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What is non-traditional about a hung parliament ? It's always been a risk.
Anyway ideally parties should be disbanded, representatives are supposed to be representing their constituents not toeing a party line. In which case we'd have about 650 "parties", and they can form whatever coalitions they want on an issue by issue basis.
Despite it being a 'poll of polls' unless it's YouGov there is one on here who will dismiss it out of hand.
Unless of course......

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/

From the link, dated 9 Dec 14:

Taken together this seems like a pretty convincing case for UKIP damaging the Conservatives more, but as ever things are a little bit more complicated than that. Here are the reasons why:

First, 2010 is not necessarily a good baseline for judging where support has come from or would otherwise be. Just because people voted Conservative in 2010 and UKIP now, it does not follow that if they weren’t voting UKIP they would jump back to the Tories. Perhaps as a rival opposition party UKIP are picking up anti-government feeling that would otherwise have naturally gone to Labour as the main opposition. Perhaps the people who voted Conservative in 2010 and UKIP are not dyed in the wool Tories, but people who switched from Lab to Con in 2010 and might have otherwise switched back. The point is it is wrong to assume how people voted in 2010 is a good guide to how they have voted previous to that, or what their voting intention would otherwise be.

If we look at polls over the last couple of years it is clear that Labour have steadily lost support while UKIP have gained it. This is not necessarily evidence that people have switched from one to the other, but it is certainly a possibility. The British Election Study website has an article by Jon Mellon and Geoff Evans looking at the BES data on how current UKIP voters voted in 2010 and how they voted in 2005. Their findings show, as expected, that by far the biggest chunk of current UKIP supported voted Tory in 2010 (about 40%, compared to about 11% for Labour). In 2005 though the picture is somewhat more even – former Tories are still the biggest chunk (about a third), but there are about about twice as many UKIP supporters who voted Labour in 2005 than did in 2010 (about 20%). UKIP are taking former Labour voters, it’s just those voters have taken two elections to make the journey.

Second is the demographics of UKIP support. While UKIP have taken more support from the Conservatives, their support doesn’t resemble that of the Conservative party that much. UKIP support tends to be very white and is disproportionately from older generations (like that of the Conservative party), but unlike the Conservative party it is also strongly working class. This is the core message of Rob Ford and Matt Goodwin’s Revolt on the Right and one that is now quite widely recognised – UKIP voters are not retired Tory colonels, but are working class, older men. This is not incompatible with UKIP drawing their support from working-class Tories of course, but the potential risk to the Labour party should be clear: there is a significant body of working class Labour support that is hostile towards immigration and receptive to the sort of message that UKIP are offering, UKIP may not have taken full advantage of it yet, but they show every sign of attempting to do so in the future. There is already some sign of that shift – Peter Kellner’s analysis last month based on recent YouGov polls suggest that the balance of the voters UKIP are picking up is changing, and that amongst more recent UKIP recruits the proportion of former Labour voters is growing.

How do you like them apples mikey?
So what - we are just taking on a more continental model of government. Works perfectly okay in many countries, the key being to define the agreement of the merger well and stick to it. Coalitions tend to moderate the excesses of the larger party and perhaps that's no bad thing.
I'm unsure not getting difficult decisions made, and a tendency to stay in the safe middle ground, necessarily counts as working perfectly ok. Moderation is all very well if taken in moderation.
The notion that the workingclass all vote Labour has never been true. There have always been working class Tories, and far right parties from Moseley's Blackshirts to the NF and BNP have always been predominantly working class.

What UKIP have successfully done is hoover up the BNP and Tory working class votes into a place somewhere in the middle. But that isn't damaging Labour's core vote. So I do not agree UKIP are capruring the working class.

As for UKIP taking LibDem votes, that too is a non starter. They may get the floating voters, who may have opted for Clegg last time, but anyone who's politics fit to the LibDems would not be drawn to UKIP, probably the opposite. In 2010 most of the LibDem movement was from Labour to the LibDems. A disgruntled LibDem voter is more likely to move back to Labour than to UKIP.
// A disgruntled LibDem voter is more likely to move back to Labour than to UKIP. //

Or to the Greens. The upsurge in the Green vote is former LibDem voters.
If it's all the same with you Gromit, I'll go with the YouGov guy's assessment and detailed analysis:

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/nov/17/ukip-support-british-politics-voters-labour-party

The question is, will our friend currently sojourning in Cornwall?
I think some Labour voters may go Green as well - people who think that if parliament is going to be hung anyway, they have nothing to lose by voting with their social conscience. I don't see that either Clegg or Miliband can win alone.
Question Author
Gromit

/// from Moseley's Blackshirts to the NF and BNP have always been predominantly working class. ///

Yes all fully paid up members of the working classes.

The following were all prominent members and supporters of the British Union of Fascists.

Hastings Russell, 12th Duke of Bedford

Josslyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll - Member of the Happy Valley set, famed for the unsolved case surrounding his murder and the sensation it caused during Second World War Britain

Harold Sidney Harmsworth, 1st Viscount Rothermere - owner of the Daily Mail

William Edward David Allen, was the Unionist Member of Parliament (MP) for Belfast West.

David Freeman-Mitford, 2nd Baron Redesdale, his wife and two of his daughters:
Lady Redesdale
Diana Mitford (Lady Mosley, after marriage to Sir Oswald Mosley in 1936)
The Hon. Unity Mitford
Lady Cynthia Curzon (known as 'Cimmie'), second daughter of George Curzon, Lord Curzon of Kedleston and the wife of Sir Oswald Mosley until her death in 1933

Edward Frederick Langley Russell, 2nd Baron Russell of Liverpool CBE MC

Lady Russell

John Francis Ashley Erskine, Lord Erskine, GCSI, GCIE, was the Conservative and Unionist MP for Weston-super-Mare and Brighton and assistant Government whip.

Lieutenant-Colonel Lord William Walter Montagu Douglas Scott, MC, was the Conservative and Unionist MP for Roxburgh and Selkirk

John Beckett MP, was the Labour MP for Member of Parliament for Peckham

Robert Forgan MP, was the Labour MP for West Renfrewshire

Group Captain Sir Louis Leisler Greig, KBE, CVO was a British naval surgeon, courtier and intimate of King George VI.

Sir Alliott Verdon Roe OBE, FRAeS - the first Englishman to make a powered flight (in 1908 at Brooklands) and the first Englishman to fly an all-British machine a year later, on Walthamstow Marshes

Sir Reginald Goodall - noted English conductor

Major General John Frederick Charles Fuller CB, CBE, DSO - military historian, former Conservative MP for Ardwick

Frank Cyril Tiarks OBE - Director of the Bank of England

St. John Philby CIE

A. K. Chesterton MC

Neil Francis Hawkins

Arthur Gilligan

Jeffrey Hamm

William Joyce

Tommy Moran

Alexander Raven Thomson

Henry Williamson - writer

Frank Bossard

Malcolm Campbell - racing motorist and motoring journalis
So, if I read this properly, AOG, your list makes up the majority of the BNP. On this basis and given that the numbers are so few under your supposition, can you name the working class members?
Question Author
DTCwordfan

If you had read it properly you could not fail to notice this is not a list of BNP members as you suggest but it is in fact a list of prominent members and supporters of the British Union of Fascists.
Splitting hairs IMO, both were/are predominantly made up of working class members, note the word predominantly....
AOG

You are mistaking financial backers for members/voters/supporters.

Mosley had aristorcratic backers but the foot soldiers were working class. There were not many Dukes throwing punches in the Battle of Cable Street. The working class supporters objected to the Jews and Irish taking their jobs.

The Conservative Party was backed by multi-Millionaire, Lord Ashcroft, but you wouldn't describe the majority of Conservative voters as Peers.

Likewise, Farage has millionaire backers too.

But their core support/voters are the working class.
Turkey will not become a member of the EU for decades (if ever). The EU has a Catholic heart and France, Germany, Spain and Italy are firmly against allowing a muslim country to join.

The UK's support for their cause is mainly due to Turkey being a very active and important member of NATO. The US see Turkey as a very strategic ally, so the British Government follow the same line. Which is why Cameron and previous British leaders have always supported Turkey's application.
I think it is because they rightly (in my opinion ),feel that Turkey is not a European country.

Don't think it has anything to do with Catholicism.
Chilldoubt's detailed analysis was interesting.

"but the potential risk to the Labour party should be clear: there is a significant body of working class Labour support that is hostile towards immigration and receptive to the sort of message that UKIP are offering, UKIP may not have taken full advantage of it yet, but they show every sign of attempting to do so in the future."

All some Labour supporters want of The Labour party is that it does what it says on the tin and delivers jobs to them. It's easy to see immigration as an obstacle to that and frustrating that this makes their natural supporters gravitate to UKIP. (Isn't Labour responding by changing their immigration stance, now?)

Unpalatable to "right-on" types, no doubt.
However, it's seldom pointed out - in TV debates and vox pops on the news - but what we all overlook is that immigrants are willing (and able) to detach from their roots, up sticks and shift __thousands of miles__ to find work, whereas the average Brit is extremely attached to where their parents, wider family, their circle of friends and the environs in which they grew up. They are thus more than a little unwilling (wait for it...*) to move more than a few hours' drive away from all the people they'll want to be visiting on a weekly basis, on account of a job - more so, if it's about long-term career prospects, such as if you're from the provinces and your quals oblige you to move to a city.

* - can't afford to move from a low house-price area to a high price one but city folk get to flee the city and get the nice place in the country, leaving the local youngsters unable to afford anything near their folks. "Gee, thanks, city folk!"

Obviously, London attracts employers, who want to draw on the widest possible talent base (the commuter belt stretches over 100 miles, these days). Again, the most distant parts of the country lose out on job prospects.
The best (ie most well-established) immigrant communities are located in the cities, making this where all immigrants want to be, in the first instance.

Therefore, they don't just get any old jobs, they have better access to the higher-paid jobs. Hence they get to make outward displays of welath, drive posh cars and hence, if they head to the countryside for a break, prejudiced types mistake them for a drug dealer... (or a sports star or some other stereotype).

It's not always about race. It may just be generalised envy and the fact that someone got a job better than yours just by living closer to where it is based. Equality of opportunity only works on a small scale, where distance is involved.

I think Gromit and SirOracle's last posts landed in the wrong thread! :o)
Can't believe mikey chose not to post or comment on this thread.
Why would that be?
I have been retired now for a long timebut when I was working I belonged to a union & one of the things I objected very strongly to was the practice of union bulk votes to the Labour Party ( they were casting my vote without my permission to Labour Party decisions ) I believe the same sort of tactics is taking place with regard to party politics. There may be several differing candidates in an election who hold different views regarding what the general public want. The problem is that party politics can conflict with the personal views of a certain candidate who is forced to toe the party line. I would dearly like to see a system whereby we vote for a candidate who we think has our interests at heart & then let them sort gverning out in Parliament, it surely couldn't be any worse than the rabble we have at the moment.

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