Neither Reckless nor Carswell

Will UKIP have two MPs in the House of Commons before 2015?

No, I don’t think they will. I don’t think they’re even likely to have one.

Despite Daily Mail fantasies of all white working-class people being racist, UKIP clearly present a threat to the Tory party and thus possible electoral benefit to Labour by splitting the right-wing vote, as I think we will see proved when the Rochester and Strood byelection date comes round.

What should the LibDems do after May 2015?

The next General Election for the UK will be on 7th May 2015. In Scotland, we’re all looking at 18th September 2014, but for the Westminster parties, the general election campaigning has already begun.

At the 2010 general election, the results were Conservatives 307, Labour 258, Liberal Democrats 57: the LibDems dashed into a coalition with the Tories, and the hugely unpleasant mess that followed is still miring us up.

It’s fair to say that without the LibDem decision to join the Tory party and keep them in government (despite Tories not having won an election since 1992) – there likely would not have been a majority-SNP government in Holyrood: conceivably, if enough Scots had voted LibDem in 2011, there might not be an independence referendum this year.

LibDems: Dying for a general election

Nick Clegg’s New Year message leans heavily on things he had less than nothing to do with:

“The last twelve months have been lit up by moments that will stay with us forever. When Mo Farah approached the final stretch of the 10,000m final, who wasn’t up on their feet, screaming at the TV?

“When Nicola Adams beamed at the crowd after winning the first ever women’s Olympic boxing, who didn’t smile back? I was lucky enough to be there, and that’s one I’ll never forget.

“Was there anything more British than that drenched choir in the Jubilee River Pageant, singing Rule Britannia! in the pouring rain?

“Incredible images. Spectacular shows. Jaw-dropping personal triumphs.”

Sadly, none of them involved the Liberal Democratic party or its leader.

To be able to form a government the leader of the largest party in the House of Commons needs to be able to count on a minimum of 326 votes: otherwise, as soon as the government does something which the opposition cannot approve of, they can hold a vote of no confidence which the government will lose: Parliament is dissolved, a general election occurs.

The median age of the population of the UK is 40.2: the last time there was a general election called in those circumstances was October 1974. Over half the population are not old enough to remember this except as a historical report: no one under 56 is old enough to have voted in 1974, the year of two elections. Gordon Brown would have been 23 that year.

Ed Miliband wouldn’t yet have been 5: Nick Clegg was 7: David Cameron would have been 7 at the time of the first General Election in 1974, and the second happened the day after his 8th birthday.

Bradford West: Respect

Since May 2010, there have been six by-elections, and every one of them a hold for Labour until last night.

(BBC)

• George Galloway (Respect) 18,341 (55.89%, +52.83%)
• Imran Hussain (Labour) 8,201 (24.99%, -20.36%)
• Jackie Whiteley (Conservative) 2,746 (8.37%, -22.78%)
• Jeanette Sunderland (Liberal Democrat) 1,505 (4.59%, -7.08%)
• Sonja McNally (UKIP) 1,085 (3.31%, +1.31%)
• Dawud Islam (Green) 481 (1.47%, -0.85%)

Eoin Clarke very nicely shows that the biggest slide towards George Galloway was among Tory voters. (Update: And more realistically, Matthew Butcher notes that Galloway’s victory should be a wake-up call to the left – GG campaigned on an anti-austerity platform in a constituency where a Labour council had implemented ConDem cuts.)

But the 2010 election results for Bradford West had Labour winning with a margin over 14 percentage higher than the Tories: 2.9% of formerly-Tory voters were voting Labour: Bradford West was a safe seat, in ordinary UK Parliamentary understanding.

Why vote Labour?

I want to live in a country (I want to live in a world) where everyone gets the healthcare they need, when they need it, and without paying for it at the point of need; where no one goes homeless, or hungry, because they can’t afford shelter or food; where access to education, from nursery school to university, is based on ability and inclination, not on parental income or inherited wealth; where no one gets forced into a job that will damage their health or may kill them, because they have no other choice if they want to work at all.

I want to live in a country (I want to live in a world) where everyone can work if they’re able to, where people who are currently out of work get the financial support they need to live and to find another job without being shamed for it, where people get paid a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, where no one gets forced into doing a job that’s ethically abhorrent to them, and where people who can’t work get the help and support they need to live ordinary, decent lives.

I want to live in a country (I want to live in a world) where we strive to be decent to each other: where discrimination on the grounds of gender, race, religious belief or lack of it, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, or poverty, is just not tolerated – not legally, not socially, not by the customs and traditions of statutory bodies and social associations.

Why have I been a Labour voter?

Every three or four years, however, I have to reduce the complexities of belief down to a pinpoint decision to actually cast a vote for one party’s candidate or another. And mostly, I’ve voted Labour. Because for most of my life, Labour was the party that seemed to best express, in an imperfect world, what I wanted to vote for.