground for another election.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 5:26 pm
Can’t see that sort of Lib/Lab coalition is all that great for Labour as you describe it, especially as Lib/Lab + SDLP = 218 out of 224 (assuming SF stay absent), although you can probably also add 1 Green/1 Alliance (I think?) and 1 independent (probably?) so that maybe Plaid Cymru (with 3) is just enough, but more likely SNP as well will be needed, so I think such an alliance will probably need something for Labour, and stuff on devolution as well as some sort of serious voting reform consideration for the Lib Dems.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 5:27 pm
(thats obviously 318 out of 324 I meant of course)
Harry 05.07.10 at 5:28 pm
Well, I think electoral reform would be a disaster for both the major parties, so really they should form a Lab/Con coalition to avoid it.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 5:44 pm
I could see Labour trying to come to a compromise with the Lib Dems on electoral reform – something like a ranking/preference system or approval voting rather than an Proportional system, which could be argued based on the idea that it would avoid a lot of the tactical voting and probably cost the Conservatives some seats to both their parties, and doesn’t need any major reform of the commons or the constituency link of MPs.
roac 05.07.10 at 5:44 pm
We have a monarch to take care of that sort of thing.
And in fact, she, or her representative, has in fact done “that sort of thing” in the not-too-distant past, right? In Australia if not elsewhere? (Just demonstrating in case anyone wondered that my ignorance in 103 was at least partly feigned.)
christian h. 05.07.10 at 5:53 pm
I have a question: do we really know what impact introduction of PR would have? It seems awfully presumptive to assume that such a big change would leave vote totals as they are and simply change the way those votes translate into seats. For example, turnout is now, it seems, quite uneven (why vote in safe seats?) – that might change. Similarly, it could well be many LibDem votes in safe Labour or Conservative seats are protest votes (or not, I don’t know) that will go differently if PR is introduced… etc. I think it is safe to draw some general conclusions (it will be easier for new parties to get established) but concrete estimates of majorities and such seem risky.
Harry 05.07.10 at 5:54 pm
Yes, that’s right. But only in a colony. It’ll take a lot for it to be repeated, even there…
Myles SG 05.07.10 at 6:13 pm
“The results from the Peak District and the M62 corridor tell an interesting story. I lost count of the number of Lab-to-Con flips last night that seemed to be from that part of the country.”
But that’s exactly my point. There were basically suburban, Essex-men votes, and the Tories can win those easy. But Tories are basically never ever going to win the seats in hard-up districts with like 40% unemployment. And they shouldn’t bother trying.
The demographic trend is in the Tories’ favour. The South will get more seats, the North will less, as the economy shifts and people migrate. By 2030 or 2040 the entire North, politically, would probably be expendable and meaningless. It would, essentially, be a permanent Tory majority of some kind, or at least the marginalization and irrelevancy of Labour as it gets shut out of seats in the economic heart of the country and simply becomes the party of ne’er-do-wells.
The harsh reality of the matter is that it’s just impossible for the Tories to succeed as a One Nation party at this point. It is a middle-class party, and it will be as a middle-class party that it will stand or fall. To succeed as a One Nation party would required a modification in Britain’s class system so drastic that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long-term for most Tories (give up the public-school system and so on).
william u. 05.07.10 at 6:18 pm
I endorse Myles’ Southern Strategy, but only because I want an independent socialist Scotland.
chris 05.07.10 at 6:50 pm
Myles’s scenario is interesting — in the US it’s the *less* conservative party that benefits from demographic trends such as urbanization and immigration.
Do Tories really do better in densely populated areas in England? And if so, why is there such a difference between the politics of urbanization on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
Russell Arben Fox 05.07.10 at 7:05 pm
The harsh reality of the matter is that it’s just impossible for the Tories to succeed as a One Nation party at this point. It is a middle-class party, and it will be as a middle-class party that it will stand or fall. To succeed as a One Nation party would required a modification in Britain’s class system so drastic that it wouldn’t be worth it in the long-term for most Tories (give up the public-school system and so on).
Myles’s use of “One Nation” interests me, because–for some who knows Britain mainly through blogs and history books–it sounds to me very Disraeli-ish. Do people still commonly use the language of “One Nation Conservatism” in political discussions in Britain? Is it still (if it ever was) a legitimate tool of argument over what the Tories can or cannot do?
Stuart 05.07.10 at 7:17 pm
Do Tories really do better in densely populated areas in England? And if so, why is there such a difference between the politics of urbanization on opposite sides of the Atlantic?
No, they lose in the urban areas generally, but there are large swathes with a mix of rural and large towns across the southern half of the country where they do quite well. These places are growing in population but are still relatively affluent mostly, and many are exurbs and commuter belt for highly paid London based professionals and that sort of thing. Not much heavy industry or urbanisation, so you have Con/Lib races in the more rural areas, and more normally Con/Lab races in the large towns (although for all sorts of personality and historical reasons it isn’t always as simple as that, and in some places you also get Lib/Lab races and three way marginals.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 7:25 pm
Note that you can play with the BBC seat calculator to get a feel for the above:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8609989.stm
Obviously this map is equal size for each consituency so it isn’t totally straightforward to realise where is switching unless you are already reasonably aware of uk geography and population density – something like the following might help a bit here.
http://maps.howstuffworks.com/united-kingdom-population-density-map.htm
chris 05.07.10 at 8:25 pm
@123: Doesn’t that mean that the same demographic trends that increase the population (and thus representation) of those areas will also make them less Conservative strongholds than they used to be?
Sort of like the combined impact of urbanization and immigration on Texas, Florida, or Virginia (except that England doesn’t have our weird state-based-winner-take-all system, so you don’t have to reach 50% of a whole region to start flipping districts within the region — it’ll work more like the House, where all of those states have split delegations).
Stuart 05.07.10 at 8:40 pm
Probably true in the long term, but for now these places are safe until the Labour vote breaks 40% (i.e. landslide territory), and such a trend will probably make them more vulnerable over time, but it probably won’t change enough for a generation or so, and meanwhile the 2011 census will no doubt increase the amount of seats in those areas of the country (I wonder if that sort of thing crosses politicians minds, i.e. that if the conservatives can muddle along until the census 2011 is available, then the boundaries commission will rearrange things more in favour of the Conservatives vs Labour compared to this time)
nick s 05.07.10 at 8:56 pm
I endorse Myles’ Southern Strategy, but only because I want an independent socialist Scotland.
But would you want one whose southern border was with Yorkshire?
Myles SG 05.07.10 at 9:33 pm
“Myles’s use of “One Nation†interests me, because—for some who knows Britain mainly through blogs and history books—it sounds to me very Disraeli-ish.”
Disraeli all the way through to Churchill (the younger), Macmillan, Heath, and so on. Eden was actually on the classical wing of the party, but he didn’t last very long. Had Eden lasted, British politics would likely have taken a much better turn.
Myles SG 05.07.10 at 9:34 pm
“But would you want one whose southern border was with Yorkshire?”
They will probably get the devo-max, which I am fine with. In relation to the North of England; well, they would probably be near the state of abandonment by then, sort of like Michigan of today.
Stuart 05.07.10 at 11:16 pm
Something I have been mulling over about polling station reform to avoid the problems repeating, not sure how workable it is: have a central database of all registered voters (probably already exists), and each polling station is electronically connected and has a laser printer so a voting slip can be generated for anywhere in the UK. Anyone can turn up at any polling station (and go to another if there is a long queue), hand over the card with your details or provide name/address and so on, and vote at any location (avoiding issues with so many people that don’t work near their polling station, and thus have relatively small windows to vote in). Doing it this way, you can add extra polling stations at train stations, near supermarkets, or whatever because you do away with the single paper list of voters to be checked off in each ward, replacing it with a single electronic list of who has/hasn’t voted yet.
John Quiggin 05.08.10 at 12:13 am
Looking ahead, it’s hard to imagine the Tories accepting electoral reform as the price of LibDem support.
But if Clegg cuts a deal without this (and other policies unpalatable to the Tories), Labour can put forward its own legislation, incorporating LibDem policy and forcing the LibDems to vote against it. That would make life v uncomfortable, I think.
The Tories don’t seem to have as many attractive wedges to use against a LibLab coalition, I think.
Len 05.08.10 at 12:26 am
I don’t know if this has been mentioned but there are actually 5 seats almost automatically tied into a Lib/Lab deal from NI – 3 SDLP (who are already allied with Labour), 1 Alliance (who I think are tied in to the LDs) and 1 independent unionist (Sylvia Hermon who left the Ulster Unionist Party because of their deal with the Tories because she likes Labour). That gives 320 in total without too much party bargaining, though that could obviously come to grief with any cuts that they are likely to pull in NI – but the chances of that are roughly equal to that of losing some Lib/Lab MPs with austerity cuts anyway and counts as a natural alliance. It could hold surely for a short-term administration that would hold in place until after a PR referendum. It would just take the indulgence of the greens and welsh or scots nats to hold that together given Sinn Fein don’t turn up. And of course there is always the DUP for pork barrel stuff which they have already given Labour recently for a PTA vote. Though it would not look good for any likely abortion vote, which are free anyway and nobody would trade off because it won’t happen under the current arithmetic, but they only need to hold together for a PR referendum.
Current 05.08.10 at 2:33 am
I’m happy about this. For years Brits have had to put up with a ban on this and regulations on that. We’ve had to put up with the scum of our society being untouchable by the law. The days of Britons being bullied by a bunch of elite Socialists is over. The conservatives may be politically just as far left as labour but it doesn’t matter now, any hung parliament won’t be able to pass laws to further infringe our rights.
The casting vote now is by the international bond market. They will vote for harsh spending cuts. The massive client state labour have created will be left in destitution as they richly deserve.
The Righteous are finished.
christian h. 05.08.10 at 4:26 am
I call American. If Current is really a Brit with his talk of “elite socialists” (which socialists – I didn’t see any) then he’s certainly an outlier.
nick s 05.08.10 at 4:45 am
The casting vote now is by the international bond market. They will vote for harsh spending cuts.
I think there’s a typo at the end of that last sentence.
nick 05.08.10 at 4:53 am
hmmm…..I call batshit crazy, certainly; but “labour have created” is something an American faking it would probably miss…
on the other hand, he didn’t refer to “swingeing cuts”–so who knows, really?
Danny 05.08.10 at 6:44 am
I would think that Labour would never agree to a change in the electoral system that benefits them enormously, even more than it benefits the Conservatives (in 2005 Labour won a smaller share of the popular vote than Conservatives won now and still won by a very comfortable margin in seats).
It would be best for them to let Cameron have his minority government, and then come back in a few years.
alex 05.08.10 at 7:14 am
current may be nuts, but monstrous kneejerk authoritarianism is not a charge against Labour that has gone unmade from the left in recent years, either. And too many ‘public servants’ on six-figure salaries likewise…
Current 05.08.10 at 10:22 am
I promise you, I really am British. But “Elite Socialists” I mean the elite of the Labour party. (What else could I mean?) I suppose this forum is so far left that it doesn’t see them as Socialists, I hadn’t thought of that.
> monstrous kneejerk authoritarianism
That’s a nice way of putting it.
novakant 05.08.10 at 11:19 am
monstrous kneejerk authoritarianism is not a charge against Labour that has gone unmade from the left in recent years, either.
That would include me – take a look at what has happened under Labour: paranoid surveillance state, constant undermining of civil liberties, two aggressive wars, torture, total disregard for the rule of law (e.g. BAE) in favour of “national interest” …
I really don’t give a flying f+++ if they think they are sozialists or that others might be worse, but anybody voting Labour has to explain to me how they can be a-ok with all that crap. And I’m not a libertarian by nature, neither do I have anything in common with the weirdo US version of libertarianism. I just believe in, seemingly antiquated and naive, concepts of democracy and freedom.
IM 05.08.10 at 1:25 pm
That would include me – take a look at what has happened under Labour: paranoid surveillance state, constant undermining of civil liberties, two aggressive wars, torture, total disregard for the rule of law (e.g. BAE) in favour of “national interest†…
But the Tories are not really different in these policy fields.
The liberal democrats could be really useful on civil liberties. I hope they deliver.
Current 05.08.10 at 3:25 pm
Yes, all of the three main parties are against civil rights, for authoritarianism and for the surveillance state.
But, the election result is still good, because there is a hung parliament. All the three main parties are collosal egotists, they may all believe the same things, but they will have difficulty accepting each other’s laws. As a result I think that lawmaking will proceed at a much lower rate than it did in New Labour times, which will give society a bit of a breathing space.
What folks here miss is that Brown and Blair are *consistent* Socialists. They don’t believe in economic freedom or personal freedom. Socialism is inconsistent with personal freedom because economic freedom is so closely tied up with it.
praisegod barebones 05.08.10 at 3:38 pm
Here’s an argument against PR that hadn’t occurred to me before today.
In a system in which coalitions are a regular occurrence you end up ceding an awful lot of power to Very Important People in the Media to define what counts as a legitimate outcome of an election. Given current patterns of media ownership, that means the plutocrats get to place an even bigger thumb on the scale than they do at the moment.
engels 05.08.10 at 3:49 pm
How many British people do I know who refer to people as ‘folks’? Hmm…
nick s 05.08.10 at 4:07 pm
How many British people do I know who refer to people as ‘folks’? Hmm…
Perhaps ones who spend all their virtual time around American libertarians?
Current 05.09.10 at 3:00 am
> How many British people do I know who refer to people as ‘folks’? Hmm…
I see your point. To answer it, people who work for american multinationals ;) .
Still “engels” are they not consistent Socialists?
engels 05.09.10 at 3:29 am
Are Blair and Brown ‘consistent socialists’? Er, nope.
jim 05.09.10 at 5:08 pm
The Con/LibDem talks have just broken up. Hague said they’d been discussing “political reform, economic issues, reduction of the deficit, banking reform, environmental issues, civil liberties”. He didn’t say they’d been discussing potential responsibilities. So these haven’t been, in any sense, coalition negotiations. They’ve been a general airing of policies. They needn’t have met for that; they could just have read each others’ manifestos.
Political theatre.
NomadUK 05.09.10 at 6:08 pm
What folks here miss is that Brown and Blair are consistent Socialists.
Yes, poor, deluded Brits. If only they possessed the razor-sharp political acumen of American multinational employees, they wouldn’t have missed that.
chris y 05.09.10 at 6:17 pm
Still “engels†are they not consistent Socialists?
I don’t know about engels, but I would bet a substantial sum that not one per cent of the British electorate would accept that they are socialists in any sense of the word. American influenced libertarians can play word games as much as they like but it’s neither interesting nor useful to people who prefer robust definitions.
jim 05.09.10 at 6:38 pm
Well, I tried to change the subject.
Old Labour, say the Atlee government, could have been described as socialist — on the fringes of Bernsteinian Revisionism. Even by the mid-sixties, though, it was very hard to call the Wilson government socialist. I remember, though, conversations where it was pointed out that the Labour Party was the only mass party of the working class and therefore the only practical vehicle for socialism. That thought led to the attempts by Militant to subvert the party. But with the defeat of Militant and the rise of New Labour, culminating in the symbolic excision of Clause Four (it’s all her fancy, that: they never nationalizes nobody, you know) and, after the victory in 1997, their refusal to renationalize the railways, there were no longer even any connections to socialism or socialists left. Since Blair and Brown led severing those connections, it is perverse, to say the least, to refer to them as socialists.
But some people are ignorant of this history.
Current 05.09.10 at 6:58 pm
I suppose on this blog the definition of Socialism is quite narrow, which is reasonable enough. But I don’t think Socialism ever has referred simply to nationalization of industry.
How are we to describe Blair and Brown though. They certainly believe in paternalism. While they have kept business owned privately and quiet free in some areas, but they still believe in controling it by discretionary regulations, taxes and other policies. They have done pretty much the same thing with society attempting to control it be bans and regulations.
We need a new ism to describe it.
chris y 05.09.10 at 7:45 pm
We need a new ism to describe it.
No we don’t. It’s neoliberalism with a few local tweaks. You choose to describe as socialism any society where the state has any role whatsoever beyond (I’m guessing) maintaining an army. I also know sectarian Trots who would deny that socialism means anything short of the dictatorship of the proletariat with full workers’ control of the economy.
Neither definition is useful for any imaginable purpose. You have individually and subjectively decided to describe the European centre-right as ‘socialist’. Whoopie-doo. Who do you think cares?
Madeleine Conway 05.09.10 at 8:10 pm
The Tories are never going to offer electoral reform – and if Clegg accepts a deal of any sort without that firmly and unavoidably on the table, he blows his credibility utterly with his own party and any floating supporters. Rocks, hard places, frying pans, fires etc etc. He’d be much better backing off and letting the Tories discover the truth that Tommy Carcetti was warned about some years ago on the Wire about people coming every day to the Mayor’s office with another bowl of sh*t to eat.
Current 05.10.10 at 12:32 pm
chris y,
Neoliberalism generally means a return to the ideas of classical liberalism. That is:-
* Free enterprise
* Rule of law, rather than discretion
* Personal liberty
New Labour have moved in the opposite direction to the Neoliberal one on all of these areas. Enterprise has to contend with many new regulations, and regulators with greater arbitrary power. The rule of law has been dimnished by removal of trial by jury for many offences and the introduction of ASBOs. Personal liberty has been diminished by things like the smoking ban, and by the campaigns of “denormalisation” against smokers, drinkers and the fat.
If anything I suppose New Labour are a Paternalistic government.
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