David Blunkett admits that the No side used made-up numbers when they claimed AV would cost £250-mn.

Broken link?

Weird. Fixed it now.

Heh, doesn't surprise me.

I did like some of the comments, though:




Best argument for AV yet. If we can only return people to parliament via FTTP I think that leaves us with a choice between Skynet and PB :D

WTF?

We have to wait until 4pm until they even start counting.

What's the point in that? :|

I dunno, but I'm watching the Scottish election results coming in. Looks like a landslide for the SNP 8-O :D

 

Most seats so far have a swing of about 15% to the SNP which is really significant. I don't think any of the Lib Dem candidates that have been counted so far have even for their deposits back. Of course with the Scottish system there will be a redressing of the vote in the second list, but the way Labour do things they're going to lose a LOT of their big guns* tonight.

 

 

 

*that's as in not big enough for Westminster but hell, it's only Holyrood. They'll accept any old crap up there.

What's the second list?

You get two votes. One is for a candidate (FPTP), one for a party(PR).

 

The more seats you win in the FPTP round the less you are likely to gain in the PR round.

 

It's complicated :|

Wow, Iain Gray (Leader of Scottish Labour) only just held onto his seat by 150-ish votes 8-O

If the SNP win a majority and hold their referendum on Independence, and Scotland goes for it, does that mean that you lot are left holding the bill for our banks? :'D

SNP (communist)

Looks like the lib dems are going to make big losses. And this is councils and I think people generally know how to separate local stuff from westminster stuff. I'm guessing it's just people expressing their anger/disappointment at the lib dems.

Seriously, what were the lib dems thinking? I mean, yes, showing them as part of the government makes them look more electable and could potentially encourage those "I'd vote lib dem but they'll never win so it's pointless..." people to vote for them in future.

But backstabbing their loyal base to do it? Allying with the tories? Going back on tuition fees (I mean, many lib dem candidates signed that 'pledge' not to raise tuition fees and ... now they are? I... that just leaves me speechless), u-turn on student loans? etc.

They really think they're going to gain more votes than they lose, from that? And even if they did, even if it worked - what do we have then? A third centrist/centre right party? What would be the point?

Lib dems seemed like the one (mainstream) party that actually had convictions, principles and (by today's standards) a cohesive ideology. And they've thrown that away for some tenuous, transient and honestly quite dangerous* appearance of power.

(*because of course, when the tories are done with them (i.e. when they can make their own majority, which isn't going to take much of a shift at all) they will turn on the lib dems and attack them using everything they learned during this 'close relationship'. And I really don't think the lib dems have the apparatus to respond to that)

If they'd used their position in the coalition to force the tories left, then that would've been fine. I still wouldn't like them handing the tories power, but whatever. If they'd pushed things left then that would've been forgiveable. Either a general leftwards pressure or sticking to their guns on a big issue. Instead they got us a referendum on AV. I mean come on.

This could've been the one thing. Give the country PR and give minority (including yourselves!!) parties a say in things. It would've been noble, it would've been pleasingly pragmatic and it would've been smart. But no, they let the tories talk them into it being AV. Which is such a small reform it's actually insulting. And is, of course, not at all proportional.

The tories must be loving it. They get free votes in the commons. They have to give nothing in return. The country wasn't sure, the lib dems hold the balance of power and... the do literally nothing with it. Which, aside from there more dramatic betrayals of the people who actually voted for them is a betrayal of the electorate at large.

So yeah, I feel utterly betrayed by the lib dems in various ways. I'm sure other voters do too. I, as someone who would never vote tory, got my vote cast for the tories (well not me personally in this case but anyone whose constituency returned a lib dem MP). I am about as likely to vote lib dem again now as I am to vote tory.

And this AV vote... the tories can spin it to their advantage whichever way it goes. If it goes "yes" then fine, nothing, essentially, changes - the electoral map will look pretty much as it does now and there'll never ever ever be a vote on PR because why bother? Voting has already been reformed. And if the vote is "no" then, well, people obviously don't want voting reform - they even turned down quite a mild variety so they certainly aren't going to support actual PR, why bother?

I don't know who's doing strategy for the lib dems. I mean I can't imagine anyone with an actual brain came up with this strategy (or lack thereof). I mean, this is how oblivious they are:

.

That's the party president. He really thinks this is a mid-term thing? That's either disingenuous, dangerously stupid or just plain insulting. If it was a mid term thing then the tories would be leaking support at at least the same rate the libs are, and they're not. It's because the only people who can safely vote lib dems now are tory supporters. Possibly as second choice on their AV ballot, that way their vote goes to the tories either way.

I'm just amazed at the libs' performance at every stage of this. Every time they've had an opportunity to do something positive with it they've just rolled over for the tories instead. It's truly amazing. Either this is just a big vanity exercise for Clegg, they have some secret plan to do something amazing at some point, or they'e very very very very very very stupid.

Oops that turned into a bit of an essay-rant.

I wanted to ask, if you know...

What does the sort of independence the SNP want look like? I mean I'm sure there's some disagreement even within the party as to what form it should take but what's the general y'know?

+1

 

Looks like Scotland could actually get a majortity party in holyrood if momentum keeps up. That's an achievement and a half if they do, the whole system here was designed to prevent majorities (and so doing reduce the chance of an independence referendum).

 

And /fuck/ the lib dems. And /fuck/ Scottish labour.

Yay! My constituency just went SNP. Really expected labour to hold it here, but they lost it by a couple of hundred :'D

It's interesting. And aye, it'll be an amazing achievement if it happens.

Also interesting that the SNP is quite a left wing party (obviously any nationalist party here would be right wing, though of course it's a different situation and, in a way, a different kind of nationalism). Makes me wonder, though, whether Scotland is really that much more left-leaning (I mean of course I know it is a bit) or whether a significant proportion of people would vote for the nationalist party regardless of their other policies (and, conversely, how many people would still vote SNP after independence (and after the SNP's heroic afterglow has worn off, which wouldn't take long I think (man, I overuse parentheses))).

But yeah, my worry is that we agree to a form of independence which leaves you economically fucked. I mean it's unlikely that general public here will recognise that we owe you for holding you back (to put it mildly) for x hundred years. Cos yeah, the reparation movement in the US hasn't exactly done well.

Oh man they have a majority now, right? Am I reading this wrong?

"Lib Dem president Tim Farron says he does not see the party's losses on Sheffield Council as an anti-Clegg result"

(fail)

Cons: up 1 council and 10 councillors
Libs: down 3 councils and /233/ councillors

(and the lib total was lower so as a proportion that's huge)

I mean seriously, I know it's just spin but they really need a new line. At best they look stupid, at worst they look oblivious.

Same here - a swing of 10% or so from labour to snp. Round here, there are about twenty people who vote tory and huge swathes of labour-for-life voters, so I imagine a fair bit of that swing came from disenchanted lib dems.

It's weird that the media are reporting this as, by some magical mechanism they don't quite explain, people deserting the lib dims because of the tories' spending cuts :?

 

Does that make any sense to them when they're writing it?

 

Seems to me this clearly many people feeling like I do - that the lib dems betrayed those who voted for them, turning a vote for them into a vote for the tories. And it seems (unless I'm delusional about that) weird that that is not being reported.