Election Night

[Spy Bee]

So many people have just got their ideas fixed and are so partisan that no amount of evidence will change their mind. A perfect example is people are using Blair as a reason so slag off Cameron. This is Tony Blair who was a long serving leader of The Labour Party - Y'know The Labour Party who are the greatest force for fairness this country has!

 

It's not worth debating. A lot of people would rather change their football club then their political party!

[Redexile]

So let me get this straight, Labour who finished with 258 votes have no right to govern the country as they lost. The Conservatives with 306 votes never lost, but they didn't win, and the Liberals who had 58 votes and finished a distant third, so they do have a right to govern?

 

So we have two thirds of the country who have voted for a left of centre government, voted against a Conservative Government, voted against the policies put forward by the Conservative goverment and yet we have a Conservative government! Whose policies will dominate the government for the foreseable future, despite the fact the the large majority of the population didn't vote for them!

 

And Strontium, and any other Liberals defending this, the Liberals have, whether you like it or not, voted to put in power a conservative government against the wishes of the country, there is no two ways about it. And you did it so that the Liberal party can taste power, no other reason.

 

You could simply have agreed that the Conservatives can attempt to form a minority government and back then when you agree and vote against them when you don't.

 

Nice to know Dave is consistent anyhow! We always knew he was going to give the top jobs to the private school brigade!

 

With a 65% turn out only two thirds of the country actually got off their arse to vote.Without PR a skewed result can always happen.

I left Liverpool when Thatcher ripped it apart but my view from afar is that socalled New Labour looks far more like the Tory party of the 80's than the party of the working man that I voted for back in the day. I think it was always going to work out the way it has as it appears now that the once clear dividing lines between the parties are starting to blur.

[cochcaer]

I see the Lib Dems have agreed with Tory plans to cut more this year. Looks like they took a principled stand then after Cable said their economic plans were madness.

 

I look forward to the next election, the Lib Dems will be slaughtered.

 

I suspect over time we'll see defections from LD to Labour.

 

How many Liberal Democrats would be expected to rebel? Would there be defections?

 

Difficult to predict. Nicol Stephen, the former Lib Dem leader in Scotland, has said that about one-third of Lib Dems would say they'd rather do anything than do a deal with the Conservatives. A similar proportion would feel the same way about getting into bed with Labour, and the final third would rather do a deal with neither. Nick Clegg has to decide which he will disappoint.

 

A survey of 347 party members carried out on Monday by the Liberal Democrat Voice website found that 89% supported Clegg's decision to enter into talks with the Tories on the basis that he had already announced that the party with the most votes and most seats should be allowed to try and form a government. But 80% also said that "significant progress" on electoral reform was a deal-breaker.

 

While MPs such as Don Foster and Simon Hughes and mavericks such as Norman Baker might think twice about their position, it is unlikely to trigger mass defections. Baker spoke approvingly of Clegg's approach today. The party is well used to being involved in both Lib-Con and Lib-Lab coalitions in local government, which many of the new MPs will have been involved with.

 

Clegg also has to get the deal through a "triple-lock" of party democracy. The first safeguard is that three quarters of the party's MPs must approve the deal, the second is that the party's federal executive also approves. If Clegg fails to get the backing of either of these bodies he can go over their heads and call a special conference of party activists, and push the deal through the party with two-thirds of their support.

[Spy Bee]

I suspect over time we'll see defections from LD to Labour.

 

Maybe so, but the fact that ever MP voted in favour of the coalition - the coalition which is set up to run for five years would indicate a fairly united front at this stage.

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

Maybe so, but the fact that ever MP voted in favour of the coalition - the coalition which is set up to run for five years would indicate a fairly united front at this stage.

 

Do you honestly think this coalition is going to run for up to five years?

[King Emlyn]

As somebody said earlier it's Osborne i can see doing the real damage. Awful man.

[bigal]

Get real. The Labour Party promised cuts too. The difference was in the timing, later as opposed to now. There is a massive deficit and it won't magically disappear.

As for saying more voted centre left so Liberals should have supported that, the fact is that more voted Tory than Labour and so as the party holding the balance of power they had to go with the largest party especially when their own seats fell. There is no way the two parties which lost seats could realistically turn round and say we are the choice of the people.

And I say that as a left leaning Liberal who is feeling nauseous at the sight of Letwin, Osbourne and Hague in power. Sometimes reality gets in the way.

[Dirk]

I suspect over time we'll see defections from LD to Labour.

 

There are already Liberal Democrat members defecting to Labour, I doubt it will be long until we see some of their MPs defecting too. How are we supposed to believe the words of a man who has formed an alliance with a party he recently branded as negative and destructive?

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

There are already Liberal Democrat members defecting to Labour, I doubt it will be long until we see some of their MPs defecting too. How are we supposed to believe the words of a man who has formed an alliance with a party he recently branded as negative and destructive?

 

Has the new Deputy Prime Minister spoken about this yet? I've had the news off this morning.

[bigal]

So what would you have had him do Dirk?

[Mr T]

You want PR and yet you think politicians who slag each other off during an election campaign shouldn't work together after the election? Not really thought that one through have you..

[Guest Numero Veinticinco]

So what would you have had him do Dirk?

 

Allow Conservatives to run with the amount of power bestowed upon them by the electorate. If there was no deal with the other party on the left, then they should have, in my opinion, let the conservatives go with a minority government and then waited for the election down the road, with a new Labour leader that was elected by his own party that the Lib Dems could work with.

[bigal]

That's fair enough NN. I could have lived with that. I suppose the danger is that the right wing press would have killed the LDs for not acting to form a stable government at a time of economic crisis. And the need for PR. Let's face it if PR is to come, which I think is essential, then negotiations after elections will be the norm.

[JER]

So the party that came third have done a back door deal to have policies that 75% of the electorate didn't vote for implemented, propping up an unelected government in the process. And this is the man who was going to clean up politics.

[Mr T]

The Lib-Dems have stepped up and are acknowledging that they are a real party who want to try and tackle the problems facing the country rather than leaving it all up to the Tories to deal with.

 

That means making actual decisions rather than the intellectual posturing that they've been doing for nigh on 80 years. Good for people who want Lib Dem policies, bad for the self-righteous, beardie-weirdie, professional pontificators, who love the safety of hypotheticals without ever having to get their hands dirty.

[Elmyn Noos]

 

Sorry, the future of the Lib Dems is not as a protest vehicle for disgruntled socialists to express their dissatisfaction with the Labour Party.

 

.

 

Judging by the results of this and other recent elections, the LibDems are not EVEN a vehicle for disgruntled socialists to express their dissatisfaction with the Labour party.

 

The LibDems are a bunch of short-term opportunists. Let us not forget here SD, that your lot not only LOST seats at this election, but have also wholly failed to capitalise in other elections despite the unpopularity of Labour. You are not and never have been a viable third option, despite managing to con me and others into thinking so.

 

You are the momentary beneficiaries of circumstance, nothing else. I look forward to sometime very soon being able to right my wrong and consign the LibDems back into the political wilderness where they belong.

[Mr T]

So the party that came third have done a back door deal to have policies that 75% of the electorate didn't vote for implemented, propping up an unelected government in the process. And this is the man who was going to clean up politics.

 

Is that figure just pulled from your imagination? Like your assertion that the deficit was worse in the 90s than today? If you want to criticise at least get the facts right.

[cochcaer]

Maybe so, but the fact that ever MP voted in favour of the coalition - the coalition which is set up to run for five years would indicate a fairly united front at this stage.

 

That triple-lock might take some holding later, 'at this stage' barely 24hrs have passed. Let's see in 12 months.

[bigal]

So the party that came third have done a back door deal to have policies that 75% of the electorate didn't vote for implemented, propping up an unelected government in the process. And this is the man who was going to clean up politics.

 

75%?? You're including people who couldn't be arsed to even vote I suppose. They have no right to complain.

If you didn't see the prospect of a hung Parliament with the Liberals holding the balance then you were living in cloud cuckoo land.

[Spy Bee]

There are already Liberal Democrat members defecting to Labour, I doubt it will be long until we see some of their MPs defecting too. How are we supposed to believe the words of a man who has formed an alliance with a party he recently branded as negative and destructive?

 

As your man Gordon might have said Dirk - get real!

[JER]

Is that figure just pulled from your imagination? Like your assertion that the deficit was worse in the 90s than today? If you want to criticise at least get the facts right.

 

Er - Lib Dems got 23% of the vote so 77% didn't vote for their policies. Not sure what else I can add to that. And let me be the first to say that the real Mr T would not be happy that he has had his name taken by a tory boy.

[jimb]

Nice to see that some people can see through labour as well as the tories.I'm against both lib dem and tories but why not give them at least 6-9 months to have a go at sorting out the disaster the country faces.Unless of course all you're worried about is saying I told you so.

[bigal]

Er - Lib Dems got 23% of the vote so 77% didn't vote for their policies. Not sure what else I can add to that. And let me be the first to say that the real Mr T would not be happy that he has had his name taken by a tory boy.

 

Add the Liberal and Tory votes and you have a majority. The only majority available unless you were going to have Labour, LDs and the various nationalist parties which is unworkable. The reality of the result means there was only really one choice available.

[Strontium]

There are already Liberal Democrat members defecting to Labour, I doubt it will be long until we see some of their MPs defecting too.

 

 

I can't see any MPs defecting, especially not now we actually have a chance to influence things from the inside, but I don't doubt that a few of our more tribalistic members will find this hard to stomach and will leave the party.

 

If those leaving the Lib Dems then find themselves able to join a morally bankrupt party like Labour, a party that wants to lock people up for three months without charge, cause unnecessary intrusion on our lives with measures such as ID cards, maintain a database of its citizens' DNA, invade other countries on false pretences and tax the population into oblivion, then they weren't really liberals in the first place, and it's good riddance to the lot of them.

[Mr T]

Er - Lib Dems got 23% of the vote so 77% didn't vote for their policies. Not sure what else I can add to that. And let me be the first to say that the real Mr T would not be happy that he has had his name taken by a tory boy.

 

But the Government is a coalition between the Lib-dems and the Conservatives who got 36% of the vote. If your arithmetic is not up to it, I could help out.