The final polls of the year have been published — getting on for 500 have been commissioned in 2014 — and their story is told in the graph below.
It shows Labour’s declining (down from c.38% to c.33%), the Tories static (at c.32%), Ukip on the rise (up from c.12% to c.16%), and the Lib Dems dipping (down from c.10% to c.8%). I’ve added trendlines to cut through the noise and give us a signal:
The last month has done little to alter this overall picture.
A handful of polls in December have shown Labour opening up a wider lead over the Tories, with Ukip’s support subsiding below 15%. It’s possible this is a reaction against George Osborne’s autumn statement and his signalling the Tory determination to continue slashing public spending after May if they’re in power. (It is, by the way, a mystery how the Chancellor is considered a strategic genius: many of the Tories’ woes can be laid at his door. His gloomy cuts ‘n austerity 2009 conference speech played a big part in losing his party its majority. His U-turn heavy 2012 budget which cut the top-rate of tax sealed the impression the Tories care more for the wealthy than the oppressed.) However, the polling movements are slight, and in any case appear to show the small Labour gain is chiefly at Ukip’s expense — perhaps Nigel Farage’s teflon coating is beginning to show signs of wear and tear?
For the Lib Dems, 2014 has been a grim year. For the past three Christmases our average rating has been 10%. Many would have hoped by now we’d be getting some credit for the (wobbling) economic recovery and for our stoic perseverance in government. For the record, I didn’t — here’s what I predicted would happen in the polls a year ago:
Labour will still lead the Conservatives in the polls in a year’s time, but it will be closer than the 5% the current average of polls shows – mostly as a result of Labour declining than the Tories’ attracting more support. The polling in 2014 is likely to be quite erratic, as Ukip’s expected strong showing in the Euros will spike their vote, hitting the Tories worst but also Labour. I don’t expect to see much, if any, uplift in the Lib Dems’ flat-lining 10% polling yet (I think it will happen, but much closer to the general election). I think 2014 will mark Ukip’s high point, however: support will drift away the closer we draw to the May 2015 general election. Okay, I’ll stick my neck out… The polling averages for the parties (according to UK Polling Report at 31 Dec 2014) will be Labour 36 per cent, Conservatives 33 per cent, Ukip 14 per cent, Lib Dems 10 per cent.
Not too shabby a prediction, eh? The current polling averages are Labour 34%, Conservative 31%, Ukip 15% and Lib Dems 8%.
Lib Dem hopes will have been raised by the most recent ICM poll showing the party at 14%, level-pegging with Ukip. I’d love to believe it, but it ‘feels’ a little generous to me.
As I’ve pointed out before, ICM’s methodology tends to be most generous to the Lib Dems because they re-allocate half the current ‘Don’t Knows’ to their previous party allegiance — and Lib Dem voters often least tribal and most likely to make their minds up late (often for tactical reasons). This makes it as much a prediction as a snapshot of current opinion, which is why the polling firms’ numbers tend to converge the closer we get to polling day itself.
Still, it indicates what’s possible for the Lib Dems: 14% is by no means an impossible target. Indeed, if you feed the latest ICM figures into ElectoralCalculus, the party would retain 43 of its current 57 seats. I don’t think there’s a Lib Dem activist around who wouldn’t take that as an early Christmas present right now (even though it would also mean a hefty Labour majority of 56).
Feed in today’s YouGov figures into ElectoralCalculus, though, and you’ll get a very different picture: the Lib Dems’ 6% would see us reduced to just 14 seats. I don’t, by the way, set huge stall by the ElectoralCalculus methodology — at one point in the last parliament it showed the Lib Dems would be entirely wiped out at the May 2010 election — but it does highlight the massive range of possible outcomes for the party.
How well/badly we do and the extent of liberal influence in the next parliament depends on what happens in our key seats in the 133 days between now and 7th May.
* Stephen was Editor (and Co-Editor) of Liberal Democrat Voice from 2007 to 2015, and writes at The Collected Stephen Tall.
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36 Comments
One thing the polls are consistent in showing is that there are around a fifth to a quarter of our 2010 voters who are currently undecided. That could be as much as five percentage points of the vote and would mean the difference to annihilation and survival at a parliamentary level. These voters will only come back to us if we are able to spell out what kind of vision we have for the future. What would a Lib Dem Britain look like in 2020? Unless our leadership is able to articulate this vision clearly, not only will we not get these voters’ support but we have even less of a chance of winning back defectors to Labour, the Greens and even the Tories and UKIP.
“These voters will only come back to us if we are able to spell out what kind of vision we have for the future. What would a Lib Dem Britain look like in 2020? Unless our leadership is able to articulate this vision clearly, not only will we not get these voters’ support”
These voters will not come back because in the run up to the election people will be reminded at every opportunity by the media and of course Labour.
Nick Clegg’s statement about the Autumn statement, reminding how he co-authored it, owned it, proud of it and it was just as much a Liberal Democrat Autumn Statement.
Then they will be reminded of the bedroom tax, which Liberal Democrats claim to be against but continues to support in Government.
Then there will be the March 2015 budget, There will be no election giveaway’s and more announcements of further spending cuts and downgrading of economic forecasts, which the Liberal Democrats will whoop and cheer whilst waving their pieces of paper, Danny patting George Osborne on the back and Libeal Democrats endorsing the budget as a Liberal Democrat budget.
There will be plenty of reminders for the voters who have not yet made up their mind, why they won’t vote Libdem.
RC
I agree with you when you say — ” Unless our leadership is able to articulate this vision clearly, not only will we not get these voters’ support but we have even less of a chance of winning back defectors to Labour, the Greens and even the Tories and UKIP.”
Either voters do not know what we stand for or, just as likely, they know exactly what Clegg and the Orange Gang stand for and that’s about as popular with the voters as a turkey dinner with a Botulism stuffing.
It’s interesting to see the overal trend with the graph provided for potential results in rUK; however, it might be pertinent to include the figures for the SNP, considering that they could very well form the block of Westminster MP’s with whom a future minority Labour administration may well have to rely on to pass legislation.
Forgive me for saying this on a Liberal Democrat blog; but it’s looking increasingly unlikely that the LibDems are going to be the ones with the third largest block of MP’s at Westminster, this time around.
The reasons for this seem to be obvious – the renaging on the cast iron pledge about student fees and supporting of Tory policies such as the hated Bedroom Tax and repressive attacks on freedom of speech are what will sink the LibDems this time.
Whereas, in Scotland, the largely progressive, left of centre SNP government has proven to be both popular, competent and more importantly, honest with the voters of Scotland. Their membership is well over 85,000 now, and still climbing.
They at least are helping to mitigate the impact of Westminster policies which seem to favour only those south of Watford. It doesn’t take a Rocket Scientist to figure out why the SNP should be factored into any equation about the shape of the next Westminster government, given their current and sustained surge. Labour are a doomed party in Scotland, particularly since they have appointed a hugely unpopular “branch manager” for their Scottish “Office”.
Being at 8% 5 months before an election wasn’t the plan when Lib Dem MPs were backing Clegg for years as he destroyed support among the elctorate. ‘It will all improve’ they were told. ‘We will look responsible’.
Should also perhaps add the greens to that chart? They are now regularly above the Lib Dems with yougov who have the best track record in recent elections. Doubt they’ll maintain that to May though.
@Ed.
Yes, that’s a good point. The Greens should also be factored in, since they too appear to be gaining votes at the loss of the 3 main parties.
It would be interesting to see the graph reflect these demographics as well.
I am wondering if the fieldwork that led to that 14% score was done around the time that Vince Cable attacked the Tory economic policy on the Andrew Marr Show. Perhaps some of those polled were under the erroneous impression that Vince had just been elected Leader. Now, imagine what the polls would show if Vince actually was Leader! Interestingly, Danny Alexander’s recent attack on George Osborne is the No 1 story on http://www.davidicke.com today.
The SNP, Mr Howell, only look competent if you wilfully ignore the failures of their policy and choose to overlook the consequences of their easy answers to difficult questions politics. A centre left party that intends to cut corporation tax, abolish air duties and expand the fossil fuels sector, to pluck three examples off the top of my head, is a lie that simply has yet to be exposed in the way that the Clegg clique has been.
Although you are quite right that the SNP will do well, and although it is plausible that they will be the third largest parliamentary bloc next year, you are fooling yourself if you believe that liberalism is defeated forever and that the SNP’s brand of centre-right mush mixed with bitter nationalism will offer a route to long-term success.
I think the tuition fees issue is the one that parents and students alike are struggling with. Signing up to the trebling of fees, especially when the teaching on some courses is now less than 10 hours a week, is just too hard for many to overlook. There is still a trust issue here, despite the apology. And with 50% of school leavers going into higher education, all of whom are potential voters – and their voting parents – that is a large slice of the electorate. As a side note, I personally think students should be ‘reimbursed’ for any debt they have accumulated for tuition fees in excess of £5,000 a year . Action not words is required to restore justice for students.
Judy Abel
” Action not words is required to restore justice for students.”
I agree with much of what you say, but at this late stage who would believe any LibDem promise on tuition fees. If the Labour party could come up with a way of scrapping tuition fees – or even a big reduction – they would walk the GE.
Well, Mr J,
Forgive me for pointing out the paucity of your argument, since the SNP are being judged on their competency in government rather than what they just “say”, which perhaps explains their popularity with the Scottish electorate – and, I might add, many South of the border , not wishing to be ruled by a corrupt Westminster government intent on selling the country to their mates in the City.
For you information – the SNP are committed to 100% renewable energy for Scotland by 2020 and have taken steps to make it happen – action! Not words!
It’s always amusing when folk like you shout “lies” without producing any evidence of it, other than what they read in the Daily Mail; that bastion of truth. :0) lol
With regard to your comments regarding Liberalism , I have no wish to see the Liberals defeated – on the contrary, I respect the Liberals as a party of integrity. Unfortunately, they seem to have forgotten this of late.
If you think the SNP are centre right, then you know far less about “politics” than you give yourself credit for.
But please, do keep up the vitriol, it has been a wonderful tool to help recruitment which has seen our party soar to more than 85,000 members. It seems people are sick of the old two and a half main party hegemony of politics for the elite.
RC said,
“What would a Lib Dem Britain look like in 2020? Unless our leadership is able to articulate this vision clearly… (we will not get voters’ support”.
That’s a good comment. It’s also, of course, a statement of the bleeding obvious. So how is our leadership measuring up to the challenge? The answer seems to be that they are comprehensively, resolutely, ducking it.
Mental health, we know, will be our “big idea”. It is, of course, an unimpeachable sentiment. Maybe that’s the point. If we pick on a significant secondary issue like mental health, we can in a sense justify promoting it to centre stage. We have found a cause that has been unjustly neglected, and brought it forward. But what is our leaders’ motivation in doing that? Is it a positive one, that they want to see mental health take centre stage? Or is it also a negative one, in that it helps us duck out of making our broader “vision of a Lib Dem Britain in 2020” take centre stage? I fear the latter.
Why is our leadership so resolutely refusing to develop an independent Lib Dem vision? I think that is because if you are Clegg, Alexander, Laws and cronies, you have no interest in an independent vision. You have spent five years destroying Lib Dem independence. You know where your interest lies. It is in establishing your group as the Tories’ obedient little helpers, and as nothing else.
That is the aim. It has been wholly successful. Only a leadership change would have prevented its success, and the party have funked that, for a variety of ignoble reasons.
Once again I reccomend that everybody should read Nick Sparrows piece about online Polling on The Political Betting site. Put simply we now have serious research which confirms that Online Polling has a fundamental flaw which no amount of fiddling with the figures can fix. The Voters who join Online Polling panels are not like everyone else, they are a lot more volatile & their opinions swing more wildly. That suits the Media of course, making Polls more “Sexy” as well as dirt cheap.
Its not that Labour havent enjoyed a mid-term boost or that Libdems havent been hit, but both those trends have been massively exagerated by the dominance of Online Polls. Look at Phone Polls & The Tories already have a small lead. As for us 14% is precisely what we have been getting in Local Elections, that is where we start from in reality.
Online Polling companies & The Media have got away with an enormous con which has a real effect on Politics, lowering Libdem & Tory morale for example & inflating the hopes of Labour, UKIP & The Greens.
I predict that in the spring The Media will be full of stories about our miraculous recovery & Labour/UKIPs collapse.
……”But please, do keep up the vitriol…….”, says Mr Howell, an absolutely typical comment from a Scottish Nationalist. “Us against the world” is the SNP mindset. The SNP have not the slightest idea about “liberalism”. Salmond and Sturgeon are good old-fashioned reactionaries. They are ruthless and utterly intolerant of criticism – from wherever it comes. And Mr Howell is surely “having a laugh” as regards the competency of the SNP in government. The NHS (Scottish branch) is a mess – but please don’t blame Salmond, otherwise you will b part of a “Westminster Plot”. As for Mr Salmond the expert oil economist , well he claimed (March 2013) that Brent Crude would be worth a minimum of $113 pb, and would steadily rise over time above this. Thus, he and his “groupies” proceeded to plan an independent Scottish economy on the proceeds of Brent pricing at $110—$115 pb. The man is a joke. A few minutes ago Brent Crude was worth just $60 pb. “Salmodnomics” would have an independent Scotland utterly broke, with c.16% of its government funding (oil) having gone AWOL. The re would be no money for Health, Education or precious little else. Your “take” on the Scottish government is rather foolish. It is iIlliberal “Bitter Nationalism”that is the sole driver of the SNP’s popularity. England had a phase when much of it was infatuated with an English Nationalist leader – Thatcher. Almost forty years on “Thatcherism” is an embarrassment the English nation. Thatcher’s so-called “left” or “liberal” Scottish counterparts please take note.
Apart from T-J most people seem to be very realistic as regards reading the situation. I do think the LibDems will be hit much harder in Scotland as a result of the “Tory connection”.
T-J forty five percent of those who voted in the Referendum voted YES. The membership of the SNP is approaching 100,000 and you are going to dismiss this on your selected examples of policies. Why did you not pick free education, free prescription, renewable energy, pro- European, fifty percent tax rate for high earners, anti-nuclear, opposed to the HofL and NEVER accepted a seat, etc,etc
Julian, please. I am aware of the scale of the Yes vote. I actually put my little X next to the Yes myself. But I am not going to just accept the story of the SNP as a progressive political project.
They arise from the same school of thought that spawned New Labour, the Clegg Coup and Cameron’s modernised Tory project. They offer only the same centre-right ‘Third Way’ agenda, albiet with a flair for the theatrics of ‘standing up to Westminster’. But even so, the SNP had the power to prevent the Bedroom Tax from existing in Scotland right from the start. They had the power to deliver the childcare they promised for post-independence already. They have paid for free university tuition by starving the college sector of its funding. They have covered prescription charges by reducing the range of treatments available on the NHS overall. Their policing strategy has run into problem after problem, unavoidable as part of a cost-cutting centralisation drive.
The renewable energy issue is a case in point. The policy calls for 100% renewables. Of course, the nature of the technology means that some days, there won’t be that much available and energy will have to come up from south of the border. Sure, there’ll be other days when an excess is sold south, so calling it a lie would overegg the pudding. But there’ll still need to be that baseload capacity, and it’ll be other people carrying the can while being told how backwards they all are for their trouble.
It is not something for nothing, the SNP doesn’t have any secret answer that the rest of us have missed. They just are more successful in pinning the negative consequences of their choices on others, and better at positioning themselves to reap the rewards of the positive consequences.
Lastly, I apologise if my attitude to the SNP offends, irritates or bores anyone. My referendum experience was not a positive one, all told, and that does affect how I now deal with the nationalists (on both sides) who made it such an experience. And, on that note, I’m off to have a Christmas. Everyone, have a good one.
One could also mention the council-tax freeze. Originally brought in as a temporary measure prior to a local income tax, it has been shown to disproportionately benefit the better-off. Why not at least defrost the council tax for the top bands?
The SNP promised to bring in a local income tax, did they not, prior to 2007? Mind you, their idea of local’ was typical of their centralising approach, in that the rate was to have been set by Holyrood and would have been the same throughout Scotland. Their response to questions why they didn’t bring one was that there was ‘no consensus’ in Parliament. though that excuse no longer applies since their overall majority from 2011. The same reason we couldn’t freeze tuition fees, of course; there was no consensus in Parliament, with Labour supporting implementing all the Brown report recommendations (which we ameliorated) and the Tories also favouring raising fees. And we were only 279 short of an overall majority; how could we not have prevailed!!
I note with interest that Labour promised not to introduce tuition fees before the 1997 election, then won a landslide majority (no pesky coalition partners to get in the way) and did that very thing. Yet everybody seems to have forgotten that one.
Or Council Tax is, as Julian Huppert puts it in The Guardian on October 22, 2013, “regressive – the very smallest house would pay a third the value of a vast mansion, although the difference in values is far larger. It also takes no account of ability to pay, although council tax benefit slightly corrects for this”.
This could well explain why nobody would want to increase it because it would hit the poorest the hardest. But alas, as we have seen in the coalition period since 2010, the Liberal Democrats like to use rethoric about the poor, and in action do things quite differently. As Professor John Hills of London School of Economics put it in the report “The distributional effects of the UK Coalition government’s tax-benefit policy changes”:
“What is most remarkable about these results is that the overall effect of direct tax and benefit changes under the Coalition have not contributed to cutting the deficit. The savings from benefit reforms have been offset by the cost of raising the tax-free income tax allowance. But those with incomes in the bottom half have lost more on average from benefit and tax credit changes than they have gained from the higher tax allowance.”
On this Christmas day, this atheist is reminded of the biblical saying from Matthew 7:3, “And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
David Howell,
Do you just talk in cliches or are they what you actually see?
Doomed party, branch office, South of Watford (it’s the Watford Gap anyway) etc.
Did all this renewable energy just spring up overnight? Seemed to be a fair bit of it around pre-2007. And I’m not aware of these nasty Labour people trying to reduce the genius SNP’s contribution. The target btw for renewables seems to be 50% by 2020. Which is good, but the sanctimony rather sits ill with flogging oil at the same time.
Talking of oil, you will have seen the price. The FT the other day calculated that in the first year of independence, the current disastrous situation could leave you looking at a much bigger deficit than the UK. You’ll be begging for those Westminster Cuts back. It’s not too far ahead of that when the bad demographics start to be a problem.
The fiscal case put to the electorate was pitiful. Stick every estimate near the top of the range, bank a load of productivity improvements that haven’t happened, malign the OBR and the IFS and anyone else as being “London”. This is ignoring the laughable currency situation. If the YES side had won, the country would be wanting your heads on sticks.
Seen what the main teachers union have said about Scotland schools? Pretty strong stuff. Easy to showboat free tuition fees. Just a shame the poorest aren’t going to get anywhere near university, especially in Scotland.
Same with prescription charges. England’s stuck with them, for their obvious faults, as a way of raising money for its health service. Surely they’re better than cuts?
Money talks, nationalist bluster will walk in the near future.
@Paul Barker.
” I predict that in the spring The Media will be full of stories about our miraculous recovery & Labour/UKIPs collapse.”
I predict that if you went into Ladbrokes with that prediction, they would offer you odds that would make somebody viscerally opposed to gambling in all its forms, bet the house, the pension, the cat, even the mother in law’s best frock on it.
The polls are showing the mood of the country, you either go into the election ideologically defending liberalism as you perceive it and get trashed, or you listen to the people and begin the journey to perhaps creating a liberalism in touch with reality and in tune with the concerns of the people. You have a mountain to climb to regain their trust, and they may still not believe you, but you still have to climb that mountain
The polls and recent election results are effectively telling you they don’t want your vision of the future for the UK, if you don’t listen and act on it, you deserve to be marginalised into a rump. You are increasingly seen as the enemy within.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War
For enemy replace with ‘the best interests of the BRITISH people’, for yourself, well who are you!!
Merry Christmas everybody.
“The polls are showing the mood of the country, you either go into the election ideologically defending liberalism as you perceive it and get trashed, or you listen to the people and begin the journey to perhaps creating a liberalism in touch with reality and in tune with the concerns of the people….you still have to climb that mountain”.
Thank you for these wise words Raddiy – I doubt that many Liberal Democrats will be as helpful when the country falls out of love with UKIP. Liberalism has a set of fundamental values, summarised in, but not contained by, the preamble to our constitution. The Liberal Democrat party tries to embody those principles in its policies, arrived at ideally by rational debate amongst as much of the membership as wishes to participate. We cannot compromise our fundamental values, but how those are translated into policies will vary with circumstance – one of the strengths of liberalism is its adaptability (also one of the reasons why those who adhere to rigid ideologies, like socialists, hate us so much). What we as a party have singularly failed to do is to think seriously about our future political direction in the light of the way the world has changed, and is changing still. This is something that is very difficult to do in government: the Labour Party, after nearly five years out of power has failed to do it too which is one of the reasons why UKIP has had the political space to expand and why Labour shouldn’t win the coming election, for their own sake as much as for that of the country. Yes, we do have a mountain to climb, and maybe it will take the coming avalanche to force us focus on 21st century realities rather than being stuck in the mind-frame of campaigns that worked in the late 20th century.
It’s not often I agree with Raddiy, but on this subject he’s more realistic than Paul Barker’s Spring Miracle.
ChrisB
I like your phrase, the ‘Spring Miracle.’ It has a sort of CIA-flavour about it, like one of their colour revolutions.
In fact, I think that a CIA-sponsored colour revolution is the only way to save Clegg (and Camoron) from being thrown into history’s dustbin on May 7th.
Not that there would be much point of course, since the Ed Miller Band plan to continue Clegg’s insane rush to war with Russia over Ukraine.
I still think that the outcome of the 2015 general election is too close to call.
It seems inevitable that Lib Dems will do far worse than 2010, but I’m sure they will perform better than the polling figures. In England, anti-labour tactical voters will return and anti-tory tactical voters may still hold their noses and vote Lib Dem, but perhaps not if the party is perceived as a political joke or as simply “tories for gay marriage”. Perhaps the biggest loss is members, activists and “core” voters who do not like the perceived change in position of the party. Some incumbency benefits (including targeting of resources), and the rise of UKIP & SNP under first-past-the-post mean that translating overall numbers of votes to numbers of seats is hard to predict without looking at each individual seat. Whatever the outcome for Lib Dems, the leadership will present it as a success even if that simply means better than the wipeout predicted by some.
Dimbleby et al will be must-see television in the early hours of 8 May 2015, and in the days/weeks/months afterwards the future of the Lib Dems will be determined largely by whichever MPs are still there. Not having replaced Clegg before now might mean he stays as the leader with the full support of a smaller (more orange?) parliamentary party. Or the electoral dice might fall differently, leaving only MPs less associated with this coalition or even two groups and civil war. “May you live in interesting times”.
>Whatever the outcome for Lib Dems, the leadership will present it as a success
That will be an interesting presentation; if you’re correct, then June may be the month for a new UK political party! Imagine a party that was both liberal and democratic. A transparent organisation with internal structures proven in other disciplines, where trust and expertise were valued commodities and where action is taken when trusted members speak out. A party that doesn’t capitulate because its ideas are momentarily inconvenient, but presents a case in such a robust fashion that it feels capable of arguing the point in Parliament and publically. A party that doesn’t seek to ban things, but instead seeks to educate and inform the public of potential perils and pitfalls.
That’s what I’m after for Xmas. There are more Lib Dems like me than remaining members huggin’ up the big monkey man, so I think this year will determine many things for us.
Peter Watson,
Your possible scenario — “.. Or the electoral dice might fall differently, leaving only MPs less associated with this coalition..”
The general view seems to be that unless Clegg can manage to get more than 40 of the existing MPs re-elected he will not be able to achieve an Orange Gang majority in the parliamentary party in The Commons. Because of the situation in Scotland and the large number of existing MPs not re-standing the arithmetic makes more than 40 impossible.
That would not stop him using the powerof of patronage to cling on as leader. He would not be wise to do so. It would be a short term fix, doomed to failure in the medium term.
The changing generations will mean that Mr Clegg and his Orange tinted chums (born in the sixties) will no longer be the ” bright young things ” that were seen to be ten or fifteen years ago.
The Orange Book has already become dog-eared and dated. A group of fifty-somethings droning on about their past glories in coalition will look as exciting and as attractive as page 17 in last month’s Daily Telegraphs.
Souped-up Thatcherism may have bewitched the Jeremy Browne generation but they are no longer “the future”. They are very soon to be “the past”.
See the ICM poll for Scotland has the SNP on 43%, Labour 26% , Lib Dems 6%. Professor Curtis sees the swing against Labour worse in their strong seats, he has forecast a probable result of 53 SNP, 3 Labour and 3 Lib Dem. The poor Tories have 13% and register nil MPs, will they seek PR!!!!
This would eliminate any hopes the Lib Dems had of being in a two party coalition, it would be a real game changer.
@ Tony Hill
Whether or not the public fall out of love with UKIP is a moot point, but is irrelevant to the fact that the Liberal Democrats are now offering a vision of the UK that few people want.
UKIP states its purpose and objective in 250 words in the first two paragraphs of its constitution in clear and unequivocal terms. That objective is to restore the primacy of the British state, to restore the primacy of the British people to decide on their governance, and to restore the concept that the purpose of an elected British government is to look after British citizens and their interests first and foremost.
http://www.ukip.org/the_constitution
The preamble to the Liberal Democrat constitution is 1000 words of the longest suicide note in history. It does not mention the British state or its citizens, and seems to be a manifesto for the rapid destruction of the remaining vestiges of British self governance, seemingly for the benefit of anybody but the people who elected you. I am amazed it has never been used by your opponents to expose your lack of interest in your fellow citizens. It places no value on the concept of British self governance, considers British citizens as worthy of no more consideration than any other citizen of the world, and perhaps less worthy than the billions who are worse off than the average Briton.
http://www.libdems.org.uk/constitution
You claim you can’t compromise your fundamental values, yet we all know your party does it with impunity whenever it is politically expedient to do so. The future politics of this country will be focused on those politicians who put the interests of our country first, and put the concerns of our own people above their own narrow ideology. If your values preclude you from doing that, then you will inevitably pay the same price those throughout history have paid, who blindly thought they could hold back the rising crescendo demanding change by ignoring them
theakes
” Professor Curtis sees the swing against Labour worse in their strong seats, he has forecast a probable result of 53 SNP, 3 Labour and 3 Lib Dem.”
Professor Curtis should get down to William Hills – they have it at 40/1 for Labour to have less than 5 scottish seats. The bookies generally show Labour getting between 25-35 seats.
@Raddiy:
“UKIP states its purpose and objective in 250 words in the first two paragraphs of its constitution in clear and unequivocal terms. That objective is to restore the primacy of the British state, to restore the primacy of the British people to decide on their governance, and to restore the concept that the purpose of an elected British government is to look after British citizens and their interests first and foremost.”
So how does a Party led by someone called ‘Farage’, married to a German, define ‘British? By pure expediency, I reckon. You value the primacy of the ‘British state’ over the liberty of the British people. You champion you own very narrow version of ‘British interests’. I guess you will allow us to wear any shirts we like, as long as they are black.
>The future politics of this country will be focused on those
>politicians who put the interests of our country first
Completely agree with Raddiy on this too, I think once people have had enough of Kippers they’ll realise these self-interested racists aren’t fit to run the marathon, let alone the country. I note UKIP have banned its members from using the party logo on social media – they don’t even trust themselves. The future politics of this country will be determined by the youth – the group that loathes UKIP more than any other!
ChrisB,
I agree.
The challenge for activists on here will be will be to get the young out to vote.
It isn’t complicated.
Who is fighting for the interests of of our great nation? UKIP or the Lib Dems?
We will make our pitch and you yours. In 2015. The more interesting question will be be how you and the Europhile parties will do in the election after that…
How is Little Englandism anything do with a “great nation” (whatever that may be in the modern world)?
@ Raddiy,
What nonsense you spout.
You clearly don’t know the difference between narrow self interest and enlightened self-interest.
@ Raddyie,
Or maybe the consequences of unenlightened self interest are the conscious goal of your party?