If A Vote For Ukip Is A Vote For Labour Why Are They So Against Them?

[anotheoldgit]

Be interesting to know.

[mikey4444]

weecalf...not entirely sure what the "far middle" is, but.....

This interesting little chap stood in Clacton ::::

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howling_Laud_Hope

( actually I quite like his cat )

[mikey4444]

Naomi...to be honest, you rarely do otherwise !

[mikey4444]

Thanks Sqad...I always appreciate honesty on here !

We will see what the weekend Polls have to say, tomorrow morning.
( Labours still ahead in YouGovs Poll, done on Thursday and published on Friday ) ...ie before the two by-elections.

[Quizmonster]

Sqad, re your querying of 10ClarionSt's figures above, the fact is that Liz McInnes got 40.86% of the vote on Thursday whereas Jim Dobbin got 40.11% of it in 2010 That is, she got 0.75 more percentagewise than he did!

[ChillDoubt]

mikey,
Did the weekend polls suggest that Liz McInnes would win by the tiniest margin and see the majority cut from 6,000 to 600?

[Svejk]

Labour are finished. As the opposition to an austerity government they should be out of sight in the polls and walking by-elections.

[mikey4444]

Lets not forget the appallingly low turn-out in Heywood last Thursday...only 36%. The majority of the electorate quite clearly couldn't care less who won.
Shame on them.

[mikey4444]

Chili...to be honest, I didn't see any Polls that predicted the result in Heywood either way. YouGov certainly didn't do one.

[ChillDoubt]

Hear, hear Svejk. Labour are no longer the party of the working man and haven't been for some time.
That mantle has gone to UKIP.

[ChillDoubt]

Lets not forget the appallingly low turn-out in Heywood last Thursday...only 36%. The majority of the electorate quite clearly couldn't care less who won.
Shame on them.
---------------
Yeah, almost 7,000 Labour voters went MIA, AWOL or switched sides.

[mikey4444]

Chili...you can't possibly know what the people who didn't bother to vote, would have voted if they had. Maybe 1000's more people would have voted UKIP, or even Tory !

[ChillDoubt]

Sky News were talking to a UKIP MEP the days after(name escapes me) and I believe he made the calculation that if you combined the number of votes from the 2 by-elections, UKIP got more than all the other parties combined.
For a fledgling party, that's quite some stat.

[ChillDoubt]

Spin it however you like mikey, but give me some indication as to what happened to the views of 7,000 people in 4 years.
However you cut it, they becamse disillusioned with politics altogether or abandoned the Labour party completely.
As Svejk says, for a supposedly serious opponent to the Tories the Labour showing was abysmal and you are in effect not an opposition party by any stretch of the imagination. You're just making up the numbers, so in essence a wasted vote.

[Sqad]

Clarion....correct.

[ChillDoubt]

Or to spin it another way, their majority dropped by 90%!

[naomi24]

Mikey, I criticise Labour because Labour has nothing whatsoever to recommend it. It is not the party of the working man, and anyone who thinks it is not only has a very short memory, but is living in the long gone past.

[Slapshot]

Such a lot of rhetoric .......

One thing is certain, the nature of politics in the UK is changing because we've had 40 years + of blatant ineptitude in Government and it's created a chaotic state that has no way of stabilising itself in my view. I truly believe Labour are a spent force and if the Libs were a stronger Party Labour would drop to third, UKIP offer a different vision and as people are hacked off with the Tories and Labour they see something different as a possible improvement.

Labour offers nothing new other than a spend to get the country back on its feet, we know what happened last time with B Liar and in the 70s. The best solution for Britain right now is probably a hung parliament where the extremes of both parties are neutralised.

Right now Labour have 40 Scottish MPs in Westminster, next year they will be lucky to have less than half of that, the gains will be made by SNP and I expect the Tories. The nationalist alternative has been offered north of the border, I suspect the offer of this down south is attractive to many.

It's a changing world and politics is changing, now if this makes the Tories and Labour have a good look at themselves and really understand what Britian needs and deliver it then fine, problem is they are both too feckin arrogant to look internally and make a shift change in policy that might give the country a chance.... personal rhetoric over.... ;0)

[agchristie]

As I said yesterday, how many wake up calls do the big two need? They are now not staring at a mirage, it is Farage and co, who must be relishing the task ahead and anyone with an appx 6000 majority will be anxiously looking over their shoulder.