UK election open thread.

Lib Dem election chief Lord Ashdown told the BBC: “If this exit poll is right I will publicly eat my hat.” Well Panstdown, you pompous sanctimonious adulterous git, I expect that will be another broken Lie-Dem promise – wanker!!!!! (Sorry if I cause offence.)

Of course, it is too early to tell yet, but my guess is the the new government will be weak and short-lived, relying on the heirs of Iain Paisley. Labour did quite well in England, but not well enough. The Scottish Labour party tanked – it’s a terrible party machine up there anyway the worst of old and New Labour.

Karma has overtaken the Lib-Dems, as the history of the 30s and 40s repeats itself. I really hope that Clegg loses, because in my view he is personally the most to blame for his party’s collapse: but the rest of them deserve it too: the two-faced bastards sold their souls for office without power. I actually think they enabled the Tories to be MORE extreme, because the Lib Dems knew in their gutlessness that they were Turkeys who couldn’t afford to vote for early Christmas. The Ucrap balloon is punctured – for now, but never underestimate the power of ignorant xenophobia. If Caroline Lucas gets another Green colleague that will be great! But for once, I’m not staying up to see the agony!

Good night all! :)

“The people of England regards itself as free; but it is grossly mistaken; it is free only during the election of members of parliament. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The use it makes of the short moments of liberty it enjoys shows indeed that it deserves to lose them.”

That pretty much sums up my thoughts on the exit poll.

Ashdown did rather hurriedly demand that the hat be made of marzipan

Even people who don’t think voting counts can be pleased with the outcomes projected for Scotland.

1. The exit polls are holding true so far in Scotland, where it’s a clean sweep for SNP over Labour. Gotta love the Scots: affirming for social democracy – shortly after affirming they want to stay in the UK.

2. If they had been joined by English voters, the latter would have turned out better, but “Red Ed” never was red, no matter the tabloids. Russell Brand, promises on tombstones, kitchens upstairs and down: never comfortable in his own skin.

3. Goodbye Cleggers – and good riddance. Tuition fees, remembered.

4. Greens projected to double on two, so imagine what they might do if they obtain a more inspiring leader.

5. Watch UKIP get more press, though.

6. Why the advance polls so discrepant from the results?

Puttering back to bed now.

@9, yes, two-kitchens, Oxbridge Ed talks the talk but isn’t ready to rebel against the Downton party.

So this presumably means that Ed is out, as Labour makes penance for trying yet again to run as the “We can do austerity and budget-balancing too! Just watch us!” party. Whereupon … Ed Balls becomes the new Labour leader? David “The more right-wing” Miliband? Because next time people will finally want warmed-over Tory ideas leavened with more accounting sense, while lacking most of the Tory gleefulness in kicking the filthy poors repeatedly in their faces.

Also, I don’t know if there was any way to thread the needle between “He wants to destroy the Union” and “I will not form a center-left coalition, no matter the price to the nation,” but Miliband seemed especially cack-handed about it. To make it all about me the US, I will quote commenter Murc at Lawyers, Guns, and Money:

I understand why he did it, but Miliband’s threats to the Scottish electorate were shockingly ill-conceived. I don’t know how your typical UK voter weighs things, but speaking for myself, I respond to warnings but not to threats.
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By which I mean, if the Democratic Party tells me “You shouldn’t vote Green, it means a Republican will win your district” I will take that seriously. If it tells me “You shouldn’t vote Green because even if they win your district, we will refuse to work with their representative in any way, even if that means Republicans rule” I will goddamn paint myself Green and walk into the voting both [sic] St. Patrick’s Day stylez, because fuck you.

Talking entirely out of my marzipan hat, my outsider sense was that it was probably a lost cause for Labour in Scotland this cycle regardless, but I’m not convinced that it showed the right sort of spine in the face of the poll numbers to declare that he wouldn’t even take under advisement the only possible route to governance. Because they tarred him with SNP-by-association anyway.

My understanding was that Ed Miliband represents the “left wing” of Labour, such as it is these days. Am I wrong about this?

Christopher Phelps at 9

You say that Scotland’s overwhelming vote for the SNP is “affirming for social democracy – shortly after affirming they want to stay in the UK”. Perhaps that’s what Scotland thought it was doing but it seems to me that the inevitable result of today’s vote is that is secession and a long, lingering death for the social welfare state everywhere in the present day United Kingdom.

I freely confess that I don’t know much about Scotland but it’s difficult to see the logic of voting for the secessionist SNP instead of Labour immediately after voting to remain in the union. If the Scots remain in the union, they’ve probably doomed the social welfare state by keeping in power—with an even larger and more stable majority— a Conservative government that is an implacable foe of everything you say the Scots think they’re voting to keep. Even if the Conservatives keep all of their promises from the referendum—which they won’t—Scotland is neither sufficiently independent nor sufficiently rich to maintain itself as an island even as the social welfare state crumbles everywhere else.

On the other hand, from this point forward, I think it’s going to be increasingly difficult for Scotland to stay in the union. It’s impossible for Labour to get back into government without its Scottish stronghold but, equally, the SNP seems toxic enough in the rest of the UK that I think it would be impossible for them to enter into some kind of arrangement with the SNP. That leaves the SNP in power in Scotland but with everything it’s supposedly pledged to protect under continual threat from the Westminster Parliament that will, in all likelihood, be dominated by a Conservative Party that is utterly opposed to everything the SNP claims to stand for.

I think pressure on Scotland’s more generous social services, education and NHS will force the SNP to call for another vote on secession in the near future and, if today’s vote is an indication, it will win. Yet, it will have cemented in power in its most powerful neighbour and biggest trading partner, a Conservative Party that will see any continued vitality or economic growth in left leaning Scotland as a threat. And the Scots will have effectively alienated and probably destroyed any possible allies in what would remain of the United Kingdom.

My own assessment is that Scotland has basically decided to secede in the near future and has chosen to burn all her bridges behind her. I hear what people are saying about the inadequacy and ineptitude of Scottish Labour but I think this has been a grievous, suicidal error by the Scots. If, as you suggest, the Scottish people thought they were somehow voting to save the social welfare state, then they are idiots.

js — I wouldn’t have said that, no, but its not clear there is a left wing (apart from the far left old-timers — Skinner, McDonnell, etc — and I mean no disrespect, they are terrific people). Ed was chosen over his brother David because it was thought he was to David’s left. But he was less left than he looked and, imho, David was more left wing than he looked — the big differences between them all favoured David (which is why, in fact, a good number of left MPs supported him). It was a bad, bad, decision and they are reaping the consequences of that in England. In Scotland –not so clear, for two decades Labour has been repelling Scottish voters, and it has finally caught up with them, partly (but only partly) due to Camerons’s smart timing of the (very high-risk) referendum. This is the SNP’s high point, but it might be high enough to get them what they want.

Nobody not named Tony Blair has led Labour to victory in over 40 years. Blair was an electoral genius. If only he had used his genius for good rather than evil …

Callaghan didn’t win an election. Wilson had won the October 1974 election which was over 40 years ago. After Wilson resigned Callaghan became Labour leader and Prime minister without a general election.

Only 4 people have ever led the Labour party to government (including Wilson 4 times, and Blair 3 times).

Labour has paid a big price in Scotland for opposing Scottish independence. But if Scotland had voted yes and left then, as this election shows, the price would be permanent. England is a Tory like Utah is Republican.

“This can only be described as an act of unimaginable stupidity, short sightedness and caprice.”

Hogwash. If Scotland had elected 57 Labour MPs, there would still be a Tory majority. Why don’t you do some arithmetic?

The exit poll appears to be holding up rather well. Updated predictions are now for a possible slim Tory majority. The good news is the Tory’s won’t be able to hide behind the craven Lib-Dems anymore. In my opinion, the L-Ds performed a service as flak-catchers. They got what they deserved.

Sandwichman at 29,

As I read the results, you’re right that Labour wouldn’t have had a majority even if they’d won every seat in Scotland and the Conservatives had won none. But I think everyone saw going in to this election that no party was going to be able to govern on its own. The point is that if Scotland had gone for Labour, then I think they probably would’ve been able to form a government with the LibDems.

I’ll certainly grant you that Labour didn’t do as well as expected in England and that the English seemed surprisingly pleased with the totally unnecessary suffering they’d endured under the Conservatives. My point is that with Scotland it would’ve been possible to maybe cobble something together with the LibDems and a small, nonthreatening SNP. As things stand now, Labour is finished.

An interesting observation about the SNP surge is that it is a vote for an idea, or a set of them, and not for an individual leader. It isn’t either, as was made certain by London, a vote in the hope of winning executive office. The result is a collective politics mobilising for shared goals, not mendacious salesmen pitching hatred or jam at the electorate. I can’t see that Sturgeon is remembered after this result as the genius who delivered an electoral triumph or imagined as the Moses that gets Scotland out of the union.*

I will also remember watching the SNP’s Mhairi Black articulate an anti-war position. The 20 year old university student who unseated Danny Alexander, remembered her involvement in politics starting as a little girl protesting the invasion of Iraq. She spoke against Trident and how wrong it was to be spending billions on weapons of mass destruction.

Doubtless these aren’t the highlights that grownups find rewarding on a day like today. The Nadering of ‘idiots’ in evidence above proposes instead that we’ve arrived at the season for mega-threads on lesser-evilism. As Toynbee in the Guardian made out yesterday some electoral choices, Green, PC, SNP, abstention are ‘criminal’.

* Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP party leader, wasn’t even running for a seat.

1. It does look like Cameron will be able to continue alone – which means he’ll have to continue depending on his batshit crazy backbenchers. That’s going to be fun for a week or two and then it’s going to get mean. It’ll be even worse when the in/out referendum on the EU turns up which it now must. The joker is the Fixed Term Act which makes it harder to unseat the government, but he still can’t afford many defectors and byelections
2. No British party is going to be willingly involved in a coalition against for a very long time. The Lib Dems got pulverized equally by red and by blue. There’s still very limited acceptance that a party with a fifth of the seats in a coalition can only have a fifth of the say
3. The British electoral system is still ludicrously disproportionate. The Lib dems, UKIP and Greens got around 20% of the vote and virtually no seats. The SNP with 3% got 57.

Harry, in the immortal words of Public Enemy, “Yo, bum, RUSH the show.”

To others: In the debates the only vigorous, powerful statements against austerity came from the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon’s appeal was not on nationalism but on social democracy. Labour’s current generation of leaders still fears the defeats of the 1980s and is afraid to seem too left. This misjudged the times and along with a kind of comical hamhandedness – bacon sandwiches and all that – is why the vote went as it did, esp. in Scotland. Bear in mind that even the Tories promised to spend more on the NHS than Labour (phony, phony, phony, yes, but it tells where they sensed voters’ worries lay). Miliband looked like he would at best generate a kinder, gentler austerity. So if you’re angry about Labour’s loss, look to Labour, don’t bash the Scots.

Scotland has helped the Tories by giving them a scaremongering campaign against the SNP that has handed them English voters who were encouraged to be frightened of the prospect of the SNP in coalition.

UKIP has also gained to sufficient votes to influence seats, for example Ed Balls lost Morley and Outwood (a complete shithole) largely due to the high UKIP vote. The results also show that Lib Dem voters in previous elections must have been overwhelmingly right-wing- in many cases the Lib Dem dip almost exactly matches the UKIP rise. Not all of this will have been direct, but a large proportion must have been.

Manipulation is the name of the game in conventional party politics, particularly in our ridiculous electoral system. Miliband and particularly Clegg seem to be very poor at this.

The BBC is showing the percentages and number of seats.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2015/results

I think both the Tories and SNP will be very happy with this result.

I think the leaked memo on the SNP’s comment to the French ambassador that they’d prefer a Tory government is completely accurate. The last thing anyone keen on Scots independence wants is a Labour Government that takes the Scots’ concerns about decreased welfare spending seriously. They’d much prefer more austerity from a mean spiritied anti welfare government and “english votes for english laws” to fuel nationalist grievances on both sides of the border.

And for the Tories the effective neutralisation of virtually every Scottish Labour seat just shows how politically valuable the loss of Scotland can be not mention the removal of a welfare addicted political constituency. The only reason that has ever made sense as to why Cameron allowed a referendum he had no obligation whatsoever to allow (see Spain for the best possible alternative treatment of would be separatists – it gets much worse quite quickly when you look elsewhere) and allowing 16 years old to vote is that he wanted rid of them but as leader of the “Conservative and Unionist Party” he could not say so. He must be hoping for another referendum soon and that this time they get the hint and also that the Scots Nats have a slightly better argued case for independence.

FT says Miliband to have press conference at noon, probably to step down as leader.

Oh, and Labour has done quite well in its safe seats, increasing majorities in the inner cities and old industrial areas. Unfortunately the Tory strategy of polarising the country and demonising the poor has worked only too well elsewhere.

Clegg will go tomorrow, but there’s barely anyone to replace him. Tim Farron is the likeliest, I guess.

I’ve always thought that Paul Mason was one of the best political journalists around. His analysis is sobering, but realistic I’m afraid.

http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/labour-failed-win-worse/3671#more-3671

In my view, the problem with the Labour Party was not Ed Miliband, but the poisonous legacy of Blairism, and a Shadow Cabinet full of those only too happy to appease the Tory agenda and Flat-Earth economics. True Ed was too timid at times, but he was elected because he was the choice of grass roots Labour supporters. A Blairite coup is likely to lead to Pasokification and an Engish/Welsh Syrizia.

As for UKIP, Mason says “The Ukip surge clearly came largely from Labour voters – as evidenced by the close shaves Labour had with Ukip in Hartlepool and Heywood and Middleton. … And make no mistake, a significant section of working class labour voters are still not convinced on freedom of movement. That – not Euroscepticism – is what is driving the Ukip vote in the north and in Wales.”

I say this with no joy, but it is going to be very difficult to advocate justice for migrants when economic conditions and housing shortages are still punishing the poor. Punishing the poor is a good strategy to perpetuate an I’m al-right Jack society.

At the risk of losing my head as I post it over the parapet, for those indulging in schadenfreude at the end of the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg today, the following question.

a) Please tell me what the alternative governance options following the 2010 general election were, taking into account many senior Labour figures were immediately dismissing a coalition and saying it was time to go into opposition immediately after the vote.

b) The Tories now have an overall majority, and will be able to pass anything they please through the Lords, because dozens of Lib-Con marginals went blue last night. That was most likely due to ‘never again/bastards just wanted offices/this betrayal is personal’ LD voters going elsewhere. Are you happy with that outcome, and does it sound like a constructive use of one’s vote?

c) The Libs were the only party to call for tuition fees to be scrapped in 2010. They didn’t get the political power necessary to do so. Labour introduced fees and raised the cap, with an overall majority after explicitly promising not to in their manifesto. They basically forecast that they would raise them in the 2010 manifesto. How could the LDs have reasonably been expected to change this policy, and why are Labour the morally superior option here?

d) The monstering and shit-throwing at the Lib Dems and Nick Clegg personally has probably ensured that there won’t be another coalition in the UK for the forseeable future. Instead, constitutional reform is farther away than ever, and the future appears to belong to the kind of Labour politician who would regard the abolition of non-dom status as some form of Trotskyism. Are you comfortable with that?

In other words, take a look at 2010, then take a look at now. Happy?

A lot of Lib Dem voters really do appear to have gone to UKIP. They were always more of a protest party than anyone liked to admit. Some of them have gone to Labour, others to the Conservatives.

I think LDs have gone Tory, Labour and Green, Tory has picked up some LD but also had some peeled off to UKIP, and Labour has lost to UKIP. I’d be surprised if that many LD votes have switched directly to UKIP.

Daragh @55

a) Please tell me what the alternative governance options following the 2010 general election were

The alternative was to allow a Conservative minority government with a “confidence and supply” deal, but otherwise to vote according to their election promises.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidence_and_supply

In the end, the Tories played a brilliant long term plan, to trap the Lib-Dems in a coalition, concede nothing of substance except a few cabinet seats and the AV referendum – which was doomed from the beginning. Once the Lib-Dems betrayed most of their voter base, their fate was inevitable. Of course, in many cases the seats they held were Tory Lib-Dem marginals, and thus the collapse in Lib-Dem vote could only benefit the Tories.

53: Many, many thanks to Sacha for the perceptive comment, but even more so for the link. If you’re interested in how Labour’s leadership has turned the UK into an upside-down bacon buttie, read it now. Recall that Cameron is roundly loathed. His own political future hung by a thread and he owes his majority to the Wizard of Oz.

I predicted a day or so ago…more of the same! And how, as it turns out. I frankly shudder to think what Cameron’s front bench will look like. The less said on that the better.

The main takeaway on the meager but meaningful dropping to date has yet, to be fully articulated, so I guess it’s up to me: The men blew it, women rule.

The post-election dynamics mean that Nicola and the SNP will have even more power than before. Re: the French Ambassador’s remark that the SNP prefer Cameron, the question is why. Not just because the SNP works better pitted against the Conservatives, but because this particular Conservative, the new PM is also the old PM, the one who made all the promises to Scotland during the Scottish vote, and who now promises to ‘Unite the Kingdom.’ Nicola has already fitted Dave’s testicles to a large industrial size vice and unless the rights and cash spigot starts flowing vigorously and fast, she’s going to demand another referendum even more quickly than she would with Labour in charge. When the SNP claims that the last 24 hours confirms the need for political dissolution but quick, that’s a message that many north of the border will heed. She has Cameron’s word on all those promises that pissed off large sections of the south of the border electorate. She’ll be looking to collect first thing Monday morning, or earlier.

When Dave succumbs, as he will, CR readers will learn quite a bit more about Evans and James, the other two women who rule. As in rule the now leaderless party that just displaced the Lib-Dems. I started following James than a year ago, just to find out if UKIP was really Farage’s one-man band. Here’s Diane eerily mapping out the destruction of the Libdems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIzsyMvQMZE and the rise of UKIP after the European elections, should they win.

One UKIP MP is enough to demand that no SNP MPs be allowed to vote on any laws that have a direct impact on England. And since Ed and company managed to ensure that virtually every Scottich MP is an SNP member, Scots won’t be allowed (UKIP will argue) to vote in the UK parliament. Large numbers of already pissed-off Labour supporters outside London will shout: ‘quite right’ and the race for the dissolution of the UK will begin in earnest.

Is there any Labour leader (ideally female), who can win back the center whilst convincing Scots she shares their leftish leanings. Better find one quick. The added bonus in all this is that virtually certain Cameron will decide that bombing the shit out of some third-world country would be an excellent way of bleeding off hostility toward London, the Scots, immigrants, and everyone else.

I can’t really fathom the depths of confusion that would be needed for someone to vote for the lib dems, become disgruntled with the coalition and therefore switch to voting for UKIP. Presumably a few of these people exist, but what can they have been thinking? Were they simply looking to cast a protest vote against the political mainstream, and don’t care about the actual positions they’re voting for? Did they notice they were switching from a strongly pro-Europe party to one whose signature issue is withdrawal from Europe? If this has really happened on a significant scale it’s baffling.

@Salem – I think you’re exactly right on this, though in fairness, they might also have reasonably expected Labour to campaign for electoral reform (technically a manifesto pledge, IIRC) instead of half-heartedly pretending to and actively sabotaging the vote. I’m also certain that the Tory press’s happy willingness to lie at length to the public about how proportional systems work, and unwillingness to seriously interrogate No2AV’s similarly mendacious campaign helped (I fondly remember No2AVs claim that FPTP was the most used democratic system in the world, which of course included counting such famously representative societies as Uzbekistan).

And trust me – being out of touch with the electorate isn’t an exclusively Lib Dem problem…

Feeling grouchy, Daragh?

And now they’re talking up Andy Burnham. And he may in fact be the best of a bad lot. I’m glad I’m old.

“If you supported Labour in 1997 because you wanted fairness, you wanted young people to flourish, you wanted political reform, you wanted the environment protected, or you simply believed in a better future, turn to the Liberal Democrats. We carry the torch of progress now.” Nick Clegg, 23rd September 2009.

“The Lib Dems never were and aren’t a receptacle for left-wing dissatisfaction with the Labour Party. There is no future for that; there never was.” Nick Clegg, 18th September 2010.

Where’s the contradiction between those quotes? The first seems to me to be saying “If you don’t like how Labour have drifted away from their New Labour ideas from 1997, vote for us” – i.e. attacking Labour from the centre-ground, not the left. Now you’re right that the words are squishy enough that if you don’t pay attention to the “in 1997” they could also be interpreted as attacking Labour from the left, but then that was always the Lib Dem strategy – all things to all men.

My sympathies Daragh. I was a Liberal for a while in the ’70s, and then a Labour activist for 25 years, often battling the machine. I resigned in the early naughties over Blair’s gerrymandering of the London Mayoral selection. Even as an activist, I was never big on party loyalty. I voted for a Lib-Dem candidate in 2005, but not, I’m glad to say, in 2010.

But Cleggie took self-delusion to a new level. In 2011, according to Auntie Beeb: ‘Clegg has said the Liberal Democrats will “never lose their soul” despite the compromises of coalition.’ You can’t lose what you’ve already sold!

I was sup uplifted by the NDP win in my old home province on Tuesday. I should have known that expecting two good news elections in one week was too much to ask of the Political Gods.

“I can’t really fathom the depths of confusion that would be needed for someone to vote for the lib dems, become disgruntled with the coalition and therefore switch to voting for UKIP.”

Most people can’t even tell you the difference between left and right wing. They vote based on gut feelings and the media atmosphere right before an election. Which is why having a hard right wing media is turning into a disaster for left wing politicians.

Tim Worstall
Yes, I think it means that. But what else does it mean? So, for example, are the UKIP voters (on average) protest voters, or do they REALLY support UKIP (would a bunch of them vote Green in a constituency which a Green might win, eg?); would they vote Tory if the Tories had leaders who weren’t related to Lord Snooty; would they vote for a more populist (not necessarily more leftwing) Labour Party (Phil Woolas style, eg, repulsive as he is). You’re the person who, in a single sentence, made me look at UKIP differently (years ago, on one of these threads), so I’m interested in what you think (actually, I’m always interested in what you think, but yoou know what I mean).

Val. Come on. Natalie Bennett has been dreadful — it really has been as if they haven’t had a leader. Frankly, for all that people have said Ed has exceeded expectations, I think the same about Labour. The SNP and Plaid, much as I dislike the SNP, have had by far the most impressive leaders of any of the parties (including UKIP) — and if the election hadn’t been so focused on Scotland I think Plaid would have made real gains. I haven’t followed the Greens internal life but as far as I could see they had a very good leader and replaced her with a second rate one.

@Daragh The problem is, once you’re on the payroll vote, inside the tent aiming out as it were, you can’t be a brake on anything.

The reason I voted Lib-Dem in 2005 was that our local MP, whom I’d helped select and elect back in 1992, became first a PPS and then a whip. This meant that his allegiance had shifted from his constituents to the executive, and he voted for many things which I knew he didn’t agree with. He changed his loyalty, so I changed mine!

Now, as was even worse in 2005, we have a party having an absolute majority in Parliament with well over 60% of the electorate having voted against them.

Harry b, others
What should one be reading that justifies this attention you pay to leadership? Are there really people who say, this is a great platform but I don’t like Natalie Bennett? Voters swung to the SNP on account of Sturgeon’s leadership when she won’t even be in the Commons? Would you credit the rise of Syriza and Podemos to their charismatic leaders?

What should one be reading that justifies this attention you pay to leadership? Are there really people who say, this is a great platform but I don’t like Natalie Bennett?

Many people’s only information about the minor parties came from the leadership debate, which was a great opportunity for their leaders to get people interested and draw them in. The argument is more that Natalie Bennett didn’t get people excited enough about the Greens that they would read the Greens’ platform in the first place.

That said, I don’t buy it. The Greens got a perfectly respectable share of the vote, and beat the Lib Dems in many areas. They didn’t get close to winning a second seat, but it’s hard to see how a different leader gets them 6000 extra votes in Bristol West, 15000 extra votes in Cambridge, 23000 extra votes in Holborn & St Pancras, or however they did in their other target seats. They’re a geographically dispersed party with a fairly low level of support. That doesn’t translate into lots of seats.

Harry @83

Plaid has made very little headway in Wales, and came 4th below UKIP in terms of the popular vote. This includes my own constituency, Carmarthen West and South Pembs, which was one a three-way marginal where Plaid once had a realistic chance of taking it. Interestingly, there were far more Plaid than UKIP posters.

One big problem in Wales is that the language issue is poisonously divisive, and usually brushed under the carpet. People often only speak of it behind closed doors. Without this, an SNP style party would have done a lot better.

Daragh they could have left the coalition at anytime and went over and formed a gov’t with Labour. They could also have refused to join in a formal coalition with the Tories and voted against the worst of their excesses.

Instead they sold out their voters and the rest of the country for what exactly? Why defend the indefensible?

You know you are right! The LibDem strategy was a HUGE success which is why they are riding an electoral wave to powe…..

Oh wait. Nope. Turns out all of their supporters were appalled at the fuckery and voted for other parties. Shocking….

“‘sorry, this is for the country, not you.’ “ That’s the platform you were elected on surely? Anything else is usually a dirty deal.

To mix my metaphors, Except for diehard supporters suffering from confirmation bias, the general perception is that the Lib-Dems got nothing from the coalition but (to mix my metaphors) a few fig-leaf crumbs from the table. And otherwise the coalition was the most illiberal anti-poor government in living memory. And it was Lib Dem MPs who enabled this to be so. Presumably most people who voted Lib-Dem in 2010 thought this too, or they wouldn’t have deserted the party.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Sasha, that might be so except for the fact that many of those Lib Dem lost votes have gone to the Tories. Somewhat illogical, as if you were pleased with the government you would rationally vote Lib Dem again to maintain the coalition, or if you disliked the decision to coalesce then you would surely vote Labour?

72: “all coalitions mean the weaker party can only moderate the excesses of the more powerful partner”

I’m not so sure about this. Why shouldn’t LD have been able to extract significant concessions from the Tories as price of a coalition, especially if these concessions are tied to popular policies? What prevented LD from bargaining hard and rejecting a bad deal? The fear of being punished in an early election? But voters don’t punish a principled stance, time after time they punish a lack of spine. And yet center left politicians never seem to learn.

Btw LD was the smaller partner but not that much – they had 23% of the vote compared to the Tories’ 36%. In Germany, the FDP, with a much smaller voter base, has been permanently in government for almost 30 years as junior partner in several coalitions, thereby wielding significant actual power over the direction of policy. Granted this is in part due to an electoral system far friendlier to smaller parties. Still, the axiom that the smaller coalition partner is always powerless is simply not true.

Question: What did LibDem actually campaign on? What – if any – accomplishments of the last five years did they claim?

101: Good question. I’m certainly open to the notion that the LD could have won more than they did. I frankly didn’t care for any of them, or their policies as I understood them. I didn’t like Kennedy, or Ming. But no matter how little the LD did get, they must, at times, have frustrated the Conservatives. Then there are the opportunity benefits/costs. Each LD minister means one less Tory. That said, Engels at 100, makes an excellent point. Don’t know if you read Sacha’s link at 53. Had Labour remained pro-Scot, but neutral in their Yes/No vote, it would have been much, much harder for the SNP to knock out Labour in Scotland. That might not have prevented a Cameron victory, but would have left Labour in Scotland something to build on. Forgive me for pointing out that nobody, I think, is suggesting that the weaker partner in a coalition is ‘always powerless.’
In hindsight, the only way for Labour to win was (perhaps) to make the election about the future of the UK and not about the Conservatives. You’ll have noted that Ed’s numbers were the same as Farage’s in one of the last polls, and that UK votes favored UKIP policies over Labour’s 48-12. Embracing Scotland and the poor and offering voters a choice on Europe might have allowed a braver, brighter leadership to stop the SNP and keep disgruntled Labour voters in the fold. The majority of voters want an Australian or Canadian points based immigration system, and the only way that’s going to happen is after Britain leaves the EU. Denying Labour voters a voice in that debate and the chance to vote on the question very likely handed Cameron the majority.

TM @101 “In Germany, the FDP, with a much smaller voter base, has been permanently in government for almost 30 years as junior partner in several coalitions”

The FDP got wiped out at the federal level in Germany’s 2013 election. It’s not at all clear that they will get back in to the Bundestag in the next one. At present, the FDP is present in 6 of 16 state-level assemblies, with elections scheduled for Hamburg (FDP presence) and Bremen (no FDP presence) in 2015.

The FDP has played a role in just one of the last five national-level coalitions in Germany (Merkel’s second cabinet). Since 1998, there have been two SPD-Green coalitions, two CDU-SPD coalitions, and one CDU-FDP pairing.

I would guess that the former Lib Dem voters scattered in all directions (or simply didn’t turn up at all) and UKIP drew support from all parties in England and Wales. UKIP’s support wasn’t especially correlated with areas the Lib Dems were previously strong in, it was spread fairly evenly over a large part of England and Wales, which is why they got so few seats relative to their vote share.

A minor party in a coalition can get squeezed in two ways: there are the voters who think the minor party has ‘sold out’, but also people who are pleased with the coalition’s policies, and think ‘why vote for the fellow travellers when I can vote for the real thing?’ I think Cameron benefited significantly from the latter phenomenon this time, which has turned a number of former LD-Con marginals into very solid Tory seats and masked the loss of Tory voters to UKIP. The net movement in the Tory vote share was close to nil, but that doesn’t tell us how big the gross movements were.

@ Daragh McDowell,

My memory my be faulty but I don’t remember Nick Clegg ever saying that Labour was his first and best choice as a coalition partners. Or that he’d never accept a coalition with the Conservatives because he refused to put in power a party who need constantly to be restrained from doing evil. The numbers weren’t immutable and a coalition with the Conservatives wasn’t compelled by some kind of natural law.

If there was indeed a strong feeling in the LibDems that the Conservatives were a terrible gang of evil Thatcherite fanatics who would wreak the UK if left to their own devices, why didn’t Nick Clegg simply say that he’d refuse to join with them under any circumstances, come hell or high-water and see how things played out? What would’ve been the harm?

It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that from the moment the Conservatives took power, both Labour and the LibDems seemed pretty happy with what was being done. Labour seemed at times to be even more gung-ho on austerity and reducing the deficit than anybody. Even though the last hours of the election, Labour still couldn’t decide on its identity and instead offered a grab bag of contradictory programs to be carried out in conjunction with continued austerity and a focus on deficit reduction.

@ PlutoniumKun,

I think you’re basically on the money. The one point I would disagree on is that I think it was absolutely necessary for Labour to oppose austerity and have their own white paper on the economy early on. By essentially embracing or at least not vigorously opposing austerity, Labour looked hypocritical when it finally came around to putting some social programs and increased spending on the table, particularly when they insisted that it could reverse the Conservatives draconian cuts and increase spending for the NHS, education and infrastructure even as it would continue on with austerity and deficit reduction.

I thought Labour came of as basically insincere and opportunistic.

How does it work with prominent individual party members who lose their seats? I’m thinking specifically of Ed Balls and Douglas Alexander, the shadow chancellor and foreign secretary. Do they try again from their current districts in the next election? Are they assigned safer constituencies? (As I understand it, MPs, unlike Congresspersons, don’t have to live i their districts.) Is somebody in a safe seat pensioned off so the big boys can get back in in a special election?

107 and 108 are on the mark, but so is 110. Whatever badness resulted from the LD-Coalition, it was on Labour to prepare to govern. Labour failed utterly – the defeat in Scotland alone is on a scale to raise real questions about whether Labour will ever rule again in England, no matter Scotland.

109 ‘I thought Labour came of as basically insincere and opportunistic.’ You might add smug, self-satisfied, and condescending. What strikes me most is the smallness of the ideas, the vision, the individuals, and the politics. Both my grandfathers were working-class and the last thing the average working-class voter wants to hear, especially from a Labour leader, is disdain. Watching the London Labour elite sneer at requests by northern Labour leaders for an opportunity to discuss the EU referendum as ‘pandering to bigotry’ filled me frankly with disbelief. I couldn’t believe such well-educated people could be so profoundly dense. We’re all going to be living with the consequences of this arrogance for some time. There is, sadly, no guarantee that Labour will ever get a chance to form a government in the UK, again.

Can someone explain to me why a Labour-SNP Coalition government was so frightening to Middle England? John Major started in on how the SNP and Labour would destroy the country, and the Murdock press ran with it.

For example, this Guardian feature from Nuneaton was breathtaking:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2015/may/06/nuneaton-election-2015-scottish-get-in-with-labour-were-done-for

But…why is a SNP-Labour so scary? What is the SNP going to do, invest in infrastructure? Re-nationalize the railroads? The horror!

Please explain to a non-Brit. Personally, I think it was just monstering and illogical tribalism. The stage was set last autumn during the Scottish Independence referendum.

On a potential EU vote and the SNP ; (1) what do people see as the result of a vote on EU membership ? I guess it’s very difficult to call at this minute and the publics perspective will change as the vote comes nearer, but will the referendum happen and will the UK vote out ? What would that mean for the UK (it might, plausibly, just lead to renogitation of the UK’s place within the EU rather than leaving entirely?)

(2) On the SNP, how does the constitutional issue resolve itself ? At the moment it appears the majority in Scotland want to remain in the Union, but is the split-up inevitable and if not how can you deal with Scottish nationalist sentiment and demands ? Further powers to the Scottish Parliament would surely just continue to insitutionalise the divisions and exacerbate the push towards break up. Is there any long term chance of preventing this ? (and some of the more self interested English arguments, that it would leave England with Tory governments for a generation, seems to no longer be particularly relevant if this is the beginning of the SNP absolutely dominating Scottish politics)

If I have the time and interest, I will do a district-by-district analysis to see where the votes shifted. I think this is more reliable than the main alternative, which is to poll supporters of Party X to see if their second choice was Party Y or Party Z, or who they had voted for earlier (as we found out again with this election, voters will readily lie to pollsters).

My preliminary impressions is that turnout was about the same or a little higher than 2010 at 65% or so, which is low for a UK election. The Conservative percentage of the vote was unchanged, and they didn’t get many more votes in terms of raw numbers. Labour actually achieved small increases, as measured by raw vote totals, percentage, or swing from the Conservatives (yes there was a small national swing from the Conservatives to Labour). This was in the face of the Labour collapse in Scotland.

Aside from Scotland and Northern Ireland, the big movements were away from the Liberal Democrats and to UKIP and to a lesser extent the Greens. If my supposition that the Liberal Democrats got alot of protest votes, that scattered when they actually joined a government, is correct then we should be seeing evidence of movement directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP, even though you wouldn’t expect this from the platforms of these parties. I think this is more likely than the alternative of Liberal Democrats deciding to support Labour, and many Labour supporters defecting to UKIP. Though I don’t expect a lot of rationality from voters, I simply can’t think of an even semi-plausible reason to vote Lib Dem in 2010 and then Tory in 2015.

I also suspect that there wasn’t alot of movement in the Conservative vote. I think alot of people who normally vote Tory may have considered voting for UKIP, then were convinced to stay with the Tories by the usual last minute scare campaigns. During the campaign, UKIP polled higher and the Tories lower than the final result indicated. This would imply that the movement was to UKIP from the Lib Dems and Labour, with some movement from the Lib Dems and Conservatives to Labour. Obviously there will be lots of places where this worked differently, such as in the two seats where Tory MPs who defected to UKIP were standing.

There also seems to have been gains for Labour in the cities and for the Tories in the countryside. This benefited the Tories who were able to sweep up alot of rural Lib Dem marginals, while Labour can’t squeeze out many more urban or industrial seats. A percentage of 36% of the vote really shouldn’t provide a majority, though Blair got a majority with an even lower percentage of the vote (but I think that particular election was also screwed up). By the way, I haven’t seen much evidence that the Tory government will function much better than the one elected in 1992 did, all the conditions now are the same as then or have actually gotten worse.

I also did not realize and could not really believe that the SNP got a majority of the votes in Scotland. By achieving a majority of the votes and a near sweep of the seats, and the fact that the Tories engineered their last minute surge by basically campaigning against Scotland, the SNP did achieve the political conditions for independence. We have probably seen the last UK general election.

I dunno about Scotland, but the EU is pretty clear.

The referendum will happen. But the renegotiation of the UK’s place is going to happen first. This was actually a Conservative commitment for the 2010 election, but due to the coalition didn’t happen*. Basically Cameron will (attempt to) make a deal with the other EU member states to redefine our relationship, and then there will be an in-out referendum – i.e. a choice between Cameron’s renegotiated relationship, or leaving the EU. How much Cameron will be able to achieve is anyone’s guess. It’s already clear that he’ll be able to have “ever closer union” not apply to Britain, but will he be able to get substantive concessions, or only symbolic ones like that? My vague feeling is that Cameron won’t get the most far-reaching notions, like an opt-out from Free Movement of Workers, but he’ll get enough to persuade 3/4 of the parliamentary Conservative Party to campaign to stay in, in which case Britain will remain in the EU. But there’s an, oh, 30% chance that the other member states think that Cameron is bluffing, and just try to fob him off, in which case the Conservatives will campaign for EU exit, and I’d say we have an 80% chance of leaving.

*Perhaps Darragh might cite this as one of the Lib Dems’ achievements?

The Conservative percentage of the vote was unchanged… Labour actually achieved small increases… there was a small national swing from the Conservatives to Labour

No. The Conservatives were up 0.8% of the vote, Labour up 1.4%. Both parties increased, and the swing was from the Lib Dems to both of them.

[There was lots of] movement directly from the Liberal Democrats to UKIP, even though you wouldn’t expect this from the platforms of these parties. I think this is more likely than the alternative of Liberal Democrats deciding to support Labour, and many Labour supporters defecting to UKIP. Though I don’t expect a lot of rationality from voters, I simply can’t think of an even semi-plausible reason to vote Lib Dem in 2010 and then Tory in 2015.

Agreed on the first point. But the second seems contradicted by the facts. Look at all the Lib Dem losses in the South West, where the Lib Dem vote has fallen and the vote of every other party has risen, including the Conservatives. It seems clear that there is no shortage of Lib Dem voters who switched, possibly because they approved of the coalition and didn’t like that the Lib Dems seemed to have one foot outside it at all times.

Doug 105: The FDP has recently become more or less obsolete (although as they say Totgesagte leben laenger) but had a pretty good stretch before that. In their heyday (up to the late 90s), the party system had 3 players, then 4. Now things are way more complicated. Nevertheless, they have shown how small players can matter.

Re Labour:

Just when hope and courage are called for, Labour promises bean-counting
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 15th April 2015

Labour’s 1983 manifesto is widely known as the longest suicide note in history. Its 2015 manifesto is the longest till receipt in history. It is costed and funded, ordered and itemised, and will electrify anyone who is aroused by the high wild cry of accountancy.

http://www.monbiot.com/2015/04/15/the-longest-till-receipt-in-history/

“The Conservatives were up 0.8% of the vote, Labour up 1.4%. Both parties increased, and the swing was from the Lib Dems to both of them.”

This is partly a technical objection and partly a matter of semantics. But the swing is calculated as the increase in the vote for party A, minus the increase in the vote for party B, divided by two. The concept was invented at a time when two parties accounted for 95% of the votes and the expectation is that if party A’s vote goes up, party B’s will go down. But it works if the votes of both party A and party B go up as in this case: (1.4 – 0.8)/2 = 0.3, so there was a nationwide swing of 0.3% from the Conservatives to Labour. It wasn’t very big, but it was enough that you would normally see the opposite movement of seats from what occurred. And yes, if a party’s vote simply collapses, then there is a “swing” against it to just about everyone.

On the larger point, neither 0.8% or 1.4% are big increases, but 1.4% is bigger than 0.8%. Milliband managed a bigger improvement in the Labour vote totals than he will be given credit for. Over the course of two elections since becoming leader, Cameron has improved the Conservative vote share by about 4.5%.

Mitch, you can’t have “no government” under the UK constitution. The Queen’s actual job is to make sure there is a Prime Minister. If the Liberal Democrats had a “no deals with the Tories” policy in 2010, Gordon Brown would have remained Prime Minister until the inevitable defeat in the House of Commons, after which the Queen would have appointed Cameron. There still would have been a government, in this case a Tory one, which probably would have gained a majority in an election called (before the Fixed Term Parliaments Act) at Cameron’s discretion.

Many thanks to so many for the well informed comments and thoughts about the election. Its nice to read well over 100+ comments where those involved are able to express a range of views both competing and complementary and not have it evolve into a Dems are hopeless, Reps are bigots name-calling game.

I lived in London when Blair was elected and remember the excitement and energy that came with that change after +15 years of Tory leadership…this election doesn’t seem to have much of that, far more of the major parties clinging to their base while the assortment of smaller minority parties carve off different slices of those disatisfied with both majors.

Americans should be jealous of a system that is able to actually elect a diversity of political views – sadly, the U.S. system (at this point) is largely rigged to favor 2 parties and 2 parties only and the lack of spectrum of views that imposes on the electorate.

Thanks again for the thoughtful comments I look forward to many more.

I was incorrect on one of my points, after checking the latest updates on the BBC website. The Conservatives have a 12 seat majority, not a 4 seat majority, so it is less likely to disappear over the course of the Parliament, unless they split over Europe as in the 1990s.

Ed at 125,

As with most things in this comment thread, I think you are right and generally better informed than me. Nevertheless, I’m not sure that it’s impossible for the UK to be without a government. Again, we’re very much in uncharted waters but I believe that if the PM’s office were vacant through the death or resignation of the incumbent, at the moment the party in government had lost its majority, and no party could form a government, I think it’s a close question whether the Queen could simply appoint but I’m pretty sure that she isn’t obliged appoint one (such as a new leader elected by party of the departed incumbent) if she doesn’t want to. So I think you could have a situation similar to that in Belgium.

As a practical matter, however, you’re right that the UK would still have had a Prime Minister in 2010. In my zeal for making a good debating point, I didn’t chose my words carefully and muddled things up, for which I apologize. Obviously, Gordon Brown would’ve continued as PM until he was replaced (which would have been fine with me).

I think if nobody else had been able to form a government then Gordon Brown would have continued as Prime Minister until the next Queen’s Speech. Then, assuming the Labour Queen’s Speech was voted down, that would have been the equivalent of a “no confidence” vote and I believe at that point there would simply be a new general election, after which the Conservatives might or might not have been able to form a government.

Daragh McDowell at 110,

First, the voters didn’t choose the Conservatives as the Lib Dems partners. They didn’t choose anybody. Nick Clegg choose to hop into bed with the Tories because he and his pals were hot to strut around carrying their little red boxes and get better tables and more obsequious waiters at the The Wolseley.

Second, you’re making an assumption about the inevitability of the Conservatives getting in after the next election and using that assumption to justify a coalition with a partner that your party claims now to have always distrusted and whose entire program was supposedly repugnant. It is not persuasive to me when you claim that the Lib Dems somehow prevented the greater harm of the Conservatives possibly getting into government in six months (through winning a new election) by guaranteeing them almost absolute power today. Frankly, I don’t find that reasoning persuasive and, as I said earlier, I think it’s just a post hoc justification for doing a very shortsighted, stupid thing that turned out to be a disaster for your party and for the UK.

Is there reason to think that the UK’s 27 European partners want to change the set-up?

As I say, I reckon there’s a maybe 30 per cent chance they tell Cameron to do one. In which case we’re probably leaving the EU.

novakant @ 131: should that be spelled FCUK?

@ Mitch –

Ed more or less made precisely the same argument I would have in response to you. The scenario you’re describing goes something like this – Clegg says ‘we’re backing no-one!’ or ‘We’re backing Labour!’, Brown resigns/loses confidence motion and then resigns, Queen appoints David Cameron as PM (yes, constitutionally she does that and constitutionally there must ALWAYS be a PM, which is why John Prescott was otherwise inexplicably in charge of the country for brief periods during the Blair years, just in case something had to be nuked), Cameron attempts a Queen’s speech, which is voted down and an election is called. Labour fights the election without minimal cash on hand, heavily in debt, and with Gordon Brown as leader, or, at best, a hastily introduced David Miliband who will have had precisely zero time to formulate a policy vision. The Tories are well funded and have a message of ‘we’re in the middle of an economic emergency, Greece is on the verge of sinking the eurozone into another depression, and for some reason we’re having another election because the Libdems are playing spoilers/attempting to shore up an obviously discredited and defeated prime minister.” Meanwhile, every paper in the land bar the Guardian and the Indy paste pictures of rioters in Athens with ‘London next?’ on them for the entire three week campaign.

If you seriously think the outcome of such a contest would be in any doubt, there’s a Nigerian prince I’d like to introduce you to whose in need of some assistance, but the payback will be AMAZING!

“First, the voters didn’t choose the Conservatives as the Lib Dems partners. They didn’t choose anybody. Nick Clegg choose to hop into bed with the Tories because he and his pals were hot to strut around carrying their little red boxes and get better tables and more obsequious waiters at the The Wolseley.”

Leaving aside the de rigeur, and frankly rather juvenile cynicism (seriously – politicians do actually often have some sense of purpose, and if you think that people endure the kind of daily public shit-hosing that frontline politics entails for a better waiter…) again – the only combination of seats that reached more than 323 was LibDem+Con. No amount of pretending the DUP was lining up to support a Lab/LD/Green/Plaid/SNP/Alliance/SDLP/Galloway/UUP Rainbow coalition (not to mention the Labour PLP) changes those numbers.

Finally, I don’t think arguing that ‘we’ll be a restraint on the Tories worst instincts’ translates into ‘we regard the Tories as implacable foes.’ The party promoted coalition as a virtue during the campaign and said that they’d not rule out either party. So cries of ‘betrayal’ don’t cut much ice here either.

The TL:DR – You’ve created an imaginary constitutional process, ignored parliamentary arithmetic and assumed that an immediate election after a hung parliament wouldn’t necessarily result in a Tory majority. And yet you feel justified in accusing others of post facto rationalisations…

Harry b @ 83
I’m Australian, and I haven’t followed the detail of your campaign. However we’ve had two female leaders of left political parties at federal level in recent years (they’re both gone, now, the Greens leader having just resigned and been replaced by a man), and one thing I recognise is the tone of blithe dismissiveness by men – supposedly of the left – when talking about female leaders.

The assumption is that the female leaders in question are so obviously hopeless that it’s not even worth taking the time to discuss them, which is pretty clearly what you were doing.

I really wish that men in privileged positions would take the time to think critically about their behaviour, instead of the reflexive denial that seems so common. I assume you know that women are under-represented in British politics? I think this time they’ve got to just over a quarter of MPs or thereabouts (which is being seen as a great improvement, apparently). Why do you think this is?

If you don’t like the woman as Greens leader, how about taking the time to say why, politely? Treat her with at least that much respect. It’s common to treat one’s political opponents with contempt – rightly or wrongly – but if you are supposedly on the same broad side of politics as someone, it’s not normal to treat them that way, unless they are women, so it appears.

@141: Perhaps a case as to why she’s good would be a useful one to make?

Working class bigots and austerity light.

I’ve yet to see any Labour leader go public on the damage Milliband’s anti-referendum slurs did to the Labour vote, but here’s a pre-election summary of the problem Labour faced and very much still faces: ” The left in British politics has a proud heritage of enfranchising working class voters and ensuring that working people have a say in how their country is run. It’s a radical tradition that stretches back to the Levellers, through the Chartists, the Suffragettes and the founders of the Labour Party at the turn of the century.
In rejecting a referendum on the EU, Labour have defied this heritage. They are saying that working people cannot be trusted to make a big decision about how the country should be run in the future. They are saying that the elites, the man in Whitehall or the crown placemen know better than the people.
It wasn’t always this way, of course. In the 1970s, it was Labour who were making a principled case that the people should have their say. Michael Foot, a man steeped in the radical tradition said in 1975 that, “this question… will never be settled until the people of this country have had the right to pass judgement on it… we insist that, on a matter of such consequence, only the British people can settle it.”

This clear and cogent critique of Labour’s elitism was penned by David Skelton, a journalist /activist specializing in ‘broadening the Conservatives’ appeal to the working classes.” Six months from now, I expect some pointy-heads to produce a 50,000 word paper saying the same thing. That’s the problem both the LibDems and Labour faced and face. Both had/have to explain why their own voters, supporters and candidates should not be even given the opportunity to vote on an EU referendum. Instead, Ummuna and Milliband adopted a pro-business position certain alienate and insult core Labour voters (from the Guardian, 10 nov 14) The Labour leader is to offer to form a partnership with British business leaders in which a Labour government would guarantee the stability of continued EU membership in return for support for his plans to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. “If I am prime minister I will never risk your businesses, British jobs, British prosperity, by playing political games with our membership of the EU,” he will tell the CBI.”
Two years ago Milliband took the stand that delighted Conservatives, (Guardian 28 Jan 12)

“Ed Miliband risked alienating some voters, and unnerving sections of his own shadow cabinet, when he stood firm on Wednesday, saying he was opposed to an in-out referendum on the terms proposed by David Cameron. The Tories seized on his statement, claiming he was against an in-out referendum, but Miliband’s aides said the party only opposed a referendum now. However, the Conservatives were confident that the Labour leader had made a disastrous political error for which he would pay a price at the next election. Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, said: “It’s clear that Labour doesn’t trust the British public to have their say on their country’s future.” But those senior members of the shadow cabinet that would have preferred a clearer pro-referendum line bit their lips, saying the option remained open. Others claimed Cameron would enjoy a short-term hit, but that the speech would not age well. Some senior backbenchers such as Keith Vaz, the home affairs select committee chairman and a former Europe minister, openly called for a referendum but surprisingly few Labour voices called for Miliband to follow Cameron.”

This fundamentally elitist and dishonest position by Milliband did indeed cost Labour the election, along with their disastrous Scotland policy. Cameron and UKIP gleefully pointed out the hypocrisy directly and through surrogates (see above). The working class electorate, ‘anxious about jobs/immigration’ etc. clearly felt their leaders did/do not trust or respect them. We can find well-educated Labour theorists entirely all too willing to characterize working class concerns as rift bigotry. Indeed this contempt for working-class Britain is one the key points upon which Labour and Conservative elites can agree.
The best Labour could do was admit that they ‘got it wrong’ on immigration during their tenure. Refusal to even discuss giving voters a debate/vote on the referendum forced Labour further towards the right, a drift did not go un-noticed in Scotland in the run-up to the 2015 election. (Herald-Scotsman 19 nov 14)

“LABOUR has upped the political ante on immigration by saying that if it won power, EU nationals would have to be in Britain for a full two years before they could claim unemployment benefit.

At present, they only have to wait three months.

Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, unveiled a package of new measures which, she insisted, represented “credible reform” on immigration.

They were announced just 48 hours before the Rochester by-election in Kent, the campaign for which has been dominated by immigration, and which Ukip is strongly tipped to win.

Ms Reeves also said a Labour government would work with other EU countries to limit in-work benefits paid to EU migrants which “can encourage employers to rely on low-cost short-term labour from abroad” and end the “absurdity” of child benefit and child tax credits being claimed for children living in other countries.

“Ukip would have us leave British values of fairness and toleration at the door,” declared Ms Reeves.

“But I also believe we have to listen to the real concerns people have about how immigration is being managed. That’s why I’m setting out a credible three-point plan for reforming our social security system, which was never designed for the levels of migration we are now seeing.” The Lib-Con Coalition has already tightened the rules so EU migrants have to wait three months after arriving in the UK before they can claim child benefit and child tax credits.”

Sorry about the long post, but I hope this sheds some light on how denying voters the right and respect to even discuss the EU referendum without slurs cost and will cost Labour.

What’s the PD?

WHY IS NOBODY TALKING ABOUT THE UKIP VOTERS IN WALES? Who are these people?

People who are voting on the “we hate Plaid” ticket. And, tbh, there’s a lot to dislike (and a lot to like as well, that’s Wales for you). Anyone who feels they might have been shut out of a job due to language policy. Etc etc. Not necessarily all “horrible English immigrants”, there are a lot of multi-generation Welsh who don’t like being told that they’re second class citizens (“Cymro sal”) because they don’t speak the language. In general, nationalists are nationalists, and they can hardly complain about not getting many votes from nationalists of a different nation.

I have no idea whatsoever why anyone would want to claim that Natalie Bennett has been anything other than an embarrassment to the Greens, particularly compared to Caroline Lucas. Val, since you really haven’t been following the campaign, and really don’t know anything about the UK Green Party and its leadership, perhaps you might want to consider taking the option of not expressing strong views in disagreement with people who have. Scolding someone for their views and then admitting that you have no information at all about the subject is the sort of thing that is absolutely toxic to your credibility in the long run.

By the way, Harry, wtf? Is this all about the family stuff? As always with these things, I am willing to be a witness that you have a reputation worth protecting in England & Wales and that any libellous statements about you have been published there, if need be.

And also dsquared, when you work out a perfect way that feminists can complain about the treatment of women in politics, without lecturing or scolding or whining or being victims or ‘playing the gender card’ any of those unpleasant things, please do let me know.

There must be a nice way of doing it, without upsetting anybody, and that’s what we feminists need to learn.

PS, Point fully taken about Plaid, and I have all the same thoughts, but I do like their leader! Aren’t there other ways of opposing them than voting for UKIP? Anyway, I guess, from a distance, just as many of the northern UKIP voters seem different from the southeastern ones, I wondered if the Welsh ones were different again.

My dad’s already done the libel thing. It would, really, be such fun, though, to sue some of these people for libel in the UK!

Thank you Salem. I’m not persuaded that people learn about party platforms through the televised debates. There just isn’t enough to go on there. Each candidate has too small window of opportunity in which to speak and the ‘worm’ suggested Bennett’s presentation provoked a good response in audiences.

Still, I think it unlikely that in a parliamentary – not a presidential – system, with the liberal book-keeping consensus having a profoundly negative effect on millions of families’ welfare and with widespread concerns about climate change, there exist actual people who will not support a platform they otherwise find appealing because it was presented on the telly by a ‘bad leader’? This, especially, for a party that has no chance of getting into executive office?

*Val could look up ‘worm, Natalie Bennett, debate’, or how she was forced to shout because the boys wouldn’t let her have her turn, or that she was said to have ‘won the Challenger’s Debate on Twitter’. She did lose her voice during the campaign period and couldn’t show her working on social housing one night. In a time where presentation and ‘competence’ are more important than notions of justice and fairness that is unforgivable.

Aren’t there other ways of opposing them than voting for UKIP?

Yes and that’s presumably why a Tory got in for Gower (he’s also been a popular local AM, but even so, first in something like a hundred years). My guess is that Welsh UKIP are mainly Tories in weigh-the-vote Labour constituencies having a laugh. Also, ironically, they’ve got a lot more in common than they’d like to admit with the “Not From Round Here” element of Plaid.

(I suppose that what I’m saying here is that this is a crossword puzzle and the answer is “Anti-Polish Racism”. But that can’t be quite right because UKIP Is Definitely Not Racist.)

And I stand by what I said, I am not trying to cover up for drunken nonsense, as you suggest.

@Val:

I do get your point about women in politics, or otherwise, being summarily dismissed. I really do. But the harry b commented you originally responded to mentioned three women politicians—one of which Harry described as “most impressive” another as “very good” and a third as “second rate”. It does seem more than a little odd to apply the general criticism, which in general is valid, to that particular comment.

harry b @153:

Please do write the post! I think you’d be well within your rights to be more than whiny.

Oops. dsquared makes me realize I missed some of the earlier part of the thread. I had in mind @83 in my last comment.

Sorry about the html mess. Cheers.

“British Labour”, apologies, I know that, I got it right most times.

Thank you Val, for bravely pushing back.

I did have your previous interventions in mind when I made my initial comment, especially what you’ve said about gendered approaches to politics. For me, the idea of strong effective leadership, the great men of history, is impossible to disconnect from patriarchal conceptions of governance. This lot is committed to its hierarchies.

There’s politicalcompass.org. Have you seen that?

Thanks basil and js, I am happy to apologise to Mitch and Harry if they think I’ve misrepresented them as being centrist when they are really left, but I guess it has to come from them.

I guess a better, and more reasonable way of putting it might have been to say that I think there some influential people in supposedly left parties who are actually blocking left wing progress and I wish they would stop calling themselves left – and to say that Harry and Mitch seem as if they may be in that camp. That would have been much more polite and woukd have given them an opportunity to clarify their positions.

I don’t know really – I had had a few drinks when I wrote it, which is a mistake ( although I at least owned up to it), but as I said I felt furious when I read those first few exchanges earlier in the day, and I was sober then. What can we do about this? I don’t know a lot about UK politics, but there was a clearly a trend for Labour people to blame or criticise SNP or the Greens in the early comments on this post. The reality is though – I’m sure here and it looks the same there – that parties like the SNP and the Greens are standing for things that people actually want and the right wing of Labor/Labour is joining in the game of discrediting them.

I get so fed up. Of course it’s possible to have social housing, decent incomes, and publicly funded health and education. We used to have them, back in the days when we were supposedly poorer! There’s so much nonsense going on, and by supporting it, labor (labour) parties are blocking any real social change.

I read some stuff on Natalie Bennett. She certainly stuffed up the interview on social housing, but she doesn’t actually look like a fool to me. But according to people like dsquared I suppose, my opinion on that doesn’t count for anything. The number of times I have been told by men on CT how stupid I am, you’d think I would have got the message and given up by now.

Not ‘sadly’ because I will be sad not to get drunk, obviously, but sadly because your comment looks like an invitation to some british-oz slanging, and I am sorry to disappoint (not really :) )

I’d also have to assume John Hollbo’s smoking pcp.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417997/professor-if-you-read-your-kids-youre-unfairly-disadvantaging-others-katherine-timpf

I would appreciate it, Harry b, if you explained yourself—a little. In recent days, I have been attempting to defend you on a facebo0k discussion.

There’s a case to be made that Natalie Bennett suffered a bit from the excellent performances of the two other female leaders, in the debates and in interviews, and in comparison with her predecessor (a lot of Greens still regret that Caroline Lucas stepped down from the leadership to focus on being the Greens’ sole MP). A lot of the commentary was thoroughly sexist, not least because Bennett’s personal style doesn’t fit with conventional expectations of female politicians, but I think there was also a lot of genuine disappointment that she didn’t do a better job in representing the party in the national media – which is surely her main task in a general election. She’s been pretty good, I think, in the party management aspect of the leadership role; indeed, I’d see this as a case for adopting a clearer distinction between that job and the task of embodying the party for election purposes.

I fear that Salem is being over-optimistic in estimating likely outcomes of the EU referendum. Yes, there’s a chance that the other states will call Cameron’s bluff and reject his overtures, but (put in those terms) I think that’s a lot less than 30% – but I think there is a much greater chance that they will simply be unable to offer the sorts of concessions he demands (or that his rabid backbenchers force him to demand), especially if this would require them all to hold referenda on treaty change. If Cameron were willing to go for some symbolic concessions, fine, but he’s now at the mercy of the Europhobic wing who won’t accept anything like that, and too much of the press is virulently anti-Europe for him to escape thorough scrutiny there. British manufacturers will be holding their heads in their hands – but it’s financiers in the City who are the major donors to the Tories these days, and there’s less indication that they will fiercely oppose the idea of Brexit.

This is a major reason for feeling *so* depressed about the election result: this issue was scarcely discussed in the campaign, but we’re now in serious danger of wandering out of Europe and becoming even more of a corrupt tax haven dominated by the City of London than before.

I honestly think that the tide of xenophobic feeling has been encouraged so much that a referendum on the EU would almost definitely produce a vote for exit. Most Tories that do not positively hate the EU do not care enough to campaign to stay in, and you have to remember that the EU acts as a brake to many of the Tories’ aspirations in the field of curtailing human rights and scrapping health and safety legislation and workers’ rights. The City can cope perfectly well outside of the EU, and would not interfere in a referendum either way. UKIP has just won three million votes. And, despite what Kidney Stones has said on this thread, the issue of the EU has not alienated many Labour voters, a good chunk of whom constantly stick with the party but would vote to leave the EU.

183 I apologize for not being clearer. The argument works on three parts.

1. As you note, many Labour voters would vote to leave the EU, but stuck with the party. Others, however, did not because 2

2. Milliband and his allies decided to stand against an EU referendum and attempted to characterize referendum supporters as bigots and racists. Despite this effort, support for an Australian or Canadian style points based immigration system remained strong, compelling a discussion of an EU exit.

3. Refusing to back away from their reform supporters are bigots and promising to kill any attempt to hold an EU referendum, but faced with growing calls to respond to support a referndum Milliband, Ummuna, and the Lib-Dems embraced some appalling policies – such as denying legal migrants to the UK social service for up to 2 years – and embraced austerity light. See 145.

This ‘blame the poor and penalize the migrants policy from Labour and the Lib-Dems’ received a great deal of coverage in Scotland, allowing the SNP to run against the austerity and anti-immigrant light policies of Labour. Milliband, Ummuna, and company crafted the cudgel which Nicola wielded with such historic efficacy. These dynamics are still in play. Labour is going to have to support a vote on the EU. I stand by my original argument that Labour’s position on the EU referendum propelled the SNP to power in Scotland, redefined Labour as hypocritical and uncaring – a truly remarkable two-fer, and significantly increased the prospects of dissolution of the UK, while actually increasing the chances of a British EU exit. Mind-boggling incompetence all because the toffs at the top don’t trust ordinary voters.

Val,

“Tabasco
I will reread your post when I am drunk so that I can say some rude things to you.”

My university’s student charter was pointed out to me , as you are doing a phd your university’s student charter probably applies to you too. I have to try to bear in mind now being a good ambassador for the university in public forums even when people are very impolite or wrong on the internet.

ZM @ 187
That particular comment was a joke, as I thought my following comments made clear. Hopefully my university won’t penalise me for making silly jokes on the Internet.

I usually comment under my private email, but it is a bit grey, because I also link to my blog, which is connected to my PhD research. I do try not to be deliberately rude, generally, though it’s questionable certainly whether I was needlessly rude to Harry b and Mitch.

Oh, and again, the SNP victory was not nationalism, it was left-wing social policy, esp. on NHS and cuts to social spending and the poor.

There’s a great piece on this by a Glasgow filmmaker in this morning’s paper Independent, but I can’t find the link online…

Natalie, Valerie –
it is all a congeries.

I’ll note that the big shift that Thatcher seems to have been able to produce is a new belief that in order for there to be winners there must also be losers. As such, policies are being put in place to show that losers are getting their “just deserts” – which rather bizarrely seems to work as giving other “aspirational” people the feeling that their chances of winning are being increased…

It was the most misery-making result for me since 1992. Or 1987 — Thatcher’s bunch of red roses (Labour had just replaced the red flag with a red rose as its emblem); and her “conciliatory” tone of voice (that Jonathan Miller likened to a perfumed fart).

But so much depends on expectations, or on the kind of familiarity that, as R.G. Collingwood put it, breeds not so much contempt as oblivion. Is it just frivolous or Whiggish to console oneself at moments like this with the thought that we aren’t living in Uzbekistan, or for that matter, Tudor England?

Expectations, context, framework assumptions . . . I will find it impossible to suppress my delight if Hillary Clinton wins next year; but I really don’t know if her policies would be even as liberal as David Cameron’s, let alone more so.

Conversely, how likely is it that Nigel Farage as P.M. (now just a thought-experiment, touch wood — though who knows what might follow a Brexit then a Scoxit) would be anything like as bad as Ted Cruz, or Mike Huckabee, as President (genuine if remote possibilities, it seems)? Or even an actually-existing P.M. — Tony Abbott?

Dunno if this thread is really the place for Britsplaining 101, but I’ll bite.

First thing is to throw away any nonsense picked up from ‘political compass sites’; the only element of interest such sites have is working out exactly which group set them up to frame the questions and why (spoiler: it’s libertarians).

As soon as the consequences of universal suffrage worked themselves out, you had one party favouring the economic interest of the majority, and one fighting a defensive battle based themselves on cultural issues like nationalism.

The big change from that post-WWII status quo was when Thatcher worked out how to arrange the economy so that the class interests of an electoral plurality mirrored those of the rich. So house prices, individualized pension funds and income tax put together may not actually be larger than wages, but they were more volatile, more directly driven by political decisions.

The numbers added up when you remember the poorest don’t vote, and 40% is a solid majority under multiparty FPTP.

New Labour countered this by _making economics a cultural issue_, bundled in together with opposition to all the old Tory cultural baggage. You are not a good person if you don’t like blacks or gays, or if you don’t pay more in tax to support the poor. Most, if not all, people want to be seen as good, so there’s your majority.

Like Thatcherism, this worked politically until it didn’t, and ended some time after that.

This election shows that Cameron and the Lib Dems (who are the true vanguard of this movement, now fallen in battle for the cause), are not a glitch, but the next stage of the narrative. Drop all the old cultural baggage, hug a polar bear, reintroduce gay marriage. Hold wages constant to neutralise them as a political issue. Demonise the po0r so that supporting them is no virtue.

Make it money-economics versus culture-economics as a single issue, and the money wins as soon as you have enough other reason to think of yourself as a good person.

Ruth Rendell is no longer with us, sadly. But on the upside it’s now safe to bomb the House of Lords!

All joking aside, the unanswered question hanging over the discussion, in what sense is it bad if the Labor Party goes down the drain? What good is New Labor?

LFC @ 198
Here’s another thought experiment:

I’m a woman of the future, living in an age where women constitute the majority of parliamentarians, as well as CEOs of large companies, media barons, and so on. I live in a multi-party state, and am watching some political parties hold a debate in the lead up to an election. A woman from a party on the same broad ‘side’ of politics as me speaks, and I feel she hasn’t done well. I turn to another woman nearby me, and say ‘that was a bad job’. Then a man also speaks, again not very well, and I turn to my companion and say ‘he’s useless’. You – a man in the same group as us – say ‘I’m sick of hearing male MPs spoken about like that, I don’t think you’re being fair’. And I say ‘of course I am, I treat men and women exactly the same, it’s a pure coincidence that men only make up 25% of MPs, you must be living in funhouse mirror land’. How do you feel?

Harry, it’s football, not soccer. Even I know that.

This makes me even more determined to push back against people like dsquared.

No. There is no “push back against” here, because I haven’t made any political statement at all. I’m entirely focused on the single issue of comment number 60 in this thread. Whatever your views, whatever your point, it’s credibility-destroying to shoot your mouth off like that.

Or in other words, if you have decided that you are too cross and short of time to get involved in a long argument, and you don’t really know anything about the subject, then:

“Guys like you are destroying the left, I honestly wish you would stop claiming to be left.”

is not a sensible holding response pending your having time to consider what you really want to say. If, as in comment #202, you want people to assume that you’re not a fool, you have to meet us half way.

It was when Milliband slipped up and called it “soccer” that cost Labour the election.

Has their been any polling or statistical analysis on the outcome of the election? Most of the commentary I’ve seen by news sources have been of the “the election proves me right on all points” variety. (For example I just read back-to-back articles complaining that Labour was either too left or too right to win. I guess you could argue that they were too right for Scotland and too left for England, but since that would detract from central message of how the author was proven right on all points, neither article went that way.)

Jim — I just wrote an irritable response to your fb message, which came out of the blue to me! I hope you read it as being nice and appreciative (it doesn’t sound it, but really I am).

Your reply to me was irritation-free and very useful, Harry. Best regards!

dsquared @208 Swansea’s very different from Pembrokeshire. To the north, Swansea valley (Cwm Tawe), Neath Constituency, always had significant number of Welsh speakers, as did Llanelli and much of Carmarthenshire. In fact, it was the Swansea votes which ensured there was a Welsh Assembly, because there was less than a point in it. Pembrokeshire voted no, as did the Cardiff and Newport areas.

The issue isn’t protection of Welsh speaking communities, it the expensive “promotion” of Welsh and compulsory Welsh, but not any other modern foreign language, up to the age of 16 in English speaking communities. Our local secondary school has lost German, and even French is under pressure because of this policy. Eisteddfod day, always around March 1st, was described by my friend’s boy as “the most boring day of the year”. There are a few enthusiasts, but it’s alienating to the rest

This isn’t really an answer to Ronan, and it’s thirty years old, but it’s bemusing to me how many of the issues H. Stuart Hughes covers in his book on 1970s social movements (Sophisticated Rebels), which I finally finished, popped up in this election. You have Greens, Welsh, Social Democracy…

I would like to respond briefly to those who have argued that the SNP should be viewed (and supported) based on its support for the social welfare state. The difficulty with looking at their policies in isolation is that the SNP is a nationalist party whose principal objective is an independent Scotland. Everything the party says and does is, understandably, viewed by others in the UK through that prism.

The potential disintegration of the UK is an overarching question and most people outside of Scotland want the union to continue. That’s what made the SNP toxic as a partner for Labour. The fear of such a partnership probably drove down Labour support in key marginals and will sharply limit the SNP’s ability to influence policy in Westminster (assuming that it wants to influence policy as opposed to allowing a rampant Conservative Party to create sufficient hostility in Scotland that a vote for independence is assured).

What is the consequence of an SNP dominated Scotland? Paradoxically, the most likely outcome is to imperil the social welfare state throughout the United Kingdom. At the very moment when Labour is most likely to abandon neoliberalism and at a time when Scotland could have pushed Labour in a better direction, the Scots cannot influence Labour because they are no longer its key stronghold. Likewise, Conservatives can now afford to ignore both Scotland and Labour.

Scottish voters may have wanted to send a message against the Tories but paradoxically, I believe they have inadvertently just aligned themselves as the Conservatives’ greatest source of support. The SNP will actually welcome Conservative attacks on Scotland’s more generous benefits and will use those attacks (and the fact that the Conservatives now probably can’t be dislodged from power for at least a generation) to demonstrate the necessity of a new vote for independence.

And with what probable result? An independent Scotland will almost certainly be forced into the eurozone at a moment when the social welfare state is under ferocious attack by a neoliberal elite. I think it very likely a significant reduction in state funding for education, health care and pensions would be demanded as a condition of entry into the EU, assuming that Spain, France, Italy or some other member state that’s worried about separatism doesn’t outright block Scotland’s entry.

Fwiw not a Green voter but thought Nathalie Bennett was godawful. To be fair to her I think the media establishment’s enthusiasm for trashing her was up there with its bloodlust for Miliband (whom I also didn’t rate). I did rate Sturgeon and Plaid leader very highly. Not to sound like a broken record but they’re both state-educated whereas Bennett is (like Cameron, Clegg, Farage, Blair _and 7% of British population_) ex-public-school. Just putting that out there.

Btw does anyone know what’s going to happen to Miliband’s policy cenotaph now?

@Metatone – That’s absolutely awful, truly. I’ll admit I often forget that being a white male my impressions on the state of civil liberties may be somewhat skewed by personal experience. I’d be interested to see what exactly Clegg wrote back, and under what law the police felt able to do that. Very, very worrying.

I’m also unimpressed by the argument that the Lib Dems had to join the coalition in the form that they did because otherwise the Tories would have won a second election later in 2010.

For one, there was no obligation for them to join the coalition on the terms that they did. Secondly, if the Lib Dems had gone for a ‘confidence and supply’ deal and taken a stand against one of the more unpopular Tory policies and forced an election then the 64% of the population that did not vote Tory in 2010 would probably have appreciated it. Thirdly, there was no reason why they had to tie themselves in the coalition for the full five years in a masochistic attempt to prove how responsible they were.

As it is, I think the Lib Dems decline when confronted with a hung parliament was almost inevitable. Their campaigning had been based on opportunism and protest-based politics for at least 40 years, while their strategy was founded on becoming a dependable coalition partner for any party. In a PR system this strategy could have worked, as a bourgeois liberal party like the German FDP might win enough seats to be part of government for years. As such, I think Clegg’s gamble was that electoral reform would enable them to survive the loss of half their 2010 vote but still win enough seats to be a coalition partner. After the 2011 referendum defeat they were just holding on and hoping for the best, as their usual tactics were no use any more.

Mitch, Scots had a referendum a year ago and rejected independence. They did so in all of Scotland with the exception of Glasgow. They then voted for the SNP two days ago, with equal comprehensiveness. Is this a contradiction or about-face? No, they supported the SNP not because it is nationalist or because they’d changed their minds on independence, but because they wanted Scottish values, social values – a strong public sphere, strong social provision, equality of wealth – taken to Westminster.

This outcome might result in a greater degree of devolution or federalism but is very unlikely to result in breakup of the UK. Very, very unlikely.

As for whether it plays into the hands of the Tories, well, the problem with that is it scapegoats Scots for a problem that resides within Labour. Scots watched as New Labour weakened the welfare state, as New Labour endorsed the war in Iraq, as New Labour allowed the NHS to get eroded, as Labour didn’t resist austerity, etc. If Labour wanted to retain the loyalty of Scottish voters, it needed to do so on a real commitment to alter this course. Miliband inched a bit closer to that and had some symbolic “left” qualities but kept making all kinds of signals that he was at best a vacillator rather than a departure from the norm.

Furthermore, there’s a strategic issue here. If Miliband had instead of saying “I won’t make you a deal” to Sturgeon instead pitched, even in the English marginals, the idea that a coalition between Labour and the SNP, far from being some kind of shakedown of the English pocketbook, might be in all of the UK’s mutual interest (I know, a utopian thought since it would involve vision and courage), and that those fearing such a coalition were the bankers in the City, etc., then the whole Tory fear-mongering might have been turned round. Taking that supposed weakness and making it a strength was the only way out of the box the Tories wanted him in. Instead he stayed in the box.

Look to Labour for Labour’s crisis, don’t scapegoat the Scots.

JW@224: How do these two statements fit together:

In which case, when someone says that we should be more thoughtful about how we talk with and about women, that must be asking for special treatment. — in which you seem to be criticizing the idea that judging fairly and thoughtfully implies “special treatment.”]

and

Actual equal treatment requires differential effort. — in which you seem to be implying that judging fairly and thoughtfully does imply special treatment. Or perhaps you could differentiate “differential effort” from “special treatment”?

NB – This is not (yet, anyway) a disagreement, just a request for clarification.

‘at a time when Scotland could have pushed Labour in a better direction, the Scots cannot influence Labour because they are no longer its key stronghold’ (Mitch Guthman, 217)
If losing all but one of their Scottish seats does not make Labour reconsider their position, then keeping those seats certainly would not have influenced anything. You can either influence or you can give unconditional support, not both.
‘I believe they have inadvertently just aligned themselves as the Conservatives’ greatest source of support.’
Look at the electoral map: the Tories greatest source of support is Middle England. You want to blame someone for Tory victory, the actual Tory voters would be the place to start.

JW Mason: Please disregard my comment @229. I see what you’re saying, and agree with you: it’s not that we should apply different standards to women’s performance, it’s that we often, or usually, have to try harder to apply the same standards.

Ed – A good post, but: I don’t see it as at all persuasive to say this was the same people voting on the same grounds. There were many former Labour voters, who had voted No on independence, who voted SNP here without at all endorsing independence. Note that Nicola Sturgeon in the first leaders’ debate never mentioned independence. That was her stunning breakthrough and it was all on austerity. The current election was not seen as a replay of the independence vote, and plenty voted SNP because they were seeing the election as a referendum on austerity. And because instead of seeing Scottish Labour as a reflection of their interests, they saw it as the stalking horse of English New Labour.

Christopher Phelps at 235,

I think your analysis of why the Scots voted as they did is absolutely correct. Where we disagree is in the likely consequences of the vote. Again, the crucial point is that the nationalist agenda of the SNP makes a vote for them something quite different from a vote for the Greens with a social justice and environmental agenda or, hypothetically, a newly divorced Liberal Party with an anti-austerity agenda.

They may have thought they were participating in a referendum on austerity and New Labour, and returning a solid block of MP’s for another other party would have been seen that way, but by choosing the SNP as the mechanism for the protest, the Scots inevitably and perhaps unintentionally transformed it into something else. I believe that was a serious mistake.

@238 Engels Great! :)
(Though it’s Rupert Murdoch’s offices in Canary Wharf I would really like to occupy.)

RE MS Bennett: Severalpeople have posted links to her dreadful interview with Nick Ferrari, but for those who have not followed them up it might be worth looking at transcript, which shows why you do not have to be a dedicated misogynist to doubt she is fit for her position:

Nick: The third key theme is ‘The Greens will ensure everyone has a secure, affordable place to live. How would that be brought about?
Natalie: A couple of things that we want to focus on. In terms of council housing, we want to build 500,000 new social rent homes.
Nick: Good lord, where would you get the money from for that?
Natalie: Well, what we want to do is fund that particularly by removing tax relief on mortgage interests for private landlords. We have a situation where…
Nick: How much would that bring in?
Natalie: Private landlords at the moment are basically running away with the situation of hugely rising rents while collecting huge amounts of housing benefit.
Nick: How much would that be worth, the mortgage relief for private landlords?
Natalie: “Erm… well… it’s… that’s part of the whole costing.”
Nick: Yes, but how much would that bring? The cost of 500,000 homes, let’s start with that. How much would that be?
Natalie: “Right, well, that’s, erm… you’ve got a total cost… erm… that we’re… that will be spelt out in our manifesto.
Nick: So you don’t know?
Natalie: No, well, err.
Nick: You don’t, ok. So you don’t know how much those homes are going to cost, but the way it’s going to be funded is mortgage relief from private landlords. How much is that worth?
Natalie: Right, well what we’re looking at with the figures here. Erm, what we need to do is actually… uh……… we’re looking at a total spend of £2.7… billion.
Nick: 500,000 homes, £2.7billion? What are they made of, plywood?
Natalie: Erm, basically what we’re talking about is 500,000 new homes and basically each one pound spent on this brings back £2.40…
Nick: Yes, but what is the total cost of 500,000 homes?
Natalie: [Long, long pause] Erm… it’s a cost of £60,000 per home.
Nick: £60,000 per home?
Natalie: Because what we’re talking about is, is the opportunity for…
Nick: That can’t include the land?
Natalie: Well, what we’re talking about is, what we want to see is the possibility of, um, of homes being built…
Nick: That’s not much more than a large conservatory, £60,000. So where’s the land, how are you going to pay for the land?
Natalie: [Even longer pause] Right, well, what we’re, what we’re looking at doing is, is… is basically *cough, cough, cough*
Nick: Are you alright?
Natalie: Yes, sorry, as you can probably hear, I have got a huge cold.
Nick: I’m terribly sorry to hear that.
Natalie: So, so what we need to do is, is social rental homes.
Nick: Right. Still don’t see how you’re going to get this… some at £60,000… you don’t actually know how much this is going to cost, do you?
Natalie: Uh, yes, we’ve got a fully-costed programme which we’ll be releasing, which will be released…
Nick: Shouldn’t you be aware of what that cost will be now?
Natalie: Uh, right, yes. So what we’re talking about is £6billion per year. So the current budget is £1.5billion a year.

Nick: £6billion? That will be attained by taking mortgage relief from private landlords? That’s £6billion-worth is it?
Natalie: And we’re also looking at investing… [long pause]. Yes, well, it’s… we’ve got the fully costed figures here.
Nick: You’ve said that on a couple of occasions. How much does mortgage relief from private landlords bring in then?
Natalie: [Long pause] *cough, cough* Basically, we’re talking about an overall saving of £4.5billion.
Nick: What? Mortgage relief is worth £4.5billion a year?
Natalie: And this is other saving as well, from private landlords as well, we’re looking at housing benefit reforms and what we also want to do is bring in caps on private tenants.
Nick: Yes, do you think you could have perhaps have ginned up on this a bit more Natalie Bennett?

@207
Actually I’ve had a glimpse of your politics before, and I think they’re probably worth pushing back against, but no, but in this case it’s your continued refusal to see that if you are genuinely left, then your first response to this election should not be to diss female leaders and attack genuinely left parties as being the cause of the problem.

Both Mitch and Harry have now explained their position and their thoughts on the election, which are obviously more complicated than that. Nevertheless, that was their reaction in the early comments (in Harry’s case, admittedly, a small, but significant, part of it).

So, as I have said above, I am happy to modify what I said above. Final version: right wing Labor/Labour are destroying the left, and I really wish they would stop pretending to be left. (With the added comment that Mitch and Harry sound like right wing Labourites and a request for clarification, but I won’t say that this time as they have already done that).

That would have been the more polite version, sure, but nothing you have said has persuaded me that an occasional shock tactic, to make people think about what they are saying and doing, is a hopelessly bad idea.

“If … you want people to assume that you’re not a fool, you have to meet us half way”.

I don’t think there’s an “us” here, you’re the only person suggesting this as far as I can see. And a large part of the reason seems to be that you don’t understand what I’m saying, or more likely don’t want to – which doesn’t make me the foolish one in encounter.

Sorry to be repetitive, but if a feminist makes a critique and you don’t understand it, you shouldn’t necessarily assume that she’s the fool. I’m not going to talk to you any more because you are determined not to understand me, as far as I can see, but I won’t let you put me off having a voice in public debates. You should seriously understand that the way you have been talking to me probably helps to explain why you often don’t get many women on CT threads.

I see Tony Blair is calling for Labor to return to the centre
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/may/09/tony-blair-labour-return-centre-ground-general-election-defeat

He also says that hard working families should be able to “rise up” and be “better off” but that Labour should pay more attention to inequality than he did. I don’t know if this is a centrist position or just a load of gibberish.

I think the key issues that need to be clarified are: what are they rising up and who are they being better off than? Other people? Or just than they used to be? And is it only hard working families that should be better off (than non hardworking families?) or should everyone be? How is “if you work hard, you deserve to be better off” different from a conservative position? And how is it reconciled with addressing inequality?

Is anyone from the UK prepared to have a go at explaining what Blair is actually calling for? Probably a vain hope, I guess.

After the leaders’ debate (the one cameron and clegg could be arsed to turn up for), there was a massive cry from progressives in england and wales; why can’t we vote for nicola?! Then miliband came out with; I’d rather cameron wins than have any progressive influence in government, it turnes all these voters off. For labout, this was electoral suicide and largely account for the disparity between early polling and the exit-poll and the result.

As for the lib-dems, you can argue the toss which way their voters went (hint: most people don’t change their minds, they stay at home). their seats went 2:1 to tories rather than labour. Not one went to ukip.

engels @221

Btw does anyone know what’s going to happen to Miliband’s policy cenotaph now?

Off the top of my head, the only meaning of “cenotaph” I know is “empty tomb,” which is presumably not what you meant? Is this a (derogatory) Britishism for “personal policy think tank” or something?

Off the top of my head, the only meaning of “cenotaph” I know is “empty tomb,” which is presumably not what you meant? Is this a (derogatory) Britishism for “personal policy think tank” or something?

No, it’s worse than that and it actually kind of eats me up inside to type this to a foreigner. The Labour Party decided to have its five “policy pledges” engraved, by a stonemason, on a ten foot high piece of stone. To show the public that their promises were “carved in stone”. Miliband said that if elected, he would have the stone placed in the garden of Downing Street, to remind him every day. This all happened. There was a press conference in front of the stone and everything. Oh god I’m embarrassed. I presume that the other side of the stone was blank, so it will end up as a counter top in someone’s kitchen, but that is the reference to “Miliband’s Policy Cenotaph”.

Thanks Daniel. The last Q was poorly written on my part, what I meant was more along the lines of has it been spoken by a substantial portion of the population consistently across generations or is its current strength part of a more recent revival. Wiki tells me it was a more recent resurgence of interest dating from last 50 years or so?

216 Thanks for this and to everyone for their own very interesting contributions. I think, btw, you’re being rather unfairly savaged for your support of the Lib-Dems. The last thing the left needs is more infighting, especially when the only kind of politics that’s going to reign in Tory excesses will depend very much on setting differences aside. There’s lots, too, to be done at local levels. So, please take your time and decide precisely where you’d like to park.

To respond to your very sensible remark re: neutrality. Two points: hindsight is 20/20. I can say that at our house and in our family politics is a private matter, in that one does not ever ask how another family member voted. Nor do we advocate inside the home. The actual mix tilts left. I never heard a word pro or con from my numerous Scots relations during the vote, nor have I inquired since. Telling others how they should vote seems most unwise in almost all cases, and asking others after the fact is simply rude. Should others wish to volunteer the information – great. I think a very sound critique of the non-Scottish referendum activities can and should be mounted. I’ve read enough of the Scots press this May to understand that Cameron’s promises have very likely done far more damage than good.

As for your remark about “RED ED.” That kind of characterization is a constant, and not conditional on any individual action. As I mentioned, probably too often, Labour politics have become tiny – practiced by feeble, insecure leaders, with far too many individuals at the top lacking courage, vision, and principle – who abandoned the migrants they profess to protect, who don’t trust or like their own base – and who allow themselves to be guided by focus groups and spin-doctors rather than conscience vision and principle.

I find these qualities in many of the contributors here. We all deserve better.

@Kidneystones – many thanks for the kind words, and indeed you may be right about the Scottish referendum too – hypotheticals, counterfactuals and all that. Having said that, while it would be the height of rudeness indeed to tell someone how to vote, one-on-one, elections and referendums do involve campaigns. I still don’t see how Labour staying outside the Scottish one would have been anything less than disastrous, given that its becoming clear Cameron’s focus on the SNP was a core element of his majority.

@Val

I’d be much more open to considering whether I had mischaracterised your views if you didn’t write “this may not have occurred to you, but in spite of being a woman and a feminist, I am also an actual human being and I can read.” I don’t see how that can be construed in any other way as a snide insinuation that I’m some kind of misogynist because I don’t find your arguments RE: Bennett convincing in the slightest (other than that yes, of course, female politicians face immense challenges their male colleagues don’t) and think that Caroline Lucas was an obviously superior leader.

You might also try spelling my name right.

Labour’s New Leaders. Just took a quick peruse of major papers. The Mail is crowing, of course, about Labour’s leadership crisis. I’m sure others have a better understanding of the Labour leadership and can something positive to say about those touted to replace Ed. Ummuna is ranked no. 2 after David M., I find very little to admire in either. And they’re followed by list of people I very much want to forget.

Engels from somewhere back up a few comments (can’t find it at the minute) I think you’re half wrong re the public school thing. Wiki says miliband went to a comprehensive and Bennett was from a working class background and won a scholarship to a private school.

Christopher Phelps at 260,

You’re certainly right that, as we now know, even a clean sweep of Scotland by Labour wouldn’t have been enough. On the other hand, it seems to me that the overwhelming victory by the SNP changes things strongly in favor of the Tories and probably shifts the overall political center of gravity sharply to the right.

With Scotland as a Labour stronghold, Cameron was very limited in his ability to deal with the movement for Scottish independence. He desperately wanted those forty or so Scottish Labour MP gone from the Westminster parliament and the only way seemed like secession but he couldn’t be seen as facilitating that.

The only way Cameron could win was by being seen as having done everything humanly possible to keep Scotland and it Labour voters but failed through no fault of his own. But now, all the Scottish Labour MP’s are gone and Nicola Sturgeon is his stalking horse. Labour’s power base is gone and the SNP is no threat to him even if Scotland remains in the union because they can’t provide votes or support for Labour because the SNP is toxic everywhere outside of Scotland.

What will be the likely effect on Labour? Scotland provided a big chuck of Labour’s core support and it was pretty much left to center-left members chaffing under the “leadership” of basically centrist New Labor leaders. And they didn’t just vote: they voted in places where they returned Labour MP’s year after year. Now that leftist core is gone, the labour unions are pretty throughly alienated (having been disowned and disrespected by New Labour) and the temptation to shift further right in an effort to appeal to LibDem refugees will be irresistible.

It seems very unlikely that the widely dispersed and badly demoralized non-centrists in England will be in position to resist the call for New Labour move even further into the neoliberal, pro-austerity camp—even though I and may others here think that’s what doomed them in the first place. On the other hand, if Scotland had gone solidly for Labour, the election would have been very, very close and the Conservatives would have a much small, more vulnerable margin for error.

Labour’s loss probably wouldn’t have seemed quite so catastrophic and there would be a strong base of supporters in Scotland pushing for abandonment of the New Labour stupidity and a serious argument that a public abandonment of austerity would allow Labour to hold it core of support and perhaps expand it into key marginals in the next election. Now, there’re just wiped out.

Whether Scotland stays in the union or not, really doesn’t matter to Labour. Left-leaning Scotland is gone and can’t provide any pressure against even more austerity.
identity politics alienates Middle England but since New Labour rejects economic liberalism that once made acceptance of social justice palatable to ordinary Englishmen, where does that leave Labour except to remake itself as a party will keep running right to diminishing returns until, finally, it disappears. That’s a future that I think could have been resisted by a Labour Party that’s supported by a solid red Scotland.

Sorry, I have an unbelievably dumb question: ‘Plaid Cymru’ is pronounced plied (as in “applied”), cumri? I basically have no idea how to pronounce Welsh words/names.

Daragh @ 257
I’m getting incredibly tired of this, but I’m not going to give up.

The disagreement between myself and Harry was not over who was a better leader for the Greens. It was about the tone of his comment in this exchange:

Christopher Phelps @ 9
“….
4. Greens projected to double on two, so imagine what they might do if they obtain a more inspiring leader
…”

Harry b @ 14

“Chris, great to hear from you! Greens could do with any leader.”

I took objection to that as needlessly dismissive and disrespectful and after some further discussion, Harry said @ 142:

“… I apologise that it came off as badly as it did.
…
For what it’s worth, I’ll try to make sure your rebuke has some effect on my thinking and my comments.”

It was an argument about tone and whether his tone was needlessly disrespectful of a female left wing party leader. It was not, and I did not ever intend it to be, an argument about the merits of alternative Greens leaders. It appears that Harry has accepted that, I cannot for the life of me understand why you (and Daniel/dsquared, to whom I am not going to respond, because his arguments are so patently dishonest) need to keep this fight going.

You claim you’re not a misogynist – well why do you need to keep attacking me? What are you trying to prove? What’s it for?

I apologise for getting your name wrong, it was an autocorrect and I didn’t notice it till after I’d posted.

dsquared, thanks.

Thanks Neville, constituency, of course – I was vaguely aware of that, but it didn’t come to mind at the right moment (these pesky words)

js@265 it isn’t a dumb question. Welsh pronunciation is a bit difficult to get the hang of to start with – and there are also confusing subtleties.

Firstly “f” is “v”,
“ff” is “f”
“dd” is a voiced “th” as in “this”
“u” is a long “ee”
“i” is as above but slightly shorter – almost indistinguishable
combinations of vowels are always dipthongs.
Double ls “ll” are pronounced “chl” with “ch” as in Bach. That being said, one old Tenby friend of mine pronounces “Llanelli” as “Lanelthy” – but South Pembrokeshire, little England beyond Wales, has its own traditions going back a thousand years or more. Place names and some surnames indicate Viking settlement, eg a village called Freystrop, I guess corrupted from “Freyrstorp” Freyr’s village (or possibly Freya’s).

Different regions have different dialects of Welsh, which is really old British, once spoken from Cornwall to much of Scotland. Aberdeen is not a Gaelic name but a Brythonic/Welsh one.

:)

Daragh @ 272

People like me – evidence driven, fact checking people, who will scroll back through hundreds of comments to locate particular comments, check the context, copy and paste the quotes – are at a huge disadvantage when talking to people like you, who seem to just basically say whatever you feel like saying. But I will try the laborious process of responding to your points:

a) I’ve never called you a misogynist. You claimed @ 257 that I had made “a snide insinuation that I’m [ie you are] some kind of misogynist”, but I didn’t in fact, and I’m not even interested in that particular discussion in this context. The reason I referred to you not being a misogynist in #267 was that I was trying to use your language to get through to you.

b) You referred to a “ludicrous sub-debate” about Natalie Bennett’s flaws etc. As I’m the person who started the debate, I presume you are blaming me for this supposedly ludicrous debate. I’ve already explained to you, pretty clearly I think, that it wasn’t about her flaws but about the dismissive tone in which Harry referred to her. Why don’t you take that on board and admit you were wrong? That would be a good way to end the argument.

c) same as a) – I never said you hated women.

You know these kind of arguments are incredibly boring for people who aren’t involved in them (well actually they’re pretty boring for me too, but I have made a commitment I will argue this through, and not just give up in disgust and walk away, which is what I think most women in this situation would do), so I possibly won’t answer at such length in future, but if you want to be an ally, why not just do that?

Don’t mourn, fight dirty: https://www.change.org/p/rt-hon-david-cameron-mp-we-now-require-that-david-cameron-keep-his-promise-of-a-law-guaranteeing-no-increases-in-income-tax-rates-no-rise-in-vat-or-widening-of-its-scope-or-any-increases-in-national-insurance-before-2020?recruiter=46659498&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=share_facebook_responsive&utm_term=des-lg-no_src-custom_msg&fb_ref=Default

Nicola and Alex seem to be having a bit of a public spat as to what the consequences of the SNP victory actually mean. The Telegraph misses the point, which may lie more in the tone of Nicola’s comments more than anything.

” The SNP proposed increasing departmental spending in its election manifesto and is likely to fight against every Tory cut, as well as pushing for more powers for Scotland. Ms Sturgeon said Mr Cameron would have to go further than the devolution agreed in last year’s Smith Commission and suggested the party will push for Holyrood to get powers to set minimum wage and business taxes. The SNP leader also distanced herself from her predecessor Mr Salmond’s claim that the party’s success at the general election was a “staging post” on the way to independence. “What Alex said – and I don’t think it’s a particularly controversial statement – is that he thinks Scotland will become an independent country. I think Scotland will become an independent country one day. He said he thinks it will be in his lifetime. I hope that’s the case,” Ms Sturgeon said. ”

There’s been some speculation about what the SNP’s spectacular victory actually means to the Scots, and I’d suggest that Nicola is speaking here primarily to her own constituents rather than to the broader public, assuring the Scottish public who did, after all, resoundingly vote NO on independence just last fall, that the wishes of the Scottish public will be respected. As in, the Scottish public currently wants to remain in the UK. Whatever one thinks of Cameron it’s extremely unlikely that he has any desire to enter the history books as the PM who won an election only to see the break-up of the UK. I’m aware that I’m reading a great deal into just a few remarks, but Nicola will have a much sharper understanding of the mood of the Scottish public than just about everyone.

“To get back to the point: either Clegg’s performance was lacking, and/or his message was unconvincing because of his legacy. In either case, Natalie Bennett’s performance was good by comparison!”

Well we’re not comparing Clegg to Bennett, we’re talking about Bennett on her own merits. And as bad as Clegg did/was – 8 seats is 7 more than one! And not to belabour a point but public presentation is a HUGE part of leading a modern political party – see Miliband, Ed.

As to the Green platform, which I’ve avoided discussing – I stopped reading it once I got to the sections on defence (which, to me, read as a pledge to abolish the armed forces) and international policy, which called for the UK to abolish the UN Security Council… somehow. These are, to put it mildly, extremely silly and unworkable ideas. Along with the ‘we’re happy with Bennet’s leadership internally, even if she’s a terrible public performer’ has convinced me the Greens are simply not serious about working for, and achieving power to implement policy. And if that’s the case, why vote for them?

“Engels, from somewhere back up a few comments (can’t find it at the minute) I think you’re half wrong re the public school thing.”

It’s here. I’m not.

https://crookedtimber.org/2015/05/07/uk-election-open-thread-2/comment-page-6/#comment-628040

“@engels… the sneering tone of your comment… is… also a big part of why Labour lost on Thursday”

Sorry bout dat.

“And not to belabour a point but public presentation is a HUGE part of leading a modern political party”

An aspect of leading the party, but how important when people decide how to vote ? Provisionally and without a huge amount of certainty I’m going to say it features quite far down the list of factors that effect voting behaviour (didn’t the Greens share of the vote rise in this election?)

Daragh @281 “Well we’re not comparing Clegg to Bennett ….”

Well you might not have been, but I was, because it’s relevant to the election results, and this is an election open thread. Ie YOU don’t decide what it’s about. If we look at the changes in the national vote share as a guide to leadership ability, Nicola Sturgeon and Nigel Farage came top, Cameron, Miliband and Bennett performed positively, although not wonderfully, and Clegg performed abysmally.

Of course, its rather more complex than that but, as a first approximation, it works.

basil – you have been making that point pretty consistently throughout the thread (I should have registered agreement earlier, but perhaps got sidelined a little on account of the various digressions)
But, do you think ‘leadership’ (or how the public views the candidate) matters that much in a Presidential system (say the US) ? I can imagine it matters somewhat, and more so than it does in this case, but even during the US presidential election would you think things like party platform, the economy, constituency work etc matter considerably more than the personal characteristics of the candidate ?

@ 290
What’s this mysterious intervention about? Sounds rather hostile, but it’s not clear why.

> (which, to me, read as a pledge to abolish the armed forces)

You seem to like the phrase “read to me as”. Do you often find that things read to you differently to how they read to other people?

Janie, that snark was unworthy of you.

Re the subthread on Welsh: I don’t really know anything about the language (Sasha C.’s pronunciation primer makes it look very difficult), except I recall that Shaw in one of his prefaces or stage directions says something like “there is no adequate notation for the grave music of good Welsh” (that’s as I recall the phrase, it may be off a bit). Unfortunately, Google seems to return no hits for it and is thus not helpful in tracking down its exact source.

LFC – I learned to pronounce Welsh by singing in a male voice choir – even Cockneys in my local one get the hang after a while. One good thing about Welsh is that spelling to pronunciation is far more consistent than English.

Here’s an example:
http://www.meucymru.co.uk/music/harps/alawteln/siheilwl.htm

(and which used to show C4 shows at night back in those days

it was also (via the ace football show Sgorio) the first British broadcaster to realise that there was value in Serie A broadcasting rights.

You’re right. That’s what I was thinking aswell. (I thought they had preniership rights for a bit,but it was Serie A)

Val,
I agree that those ‘compass’ sites aren’t ideal, but pace Richard M, I don’t think they are crafted by libertarians. In answering the questions, one sees that confirming left-liberal assumptions about markets and the state as inescapable can get you to the extreme bottom left corner, i.e. there’s no conception of political choices that aren’t for some idea of the state and capitalism. My sense of it is that even proposals that a parliamentary party, i.e. one that participates in the state like the Greens would put forward are, to put it mildly, etc, too silly to be plotted onto the compass.

But that UK one does reflect my understanding of where pro-war, pro-City, pro-ASBOs and IDs, immigration-mug, British jobs for British workers, burgeoning prison population, tough-on-crime, tough-on-the-causes-of-crime Labour would be. I’d go further than Sasha in his comment above, the likes of Balls, Mandelson, Blair, Reid are proper right-wingers – maybe wet or compassionate or some other modifier but they’d easily fit into Cameron’s party. They certainly don’t subscribe to an egalitarian ideal.

Above, HRC has been name-checked twice to establish left and feminist cred, and David Miliband was proposed as a true left alternative to Red Ed, so I don’t know that such distinctions mean anything any more.

Ronan,
I’ve imagined Blair, Thatcher, Kohl led this presidential turn, but the effect of the presidential leader debates is to entrench it so that notions of first-among-equals are discarded and great media events fore-grounding confidence, charisma and some idea of ‘balls’ are promoted over party platforms.

@Daniel #300: slightly puzzled by this, as seems to conflate Bennett’s performance in different aspects of role as leader – which is what I was talking about – with the contents of the Green manifesto, which she may have influenced to a degree but certainly didn’t determine. Equally I was talking about way she herself was treated in national media, compared to e.g. Farage, rather than scrutiny of individual candidates on Twitter.

The late great Jake Thackray warned against the cult of leadership in his song “Beware of The Bull”

The hero gets to the microphone, and then:

…”down it comes: slick, slithery pat!
If you must put people on pedestals, wear a big hat.
The tongue he’s got is pure gold, the breast is pure brass,
The feet are pure clay – and watch out for the arse.

Beware of the Bull …. “

Harry, yes, though I think we met actually face to face in 1990, right? I won’t belabor in what association, but as I recall it feminism was one of the cardinal principles, one of the two most prominent ones, indeed. But we’re still young, man, I promise. Fifty more years!

Val, I suspect the values are pretty broadly shared here, it’s just the times are beyond shitty.

Oh, and Val, you are right that on CT you will find the “pragmatic” left quite strong, but these days I don’t think it works to say they’re not left or get pulled into such metaphysical categories. Me, I’m now casting about to find a way to move to Scotland: Scotch, salmon, social democracy, a lovely lilting accent, and a hearty refusal to do as told, my kind of people. (Anyone hiring, contact me offlist… Hey, you never know.) So as you can see when I said the Greens got more than a million votes at the beginning despite its lacking leadership that was for me a *positive* indicator, as too the SNP vote, of a potential for resistance and renaissance underlying the wretched outcome.

Ronan @291,
I agree that those other factors are important/play a part, but presidents *claim* a personal mandate to direct affairs as they think best – like a legally constrained and term-limited monarch. They campaign for a personal mandate, can pick almost anyone into their Cabinet, rule against their party’s preferences, etc. Consistent with that logic, I think it makes sense that they are personally scrutinised.

Sasha, Christopher Phelps
Thank you for your contributions. I’ve learnt a lot from you both.

Sasha @296,
I meant to say that liberals are attached to hierarchies. I grant that they don’t like these to be particularly pernicious or restrictive as to who gets to be dominant, but they don’t aspire to equality or flatness. I felt that much of this thread and the concerns about the leadership capabilities of Bennett or Miliband reflected that liberal preference. Thank you for The Bull!

seems to conflate Bennett’s performance in different aspects of role as leader – which is what I was talking about – with the contents of the Green manifesto, which she may have influenced to a degree but certainly didn’t determine.

But what’s a failure to manage the policy process, if not a failure of leadership? If not something like this, then what are you referring to in saying that she did a good job of party management? Sending the newsletters out on time?

Paul Krugman is scathing. Before the results were out he wrote: “Britain’s election should be a referendum on a failed economic doctrine, but it isn’t, because nobody with influence is challenging transparently false claims and bad ideas. … Labour’s leaders probably know better, but have decided that it’s too hard to overcome the easy appeal of bad economics, especially when most of the British news media report this bad economics as truth.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/08/opinion/paul-krugman-triumph-of-the-unthinking.html

This is very relevant to the debate about leadership. When, as in a party like the Greens, people know what they stand for, and there is agreement and cooperation, leadership might not be too important. But the Labour Party was not like that. Ed Miliband, more numerate and more knowledgeable in Economics than the rest of his shadow cabinet, was a prisoner of the New- Labourites within it. I often read the pronouncements of Ed Balls, Tristram Hunt, Rachel Reeves, Chuka Umunna and others, wondering why the Hell they were in the Labour Party at all!

Now the New Labour worms are weaselling out of the woodwork and saying that Ed Miliband lost because he was too left wing, and that the only way for the labour Party to win power is to promise not to do anything worthwhile with it. This is being hyped up by the right wing press who want the Labour Party to be a Tory Party with a red tie to save their plutocratic bacon when the voters get tired of the real thing.

My conclusion is that if you haven’t got the guts to say what you stand for, you cease to stand for anything.

Even had Labour won the election, the New Labour old guard would have obstructed Miliband’s premiership. But Labour lost Scotland, precisely because the Scots did not trust Labour, and preferred, as Paul Mason put it “a form of plebeian national leftism” which was confidently espoused by the SNP. Once this debacle was perceived to be inevitable, we can see in hindsight that Labour’s campaign in England and Wales was fatally undermined. None of this supports the Blairite narrative of course.

My conclusion is that the Labour Party in its present form is done for. Too many members have voted with their feet since the early naughties, and a right wing leader will lose even more members on the ground. In many areas there is nobody left to to number taking duty at polling stations: in my village there were no party reps there at all this time. This would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago.

Oh, and Basil, thanks. Signing off now, probably for another 15 months or whatever my typical CT intervals are…

Daragh @ 316
Just for the record, and because I really don’t like being misquoted, I didn’t ever accuse you of misogyny. You made that accusation up.

We have a saying in Australia, I wonder if others have anything similar:

Go to Bunnings*, buy some timber, build yourself a bridge and get over it.

Maybe you could do that about the imaginary misogyny complaint?

* (substitute your local hardware store as required)

You wrote this – “you know Darragh, this may not have occurred to you, but in spite of being a woman and a feminist, I am also an actual human being and I can read”. If you’d like to offer an interpretation of that that ISN’T calling me a misogynist I’d be glad to hear it.

You’ve spent this thread loudly accusing Bennett’s critics of ‘dissing left-wing women’ while admitting you didn’t follow the campaign, attack your opponents motivations at every opportunity then denying you ever did such a thing, and showing magnanimity only to those who tell you you’re fundamentally right while doing your best to drive everyone else out of the debate, even those like Daniel Davies who are fundamentally ON YOUR SIDE OF IT, rather than accept any sort of compromise or even acknowledgement that Bennett’s critics MIGHT be motivated by, say, the LBC interview rather than her gender. And on top of all this you’ve delegated to yourself the duty of declaring what is and isn’t ‘left’, mainly as a means of delegitimising your critics.

Funnily enough, many of the post-mortems of Thursday’s debacle have focused on the alienation of many voters from the Labour party and left-wing politics in general due to perceptions of arrogance, obnoxiousness and obsessive ideological policing on the part of political elites who rush to diminish their concerns as the product of various isms and a general lack of cultural and political enlightenment, and when confronted with people who agree with them on 80% of the issues, damn them as heretics for the remaining 20%.

Val – I, and many others on this thread, made a good faith effort to be generous and extend you an olive branch in order to find some common ground. You responded by slapping it away and doubling down on the defence of the tiny strip of land you occupy as the one true left. If you’re wondering why left-wing politics is so ineffectual and unsuccessful at the moment, I’d take a look at the nearest mirror.

Daragh,

Val is not under an obligation to compromise or be agreeable, she can just argue her own point.

Australian centre-left politics seems to be more left than UK centre-left politics as we Australians have mentioned a few times before. The Economist Ross Garnaut said we have a fairer type of Neo-liberalism here than in the UK or USA.

And in political arguments you don’t have to be agreeable in Australia as we are more blunt – when our Liberal Prime Minister offended the Malaysian Prime Minister he said

““[The Malaysian Prime Minister] knows we play our politics pretty hard in our country and I think he understood.””

Val – my apologies. I didn’t see your comment at 330 before posting my own at 332. While I still don’t agree with your argument or the way you make it, your graciousness is appreciated, and agreed – lets leave it be for the moment and return to the topic when emotions over the results are less raw.