UKC

Who's watching? and who's doing well?


Thought Cameron seemed strong, some question avoidance, but mostly coherent answers.


Milliband has just come on... audience seems pretty hostile so far

In reply to balmybaldwin:

I think Cameron is smooth at talking but has nothing to say. Miliband seems to be getting a kicking atm

In reply to ACollins:
I think he just got cornered into committing labour to the opposition benches or a minority government

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Yeah I think you're probably right. But I think a labour minority is preferable to a lab SNP coalition. I think a vote by vote government would make debate much more public

In reply to ACollins:
agreed.

for the SNP to have a big influence on a lab snp coalition (or any other coalition) doesn't strike me as democratic given that only 4%* of the uk population able to vote for or against them it seems especially weird that anyone voting for snp has effectively voted against labour (and every other nationwide party)

In the end I think we will have a minority government of some colour (possibly with lib dem support/restraint) which could open up the democratic process as you say, but could also end up in a lame government unable to push through any bills, and a term of under 2 years

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Yeah that's what I think especially as virtually every seat in Scotland is SNP vs labour. Every SNP seat is an anti labour vote.

Hmm yeah I think it will open everything up but how well they'll manage remains to be seen. It doesn't seem to have been to stable in Europe though.

Clegg seems to be doing quite well!?

In reply to ACollins:




Yes I thought so.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Quite looking forward to the Nigel Farage session now, given the aggressive nature of the questions to the first 3, I think the audience will take him apart

In reply to balmybaldwin:

It seems its a different audience... "carefully selected to include 25% ukip supporters, 50% other parties, 25% undecided"

It's amazing how much more simplistic the questioning is. It's a shame they couldn't use the same audience for these recorded programs.

In reply to balmybaldwin:

Yeah I agree. I think faradge is on a downward spiral anyway though.

In reply to balmybaldwin:



I don't think they would have a big influence at all, if any, given that they can't possibly let a Labour government collapse and put the Tories in power, plus their polices are pretty much exactly the same as labour, the only minor difference being that they want to cut spending slightly more than labour, but over a longer period, and scrapping trident, which they'll never get anyway given that there is more than enough votes on both sides of parliament to renew it.

In reply to ACollins:


I only saw him and Milliband, who was terrible - his constant uttering of "let me just explain..." drives me mad.

I thought Clegg came across very well, especially in response to tuition fees. I think it's rather unfair to base your vote for/against a party based on 1 failure to deliver.

In reply to LastBoyScout:

Milliband seems fated; the stumble off the stage was really unfortunate.

The mood in the press has been 'Thank god, Milliband is not as bad as we feared.'

I don't think it would take much for that to change to: 'Oh no, he is a dickhead after-all'

In reply to LastBoyScout:

I actually thought some of Milliband's "content" was good but his awful, coached manner lets him down, the "let me just explain", first names for everyone, odd hand gestures etc. You can virtually see him trying to remeber evertyhting he's been told to do.


Agreed.

In reply to galpinos:

I think Clegg is the most fundamentally honest and decent major party leader; he's paying the price for what people see as a betrayal, as they expect it less from him.

In reply to galpinos:

It's not about just fees. A whole generation has been put off politics because of that betrayal.

In reply to XXXX:


If that's true then a whole generation have completely unrealistic beliefs about what is possible in politics, particularly coalition politics. Compromise due to coalition, changing circumstances and simply mistakes don't mean they have been betrayed, it's just an inevitable consequence of a messy world.

In reply to MG:

(this is going to veer off the topic of the OP, but....)

I don't think that's true. No-one forced the lib dems to enter coalition - the tories could have run a minority administration with lib dem support on certain issues. Indeed, the lib dems would have still had significant power in that situation. Instead they decided to enter coalition, and as a trade off for this (trade off for power?) chose to abandon a key manifesto pledge.

I call that unprincipled.

In reply to MG:
+1. 50-odd lib dems, 300-odd Tories. They were always going to have to compromise more and give up more of their manifesto, and unless electoral arithmetic changes drastically, always will have to. You'd have thought lib dem supporters of all people would understand that they have a choice of some of their policies, or none of their policies, and given their status as very much junior partners, they will have less leverage over which ones that they'd like

It was a big error making that claim to start with, but I suspect they never thought they'd be called on it. They should have been more prepared and not left such a hostage to fortune. Instead of concentrating on that, people should think more about the fact that they made what seemed like an impossibility at the time- a stable coalition which could last the full 5 years- work.

They messed up on the PR referendum though, that is a bigger criticism than tuition fees.

Lib dem supporters, of which I guess I would consider myself one, are a funny bunch. There was a chap on last night who was angry at clegg for going into coelition with the Tories rather than labour. If people want a labour govt, why not just say that? And vote for that? Instead of insisting that the lib dems should only be allowed to be an appendage of labour

Overall, on last nights performance I thought clegg did well, Cameron did well at smoothly ducking the issues, and miliband took a bit of a beating. He really should have worked out a formulation that deals with the performance of the last labour govt by now, but didnt seem to be able to

Cheers
Gregor

In reply to climbwhenready:
Well if it was all about power, it didnt turn out well for them did it!

It's a counterfactual argument so we can never really know what would have happened if they had done that; but my impression was that coelition was necessary to convince the markets that we had a stable administration in place so as to avoid Interest rates rising

In that sense, I buy into clegg s assertion that he, and the lib dems, have 'taken one for the team'. I can see how others could reach a different conclusion, but given the harm that has inevitably been done to their electoral chances at this election, and the possibility cleggs epitaph is as the man who destroyed the lib dems as a major force for years to come, I don't buy that.

Cheers
Gregor

In reply to climbwhenready:
They could have done that with the results a ) the government would have been unstable and seen as unstable. A very bad thing in 2010, if you recall the financial situation, b) there would still have been tuition fees c) they would have had even less power to influence policy generally.

There was quite a low limit on what they could ever achieve with the seats they won. Maybe they could have achieved a little more, maybe not, but banging on about "betrayal" over one policy reversal when in a minority partner in a coalition as people do is ridiculous.

In reply to MG:

Which is not helped by the fact that all parties have treated this election as a sort of crazy auction, each trying to outbid each other with clearly undeliverable, crazy promises which were frankly and obviously bribes to special interest groups, while the SNP who seem likely to sweep the board in Scotland are frightening in their anti-English tone and aggressive victimhood, not to mention their messianic rhetoric.

This sort of pork-barrel appeal to identity politics on all sides certainly suggests that the politicians have learnt nothing from the fees fiasco, i.e. promise anything to anyone to get elected, no matter how unrealistic, impossible or harmful it is in the hope that it will be forgotten or you will never have to deliver. Either they have learnt nothing or they think they have no alternative but to frantically outbid their opponents. None of them have offered coherent policies on any subject, while great areas of public moment have simply not been mentioned as being in the "too difficult" box. All we have had has been silly sound-bite gestures.

One of the worst attempts to buy votes of a vested factional vested interest group has scarcely been noticed, in that Miliband announced (very quietly, in Muslim only channels, hoping that the dog-whistling would attract no wider notice), that he was going to "make 'Islamophobia' illegal and come down hard on it, making sure it stayed on people's records and followed them for good". Which would do wonders for Rotherham, Tower Hamlets and people's right to criticise an imported religion that feels free to threaten anyone who questions its "prophet" or rejects its dogmas. To say nothing about the avoidance of thought crime or the desirability of rehabilitating offenders either.

Quite surprised Coel hasn't noticed this particular hostage to fortune, that religion in general and one particular aggressive and intolerant religion and its adherents in particular, should be made even more immune to criticism than it currently is.

In reply to MG:

Those are good arguments. I don't think that a minority administration is necessarily unstable, but I can see how one could think that. However I'm still going to mourn the demise of the conviction politician!

FWIW, I'm not "banging on about betrayal" - but there were options that they could have chosen to take had they wanted to.

In reply to Simon4:

Bloody hell. Missed that. And I had thought the Labour authoritarian streak had subsided a bit.

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2015/04/free-speech-campaigners-concerned...

In reply to MG:


But the thing is that Clegg must have known it was a promise he could never keep in government. So it was either an incredibly cynical move to secure a generation new to politics, or just as naive as the generation he was trying to win.

I sympathise with him, but not over that.

In reply to Trevers:


I doubt it, really. For example had it been a Lib/Lab coalition it would have survived but something else would have gone no doubt. Anyway, it won't have been Clegg writing the manifesto but a whole range of people and committees.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Indeed the only problem is that honesty and decency in politics brings no rewards.

In reply to LastBoyScout:



I think it's unfair.