Labour Party leadership election 2015

[afleitch]

The SNP are potential winners here. With the new Nationalist-Unionist spectrum a lot of 'anyone but SNP' voters might be more hesitant to tactically vote Labour, particularly when it comes to matters of the wallet. They won't necessarily vote SNP, but it helps blunt that appeal a little.

[afleitch]

The fact that the Lib Dems are decimated will be of a great help to the Labour Party over the next few years.

[afleitch]

The fact that the Lib Dems are decimated will be of a great help to the Labour Party over the next few years.

Not really, there's no source of votes left there.

I meant that had the past few years not happened and the Lib Dems had some integrity and a 20% vote share, they would be in a far better position to attract votes from Labour.

[afleitch]

Here's something you might have forgotten about/not known about while on the subject of the war criminal.

Tony Blair used to have an Edinburgh inflected accent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2FRHz8Gp4w

[afleitch]

Labour replaced the old Knife Fork and Spoon badge with the following logo for the 1983 election:



In full colour it was red with yellow writing.

I think both Plaid (though significantly altered and dropped) in the 30's and the SNP (1963) were the first parties to adopt a 'logo' that was universally adopted (and the SNP logo is still with us, even excusing the early 90's fascist thing) if I remember correctly.

Interestingly the 1983 Labour logo has in many ways is 'back' as more aesthetic. While the 1987 rose needed to be pruned a little it now looks like the logo for a phone app (that is expensive and doesn't work. I'm here all week...)

[afleitch]

Umunna walks.

[afleitch]

We're actually living in that Simpsons episode where Homer becomes sanitation commissioner.

[afleitch]

Must be piss easy being a journo. Dig out old articles and rub out Nicola's name.

[afleitch]

Labour have announced that Corbyn will be singing at future events after all.

For what it's worth I've never sung the national anthem, even when I was in the company of the Queen. I think if I was ever in a position of power I wouldn't sing it either. Why people can't equate silence with respect I'll never know.

[afleitch]

The fact is, as afleitch here demonstrates, SNP's constituents are varied and many care more about independence (especially their leadership). A Labour party not offering to sign off on another referendum will not be supported by the SNP, and if they do, then unionist Labour voters will punish them for it. 

It's a little more complex than that. If Scottish politics settles on a unionist-nationalist axis, with the SNP standing in one corner and the Scottish Tories (who for many working class conservatives were actually detoxified in the referendum) breathing down Labour's neck, then what need is there for Labour in Scotland? What about 'Orange Labour' (something always there but now exposed in Labour's decomposition)? Having 'IRA sympathisers' in the top job is not exactly going to be endearing to whatever is left of their west central Scotland party machine.

Labour keep making an assumption they will always be there and that they always have a constituency of voters no matter what they do or don't do. They really ought to be a little concerned with what's happened this last week.

[afleitch]

I do not see that a Labour minority government, dependent upon SNP acceptance that a Labour government would be better than a Conservative one, would be impossible.

The British hostility to Irish nationalism, in 1886-1914, was considerably stronger than English antipathy to the SNP. It did not prevent Liberal minority governments being formed in 1892-95 and 1910-14.

But thanks to our wonderful media the SNP did effect the way many people voted.

Except according to the British Election Study that didn't happen. UKIP voters returned to the Tories where they could stop Labour and the Lib Dems (but they didn't 'return' in seats where Labour were comfortably ahead). Also the movement of Lib Dems to Labour actually happened a little too greatly in at least 7 seats gifting them to the Tories (instead of Lib Dem holds)

http://www.ippr.org/juncture/learning-the-right-lessons-from-labours-2015-defeat

'The first is the ‘SNP threat’. As discussed above, we currently find little robust evidence that attitudes towards the SNP and expectations about a hung parliament resulted in gains for the Conservatives from Ukip or in vote losses for Labour from former Lib Dems. We cannot say for sure that this didn’t matter, but our explorations suggest it is a difficult effect to pin down.'