Discussion for article #236289
I think one reason why the Tories ’ won ’ is that Mr Cameron is ’ promising ’ a referendum in the future for the UK to either stay in the EU or to leave it .
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The real issue with the conservative triumphalism of Brooks, Frum, et al. is that the “triumph” of the Tories in the UK was based on increasing their vote share from 36.1% to 36.9%. Labour actually increased its vote share slightly more- from 29% to 30.4% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_2015. Similarly, current polls from Canada have the Conservatives at 32.6%, with the centrist Liberals at 30.9% and the left-wing NDP at 22.6% http://www.threehundredeight.com/p/canada.html. Add in the Greens at 7.5% and the center-left has a solid 60%, which would be a landslide for the Democrats in the US. Could Harper win another term despite that? Possibly, though the recent win by the NDP in his home province of Alberta (the Texas of Canada) has to cause him some sleepless nights.
Similarly, the crushing win by Netanyahu in Israel actually came from cannibalizing votes from other parties further right than his. All-in-all this hardly indicates a wave to the right.
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I followed the election on BBC (Because I can’t voluntarily watch CNN)–Cameron was very good at taking an assertive stance on the economy. Miliband was a disaster–he was McGovern and Dukakis rolled into one----a totally inept retail politician.I know people will try to defend McGovern and Dukakis because of where they stood on issues—but they totally sucked as campaigners and I suspect they would have been horrible administrators.
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I noticed the high vote for the UKIP and I’m wondering if there’s a “Reagan Democrat” factor with Labour voters who jumped to UKIP?
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You’re exactly right. Seems that blue-collar Labour voters were more likely to vote UKIP than were Conservative voters.
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Original comment deleted.
Never mind. It must’ve been a bad day to make such an error. I should not check my on stocks when a large position is losing badly while commenting.
The elephant in the room with respect to the U.K. Generals were the Scots. English nationalism, often overlooked, along with the Flag of St. George, is on the rise and rightly or not a lot of Englishmen now detest the Scots for what is seen as a betrayal of the Union. Not saying this is right or good, just how it is. So any possibility of a Labour-SNP was anathema, which is why Miliband made several statements saying there were no plans to form a coalition with the SNP regardless of the election results. A lot of English voters who otherwise might have leaned labor didn’t buy it, seeing a Labor SNP coalition as inevitable and unacceptable.
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One lesson that can be learned from the British elections is that polls, like it happened here in US last November, were flat out wrong and can’t be trusted on predicting the winner. Contrary to all polls, Conservatives in both the UK and US won handily over Democrats, gaining overwhelming government majorities.
When people need a lot of words to explain a loss, especially as resounding as in the late elections, usually it means they are trying to BS their way out of embarrassment and it seems like Ed Kilgore is a master on doing just that.
With the Conservatives solidly in power in the US Congress and Harry Reid out of the picture, looks like Congress has begun working again as designed. Hopefully similar progress can be achieved by the British as well.
I believe I did mention the NDP win in Alberta. It’s a very big deal.
Actually, the Conservatives increased their share of the vote by 0.8%, while Labour increased its share by 1.4%. So where is the “resounding victory”, other than for the unrepresentative nature of Anglo-Saxon electoral systems?
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WTF are you babbling on about now?? There is NO WAY anyone could say that the US Congress is “working.” There just isn’t. The only metrics you could possibly use involve delusion and outright lies.
As for the “similar progress” by the Cons in Britain, guess what sparky… the average Englishperson has got some surprises coming to them. The only thing really standing in between the viciousness of austerity and the British people was Cameron having to wrangle with the Lib-Con coalition. That’s gone. Now, the hardline Tories can ravage Britain as they see fit and the worst struggles coming up are between Cameron and his own party.
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To me, the big story in this election is the complete obliteration of the Lib Dems. They went from 55 seats to 8 - the same number as the DUP, which only runs candidates in Northern Ireland. The UKIP folks are incandecently angry that they got 3 times the votes as the SNP and got 1 seat, whilst the SNP got 56. If they re-run the Scottish independence vote again, which I think is likely, Scottland will leave this time. If that happens, the remaining UK will be essentially a 1 party state on the national level. Labor doesn’t really have a map to a majority without seats in Scottland, either Labor or in coolition with SNP, and without the working class chavs that left Labor for UKIP. I’m sad to say, I think Labor is in for a long winter.
Conservatives won 28 more seats while Labour lost 24 and that by all parameters is a resounding victory
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Unless Latinos all go SNP…
Nice firebomb throwing there. I’m sure you’re aware there are no Democrats in the UK right? And that the parties who represent analagous constituents to the Democrats in the UK (Labour/Liberal) actually received about 60%+ of the vote, right? Good to know you’re both a scholar and supportive of democracy.
For the US, if the Republicans have such an overwhelming majority, can you please describe what they’ve done thus far to govern, outside of spewing the same dogmatic BS while they were in the minority? (crickets) Or are you taking a lesson from the Founding Fathers who “intended” our Federalist brand of government to be disfunctional?
I will give you that it appears conservatives in both the US and the UK are masters at engineering broad legislative-house election victories when they otherwise don’t have their countries popular support. Congratulations, go out and kiss a political consultant.
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What firebomb? Liberal Democrats led by Nick Clegg in UK lost 48 seats out of 56.
Not sure what you are referring to.
I think that there is a lesson from recent surprisingly-conservative elections in Britain, Israel, and the US. I think that every one of them was based on fear. Irrational fear perhaps, but the conservatives really pushed it hard.
In Britain, fear of Scottish independence was pushed very hard in the last week, and I do think it was a huge benefit to the Tories. If Labor won, they’d have to partner with the Scottish nationalist party to make a government.
In Israel, Netenyahu’s campaign was all about fear, while his opponents was more about hope.
In the US 2014 elections, the GOP and the media hyped the fear of Ebola to truly insane levels up until election day, and I do feel that they managed to convince people that the Democrats were somehow responsible. Stupid, insane, but effective. Note that the talk of Ebola ended election day. Not an accident.
What this means for 2016 is that we have to prepare for this. I do think that the Democrats have to be a party pushing for a better future, but they have to be ready for the GOP to be all about fear of a worse future. Fear is, unfortunately, a much easier sale.
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It’s certainly more “universal”
It takes less thought
Let’s take the second point.
How many of us here have looked at an Apocalyptic web story or article…and how many of us immediately go to VARIOUS, VARIED sources for insight on the web story or article?
Pfttt …