2015 General Election

a good job they are only in opposition then.- Figg

We will see if you still think after another 5 years of Tory austerity and abuse of the poorest, with their 20billion of welfare cuts still to come hitting child benefit and disability whilst giving tax breaks to the wealthiest.

Nice one England- thanks for that, again

I remember Labour in 1997 saying stuff like 'we are the bold progressive party' look where that got us. I hope the SNP walks the walk and well as talking the talk, but I doubt it. Nick Clegg was once the new messiah and look where he is now. Sooner or later ALL voters realise that politicians are basically the same. self interested and will shaft you as soon as it suits. I hope this is a learning period for Labour and Lib-Dems, how did it go so wrong, and it went wrong because they promised they would be fair to the poor, obviously people didn't believe them, like I don't believe Scottish people are suddenly going to be better off with Sturgeon. In 5 years time when people have been truly let down by the SNP and the scales have fallen, then maybe Labour have a chance of regaining some ground, and I hope they do because its going to be Tories for the next 20 years if they don't.

edit probably 30 years if Boris becomes the next PM.

I hope the SNP walks the walk and well as talking the talk, but I doubt it. Nick Clegg was once the new messiah and look where he is now. - Figg

There is a big difference here Figg, one you seem to ignore, the SNP are not new, they are not the latest one hit wonders of the political world or a fad, they have been the government of Scotland now for seven years.
We have seen how they go about it, we have seen the sort of policies they pursue, we have seen them balance the Scottish budget every year.
They didn't get these votes just as a protest, they earned them from the people by being competent, listening to the people and reflecting that in policies.

After seven years and counting of seeing them as the government I doubt there are scales to fall off anyone's eyes up here.

I am not sure what it is you find so hard to accept about the idea they might just have done a decent job, and a noticeably better one than the other parties ever had, and people simply like that.
You seem instead to be certain that the SNP are somehow some terrible force for evil who have just somehow successfully fooled all the people of Scotland for the better part of a decade.

Perhaps if the English had actually seriously looked at what has been happening here rather than going with this weird invented English narrative of what has happened, it would never have got to this point.

The bigger story for Labour is not being wiped out in Scotland but flopping in England. Even if they had taken all the Scottish seats that the SNP won, they would still be in second place and the Conservatives would still have a majority.

Yup- which does rather show that in terms of who runs the country Scottish votes are irrelevant- if we vote on mass for one of the big two Westminster parties (as it was traditionally voting Labour) we still only get what England vote for, if we reject every Westminster party as this time- we get whatever England voted for. Makes no difference.

Why England voted Tory is an interesting question however. As is what happened to Labour in Wales? The Tories had their best election there in decades.

I am not sure what it is you find so hard to accept about the idea they might just have done a decent job, and a noticeably better one than the other parties ever had, and people simply like that.
You seem instead to be certain that the SNP are somehow some terrible force for evil who have just somehow successfully fooled all the people of Scotland for the better part of a decade.

er show me exactly where I have said the SNP are a force for evil? I was being pragmatic, we all thought Blair was all that, he wasn't, and neither is Sturgeon/Salmond.

Lib Dems kept saying last night that they were a moderating influence on the Tories.  The Telegraph has an article about what the Tories might try now that they have a majority.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/11593496/New-Commons-boundaries-top-Conservative-government-agenda.html

Redrawing constituency boundaries to lock Labour out of power for a decades is at the top of the agenda for the new Conservative government, senior Tories have said.

The changes to parliamentary boundaries, blocked in the last Parliament, could be confirmed quickly and take effect at the 2020 general election, party sources suggested.

Boundary reform is on a list of Tory policies the party was unable to implement in coalition with the Liberal Democrats and which the new government will now push ahead with.

Giving new powers to the police and security services to monitor electronic communications -- dubbed the “snooper’s charter” by critics -- will also be high on the Tory agenda.

Abolishing the Human Rights Act and implementing a British Bill of Rights is also on the list.

Creating new boundaries is regarded as unfinished business by many Tories. The party drew up plans to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 and standardise the size of constiuencies.

Tories say the current boundaries unfairly favour Labour, because the urban seats where it does best tend be smaller than the suburban seats where Tories thrive. The effect is that Labour requires fewer votes for each seat it wins, although its heavy losses to the SNP in Scotland lessen the impact of boundaries.

My understanding is that non-English constituencies do tend to be smaller than English constituencies, which isn't really fair.  And re-districting on a regular basis, while fraught with the potential for abuse, is important to keep up with population changes.  The article goes on to explain what the implications of changes would have been on this election and I think it makes the "lock Labour out of power for decades" lede seem pretty hyperbolic.  The current system has already given us periods of party dominance that lasted 18 and 13 years in recent history, but I think lasting much longer than that is highly unlikely.  Something will come up to alienate voters from the status quo in that time, including a general sense of restlessness.

EDIT: a proportional system would be better though, and it's interesting that with both the Greens and the UKIP getting fucked despite historically large numbers of votes, there will be pressure from both the left and the right on this issue.  But there was a referendum on voting reform just four years ago and it failed miserably so who knows.

I don't know enough about the Human Rights Act and the Tories' proposed alternative to have an opinion on that.  Increased electronic surveillance sucks, though.

we all thought Blair was all that- Figg

And he was found out once in office- the SNP have been in office for 7 years- if they are to be found out as frauds then we are still waiting to see it.

And everything you say about the SNP and your attitude towards them strongly implies you think they are dishonest and somehow fooling people into voting for them.

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Why England voted Tory is an interesting question however.

I certainly didn't!

Unfortunately I was expecting the Tories to come out on top (but not that extent) as I live in a conservative safe seat, speaking personally from people I know and local media I think that A) The promised EU referendum in 2017 2) The Fear factor over the SNP and another coalition government for the next five years 3) The English Press seemingly becoming increasingly right wing and foaming at the mouth at the thought of a Left Leaning government were probably influential in pushing wavering/tactical voters to a small degree (I wouldn't vote Tory but I didn't make my mind up till the night before election).

And locally at least, there seems to have been considerably more Conservative canvassing than other parties (haven't seen a single poster for Lab or Lib round here, I saw a fair few UKIP posters the other week, but that was in rural Somerset)

The euro referendum will be interesting- it has the potential to spark another Scottish independence referendum if England votes to leave and Scotland votes to stay.
And I don't think Cameron can just ignore the SNP result last night but what he is going to do about it is another matter- he has promised so far to implement the Smith Commission- problem there is its viewed as rushed, poorly thought out and doesn't go anywhere near far enough. But so far Cameron has offered nothing more than it.

These two vids go rather well together

malickfan wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Why England voted Tory is an interesting question however.

I certainly didn't!

Unfortunately I was expecting the Tories to come out on top (but not that extent) as I live in a conservative safe seat, speaking personally from people I know and local media I think that A) The promised EU referendum in 2017 2) The Fear factor over the SNP and another coalition government for the next five years 3) The English Press seemingly becoming increasingly right wing and foaming at the mouth at the thought of a Left Leaning government were probably influential in pushing wavering/tactical voters to a small degree (I wouldn't vote Tory but I didn't make my mind up till the night before election).

And locally at least, there seems to have been considerably more Conservative canvassing than other parties (haven't seen a single poster for Lab or Lib round here, I saw a fair few UKIP posters the other week, but that was in rural Somerset)

I think this is to a certain extent understandable when you think about what happened when labour was in power, global financial collapse, no money left, in the shit up to our eyeballs, people are still recovering and haven't forgotten, they are still afraid of labour and what happened to the economy. when times are tough people vote to the Right. people are genuinely scared of going back to that dark place the UK was in 5 years ago. its true the tories screw the poor, but with Labour in power  we would ALL be poor. The idea of a Labour gvt propped up by the SNP is the reason we now have a majority Tory gvt. it would have been horrendous.

it would have been horrendous.- Figg

Or a brave new dawn in which politics stops being a game played by a few exclusive people and becomes again the forum of the people (as it has become in Scotland where the town hall meeting, the politician out in the street meeting the people and listening to them have all come back with a vengeance- look at who we just elected compared to the Wesmtinister parties- they are career politicians surrounded by carefully stateg managed followers and events, they never go out and meet the people, there aren't town hall meetings all over England about politics, the SNP new members are teachers, students, professors, housewives, farmers, normal folk, look at the difference in make up- Westminster is a sea of mainly white middle aged men, SNP a wide variety of ages from 20 to 70 and a third of them women- thats the sort of ground roots politics England just turned down in favour of the carefully stage managed career politics of the Tories).

Th SNP dont have leftwing economic policies by and large, they are more right than left most of the time in that regard- so fears over the SNP spending money like water were always just bullshit dreamt up by the english press. It doesnt bear any scrutiny- and the Tories of all people know that as they were the ones who backed ever single SNP budget at Holyrood when the SNP were a minority government.
Do you honestly think the Tories were backing a left wing spend, spend budget?
The very fact the SNP have balanced the Sottish books whilst in power whilst at the UK level Westminster has let our balance spiral out of control should also tell you something.

This whole notion the SNP are a left wing spend spend party is a complete falsehood.

If Scotland stays and we go...things will be screwed....- Malick

God knows how that works if it happens- there would need to be border control between Scotland and England if we still have free movement and England don't.

'It's funny the English MP's are only demanding new powers after you guys get them....'

Yes, and especially as the powers we got were to try to correct a massive political imbalance- now its less of an imbalance England want to move further away and make it more imbalanced again by grabbing more powers.

English votes for English laws sounds fine in principle, ut in practice ver few things devolved to Scotland are actual fully in our control because of the Barnett Formula- Health for example is devolved but the Sottish budget is entirely dependent on the English and Welsh NHS budget for funding- it gets cut so do we.
So the idea Scottish MP's would be excluded from voting on a matter which directly affects our funding is a nonstarter.
But on the otherhand the notion of Sottish MP's voting on policies which dont effect Scotland is also out of balance- its just there are very few actual examples of that and loads of examples of English votes for English law people think are examples but which aren't when you get down to the detail.

"I have always believed in governing with respect.That's why in the last parliament we devolved power to Scotland and Wales, and gave the people of Scotland a referendum on whether to stay inside the United Kingdom."- David Cameron

GAVE the people of Scotland a referendum- oh well how magnanimous of you Dave- no mention of the fact it was backed with a strong democratic mandate, a landslide victory and the will of the Scottish people, or that you had about as much choice in what direction you went as a fart in a wind tunnel

Or a brave new dawn

Or a brave new dawn - Figg

Hardly my fault you have become so cynical you can see nothing else.



I thought this was a good summing up of the Scottish state of affairs by the BBC political editor for Scotland Brian Taylor-

'In no particular order, here are a few reasons for the remarkable results in Scotland.

My interlocutors were all agreed that the roots of the night are deep. One might cite Labour complacency in Scotland. Some inside the party attribute that phenomenon to the Westminster group in particular.
It is possible to attach credence to that viewpoint without going the whole way and endorsing the view, attributed to Wendy Alexander, that the Scottish Labour Party has not contributed an original idea to the body politic in a century or more.
One might also cite the long, slow erosion of Labour tribalism.
Labour has lost or corroded its links with working-class communities across Scotland. Those links have been supplanted by grassroots organisations. And SNP affiliates. It is no longer a given - has not for some time been a given - that Labour can be trusted to stand up effectively or uniquely for proletarian concerns.

From the other standpoint, the SNP has earned its success. It has been skilled and consensual in Holyrood government. It has demonstrated that it fields serious players and effective ministers.
Folk were not voting yesterday for independence. Nicola Sturgeon made that much clear. It is not a proxy for another referendum.
But, equally, the SNP standpoint is scarcely a secret. Seems that folk were not sufficiently deterred from voting for the Nationalists by the scares prompted by their rivals.
Alex Salmond was, and is, a highly skilled politician. He won an election at Holyrood then defied voting rules drawn up by Labour to take an overall majority. He governed and led, mostly, well. Consensually where possible.
His successor, Nicola Sturgeon, has gone further, running a superb campaign. She has been strategically dexterous, intellectually skilled and tactically grounded, pitching her arguments to exactly the right blend of potential support in Scotland.
She has swept her opponents aside.

In the aftermath of the referendum, folk in Scotland have been in a mindset which was focused upon the need for a clear Scottish voice.
That demand is inchoate and imprecise - in that it is not pegged directly or solely to a demand for particular devolved powers or a particular economic strategy.
It is, nevertheless, powerful and all-consuming. Perhaps all the more potent in that it is wide-ranging, rather than narrowly driven.
It is an aggregate feeling of remoteness from the concerns of a metropolitan elite, a feeling of physical and cultural distance from the Westminster centre of UK political life. A shout of anger, a yell of anguish, a demand to be heard. And that feeling found expression through the SNP."


Note Figg the emphasis put on how consensul the SNP have been in government- even when they got a majority and no longer needed the backing of other parties they still routinely consult them on legislation- because they believe you get better fairer, more widely acceptable law that way- imagine that attitude at Westminster instead of the old tribal ones- imagine a Westminster where more than a third of MP's are female. Imagine a Westminster where the politicians take to the streets to sound the views of the people.
Because thats the government style we have developed in Scotland- and if you Figg think that is only worth derision and laughter then frankly thats your lose and you deserve everything you get from the Westminster Old Etonians Boys Club. Which presumably given the derision with which you treat the Scottish Parliament is your idea of a perfect legislature.

There only have to be border controls it an independent Scotland was obligated to join Schengen. Whether they'd inherit the UK's opt-out is one of those question marks that comes from no country having left the EU before.

But if Scotland stays and England goes then we are the continuing member- so we would neither have left or joined but remained. So presumably what we are currently signed up to would remain in place.

A bigger question is what happens inbetween- if England votes to leave, Scotland votes to stay that could trigger a second scottish referendum, and going form that to indpendnece if its yes would take a few years- in which time would we remain members of Europe whilst the overall UK withdraw? Hard to see how that could work. On the otherhand can England pull Scotland out of Europe against its will whilst we hold another referendum?
Lots of questions, few answers.

Blaming Labour for the economic collapse is kind of weird since it was a global phenomenon. If you want to blame one country or party though, it started in the US. I understand that incumbent parties are usually ascribed responsibility for the state of the economy, good or bad, whether they deserve it or not. That probably helped the Conservatives this year, even though their austerity policies have been discredited.

If Scotland is still part of the UK in 2017, which they almost certainly will be, then they will stay or leave the EU along with the rest of the UK. Sub-national units don't get to join international organizations separately from their parent state, not the sort of organization the EU is anyway.