On Friday 8th May Britain will wake up, and whatever your political persuasion, most people will probably think “well, shit”.
At least that is what the polls are pointing to. The race for Number 10 has been incredibly tight, and with such a wide range of options on the table, it is an election that is pretty impossible to predict.
As is the case in each general election, out of 650 seats, 326 are required at the minimum to form a majority.
When looking at the possible outcomes for this election, we must look at how the political landscape has changed since 2010:
- The Scots have fallen out of love with Labour (and in love with the Scottish National Party).
- The Lib Dem vote has significantly collapsed… no surprise there really!
- Nigel Farage, and hence his party, have grown in popularity due to… well… there’s a question!
- The anti-austerity feeling is making its way through communities, and people are pointing their fingers firmly at the Tories.
As usual we can expect the two biggest parties to be Labour and the Conservatives. The question is, which of them will be biggest and to what extent? From where I’m sat (and I do a lot of sitting), you might as well automatically give both parties 250 seats and then take two random numbers between 0 and 50, and randomly assign them to the two parties. That is how unpredictable it is. So that leaves both parties needing to form a coalition, but we must consider the four factors above, and also the left/right nature of the parties.
Labour have said they don’t want any coalition with the SNP and on the basis of their policies, they wouldn’t be interested in anything with UKIP, which pretty much means they won’t be able to form a majority. A LAB-DEM coalition remains a possibility but the likelihood of both parties having enough is fairly low.
The only party I can realistically see the Tories jumping into bed with are UKIP. But even then I don’t envisage both parties having enough between them to form a majority. There’s the real possibility of another CON-DEM coalition, but would there be enough wiggle room in their manifestos now that Cameron has vowed to have an EU referendum? I’m not convinced.
The seemingly only realistic possibility from this election is one of either Labour or the Conservatives forming a minority government. History tells us though that would be destined to fail, and another election within a short period would be inevitable – oh the joys!
All the politicians are spouting on about “There’s a real choice at this election…” Well they’re right about that! The choice in my view is “who do you want to see have a chance at screwing the country over first?” I am most inclined towards thinking that whether it be the result of a failed coalition or failed minority government, we can expect another month of harassment sooner than 2020… much sooner! The notion that you are voting for who you want to win is therefore nothing but an illusion.
Got any different ideas? Let us know in the comments!
Possibly the least insightful election commentary I’ve ever read.
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Hi there, thanks for reading and for the feedback
anything specific that would make it more insightful at all?
Cheers!
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From reading the article, it seems that all you have done is to read a few polls and then inject your own cursory knowledge of the political landscape. As for specific points –
The bullet points at the beginning of the article are particularly lazy – you can’t think of a single reason someone would vote UKIP? You might not like them but they are the 3rd most popular party in the country, so clearly they’re resonating with people, couldn’t you try to give your opinion of why?
Now admittedly, the Greens are unlikely to gain any seats, but they are consistently polling much higher in national polls, and yet you failed to mention them at all.
A massive consideration in any UK election, especially this one, is the FPTP system. Your prediction method of “automatically give both parties 250 seats and then take two random numbers between 0 and 50, and randomly assign them to the two parties” might be relevant if we were voting in an AV system, but pretty much all the seat predictions that have taken polling data and factored in FPTP (barring YouGov) are predicting that the Conservatives will take the most seats. Therefore your prediction that I quoted is ill-informed and shows that you haven’t done your research.
You refer to potential coalitions but make no reference to ‘confidence and supply’ or informal ‘vote by vote’ deals. It’s worth noting that both Nicola Sturgeon and Nigel Farage have ruled out coalition agreements with Labour/Conservatives respectively, in favour of more informal deals. The reasons why they have said this are interesting, and would make for a more insightful article.
Another point in relation to this, you failed to mention that Nick Clegg has come out in saying that he would enter into coalition with either the Conservatives or Labour.
Another interesting point to make is what effect the last governments Fixed Terms Parliaments Act will have in regards to your prediction of a second election before 2020.
In any case, I’m not the one writing the article, so I’m not going to spend the hours of research that you should have.
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Thanks for the detailed response
believe me I would have liked to have gone into the detail that you have described, and could have gone quite a bit further I believe, but unfortunately SotonTab articles are fairly limited in that they tend to stick to around 500 words.
I take your point about the lack of mentioning the Green Party, and the discussion about FPTP. I did endeavour to provide a very broad analysis but it seems I failed to do that. My apologies
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Conservatives will get the most seats, and will go into a minority coalition with Lib Dems. UKIP will probably not play any role. They’re only forecasted to get 1-3 seats. People vote UKIP because they want an Australian attitude towards immigration.
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I’m voting UIKP because I agree with the reintroduction of grammar school and I think inheritance tax is disgusting, a scrap of which will make me more wealthy.
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I’m the deity round here, and this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.
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The only real coalition that would add up would be Labour/SNP and that’s been pretty much categorically ruled out. Tories/LD wouldn’t have enough (nor would Labour/LD) and even if they did, there’s a hell of a lot of bargaining to be gone. UKIP will get max 5, Green max 3.
A minority coalition isn’t even a thing that’s remotely stable and would last for about 1 hour. The only real thing I’d envisage is another election in Autumn which probably won’t deliver hugely different results. Time for Proportional Representation so at least there are fair coalitions and decent choice for voters.
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The N in SNP stands for “National”, not “Nationalist”. But that is so, so far from being the biggest thing wrong with this article.
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Hi there, thanks for pointing that out – it has now been corrected!
I would definitely welcome any further feedback you might have, please don’t hesitate
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Seems like ads has provided some detailed feedback above which generally covers it. Kudos for actually asking for feedback rather than just getting aggressively defensive like most tab writers. To be honest the other feedback I would give is that you are wasting your time trying to write serious articles for the tab. You mention its word limit etc. It’s a mildly amusing distraction from work and it’s good for reporting on shit going down in Portswood, but it’s not exactly going to win a Pulitzer. If you want to write about politics, I’d say you should put more effort into researching and writing a single really high quality article and try to get it published by the Telegraph/Guardian/whoever it is that publishes student articles (I know some of the broadsheets do, I have no idea exactly how it works though).
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I always knew that the Tab prefer the less serious articles, and I did genuinely try to include a bit of political satire but I think it would have been more effective had the word limit been less restrictive. Ultimately the way I reasoned it was that politics will affect everyone (including students) and that was why I joined the Tab in the first place. Since ads’ comment I have taken the decision to step away from writing for the Tab, though I remain entirely supportive of the work done by them as an independent media outlet. Thank you very much for the feedback – it is definitely appreciated
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Guys, check what the result was for your seat you are voting in. If it’s a swing seat (ie thin margins), don’t vote for UKIP or greens, vote tactically for a big party.
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Or just vote for who you want, if parties with a large popular vote get screwed over by FPTP, it makes the case for electoral reform.
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