Politics Thread!

[SuperMappy]

[gravy]

That guy's nutso



"The only reason that UKIP candidates say horribly racist things is because they're not as good as hiding their racism as career politicians so it's not fair to judge them on that basis!"

[Absolute_Zero]

Big guns of business may say in, but all the right-wing press will shout out. I'm not so sure it's a foregone conclusion.

The right-wing press have been shouting "out" for ages and yet according to YouGov's most recent polling, there's record support for staying in.

YouGov update, May poll: inners += 2 since April.

http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/d ... 040515.pdf

[phattslagg]

London cabbie (or not, as it turns out) tells it straight:

[gravy]

Ooof, this is going to make it hard for the Cons to dispute the legitimacy of a government not formed by the party with the most seats

Excerpt from the Cabinet Manual:



from an Alistair Campbell tweet:

https://twitter.com/campbellclaret/stat ... 68/photo/1

Basically the cabinet manual legitimizes a minority governmemt and says PM must resign if it doesn't look like he can gain the confidence of the house.

As for the legitimacy of the cabinet manual, in the introduction it says:

Cabinet has endorsed the Cabinet Manual as
an authoritative guide for ministers and officials,
and I expect everyone working in government to
be mindful of the guidance it contains.

Written and signed by.... David Cameron

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... manual.pdf

Hahaha, I can see that Milliband could use the "clear alternative" bit as his hand being forced to do a deal with the SNP.

[pogo]

He has to wait until someone can form a government. Which means for Labour getting the support of the SNP. It does not have to be a formal coalition like this government but they need some sort of agreement or understanding. And Cameron will waste no time highlighting this, how a Labour government needs the help of a party set on breaking up the UK to govern.

[Dio]

There's no requirement for Labour + SNP to have a formal coalition.

The arithmetic is merely "Do Labour + SNP command more than half the house? Have both stated they will vote to bring down any Tory government?" In that case Cameron must fall on his sword and make a recommendation to the Queen and that has to be Milliband.

Then if the outright opponents of a Labour government can't offer up the same maths then Labour get a stab.

(For a few months, at least.)

[Governmentyard]

The arithmetic is merely "Do Labour + SNP command more than half the house?

Labour and SNP and Greens and DUP. And the answer might be yes.

[gravy]

He has to wait until someone can form a government. Which means for Labour getting the support of the SNP. It does not have to be a formal coalition like this government but they need some sort of agreement or understanding. And Cameron will waste no time highlighting this, how a Labour government needs the help of a party set on breaking up the UK to govern.

Not according to Cameron, these are the goverments that can be formed according to the Cabinet Handbook:

Single-party, minority government where the party may (although not necessarily) be supported by a series of ad hoc agreements based on common interests

Formal inter-party agreement for example the Liberal–Labour pact from 1977 to 1978

Formal coalition government which generally consists of ministers from more than one political party, and typically commands a majority in the House of Commons.

The first option is completely ad hoc. The key point here though is that document heads of any legitimacy bullshit.

But yeah it's maths; do all of the parties that hate the Tories and would never support them (ie most of them) have more seats or not?

[pogo]

An incumbent government is entitled to wait until the new Parliament has met to see if it can command the confidence of the House of Commons, but is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a clear alternative.

It’s the “clear alternative” part. Cameron does not have to resign just because he cannot form a government. Labour needs to be able to show it can form one.

I wrote earlier that I don’t think the SNP have any interest in bringing down a Labour government, and I still think that’s true. But they will be interested in extracting as much as they can from Labour for their votes. It doesn’t matter if it costs Labour support: in fact the SNP would probably be quite happy for this to happen. They can only gain if Labour look weak and powerless in Scotland, while they don’t care what happens to them in England.

[pogo]

[gravy]

An incumbent government is entitled to wait until the new Parliament has met to see if it can command the confidence of the House of Commons, but is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a clear alternative.

It’s the “clear alternative” part. Cameron does not have to resign just because he cannot form a government. Labour needs to be able to show it can form one.

That's not what you're being called out on, it's the claim there has to be any permanent agreement for him to resign.

There doesn't, you're wrong on that. It could be as little as 'yeah we could support Labour' coupled with a direct refusal to ever support the Tories.

[gravy]

Ha!

Looks who's favourited this tweet:

https://twitter.com/JoeComper/status/469512951196839937

[gravy]

From another forum I'm on

ICM preliminary poll is out (ICM were once considered the golden standard of polls) showing both labour and tories on 35 percent. This is an interesting poll because ICM have constantly had the tories in the lead by a few points. Pretty much every poll is now agreeing with each other so this really could be down to just a few seats to see who is the biggest party

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/201 ... n-icm-poll

[VNVObit]

Ha!

Looks who's favourited this tweet:

https://twitter.com/JoeComper/status/469512951196839937

Look forward to the sign
"Will do anything for a vote"

he has a sense of humour (sadly lacking elsewhere)