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General Election 2015 - Thoughts/Predictions/Results
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Manchester77
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It's less of a possibility and more of a certainty based on most of the polls, labour are polling anywhere from 3 to 10 percent ahead of Nick in Sheffield so it's increasinly likely he will be facing a Portillo moment. To add to this the SNP will certainly take current chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander's scottish seat so it'll be quite the culling on election night.
The could is almost a certainty scottish labour are more incompetent than the rest of labour, they seem unable to produce any correct statistics and Kezia Dugdale is yet to successfully perform at FMQs - shes managed to forget labour control glasgow City council and attack the anti-austerity SNP for voting against their motion for austerity.
The second one is impossible, physically impossible under FPTP. It's the number of seats a party polling 15% should get however were looking at probably 4 to 8 seats for UKIP which I see as a good thing because it put even more pressure on for full electoral reform. Especially if the greens and LDs are tied stil,and yet one manages to get 1-2 MPs whereas the other manages 27 MPs. However UKIPS certainly won't get anywhere near 15 let alone 50!!
shinkansen1966
Member
You highlight some key loses for the LibDems with implications for any attempts by David Cameron to continue the current coalition. That's if the parliamentary numbers add up and there's a desire on either side to negotiate. If we do have a hung parliament, by convention the sitting PM will have first opportunity to form a new government.
This article...
http://www.liberal-vision.org/2015/02/26/what-if-nick-clegg-loses-his-seat-at-the-election/
... if the deputy PM does lose his seats, it could turn into a farce. I shall, of course, be transfixed !
Busaholic
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If the electorate speak and Clegg gets kicked out, how many days before he comes Lord Clegg of Westminster? IMO nobody rejected by the electorate should be allowed to go anywhere near the Lords for five years afterwards, otherwise it is just two fingers to democracy.
Butts
Veteran Member
Can't wait for the new derivative of "Spitting Image" to appear on our screens 
Peter Mugridge
Veteran Member
Can't wait for the new derivative of "Spitting Image" to appear on our screens
It's called Newzoids and it starts "in the Spring" which I take to mean around Easter.
MidlandMainlie
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If Nick Clegg does lose his Sheffield Hallam seat and the Lib Dems be one leaderless then shouldn't Tim Farron as Persident of the Liberal Democrats become interim leader (assuming with a majority of 12,264 he retains his Westmorland and Londsdale seat).
90sWereBetter
Member
I'm starting to think Cameron's cost himself any remaining chance of being re-elected as PM with this debates fiasco. In addition, I'm watching Ed Miliband's appearance on BBC's Free Speech programme, and he's doing a decent job at the moment with the questions. Apparently, Ed's approval ratings have gone up by 7 or 8% this week, if Mike Smithson of PoliticalBetting (great politics website btw) is correct.
I believe Labour will get around 300-305 seats, and then cobble a coalition together with the 30 or so Lib Dem MPs that remain after May.
I believe Labour will get around 300-305 seats, and then cobble a coalition together with the 30 or so Lib Dem MPs that remain after May.
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12CSVT
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In which case it might be interesting to work out how much they spend on petrol ferrying people to the polling booths and see if it complies with spending rules.
PermitToTravel
Established Member
Cost of petrol per person * 0 people = £0: looks compliant to me 
Butts
Veteran Member
If that's the case I'll give up my Postal Vote forthwith - if they throw in a Cigar as well
Busaholic
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If that's the case I'll give up my Postal Vote forthwith - if they throw in a Cigar as well
Knew an old, but very feisty lady in London whose husband had been killed in Second World War and she'd had to work cleaning houses for people until well into her 70s (including Frankie Howerd's mother's): she was a regular attendee at the local Conservative club where they gave her a free lunch and subsidised drink. She also made sure the Tories gave her a lift to the polling station for each local and general election. She used to take great delight in telling all her friends that she never once voted for them, but always for the Labour Co-Op candidate (the Co-Op in the form of the Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society was an important factor in local politics well into the 1960s).
shinkansen1966
Member
Just don't see that happen. On Wednesday, we have the Budget. And I think the Conservatives are just ahead in the polls to make a difference.
Sticking with my crystal ball prediction of some sort of Conservative/LibDem/UKIP/DUP grouping.
http://may2015.com/featured/tories-lead-by-20-seats-and-are-now-on-course-to-win-this-election/
MidlandMainlie
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The only problem with that grouping is I carn't see the LibDems working with UKIP under any circumstances. I carn't think of one policy area they agree on let alone Europe where they are polar opposites. Take the LibDems out of the equation and the Tories/UKIP/DUP are far short of a majority. (Tories and UKIP are a zero sum game as every UKIP MP elected is one less Tory MP elected).
Even though Ed Millibnd has ruled out a formal coalition a minority Labour government with support from the SNP and LibDems on a vote by vote basis remains the most likely outcome IMO.
muddythefish
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Grant Shapps revealed today as a lying scumbag. Dodgy Dave certainly knows how to pick 'em.
DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Ummm, I don't like the Conservatives very much, and I'm more often than not on 'your' side of these debates, but really... the fact that someone once made a mistake about precisely what date they stopped working in some job does not make them a 'lying scumbag', it just makes them a normal human being with a somewhat fallible memory - the same as everyone else.
Obviously, if there's some other evidence to indicate a person was deliberately lying, then you might reasonably think rather less of them, but I don't get the impression that's the case here.
As I often seem to end up pointing out, these debates would be a lot more constructive if people stopped looking for the worst possible motives on the part of their political opponents (and that applies on both left and right).
muddythefish
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You're far too kind. Shapps has has repeatedly denied having a second job for three years. He went on live radio just three weeks ago and stated three times that he was not doing business as Michael Green while he was an MP, when new reports and audio tonight show quite clearly that he did.
He’s not any old MP – he’s chairman of the Conservative party and he was talking specifically in an interview about second jobs and he had a second job.
Rather more than just having a "fallible memory" don't you think ?
He’s not any old MP – he’s chairman of the Conservative party and he was talking specifically in an interview about second jobs and he had a second job.
Rather more than just having a "fallible memory" don't you think ?
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I do hope this isn't going to be the tone over the next few weeks. This story is trivial, just like "kitchengate". Sensible debate, please.
Technically if Nick Clegg lost his seat, could he remain as Deputy Prime Minster as I didn't think you needed to be an MP to have those titles. If you did, we'd have no Prime Minster during the election period.
Personally I want the status quo. The same. I actually wanted this coalition in the first place and despite people saying it would never happen, it did.
It's not perfect but I don't think others would have done better.
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SWTCommuter
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Not necessarily. UKIP also threatens some Labour seats, as they demonstrated at the Heywood and Middleton by-election where they reduced Labour's majority from over 6000 to 617.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-29564515
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Schapps' "forgetfulness" is not the issue, although it is amazing how much he "forgets" until the papers "remind" him. He was adamant that he'd never been Michael Green at all, at one point.
The real problem is that Mr Schapps has been very quick with m'learned friends in the last year or so, bullying anyone who mentions Michael Green with very expensive libel letters. He's been threatening to bankrupt anyone and everyone who mentions Michael Green on Twitter or Facebook. He's secured plenty of money and apologies for people who were too poor to fight him and his multi-millionaire lawyers.
But then having a corporate bully in charge of the Conservatives is pretty much par for the course, I'd say.
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I don't want to totally dismiss UKIP in Labour heartlands, but I pretty much file them along with the British National Party.
The BNP were very successful in the late 2000s in Labour heartlands, in both Euro and local elections. That vote never converted into General Election votes, to the extent that the BNP struggled to keep their deposits in many seats they competed in. The BNP vote has disappeared and mostly gone to UKIP.
I don't think you can generally read too much into by-elections; just look at Gorgeous George in Bradford West.
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I feel partly sorry and partly angry with Clegg.
He's been good in the coalition. He's managed to take the edge off of the psychopathy displayed by the likes of Duncan Smith and Gove, if the Tories had actually had a majority this time they'd have basically nuked public spending (at least on welfare; their corporate kleptocrat friends in the City would have still had their wheelbarrows full of cash). The Lib Dems have managed to keep the raving tea-party lunatics in the Tory Right on the leash, which has only been good for the country.
The trouble is that he's not sold himself properly, he's allowed everyone- the left and the right- to blame him for the Government's economic failure and bullying of the vulnerable. Cameron- a man so incompetent he lost the unlosable election in 2010- has had a very easy ride because Clegg has been the magnet for the hatred.
I'm disappointed in his lack of political nous, and I think he will lose his seat because of it.
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DynamicSpirit
Established Member
Actually, having done a bit more digging around, I've somewhat changed my mind about this.
It appears that Grant Shapps worked under the pen name, Michael Green, for well over a year after he became an MP. That strikes me as rather too long for poor memory to be a plausible explanation for his denials of having done so. Running a business while an MP is obviously not a crime, and if it's a family business I'd say it's quite understandable in some ways. The moral issue seems to me to be over whether he was actively seeking business using the pen name while not being upfront about who he was.
But then it gets worse. The Guardian has published extracts from the letters his solicitors wrote to a constituent who posted on facebook about Shapp's activities. They make for very threatening reading - full of demands for compensation. They are the kind of thing that look somewhat frightening to be on the receiving end of them - and so far as I can tell, this was for someone apparently reporting what turns out to be true. (Note that the constituent was an ex-Labour councillor, but in this case I don't think that changes the point).
There's a claim on politics.co.uk that
politics.co.uk said:
Also, Shapp's Wikipedia page contains the statement.
Wikipedia said:
Obviously - all the usual provisos about how reliable stuff on the Internet is or isn't, but it does rather look to me like Grant Shapps has been fairly aggressively trying to hide details of his business dealings, and has apparently been prepared to threaten others in pursuit of this. All in all, this gives me the impression of a person that you would not want as your local MP - and of course this is the Conservative Chairman.
(But of course, none of that has any bearing on which party has the most appropriate policies to govern the UK).
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
Kitchengate was trivial, and the timing of it made me think that it was orchestrated by Conservative symapthisers knowing something was up with Schapps. It's the same with the claim for a £17 poppy, talked about with such vitriol from the hedge-funded tea-party lunatics at the "Tax Payers Alliance".
I don't think this story is quite so trivial though. Where a Party Chairman is repeatedly "forgetting" things, and bullying weaker opponents into silence using m'learned friends, I think it is an important story.
Sure, it's not about policy, but the personal and business ethics of political leaders are far more illuminating than what they say or write. After all, as the old cliche goes, actions speak far louder than words.
When the Conservative Party Chairman makes his money with online "marketing" of dubious legality, and then denies it was him, and then claims to have stopped 18 months before he actually did, it's an important story.
Tetchytyke
Veteran Member
I disagree, they look very threatening, talking about severe financial repercussions and demanding ridiculous "reparation". They're as bad as the letters George Galloway is being (rightly) vilified for sending to Twitter users.
I've also highlighted the key issue for me: Grant Schapps knew (or should have reasonably known) that the posting was not defamatory.
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I wonder if we could stop using silly nicknames and start referring to people by their actual names? If nothing else it would make it easier to work out who are being referred to.
Very soon that will be a requirement on the radio and TV no doubt they everyone conforms of Ofcom regulations or face fines or sackings. In the mean time newspaper sill be able to print whatever they like and say whatever they like. They will even be able to ignore whoever they like.. unlike TV and radio.
Perhaps it's time newspapers were regulated to the same standard as TV and radio and if not, perhaps it's time TV and radio were less regulated.
shinkansen1966
Member
And so does David Cameron, I suspect.
In the likely event, we wake up to a hung parliament on Friday 8 May, as sitting prime minister, Mr Cameron will have the first chance to form a new government. He may even attempt to go it alone with a minority administration.
Regardless of fixed term parliaments now, I doubt if "doing a Wilson" with a second early election will achieve anything. The Lab-Con two party vote is stubbornly below 70% and the SNP may rob Labour of a future chance at government for years to come.
If Mr Cameron continues as PM, among his many problems will be Boris Johnson in Westminster and the EU membership referendum. I think he'll win the referendum vote. In the run up to the referendum, expect Mr Cameron to campaign for us to stay in the EU. A "stay in" campaign platform shared by most other leading political figures.
Grant is my MP, and took me around the Houses of Parliament before Christmas, and I can honestly say that he's served us pretty well.
But I have said on his own forum that I was very disappointed about his alter-ego, and what he was actually selling. Namely software that ripped off content from the Internet to be 're-purposed' and used to sell advertising against. I had no idea he did that, always thinking he ran a perfectly legitimate printing business. (What's more, he has never deleted the posts or threatened me!).
This isn't even a recent story, as it was some years ago (almost) when it came out that Google had banned him from advertising as it was in breach of its rules. To this day, there are no longer ads on his site/forum. I assume they withheld payments too.
Not that I can imagine he made much money from a 'get rich quick' scheme that a lot of people are now rather too clued up about to fall for, or even be interested in in the first place.
It's a real shame as it leaves me, and no doubt many others, very conflicted as he seems fine as an MP, but as his alter-ago he's a bit of a Delboy.
On the other hand, the ex-Labour councillor who said lots of things about him on Facebook before being made to delete the posts and publish an apology had his own issues, namely never turning up to any council meetings and seemingly doing sod all before being kicked out. Other councillors are also digging at him all the time, as you'd expect, and I think some of them need to tread carefully.
And now we've got a prospective Labour MP trying to make out he's on the front page of Time magazine and almost God-like, yet I am unsure on whether he really does live here. He claims to, but it isn't hard to discover he actually owns a number of properties around the UK and in the paperwork put through our letterbox it seems he knows precious little about things around here and even made some mistakes that surely someone would have picked up on before printing went ahead...
We do seem to know how to pick them around here!!
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