UK Politics MCMXXXIX: Should I stay or should I go now?

[Maltaran]

I voted for the council (protest vote for the Greens) and spoiled the PCC ballot.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

wish I had a decent protest vote candidate.  but with Tory, UKIP or Labour  and nothing else for council, not sure any of them count as a protest.

 

I did turn up though and spoiled both the ballots.  Tory will win the local seat easily, but we will have a very mixed council if the past is anything to go by.

 

I've only not turned up to vote once before, and I was very ill that day.

[ljkeane]

I did vote but we only had the PCC elections on where I live. I probably shouldn't have bothered really considering I think it's a pretty bad idea having elected police commissioners.

[Hereward]

I spoiled my ballot last time for the police commissioners, but as that didn't seem to swing the issue, I voted LidDem this time.

[Sophelia]

Curious: is there any evidence that spoiling votes can have an effect?  I've always voted even when not really happy with any of the choices - my view being that I am never indifferent to the outcome and therefore voting for the lesser of several evils is better than refusing to vote any evils (because otherwise the choice of evils is left entirely to people whose judgement I don't trust as well as my own!).

Generally though I think there is a chance of getting decent people in and I have to try.

The Northumbria LibDem PCC promised to campaign against his own existence - yours the same Hereward?

[Maltaran]

Birmingham PCC ballot didn't even have a Lib Dem candidate, they can't afford the deposit any more

[Hereward]

Sadly not. I voted LibDem though because I have always been a social liberal. I vote Tory because of defence and security policy.

[The BlackBear]

Voted in the Scottish Parliamentary elections, the only real question is how big the SNP win, and how much Labour will lose. Lib Dems just held Orkney and SNP took Rutherglen from Labour.

[lessthanluke]

I voted Plaid again. They actually won the seat next to mine after a big swing from Labour so we shall see what happens.

[mormont]

Odd set of results in the Scottish election. Turnout was actually up, which surprised me. To be honest, the Tories probably did best: they've wound up as the largest opposition party and doubled their seats. So that's great, but they still have only 31 out of 129; they're the largest opposition but they have less than half the seats the SNP do.

The SNP, meanwhile, won as expected but are two seats short of an outright majority after losing six seats overall. That's not surprising, as the 2011 result was exceptional, but it must be a bit disappointing particularly after the UK general election result. Still, they can probably rely on the support of the 6 Scottish Green party MSPs, either in a formal coalition or an informal arrangement, and should sail on relatively untroubled.

The Lib Dems won a couple of constituencies (including my own, ugh) and maintained their number of seats but they're now the smallest party in the Parliament and their share of the vote is static at a catastrophically low level.

UKIP came nowhere. Literally. Their share of the vote is too small to register.

Labour had a pretty awful result. Lost 13 MSPs from an already low level of 37. They now have 24 MSPs, almost all from the list: ten years ago, they had 50, almost all from constituencies.

There's a lot of talk about this all being the result of strategic voting against the SNP but the figures don't seem to support that. Instead it looks like the Tories simply did well and Labour did badly pretty much across the board, while the Lib Dems continue to bump along the bottom.

[Sir Thursday]

5 minutes ago, mormont said:

Odd set of results in the Scottish election. Turnout was actually up, which surprised me. To be honest, the Tories probably did best: they've wound up as the largest opposition party and doubled their seats. So that's great, but they still have only 31 out of 129; they're the largest opposition but they have less than half the seats the SNP do.

The SNP, meanwhile, won as expected but are two seats short of an outright majority after losing six seats overall. That's not surprising, as the 2011 result was exceptional, but it must be a bit disappointing particularly after the UK general election result. Still, they can probably rely on the support of the 6 Scottish Green party MSPs, either in a formal coalition or an informal arrangement, and should sail on relatively untroubled.

The Lib Dems won a couple of constituencies (including my own, ugh) and maintained their number of seats but they're now the smallest party in the Parliament and their share of the vote is static at a catastrophically low level.

UKIP came nowhere. Literally. Their share of the vote is too small to register.

Labour had a pretty awful result. Lost 13 MSPs from an already low level of 37. They now have 24 MSPs, almost all from the list: ten years ago, they had 50, almost all from constituencies.

There's a lot of talk about this all being the result of strategic voting against the SNP but the figures don't seem to support that. Instead it looks like the Tories simply did well and Labour did badly pretty much across the board, while the Lib Dems continue to bump along the bottom.

The impression I get from afar is that Labour lost their credibility as a proper "Opposition" party during the Referendum when they were campaigning to stay in. That was seen as the same position as the Conservatives on the National level, so I imagine there were quite a few people who looked at it and said "Well if they're going to be the same as the Conservatives, I might as well just vote for those guys instead". Does that match your experience at all, or am I just making shit up?

ST

[The BlackBear]

I think the referendum was more in folks minds than was expected. Ruth Davidson focused much more on that than Labour did, who went very hard on tax. I do suspect there was a degree of tactical voting in seats like mine where the Tories were in second place.

[mormont]

17 minutes ago, Sir Thursday said:

The impression I get from afar is that Labour lost their credibility as a proper "Opposition" party during the Referendum when they were campaigning to stay in. That was seen as the same position as the Conservatives on the National level, so I imagine there were quite a few people who looked at it and said "Well if they're going to be the same as the Conservatives, I might as well just vote for those guys instead". Does that match your experience at all, or am I just making shit up?

I don't think it worked quite like that, no. After all, their positions on the constitution aside, there's a great deal of clear difference between the Tories and Labour, even in Scotland, where both parties are somewhat to the left of the national parties. Moreover, in Scotland at least, direct switching from Labour to the Tories is rare.

I do think a lot of the Lib Dem vote went to the Tories this time around. But mostly I think the Tories just did a great job of getting their vote out, and Labour did a very bad job. The Tories had a well-liked leader and played on that (to the point where you hardly heard the name 'Conservatives' but heard 'Ruth Davidson' every two minutes): they had some middle-of-the-road policies they played up (while playing down the more right-wing ones): but mostly, they got their vote out by banging the constitutional drum. Even if it mostly went like this:

"The SNP are obsessed with the constitution!"

"OK, let's talk about schools then - "

"They can't shut up about it!"

"Well, we - "

"They're fixated on it!"

"But - "

"They just won't stop talking about independence!"

But it was smart tactics, as BlackBear notes. It got their vote out.

[Sir Thursday]

I'm pretty impressed by this website, which lets you view the election results for London as they come in. Some nice infrastructure they've got there!

Results counted so far seem to suggest that Sadiq Khan is going to be the new mayor - he's got a clear lead on first count votes, plus the Green party is in 3rd place and I can't imagine that many of those will go to Goldsmith. I was interested to see that in my area (North East) the Women's Equality Party is currently beating out UKIP for 5th place! Dunno if that signifies much beyond London being fairly hostile to UKIP, but interesting to see an explicitly feminist party making headway.

ST

[Maltaran]

In terms of councils, so far the losses for Labour seem to be a lot less than predicted. Looks like Corbyn is safe for now.

[SeanF]

3 hours ago, mormont said:

I don't think it worked quite like that, no. After all, their positions on the constitution aside, there's a great deal of clear difference between the Tories and Labour, even in Scotland, where both parties are somewhat to the left of the national parties. Moreover, in Scotland at least, direct switching from Labour to the Tories is rare.

I do think a lot of the Lib Dem vote went to the Tories this time around. But mostly I think the Tories just did a great job of getting their vote out, and Labour did a very bad job. The Tories had a well-liked leader and played on that (to the point where you hardly heard the name 'Conservatives' but heard 'Ruth Davidson' every two minutes): they had some middle-of-the-road policies they played up (while playing down the more right-wing ones): but mostly, they got their vote out by banging the constitutional drum. Even if it mostly went like this:

"The SNP are obsessed with the constitution!"

"OK, let's talk about schools then - "

"They can't shut up about it!"

"Well, we - "

"They're fixated on it!"

"But - "

"They just won't stop talking about independence!"

But it was smart tactics, as BlackBear notes. It got their vote out.

The basic problem for Scottish Labour is "What's the point of them"?  The SNP can outflank them on the Nationalist Left, and the Conservatives can outflank them on the Unionist Right.

Realistically, the Conservatives can only ever hope to be the second party in Scotland, at best.  But, if they can get 25% or so of the vote, they can probably win several rural or middle class constituencies, making their job in the Commons far easier.

[Werthead]

It depends on the effectiveness of the SNP at Westminster. If they can show they have achieved success and victories - not impossible with such a narrow Tory majority - then they should be able to maintain that success. If they cannot and it is judged that voting Labour in 2020 would help get rid of the Tory government nationally, then Scottish Labour may be able to stage a comeback. That does depend on what else happens between now and then, of course, and the judgement over whether having Labour back is necessary when they maybe able to form a coalition with the SNP instead.

[Chaircat Meow]

Yea, well done Ruth Davidson. I realise we're still a long way behind the SNP but this is still a really good result for us and for the country as a whole. The Scottish conservatives are now the biggest opposition party in Scotland.

Forget Labour, under Corbyn and his band of utter trash they are a complete joke and no one in Scotland will be dumb enough to think they have a hope of winning at the next general. Labour are a totally wasted vote.

[Maltaran]

So, now that Sadiq Khan is mayor, will President Trump ban all flights from London to the US?

[HexMachina]

1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

So, now that Sadiq Khan is mayor, will President Trump ban all flights from London to the US?

"We're going to need a bigger wall."