UK election 101

[MajGenl.Meade]

So many variables though...

[Gob]

Campaignspotting is taking a break from the US presidential campaign marathon to look at the sprint that is the UK 2015 General Election.

On Monday the British Parliament will be officially dissolved, David Cameron will make the traditional trip from 10 Downing St to visit the queen and politicians will hit the hustings in 650 individual races that will determine who runs the show for the next five years (or less!).

And what a campaign it looks to be. While Americans may have grown a bit too comfortable with the left-right, Republican-Democrat face-offs, the Brits are going to have a multi-party fracas that will be as unpredictable as it is entertaining.

Conservative, Labour, UKIP, Liberal Democrats, Scottish nationalists, Welsh nationalists! The possibilities would give your average US election forecaster a pounding migraine.

So for the next week I'll be blogging from the ground here in the UK, witnessing the kickoff spectacle in London, getting a view of the campaigns on the ground and checking out the seven-party debate that's scheduled for Thursday night.

Buckle up. It's going to be quite a ride

[rubato]

Angela Merkel and Chris Christie are British?

Well now that's surprising.


yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

Oh god.

[Gob]

[Lord Jim]

I love the way the Brits like to maintain the quaint fiction that the election race for their new government really only begins with the "official" start with the dissolution of Parliament...

When anyone who's followed this can clearly see that the electioneering jockeying for this has been going non-stop for at least the past two years...

In fact a strong case can be made that since the party leaders who would form the next government have been serving this entire time, it's been going on since the last election...

[Gob]

But there again, all politics is about advertising.

[Lord Jim]

The results of that Daily Mail/ComRes poll are interesting, and really illustrate the extent to which Two Kitchens is a drag on Labour support.....

It's a huge problem when one out of five of your own voters would prefer the other guy to be in charge....

Especially when only 1% of the folks in his party feel that way about your guy....

That won't turn many Labour votes to the Tories, but it could have an enormous impact on Labour voter turnout, which could make all these polls showing Labour and the Conservatives running neck-and-neck very misleading...

If you have such a low opinion of your own party leader that you would prefer to have the leader of the other party in charge, why bother to show up to vote?

[Lord Jim]

Of course they could wind up having a genuinely short election cycle:

UKIP's Farage warns Britain: Brace for a second election in 2015

(Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron is likely to win a May 7 national election and form a minority government, but his grip on power could be so tenuous that Britain will hold a second ballot this year, the leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) warned.

Opinion polls indicate neither Cameron's Conservatives nor the opposition Labour Party will win an overall majority in the 650-seat parliament as millions of voters turn to Farage's anti-EU UKIP party and the separatist Scottish National Party (SNP).

The closest British election in at least a generation has flummoxed seasoned politicians and City of London financiers who are pouring over opinion polls and Westminster seat predictions to see who might rule the world's sixth largest economy.

Farage, a 50-year-old former metals trader who wants Britain to leave the European Union, said his best guess was that Cameron would get the most seats and then lead a minority government shored up by UKIP and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

"The Tories (Conservatives) are going to be the biggest party," Farage, who is running for election in the South Thanet constituency in southern England, told Reuters in an interview. "You probably get a minority government."

When pressed on whether the projected seat numbers for the Conservatives, UKIP and the Ulster unionists would allow Cameron to scrabble together a viable minority government, Farage said there could be a second election like in 1974.

In the February 1974 election, Labour's Harold Wilson won the most seats but no overall majority and led a minority government for a few months before calling another election in October 1974 when he won a tiny majority.

"You would expect a second election to see a decisive shift in one direction or the other but it didn't happen in 1974 so we are in a strange place," Farage said.

"In a situation when nobody could form an effective majority, the demands for electoral reform become huge," he said, adding that Britain's so called first-past-the-post winner-takes-all system would lose legitimacy if it failed to provide stable government.

When asked about a potential post-election internal party challenge against either Cameron or Labour leader Ed Miliband, Farage said: "The irony is if things are really in stalemate, neither will get knifed."

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/1 ... O820150317

And if this polling report, (that Strop posted earlier in this thread) turns out to be accurate:

Ukip is on course to come second in at least 100 seats at the general election as it displaces the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems as the main opposition across large parts of the country, according to new analysis of the party’s electoral prospects on 7 May.

The extraordinary potential haul of Ukip “silver medals” – in an addition to a likely tally of half-a-dozen or so seats at Westminster – would represent a massive breakthrough for Nigel Farage’s anti-EU party, which failed to achieve even a single second place in 2010.

The analysis, conducted by Robert Ford at the University of Manchester for the Observer, suggests that the biggest threat to the established parties from Ukip will come in future local and national elections after May, once it has put down local roots and established itself in the minds of voters as a real alternative to the incumbent party.

It also means that the future of the UK in the EU – normally not a top issue on the doorsteps – will become far more central to election debates, as Ukip candidates press the case for the country to quit the EU and apply pressure for an in/out referendum.

Examining Ukip’s strength, as well as byelections in this parliament, Ford concludes that Farage’s party will pile up “silver medals” across industrial and urban regions in the north, as well in parts of the Midlands, the south east and East Anglia and the south west.

The party is polling at between 10% and 15% in most polls. In today’s Opinium/Observer poll it is on 14%.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015 ... gel-farage

While they may only pick up a relative handful of seats in the May vote, the Ukip would be positioned to benefit immensely if a second election has to be held later this year...

Which I'm sure has occurred to Mr. Farage...

[MajGenl.Meade]

Jeremy for PM!

[Gob]

Seconded!

[MajGenl.Meade]

He does look a little Paki-ish
- N. Farage

[Gob]

The UK's party leaders clashed on a range of issues including the NHS, immigration and the deficit in the first TV election debate.





It is the only time Ed Miliband and David Cameron will appear together on TV ahead of 7 May's polling day. The Labour and Tory leaders debated zero hours contracts and spending cuts in the ITV-hosted contest. But some of the sharpest exchanges in the two hour event came when Lib Dem Nick Clegg clashed with Mr Cameron.

Snap polls taken after the debate gave a mixed verdict.



A YouGov poll of 1,100 people gave a clear victory to the SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, with 28%, followed by UKIP leader Nigel Farage on 20%, Mr Cameron on 18%, Mr Miliband on 15%, Mr Clegg on 10%, Green Party leader Natalie Bennett on 5% and Plaid Cymru's Leanne Wood on 4%.

[Crackpot]

is that a game show?

[MajGenl.Meade]

[Crackpot]

So yes

[Lord Jim]

I was going to guess The Biggest Loser...

[Sue U]

It certainly isn't To Tell the Truth.

[Gob]

I started watching last night's seven-leader UK General Election debate expecting something akin to a US presidential primary multi-candidate free-for-all. What took place, however, was much more interesting.



Imagine a 2012 debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney - then add conservative populist firebrand Pat Buchanan, Libertarian Ron Paul, a Green Party candidate and pro-independence nationalists from Texas and New England. The diversity of viewpoints was refreshing; the tenor of the discussion spirited.

Take the hot-button subject of immigration. It received a full airing on Thursday night, in part because it is a central focus of UK Independence Party candidate Nigel Farage. He brought the topic up early and often, calling for sizeable reductions in the number of Eastern European immigrants entering the country - and, by implication, a de facto UK withdrawal from the European Union. His opponents offered their counters and objections, ranging from controlling benefits for new arrivals to continued open immigration.

"You have to accept that people will come here, we have free movement of people," said Leanne Wood of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru. "We expect our citizens to be treated well when they move to other countries, and likewise we must treat European citizens well when they come and live with us in our communities, too."

In US debates, by contrast, immigration has been barely discussed during the general election. In the primaries, the Republicans race to see who can appear toughest on border control and Democrats tread lightly for fear of angering Hispanic voters, a key constituency. Intra-party debates, not surprisingly, seldom deviate from closely held orthodoxy. In presidential debates, heavily drilled candidates desperately try to avoid saying anything controversial. But with such a wide variety of candidates on stage Thursday night in Salford, there was a wealth of diverse opinions to consider.

The UK debate also created some unusual dynamics. As with many US primary forums, a pack mentality was often on display, as candidates ganged up on the perceived frontrunner - in this case, incumbent Prime Minister David Cameron.

There was another incumbent on stage, however - Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, thanks to the coalition government his Liberal Democrats formed with the Conservatives to forge a governing majority.
Right out of the gate, Mr Clegg launched a sharp attack on the prime minster, to which he responded, giving Labour challenger Ed Miliband the opportunity to quip: "They're blaming each other, and they're both right."

One particularly refreshing change from US politics was the number of women on the stage - Wood, Green's Natalie Bennett and Scottish Nationalist Nicola Sturgeon. That's just two less than have participated in a presidential, vice-presidential or major party primary debate in US history (Hillary Clinton, Michele Bachmann, Sarah Palin, Carol Moseley-Braun and Geraldine Ferraro, for those keeping track at home).

"Election apart - tonight has been a fantastic exposure of old, male, stale politics by women outsiders," tweeted Channel 4 presenter Alex Thomson. In the media "spin room" after the debate, much of the talk centred around the performance of Sturgeon and some polls that showed she had won the contest. She was quick on her feet, and her full-throated defence of a state-run health service and her attacks on Cameron's "austerity" budget cuts had some spectators perhaps wishing that she were the Labour Party nominee.

All this brings up an interesting point. Were the Scottish nationals not in this race, talk in the UK likely would not be on how the contest is too close to call between Labour and the Conservatives. Instead, as much of Scotland reliably voted Labour up until now, everyone might be looking ahead to a comfortable Labour win. But that's not reality in today's multi-party UK, where chances are whoever manages to form a government after 7 May will only do so by coalescing a variety of interests with distinct agendas.

"I hope what you heard tonight doesn't fill you with too much despair," Wood said in her closing statement.

For those who end up trying to govern, the real despair may come after election day.

[Lord Jim]

Imagine a 2012 debate between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney - then add conservative populist firebrand Pat Buchanan, Libertarian Ron Paul, a Green Party candidate and pro-independence nationalists from Texas and New England. The diversity of viewpoints was refreshing; the tenor of the discussion spirited.

And yet, at the end of the day, the UK versions of Pat Buchanan, Rand Paul, and Ralph Nader will have as much chance of leading the next government as they would here...