An interesting By Election

[Suff]

I've been doing a bit of browsing and thinking about the election today.

Reading the articles, I caught a bemused note in the Telegraph. They're mainly young, mainly working, non inundated with immigrants and, mostly, quite middle class.

I can hear the politithink going on...... What are they thinking? What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?What are they thinking?

The "political classes" are confused. They have defined the parameters in which we are "allowed" to think so that they can offer us their "vision" of the country within those very narrow parameters. OK so it went on swimmingly for a couple of decades. Then came the wake up call. Depression, loss of jobs massive financial crisis and those who migrated to the UK to benefit from the boom stand out like a lone palm tree in a desert.

Then people begin to question this nice little box we've been pushed into. Once they step outside of the "acceptable" box, they start looking at it from the outside. Then they start to use their noses and begin to realise that what they are being sold stinks worse than last months unused fish.

One key thing I have noticed very clearly. Using Google's search tools to limit the date, I cannot find a single article which states the UKIP is racist since Nov 1st. That's 19 days ago with a key, critical, by election going on today. So let me ask you something. If it were the BNP, would they just stop saying they were a bunch of racists, nearly 3 weeks before the election? Not that I recall, they were not only decrying them as racists but actually having them arrested and charged for racism right up to the last General elections.

To me that means that these racist slurs on the UKIP were nothing more than politically playing the race card to try and get the population to avoid them. Once the race card has failed, then they drop it. Which means it is all the more insidious for having been tried in the first place. Because it was not true. Would you like to be called a racist because someone else wants to stop people from listening to what you say? No care or concern whatsoever as to your actual beliefs or feelings?

My take is this.

Labour is doing a 1980's and sticking its foot in its mouth (well it was Michael Foot in its mouth then), rather than trying to find out what people want and working out how to give it to them.

Tories are still trying to scare us into voting the way they want. Most of them actually do want to give us most of what we want, but they also don't think that is enough, so they try the scare tactics.

Lib Dems are, well, Lib Dems. They're never going to be in government as the ruling party. Nobody will vote enough of them in. In the last election people thought that the Lib Dems would be a good way to protest. The press and media sold the story that a Lib Dem coalition would be a "good" thing because it would mean that the hated Labour and the untrusted Tories would have to listen to someone else before pushing policies and actions on us we don't want.

Honestly if people had stopped to think for even 30 seconds before voting Lib Dem as a "coalition" choice to "make things better" they would have realised that the Lib Dems must, by definition, have portable loyalties. In a coalition, as the junior partner, they have to give in to the realities of the senior partner. In the end they wound up being hated by both sides (socialist and capitalist), because they were not able to fully do what either party wanted. A small amount of thought on that would have identified that at the outset.

What people were really voting for, something the press would never say, was to hold back the Conservatives from taking the harsh actions required to rapidly re-balance the government finances and the economy of the country. These people voted to make the recovery 10 - 15 years longer than it needed. Just like medicine, voters chose the weak, sweet, syrupy stuff instead of the strong and foul tasting pharmacy option. Now they are punishing the Lib Dems for their own lack of vision. It's actually quite comical really. Well given that I've scraped things off my shoe sole that I liked more than Clegg and his merry band.

So now we have Farage and UKIP. They've weathered the storm of the race card. They have managed to get one MP and are looking likely to get another. It could even be that they have 5 or 6 MP's by the next election. This makes them a party with real representation. I've watched the rise of anti EU parties in other countries over the last 10 years and this is how it begins. They'll never be in government as a main party, but they may very well hold the balance of power. Especially as it looks like Labour in Scotland are going the way the Tories went in the 80's.

Cameron is becoming massively EU Skeptic. Why? Because of two things. One, it's clear that anti EU sentiment is running extremely high, not just in Tory back benchers; which they are used to, but also among a rapidly growing section of the voters. Two, Cameron has a gun to his head.

Question: What will a man say if you hold a gun to his head?

Answer: Anything he thinks you want to hear.

The question is not what he will say today, but what he will say 5 minutes after taking power in Westminster in May. When the gun is taken away and put in his hand, he will say exactly what he was saying before his political life was threatened.

People are stepping outside of the political box they have been in for 20 years. The dulled sense of smell is beginning to work again and, yes, they don't like the smell of rotting fish any more than any human does. They're voters, not Cats, although about as loyal....

[pederito1]

I dreamed last night that labour was elected.

[Workingman]

UKIP is seen by many, inside and outside, as mainly a middle class party. Calling UKIP racist is the same as calling the middle classes racist.

The problem there is that it is middle class journalists throwing out that particular slur. They are tagging themselves racists, and that will not do. Oh dear no! Back off, it is doing us harm.

The thing is that we all know for definite that only the working classes are racists, it is so well documented, isn't it? And as the BNP is a working class party there is no problem in classing it as it is.

Oh what a tangle mess.....................

[Suff]

My problem is that the press no longer tell you what they think is true. They tell you what they want you to believe.

Then, the next time, they tell you something else they want you to believe which is in total contradiction to the last position they presented for you. Yet they never seem to see the conflict in this and are almost never called on it.

Unless it's blebgate......

[Workingman]

Plebgate really was a media storm about something no normal person would worry about. Somebody called somebody a pleb, big deal, get over it. But no, the media had to carry on and on and on..... and it has cost God knows how much in time and money and jobs.... and it is still going on!

The media creates a situation, but when it does not work out the way it, the media, intended it does not know how to do a volte-face, so it digs the hole deeper. I have little sympathy.

UKIP was painted as a racist party by the media in the belief that voters would be turned away. That went well, didn't it? The media is now stuck with the fact that voters have moved towards UKIP and doesn't know what to do except keep quiet and hope it will all go away.

Hard lines, UKIP is here to stay.

[TheOstrich]

Labour Toff quits after tweeting pic of West Ham fan's house .....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... flags.html

You couldn't make it up, could you?

[Suff]

So we have a result.

The vote was just over 50% of the electorate. Good for a by election. The Tories saw 9,500 (or so), taken from their vote to come second.

But that’s not really the big story here.
[eidt, let me fix this]
Labour lost 51% of their vote.
Greens came in fourth.
The Lib Dems got less than 1% of the vote and came just ahead of the Monster raving loony party. Honestly I did not think I’d see the day when they garnered just over twice the MRL vote.

In fact, if you take the votes that Lib Dems lost and take it away from the 2010 election turnout, you see that there is only a 455 difference in voter turnout between the 2010 general election and the 2014 by election. Assuming that those Lib Dem voters simply refused to turn out in total disgust.

This for me is part of the bigger picture. Because if the Lib Dem voters don’t come out in May and UKIP takes from both the Tories and Labour in the same ratio, there could be some totally startling upsets come may.

Playing with the figures, Tories and Labour lost 16,595 votes. UKIP won with 16,867…. Looks like the Lib Dems stayed home and the EDL didn’t stand. Greens picked up quite a lot of those.

Changing face of British politics or just a blip?

[pederito1]

Phew, relieved my dream did not come true. He or someone made a comparison to Watt Tyler and I am sure Cameron and co would wish him the same fate so he had better watch his back against another attempt like the plane crash.

[Workingman]

I think that one thing is forgotten regarding the LibDems. For a few elections the LibDems were the party of protest voters. These voters turned to the LibDems, not because they were in favour of their policies, but because a LibDem vote could unseat a Tory or Labour MP.

By being in the coalition the LibDems became mainstream, but now their cohort of protest voters have another peg to hang their hats on.

UKIP will now be home for a lot of protest voters, that is for sure, but it is also picking up voters who actively believe in what it stands for. Those voters are are deserting from the Tories and Labour, and they are quite a few in number. If this process continues there will be one hell of a shake up in Westminster come the general election.

BTW does anybody know any White Van men who have visited a counsellor for therapy after the now infamous 'Image from #Rochester' tweet?

[cromwell]

Labour Toff quits after tweeting pic of West Ham fan's house .....

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... flags.html

You couldn't make it up, could you?

I've seen Emily Thornberry on Question Time. Massively pleased with herself, talks over anyone who contradicts her and so on. So not at all surprised to see her condescending, patronising, superior tweet. At least this incident should remove any lingering doubts that todays Labour party has abandoned the white working class.

In the past it was the case that the LibDems got a few of the "you can't blame me I didn't vote Tory or Labour" voters; it now looks like many of these have decamped to the Greens.