The General Election Thread

[cibaman]

I once read a description of Labour voters from a Labour MP - they are mostly unheard and unseen, but come election day they descend like a mist and then they're gone.

No main stream media outlet speaks for them, no serious newspaper gives them voice, consequently their numbers are often underestimated.

Day after day the media hammer Ed Miliband, and whether you agree with it or not and his personal rating is terrible, Labours lead wobbles, drops a point here and there but basically holds, Labour needs 36% to win and it's achievable. The Tories, however, need 40% to win, they got 36% in 2010, they're between 28% and 32% now (no party has ever increased their popularity in office) and no Tory party has had to face a UKIP strength party to its right.

The figures are not just tough for the Tories, they're appalling, it is impossible to imagine them, in any scenario, getting an overall majority, that's why Hague has gone off to write and so many Tory MPs are standing down.

The Tories couldn't win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government led by Gordon Brown, they had everything going for them but still fell short, this time the only thing they've got is Ed's unpopularity that's why they keep plugging away at it, but poll after poll show its not enough. Defenders of the Tories say the polls narrow as the election looms and they do, but not for the Tories.

In a recent poll 40% of the electorate say they would never vote Tory, only 25% say the same for the Labour, in the poll tightening last stretch Labour swims in a deeper and wider pool. Demographics are doing for the Tories what it's doing for the Republicans in the States, huge swathes of the country are no go areas and increasingly whole age groups, the Tories know this, that's why they're playing to their core vote, they know it's over, for them it's not storming to victory time, it's just hanging on to what they can time.

Apart from the BBC

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/09/lecture-thompson-bbc-interview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics ... -interview</a>

 

[the god Gerry Gow]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

 

[Bill]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

well we'll have to see but you are spot on.

 

[blueinsa]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

We dont have a labour party anymore in this country.

Regardless of who gets in, we will get the same bland politics from career politicians interested in only one thing.

 

[Len Rum]

I once read a description of Labour voters from a Labour MP - they are mostly unheard and unseen, but come election day they descend like a mist and then they're gone.

No main stream media outlet speaks for them, no serious newspaper gives them voice, consequently their numbers are often underestimated.

Day after day the media hammer Ed Miliband, and whether you agree with it or not and his personal rating is terrible, Labours lead wobbles, drops a point here and there but basically holds, Labour needs 36% to win and it's achievable. The Tories, however, need 40% to win, they got 36% in 2010, they're between 28% and 32% now (no party has ever increased their popularity in office) and no Tory party has had to face a UKIP strength party to its right.

The figures are not just tough for the Tories, they're appalling, it is impossible to imagine them, in any scenario, getting an overall majority, that's why Hague has gone off to write and so many Tory MPs are standing down.

The Tories couldn't win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government led by Gordon Brown, they had everything going for them but still fell short, this time the only thing they've got is Ed's unpopularity that's why they keep plugging away at it, but poll after poll show its not enough. Defenders of the Tories say the polls narrow as the election looms and they do, but not for the Tories.

In a recent poll 40% of the electorate say they would never vote Tory, only 25% say the same for the Labour, in the poll tightening last stretch Labour swims in a deeper and wider pool. Demographics are doing for the Tories what it's doing for the Republicans in the States, huge swathes of the country are no go areas and increasingly whole age groups, the Tories know this, that's why they're playing to their core vote, they know it's over, for them it's not storming to victory time, it's just hanging on to what they can time.

Apart from the BBC

<a class="postlink" href="http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics/2010/09/lecture-thompson-bbc-interview" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.newstatesman.com/uk-politics ... -interview</a>

Read the article again mate, the alleged bias in the BBC refers to a comment made by Thompson of the state of affairs when he joined the BBC thirty years ago. The headline in this right wing publication is totally misleading and unrepresentative of the article content.

 

[The perfect fumble]

I once read a description of Labour voters from a Labour MP - they are mostly unheard and unseen, but come election day they descend like a mist and then they're gone.

No main stream media outlet speaks for them, no serious newspaper gives them voice, consequently their numbers are often underestimated.

Day after day the media hammer Ed Miliband, and whether you agree with it or not and his personal rating is terrible, Labours lead wobbles, drops a point here and there but basically holds, Labour needs 36% to win and it's achievable. The Tories, however, need 40% to win, they got 36% in 2010, they're between 28% and 32% now (no party has ever increased their popularity in office) and no Tory party has had to face a UKIP strength party to its right.

The figures are not just tough for the Tories, they're appalling, it is impossible to imagine them, in any scenario, getting an overall majority, that's why Hague has gone off to write and so many Tory MPs are standing down.

The Tories couldn't win a majority against a deeply unpopular Labour government led by Gordon Brown, they had everything going for them but still fell short, this time the only thing they've got is Ed's unpopularity that's why they keep plugging away at it, but poll after poll show its not enough. Defenders of the Tories say the polls narrow as the election looms and they do, but not for the Tories.

In a recent poll 40% of the electorate say they would never vote Tory, only 25% say the same for the Labour, in the poll tightening last stretch Labour swims in a deeper and wider pool. Demographics are doing for the Tories what it's doing for the Republicans in the States, huge swathes of the country are no go areas and increasingly whole age groups, the Tories know this, that's why they're playing to their core vote, they know it's over, for them it's not storming to victory time, it's just hanging on to what they can time.

Utter bollocks and the left never shut up. They are far fewer and far louder than the right.

Just look at comedians; how many are right wing?

Exactly.

The exact opposite of just about everything you shat out in the above post is true.

You're talking about satirical comedians, they make their living lambasting the establishment, in England and particularly down south that critique has a red tinge, north of the border it has a pro SNP slant, it is not the Tories they're poking fun at per se, but the established order of things "in Westminster, "In the boardroom" or even "In the bedroom" or they take a different tilt by poking fun at the pomposity of the establishment, as Private Eye does, but remain firmly supportive of the existing order. A surprising number of comedians are right wing and just make light of the mundane things in life or avoid politics altogether. But even if they were all rabid socialists, which they're plainly not, it does not make them labour supporters, Labour is not and has never been a socialist party (regardless of Clause IV and the webbs) in fact it is barely even a Social Democratic party these days

The Guardian is not a Labour supporting paper, nor is the Independant, the Mirror supports Labour, but it's very soft support, a kind of rose tinted nostalgia for a Labour party more akin to that led by Harold Wilson than anything more contemporary.

The right has everything else, and they all support the Tories.

As for the BBC, when their politics is headed by Andrew Neil, Nick Robinson and Andrew Marr, you really would have a hard time making out these guys are a secret Labour supporting coven.

 

[Cheesy]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

Not a chance due to the "I'm a Labour voter me, just like my Father was and just like my Grandfather was" mob.

 

[The perfect fumble]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

Not a chance due to the "I'm a Labour voter me, just like my Father was and just like my Grandfather was" mob.

The Conservative party has been in power far more often and for longer than any other party these last 100 years. In the post war years, including these past 5 years of coalition, they've been in power 40 out of the last 70 years.

The period of real destruction to our ecomomy was the early 80's, where we lost 45% of our manufacturing industry.

Yet all our woes are down to labour, including, I assume, the global meltdown brought about by bankers engaging in wanton casino gambling of toxic assets, poisoned by millions of sub prime mortgages, mostly originating in the USA.

Christ! Labour really knows how to fuck up on a global scale!

 

[malg]

Labour need to be all over this stuff, a report of the Fuel Poor:

More than half of those defined as being in fuel poverty in England are actually in work, a report has said.

The right-wing think tank Policy Exchange said 1.1 million householders cannot afford to heat their homes, even though they have a job.

It wants energy efficiency subsidies to be targeted more effectively.

However, the government said the number of people in fuel poverty was already falling, and it was spending more than ever before on keeping people warm.

 

[Chancy Termites]

If this country votes in a labour government then maybe it gets the government it deserves.

And when they send the country down the shitter for the umpteenth time then perhaps voters will wake up to the tossers and consign them to the waste bin of history

Not a chance due to the "I'm a Labour voter me, just like my Father was and just like my Grandfather was" mob.

The Conservative party has been in power far more often and for longer than any other party these last 100 years. In the post war years, including these past 5 years of coalition, they've been in power 40 out of the last 70 years.

The period of real destruction to our ecomomy was the early 80's, where we lost 45% of our manufacturing industry.

Yet all our woes are down to labour, including, I assume, the global meltdown brought about by bankers engaging in wanton casino gambling of toxic assets, poisoned by millions of sub prime mortgages, mostly originating in the USA.

Christ! Labour really knows how to fuck up on a global scale!

Fallacy. Manufacturing as a share of GDP fell from 21% in 1979 to about 16% in 1997 so it fell by about a quarter in 18 years. It then fell from 16% to about 12% in 2010, so about a quarter in just 13 years. Manufacturing fell faster under Blair and Brown than it did under Thatcher and Major.

By all means criticise the Conservatives; they've done plenty to be critical of. But it's misleading to suggest, as you did, that the Conservatives destroyed manufacturing, when Labour destroyed it quicker.

You're dead right about the financial meltdown in 2007 though. That was absolutely down to Labour's decision to stop regulating the City in order to suck all the dodgy money in from elsewhere in the world where there were tighter regulations (eg the USA) when they introduced the Financial Services Act 2000. No single person anywhere in the world bears more responsibility for it than that act's author, Gordon Brown.