Most likely result of the general election in 2015?

First topic message reminder :

Looking at the current state of UK politics what do you all think is the most likely outcome of the next General Election?
 
Personally I think Labour will win but not with a out right majority (as it currently stands at least).
 
I had a quick look and couldn't see another thread like this but if there is my apologies.

Mel wrote:"Labour is finished." you say Ghost. If this is so and you feel that "there is no difference between Labour policies and Tories", my question to you is, who are you going to vote for at the election and morever, what chance of winning does it have?

It seems to me that your only hope is for your chosen party, if you have one that is, is to possibly form a Coalition with Labour. Will that satisfy you?

GW is a Tory voter Mel the thing I would like to pass on to the majority of this forum is ; DO NOT FEED THIS TROLL he/she knows Labour will win the May general election and like Davy boy will not enjoy been known as the "ONE TERM FIRM"

Ghost wrote in reply to my learned friend often wrong--

"Which really is nonsense. "

Let me tell you that that is truly insulting to this gentleman to whom I have known for a number of years.
He is well read and a fair minded man. What he has explained in his post is exactly right. Following your comment, I am leaning towards agreement with what Red Flag has suggested, is that you are probably a Tory

Agreed - there's certainly an awful lot of 'yes, but' about this contributor's posts

Mel wrote:Ghost wrote in reply to my learned friend often wrong--

"Which really is nonsense. "

Let me tell you that that is truly insulting to this gentleman to whom I have known for a number of years.
He is well read and a fair minded man. What he has explained in his post is exactly right. Following your comment, I am leaning towards agreement with what Red Flag has suggested, is that you are probably a Tory

Oh grow up. What a facile and insulting thing to say.

By that logic you're a tory as are the rest of you who refuse to accept any of the points I have made.

"points"? none worthy of taking seriously of course.

He/She is nothing more than a TROLL Mel and you know you do not feed TROLLS

Mel wrote:"points"? none worthy of taking seriously of course.

Which begs the question: who's the Tory here?

You don't take seriously, for example, Labour supporting Iain Duncan Smith's emergency workfare legisation? So you think it was ok to deny the benefit otherwise owed to people wrongly penalised as a result of his flawed Mandatory Workfare Act?

You aren't bothered that Labour support fracking, which, again with Labour support, is now legal under national parks.

You don't take the removal of Labour concilors on the basis of opposing the cuts?

Why then do we even have an opposition?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/general-election-2015-tories-switch-to-campaign-plan-b-as-they-suffer-in-the-polls-10169064.html

Poll slide means Labour could form coalition with Lib Dems, not SNP

The Lib Dims don't deserve another stint in government after this coalition catastrophe.

A fellow called Ben, in seeking to rubbish Labour, has contributed the following to an MSN discussion thread this evening :

" Anyone with half a brain is voting for either UKIP or the Conservatives..."

Naturally I have commended him for this classic piece of insight...

The ideal situation will be a (small) Labour majority with a substantial number of MPs to its left, to keep pulling it towards socialism and decency. The Blairites will otherwise always win, dragging the Party closer and closer to the right-moving tories, to keep in with Murdoch and his scumchums.

Very true i'm afraid Penderyn, it is those blairites that need to be got shot of i'm afraid the money grabbing swines.

Remarkable performance on BBC Radio 4 "PM" just broadcast, by Rachel Reeves. Convincing summation of Labour government intentions when elected to majority government.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qskw

A very good interviewer OW, Missed the first minute but she kept things light and not mega serious, with lots of laughter in it too, that is the way it should be done until you get to cameron.

Get a magnifying glass and you might be able to read this summary of Labour's manifesto...


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCffcF2W0AEgtf5.png

Fortunately with these binoculars that I use as spectacles did not need magnifier Ivan.

Here, courtesy of David Schneider and David Beresford, is a summary of the Tory manifesto:-


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CCjY4yhWYAEjGAQ.png

A beauty Ivan.

Mel wrote:Ghost wrote in reply to my learned friend often wrong--

"Which really is nonsense. "

Let me tell you that that is truly insulting to this gentleman to whom I have known for a number of years.
He is well read and a fair minded man. What he has explained in his post is exactly right. Following your comment, I am leaning towards agreement with what Red Flag has suggested, is that you are probably a Tory

then youre an idiot

Labor again offering nowhere near enough and nothing remotely progressibe. national minimum wage will be £8 an hour by 2020 anyway.

No mention at all of protecting the vulnerable, abolishing sanctions, restoring DLA, or abolishing the sac.

No mention of removing the Stain of privatisation or treating up PFI contacts that are crippling the nhs budget.

Ghost whistler - For Labour to get elected in the present sensitive climate they cannot be seen to be too radical - yet.

I do have sympathy with your views to the extent that I feel Miliband has not taken all his opportunities over 5 years to highlight the multitude of cases where the Tories have adopted cruel and divisive policies -that could have made inroads into the support which Cameron unbelievably sustains from sources which should know better.

I don't have sympathy with you when you call people on here 'idiots', however!

Well said Phil,this is not the forum to stir up things between posters is it.

'The Guardian' view on the Conservative manifesto: a false prospectus for Britain

"Cameron’s presentation was so set on being upbeat that it said much less about many mean-spirited commitments lurking in the manifesto itself. The continuing retreat on alternative energy, for instance – subsidies for onshore wind farms ended – got no mention. Nor did the nasty pledge for a further freeze in the BBC licence fee. Nor did the further dilution of any reform of the House of Lords. Nor did the snooper’s charter, which the Tories would reintroduce if they form the next government.

Cameron said nothing, either, about the much tougher thresholds that will be required for union strike ballots; who is re-fighting the class war now? Nor did he dwell on the plan to abolish the Human Rights Act; he found time, however, to make a snide remark about civil liberties. The even more serious divisiveness of the manifesto’s plans on the United Kingdom, above all the commitment to set an English rate of income tax, was also unmentioned in the speech; once again, while professing undying commitment to the union, Cameron is in fact pushing it to the edge of the abyss in another attempt to woo back UKIP voters.

No one listening to Cameron would realise from what he said that this country faces a devastating break-up at home and may, if he is re-elected, be about to cut itself off from our part of the world. But that was never the intention. Today was a clever attempt to sell a false prospectus. The next three weeks will show whether it succeeded."

For the whole of this editorial:-
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/apr/14/guardian-view-conservative-manifesto-false-prospectus-britain

It will not succeed Ivan, he may get some UKIP voters but I doubt that it make the slightest bit of difference to the voting results at all.

He says the Tories austerity policies have damaged the economy and slowed down the recovery

Former Conservative peer Lord Skidelsky launched a ferocious attack on the Tory manifesto today.

He said his former party's claim that they had rescued the country from 'Labour's great recession' was "the mother of all lies."

In a post on his website, Lord Skidelsky said: "The Great Recession was caused by the banks. Governments, the Labour government included, by bailing out the banks and continuing to spend, stopped the Great Recession from turning into a Great Depression.

"Yet practically everyone seems to believe that the Great Recession was manufactured by Gordon Brown."

He went on to say that while the Coalition's austerity strategy had reduced the deficit, most economists agree the economy would have grown between 5 and 10% more in the past five years with "more sensible policies."

Lord Skidelsky was made a peer in 1991 and joined the Conservative party in 1992. He served as chief opposition spokesperson for Culture and for Treasury before being removed from his position by William Hague in 1997 for opposing the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

He left the Conservative party in 2001, and currently sits as a crossbench member of the House of Lords.

Lord Skidelsky said the Conservative narrative on deficit reduction and austerity had been so successful all alternatives were seen as "unthinkable."

"But sooner or later reality will break in" he said. "And what is now unthinkable will become sensible again. But not in this election."

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/former-tory-peer-calls-conservative-5525765

Ain't that the truth.

Cameron is no doubt hoping that people don't look too closely at Tory policies in case they realise that some of their promises are meaningless. For example, the snake oil salesman has pledged that anyone working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage will not pay income tax on their earnings if the Tories win. Big deal - they don't now!

The minimum wage will rise to £6.70 an hour in October. In a full year, someone working 30 hours a week will earn £6.70 x 30 x 52, which comes to £10,452. You don't pay income tax until you earn more than £10,600.

When hard-working families join with the oppressed in voting to eject Cameron from Number Ten on polling day, he will probably come up with the standard Old Etonian response to adversity which is to say something like, "I don't know why they turned on me, I always liked THEM!"

Plus OW, I have always done everything that I could for them.

Before the Scottish independence referendum last September, many Labour members fretted that if Scotland left the UK it would be much more difficult for Labour ever to win a majority at Westminster again. That fear seemed to ignore the fact that Labour would have won majorities in 1997, 2001 and 2005 without any Scottish MPs, and that it had a greater share of the votes than the Tories in England in 1997 and 2001.

As we all know, Scotland voted by 55-45 to stay in the UK, so how did that work out for Labour? There are 650 MPs at Westminster, and so the number needed for the tiniest of majorities is 326. Had Scotland left the UK, the number of MPs would now be 591, meaning that to get a majority a party would have needed 296 MPs. With the SNP predicted to win between 40 and 50 of those 59 Scottish seats, would it have been easier for Labour to win a majority without any Scottish MPs at Westminster? At the moment it would appear so.

Well let scotland go independant and then it is easier for Labour to get that majority what do you think Ivan? by the way signed up to help Labour during the election run up now, so may be busy with labour soon.

Great stuff, Stu - hope you enjoy your political activism

Full marks, Stu. All hands to the pumps!

Phil Hornby wrote:Ghost whistler - For Labour to get elected in the present sensitive climate they cannot be seen to be too radical - yet.

I do have sympathy with your views to the extent that I feel Miliband has not taken all his opportunities over 5 years to highlight the multitude of cases where the Tories have adopted cruel and divisive policies -that could have made inroads into the support which Cameron unbelievably sustains from sources which should know better.

I don't have sympathy with you when you call people on here 'idiots', however!

YOu have sympathy with people who support benefit sanctions and welfare cuts, as they do on here clearly, calling others whose views they don't like, Tories though.

We have to pull the MPs back to their decent selves - most of them were not brought up to be Blairies - and a lot of them justify what they are doing by saying 'well, whatever we do will be better than this'.

A cool, determined purpose and a good deal of tact is going to be required, to my mind. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers had to do it before us.

Thank-you for my encouragement folks, will be getting my phone call soon.

Again I see no pledge to reform the dwp so that purple are no longer starved yup death from labour. Why?

Any other faults you wish to find with Labour gw?

Ghost whistler - I think I am in the happy position of having upset just about all elements of the political spectrum on here, including those who call any dissenter ' a Tory' and those for whom Labour can do no wrong.

I just put it down to coming from a long line of awkward b*ggers...  

Well got my call up from the Labour party for a week-end of canvassing folks, which should be fun as labour only lost this seat by 359 votes at the last election, so seeing my face they will probably lose by a thousand now.

stuart torr wrote:Any other faults you wish to find with Labour gw?

Prove me wrong then. Show me where Rachel Reeves has promised to end the misery of murdering people through sanctions. Do you even understand the problem?

Not at all g.w. I know how the said Reeves is going to make the unemployed take their job when it is offered or lose benefits, and she is going to be tougher than the conservatives in doing this, and it will affect the disabled too and the poor according to her first speech when getting her role in parliament.