It took them forever to start counting as well didn't it.

 

Fife Council refused to count until 8am Friday, and as a result we were the last council in and of the 7 seats last to declare, Fife had 5 of them [Out of 5] but even then 3:30 was the latest return with the list following not too long after.

 

And we had 3 ballots to count. [AV, Constituency and Regional] I can imagine it would take longer under PR but even Australia had the majority of their seats declared by now [Although it took them days to get the last one in and give power to Gillard]. When the Aussie 2010 federal election is beating you on time, something has gone disastrously wrong.

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

And the Lib Dems managed to hold on to second place with their vote only down 4.4%. They beat the Tories by just six votes last year. This year the difference was over 2500 votes.

 

The Lib Dems also won the mayoral election in Bedford.

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.

Simon Hughes is only saying what other governments have said in the past. They have always ended up being right. After all, Labour survived after introducing tuition fees (having said they wouldn't) and then increasing them substantially (having said they wouldn't).

 

We all know that Labour would have introduced substantial cuts if they had won last year's election. However they haven't had the honesty to give details of a single penny of those cuts. Whether the figure quoted many times by Tories and Lib Dems yesterday is correct, I don't know - I suspect there was some dodgy arithmetic involved. That doesn't disguise the fact that Labour are being somewhat disingenuous in acting as if they wouldn't have cut anything at all.

The thing with tuition fees is that they've always been at a manageable level for students, most people I know are quite happy to pay just under £10,000 for the degree which they're doing. I know no one who would pay nearly £30,000 for it. I have no problem with getting into the amount of debt I have for the course I've done at the uni I've studied at, but I certainly would have many problems if the debt I'd got into was twice as much.

 

That doesn't mean I wouldn't have gone to uni but I for one would expect a much higher standard of education had I been paying three times as much. If universities don't vastly improve in standards I can see a lot closing, because they're simply not worth paying so much to get into.

Simon Hughes is only saying what other governments have said in the past. They have always ended up being right. After all, Labour survived after introducing tuition fees (having said they wouldn't) and then increasing them substantially (having said they wouldn't).

 

Labour's broken promise on tuition fees wasn't their defining moment in their only term in government in 80 years - that's the difference.

 

 

We all know that Labour would have introduced substantial cuts if they had won last year's election. However they haven't had the honesty to give details of a single penny of those cuts. Whether the figure quoted many times by Tories and Lib Dems yesterday is correct, I don't know - I suspect there was some dodgy arithmetic involved. That doesn't disguise the fact that Labour are being somewhat disingenuous in acting as if they wouldn't have cut anything at all.

 

Most of the deficit would actually have been taken care of by economic growth - which the Labour government had manifestly achieved by the time they left office, and which the Coalition have thrown into reverse over the last year. The REAL black hole in the economy is only about £20bn (the amount in tax revenues from banks which they gave before the financial crisis which is never coming back), which would've only needed far more moderate cuts than the Coalition are planning.

The Lib Dems also won the mayoral election in Bedford.

They did indeed and I voted for Dave Hodgson (Labour's Michelle Harris as well as we had two choices) I really don't understand why people bring party politics into these sorts of things. Dave Hodgson has done a very good job so far and he's got planning permission to do a very much needed regeneration of the town centre. Many Lib Dem councillors who have done a very good job have lost their jobs over this. Clegg's to blame, yes but I still don't understand why you bring party politics into how good someone does their job. You vote for the PERSON, not the party. Before Dave Hodgson we had an independant mayor for seven years called Frank Branston who said he'd 'just get things done' rather than deal with party politics and he was re-elected with an increased majority in 2007 before he died in 2009.

We had a Lib Dem councilior in my constituency, massive over-haul to Labour though. While I think Nick Clegg's played a part (York's big student city aswell), the Lib Dem council was absolutely dreadful. Even though I'm not a Labour follower I would vote voted for them purely because what they were offering the city was much better than any of the other candidates.

They did indeed and I voted for Dave Hodgson (Labour's Michelle Harris as well as we had two choices) I really don't understand why people bring party politics into these sorts of things. Dave Hodgson has done a very good job so far and he's got planning permission to do a very much needed regeneration of the town centre. Many Lib Dem councillors who have done a very good job have lost their jobs over this. Clegg's to blame, yes but I still don't understand why you bring party politics into how good someone does their job. You vote for the PERSON, not the party. Before Dave Hodgson we had an independant mayor for seven years called Frank Branston who said he'd 'just get things done' rather than deal with party politics and he was re-elected with an increased majority in 2007 before he died in 2009.

Agreed - and I've said the same in previous years when large numbers of Labour or Tory councillors have lost their seats. It can result - particularly in councils where the whole council is up for election rather than just a third - in a party going from having very few councillors to controlling the council in one go. That means they have some people who didn't expect to win and, perhaps, didn't even want to win. In turn that can mean a badly run council for four years based purely on events at national level. There were certainly some badly run Lib Dem councils in the 1990s where they had gained power unexpectedly. In general, councils were the Lib Dems had gained power slowly over a number of years were much better run.

 

For a few years after 1997 we actually saw local elections decided mostly on local issues but, as Labour gradually lost popularity, things went back to normal.

We had a Lib Dem councilior in my constituency, massive over-haul to Labour though. While I think Nick Clegg's played a part (York's big student city aswell), the Lib Dem council was absolutely dreadful. Even though I'm not a Labour follower I would vote voted for them purely because what they were offering the city was much better than any of the other candidates.

You said you'd have voted Tory you absolute wum :angry:

You said you'd have voted Tory you absolute wum :angry:

 

Depends really. When I said I'd vote Tory, it was because I'd not really read the policies. The one thing I want for York is a new Community Stadium. Looks like Labour will back the idea, which is why I would have voted for them. Also the Labour leader is one of the youngest councillors in the country, think he's got a very good perspective of what our City needs.

Nick Clegg has sent an e-mail to party members. Here is an extract

 

But there is no getting away from the fact that this has been a bad set of results - both the election results for the Liberal Democrats and the referendum outcome. I am certainly deeply disappointed. I know many of you are too. I am especially disappointed that so many hardworking and dedicated councillors, MSPs, AMs and campaigners have lost their seats.

 

I think it is clear that we need to do more to show people in the party and beyond what we are doing in Government and, perhaps more importantly, why. Because we are achieving a great deal. The BBC estimates that we are implementing 75% of the policies of in our manifesto, compared to just 60% of the Conservative manifesto.

 

He certainly needs to stick to both parts of the bit in bold and the reason why has to go beyond mentioning the deficit in every breath.

I see Nick Clegg is now vowing the NHS reforms won't go through as they are. This is quite the Damascene conversion considering Clegg said in an interview last year that the reforms were "fundamentally Liberal" - but, hopefully, he changes the habit of a lifetime by actually sticking to his word this time, and blocking ANY major reform of the NHS or abolition of primary care trusts (with such a huge funding squeeze over the next few years, the NHS simply can't cope with ANY major disruption).

 

But the Lib Dems do need to stick to their guns this time, and remember that if they don't vote for it, the Tories don't get their way. One of the things that made tuition fees such a car-crash for the Lib Dems is that the party had a complete nervous breakdown, before eventually doing what the Tories wanted anyway. This made them look not only like unprincipled liars, they also looked weak and dithery. A repeat performance on the NHS - where they make a lot of sound and fury but then just let the Tories have their way in the end - will make things even worse for them.

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.

 

Danny, I know you feel betrayed by the Lib Dems but there is not "rightly or wrongly" here. This was not a Lib Dem policy and never was, they stupidly and naively made a full concession here to get some of their other policies through (none of which anyone ever mentions) and had they tried to block this further they would have just been castigated for not blocking something else by a different group.

 

It annoys me that so many people voted Lib Dem on one sole issue (tuition fees) and are now gloating having switched their vote to a party who were not necessarily going to do any more for them. Every single one of them should remember that they would have had reduced or no tuition fees at all if the Lib Dems had gone into government alone, they just cannot get all of their manifesto through. What they have got through so far is pretty impressive, given their number inthe house, but all that gets reported is how they have not stood up to the Tories. I'll certainly agree there that they have lacked any bite whatsoever and that's where they have to change. Cameron turned his back on the love-in when he went back on his word not to get involved with the no campaign for AV so he has cast the first political stone as far as I am concerned.

New by-election coming up in Inverclyde in Scotland, after sitting Labour MP David Cairns died. It will be interesting to see if the SNP can challenge Labour here after their stunning result in the Scottish election last week.

New by-election coming up in Inverclyde in Scotland, after sitting Labour MP David Cairns died. It will be interesting to see if the SNP can challenge Labour here after their stunning result in the Scottish election last week.

Labour won a massive majority there last year but only held Greenock and Inverclyde by 500 last week. If the SNP manage to win that will be a huge blow to Ed Milliband. It would be one of the biggest byelection defeats for a party in opposition for many years, comparable to Simon Hughes' win in Bermondsey in 1983.

I don't think SNP will take it. People vote differently at Westminster, at least I hope that remains the case. It's my hope that Ming C can keep his seat despite Ian Smith losing his.

 

 

Although SNP do tend to do better at a By-Election than a proper election.

Labour's broken promise on tuition fees wasn't their defining moment in their only term in government in 80 years - that's the difference.

Most of the deficit would actually have been taken care of by economic growth - which the Labour government had manifestly achieved by the time they left office, and which the Coalition have thrown into reverse over the last year. The REAL black hole in the economy is only about £20bn (the amount in tax revenues from banks which they gave before the financial crisis which is never coming back), which would've only needed far more moderate cuts than the Coalition are planning.

And of course the fact that Labour had plowed millions into the economy disguised as "Quantitative Easing" (or printing money in olden language) might have had something to do with the appearance of growth as well. This could never had continued but it's Labour's old answer to everything, "the trouble with Labour is that sooner or later they always run out of spending other people's money" not my quote but a very wise person's one. And before anyone brandishes the "He's a tory voter/scum" line I'm not, but on the balance of historical evidence they always the leave the country the same way.

 

I will say that Labour are better historically at providing socially progressive policies (abortion, homosexuality for example) but are shocking on the economic front.

Edited May 10, 201114 yr by gezza76

And of course the fact that Labour had plowed millions into the economy disguised as "Quantitative Easing" (or printing money in olden language) might have had something to do with the appearance of growth as well. This could never had continued but it's Labour's old answer to everything, "the trouble with Labour is that sooner or later they always run out of other people's money" not my quote but a very wise person's one. And before anyone brandishes the "He's a tory voter/scum" line I'm not, but on the balance of historical evidence they always the leave the country the same way.

 

I will say that Labour are better historically at providing socially progressive policies (abortion, homosexuality for example) but are shocking on the economic front.

Abortion was legalised thanks to a Bill introduced by David Steel - a Liberal MP.

Point taken- but you get my drift.... :)

Point taken- but you get my drift.... :)

It's certainly true that far more progress has been made on social issues under Labour governments than Tory governments.