British Politics Thread

I have some doubts that said demographic constitutes a very large percentage of the Labour vote.

I don't know how UKIP are going to go after the old-school voters of a party they have absolutely nothing in common with. EU-phobia will only get them so far, surely?

Further then you think. And a fair number of those old-school Labour voters don't support immigration or the EU^note  Neither did Labour in 1984, did they?, and probably feel betrayed by their party since their move to the centre.

...but to the point of voting for a party that is "more Tory than the Tories"? That's still quite a leap.

Yeah up North Labour just has to play the "Farage is a Thatcherite banker" card and watch UKIP collapse. No need to defend the EU, just point out that UIP are Thatcherites and let that do the work.

But will those voters trust Labour, or will the voters be so disillusioned that they don't care?

They trust Thatcherite liberalism a whole lot less. <_<

Mark Reckless (Rochester and Stood MP) just defected to UKIP.

To repeat, Tory MP Mark Reckless joins UKIP

Meaningful Name I hope.

It's a pretty swing seat to. When it was called "Medway" before 2010 it was a Labour seat, (though only just). The whole Medway area isn't an easy ride for the Tories, the local Labour group are tough, throw in the dissatisfied Lib Dem vote that we might grab (we did tell them at 2010 that a Lib Dem vote was a reckless vote) and Labour could swing into this one.

If there's a by-election for the seat I'm gonna be down there, hell even if there isn't I'll be down there at the General as much as possible, I was at the count in 2010 and it was tense, but this is gonna be even more so.

edited 27th Sep '14 7:16:25 AM by SilasW

In other words anyone could win there, even UKIP?

Possibly. There's a fair amount of anti-immigration sentiment there, the English Democrats got 4.5% of the vote in 2010.

The Medway are is a weird one, it's urban enough that Labour aren't totally irrelevant like in most of Kent, but it's a tough fight. thing is the Tory vote will split over this, UKIP can and will grab from both Labour and the Tories though, there's a lot to go around.

Hell the Lib Dem vote may even be retained, keep in mind that it's the South East, there are still some Lib Dems down here.

I'm gonna try and crunch some numbers, it's a shame I'm not at home, I'd have access to Labour's internal numbers if I was.

Edit: By-election confirmed, "The Rochester and Strood MP told the UKIP conference, in Doncaster, that he has resigned as an MP, triggering a by-election in the constituency."

edited 27th Sep '14 7:29:01 AM by SilasW

So which job did he get appointed to?

Going by the 2011 council elections for the wards that make up Rochester and Strood the numbers are.

Conservative: 14,126 Labour: 9,817 Lib Dem: 1974, Green: 1689 English Democrat: 1389, UKIP: 489, Independent: 683, Trade Unionist: 426

Some wards are multi-member, where they are I divided the party's number of votes by the number of candidates they ran (rounding up).

The Other Wiki has apparently confirmed his appointment to the post of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the three Chiltern Hundreds of Stoke, Desborough and Burnham.

Brooks Newmark quits Government after sending explicit photos of himself on WhatsApp

...so, did he send the pictures as a last "fuck you", or did he send the pictures and was forced to resign over it?

He was tricked into doing so. He'll stay on as MP though - apparently other folks have survived such issues in the MP post with ease.

The second; it was sting by an undercover reporter who sold the story to the Daily Mirror.

Most infamously, Chris Bryant.

edited 28th Sep '14 1:36:38 AM by Greenmantle

Dammit. Just this once, I wanna see a politician go for the first option.

Tories unveil new poor-people-fucking-over plans - a cut to benefits of £2k per year, and 18-21 year olds being stopped from claiming JSA at all unless they do "community based work".

Labour are promising to match such plans I believe, though I lack the link at present.

So on the UKIP thing, I did some looking and found something rather interesting. In 2010 the Tories won 14 seats where UKIP did not challenge them. Of those 14, 1 has had the Tory stand down and the seat be won by Labour, 1 had a UKIP backed independent running, and 2 belong to super high profile Tories (Osborn and Hague).

That leaves us with 10 seats, 2 of which have now had their Tory MP flip to UKIP. So there are 8 left.

• Aldridge-Brownhills with Richard Shepherd
• Nuneaton with Marcus Jones
• Kettering with Philip Hollobone
• Hexham with Guy Opperman
• Haltemprice and Howden with David Davis
• Dewsbury with Simon Reevell
• Bexhill and Battle with Greg Barker
• Shipley with Philip Davies

Shepherd and Davis seem to be far to entranced to go anywhere, they've been Tory M Ps for such a long time now. They may be on the right of the Tory party but they seem to be entrenched there.

Philip Davies looks like a possible target, he's a committed Euro-sceptic and was one of the few Tories that UKIP actively campaigned for in 2010. Philip Hollobone is pretty much the same, he even went to uni with Farage.

Marcus Jones seem an unlikely one, I can't find anything showing him as particularly Euro-sceptic, or massively far-right in way particular area. Guy Opperman is similarly unlikely, the guy's on the left of the Tory party, he got into politics campaigning to save an NHS hospital.

Simon Reevell I simply can't tell, there's so little information on the man that I can't even establish if there's a lack of far-right views, though the fact that his seat is in Yorkshire and he has a 2.8% majority makes me think he'd be pretty foolish to defect. Greg Barker is another one where it's hard to tell, apparently he's a fan of Farage, but he's a minister (Energy and Climate Change), plus he's standing down in 2015.

So I'm thinking the ones to watch are Philip Davies and Philip Hollobone, I'll see if I can find any additional info on them.

So, Osborne has set a grand target. Eliminate the deficit by 2018, including investment. So you have to take into account all spending and still be in the black by 2018.

Labour have set a more modest target of a balanced budget by 2020, excluding investment therefore allowing HS 2 and the like to fall off the books (or more precisely be funded by borrowing).

Osborne has also said that to achieve his aim, there has to be a freeze on benefits. There has to be more austerity. Britain, he has said, is not a country that collects too little tax but a country that spends too much. These cuts are going to be vicious, hitting on the poorest people who are often in work and are struggling to keep their heads' above water as it is.

Let's be clear. This is not an appeal to voters. This is a naked challenge to the 'fiscally irresponsible' Labour party whose leader forgot about the deficit. So it's Labour's move: accept the chancellor's view that more austerity is needed and betray Labour's core vote, or argue against these moves against further criticism that Labour simply cannot handle the economy. My hunch is that Labour will take the former option, thus allowing the election to be fought on the chancellor's terms.

Needless to say, I don't agree. Labour needs to stand up and force the chancellor to put up or shut up. This is what I would do if I were Labour: I would challenge Mr Osborne and by extension his party to make their grand target of deficit free by 2018 a cast-iron guarantee to the nation. Put it in writing that if the UK is not deficit free by April 2018 Mr Osborne, Mr Cameron and the entire cabinet must resign and call a general election. Labour should say that if Mr Osborne is so convinced that austerity is the only path to prosperity, and that inflicting this pain is completely necessary then he should not hesitate in signing such a pledge. If he does start to equivocate, then maybe he is not acting with complete certainly and is thus punishing the most vulnerable in our society on nothing more than an ideologically motivated belief. Such an act is simply not acceptable.

There would be some conditions, of course. An independent body will be set up to act as an arbitrator but their remit will be tough: only giving flexibility for truly unforeseen circumstances. In this I would not include the highly foreseeable catastrophe of the UK leaving the EU, not to mention the economic uncertainty that simply holding a referendum will have. Stoke that European flame within the Tories by using the economic uncertainty to drill right to the heart of the matter, and watch the party tear itself to shreds.

Even better, there is almost no penalty to Labour really putting the heat on by signing their own pledge of a balanced budget by 2020. Any Government that is elected next year will have to resign in 2020 anyway. Sure, it might make a headline or two in 2020 but a Labour government would have 5 years to steer the debate in a direction less focused on austerity by 2020 and general election campaigns would be in full swing. In 2018 the Conservatives would have no such luck as there would be very little to occupy the political sphere except a looming countdown to an impossible target.

Labour needs to do something to regain the initiative on the economy. They can't let George Osborne dictate on what the grounds the argument will be fought. They must know that the Conservatives always win if it comes down to a question of economic growth funded by being the bad guy. Labour cannot out-Tory the Tories. Labour needs to reignite the debate on austerity as a whole, and in doing so Ed Balls will find his arguments have more traction if the austerity consensus is broken. They need to really start to challenge the Conservative party and this I feel is the way to do it.