Sunday 28 February 2010

HUNG PARLIAMENT ON THE CARDS, BUT WITH BROWN AS PM?


It is beginning to look like Gordon Brown may be prime minister after the Westminster election. A poll for the Sunday Times poll puts Labour only two points behind the Tories. The YouGov poll puts the Conservatives on 37%, to Labour’s 35% for Labour.

That is estimated to give Labour 317 seats to the Tories’ 263, nine short of an overall majority that would mean Brown could be prime minister in June.

The poll comes as a hammer blow to Cameron he prepares for a keynote speech to his party’s spring conference.

In an interview to the Sunday Times he defends himself against right-wing criticism that he has modernized too much, moved too far into the centre. He says: “Some people say to me, ‘Play things safe; try to win by default. The government is in a mess.’ I say, ‘No. This is the Conservative party that is offering radical change. I’m doubling up on change’.”

Although Cameron says he is unconcerned about the collapse in Tory support, the narrowing of the lead has been dramatic. Until recently the Tories were solidly 10-points ahead, but last Sunday’s YouGov poll had the gap at 6 points, suggesting a hung parliament with the Tories the largest party.

Frighteningly, today’s poll may suggest that claims about Brown’s tantrums and bullying may have helped him. Just 28% of people believe the prime minister is a bully and 50% agree
he has a strong sense of right and wrong. (Scary. How clever is Mr Mandleson?) It also show concerns about Cameron’s Eton and Oxford background and lack of empathy with ‘ordinary’ people. Only 25% think that Cameron understands problems faced by “people like me”, compared with 35% for Brown. This may suggest that the right wingers, trying to push Cameron away from reforms, are wrong. He may need to push the Tories nearer to the ‘ordinary’ man. It also suggests that team Labour’s charm offensive on the prime minister’s being an ‘ordinary Joe’ may be working.

If the election result leaves Labour just short of an overall majority, Brown could battle on, with Labour as a minority government doing deals with smaller parties to get its legislation through parliament. That, however, is unlikely to last for long because it takes real political skill and incredible patience, and compromise to cope with a hung parliament and a minority government.

As has been shown with our own government much of the government’s legislation is lost or watered down because the opposition parties gang up to defeat you, regardless of their own views or the good of the country. The object becomes defeating the government, embarrassing the government, not running the country. It takes very mature opposition and a sense of duty to the country rather than party to make it work.

I seriously doubt if that exists at the Westminster assembly where self comes first, party second and somewhere way down the list, the voter. I favour a hung parliament because I can't bear the thought of Labour in government; I find the thought sickening...... and the Tories scare me. But Brown must not be their first minister. He's far too mad to be in charge for another 5 years.

22 comments:

  1. There's something wrong with this YouGov poll. There's a smell about it somewhere. I mean, when did the SNP's support ever go to 20% in just a matter of a couple of weeks? Naw, I feel the hand of erm... corruption.

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  2. Oh SR NOT CORRUPTION.... Surely not?....

    Oh no....I can hardly believe it....

    LOL....

    I'd better look at the rest of the results.... I just nabbed the headlines.

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  3. I'm not a great believer in polls either. It stands to reason that newspapers that commission them, need to sell papers, and sensationalism sells. The pollsters know this as much as the rest of us. In this climate of declining sales I bet we can expect a lot more sensational poll results, just look how many we have had over the last few weeks, here in Scotland and in the UK.

    That said, I would not be surprised if the Tories botched the election and lost it rather than winning it. Whatever happens I don’t think it will be Gordon Brown what won it!

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  4. Be amusing (for a given value of amusing I must admit) to watch the Labour party destroy itself as the IMF is called in and all our international debts are called in along with massive cuts in public services.
    I'd give them 2 years before they're forced into another election and political oblivion.

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  5. Subrosa feels the cold hand of fate and doesn't like it(she's just a Tory anyway)

    Our Gordon Primeminister in June what a result

    Quiet man

    Right wing facists like you having been saying the same thing for decades. The Greatest electoral boost the Labour party gets is when ordinary decent normal people look at your type..

    then they vote Against you and the Labour party benefits

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  6. Mr MixedPickle: how do you explain the Scottish result for your Labour party then in 2007. Did the decent people decide to vote SNP on that day?

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  7. If the poll that's got Labour at 38% in Scotland is right it's sad how many Scots vote for a party that took us into Iraq, Afghanistan and let the housing bubble rip with a banking system that was so unregulated that Northern Rock, HBOS and RBS along with several smaller societies either went under or had to be supported with tax-payers money.

    I don't like the Labour party as I think it has been a dead hand on Scotland for decades and I also have a life long dislike of the Conservatives so a Gordon Brown victory in Westminster neither puts me up or down in a UK context. I'd like Labout to lose votes to the SNP in Scotland and the only reason I care about England is that I hoped that a Labour failure in England would have a knock on effect in Scotland.

    However, as they say, if Labour win in England it raise a lot of opportunities for amusement and Schadenfreude.

    Brown will have to implement savage cuts at some point to try and balance the books and unlike the Conservative he can't blame the previous administration for the mess he's inherited.

    If Labour win then Brown's position within Labour will be unassailable and they will have a leader who appears to suffer from difficulties in relating to normal social situations for the next term of parliament.

    There will also be huge resentment in England about a Scot as Prime Minister if Barnett shields Scotland to some extent from the cuts that will be implemented in England.

    I also suspect that Labour have not done a great deal of work on how to solve the UK's financial problems because up till the latest poll the expectation was that it would be the Conservatives in power and David Cameron would have to deal with the poisoned chalice he had been handed by Labour.

    I'm sad that Scots are so thirled to Labour but a Labour win in England could end up being a disaster for them.

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  8. @ Mixomatosis

    Normal people usually vote for Labour when times are good, they soon learn that a Labour government leaves the country with the economy in ruins, unemployment higher and a bloated public sector. The only reason Blair was elected is that he was more right wing than many Tories.
    This time though they're gonners, they're broke and only the unions can pay their debts and just watch that money dry up when the IMF come knocking for the second time in the UK's history and cull the public sector boondoggle and amazingly enough last time it was a Labour government too.

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  9. Munguin

    decent normal people vote how they vote.........but never for people such as Quiet_Man


    DougtheDug

    The person who defended Nicola over Abdul Rauf
    Unfortunately Nicola being a honorable person.
    Took the opposite view and admitted to making a mistake.

    well done Nicola!!


    DougtheDug you lack any moral judgment a flaw many extremist nationalists seem to share.

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  10. Mr M: I will take that as a: "yes they did vote for the SNP" and on that day the good and decent, normal people of Scotland got not only the Government they voted for but the one that will do the best for them. And still is. That is why it is still so popular.

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  11. Mr. Mxyzptlk:

    It seems I hit a nerve with that last post about Labour. The truth can sometimes be difficult to handle for an extremist unionist.

    Iraq, the invasion and its oil, MI5 and collusion with torture, Afghanistan and its untouched poppy (heroin) fields, PFI and the costs to come and Blair and Brown's slavish following of US foreign policy with has CIA execution drones as a major component of that policy verus Nicola Sturgeon who apologised not for writing her letter in support of a constituent but for a some of the wording it it.

    A labour man pontificating on moral judgement. It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.

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  12. @ Mixomatosis,

    I've never asked anyone to vote for me, I'll vote for whoever will do their best for the country, and that has never ever been Labour.

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  13. DougtheDug

    Sophistry mere Sophistry I am heartened Nicola knows the difference.

    Munguin

    snp popularity will soon be put to the test and if found wanting will the Nationalists fold up there tents and march back into the mists of time.

    and reclaim their proper place in History as a
    half heard echo from a distant past.

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  14. Mr M: how very lyrical, reminiscent in many ways of the musings of one Mr Jimmy Buchan (not John Buchan), you and he clearly have a lot in common, you could both bring a tear to a glass eye. Talking about that wont you join me for a weep?

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  15. http://haggadahsrus.com/images/49-Shahn_Weeping-Man.gif

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  16. Munguin: It seems to me that the Tories are working hard to lose the election. Some people are scared they are too far right, not caring about the poor of which there are now millions.... and some think they should move to the right, leave the EU, shoot all foreigners and gas the gays and behead the poor.....


    You just can't please all of the people all of the time.

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  17. QM: That's quite an interesting idea... it's taking a long view of joy though....

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  18. Doug: That's well thought out stuff. I wonder if Labour has been trying to lose by letting Brown's weaknesses be seen. And it's backfired as it turns out that swathes of the British population actually are attracted to a nut case like Brown, bullying and shouting and throwing furniture and crying and babbling on about his bloody father and now his mother......


    Actually the Ranting Penguin has a great post on it which is funny, even if some of the comments are a bit off colour.

    http://therantingkingpenguin.blogspot.com/2010/02/lets-play-happy-families.html

    But yes, going back to your post the whole thing will be an ugly mess for Labour if they actually manage to get in....

    As Quiet Man suggests there may be some joy in watching it all fall to pieces and Brown having to take all the blame.

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  19. Niko: QM isn't a fascist. He's a libertarian. You should know and appreciate the difference.

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  20. Niko: Nicola Sturgeon is a fine MSP, and excellent Secretary, and an inspiring Deputy First Minister. Your party would kill for someone with her intellect, her abilities and her charm, not to mention her looks.

    I think she did nothing wrong personally, but if she felt it right to apologise then so be it.

    Your own First Minister did far worse as did that half witted arse in Downing Street.

    That stupid little man you guys call leader (which of course he isn't ) should check up before he opens his silly little whiney gob and ask around....have we ever done that?.... before he starts on other people.

    What a twerp he is.

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  21. Doug: All that and Gordon Brown is the son of the manse who has a moral compass.... Yeah...

    What twaddle these people speak.

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  22. QM: You make a good point there. To get elected Blair had to reform the Labour party so that a wide range of people would vote for it. He had to deal with a country which had changed during the Thatcher and Major years. There were many more share holders and house owners. There were many fewer factory workers. He moved it to the centre and then to the centre right so that the south of England where a vast swathe of the population lives, would vote Labour. He knew he's keep most of the traditional Labour voters. They had nowhere else to go.

    So in many ways they were at least as right wing as the Tories. Of course many of the actual MPs might have objected to it, but they were having a great time on the property market, flipping houses and making a vast profit at our expense so they shut up.

    There were a few good men left, so every now and then they had to do something to keep the left sweet.

    I rather think that the Labour whips knew too much and bribed the rest.... visits to various places they would prefer their other halves and kids and local party not to know about.....

    It all stinks.

    The only way we will be rid of it all is when we leave the London assembly behind us forever and have all our decisions made in our own parliament... and you have yours

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