Monday, June 08, 2009
EU ELECTION - THAT WAS FUN
Conservatives 28.3%
UKIP 17.5%
Labour 15.4%
Lib Dems 14.0%
Greens 8.7%
BNP 5%
A disaster for Labour whose vote has crashed from a previous lowest ever of 22.6% & are now in 3rd place. Other than that the strange thing is that the other parties have shuffled around a point or 2 up or down. Well OK the fascists of the Green party went up 2.9% which is unfortunate & may be the result of them having no MPs & thus no fraudulent MPs. LibDims 0.9% down cannot be good news for them since if they had managed even a small recovery they would have been able to have claimed replacing Labour as the 3rd party in British politics. The relatively slight changes suggest that this is not a flash in the pan for any of them but represents a definite trend. Mark Wadsworth says that where UKIP put up council candidates the same night they got the same sort of vote. Nobody votes for their councillor to influence Europe & knows the councillor will have some direct influence on them probably doesn't do it as a pure protest. So probably UKIP have a solid core vote they can call on in general elections. I suspect that if in the general election they put all their effort into a hit list of about 50 seats where the demographics looked good, the local MP or prospective Tory wasn't eurosceptic & openly admitted they weren't trying elsewhere they could at least match the LibDims, who are in for a disaster, in the next Parliament.
Despite the Conservative glee this is not exactly a ringing endorsement for them. 28% looks good only by comparison with 15%. They are clearly not popular either.
Interestingly only 44% voted for the 2 main parties together which is less than either of them got in their best days alone. Also, since they are the only ones who support the corrupt FPTP system that means a clear majority voted for parties favouring proportional representation.
This reinforces my previous post about Alan Johnson, who supports PR, being able, if he can be credible about it, to get Labour back in on a platform of a PR referendum. The conservatives presumably think most UKIP voters will go to them in a general election but if PR is on offer, but not from the Tories, they won't do so. I think Cameron would be wise to spike Labours guns here by calling for a referendum on it now & that his party would respect & legislate the result. The other thing he should do is start looking through UKIP's policies, particularly a referendum whether the constitreaty has been ratified or not. His original tactic was to be Blair Lite positioning the Conservatives on "moderate" Labour ground to achieve their popularity on the assumption that "right wing" Tories would have nowhere else to go anyway. Well their popularity has gone & so have many economic liberal Tories.
Best moments of coverage were the BBC interviewing Nigel Farage & Dan Hannan, who got in in South East England (Labour 8%), together. There really wasn't a paper between them except that Farage was pro-PR & Hannan was fighting in the within the Conservative big tent. If the Conservatives had any internal party democracy in policymaking they would both be in the same party. Other best moment was the BBC interviewing the eco-Fascist leader & sympathetically asking her if it wouldn't be better if the voting system was more proportional so that they would get more seats while not asking BNP leader Griffin the same.
In Scotland the SNP trounced Labour 29% to 21%, the Tories took 17%, LibDims 11%, Greens 8%, UKIP 5.6% & BNP 2.5%. Not a bad showing for UKIP (half the LibDims who were the 2nd party in Scotland back when I was expelled) when you consider they not only have no history here but have handicapped themselves with a ludicrous opposition to us having a Holyrood government. I think UKIP should reorganise as a separate party (UKIP-Scottish Progressive Association or something of the like) to include some known Scots. Our Conservatives are so Blair Lite that at the last election their main policies were more council house & more money to fight drugs. Scotland needs a party willing to stand unabashed for economic sanity & UKIP have nothing to lose by franchising out.
And Alan Johnson should get off his ass & challenge Brown either to go immediately for PR or to go.
UKIP 17.5%
Labour 15.4%
Lib Dems 14.0%
Greens 8.7%
BNP 5%
A disaster for Labour whose vote has crashed from a previous lowest ever of 22.6% & are now in 3rd place. Other than that the strange thing is that the other parties have shuffled around a point or 2 up or down. Well OK the fascists of the Green party went up 2.9% which is unfortunate & may be the result of them having no MPs & thus no fraudulent MPs. LibDims 0.9% down cannot be good news for them since if they had managed even a small recovery they would have been able to have claimed replacing Labour as the 3rd party in British politics. The relatively slight changes suggest that this is not a flash in the pan for any of them but represents a definite trend. Mark Wadsworth says that where UKIP put up council candidates the same night they got the same sort of vote. Nobody votes for their councillor to influence Europe & knows the councillor will have some direct influence on them probably doesn't do it as a pure protest. So probably UKIP have a solid core vote they can call on in general elections. I suspect that if in the general election they put all their effort into a hit list of about 50 seats where the demographics looked good, the local MP or prospective Tory wasn't eurosceptic & openly admitted they weren't trying elsewhere they could at least match the LibDims, who are in for a disaster, in the next Parliament.
Despite the Conservative glee this is not exactly a ringing endorsement for them. 28% looks good only by comparison with 15%. They are clearly not popular either.
Interestingly only 44% voted for the 2 main parties together which is less than either of them got in their best days alone. Also, since they are the only ones who support the corrupt FPTP system that means a clear majority voted for parties favouring proportional representation.
This reinforces my previous post about Alan Johnson, who supports PR, being able, if he can be credible about it, to get Labour back in on a platform of a PR referendum. The conservatives presumably think most UKIP voters will go to them in a general election but if PR is on offer, but not from the Tories, they won't do so. I think Cameron would be wise to spike Labours guns here by calling for a referendum on it now & that his party would respect & legislate the result. The other thing he should do is start looking through UKIP's policies, particularly a referendum whether the constitreaty has been ratified or not. His original tactic was to be Blair Lite positioning the Conservatives on "moderate" Labour ground to achieve their popularity on the assumption that "right wing" Tories would have nowhere else to go anyway. Well their popularity has gone & so have many economic liberal Tories.
Best moments of coverage were the BBC interviewing Nigel Farage & Dan Hannan, who got in in South East England (Labour 8%), together. There really wasn't a paper between them except that Farage was pro-PR & Hannan was fighting in the within the Conservative big tent. If the Conservatives had any internal party democracy in policymaking they would both be in the same party. Other best moment was the BBC interviewing the eco-Fascist leader & sympathetically asking her if it wouldn't be better if the voting system was more proportional so that they would get more seats while not asking BNP leader Griffin the same.
In Scotland the SNP trounced Labour 29% to 21%, the Tories took 17%, LibDims 11%, Greens 8%, UKIP 5.6% & BNP 2.5%. Not a bad showing for UKIP (half the LibDims who were the 2nd party in Scotland back when I was expelled) when you consider they not only have no history here but have handicapped themselves with a ludicrous opposition to us having a Holyrood government. I think UKIP should reorganise as a separate party (UKIP-Scottish Progressive Association or something of the like) to include some known Scots. Our Conservatives are so Blair Lite that at the last election their main policies were more council house & more money to fight drugs. Scotland needs a party willing to stand unabashed for economic sanity & UKIP have nothing to lose by franchising out.
And Alan Johnson should get off his ass & challenge Brown either to go immediately for PR or to go.
