andrewducker | There are never enough options. It's a curse we have to live with.

So, I say to H - let the Cons and Lib Dems form a government, fuck everything up, and people will realise how bad they are. H says, but think of all the people who will suffer, and the irreversible damage they might do. It's a difficult one.

Whoever forms the next government has got a task so unpopular and difficult that they will end up out of power for a generation as a result. Hence my preference that the Tories suffer, especially as its what they did last time that contributed to the problem.

I know just what you mean. There is a risk though that they will try to fiddle the electoral boundaries to lock themselves into permanent power, and also that they might dismantle the BBC. I'd hate that to happen.

i'm not sure, this round of government is going to any party any favours. Given the scale and type of cuts that are going to have to be made. Its a shame its not the labour party who's going to have to deal with it. Whats best for the conservatives is stay out of it, which is totally why i want them in there, cause then it'll be their last four years ever

I say shame its not the labour party, mainly cause they caused it

I think you'll find that it's an international problem, mostly precipitated by the previous Republican administration in the United States. The reason the UK has got a particularly poor dose is because of the liberalisation of the financial markets brought in by the Thatcher government. Where "liberalisation" means "changing the law to allow them to do all sorts of dodgy snake oil stuff like they can in the States".

The fact that we're not as deep in it as Greece (which has internal corruption problems) or Ireland (over-reliant on the US) can be credited to the outgoing Labour government.

Brown had 12 years to bring regulation back in, and not only didn't, but talked about how great our system was. I hold him entirely responsible for the lack of regulation that caused us to do as badly as we did.

Bollocks.

Are you saying that 12 years wasn't long enough to reform the regulation of the financial sector? Or something else?

I am giving your shifting of blame the full respect it deserves.

Shifting of blame?

Brown was in power. He had control over the legislation. Are you actually saying that Brown couldn't have reformed the system?

Because that seems like massive blame-shifting to me. 12 years is a very long time, politically speaking. To blame the people who hadn't been in power for 12 years seems staggeringly odd to me.

Sure, if the problem had happened in the first term, then I'd blame the Tories. The problems that happened in 2000? Absolutely, we were still recovering from the damage they did to the system.

But in 2009?

How long would Labour have had to hold power for them to have responsibility for the way the country is run?

So far as I understand the situation (which is not in great depth, I admit), reform of the British system alone would have been largely meaningless, and would not have insulated us to a significant extent. What was and is needed is global agreements on financial regulation, and Brown did call for and work for those -- without success, admittedly -- since at least the mid-nineties.

Except that we were hit worse than other countries, because we were leveraged further. It's generally acknowledged, I believe, that our internal regulation was more lax than most countries in Europe, because Labour wanted the tax that the financial sector brought in, and believed that they knew what they were doing.

I certainly don't blame Brown for the global problems - although others (like Vince Cable) were warning of the problem in advance - but I do blame him for the state of regulation we have.

although others (like Vince Cable) were warning of the problem in advance

You missed my point, there. So was Brown. He just wasn't doing it to the media.

On regulation: we have obviously read different things, and I didn't bookmark my reading, so.

I shall take your word for the first bit. I'm glad Brown was talking about it, in that case. I wish he'd been doing so more publicly.

Sorry but I would like to know how it is shifting blame to rightly point out someone failed to do something in 12 years. We had the longest period of growth in history and yet we have the biggest deficit and national debt even in real terms. I'd be interested to hear a pro-labour point of view beyond "bollocks".

Easy! The deficit and debt are large in real terms because the economy is much, much larger in real terms than during the last recession. Brown's treasury ran three years of surplus, meaning we entered the recession with a very low national debt compared to the other EU nations and to the USA. We are also leaving the recession with low national debt compared to those same countries.

Right now the public sector is spending about 45% of GDP and taxing about 35%. (The long-run shortfall is much less, as corporation tax and VAT should recover.) That needs fixing, but it can be fixed over the next few years from 2011-12, as agreed by the Liberal Democrat's economy team (meaning Vince Cable), the IMF, and many other independent economic institutions.

This:-

http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/downchart_ukgs.php?year=1900_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=2010&chart=G0-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=l&color=c&title=UK%20National%20Debt%20As%20Percent%20Of%20GDP

Appears to suggest you are wrong. From 2001 there is a steady increase in national debt as a % of GDP and then it sharply rises when the economic crisis begins. This doesn't strike me a good planning. Also, if my own spending outdid my income by 10% a year, I would be very VERY scared.

Nope: I chose my words carefully, and I stand by them. And I don't think a graph showing increasing debt over 2001-2007 is a useful response to my claim that we had low debt compared to peer countries in 2007.

A government is not a household and comparisons based on personal income versus spending are ridiculous. Imagine you have accesible cash savings of perhaps ten years income, and your family are willing to loan you one year's income over a thirty year period: are you still worried about spending 10% above your income in any one year?

When it is 2 years, and soon to be 3, and there is interest payments to be made on that 3x10% and I was already in debt to the tune of 30% before it began.. YES I would be worried.

I don't know how you don't think there is increasing debt when the graph clearly shows that there is an increase in debt even though GDP is also increasing rapidly ahead of inflation. Now if you want to correctly argue that some of that debt is due to funding an illegal war, then I will concur, but to deny it is fooling yourself.

Of course debt is increasing! What I said was that debt was low relative to our peers in 2007, and remains low compared to those peers now. It is perfectly that debt is far higher now than in 2007 - but France, Germany, Italy, the US (and the individual states of the US)and Japan have all run their debts up as well, justifying my statement.

I think despite the party faithful being slightly horrified at the prospect of a Tory led coalition, it would be the best result. We would be getting an incremental change towards a Single Transferable Vote in the shape of A.V. as well as a full debate and referendum on the subject so that the public can be informed.

It will be interesting to see what the increasingly frustrated Tory press make of it all as the Tories won't be obliged to campaign in favour of AV and yet most ofthe general public will be in favour of reform. It could be another nail in the coffin of the newspapers dictating politics to the masses. After the bluster of "The Sun what won it" we now have a Hung parliment because people DIDN'T listen to the tabloids, which is refreshing.

Whilst under normal circumstances I would much prefer Labour and Lib Dems in power together, the position is currently untenable; Tories got the biggest vote and Labour are without a leader. Clegg is in a horrible position of being damned by the party or damned by the rest of the public if he chooses Tories or Labour respectively, but this is ALL about getting reforms through and once that happens it is a game changer. In a year's time when the coalition enevitably collaspes, Lib Dems will gain far more marginal seats and the "wasted vote" brigade will be fair less effective.

yet most ofthe general public will be in favour of reform.

I'm not sure that is the case. 78% of the electorate did not vote for a party in favour of electoral reform.

That is an illogical argument. Most people don't vote for a party on the basis of a single issue.

True, but I still doubt the majority of the electorate will vote in favour of voting reform, especially as both the major parties will campaign against it.

Polls come out in favour of PR at the mo, but, as u say, difficult to know how people will vote once Murdoch has finished with them.

Infact here's the first link I can find on polls for PR.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/7697099/General-Election-2010-half-of-voters-want-proportional-representation.html

Question asked again in a YouGov poll today, no significant change. I suspect the fate of any referendum would depend even more than usual on how it was worded.

Electoral reform was in Labour's manifesto, although admittedly only Alternative Vote. So in fact at least 52% of the votes were for parties in favour of reform.

I'll take AV at the moment. It's a nice first step towards a fairer system and less likely to come up against the full ire of the main political parties and their respective newspapers.

Was it? I was not aware of that.

But does anyone really want AV? By all accounts, it seems to make little difference in terms of fair representation for smaller parties.

It's all about progression. I doubt that either of the big two are going to offer STV or PR at the moment. Once we start down the road of making the system fairer, it opens the door to further reform. Personally, having discussed most of the available alternatives with people over the last few weeks, I've come to the conclusion that partial PR is the best approach which would allow for larger constituancies but still retaining local politics and reducing the political tourism of putting MPs from outside of a constituancy in because it is a safe seat.

Depending on how difficult it is (made) to change systems, one change may be all that happens for a long time, making it important it's the right one. There could be the argument "we've already done this issue once, there isn't the parliamentary time to revisit it this parliament", which happens with other issues from time to time.

Although had it been in place in 1997, it's estimated that the Conservatives would have been the third party.

the libdem share of the vote is artificially depressed due to lack of PR causing tactical voting for lab/con.

I'm not convinced that can account for a large percentage of the electorate. Of course some people vote tactically, but there are also bound to be constituencies where people voted tactically for the Lib-Dems to keep another party out. Even if it doesn't even out, given that only about a third of the constituencies could be considered a close contest I find it difficult to see how it could account for a significant percentage of the vote.

oh, i'm not suggesting they'd've done massively better, but just suggesting there's a margin of error in your quoting exact shares of the vote, even ignoring labour's fairly recent "conversion".

Is anyone in favour of AV? Apart from people like me who want to put the Tory LAST (or lower if possible)? (And presumably a decent proportion of Tories that want to put the Labour candidate last ...) Labour use it for Leader/Deputy elections where it is great fun to be able to rank the candidates.

However, returning from my puerile amusement to issues of mere national importance, it's not proportional, is it? I don't know enough about it (must google) but I've heard some pro-PR people saying "It's WORSE than FPTP".

I have yet to hear anyone say it is the system they want. I have seem some (admittedly rather speculative) analysis in the Guardian that seems to suggest it would have had very little effect on the Lib-Dem number of seats in last week's election. The suggestion was that the only beneficiary would actually have been the Labour party, but obviously we can't put too much faith in analysis that attempts to predict how people would place their 2nd vote.

The Guardian item suggests that Labour would gain 4 seats (not a tremendous boost), the Conservatives would lose 25, and the Lib Dems would gain 22. The suggestion that a 39% increase in the number of seats counts as "very little effect" I believe evidently shows that the Garuniad's arithmetic skills are even more lacking than their spillchucker skills.

AV is certainly better than the existing system - perhaps not much better, but better nonetheless. Certainly, had it been in place in this election it would have made the past 5 days much more interesting, as the Lib Dems could then grant a majority to both the Conservatives and Labour, so the flurry of negotiations may well have been much more intense, with the Lib Dems holding a much stronger hand.

Don't really care who runs the country for the next couple of years. In the long term we need electoral reform.

That's my view generally as well. I'd take a Tory/LD alliance if it meant we got PR.

And yet the longer the current situation goes on, the more people will be convinced of the opposite. FPtP rarely throws up these situations whre no single party has a majority, whereas PR pretty much guarantees it will happen every time we have an election.

And while all this uncertainty is going on, we can't get involved in illegal wars. Sounds like a win to me.

:(

I view this as a Good Thing.

Politics is supposed to be about negotiation, compromise, and finding the least-sucky outcome for the greatest number of people.

The current British system is still, as Lord Hailsham put it in the mid-1970s, "an elective dictatorship".

(And since 1979 we've had a trend towards ruthless factionalism by whichever party is in power, pandering to their particular base at the expense of those folks whose votes don't count due to FPtP.)

Coalitions can still deliver strong, decisive action when it's essential -- or have we forgotten that Winston Churchill led a grand coalition during the war? But we don't need that level of control most of the time; we need horse-trading and boring negotiation instead.

So, yes, I'm broadly in favour of coalitions as a way of putting the brakes on the hard-liners of all sides.

Yes, this.

I want a bunch of different people who will work together to find common ground to carry out the general will of the people. 30% of the people trampling the other 70%, followed by a different 30% trampling in a different direction is not my idea of good government.

I tend to agree I think. It seems to me to be A Good Thing that we are witnessing our putative leaders in an attempt to compromise, rather than the usual process of Kill! Crush! Destroy!

What'll be needed is a change of mind-set on the part of most of the electorate. And most of the press will be firmly set against allowing that to happen.

The press think they'll hate coalition government because, compromise? Meh.

In reality, they'll learn to love the weeks of high drama after each election.

Although on the third hand, Murdoch's going to hate it. Having a dupoloy makes it easy to stroke the right people. Having a true multi-party system makes lobbying a lot harder.

I agree. We are currently going through a process that most other European countries go through every 4 years. They seem to manage it without the world ending.

I suppose it doesn't help that our parliament is so confrontational. Things like PMQ's don't serve any real purpose, aside from generating soundbites for the news.

Labour have actually come out of this in pretty good nick. They avoided the Tory attempts at decapitation, kept a substantial number of seats, fought a dignified campaign and swept up at the local elections (how come no-one is talking about that). They're poised to bounce straight back into power if they pick the right leader and keep acting like the natural party of government.

Which won't happen if they form a big rainbow coalition. A creaky alliance is going to make the involved parties look weak, plus now there's the issue of Labour trying to foist a second unelected Prime Minister on the country.

They should sit out this dance and wait for the next one.

I think the Lib Dems are going to get eaten alive next election. I don't see what they can do to improve on their performance this year, so the only way is down. It will be even worse if it's an emotive election along traditional Left V Right battlelines: Labour and Tory supporters will run back to their own parties to keep the other ones out.

The only real hope for the Lib Dems is the introduction of PR, but imho they've got no chance of getting that from Cameron and I'm not sure a LibLab alliance will be in a strong enough position to push it through. Even then, we're all assuming that a referendum on PR would result in a Yes from the British people. Don't be so sure. Right now, pro-PR types are dominating this conversation, but there may be a surprising amount of resistance when it's but to the public.

[/tuppenceworth]

I'd (just) prefer a progressive alliance if I had a bit more confidence that it wouldn't collapse, I think. But I don't have that confidence, and I'd rather have Lib/Con than go into another general election where I expect the Tories would get in with ease.

It's in the interests of the Conservative Party that there be a further General Election later this year, after they have gained credibility from being in government, but before they've had to do anything very unpopular. The other parties will be at a relative disadvantage funding their campaigns.

I think it is in the interests of both Labour and the Conservatives to not be in this coalition. I suspect whichever way the coalition is formed, the two parties involved are going to see their popularity fall. Whichever party is not involved I would place money on win an outright majority at the next election.

Unfortunate that this question - what is the interest of our party - is taking precedence over what is in the interest of the UK and/or its people.

That's tribalism for you.

With a wider spread of parties, who would _have_ to compromise, you might end up with a bit less tribalism. If your party had a chance of power, and the next party over wasn't really that bad, then you might be less attached.

Or, more cynically, that's politicians for you.

Well, they wouldn't do it if it didn't work...

I'd like a national government to be in place for a year or two to sort out the deficit as I worry that:

1. a minority Tory administration would mean an early election and a subsequent Tory majority so they could push through all their manifesto

2. a Lib/Lab (and other) pact would mean both the Lib Dems and Labour would get blamed for the harsh measures that will be brought in and be out of power for a generation after this parliament.

Edited 2010-05-11 13:31 (UTC)

It's a bit of an odd one.

While I'd like, purely on instinct, to see a LibLab+ coalition, it's fairly clear that Labour have a desperate need to go somewhere nice and quiet until they figure out What Went Wrong [and no it isn't just Brown - the entire Cabinet is shagging awful]. The concept of Milliband or Jonston as PM is just vomitous.
A lot is being said about Cleggs education and family ties, but that has bugger all to do with where and who is is now.

Simply truth is - as the electorate has concluded - there is no natural leader out there right now. Cameron is a smooth mask on a bunch of arrogant bastards, Clegg a relative unknown with a ghost of a party, Labour floating around on the detritus of a damned nasty shipwreck.

It's something of a pity there has to be a PM. The concept of non-partisan co-operative Parliament is very appealing

if totally impossible

"My favoured result is:" Liberal Democrats running both England and America.

N.B. I'm an American.

There are never enough options. It's a curse we have to live with.

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