Sunday, February 22, 2015

This is how stupid Labour think you are - they want you to believe that a 1 in 4 chance is a freak occurrence

You might remember that a few weeks ago, the Labour party lied through their teeth in an attempt to scare people who were thinking of voting SNP - by claiming it was a "FACT" that in a hung parliament, the largest single party gets to form a government.  When it was pointed out that there were historical precedents of the second-largest party forming a government (most recently when Ramsay MacDonald became Prime Minister after the 1923 election), they hurriedly changed their line to "for the last 90 years, the largest party has always formed the government".  The implication was that this amounted to much the same thing, ie. something that hasn't happened for nine decades must be extraordinarily rare, and thus unlikely to happen now.

But here's the thing - there have been twenty-five general elections over the last century, and just four have resulted in a hung parliament.  Those four occasions were 1923, 1929, 1974 and 2010.  One of them resulted in the second-largest party forming the government.  I don't know about you, but a 25% strike rate seems pretty decent to me.  And it gets even better, because on at least two of the other three occasions, the second-largest party made a serious attempt to form a government.  In February 1974, Edward Heath's Tories were narrowly beaten into second place, but immediately opened coalition talks with the Liberals, and offered the post of Home Secretary to Jeremy Thorpe.  There were even suggestions that Heath might step down in favour of Willie Whitelaw to make the deal more palatable.  And then of course there was 2010, when the Liberal Democrats agreed to Gordon Brown's request to open up formal coalition negotiations with the second-placed Labour party.  Those negotiations were eventually scuppered by right-wing Labour politicians such as Tom Harris and David Blunkett, who toured the TV studios openly campaigning for David Cameron to become Prime Minister.

So what Labour should really be saying is : If we're the second-largest party in a hung parliament after May, history tells us there's 'only' a 75% chance that we'll make a serious attempt to take office, and if we fail it'll probably be because our own members sabotage us.  But somehow that doesn't sound like a very compelling argument against voting SNP.

29 comments:

  1. Yeah, exactly. The other thing that winds me up is this constant refrain in the msm of "....if the SNP surge lets the Tories back in". How about: "if Labour's crapness means they get less seats than the Tories". As Ralph Nader stated when accused of scuppering Al Gore's chance of becoming president: "Gore beat Gore".

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  2. What will be become very apparent to Scots,no matter the outcome,is that the current constitutional arrangements are not designed to serve Scottish interests.
    The Westminster establishment are back in full panic mode again at the prospect of only having a token representation from london based parties in Scotland being returned to head office in May.
    Who will they appoint as their governor general to implement their will in Scotland?

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  3. There's a simple question to be asked: if Labour are a smaller parliamentary group than the Tories but even with UKIP, northern Irish unionist and maybe even Lib Dem support they can't form an overall majority, would Labour join the SNP/Plaid/Green bloc in voting against their Queen's Speech? If the answer is yes, the only question is what level of further co-operation they're prepared to discuss. If the answer is no then it's a clear statement that Labour would rather have a Tory government in power than let an SNP-voting Scotland have any say in the government of the UK.

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    1. I suspect that we will find that Labour's head office would prefer a Tory government to any form of accommodation with the SNP/Plaid/Green bloc; and I am certain that Labours North Britain branch office would prefer a Tory government to any deal with the SNP.

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    2. For a party that now exists mainly to perpetuate the Thameside Trough, opposition to the Blue Tories must be a very cushy number indeed. Hundreds of thousands of £, shady consultancies, a public profile of sorts, otherwise unattainable sexual favours, etc, in return for putting your feet up, watching The Wire boxsets and nodding along enthusiastically to Carcetti's sellouts, and then every few months pretending to GAF what the Govt are up to: this surely is the lifestyle your modern Labour candidate dreams of.

      Miliband may (or may not) prefer not to get the boot, but those from Welsh or North English inner city rotten boroughs? Why bother with the hassle of governing alongside those weird ideologues from Scotlandshire?

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  4. "Those negotiations were eventually scuppered by right-wing Labour politicians such as Tom Harris and David Blunkett, who toured the TV studios openly campaigning for David Cameron to become Prime Minister."

    Despite their rhetoric on the cuts, Labour knew that they would have also presided over austerity if they had won - as Alistair Darling admitted in that famous interview, Their gameplan was obviously to let the Conservatives form the government in the hope that they would become massively unpopular and could swan back in 5 years later on a massive anti-austerity message, Whilst the Conservative polling position is obviously weak, Labour are far less popular than they must have imagined 5 years ago. The really worrying thing for Labour is that in the English local elections (in terms of national equivalent vote share) and last year's Euro elections they have consistently underperformed their opinion poll figures.

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  5. Miliband will be deposed - for losing - and the Labour and Conservative wings of the British Establishment will enter a Grand Coalition. Because the nasty Scots want to break up this great union of peoples of England and er, well Scotland which is clearly in the interest of both countries. Well really just England. Really.

    We are going to have to send 59 MP's to Westminster, then do a Sinn Fein and refuse the oath. Perhaps some of the other Europeans will lean on these people to just let us go.

    So on May 7th, Vote SNP for Scotland. Never mind speculating who will form what arrangement with whom. Vote SNP, and worry about the consequences later. Its not like voting for anyone else made any difference in most of our lifetimes.

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    1. The SNP would never refuse to take the oath. However, if they had a large majority of Scottish MPs, the option of effectively "withdrawing Scotland from Westminster" at a time of their choosing might give them extra leverage if London ever tried to prevent the Scottish Parliament from calling a referendum.

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    2. Sorry James, I'm being flippant. I just read Rawnsley saying Vote SNP get Tory. Its all speculation. We could spend every minute discussing how many angels can dance on the end of a pin. Just Vote for who you want. I trust the leadership of the SNP. They will get the best they can for us. And that us is the Scots. Not the party members, or the MP's on expense accounts. They have a track record.

      But I do expect Miliband to be ousted. And I wouldna be surprised if the two cheeks joined forces.

      I really like the new captcha's. I can read them. Never did understand why they had two words often of immense ambiguity and complexity.

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    3. You obviously haven't had the sushi picture puzzle yet - that was the worst one so far. "You haven't identified enough photos of sushi. Please try again."

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  6. Red Tories voting for Blue Tories.

    If anyone was thinking that the UK was a democracy think again.

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    1. I think the Lib Dems might raise an eyebrow or two at the recommendations for Argyll & Bute and Berwickshire, Roxburgh & Selkirk. Labour erring on the side of the Tories, as they always do.

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  7. Lab/Tory fought tooth and claw against PR yet now they could both be it's victims. Scotland indeed could have a disproportionate affect on England's politics. Aye whit goes around comes around!

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  8. Populus: SNP 37, Lab 28, Con 19, LD 8.

    http://www.populus.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/OmOnline_Vote_23-02-2015_BPC.pdf

    Perhaps more significantly, it's the first time their GB poll has not shown Labour in the lead since mid-December.

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  9. I have just a one point Lab lead over Con now in my own UK PoP. Zero points if you exclude the rather odd TNS polls which give infeasibly high Labour leads. Narrowest gap since LAbour's peak in early 2013. The recent modest movement to Con seems to be coming from UKIP.

    Also, polls going back to 1992 (haven't looked beyond) always overestimate Labour's VI at this point ahead of elections, often by quite a large margin. Tories often a bit overestimated too, but not as much as Labour.

    If the pattern repeats, then Tories will get more votes than Labour although number of seats might be similar.

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  10. You would need a heart of stone not to laugh at the deluge of sleaze and corruption from the out of touch tory twits and red tories today.

    Poor old Straw and Rifkind.

    Couldn't happen to two nicer people.

    ROFL!!! :-D

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  11. Oh dear, I see a SLAB official in East Lothian has urged tactical voting against the SNP, and for SLAB voters to vote for the Tories in certain seats! He has deleted his Twitter account apparently! This was coming for years. Dear o dear what a terrible state SLAB are in.

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    1. Michael Kelly did something similar a few months back. It's supposed to be an expulsion offence from the Labour party, but they'll let it go, obviously.

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    2. Despite Duncan Hothersall's pisspoor attempt at trying to smear the SNP, I'm pretty sure that SLAB will have ordered Mr McNeill to delete his account. I doubt they will discipline him because it will just draw (mainstream media) attention to his utterances.

      They won't want it getting wider publicity because it completely undercuts their primary (only?) message.

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  12. Straw thought he may get away free from the Chilcot report, as the delays go on and on, but this turns up!
    Possibly some poetic justice there, and then there'll be Chilcot.

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  13. And there's me thinking today couldn't get any funnier than the corrupt warmongering right-wing fools Straw and Rifkind getting caught red-handed! :-D

    "16 days before the polls open Andy Coulson will stand trial in Scotland on charges of perjury on 21 April"

    *tears of laughter etc*



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  14. Ashcroft sub-sample:

    SNP 43, Con 25, Lab 19, LD 10.

    http://lordashcroftpolls.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/ANP-150223-Full-data-tables.pdf

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    1. Liberals and Torys a tad high, NewLabour about right. Interesting to see when the transition stage will take place, when it becomes the Conservatives and not NewLabour who become the office opposition to Scotland. Undoubtedly they will then have the support of the media, just as NewLabour have now.

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  15. Stupid is publicly demanding that people vote for a Conservative MP to stop the evil SNP.

    Stupid is squealing that evil Mr Wings forced a defenceless labour activist off of twatter.

    Stupid is that walking corpse Drunken Hovercraft.

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  16. I think wisdom of crowds has value, maybe even more than straight VI.

    This from Yougov:

    Irrespective of how you yourself will vote, who do you think will win the next general election?
    39% Con
    30% Lab
    5% Other
    26% DK

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    1. Slightly different Q scottish crossbreak:

      Thinking specifically about your own constituency and the candidates who are likely to stand there, irrespective of how you yourself will vote, which party’s candidate do you think is most likely to win in your own constituency at the next general election?


      52% SNP
      26% Lab
      7% Lib
      5% Con
      8% DK
      1% WNV

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  17. ComRes (now working for the Daily Mail) sub-sample:

    SNP 43, Lab 24, Con 20, LD 10.

    http://comres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Daily-Mail-Political-Poll_24th-February-2015.pdf

    There are a couple of supplementary questions about the SNP entering coalition with contradictory answers.

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    1. The Ashcroft poll & Com Res samples for Scotland seem to almost have the same findings.

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