Danny

In the local elections, it was actually the opposite, on average they fell a bit more heavily in places where they had MPs than elsewhere. Which, despite the bullshit Lib Dem spin is only logical: they've fallen by 15% nationally since 2010, but in a lot of seats they don't even have 15% to start with so naturally that would mean there would have to be bigger falls in places where they're stronger.

"Blue collar" is probably not the right term, but it IS a fairly poor area, the type of lower middle-class people who are the real swing voters. Nottinghamshire is not wealthy no matter how big the Tory majorities have been here lately.

Unexpectedly poor performance from UKIP. If people are prepared to tactically vote against them, then that will really screw them over since their ceiling in any constituency is probably 35-40% maximum. They'll really need to choose their targets seats carefully (i.e. marginal seats where the winning post will be low, rather than safe Tory or Labour seats). Expected Labour flop. Beating dead horse time, but this really hopefully should shake them out of their complacency. They are not going to get a majority on present trends, and probably won't be be the biggest party. They are NOWHERE in the blue-collar parts of the Midlands where so many of the marginal seats are, no matter how many wasted votes they rack up in London or in safe southern "Middle England" seats where they have no chance of taking the seats.

The real improvements in the NHS only came after 2005 - after Blair and his line of awful health secretaries gave up with their "reforms". Before that, waiting lists were still very long, because all the extra money that was going into the NHS had to be wasted on the pointless bureaucratic restructurings and farming things out to inefficient and inexperienced private-sector. Once the Labour government got out of the way and just supplied the money and let the health professionals get on with their job, outcomes and efficiency shot up.

I'd be a bit wary of fines for missed appointments because it might dissuade people who really need medical help from making an appointment. I'm thinking especially of people with depression here; if you have trouble leaving the house and can't honestly say if you're going to be feeling well enough to go at a time you make an appointment, then something like that might well mean people don't make an appointment at all. I'd prefer things like heavier taxes on things like fatty foods, cigarettes and other health risks, with all the extra money going straight to the NHS. So that people who are increasing the chance that they will end up having to rely on the NHS do indirectly pay something extra, while it still remains totally free at the point of use. The parties are probably going to have to bite the bullet and say a lot of hospitals are going to have to close too. What I definitely hope doesn't happen is we get another saga of some "reforms" or restructurings which these thinktank nerds have been so obsessed with in recent years, which we know just create a giant mess and end up wasting more money.

Good news indeed! I'm glad they seem to be moving away from the typical politician bullshit of thinking they can improve the NHS even with less money going into it, by some magical "efficiencies" or "reforms".

But it's not just confined to them, judging by some of the comments made by Ed Balls in recent days.

Sigh. Remarkably stupid suggestion from some Labour backbenchers about trying to make the party "tough on immigration": http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/m...-mass-migration Will Ed Miliband actually for once in his life take a firm stand, and say point blank that it won't be happening no matter what? Or will he do his usual by dithering for weeks with Douglas Alexander, before eventually coming out with some weak, triangulated, split-the-difference mess which doesn't satisfy anyone on either side, topped off with contradictory statements like "We won't stoop to the level of the Tories and UKIP" while simultaneously saying "people are right to be concerned if a family of Romanians move into your street or if you don't see a single white face in the town centre" and then scrabbling around for any microscopic difference which allows them to feel their position is different to the other parties'.

Just watched last night's. Joey Barton was oddly underwhelming, despite Twitter hyping him up as being "controversial" I thought he didn't say much that was interesting at all. It was good to see the Scottish Labour woman actually say that it's stupid to try and blame all the country's ills on immigrants (though she did end up throwing in those teeth-grinding platitudes like "honest debate" and "listen to people's concerns"), rather than some of the cringeworthy talk of late from the likes of Ed Balls about how Labour needed to be "tougher" on immigration.

If it's a "Yes" vote, I would expect the SNP to have a near clean sweep of nearly all Scottish seats. The talk among the rest of the UK parties would probably very quickly turn to posturing about how they'd be "tough" in independence negotiations and all kinds of insulting anti-Scottish stuff, so presumably Scottish people would respond in kind.

It would probably have a bigger benefit to Labour. You're right that there's a lot of seats currently held by the Lib Dems which would go to the Tories if they collapsed, but at the same time, there's loads of Tory-Labour marginals where, if you transfer a good chunk of the Lib Dem vote over to Labour, Labour take the seats. That said, Labour could still end up losing a lot of those seats because, despite gaining that chunk of Lib Dems, they're losing their grip on a lot of traditional Labour voters who voted for them at the last election.

...but it seems they'll never learn: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/29..._n_5413596.html

Absolutely this. ANYONE when they're being hammered is going to look for someone to blame; lazy example, but the Germans were the most educated and tolerant society in the world in the early 20th century and even they weren't immune to looking for someone to blame when their living standards were destroyed. And right-wing parties are the only ones pointing the finger at anyone and providing an easy scapegoat for desperate people to latch onto at the moment. As the legendary Owen Jones says, the only way for the Left to combat it is by redirecting people's justified rage away from immigrants (and benefit claimants), and towards those who deserve that rage, the fat-cat bosses who think they don't need to pay their workers decent wages and give them decent conditions, and the super-rich who think they don't owe anything to society and have no qualms about stashing all their money away in offshore accounts while sponging off the British society that everyone else is paying for. But, as long as the mainstream left-wing parties (all over Europe, not just here) are too scared to point the finger of blame where it's deserved, and instead just spout mealy-mouthed waffle and stupid slogans which the average person can immediately identify as the vacuous tinkering-at-the-edge bullshit it is, then the shameless populist right-wing parties who ARE prepared to point the finger at someone are ALWAYS going to fill that void.

This from Lord Ashcroft's latest poll: Thinking about the state of Britain's economy and the amount the government spends and borrows, which of these statements comes closest to your view, even if you don't completely agree with them? The national economy is not yet fixed, so we will need to continue with austerity and cuts in government spending over the next five years: 41% (current UKIP voters 37%) While a period of austerity was needed to fix the national economy, we don't need another five years of cuts in government spending: 25% (current UKIP voters 22%) Austerity and cuts were never needed, it was just used as an excuse to cut public services: 34% (UKIP voters 41%) So a total of 60% of people (and an even greater proportion among UKIP voters, the crucial swing group) don't want more cuts, yet NONE of the mainstream parties are currently offering such a platform. And then they wonder why anti-establishment parties are getting a greater vote than ever before.

Incidentally, I was quite shocked to see that Scotland was the region where the Lib Dems actually fell the LEAST in the Euros! Maybe they will actually hold onto a few of their Scottish seats next year after all.

I can't imagine how that polling came out with Danny Alexander being a potentially more successful leader. :lol: Vince Cable would give them a legitimate chance of having a mini-revival though, since he remains quite popular (ironic given he engineered the tuition fees debacle).

I think they do release a breakdown of the exact results going by council wards, which some political experts compile to find out how they relate to parliamentary constituencies. That said, I don't know for sure in the case of Sheffield Hallam, I'm going off this from Labourlist: http://labourlist.org/2014/05/european-and...-liveblog-2014/

The Lib Dems came 3rd in that seat in the Euros though :P

An interesting set of results in terms of the next general election. Labour did lacklustre but not as disastrous as I thought they might. The Tories also did mediocre; even if they came close to Labour, 23% is still not a very good result for any governing party with the exception of Labour in 2009 (which was probably dragged down by the expenses scandal) and doesn't seem to indicate there's any "feelgood factor" from the supposed economic recovery. Labour are still in with a chance (whereas a distant 3rd place would've legit killed off their chances I think), but they're going to need to make changes, starting with the main faces of their campaign, as I said in another thread. And - dead horse time - I'm assuming even the first-class blinkered morons like Caroline Flint and Ed Balls will have realised that the deficit is quite clearly not one iota of a factor holding Labour back; the big winners of these elections stand for the exact opposite of "credibility". I expect UKIP to hold onto about half of their vote from last night in 2015, and win up to 10 MPs, since Farage has said they will be focussing all their resources on a small group of target seats.

North West is the first (and probably only) region where there's been a net swing from UKIP to Labour. Nip and tuck in their battle with the Tories for second place nationally.

Pleasantly surprised that Labour are running the SNP so close. Presumably a sign they'll come a clear first in Scotland in the general election.

Eek -- apparently UKIP might beat Labour in WALES.

Germany looks like it might be one of the very few countries where the two traditional mainstream parties actually come out on top. Otherwise, it looks like populist outsiders fighting the status quo are going to do well almost everywhere.

Completely agree. And, even though people right now probably would say they didn't want tax rises if you asked them, I honestly think if a politician stood up and said income tax was going by 2p because it was needed to save the NHS then people would happily accept it as well as respecting a politician who had the balls to say it. I still think think EdM (assuming he isn't ousted) needs to make Burnham shadow chancellor and push right to the forefront of their election campaign. There's no getting around the fact Labour are in dire need of someone who speaks like a humanbeing, rather than a ProfessionalPolitician, to "sell" their message to those people who are flocking to UKIP. Plus, there's evidence that even with Andy's current relative low profile, he's already popular: one of Lord Ashcroft's focus-group thingies a while ago said that, apart from Miliband and Balls, Andy was the only Labour person people ever mentioned spontaneously (pg. 19 of this). They desperately need him to be one of their main spokesmen if they're to have any chance next year.

The NHS is certainly still one of their trump cards (though not enough on its own), but to take advantage of it they'll need to pledge to massively increase spending on it. Doing what they've done so far, complaining about the state of the NHS but essentially not saying things would be any different in the NHS under them, is not going to work.