Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

Fred, surely that can't be right? I thought that 71% of the electorate had voted against Labour, correct me if I'm wrong.

Reminds me of a half empty glass.

I am an optimist.

A Lib-Lab pact would be a coalition of losers.

Disappointing result for the UKIP even if they increased their share of the vote by a third. At least the so called Liberal so called Democrats made no progress.

My guess is another election by Oct.

Fred,

But as said by Kayak, far more voted against Labour, so your argument does not hold water.
It is a fact that Labour came second to the Tories, in both seats and votes, and it is solely for that reason a Lab/Lib pact is morally wrong.
I also heard Gordon Brown biographer say on BBC this AM that the country voted for a coalition. What a plonker. No one voted for a coalition, on the whole they voted for the three main parties. If we end up with a coalition it will only be a result of how things ended up, not because the population intended it.
I have spoken to several Labour voters, including a life long supporter, who is honest enough to admit that a Lab/lib pact would go against our so called democratic process.
Just imagine if Lab and got together with the Libs and discussed this issue on the possibility of a hung parliament prior to the election (I appreciate all 3 parties would have had their own plan) and it had become public knowledge that if Labour came second the Lib's would side with them.
Voters would have been shouting that no matter how they voted, if the result was as now, it would be a stitch-up.
I repeat, how can a party that came second (lost) with an unelected PM be our political rulers only by the backing of the party that came third (lost).
And if this does come off, we will have another unelected PM.
The public voice is being well and truly strangled.

remember that we are still waiting for one more result

Yes, but it won't make any difference.

the media will say it will be an approval rating on any coalition

Even with the assistance of the Lib's, Labour will still not have attained overall majority, so what then. A pact with the Scots and Welsh party MP's who as they have already stated, will do everything they can to make sure Scotland and Wales continue receiving beneficial rights over the English.
So we will continue to pay for none English living Student fees, Health care by way of Care Homes and free prescriptions, to name but a few inequalities.
A country fair for all. Presume they were not referring to England when they said that.
Why did we bother to vote! All it has achieved is that Nick Clegg and his party are the only ones who will decide who our next Government will be.
Remember when Clegg was asked what it was like to be a King maker, he replied that it would be the voters who decided who the next PM would be, not him. Obviously these were empty words.
If it wasn't for he risk of getting this country further and deeper into the 'Brown' (sic) stuff, I would advocate, 'Hang the lot of them, lets have a Lib/Lab pact and see what happens. I have no doubt that within 6 months this pact of losers would be shown up in their true colours, of Green for turncoats, resulting in another election where hopefully the Tories would easily obtain a majority vote, due to the populace deciding, 'We might not be able to trust the Conservatives, but we know damn well we can't trust the other lot'.

Greek,

My glass has wine in it, not water.

If the Lib/Lab coalition government is formed, then it will represent and legislate and the decisions it makes, will represent the majority of the elected and the electorate. (Those decisions will also take into consideration the majority of the minor parties, which I think have in general more Lib/lab leanings than tory.)

It is of advantage to both the Lib/Dem party, Labour party and probably the minor parties to maintain a stable government, for at least a while. It would not be a failed Labour government, but a COALITION government. (Thinking otherwise, shows an attempt to hold onto the attributes and beliefs of instinctual political tribalism)

I think, it is will be more stable than many suggest, due to the impoverished nature of party funding of those parties other than the tories. (They dont have the resources of the Bankers, business communities and those of similar leanings from Belize and other offshore islands.)
(I dont like an electoral system, which is predominantly financed by the minority for personal gain.)

Also, in order to govern, then proposal and legislation and will have to be more moderate and inclusive and representative of the whole of the electorate.
The differences between Lib/Dem and Labour economic policies seem to me small and I would think open to mediation. Their conjoint policies seem plausible and will produce less political and social strife than those who prefer the unwritten tory policies. (Many of tory leanings seem to me, to wish, or relish, social conflict and disharmony.)

The Lib/Dems and Labour party have more in common over social services, health systems and public services than differences.

Also, foreign policies are very similar, other than for the intentions of when and what on what conditions UK should become full members of the EC. there is general concord.

(Interesting, that somewhere I read that as the UK is outside the Eurozone, we wont have support of the Pound from the EC. What the hell did they expect?)

As far as, did the electorate vote for a coalition government and with electoral reform is concerned, due to the media constant talk of hung government, coalition government and electoral reform, it was obvious that they knew what they were voting for.

I think that the mistake Clegg made was seen to be cosying up to the tories, and while fed up with the Labour government, which was continuously being vilified by the media and especially the Murdock press, they public did not want a tory government, which is aberration to them.

Also, the public has greater sympathy that you suggest for Proportional Representation and see it as a fair way of having representative government and they are not swayed by false arguments that Coalition governments wont work.

This time rejecting the hostile tory orientated press and querulous media who thrive on controversy.

(The public is not being led by the noses as some would expect.)

(Have a look at New Zealands governments) The majority of the electorate like consensus, even if it does have minor drawback.)

I hope the Lib/Dem/ Lab rainbrow materialises. Not sure that it will!

Have a nice day.


PS. There will be some very interesting horse trading with the minor parties.

PS. I think I may have coined another word "rainbrow"!

Fred, sometimes you really can't see the wood for the trees. Perhaps a picture would help?

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Election/HowManyMPs

Kayak very pretty.

Check the percentage of the total electorate who voted for the tories.

That is the percentage that you can realistically say they represent.

If you had 10 contesting parties and at an election with nine parties and each had 9% of the votes and seats leaving to the remaining party having 19%, would you consider that the one party is likely to be representative of the electorate than combinations of more than any other two or three.

To get a democratic majority it would need at least five or more parties joining together to be representative.

I can see the advantage of your argument for the tory party, but either coalition would be representative of the electorate, when you consider the votes cast.

We will see.

... but when you consider the practicality of getting five or more parties to agree on a common agenda when only two seem to be having trouble doing so? And stay agreed for any length of time? Bearing in mind that the one-man parties would hold the casting vote and so a disproportionate amount of power, which would not go down well with the others? And when the arithmetic depends on Sinn Fein not taking up their seats in parliament? etc. etc.

The last thing we need is PR. These coalition talks have been a small example of what would happen after every election. In fact we would probably have to wait for the Liberals to decide each time who we could have as a government, irrespective of how the votes went. The other problem is that it would be the Liberals and another party deciding on a joint manifesto each time. The electorate would never get what they voted for.

The current election has been recalculated based on AV and the figures are approx Conservatives 286, Labour 265 and Liberals 87. That is a recipe for permanent coalitions.

Fred,

Still think you are arguing against the facts. Fact, more people voted for the Conservatives than Labour. Fact, the Conservatives finished with more seats than Labour. Fact, the electorate voted for a party that had a leader called Cameron and against a party that had a leader called Brown.
Morally I still can not see how the party that won the most votes, can be demoted to runner-up by the party that came third.
I can not see your argument, so yet again we will have to agree to disagree.

Conservatives 286, Labour 265 and Liberals 87.

where would that put SNP etc ?

In the bin hopefully.

The Guardian has the totals slightly different

What I don't understand is that the AV system works with voters ranking the candidates in order of preference rather than just marking one candidate with an X.

How, therefore, can the Electoral Reform Society (or whatever they're called) categorically say what would have happened in this election given that they don't know how the electorate would have ranked the other candidates?

Is that a Quango Moment?