Lib dems beaten in to 6th in Barnsley

I have a day off work and I promised myself I would not spend it all on here but I am pleased to say;

Clegg you two faced scumbag your lies and deceits have come back to bite you, your snivelling capitulation to the Tory filth has won you what exactly.

As your candidate in Barnsley said "people think, vote yellow get blue" but then again your a poxy Tory anyway Clegg.

Some advice;

Clegg leave MY party and join the Tories, you will feel more at home, and take Laws and Alexander with you.

Cable, grow a backbone you wretch and just maybe you will get a little respect back.

LD'MPs vote against the Tory cuts at the next conference and in Parliment, if you dont the voters will destroy you.

AV, your probably going to lose, I want it and I will vote against it, I dont want Clegg to be able to say he made a good decision to get into bed with Cameron and his ilk.

Local elections, your screwed, just learn the lesson, if you lay down with dogs you get fleas.

I think the Libdems are finished. Cameron's is lining himself up and his party to 'go it alone' at the next election. Cameron made a good speech on business this week, said to DH he looks like he will ditch Cleggers at nearest opportunity.
WE think Cameron sees Clegg as this! http:jeffreyhill.

Sorry - I posted thinking Paul88 at 11.18 on page 1 was the post I'd be following - didn't mean to cut up the thread like that, I see you're all talking about the Murdoch empire now.

I agree with Paul (ooh sorry, that expression 'I agree with' sends shivers down my spine.)

Nick Clegg MUST have betrayed his party when he agreed to stitch up the students - otherwise, how come most of the LibDems voted NOT to send tuition fees through the roof?

That one issue was the killer, wasn't it, and the outcome is nonsensical as well as really, really shitty for next year's school leavers. No money will be saved under the bad new system - if it goes through it's for ideological purposes only.

Oh no I'd lke to read all of it. But I'm weird like that.

glasnost - yes but in order to write a whole dissertation on the topic, you obviously have to get into the role of the whole Murdoch empire. It would be a bit odd to just write about The Sun and ignore the rest of it. But I assume MN really doesn't want the full 15,000 words or however many it was.

From the media.

'It's become fashionable recently to deny Murdoch's influence on politics'

glasnost, where do you get this stuff?

Ireland does not have AV but any system other than FPTP tends to promote the rise of a larger number of small parties.

I am not at all surprised by this result. I was born and brought near Barnsley. I am least surprised about the UKIP coming second.

I saw an analysis of the votng patterns and a substantial number of LABOUR voters switched to UKIP, not just Tory ones.

The phenomenon is similar to when Margaret Thatcher came to power. UKIP stands for the kind of traditional values that many working class people agree with and they dont like Europe.

The Coalition just have not delivered and LibDems have been punished. I have long thought we would ultimately end up with a two party political system in the UK with each country in the union having a nationalist party making up the third place (ie UKIP, SNP, Plaid, and Sinn Fein). It seems to be coming true and can see LibDem MPs splitting and being subsumed into the two main parties within the lifetime of this parliament shortly after the AV vote.

In the end AV may result in the death of LibDems rather than strengthening them as many thought. It will though promote the rise of nationalist and other minority parties and independents as in Ireland.

Who praises it as the best Gabby? I live abroad and I can assure you that the view from here is somewhat different.

Cheers. "Glas".

I know you know how extensive his empire is edam but you said your dissertation was on the Sun's role.

It's become fashionable recently to deny Murdoch's influence on politics. (Usually something espoused by his own media). But it's like saying the Pope's not a Catholic. Look a the States and how his Fox TV brainwashes (sorry, informs) people.

well, the Sun has a lot of readers who arent interested in politics; but they cant ignore the drip drip of headlines day after day; they probably did damage Labour in the Kinnock era. But whether they won it or not is an open question .

There is a bandwaggon effect in general elections and some people vote for the likely winner.

That apart...how good is our democracy? It is often praised as the best; but I am not so sure.

cheers "Gabby"

and the one that everybody remembers & quotes (& in some cases, even believes )

YY I do know that Murdoch's empire is more extensive than one title. I did write a whole disseration on this! 'It was The Sun wot won it' is just a quote from the splash the day after the election.

It wasn't JUST The Sun wot won it edam. Murdoch's much more than just The Sun.

Very nice of Kavanagh to be interviewed by you though. And a fascinating subject.

Btw, I did my dissertation on the Sun's role in the '92 election. Interviewed Trevor Kavanagh, the then political editor. (Bless him very much for giving his time to an inky fingered student.) Think after several thousand words I decided the claim that 'It was The Sun wot won it' was rather overblown.

Unlike UQD, I think it DOES matter if a major political party comes sixth and loses its deposit. That's humiliating. Second would be OK. Third would be OK in some seats. But sixth? Behind the BNP? Losing their deposit? Deeply embarrassing.

I suspect the LD leadership is gambling that making the most savage cuts at the start means by the next election the economy will be on the up and we will all have forgotten what a bunch of shysters they are. In their eyes, clearly it's OK to destroy services for vulnerable people as long as they can tart them up by the next election. If councils were able to make cuts gradually, it'd be far better for the people who rely on, or work in, public services. But oh no, disabled children are being sacrificed for the Lib Dems' chances of survival.

Pissing off an entire generation of young people was a very foolish move. Especially as voters are, by and large, predisposed to stick to the party they first voted for.

'Without Murdoch's blatant backing Blair would not have won the '97 elections'

Really.

Without Murdoch's blatant backing Blair would not have won the '97 elections. He even admitted it himself. New Labour courted him ferociously and moved to the right to gain his support.

The Sun, The Times, Sunday Times, News of the World, Sky............ain't just The Sun.

(The headline was "If Kinnock wins today will the last person etc etc")

and if the Sun hadn't said that Labour would have won? I think not! Kinnock did for Labour himself, in various ways...

The Sun wasn't responsible for the Labour landslide in 97 either.

Oh well. I'm not on his payroll so am clearly ill-informed

Ponders I still remember back in 1992 when The Sun had a front page editorial saying if Labour had won "will the last one to leave the country turn off thelights" a few days before the election and that had a decisive effect on elections that had hitherto been in the balance. Murdoch shapes and moulds politics in the UK. Which is a tad ironic for an American citizen of Australian origin.

Whoever says he doesn't is either ill informed or on his pay roll.

But a lot of the LibDems previous popularity has been false though. They attracted voters who were rejecting Labour or the tories. So their share of teh vote was always artificially high and not really representative of the electorate. And they never seem to really acknockledge this.

Clegg looked even more weak-faced than usual. I did hoot when I hear the news this morning though as last night they were predicting they'd come 4th and that that would be bad anyway

I missed the 5 days that shook the world (or however many there were) - I was on holiday in France with no internet access & only heard, via text, when it was a done deal; so all the minutiae went over my head & I only knew about the end result & opinion stuff afterwards.

I suppose that might colour my judgment a bit.

But I will deny to my dying breath that Murdoch actually affects election outcomes. He just jumps on bandwagons.