So, who IS going to win the next election?

[alluvial]

In my view the Liberals will see their support decimated and they will be unlikely to be in a position where they have enough MPs left to enable them to go into coalition.

The real unknown here is what effect UKIP will have. I think there will be a large part of the Tory vote lost to UKIP as these voters will see UKIP representing what they believe the Tory party should be. Unfortunately for UKIP, the number of Tory votes they gather are unlikely to be sufficient to win them many seats, if any. However, there are huge numbers of voters that previously voted Labour or Liberal that would never vote Tory because they hate the very name and detest current and previous leaders and what they did in the past. If a large enough proportion of this group now start to see UKIP as a valid alternative that will promote policies that they agree with, then there won't be any of the historical baggage that goes with the Tory party and they will be more likely to switch allegiance. It is this group that may hold the balance of power in the next general election and could result in some surprising results.

In the end, I think we are most likely to see both Labour and Tories with the largest number of seats but unable to form a government. The Liberals will be reduced to a rump and one of the two will have to form a coalition with a loose collection of small parties and independants. The resultant coalition will be unstable and will most likely fracture within a year or so and we'll have another general election within 18 months.

[d000hg]

In my view the Liberals will see their support decimated and they will be unlikely to be in a position where they have enough MPs left to enable them to go into coalition.

I think you might be right. There was massive optimism in the party and media that the televised debates would lead to a substantial LibDem showing but this didn't happen - and that's before they upset people by compromising with the Tories.
I think people will realise even more that LibDem are a pointless vote as a result.

[original PM]

back in the day was it correct that politicians actually got into politics to make a difference to their constutuents - they genuinely cared and genuinely did try to make things better.

However nowadays politics is just a career - it almost does not matter what your moral stance is you simply throw it away and put in with the party who will give you a job.

Or do i just have rose tinted glasses?

[vetran]

would be amused if the only option was a UKIP enabled coalition. Both parties have had a go at them.


I suspect the Tories will go all out at Labour on the ramp up, there are more than enough own goal's to highlight. I suspect they will have a picture of 'we spent all the money' note.

If the romanian immigration is low then they can compare to the Polish influx. There were enough Romanians here already under rules Labour approved to hide a small influx.

We have an economy that is recovering despite labour arguments.

Energy costs are down to green taxes and lack of regulation masterminded by Labour

etc

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I think the Lib Dems will hold on to more seats than people think, but they will definitely lose quite a few too. You can't always translate national opinion to local opinion and if a constituency is happy with their Lib Dem MP then national opinion may not sway that.

I think that UKIP will see an increase in votes, to the cost of tory votes but they will still be lucky to win many seats, if any.

So in short, all I can see happening is an increased Labour vote from the last election, a decreased Tory vote mainly due to defectors to UKIP and a wounded Lib Dems, resulting in a marginal Labour/Lib Dem coalition.

If you believe some reports, the days of majority governments in the UK are over...

[d000hg]

back in the day was it correct that politicians actually got into politics to make a difference to their constutuents - they genuinely cared and genuinely did try to make things better.

However nowadays politics is just a career - it almost does not matter what your moral stance is you simply throw it away and put in with the party who will give you a job.

Or do i just have rose tinted glasses?

I think people still get into it with good intentions. People that young are incredibly passionate and enthusiastic, in fact typically the young are overzealous, idealistic and naive rather than cynical and out for themselves. But they also have no idea how anything works or that you can't just fix everything overnight. Youthful zeal is very very powerful but needs to be tempered.

[Gittins Gal]

Yes, that's my analysis too. Labour will win in any scenario unless they really screw up.

I don't think they will. Don't you remember the 80s and early 90s (particularly 92) labour were always way out in front but when it came to the crunch and voters saw the whites of their eyes they stuck their cross next to someone else's name.

[Zero Liability]

Not that I see much benefit in voting, particularly not with the first past the post system (and general pessimism about the whole institution of parliamentary democracy in general), but I would only vote for UKIP given the demonstrable lack of any decent alternatives. Certainly wouldn't piss away a vote on any of the three major parties. Nonetheless, I would very much like to see UKIP cause a voter atrophy to the three dinosaurs.

That is, provided someone like Godders or Daniel Hannan influences UKIP's economic policy. The problem is, whichever party takes control, the real obstacles to change are the entrenched bureaucracies (civil servants, academics etc.) who benefit from the current system and those feeding at the trough of the government. So moving away from this TBTF culture would require a root and branch upheaval of the current political system in ways that may be infeasible for a democracy to allow for. Particularly one as stagnant as the British one.

It's a struggle to get anachronisms like IR35 changed, let alone more fundamental flaws in the system.

Regarding Labour and Milliband, he has no real political acumen. He has alienated many of the core 'feeders' at Labour's trough and also wishes to alienate the banks (which I think can see through his hollow rhetoric; who is going to bankroll his no doubt expensive policies otherwise?) He is stuck up and worse than Cameron in many ways in terms of how out of touch with the electorate he is. I can't see him winning, and I hope that I am right. The only thing that would concern me about a reformation of the system is that whoever carries it out would be stuck with the legacy costs and muck left by the other three parties, which they will very cynically try to blame on whoever is in power at the time, to make it seem like any pain that must be endured is their fault.

Even if UKIP doesn't win enough seats to influence a coalition, if it forces the conservatives to up their game and shift "rightwards" economically, that'll be a good thing.

It *seems* that they cut back on libraries and swimming pools and social care (i.e. front line services) while maintaining an army of highly paid execs and well paid middle managers. Oh but the majority of public sector workers earn peanuts, I hear people exclaim! Well yes but I'm not moaning about them, I'm moaning about the otherwise unemployable who earn 40-50-60k being in charge of parks and countryside rights-of-way and loads of other bollox. Well it's not bollux, but being paid so highly to do it is bollox.

Yes, this is a common ploy to basically induce hysteria in voters regarding any "austerity"; cut vital services the government has monopolised, and leave untouched the enormity of waste that could quite easily be cut back and pretend that anything else is "impossible". This was seen in the US with its recent "sequester" fiasco. Problem is, anything you try and cut has its lobby and interest group intensely pouring money into the pockets of politicians to preserve, whereas the average voter will feel very little cost from any one isolated policy and therefore have little incentive to vote against it. It is like death by thousands of mosquitoes.

That being said, the 'austerity' in question concerns reductions in the rate of growth of government, not actual cutting back. And even then, it is laughable.