You'd think they'd be first in the queue to encourage the Scots to leave, given that the consequent loss of many Scottish Labour MP's would leave them almost permanently in power in the UK parliament... :blink:

Would it though? Good ol' Jeremy Vine debunked this using some pointless visuals during the local election coverage a few weeks ago.

Would it though? Good ol' Jeremy Vine debunked this using some pointless visuals during the local election coverage a few weeks ago.

 

You cannot meaningfully extrapolate from local election results to GE ones, though - people vote very differently where choosing a gov't for the next 5 years is concerned.

There's the old stat that there's no election Labour's won which it wouldn't have without Scotland, but that's incredibly misleading and if we win next year will almost certainly be broken.

Always helpful to remember that the full name of the party is the Conservative & Unionist Party, therefore if they suddenly started supporting Scottish independence it would make liars of them. And as we all know, the Tories don't like lying.

Always helpful to remember that the full name of the party is the Conservative & Unionist Party, therefore if they suddenly started supporting Scottish independence it would make liars of them. And as we all know, the Tories don't like lying.

To paraphrase one of their "celebrity" supporters, a Mr Cowell, Tories don't like lying, they love it.

You'd think they'd be first in the queue to encourage the Scots to leave, given that the consequent loss of many Scottish Labour MP's would leave them almost permanently in power in the UK parliament... :blink:

Prioritising party over country is something that happens on occasion, but I think most Tory MPs are at least on the ball enough to know it would be far too brazen to do it for this.

 

In any case, most of them believe in the union. They aren't going to stop that just because of a bit of party arithmetic which wouldn't even guarantee them a win anyway. It'd be much more difficult for Labour to win a majority, but it wouldn't be impossible.

I think they showed that Labour would have won in 1997 without the Scottish seats - but that was a true landslide. The way I see it, the reasons for major political party support of "Better Together" is:

 

Conservative - although it would make it easier for them in the future (and don't talk about local election and general election results being different - Tory support in Scotland is VERY low) to win a majority in a GE, they don't want to be remembered as the government that allowed Scotland to break free.

 

Lib Dem - they have (or had) a lot of support in Scotland - until recently the whole of the North including the Hebrides was pretty much Liberal Democrat minus Aberdeen city, Banff and Moray and they don't want to be remembered as the government that allowed Scotland to break free.

 

Labour - They stand to lose around 50 seats when front-runners in a GE and that could make the difference between a majority or minority government.

 

That's all major UK political parties taken care of, don't care about the flash in the pan extremists...and it's obvious where the SNP sit on this one.

There's the old stat that there's no election Labour's won which it wouldn't have without Scotland, but that's incredibly misleading and if we win next year will almost certainly be broken.

 

Not just misleading, but untrue - 1997 & 2001 for a start, probably 1945 & 1966 too.

 

Always helpful to remember that the full name of the party is the Conservative & Unionist Party, therefore if they suddenly started supporting Scottish independence it would make liars of them. And as we all know, the Tories don't like lying.

 

:lol:

 

I thought the 'Unionist' part referred to NI rather than Scotland, though?

Not just misleading, but untrue - 1997 & 2001 for a start, probably 1945 & 1966 too.

:lol:

Eh? We'd have very easily won 1997 and 2001 without Scotland, and 1945 and 1966. We had majorities in all of them bigger than the number of Scottish seats. We'd have won 2005 as well.

And in 45 and 66 (why mention 66 if you're not going to mention 64?) the Scottish Tory vote was far higher, hence why the record still stands.

Not just misleading, but untrue - 1997 & 2001 for a start, probably 1945 & 1966 too.

Actually Scotland had a much stronger Tory vote pre-Thatcher. So the net effect before her was really small, like 20 MPs.

 

It's only after the she-devil that their vote declines to the point where they have a solitary MP here and now have a government with no legitimacy this side of the wall.

As it stands, the Tories do pretty much sum up one of the arguments for Independence. We are being governed by a government we didn't elect. We're stuck with whatever the South-East and London chooses. As such we ended with an Austerity government when only one MP from Scotland was elected on that manifesto. The remainder of Scotland's MPs and indeed most of the MSPs disagree with Austerity because, as we've seen, it does more harm than good.

 

Now granted at this moment in time, the Labour MPs don't actually have a clue what they stand for but in 2010 they were not the party of Austerity. Neither were the LieDems (who were banished from the mainland after 1 year with the Tories at the Holyrood election) or the SNP. Yet that's the government we've ended up with.

There's the old stat that there's no election Labour's won which it wouldn't have without Scotland, but that's incredibly misleading and if we win next year will almost certainly be broken.

 

Judging by the European results, there's actually a chance of there being a swing from Labour to the Tories in the next election in Scotland (it was the only region where the Conservatives increased on the '09 Euros, and the region with the smallest Labour increase).

Edited June 14, 201411 yr by Danny

Judging by the European results, there's actually a chance of there being a swing from Labour to the Tories in the next election in Scotland (it was the only region where the Conservatives increased on the '09 Euros, and the region with the smallest Labour increase).

Our result there in 2010 was almost 97-esque though, so that stat wouldn't be as bad as it looked if it did happen.

Not just misleading, but untrue - 1997 & 2001 for a start, probably 1945 & 1966 too.

:lol:

 

I thought the 'Unionist' part referred to NI rather than Scotland, though?

 

I think the origins of this go back to the Home Rule crisis of 1886 when the liberal party spilt between those who supported the Tory view of the union in opposition to Home Rule for Ireland and the Gladstonian position of 'My aim is to pacify the Irish' and who supported some kind if self government - the liberal unionists like Joseph Chamberlain went and joined the Tory benches!

Edited August 7, 201410 yr by steve201

The Tories cannot publically denounce the breakup of the union in government, imagine that the PM of the UK actively encouraging the break up of it, political suicide.

Some Tories have started to float the idea of postponing the next General Election by a year if Scotland votes Yes. The first thing to note is that this is a recognition that a Yes vote really is possible. Until the last few days, the prospect had seems so remote that it wasn't worth spending much time thinning about it. The logic behind the suggestion is that it would eliminate the possibility of a Labour government being elected next May only to lose its majority (and possibly position as the largest party) when the Scottish MPs leave. That is all very well but there are a lot of problems with the idea.

 

1) What would the government do? They are already struggling to find things to do in the current session.

 

2) If they tried to introduce anything that was not in either coalition party's manifesto then Labour would have every right to say that the government does not have a mandate to do it. Of course all governments introduce legislation not in the manifesto but it would be a different matter for a government to do that after their term in office had expired.

 

3) The coalition agreement specifically states that it is a programme for five years. The Lib Dems could legitimately leave the coalition and claim that they had not broken the agreement.

 

4) The target date of March 2016 for independence is ambitious. What if it is not achieved? Does that mean postponing the election again?

 

5) In the discussions on the terms for independence the UK should be represented by all three main parties if only to make sure an incoming government (after May 2015) did not try to renege on what had already been agreed. Would the Tories try and use this as a way of excluding Labour?

 

Yes, there will be a problem if Labour wins a majority next May but do not have a majority once Scotland leaves. The same issue over their mandate would apply. However, this proposal does not seem to be the best way round that.

If I thought they were doing it for honourable reasons then I might take the suggestion seriously.

If I thought they were doing it for honourable reasons then I might take the suggestion seriously.

It would be the first time a Tory government had ever done anything for honourable reasons.