Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 8, 2016 20:15:27 GMT
Hmm, I think the vagaries of fptp mean that getting the most MPs would have been unlikely on any realistic possible vote. However had we had rather more MPs things might have been different. One obvious thing that springs to mind is that we would have many more women on the benches - many of our near misses were female. Whether this would have made a difference to the behaviour of the parliamentary party I'm not sure.
With a stronger hand to play I expect (hope) we would have got a better deal on electoral reform, and probably HoL reform. I suspect the economic imperatives would have made some of the unpopular decisions inevitable, but perhaps we would have avoided the apparent glee with which they were taken, and provided better safety nets. The single thing which would have made most difference would have been a different outcome on tuition fees.
It probably depends a lot on who the next 50 or so potential MPs were
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 8, 2016 21:23:49 GMT
The Lib Dems' very best opinion poll result during the 2010 campaign was a YouGov one conducted between 19-20 April. It showed LD 34, Con 31, Lab 26. That would still have left them in third place in terms of seats (though there would have been about 150 of them)
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Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 8, 2016 21:32:26 GMT
The Lib Dems' very best opinion poll result during the 2010 campaign was a YouGov one conducted between 19-20 April. It showed LD 34, Con 31, Lab 26. That would still have left them in third place in terms of seats (though there would have been about 150 of them) Thats what I thought, would still be an interesting, and more realistic, counterfactual. would any important players have been removed from the scene in that scenario?
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Harry Hayfield
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Post by Harry Hayfield on Jun 8, 2016 22:27:06 GMT
Back in the 2010 UK general election campaign a couple of opinion polls suggested that the Liberal Democrats were on track to poll ahead of the Conservatives and Labour - in the event the Liberal Democrats faced a net loss of 5 constituencies compared to the notional result from 2005 after boundary change, although they did manage to enter government for the first time since 1931. So how would things be had the Liberal Democrats managed to take the highest share of MP's at Westminster (assuming the result to be something along the lines of 230 Liberal Democrat, 215 Conservative, 175 Labour)? Would they still face collapse in 2015, or could they have capitalised on a split right vote? Would they have a stronger record in government? Would this have any subsequent impact on their performance in the devolved regions? The best poll during the 2010 campaign was on April 25th which had Lib Dem 31%, Con 32%, Lab 28%, Others 9%. Running those numbers through UK-Elect gets you 251 Lab, 239 Con, 132 Lib Dem, 6 SNP, 3 Plaid meaning that the Lib Dems would be literal kingmakers (as both a Con / Lib Dem and Lab / Lib Dem coalition would have been viable).
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Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 8, 2016 22:37:19 GMT
That would have been the difficult scenario when Lab won most seats but Con the most votes of the oher two parties. IIRC the biggest party in the house would get the first go, so we would be talking to Gordon Brown - or possibly his successor
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Sibboleth
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Post by Sibboleth on Jun 8, 2016 23:10:22 GMT
Basically 2010 is an even bigger reason to regard our polling industry as inherently full of sh!t than 2015.
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Jun 8, 2016 23:55:51 GMT
This thread has been misplaced in the Forum Library.
This is merely Fiction here!
What you seek in Fantasy.
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Post by timrollpickering on Jun 9, 2016 0:02:05 GMT
The best poll during the 2010 campaign was on April 25th which had Lib Dem 31%, Con 32%, Lab 28%, Others 9%. Running those numbers through UK-Elect gets you 251 Lab, 239 Con, 132 Lib Dem, 6 SNP, 3 Plaid meaning that the Lib Dems would be literal kingmakers (as both a Con / Lib Dem and Lab / Lib Dem coalition would have been viable). Didn't Clegg explicitly rule out putting Labour in in such 3rd vote 1st seat circumstances?
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Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 9, 2016 1:10:00 GMT
I honestly can't remember. I thought the view was that as its votes in the commons that count in making a government, not in the country, they would take precedence. Or to look at it another way parties who refuse to contemplate pr can hardly complain if lack of pr harms them.
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Post by timrollpickering on Jun 9, 2016 9:08:46 GMT
I seem to recall they got tangled in a mess as they started talking about legitimacy and got put on the spot by some of the more complicated projected outcomes.
A very practical problem for the Lib Dems would be that they probably didn't put much training and/or scrutiny into many of the candidates who were suddenly projected to arrive in Westminster. The party might well have suffered a series of embarrassments as the media suddenly looked at them all at once.
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Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 9, 2016 9:43:35 GMT
I think at least the next 50 or so were pretty well trained and vetted. I know I would have been well outside the top 140.
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Merseymike
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Post by Merseymike on Jun 12, 2016 11:25:22 GMT
The Tories may not have cooperated...so could have been a minority LD government with those figures. But I think if the LDS had done that well the Tories would have had less seats and Labour more
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Jun 12, 2016 12:49:35 GMT
The Tories may not have cooperated...so could have been a minority LD government with those figures. But I think if the LDS had done that well the Tories would have had less seats and Labour more I think there is no way that would have been possible and that it really is fantasy land to see them at such a level. But if we 'accept the premise', I do not agree with your latter conclusion. The 1997 and post 1997 battering from Labour had shrunk back the Conservatives to core votes in core constituencies and a 2010 surge for the LDs would have to be mainly at Labour expense if to happen at all.
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Post by timrollpickering on Jun 12, 2016 14:09:38 GMT
I think at least the next 50 or so were pretty well trained and vetted. I know I would have been well outside the top 140. Considering you'd only recently gone through a leadership election caused by a revelation bringing down the existing leader, another revelation forcing out one contender who was also a senior frontbencher and the outing of another contender who was also Party President all in the space of a few weeks, I'd hope the party had at least done some preparation work. The Lib Dems have historically only got significant media coverage at certain times, mainly leadership elections, conferences and when people outside the party take "the surge" seriously and one repeated side effect is that the party has often been utterly unprepared for the barrage of media coverage, attacks, revelations and so forth that seems intense because it all happens at once. It may seem unfair but the price of obscurity for eleven months of the year is a year's worth of shit in one month.
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Post by greatkingrat on Jun 12, 2016 14:42:22 GMT
A more likely scenario would be the the Lib Dems coming first or a close second on votes, but still a distant third in seats. Would the perceived unfairness of that result be enough to change the result of the AV referendum, or even for the Lib Dems to insist on PR without a referendum as part of any coalition deal?
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Jun 12, 2016 15:44:59 GMT
They could certainly have insisted on a referendum on an actual PR system and not AV, I would have thought.
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Post by timrollpickering on Jun 12, 2016 15:47:06 GMT
Bear in mind that a lot of Lib Dems and electoral changers had spent the last decade or so attacking Labour for not holding a referendum on the voting system so it would have been a little difficult for them to turn round and declare the system should be left solely to the politicians of the day.
The 2010 Liberal Democrat manifesto doesn't mention a referendum here, though the wording of the clause suggests some negotiating wriggle room:
Exactly why they can't cut the number of MPs under the old system is left unexplained. And they forgot that safe seats exist under just about all seriously considered voting systems (yes, even STV). But the first two sentences seem to have been structured to allow the party to have accepted AMS, AV+ or even just AV if that was what was on offer (and which the Westminster changers had effectively settled on).
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carlton43
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Post by carlton43 on Jun 12, 2016 18:40:41 GMT
They could certainly have insisted on a referendum on an actual PR system and not AV, I would have thought. You can always 'ask for' but there is no way one can' insist' without a lot of seats AND weakness in the majors.
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The Bishop
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Post by The Bishop on Jun 12, 2016 18:53:12 GMT
The sort of situation we are presuming might well have met those conditions.....
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Crimson King
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Post by Crimson King on Jun 12, 2016 18:58:23 GMT
indeed, and if we are going with this (admittedly bizzarre) scenario, which prominent Labour and Conservative MPs would have lost, and what effect might that have had on the parties
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