did this government really not see the defeats coming?

[ThatVikRinA22]

if so im gobsmacked. truly.

lib dems have the lowest number of seats since the party was formed.
ha bloody ha.
there were no elections here but had there been i would have relished voting these bastards out

unf none of this is relevant to the gen election, that's the thing. it's no sort of victory, really.

Quite a few of them
telegraph
I was aghast. How out of touch must they be to even think that, let alone say it.
Their policies have been unpopular, mostly because they have resulted in financial hardship and unemployment and a felling that we've been lied to and manipulated. Gay marriage has got nothing to do with it.
Idiots

Thanks for the link. There are a lot of voices calling for reducing the Lib Dem influence on Coalition policies, and the article cites quite a range. Only two are named as mentioning gay marriage: Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) and Gerald Howarth.

I agree. Right now the general public are not wrestling with the pros & cons of gay marriage. Frankly most of us don't care.

What we do care about is that public services are being cut, people are being made redundant daily and benefits are being cut.

What the government need to do is make people understand that there really wasn't a sensible/realistic alternative and the tough decisions being made now are necessary for the long term future of the country. It's either make those hard decisions ourselves now or have tougher cuts imposed on us by someone else in the future.

Libdems
hahahahahahaha
oh my sides

And, of course there are the communist parties doing very well. If we're talking extremists then the French, Greek, Spanish and Italian Communists are the ones to watch. The national socialists will pick up some votes but I predict Greece will go (more) Communist.

I'm probably being slightly unfair but had to suppress a smile when Milliband in a report I saw last night was saying something about how they had regained trust but would do even more to regain trust 'right up to the next general election'..... But not beyond I found myself thinking. :)

I'm sure if there was a cheaper/quicker/more popular alternative, the painless 'Plan B' that Balls etc keep airily promising, the coalition would be grabbing onto it with both hands.

i have come to the conclusion that i hate all politicians. but didnt Brown predict a double dip recession if the cuts were this extreme??

i couldnt give a rats arse about gay marriage quite frankly. i do care that my job is being ransacked, that there are mass protests on the streets, that no where has any money and that we are stuck in a recession.

'Double Dip' is a little overstating it at the moment. When things are fluctuating by as little as 0.2% up or down it may be technically recession but it's not as dramatic as, say, the early eighties.

People imagining that Labour would do much differently are deluded. The country lived beyond it's means for 13 years, sooner or later we had to get back to reality. The public sector is still massively overstaffed, with many of it's workers still stuck with a 70s mentality of entitlement and low productivity.

well i think the disappointing things about this are -

the swing to illiberal parties - ukip/BNP
the low vote for the liberals - IMO there has never been a better time to vote liberal! It is now not a prtst, but would increase their actual influence on government. I suppose their support base may prefer them out-of-power and yelling from the opposition benches instead...

possibly the increased vote for labour can be seen as a preference for a less liberal party also. they certainly weren't liberal whilst in power - not that anyone remembers that 2 years down the line...

it is a sad fact that harder times usually result in a nostalgia for more government control - more international isolationism - rather than less.

Reasing teh Daily Mail today, it seems that many Tory MPs are saying that the leadership have ben concentrating on policies that are not the main interest of the majority of Tories, and that they should get back to core Tory principles.

They want less of the 'wind turbine Toryism', the green stuff that many Tories don't even believe in. The intellectual elite likes it, but the heartlands scratch their heads when they hear their leaders talk about the "tipping point". Why are they talking about the local recycling centre,they ask themselves. Will this be the beginning of the end of the holy green grail?

'Last night the PM was warned to rein in ?wind turbine Toryism? as senior Conservative MPs prepared to publish an alternative programme for Government, demanding more radical tax and spending policies.'

'Right-wingers led by David Davis and John Redwood will argue that a more radical economic strategy is needed, proposing targeted tax cuts, deeper spending cuts and an end to expensive environmental regulation.
The Prime Minister is under pressure to champion more traditional Conservative policies on law and order and education.'

'?If repeated in a General Election, this will mean us losing dozens of seats and make an overall majority less likely. More wind-turbine Toryism is not the answer.?
Stewart Jackson MP called for an end to ?barmy? policies. ?David Cameron is on notice that he does need to raise his game,? he said.'

?He needs to focus on bread-and-butter issues like jobs and mortgages and public services and, above all, to develop a clear route map to growth, and stop fixating on the agenda of a liberal clique around him and barmy policies such as Lords reform and gay marriage, which people either don?t like or don?t care about.

?There is a growing frustration from many Conservative backbenchers that their views are not being listened to.?
Eleanor Laing, a former shadow minister, called for Mr Cameron to overrule the Lib Dems on more issues.

?Let us remember that the Liberal Democrats make up one sixth of the Coalition, not one half of the Coalition,? she said.
?David can listen rather more to Conservative MPs, who represent the real people of this country, and give rather less regard to the Liberal Democrat intellectual urban elite, with their student politics idea of reforming the constitution and taking forward green policies.?

Centrist Tory MP Gary Streeter said party supporters were ?gagging? for some more traditional Right-wing policies in areas such as law and order.

But senior figures including Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted that abandoning the centre ground and shifting to the Right would be futile.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2139741/Boris-Johnson-triumphs-London-amid-calls-return-traditional-Tory-values.html

But will they listen or are they out of touch with their own voters on top of everything else?

[[

You have to wonder whether some of the leaders actually ever consult the Daily Mail or are they all too busy reading about 'wind turbines' in the Guardian?

I think, if they have any sense, the Tory leadership will not panic. And that means not listening to a few backbench nut-jobs getting frothy about wind turbines or proposing ever more radical strategies. They do need sell in the policies better, stop making so many avoidable PR cock-ups and cross fingers that their decisions to date will start to bear fruit. When you're proposing a rocky ride it's essential that the reason for it and the end result are well understood by the electorate.... they're not doing that well at the moment.

And the good thing is that Redwood is saying that they need to change their economic policy and start focusing more on growth.

BIWI are you telling me you had sex with Ed Milliband? Oh God.

Redwood, like Balls is not saying where the growth is meant to come from. Our nearest markets in mainland Europe are on their collective arse and even China is struggling to hit the numbers. If Redwood is making a 'trust me, I can get us out of here' leadership bid he should be a bit more honest about it.

I agree with NiceGuy. I don't think it is at all surprising under the circumstances, and I don't think it is especially alarming for the Tories at this stage.

Or for the coalition, I should say.

I think this years (and last years) results bode very ill for the government actually. They will not be able to form a coalition with the Lib dems next time because the one universal factor will be the punishing of the Lib dems. Do you remember the Barnsley by election last year? The actual result was never in question but the Lib dem vote (such as it was) disintegrated. The local results will demoralise and discourage local activists. The lib dems are going to struggle to campaign next time imo. They certainly won't be able to prop up the Tories - who couldn't gain an overall majority last time with everything in their favour. By the time they've finished screwing people over in 2015 - do you think people will be more or less likely to vote for them?
Personally I was quite impressed by Miliband yesterday - he started to look more like a leader and less like that bloke with the brother.

They're out of touch with ordinary Tories. As Elaine Laing said

?David can listen rather more to Conservative MPs, who represent the real people of this country'

They need to start listening to ordinary Tories, not a posh intellectual elite. They need to read the Tory papers - and particularly the people's paper, the leading online paper in the world.

Nadine Dorries said they are out of touch. If you look at some of their policy priorities, it makes you wonder if she has got a point.

Max Hastings writes today that the results are the price of treating Tory voters with contempt.

'This government, by contrast, treats its natural constituency with contempt. At every turn, ministers trample on the sensibilities of Middle England.

A couple of weeks ago I talked to a friend who has always been a pillar of the Tory Party ? serving four terms in local government. Now, she says: ?I?m really not sure I want to stand again for this Conservative Party. If the best they can offer us is gay marriage, it is not for me.? When Britain faces huge challenges, why is the Prime Minister committing his authority on an issue so footling as gay marriage?

My councillor friend cited another reason for her own alienation: she sees the Coalition?s policy of so-called localism as a sham. She says: ?We looked at a wind farm proposal and turned it down, partly because so many people opposed it, partly because the economics didn?t add up. But the Department of Energy just overruled us. Where is the localism in that??

When the Tories are in danger of losing the support of such people, they are losing their compass.'

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2139724/Local-elections-2012-The-price-treating-contempt.html

UKIP got 14% in areas where they stood. If the leadership don't drop some of their green obsessions and start listening to their core voters, then maybe more Tories will start voting for UKIP instead.

It was a low turnout. Tory voters couldn't be bothered to turn out and support them. What for? More wind turbines?

The Tories are looking increasingly incompetent specially with regard to home office issues..... my betting is that Theresa May will be reshuffled out....

Anyone else think the Condemns won't last the full term.....