Be Excellent To Each Other

Nah.

Farage not elecyrd

What no doom-moongering? Come on, it's great.

Edit: let's have a 3rd attempt at that, aye autocorrect.

Farage has gone! That's three leaders.

WOOHOO

Best result of the election, that.

Standing in Thanet Souh -

"What on earth is Al-Zebabist Nation of OOOG?
It is the political wing of the Church of Jezebelian Zebaists. We are a politico-religious organisation that receives instruction from our creator, the zeavenly OOOG. We are also a registered political party that is contesting the general election in South Thanet."

That's gold.

Farage get back in your garage.

To be fair, thank fuck we don't have PR otherwise UKIP would be much more strongly represented, as Grim... has said.

I do agree with Gnomes though; one cannot have an a la carte approach here. I hate the SNP with a passion; I hate what they stand for and I think their glib "we want an end to austerity/we want 'progressive' politics" vapid soundbites without any detail, let alone credible detail, coupled with their laughably terrible economic offer and portfolio to the Scots during Indyref, were utterly devoid of both credibility and authenticity. However, as a supporter of FPTP I have to suck up the result. By the same token, if I supported PR, I'd have to suck up the equally appalling prospect of UKIP's corresponding power share.

Edit: Farage gone as well? Fuck me, pass the magnum of Crystal.... me and Mrs C are gonna have one helluva party tonight, to the strains of Land of Hope and Glory. VE Day indeed!

*splutters*

Superb!

The EU is a lot tricker. The Tories will hold the referendum, which I've always said I think is essential to put the question to bed, otherwise you just have literally millions of people bemoaning that they haven't had their say on the EU for almost 40 years.

So the question is: Can Cameron get sufficient reform in the meantime to placate those that would otherwise leave? Unknown, but I think the powers in Brussels know they need to do something to appease us or we'll be off. Whether that's going to be enough is also unknown, but I still reckon the question must be put.

I see there's a case for free and open trade without political union. Seems reasonable. What are the downsides? Happy to have the arguments made and I don't know where I'd come down on it yet.

This. Unfortunately, it's a choice between the organisation we'd want it to be, and the organisation we've got.

Right, time to get washed and dressed. Don't think I need to be there for the Tories to cross the line, and I'm not cruel enough to watch Nick Clegg's last speech (I liked the line on the Charlie Brooker show about him being a future pub quiz question).

As Gaywood touched on earlier, Labour are going to have to have long hard think about what they actually stand for, and then put that forward as a coherent, credible package to offer to the country, and not just the "at least we're not the Tories" ticket they've been running on for 15 years. Having the likes of Balls and Millibean gone, so closely linked to Brown and Blair years, will certainly help.

Paddy Power has the following odds on the next leader:



I reckon Tristram Hunt would be a bloody good shout.

The guy's a total nutball! Talk about losing the plot.

I mean, I've heard of being a sore loser and all that, but fuck me.

What are the odds on David Milliband being leader by the time the next election comes round?

This.

Seems they are too leftwing for England, but not leftwing enough for Scotland. It wouldn't really matter if they actually believed in something and set out a credible alternative.

UKIP faces twin existential threats: losing its identity if Farage goes, and losing its core issue after an EU referendum. Interesting times ahead for the party. Perhaps an incoming leader could shed the wingnuts, shore up the base, and build a sustainable party; but that's no easy task.

Edit -- I am given to understand that UKIP almost doesn't exist as a core party, it's just the Nigel Farage show. There's little structure beyond him to hold it together during a leadership fight or even peaceful transfer.

UKIP are utterly finished; their whole reason to exist in the first place has now pretty much gone up in smoke, and there're about to lose their charismatic (whatever else you think of him) frontman. I can't see that baldy scouser deputy leader guy they've got stepping up to the plate.

Hopefully they're going the way of the BNP fairly soon.

I'm happy that Farage has gone. Is it bad that I really enjoyed watching his slimey, sweaty face try to look happy when the results came in?

Yeah, it's job done for UKIP. They can now just merge back into the Tory party from whence they came.

TV's Jeremy Vine just now:

"Let's just remind you of what 57 Lib Dem MPs looked like"

Ouch

And yet they are the third largest party by share of the popular vote. From that angle, it's been a massive success for them. If the party vanishes, that's a lot of people who are feeling disenfranchised. Perhaps the right leader now can parlay this into a sustainable party -- perhaps.

Queens speech draft.

My government will make boundary changes tomorrow.

That is all.

Yes, most likely.

We were talking about this early this morning: can you remember when the boundaries were re-drawn recently? I don't think it was before the last election, but maybe the one prior to that, before 2005? (my sense of time is really blurred though)

I do think fewer MPs would be better, 600 seems like a reasonable number.

UKIP might well die, and a lot of it is currently Farage. There are one or two others but none with an inch of the charisma that would be required to pull it off.

I don't think UKIP are racist, but the BNP voters must have gone somewhere. If they stop being a thing where will the voters go next?

Apart from most of their votes appear to actually have come from Labour/LD.

I agree, Doc, but there are always downsides to any electoral system, no?

But anyway, I'm not on ignore YAY!! I've got an idea for a thread that's right up your street mate, no politics, all science, your input is humbly requested in due course and very much needed!

The EU referendum will be interesting. Cameron ran for this election on a referendum platform, but will clearly be campaigning to stay in the EU. As will most of The City, so I expect that most of the newspapers will follow. I don't think it's an obvious outcome at all at present, though I think that it might be 'IN'.

"Nigel Farage stands down as leader of UKIP after failing to win Thanet South. "

Woohoo.

Nope. Farage standing down and may or may not stand again for party leadership in September. So he has indeed stood down, as promised. Haha.

Chunks of it certainly is. It's an uneasy mixture of old guard Eurosceptics, new blood career politicians who just want power, and the wingnuts the party hoovered up and didn't have the will or the means to discourage. These factions are all going to want to do very different things coming up to the EU referendum and after it; and the party has little connective tissue to hold it together without Farage's enormous ego. These fault lines could lead to a messy, fractured leadership contest.

Farage just spoke of refining the membership model. My point is that I don't think the leadership (i.e. Farage) is racist, but as I've said before its members probably have conflicting ideas about what it's all about.

Clegg resigned. Poor Clegg. Bye Clegg.

I think he will function much better as an experienced LD voice and commentator, rather than an embattled leader.

As much as I disagree with Ukip's politics, I'm extremely uneasy about it getting this many votes and so little representation. It's not right.

The downsides of FPtP are minimised in a de facto two party state, but it now seems the fabric of British politics is shifting and we're moving further and further away from that. I'm going to graph the proportion of the vote that went to someone other than Con/Lab later, but it's surely increased rapidly in recent elections. The more parties are in play, the more egregiously unfair FPtP is. To me, it's unsutainable, and the benefit of clear local representation is not sufficient upside for a national picture that is so inequitable.

Look at the SNP. By being a regional party, it can game FPtP -- channeling even modest swings into big gains in seats, or last night's enormous swings into an unprecedented victory. Do we want more regional parties? I don't criticise the SNP for playing inside the rules of the game, but I think the game is broken.

Clegg: "We've done something that cannot be undone." Well, that's certainly true, but maybe not for the reasons he's suggesting.

Top quality outgoing speech by Clegg. Very dignified. I still like him better than the other leaders. It's a shame nobody had faith in him.

I am unconvinced that parties that lose elections are best off being thrown straight into leadership contests, without reflection or pause.

Most of the election seems to be predicated on the leader you want to see controlling the power you've given the party. If one is a dud, you don't want him hanging around and need to get a new face out there as soon as possible. Sometimes leaders can hang on if their results are fair to middling, but if you've been squashed you're just out the door.

I have no idea who might replace Ed or Nick and how they're going to carry themselves, but it will be fascinating to see.

I think Farage almost certainly is racist, as are many of the party members. The voters, however, are probably mostly just disaffected Tories and floaters who are anti-EU and fed up with mainstream politics, and either aren't noticing the fact UKIP is full of racists or don't care.

Still a bit crap that turnout is around 66%, meaning a third of those eligible did not vote.

No, I disagree. If you get squashed that's when you most need to have a bloody good think about what comes next, but leadership elections aren't periods of sober reflection; they're even more of a cult of personality than a GE. I think the more mature and dignified response would be for the party to go very quiet for a period for the various potential figures to canvass the party and soberly build their platform. You've got five years before the next one; there's no rush beyond the artificial one created by the 24 hour news cycle.

Much depends on how secure the leader feels within his own party. No point holding on if every day you're going to be faced with internal and external criticism.

Only just recently revisited the share of the vote. Last time I looked Con/Lab was virtually even (although I was drunk). Now gap be big.

Heh, minutes later and Polly Toynbee is saying the same thing I just did -- that Harriet Harmon should be a caretaker of Labour for six months before the leadership contest.

Vote Stella Creasy for leader! I like her.

Actually Harriet has been fine when she's had to stand in for Ed before at PMQs so I think that would probably work well as an interim measure.

Yeah, saw that shortly after. Bloody cheating, that is.

Tories currently sitting on 325 going "COME THE FUCK ON, SOMEBODY". Considering The Cotswolds has yet to declare, I think they're probably going to make it over the line.