Who will win the UK election ?

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Mr F has said he'll stand again in the Autumn.

After the way he acted last night / this morning, there's no way I would vote for him if he stood in my constituency.

He's not coming across with any dignity in my opinion.

kabayiri

Red Eds on the podium and opens up his speech with "friends".

What about the 99.99999% rest of us?

Selfish s*d.

catshark88

Well who'd have thought it?
Cons need 1 more seat for a win, Farage, Clegg and Milliband gone.

it will be a fascinating time.

Generali

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

Don't know enough about the Greek system.

What would be wrong with full PR i.e.

CON 36.8% = 240 seats
LAB 30.5% = 198 Seats
UKIP 12.6% = 92 Seats
LD 7.8% = 51 Seats
SNP 4.8% = 31 Seats
GRN 3.8% = 25 seats
Others = 33 Seats


It would possibly engage more of the public to come out and vote

Under the Greek system you get double seats per vote for coming first. I'm not saying first should get double but perhaps a bonus.

There is a trade-off perhaps between governing and governance. Yes things should be 'fair' but ultimately the point of a Government is to govern. Any electoral system needs to leave a Parliament able to govern the country.

Jason74

Out,_Vile_Jelly wrote: »

Slightly alarmed at what an unfettered Tory government (the first of my adult lifetime) might do.

I must admit, I'm a lot more than slightly alarmed at that prospect. Now I make no bones about being very much left leaning, and actually supported many of the more "left wing" policies that Milliband was promting (Mansion tax, return of 50p rate, private sector rent reform etc.), but even from that starting point, I would have to say that the coalition didn't do a bad job. Yes, there were individual policies that I strongly disagreed with, but the overall direction of travel was to get the public finances under control, without complete destruction of the services that the most vulnerable in our society depend on.

But I think the reason that some kind of balance was maintained, was the presense of the Lib Dems in Government, providing some kind of checks and balances to a Tory leadership that imho has a particularly strong ideological tendnency to shrink the state, with the resulting impact on the poorest in society. I think that people may be about to find out the hard way how much of a positive balancing influence the Lib Dems have had on Government over the past five years. The prospect of Cameron and Osborne running riot without that balancing influence is truly scary imho.

All of that said, it's worth noting that for all that I agreed with Milliband's programme (and actually liked him personally), I didn't vote Labour. My reason for that was based purely on his refusal to admit that the last Labour Government overspent when challenged on this last week. Even though I agreed with allmost all of his programme, I just couldn't vote for someone who tacitly said that running 4%+ defecits in the middle of a boom was Ok. If someone as sympathetic to his aims as I am felt unable to vote for him based on that comment, I wonder just how many votes he lost in that instance, and how that translatde into seats.

The_Last_Username

So, three down after their disastrous results.
BUT .... the one many of us would LOVE to see resign - Natalie Bennett - hangs on.

IveSeenTheLight

Generali wrote: »

Under the Greek system you get double seats per vote for coming first. I'm not saying first should get double but perhaps a bonus.

There is a trade-off perhaps between governing and governance. Yes things should be 'fair' but ultimately the point of a Government is to govern. Any electoral system needs to leave a Parliament able to govern the country.

No disagreeing that the parliament needs to govern.

As I said earlier, true PR would have resulted in different strategies being played out, but if the results were as last night, we would probably have seen a Cons / UKIP coalition, obtaining the majority of seats in parliament and covering the majority of the electorate

Jason74

Generali wrote: »

I like the Greek idea where the leading party by popular vote gets bonus seats though.

While I agee that there's a big uspide to that idea in principle, I'm not sure that Greece is a good model to follow for anything regarding Governance

michaels

Jason74 wrote: »

All of that said, it's worth noting that for all that I agreed with Milliband's programme (and actually liked him personally), I didn't vote Labour. My reason for that was based purely on his refusal to admit that the last Labour Government overspent when challenged on this last week. Even though I agreed with allmost all of his programme, I just couldn't vote for someone who tacitly said that running 4%+ defecits in the middle of a boom was Ok. If someone as sympathetic to his aims as I am felt unable to vote for him based on that comment, I wonder just how many votes he lost in that instance, and how that translatde into seats.

Agree with you that another coaliton would have ben the best outcome.

Definitiely agree with you that the often replayed quote of him refusing to agree Labour had overspent almost certainly resonated negatively with a lot of voters.

What is it about being a politican that means you can never admit to making mistakes? It seems to be about the only thing all politicians have in common. Is there some research/experience that shows the electorate will never vote for someone who admits they have made mistakes and learned from them?

wotsthat

Well they've done it. It was only yesterday the talk was of the new paradigm of permanent coalition.