UK General Election- May 6th

[MOBIUS]

Wishful Thinking

Or, how about Ed Miliband as leader. I saw him speak at the Hay Festival last year, came across very well - or at least I didn't want to punch him in the face like most of the rest of the Labour leadership. Actually seems to 'get' Climate Change. Mostly.

I think he is a dark horse and one to watch for the future.

[MikeH]

He's hardly a dark horse, he's mentioned every time the next labour leader comes up.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

This would have been unthinkable six months ago, but Alastair Darling is now a contender due to rising public appeal. Brown couldn't ditch him.

[Dauphin]

There was one part toward the end where Cameron totally lost the plot. He said the Tories would drop the National Insurance rise and use the money to fund cancer drugs.

How does that work, Dave? You abandon a tax rise, and then use the money you didn't get from it to buy drugs? Or are you suggesting we all use our subsequent personal NI savings to buy some chemo drugs just in case they come in handy?

I haven't watch it yet, but the NHS would have a massive NI bill, so dropping the NI rise would save the NHS money.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

You can count me as "astonished" if the NHS's increased NI bill as an employer outstrips the increased revenue it would receive back from that same increase.

[Dauphin]

I thought the NI rise was meant to cut the deficit, not give additional funding to the NHS. But I haven't paid too close attention.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Main policies, at a glance.

[Dauphin]

Overarching themes.

[MOBIUS]

I vote Lib Dem because they know a good policy years before the other parties...

For example:

With the Lib Dems, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq.

With the Lib Dems, we would have avoided the majority of the negative effects of the global recession.

It is always the Lib Dems who come up with ground-breaking policies that are initially ridiculed by the two main parties, before they ultimately try to copy them - sort of like political Darwinism.

Take Trident now, only the Lib Dems have the balls to say that replacing it with a like-for-like system is nuts - but sooner or later the other two parties will follow their lead...

A vote for Nick Clegg is a vote for Nick Clegg (and Vince Cable!)

[C0ckney]

With the Lib Dems, we would have avoided the majority of the negative effects of the global recession.

i agree with the lib dems on a lot of their economic policy, breaking up the banks for example, but i have to ask how you come to this conclusion?

btw, has anyone seen the bbc's election seat calculator. pretty interesting. if you give each of the three main parties 30% of the vote, you get this:

labour - 314
conservatives - 207
lib dems - 100
others - 29

that can't be right, surely. proportional representation now!

[Krill]

i agree with the lib dems on a lot of their economic policy, breaking up the banks for example, but i have to ask how you come to this conclusion?

btw, has anyone seen the bbc's election seat calculator. pretty interesting. if you give each of the three main parties 30% of the vote, you get this:

labour - 314
conservatives - 207
lib dems - 100
others - 29

that can't be right, surely. proportional representation now!

Question is, could the Lib Dems get any sort of electoral reform through in a hung parliament?

[lightblue]

More likely to get at least a referendum out of it than if they were the third part again. I was also bemused seeing that Labour could be the biggest party in the commons with the lowest share of the popular vote of the 3 parties. Seems ridiculous to me.

[Bosh]

I think that the BBC seat calculator is assuming uniform national swings in the vote (i.e. if Party X got 15% of the vote in riding Y last time and that party is getting 5% more of the vote on national polls than last time then the seat calculator assumes that Party X will get 20% in riding Y) which is a pretty simplistic system. It works OK for a two party contest but will give pretty weird results with three competitive parties. A uniform national swing to the Lib Dems won't give them too many seats (since it assume they'll get quite a lot votes in places where they didn't get ****-all votes last time) but their swing probably won't be uniform and it might be enough to put them over the top in more areas than the seat calculator assumes, which'd probably cut into Labor's totals.

[Dauphin]

I don't know which method the BBC use, but some calculators increase or decrease votes proportionally - e.g. if a party goes from 30% to 33% nationally, their vote in each constituency would rise by 10% of the previous constituency vote.

[ricketyclik]

78% Green 22% Labour

I heard a thing on the radio this morning saying that the Lib Dems are more competitive than ever this election

Edit: OK, now I've read the last 4 pages of the thread and see that you've covered that.