Can I ask something potentially quite stupid? How is it that the SNP managed such a landslide but supposedly only about 40% of Scotland are actually for independence? I'm now familiar with their policies at all but the impression I got was always that it was their main priority.

It seems that voters felt they could safely vote SNP knowing that they could still vote against independence in any referendum. There was a large net switch from Lib Dem to SNP. Whether that was due to voters switching directly between the two, I don't know. However there are reasons for suspecting that is what happened. They may well have been left-leaning voters who are, nevertheless, hostile to Labour and to independence. They could have switched to SNP for the reason I gave at the start.

Can I ask something potentially quite stupid? How is it that the SNP managed such a landslide but supposedly only about 40% of Scotland are actually for independence? I'm now familiar with their policies at all but the impression I got was always that it was their main priority.

They swept up the Lib Dem vote which died on it's arse. While only 30-something% are pro-independence the SNP did a very good job with a minority government keeping most of their promises [No Indie Ref and a fail on Class sizes are the two I can remember right now] and they ran a very good campaign focusing on Scotland's future and how they can make this a great nation once more [As if it has been anything other than a complete dive] where Labour ran the most negative campaign I have ever seen.

 

The SNP Manifesto it managed to convert me to vote for them on the Regional ballot. My English father voted SNP both on constituency and region.

 

 

Scotland tends to vote very differently for our parliament, partially i think because we have a lot more power than the Welsh Assembly. It's more about the local issues for us and you can't argue against stuff like a further 5 years of Council Tax freezes [on top of the 4 that they have already delivered!!!] moving Scotland to use green energy entirely by 2020. Plus, they actually downplayed Independence in their campaign to win over the Pro-Unionists by using their strong track record and very much focusing on positives.

 

 

I can't stand Salmond, the man's a skezy greasy c**t, but his victory speech was rather impressive. No mention of a referendum at all, but more focus on amending the Scotland Act thats being put through Westminster and working with the other parties on areas they all agree to get more power for a devolved government. The man is very clever.

It seems that voters felt they could safely vote SNP knowing that they could still vote against independence in any referendum. There was a large net switch from Lib Dem to SNP. Whether that was due to voters switching directly between the two, I don't know. However there are reasons for suspecting that is what happened. They may well have been left-leaning voters who are, nevertheless, hostile to Labour and to independence. They could have switched to SNP for the reason I gave at the start.

You're quite right. The Labour vote has held up rather well across the country as a whole while the LibDem vote just died to the entire benefit of the SNP.

 

In Alex Salmonds most fanciful wet dream he didn't manage to win Kirkcaldy and Fife North East. Had Fife Council actually started counting overnight, when they were announced at about 2:30am everyone may as well have stopped counting and admitted defeat. Both of those going SNP by 3am would have shown that the SNP were not just on course for a win, but a crushing victory.

 

 

Both my dad and I who are against independence voted for them because LibDem got in bed with the Tory's and because they had a great manifesto and record. I would go as far to say they are probably one of the most successful minority governments.

 

 

Only bad side is they now have enough power to force through a minimum pricing bill for Alcohol :cry:

A lot of the results in Lib Dem seats in southern England are OK or even good. Results in northern England are largely bad. It mostly depends on whether they were originally gained from Labour or the Tories.

 

Even in the north the results are patchy for the Lib Dems. In the cities they are awful. In the more rural areas they are a lot better with seats gained in some places.

I think as long as the next campaign by Labour is good they will reclaim LibDem seats. In the north the SNP will hoover them up like a junky and a line of crack. Long standing MP's have a chance if they distance themselves. Ming Campbell has a chance providing he runs a good campaign of reversing the complete shock of Holyrood.

 

I can see them dying in the North of England. If Newcastle et al are like Fife NE then a LibDem vote is a fuck you Thatcher vote and them getting into bed with Cameron is going to badly affect them.

The SNP have done a good job of pitching themselves slightly to the left of Labour (emphatically ruling out tuition fees, abolishing prescription charges), which has meant they really benefitted from the many left-wingers who are disgusted at the Lib Dems. Even as a strong Labour supporter, I have to admit even I think the SNP had the better policies (though, if I lived in Scotland, I would've probably stuck with Labour simply because I'm against independence, although I might've voted SNP if I lived in a place where Tories or the Lib Dems were the competition).

 

Labour also paid the price for running a very negative campaign. I watched a debate between the Scottish leaders the other day, and Alex Salmond was by far the most impressive, giving an optimistic vision of the future. Tory leader Annabel Goldie atleast staked out a distinctive position, even though I disagreed with nearly everything she said. Iain Gray and the Lib Dem leader, on the other hand, were very poor, and simply gave reasons why people shouldn't vote for the SNP rather than reasons they should vote for their own parties. There's a lesson for the UK Labour Party there - no matter how unpopular the Coalition gets, they can't expect to just win an election by default - they'll still need to give their own vision for the future. David Cameron also showed how not to do it last year by managing to squander the Unloseable Election by running such a negative, personalised campaign against Gordon Brown.

Still no results declared in the NI elections. They're just taking the proverbial now.

My local paper is in as much shock as I am currently:

 

Comment: a seismic shift in Scottish politics

 

Words like "historic" are overused by journalists, but there is no doubt that the events that have unfolded today mark a seismic shift in Scotland's political landscape.

 

 

In many ways the Nationalist tidal wave that has encompassed Scotland is even more remarkable than Labour's Tony Blair-inspired rout in the 1997 general election.

Everyone knew the SNP would be strong in Dundee, Angus and Perthshire, but nobody predicted the extent of their popularity across the country.

 

For Labour, this election has been nothing short of a catastrophe. In a remarkable series of declarations, one traditional Labour stronghold after another has fallen to the SNP.

 

First it was supposedly safe seats in Labour's central belt base in Glasgow and South Lanarkshire. Then, as the day progressed, it became clear the blight had spread to Fife.

 

Even Gordon Brown's backyard of Kirkcaldy was not safe, with long-time MSP Marilyn Livingstone defeated. The staunchest of SNP supporters would not have predicted that — and the fact that result was the one to seal the SNP's majority win added misery on misery for Labour.

 

They were quick to blame a collapse in the Lib Dem vote, and there is no doubt Tavish Scott's party paid dear for the coalition agreement with the Conservatives at Westminster.

 

The result in North East Fife, where former Lib Dem leader Sir Menzies Campbell holds sway, was astonishing. Iain Smith, who was defending a massive notional majority and grew up in the area, is out. Nationalist candidate Rod Campbell, who lives in Perth and is largely unknown in the local area, is in.

 

The Lib Dems' woes were also evident in North East Scotland, where they lost all their constituency seats and opened the door to a Nationalist clean sweep.

 

But the Lib Dem impact granted, Labour also must take responsibility for their defeat.

 

Their election campaign was embarrassingly amateurish and at times simply patronised the intelligence of the public.

 

Today has conclusively shown that raising the spectre of the evil Tories is no longer enough to ensure a Labour vote in Scotland.

 

The Labour MSPs who remain — many of them new faces — now face the unenviable task of attempting to keep a buoyant SNP led by Alex Salmond in check during the march towards an independence referendum.

 

How they fare in that task has implications for everyone in the UK.

 

Iain Gray has said he will stand down as Scottish Labour leader in the autumn. That is the right decision.

 

A root-and-branch review of how Labour will organise, operate and proceed in Scotland is vital.

 

Source: http://www.thecourier.co.uk/News/National/...h-politics.html

 

---

 

 

I know it's a local paper, but even the commentators on the BBC were shocked at Fife North East and Kirkcaldy going SNP.

The Lib Dem Party President is now claiming House of Lords reform will be the Lib Dems' saviour: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...ailure-lib-dems

 

You have to wonder how out of touch these people are. The AV referendum has clearly shown that, at a time of cuts, people simply don't care about constitutional matters. To borrow a phrase, "it's the economy, stupid" - the Lib Dems need to start watering down the George Osborne's cuts programme if they want to have any chance of avoiding annihilation at the next election.

Still no results declared in the NI elections. They're just taking the proverbial now.

They didn't start until this morning though. I assume that means they didn't even separate the referendum ballots from the Assembly ballots. As it is also by STV, it was always going to take time before the first results were announced. It took a while for the first results across the border in the Dail election but, once the results started, it progressed reasonably quickly.

The Lib Dem Party President is now claiming House of Lords reform will be the Lib Dems' saviour: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/20...ailure-lib-dems

 

You have to wonder how out of touch these people are. The AV referendum has clearly shown that, at a time of cuts, people simply don't care about constitutional matters. To borrow a phrase, "it's the economy, stupid" - the Lib Dems need to start watering down the George Osborne's cuts programme if they want to have any chance of avoiding annihilation at the next election.

House Of Lords reform is more about satisfying Lib Dem members that the party has achieved something they have been striving for for decades. So far, membership has held up reasonably well but that could change. All governments do the same. After all, one of Labour's first acts after 1997 was to introduce "the right to roam". Not a matter of great urgency but a popular cause among Labour activists who might not have liked a lot of Blair's other policies.

LABOUR activists cared about the right to roam? :lol: I'd have thought that more the sort of thing getting the likes of the Countryside Alliance onside!

They didn't start until this morning though. I assume that means they didn't even separate the referendum ballots from the Assembly ballots. As it is also by STV, it was always going to take time before the first results were announced. It took a while for the first results across the border in the Dail election but, once the results started, it progressed reasonably quickly.

 

Even so, normally the first round of votes would start to come in at around 4-5pm, and by 6pm they were still verifying votes in certain constituencies. The referendum ballots had been separated by about 3pm and delivered to their own counting station, so I doubt that could be the sole reason. I don't think we'll get the full results until tomorrow.

 

Apparently Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister, had to show ID before he was allowed into the polling center, which I thought was quite funny..

LABOUR activists cared about the right to roam? :lol: I'd have thought that more the sort of thing getting the likes of the Countryside Alliance onside!

Many people in the Countryside Alliance hated the right to roam. After all, it allowed oiks like you and me access to what they considered to be their land. It was a cause dear to the late John Smith which was another reason Blair didn't dump it.

Oh no, I meant the sorts of people with those horrid stickers in favour of keeping hunting who tend to live in the Home Counties rather than the actual landowners in the CA :lol:

The NI contingent on Twitter are picking up on the loving reaction on the BBC of one of the UUP's campaigners to the news that one of their MLAs, Basil McCrea, was re-elected, and is beginning to trend on Twitter as #basilsweemate. Here is the picture of his reaction. Just look to the right of the guy in the centre. If that isn't love, I don't know what is.

 

And I used to do radio with him.

Labour comfortably won the Leicester South by-election with 57% of the vote, up 12% from last year's election.

 

Still no results declared in the NI elections. They're just taking the proverbial now.

 

It was ridiculous, 10 hours before we even got the first set of first preference results!! They're still only trickling in.

 

That being said, it was the most entertaining television I've watched in a long time, we really are CRAP in Northern Ireland. From the ballots in Omagh that came in soaking wet and had to be dried with a hairdryer, to the resorting that had to be carried out when votes for the two candidates whose names began with "W" got mixed up, to the constituency that had to start from scratch when a table in the sorting office collapsed, to my personal highlight of the evening, a deputy returning officer's mobile phone going off while he was reading the results live on air :lol: He could have acted like nothing was happening and carried on, but instead he apologised, turned it off and went crimson.

 

Only in Northern Ireland...you just couldn't make it up :D

Have to say I found the delusion today from the likes of Simon Hughes hilarious. "The Lib Dems are only one year into a five-year government - it will get better." WHY would it get better for them? If anything, the only way is down - the cuts haven't really started to bite yet, the NHS chaos hasn't started and the students who will have to pay £9000 fees aren't even allowed to vote yet.

 

In particular, I don't think the Lib Dems have quite realised just how toxic tuition fees is going to be for them in the long term. People are going to be carrying debts of £50,000 through most of their working lives, and, rightly or wrongly, those people are going to perceive it as solely the Lib Dems' fault. We're talking about this being hung round their necks for 20 years or more - that debt that everyone will have will always be a reminder of what the Lib Dems did when they were in government. The fact Clegg and the rest of the leadership were too stupid to see it would be electoral poison is baffling.

 

I genuinely can't see how the Lib Dems can get out of this - but one thing I know won't work is what Paddy Ashdown is doing by claiming voters are too ungrateful and/or don't understand how coalitions work.

Why have the Northern Ireland results taken so long?! I remember at last year's general elections, results from NI came in really early... Can't say I'm really that interested in the results from there though, as the political landscape is so different there that I don't know a great deal about it.

Why have the Northern Ireland results taken so long?! I remember at last year's general elections, results from NI came in really early... Can't say I'm really that interested in the results from there though, as the political landscape is so different there that I don't know a great deal about it.

 

Their excuse seems to be that we have 3 ballots to count whereas Wales and Scotland only had two, but that makes no sense whatsoever, as counting for our council elections don't even start until Monday! The ultimate embarrassment was on the 10 O'Clock news when Jeremy Vine was talking about the AV results and standing on a map of the UK with the 12 different regions on it:

 

"The 11 regions who voted "no" are shaded, and Northern Ireland is still counting." :rolleyes:

 

They also say that because we have proportional representation, it's more complex and will take longer, which once again is rubbish because we're talking about 10 hours to simply count the first preference votes, which is the equivilent of just counting an "X"...something that takes considerably less than 10 hours during general elections.