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UK Politics: Trumpy Cat Trumpy Cat Where Have You Been?


mormont

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As a 2010 Lib Dem voter, I would not have had a problem if they'd agreed to abstain on the tuition fee vote and let it be passed on Tory votes only. It was the fact that they voted in favour after promising they would oppose it that pissed off a lot of people.

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3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

I hate to sound like the LibDem spin department, but I believe the argument runs thusly; the LibDem manifesto was a list of things they would do if they were voted into power by themselves. They weren't. They were part of a coalition government. I'm certainly not saying I have no problems at all with everything they did, but the whole LibDem manifesto was never gonna get implemented 100%. I find it hard to see a path that Nick Clegg could've trodden and come out of things well regarded, he couldn't have turned down the coalition cos then what?

It feels like we had this discussion a few threads ago. Anyway, the counter argument being, that in coalition talks, there are some red lines for a junior partner. And the way the committed themselves on the tuition fee issue, that was a pretty big red line. That's what got them elected. They were not required by law to join a coalition with the Tories. They could have talked to Labour (or threatened to) or they could have wished Tories and Labour good luck building a coalition together. 

The argument we did not get into power by ourselves does not fly imo. The LibDems were never gonna win the the election by themselves. The bottom line is, Clegg and the LibDems signed that pledge, and they broke it. To put it a bit more bluntly, don't sign checks with your mouth, that your ass can't cash.

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Although apart from the Tuition fees I think the Lib Dems made a huge difference when they where in coalition.  and I do think they have been unfairly treated on the other issues.

 

It felt to me at the time that for every bad thing that happens the Lib Dems got the blame and every good thing the Torries got all the credit.

And I felt that they successfully held back the harsher side of Tory Policy that only afterwards are people beginning to realize just how much they did while in power.   

 

Unfortunately they made a critical mistake with the Tuition fees while also making a big massive fuss over other parties continuous broken promises.   And the fact that they did work with the Tory's is another thing a lot of people will never forgive.  I'm hoping people can see past this and they get to make a comeback rather soon.  especially if Labour continue to self implode.

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That's an issue for the small party in coalition governments, usually: you get blamed for the failures of the government far more than the successes, partly because you don't have the prime minister as a leader figure to rally to. In Germany, it's been a similar story for Merkel's coalition partners the last two times around (the SPD had massive losses in '09, and the liberal FDP didn't even get the necessary 5% in '13); and it would probably be the same this time if not for the SPD deciding not to run a current minister as candidate for chancellor, which allows Schulz to run as a de facto opposition candidate. 

All that being said, it's critical for those smaller parties in a coalition to stick to their core issues. You need to be able to tell the voters that on the core issues you were elected on, you delivered, even if the other issues were decided by your partner. And there, the tuition fees really hurt the Lib Dems (just as the FDP's decision to placate their hotel and pharmacy clientele while allowing surveillance to be expanded made them collapse in '13)

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19 hours ago, Notone said:

It feels like we had this discussion a few threads ago.

Sorry, I'm not a religious follower of these threads.

19 hours ago, Notone said:

 They were not required by law to join a coalition with the Tories. They could have talked to Labour (or threatened to) or they could have wished Tories and Labour good luck building a coalition together. 

Could they? I remember a lot of talk at the time of how delicate the economy was, how uncertain the markets were and how important it was that it was all dealt with swiftly. There was also a lot of concern that it wouldn't exactly have been democratic to end up with the 2nd and 3rd place parties running the country and the 1st place not getting a look in. I don't really know what the outcome would've been had we gone down any of those paths, but at the time, a conservative coalition was a pretty good looking result for a party that haven't been in power before.

19 hours ago, Notone said:

The argument we did not get into power by ourselves does not fly imo. The LibDems were never gonna win the the election by themselves. The bottom line is, Clegg and the LibDems signed that pledge, and they broke it. To put it a bit more bluntly, don't sign checks with your mouth, that your ass can't cash.

But if you follow that logic, any party that doesn't have a shot at power (which at the moment is, arguably, all the others) shouldn't ever offer up a policy that they don't think would get through a coalition. So all manifestos would become "here's the 80% of Tory policy we'd accept, here's what we would push back on, and here's a watered down version of a policy that we reckon might fly with the Tories".

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A very good article herehttp://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2017/02/21/impressions-from-cumbria-labour-will-win-if-they-can-turn-their-vote-out/ on the Copeland by-election.  I've just bet £100 on Labour to hold it at 9-4, which are absurdly attractive odds.

There have only been three occasions since the war in which the Opposition lost a seat in a by-election to the Government.  Sunderland South in 1953, and Brighouse & Spen 1960, saw Labour lose seats to the Conservatives, but Labour were defending majorities of 360 and 47 respectively, compared to 2,600 in Copeland, and only saw tiny swings against them.  Labour lost Mitcham & Morden in 1982, but that was because the sitting MP defected to the SDP, and immediately resigned to fight the seat for his new party.

It's not uncommon for the Opposition to lose to other opposition parties (eg Govan 1973 and 1988, Rochdate 1972, Romsey 2000) but no other opposition party features in Copeland.

A good comparison is Darlington in 1983.  Labour were as unpopular then as now, and Foot's ratings were as bad as Corbyn's, but they held the seat, before crashing to defeat in the general election.  The Conservatives successfully defended Uxbridge and Beckenham in 1997, and Eddisbury 1999, despite being miles behind Labour in polls, before getting hammered in 2001.  Labour have comfortably held all their seats in this Parliament. 

This seems pretty close to free money to me.

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The key issue in both by-elections is 'if they can turn their vote out'. That's an enormous 'if' because demotivated Labour voters are Labour's biggest problem right now, and the two constituencies involved had fairly low turnouts to start with. Tory voters in Copeland, on the other hand, probably feel pretty cheery right now.

Still, UKIP have been doing their level best to piss off working class voters over Hillsborough so Labour should hopefully do well in Stoke.

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13 minutes ago, mormont said:

The key issue in both by-elections is 'if they can turn their vote out'. That's an enormous 'if' because demotivated Labour voters are Labour's biggest problem right now, and the two constituencies involved had fairly low turnouts to start with. Tory voters in Copeland, on the other hand, probably feel pretty cheery right now.

Still, UKIP have been doing their level best to piss off working class voters over Hillsborough so Labour should hopefully do well in Stoke.

The same goes for the Conservatives.  Labour are hugely unpopular right now, but no more unpopular than in 1983, and no more unpopular than the Conservatives during 1997-2001.  Governments find it enormously hard to turn out their own supporters in by-elections.

I'd expect Labour to hold Copeland narrowly, and Stoke quite comfortably.

Edit:  If, as I expect, Labour hold both seats, it would be most unwise of them to conclude that they aren't unpopular.  Opinion polls may be inaccurate, but there's no way that a rating of 27% can win you a general election.

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3 hours ago, DaveSumm said:

But if you follow that logic, any party that doesn't have a shot at power (which at the moment is, arguably, all the others) shouldn't ever offer up a policy that they don't think would get through a coalition. So all manifestos would become "here's the 80% of Tory policy we'd accept, here's what we would push back on, and here's a watered down version of a policy that we reckon might fly with the Tories".

Hum, no. Read my previous two posts in combination. Of course they should influence policies and offer their visions/ideas. But it shouldn't expire the day after the election, or the day they signed that coalition treaty. And the LibDems really got their policy prioties wrong with regards to their voters. The tuition fees should have been a pretty close to non-negotiable red line. That was their key promise on the campaign trail, and got them a lot of votes, and that's how they campaigned on it. I am fully aware, that the junior partner doesn't get everything it wants. But that doesn't mean they should bend over backwards for the Tories to quadruple the tuition fees. 

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On 21/02/2017 at 8:22 AM, theguyfromtheVale said:

That's an issue for the small party in coalition governments, usually: you get blamed for the failures of the government far more than the successes, partly because you don't have the prime minister as a leader figure to rally to. In Germany, it's been a similar story for Merkel's coalition partners the last two times around (the SPD had massive losses in '09, and the liberal FDP didn't even get the necessary 5% in '13); and it would probably be the same this time if not for the SPD deciding not to run a current minister as candidate for chancellor, which allows Schulz to run as a de facto opposition candidate. 

All that being said, it's critical for those smaller parties in a coalition to stick to their core issues. You need to be able to tell the voters that on the core issues you were elected on, you delivered, even if the other issues were decided by your partner. And there, the tuition fees really hurt the Lib Dems (just as the FDP's decision to placate their hotel and pharmacy clientele while allowing surveillance to be expanded made them collapse in '13)

From experience here, minor parties tend to get utterly smashed in coalition (people who like the government will switch over to the major party, while people who dislike it will blame both). Which is why New Zealand doesn't really do true coalition governments any more - it's basically a major party governing with confidence and supply from the minor parties, so things get dealt with issue by issue.

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19 hours ago, SeanF said:

The same goes for the Conservatives.  Labour are hugely unpopular right now, but no more unpopular than in 1983, and no more unpopular than the Conservatives during 1997-2001.  Governments find it enormously hard to turn out their own supporters in by-elections.

I'd expect Labour to hold Copeland narrowly, and Stoke quite comfortably.

Edit:  If, as I expect, Labour hold both seats, it would be most unwise of them to conclude that they aren't unpopular.  Opinion polls may be inaccurate, but there's no way that a rating of 27% can win you a general election.

I think Labour will hold on to Stoke because Nuttall is a dick, even for a Kipper, unless the remaining Tories decide to vote tactically. I really cannot see them holding Copeland though.

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9 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

From experience here, minor parties tend to get utterly smashed in coalition (people who like the government will switch over to the major party, while people who dislike it will blame both). Which is why New Zealand doesn't really do true coalition governments any more - it's basically a major party governing with confidence and supply from the minor parties, so things get dealt with issue by issue.

In Norway, the Centre Party (agrarian, for those who would like to know) tends to buck this trend, and they do that by 1) sticking to their guns on anything related to agrarian or rural politics and 2) having mainly voters from these areas, who accept that a small party needs to give quite a bit to be in power. Other parties entering coalitions as junior partners tend to get crushed in the next election.

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18 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

From experience here, minor parties tend to get utterly smashed in coalition (people who like the government will switch over to the major party, while people who dislike it will blame both). Which is why New Zealand doesn't really do true coalition governments any more - it's basically a major party governing with confidence and supply from the minor parties, so things get dealt with issue by issue.

In Scotland the Liberal Democrats didn't seem to lose out when they were in a coalition with Labour for 8 years in the Scottish Parliament, it was only after the UK coalition with the Tories that their Scottish vote collapsed. It's difficult to know whether that would mean they would have survived a UK coalition with Labour rather than the Tories without taking damage.

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So just to drag the tone down a bit. Are Princess Diana's "grey men" going to let Harry intoduce the royal gene pool to...erm...genes that will...ummm... give some royals more of a tan than is the royal norm?

I guess there's little chance of such...ahhh...less sunburn-prone offspring from actually sitting astride the throne, but still they would be in the line of succession.

I guess these days with premature royal deaths being rather rare, the offspring of the 5th in line for the throne have a much lower chance of making it to the big chair than perhaps was the case in times past. So perhaps there won't be meddling. But I imagine some people are still quite committed to keeping bloodlines pure. I think if Diana was alive today she would be a little worried that there would be meddling.

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I am no monarchist or admirer of Harry's father, as we have well established. But I do not for a second imagine that the racial background of any royal consort - even if they were first in line - would give anyone in the palace pause.

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21 minutes ago, mormont said:

I am no monarchist or admirer of Harry's father, as we have well established. But I do not for a second imagine that the racial background of any royal consort - even if they were first in line - would give anyone in the palace pause.

The religious background of a royal consort on the other hand...

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Also things today are a lot different to how they were in the 80s, I would imagine most of Diana's grey men will have retired.

Back to politics, how will Storm Doris affect the by-elections, other than an especially low turnout?

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4 hours ago, Maltaran said:

Back to politics, how will Storm Doris affect the by-elections, other than an especially low turnout?

Can't see it mattering other than that.

On the day of voting, here's a bit of analysis suggesting that the Labour party might not need to worry quite so much about its voters deserting - well, over Brexit, at least.

http://ukandeu.ac.uk/is-labours-brexit-dilemma-being-misunderstood/

 

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So I hate to say I told you so, but... I did say that Labour was more likely to lose Copeland than Stoke.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-39064149

Corbyn supporters see only sunshine here, it seems.

With progress like this, Labour must be on track to become the third largest party by the next election! Exciting times!

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