Would Labour supporters back Owen's return?

[justin124]

Feb 1, 2016 14:59:59 GMT right said:

Feb 1, 2016 12:54:57 GMT justin124 said:

Even with a C & S arrangement I believe Clegg could have blocked a second election by threatening to switch LibDem support to Labour.

In that case the queen would have had to overrule a sitting Prime Minister trying to dissolve Parliament. This isn't Australia.

The Monarch is not obliged to grant a Dissolution if a Government can be formed from the existing House of Commons. Normally it would not have been an issue because the PM requesting a Dissolution is the only party leader able to command a majority. However, that may not have been the case in Autumn 2010 if the LibDems and the smaller parties had decided to line up with Labour.

[greenchristian]

Feb 1, 2016 17:24:01 GMT Crimson King said:

Feb 1, 2016 10:10:44 GMT justin124 said:

An autumn election would only have been likely if no alternative Government could have been formed from the existing House of Commons. Had Cameron sought to call one ,Clegg and the LibDems could have switched their support to Labour & combined with other parties to put together a majority 'in the national interest' to avoid the instability of a second 2010 election.

I can't be arsed to look it up, but if you can put together a non conservative majority with any concievable chance of all voting together from the 2010 HoC I may concede your point

Getting a majority that would vote for a Labour-led government in a confidence motion is almost certainly do-able (Lib Dems plus would-never-back-the-Tories parties gives a majority). Getting a viable budget might be a bit more difficult, though it's probably not completely impossible.

[Crimson King]

Feb 1, 2016 17:34:40 GMT greenchristian said:

Feb 1, 2016 17:24:01 GMT Crimson King said:

I can't be arsed to look it up, but if you can put together a non conservative majority with any concievable chance of all voting together from the 2010 HoC I may concede your point

Getting a majority that would vote for a Labour-led government in a confidence motion is almost certainly do-able (Lib Dems plus would-never-back-the-Tories parties gives a majority). Getting a viable budget might be a bit more difficult, though it's probably not completely impossible.

not convinced - lets see the numbers

[justin124]

2010 Parliament

Lab 258 + LibDem 57 + 3 SDLP + 3 Plaid +6 SNP + 1 Green + Lady Hermon + 1 Alliance = 330
5 Sinn Fein abstained so 330 would have been a majority of 14.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

The point is that it's practically impossible to get six parties to agree on a budget, when they all have to demonstrate something that they've won in order to justify supporting the government to their voters.

[Deleted]

If the Libs backed Gordon Brown they would have been nearly as shafted as they are now.

That government would not have been stable and would have been seen as a coup.

[Crimson King]

Feb 1, 2016 18:46:39 GMT justin124 said:

2010 Parliament

Lab 258 + LibDem 57 + 3 SDLP + 3 Plaid +6 SNP + 1 Green + Lady Hermon + 1 Alliance = 330
5 Sinn Fein abstained so 330 would have been a majority of 14.

In the unlikely even that they would all positively vote for a labour led government (because we all know how much the SNP and plaid like the labour party) rather than against a tory government I'd give it a couple of months at best

[justin124]

Feb 1, 2016 19:08:40 GMT joe said:

If the Libs backed Gordon Brown they would have been nearly as shafted as they are now.

That government would not have been stable and would have been seen as a coup.

That is not quite the scenario that I am implying. My point relates to Cameron having formed a minority Government on a C & S basis but where the LibDems fear he might have been tempted to seek a further Dissolution a few months later in Autumn 2010 or Spring 2011. The knowledge that the LibDems might react to the threat of a second election by switching support at that point to Labour would probably have been enough to effectively remove that option from Cameron.

[john07]

Feb 1, 2016 19:56:23 GMT justin124 said:

Feb 1, 2016 19:08:40 GMT joe said:

If the Libs backed Gordon Brown they would have been nearly as shafted as they are now.

That government would not have been stable and would have been seen as a coup.

That is not quite the scenario that I am implying. My point relates to Cameron having formed a minority Government on a C & S basis but where the LibDems fear he might have been tempted to seek a further Dissolution a few months later in Autumn 2010 or Spring 2011. The knowledge that the LibDems might react to the threat of a second election by switching support at that point to Labour would probably have been enough to effectively remove that option from Cameron.

So Cameron has a minority Government dependent on the Lib Dems to get anything through. What is to stop him cutting and running and calling a snap General Election. Pariiament would be dissolved so who the Lib Dems offered to side with would be irrelevant.

Hence I can fully see why the Lib Dems entered the coalition. Their mistake was the (constitutional) issues that they focussed on. Above all they should have cleared a free vote on student fees and thus prevented themselves looking complete hypocrites not to mention complete prats.

Too many Lib Dem MPs owed their election to tactical votes from people who were anti-Tory. They were doomed because they failed to keep enough clear blue water between themselves and the Conservatives. Blethering on about tax cuts for the low paid didn't cut much ice as it was not inconsistent with Conservative thinking.

This didn't seem to do them much good in areas where they depended on tactical anti-Labour voters either!

[Tony Otim]

Feb 14, 2016 12:06:47 GMT john07 said:

Feb 1, 2016 19:56:23 GMT justin124 said:

That is not quite the scenario that I am implying. My point relates to Cameron having formed a minority Government on a C & S basis but where the LibDems fear he might have been tempted to seek a further Dissolution a few months later in Autumn 2010 or Spring 2011. The knowledge that the LibDems might react to the threat of a second election by switching support at that point to Labour would probably have been enough to effectively remove that option from Cameron.

So Cameron has a minority Government dependent on the Lib Dems to get anything through. What is to stop him cutting and running and calling a snap General Election. Pariiament would be dissolved so who the Lib Dems offered to side with would be irrelevant.

Hence I can fully see why the Lib Dems entered the coalition. Their mistake was the (constitutional) issues that they focussed on. Above all they should have cleared a free vote on student fees and thus prevented themselves looking complete hypocrites not to mention complete prats.

Too many Lib Dem MPs owed their election to tactical votes from people who were anti-Tory. They were doomed because they failed to keep enough clear blue water between themselves and the Conservatives. Blethering on about tax cuts for the low paid didn't cut much ice as it was not inconsistent with Conservative thinking.

This didn't seem to do them much good in areas where they depended on tactical anti-Labour voters either!

The problem being that in a lot of the areas that they were fighting Labour they were appealing more to disgruntled lefties who had yet to forgive Labour for Blair, rather than more right wing anti-Labour votes.

[right]

Feb 16, 2016 20:30:02 GMT Tony Otim said:

Feb 14, 2016 12:06:47 GMT john07 said:

So Cameron has a minority Government dependent on the Lib Dems to get anything through. What is to stop him cutting and running and calling a snap General Election. Pariiament would be dissolved so who the Lib Dems offered to side with would be irrelevant.

Hence I can fully see why the Lib Dems entered the coalition. Their mistake was the (constitutional) issues that they focussed on. Above all they should have cleared a free vote on student fees and thus prevented themselves looking complete hypocrites not to mention complete prats.

Too many Lib Dem MPs owed their election to tactical votes from people who were anti-Tory. They were doomed because they failed to keep enough clear blue water between themselves and the Conservatives. Blethering on about tax cuts for the low paid didn't cut much ice as it was not inconsistent with Conservative thinking.

This didn't seem to do them much good in areas where they depended on tactical anti-Labour voters either!

The problem being that in a lot of the areas that they were fighting Labour they were appealing more to disgruntled lefties who had yet to forgive Labour for Blair, rather than more right wing anti-Labour votes.

On the Liberal seats lost outside Scotland how many DIDN'T revert back to the original party?

[Deleted]

Feb 27, 2016 22:48:31 GMT right said:

Feb 16, 2016 20:30:02 GMT Tony Otim said:

The problem being that in a lot of the areas that they were fighting Labour they were appealing more to disgruntled lefties who had yet to forgive Labour for Blair, rather than more right wing anti-Labour votes.

On the Liberal seats lost outside Scotland how many DIDN'T revert back to the original party?

None, Hallam was the closest.

[right]

Feb 28, 2016 21:35:05 GMT joe said:

Feb 27, 2016 22:48:31 GMT right said:

On the Liberal seats lost outside Scotland how many DIDN'T revert back to the original party?

None

Thank you.

So the collapse of the Lib Dems was the reason why the Tories went from plurality to majority? The rest was holding back the Labour advance.

[timrollpickering]

Feb 1, 2016 12:48:48 GMT The Bishop said:

Even with constitutional reform, I still can't understand why Clegg allowed himself to be fobbed off with what HE had described as a "miserable little compromise" so easily. Even if he regrets nothing else about going into coalition, I bet he wishes he had held out for a referendum on a genuine PR system.

I'm recycling a post of mine from another forum but here's my reply as to why they got AV not PR:

..[T]he Conservatives probably would have conceded a PR system referendum if it had been pushed for (though I doubt loss would have silenced many - they would probably complain the public wanted a different form of surplus transfer method) and if Labour were also bidding with one.

Broadly AV was the system on offer because during the Labour years a consensus had emerged within the Westminster village between Labour changers, Lib Dems and the constitutional change sector that starting with a change to AV was the best way forward. Here's the best account:

www.theliberati.net/quaequamblog/2011/12/02/what-part-of-yes-do-you-not-understand/

Return to Jenkins

Rightly, Baston and Ritchie begin their book with a brief overview of the history of electoral reform in the UK. It’s a fair summary but there is an omission that is all the more disappointing given the authors’ inside knowledge on the subject. Specifically, what the book does not explore at all is the fact that since the Jenkins Report was mothballed by the Blair government in 1998, an emerging consensus had been forming between electoral reformers in Whitehall around AV.

When I first started working for the New Politics Network in 2004 (NPN merged with Charter 88 to form Unlock Democracy in 2007), I was quite surprised at to what degree this was buzzing around within both Labour and Lib Dem circles. At Labour conferences, it was de rigour for reform inclined government ministers to make speeches in favour on AV on the fringe. We would receive almost monthly reports (from some admittedly eccentric circles) about how the government was going to announce its support for the policy any day now.

Inside the Lib Dems, I became aware of quite how keen some parliamentarians were about damping down party support for STV. When I sat on the party’s policy working group for democratic reform in 2006, I was once told that we couldn’t expect to introduce STV within a single parliament because the boundary changes would be so complicated, and would have to settle for AV at first. This was nonsense; even leaving aside the speed at which the current boundary changes are taking place, multi-member constituencies can be easily created simply by combining the existing single-member ones.

But perhaps the most tacit admission that the Lib Dems were geared up for compromising over AV was the party’s response to the expenses scandal in 2009. At a time when the mood for reform was at an all time high, Nick Clegg abandoned the party’s support for STV in favour of AV+ (indeed, given that this was a clear gesture of compromise, it makes Clegg’s later critical comments about AV being a “miserable little compromise” all the more inexplicable).

It was very clear that talks between Labour reformists and senior Lib Dems had been going on and that the groundwork for AV being introduced was being laid. Outside of Westminster however, the number of people privy to these talks were very limited indeed and while it appeared that ERS people and certainly the Labour Campaign for Electoral Reform were involved, I’ve never personally been clear about to what extent this included the staff team.

The hush-hush nature of the talks was almost certainly a response to the fallout following the Jenkins report which ERS tore itself apart over in the late 90s and beyond. But one of the problems about this lack of frankness was that there seemed to be a lack of strategy. For example, back in 2004 there was clearly a lot of hope that Labour might introduce AV without a referendum and this continued despite a 2005 manifesto commitment not to introduce any change to the voting system without one. Yet this was almost inevitable given that the Lib Dems, ERS and Charter 88 had all been taking Labour to task for failing to hold a referendum on the Jenkins proposals. The divisions within ERS meant that while ERS appeared to be continuing to push for AV behind closed doors, the public position of the organisation became more critical of AV – which predictably became a problem once the referendum became a reality.

(If it reads as if I, as an Unlock Democracy employee, am playing organisational politics here I can assure you I’m not. I’ve been a member of ERS since 1996 – barring a brief resignation at the height of the Meadowcroft–Russell wars – and have stood for council on three occasions. But the simple fact is that in terms of funding and history, ERS is the main player when it comes to electoral reform and its internal divisions have affected everything else).

By the time the Conservative-Lib Dem coalition talks began in May 2010, so much spadework had been done behind the scenes with Labour on AV that it is no surprise that it rapidly became the only real option. Those of us who had been pushing for an alternative plan such as a citizens assembly followed by a referendum were given short shrift.

In hindsight, the conditions attached to the referendum were such that it was almost certainly doomed to failure. But I would argue that if reformers had done a better job at uniting behind a single strategy before May 2010, we could have potentially got more out of the coalition talks and would have been better placed to fight the campaign when it happened.

(My emphasis)

It seems that the Westminster Lib Dems had concluded a two step approach was necessary - knock out FPTP in the first instance (and perhaps also get numbering ballot papers the norm) with a broad coalition of support and then once it was shown the system could change, make the final push. I think they also succumbed to the "progressive majority" myth too much and assumed voters do too.