to loathe Labour, the Lib Dems and the Tories more than UKIP?

[rootypig]

They have let this country down so badly. And now we all have to reap what they've sown.

but UKIP don't listen to me - they don't stand for anything I agree with!

I wish Labour would have the guts to move to the left - stand up for the welfare state and for the poor

rootypig yanbu. I feel the same way about UKIP as I do the SNP. Far right nationalism is a dangerous thing. No matter what other policies they promote the core is always a separatist, isolationist and elitist one. For that alone I have no interest in them as a party.

That said, should the UK seems likely to have an EU exit then I would be the first banging at the SNP door, wanting an independent Scotland that would work with its neighbours rather than against them. And I was a staunch No vote!

For all those yearning for an Australian system I hope to God we do not ever see that here.

Farage is as bad as the front bench of the Tory party and his party representatives the most ignorant bunch I have ever come across. Anyone expecting dramatic change will be sorely disappointed.

But the fact that all parties believe the EU is an unalloyed good

Explain how isolating yourself from your trading partners is a good thing.

Yes it's crazy for Ed and Dave to be basically saying na na na na ha you are loosing your core voters.

you both are

They need to work damn hard now to really take head on what the Britush oeople are worried about.

It's immigration and the EU first and foremost now the economy has picked up a littie.

If Cameron could persuade the British people that he could return the country's relationship with Europe to a trade only alliance then he might survive.

Ed can't do that. He will finish labour for a few years like michael foot did in the 70s. They will need to regroup but it will take years.

Lib dems are finished and Clegg will resign in may after disastrous results.

In may I predict a massive UKIP swing and the Tories having to have a coalition with them.

We will have the EU vote and we will leave.

caramel I do agree that it is good to have more parties and more choice to vote for. It hopefully stops complacency.

I dislike this essentially two party system we have ended up with. I just wish there was more choice and chance of other marginal parties coming through like the Greens. UKIP should not be the only one getting all the media attention. Our system is in a mess.

After we leave I then predict EU country after EU country leaving too.

It's become a huge gravy train for ex ministers and their families.... And it's time is over.

Says the body shipton.I hope there's Not a page 3 or a woman's page as in the ridicjust you know what news!!! For every human being.

Oh sorry about the last paragraph my phone is mad.

I wish Labour would have the guts to move to the left - stand up for the welfare state and for the poor

But which poor? The poor of the UK who they already sold down the swanny after how many years in power? Admitting to the child poverty gap growing wider not closing? Or the poor of Eastern Europe?

It seems to me thats who Labour is rooting for.

They have done nothing for the poor of this country except push them further under and disenfranchised them even more. So now there is an under under class...sorry which class was labour supposed to be for?

Who is UKIPS growing fan base?

Explain how isolating yourself from your trading partners is a good thing

The social impact has been too great and too intimate for people to care about trading partners.

Living a different life due to too much immigration every single day is what peoples face is being rubbed in.
Trading partners, and economics seems very very far removed from every day reality.

gordy I agree and would love to see a proper left of centre party emerge to look after working people but those days are gone.

Just to be going on with.

Sorry for running off. I'm not in the UK atm so with the time difference, Ive been asleep and looking after DD

daisies criminals - convicted of a crime - not 'people we don't like.

The criminal justice system disproportionately criminalises the poor and minority ethnic groups. Don’t tell me that UKIP wouldn’t use this power to cherry pick who they were getting rid of. Or are the old Bill going to be knocking on Roman Abramovich’s door People come and build their homes and family lives here, to deport for a minor crime (as most crimes are) is unconscionable. And as Petula points out, many are here because they have fled tyranny in their own country, and international law XYZ returning them. Like with most UKIP soundbites, the reality is a lot more nuanced and complex (by which I mean totally fucking unfair ) than they care to point out. As for the idea that they wouldn’t use such a power

Wayward I switched from Labour to Green a few years back, agreed

numanoid perhaps that is how I actually feel!

MehsMum first, because an economy is not like household budget, so these things are not ‘paid for’, in that sense. Read Paul Krugman’s explanations, e.g. here and here. Second, because the current public debt - the size of which has been so hideously, cynically blown out of proportion by the Tories, who have told flat out lies about its causes - is actually a direct result of the financial crisis and neoliberalism running out of control, and what I suggest is about doing things differently - building a country in which we grow and make things, and take care of people, rather than markets. There’s only one way your kids will end up ‘paying for’ what is happening now and that’s if we continue with this lurch to the right, because they will inherit a country that is run only for the sake of the rich. Anyway look up historic levels of UK public debt as a % of GDP. It may surprise you.

To answer your question, I think you should vote Green. really.

Fluffy exactly - this thread is about being so ANGRY that the useless bastards at Westminster have failed us so badly

Thebody inequality, low wages, housing, bursting schools, that is not the result of EU immigration. That is UKIP’s great lie. It’s a result of advanced capitalism and neoliberalism.
It's all fine and dandy for half the middle class professional posters on mumsnet. Lots can afford private health care and private education. Please don’t assume that. I don’t want to describe my financial situation but it’s the opposite end of the universe from that.

That’s enough of an essay, I've still got about a hundred posts to read!

I think a UKIP / Tory coalition is extremely likely too.

Chareth that’s the dream! it was definitely what kept me voting for Labour. Post 2008, I think that dream is dead. I think they are the most despicable of all actually, because they have betrayed their history.

unitarian The Conservatives are determined to undermine everything I believe in and are doing so because they want to, not because of the recession. They are now going to lurch sharply even more to the right to try to hold off UKIP. Yes.

unitarianand daisies I agree that people are desperate. That’s why I’m angrier with the main parties than UKIP, in some strange way. THEY are the ones who have left people this way. Bastards, bastards, bastards.

Conker LibDems haven’t tempered the excesses of the Conservatives, they’ve fully participated fully in discrediting the very idea of the welfare state. Danny Alexander in particular is a paid up Tory.

camel the UK doesn’t spend enough on legal aid and with things as they stand I hope to god you never need it

Agree with everyone saying Ed Miliband is a totally inadequate leader. he doesn’t have the personality for politics, he’s a wonk. Labour needed a showman,

Great post, harpsichord

hollow absolutely agree that in the context of the British Empire, UKIP’s attitude is doubly disgusting and insulting.

As for the EU, words fail me. The idea that withdrawing from the EU wouldn’t be associated with huge costs - both the transaction cost, if you will, as well as unknown impacts in terms of trade and countless other social, legal and geopolitical considerations, and we would simply pocket £55m a day, is ludicrous.
The EU is interesting and complicated - on the one hand, the biggest bloody neocon project in the world. On the other, the democratic deficit has enabled a sort of beneficial legal dictatorship (don’t choke on your conflakes claig ) that has protected the people of Europe from a great many things. It deserves much more interesting discussion than it ever gets.

claig democracy is not a magic bullet. Just because a majority of people decide something, it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea, or right. You don’t have to paw back through the history books very far for ample evidence of that

I am probably talking to myself
bloody time difference

They have somehow adopted the feel good factor

Yes, Sinister! you've got it. The three main parties have played a hideous, hideous game, because in their desperation to point the finger at each other, and the Tories' scramble to take this golden opportunity to dismantle the welfare state, their messages have been completely devoid of hope.

Thats exactly it

voting UKip fed up with the others not giving a damn about this country and Camerons smug bloody face

Green stealth UKIP promotion have you READ the thread????????

gordy I wish Labour would have the guts to move to the left - stand up for the welfare state and for the poor

That was my desperate hope too. But as someone with the same degree as them, I have no hope for a shadow cabinet full of PPEists. PPE is a worse pedigree than Eton. It is neoliberalism 101.

The party that cares
angry

damn!

Listening to Lord Pearson on R4's PM earlier, saying in impossibly plummy tones that Nigel Farage knows how real people live

Real people

We're fucked

Rootypig. Maybe Labour did need a showman but there isn't one really and that perhaps was not what they needed at the time.
When I saw Gordon Brown giving that speech late on in the referendum campaign I wished he could have unbuttoned enough to have spoken like that about 5 years ago!
The other Miliband isn't a showman either. Burnham? Maybe.

OTOH, do we really want a showman? I have warmed a bit to Ed. I really think he is sincere and honest. He's bright too.
Given the choice between Cameron, Farage and Miliband I will choose Miliband. ( I discount Clegg. He'll sell out at the drop of a hat to cling onto the illusion of power.)
Ed's problem is that 'setting out his vision' takes up too many words and the public & media has a limited attention span.

But the election is going to be won by the party which can get across to the public a credible immigration policy.
It's all very well saying you would deport people with a criminal conviction or turn them back at the border if they have HIV but first you would have to provide the personnel to do this (or pay an inefficient SERCO or G4S a fortune to appear to be doing it) and you'd have to stop people-smuggling - and no one's managed to do that so far.
So, if 'ban the lot of them' and 'send them all home' isn't a practical policy then you have to convince people that it isn't practical and then convince them that immigration is desirable after all and that leaving the EU will have little effect other than to increase the profits of traffickers.

On immigration Farage is winning by a country mile because he has all the easy things to say. He doesn't have to spell out any practicalities. He just has to say loud and long that he'll do something about it.

Cameron will promise to beef up controls etc etc whilst cutting funding to the Border Agency.

It's Labour that has the really difficult task of saying to people that actually it isn't that easy to stop immigration and that doing so is not really a good idea.
That's not a vote winner and it doesn't boil down to a neat soundbite. In fact, anything they do say will be chopped up and twisted round in the press.

Also, leaving the EU will lose any cooperation we have from the French.

They will happily let people though the border to Britain if we're no longer a member of the EU so UKIP's policies have an in-built illogicality.

One of their major policy planks cancels out the other.

Both Labour and the Tories covered up sex abuse and child abuse. They both protected paedophilles, and continue to do so.

How can you make a conference speech as leader of the Opposition and leave out the elephant in the roof (the deficit which your own party was mostly responsible for). Ed just comes across as a thicko as well as a weirdo.