Heres what a hung Parliament will do

[lincstash]

WE have been there before, with both Wilson and Heath.

No one can rule with a minority government. Its an abortion. Nothing radical, nothing decisive can get passed into law. Nothing gets decided, no real advancement can be made, everything is fudge and a compromise.

IF we get a hung parliament, Labour will retain power (as the incumbent governments right to), completely unable to do anything decisive about the economy, and eventually, after being defeated in multiple votes government will collapse with a year, and another election will ensue. You only need a major bill such as the Finance Bill to get destroyed by the opposition, and thats thats.

Meanwhile, the militant left wing unions (UNITE and GMB) will set about ejecting Labours Blairites and Brownites from the party , (as they have promised they can and will), and whilst labour struggles along in the minority in westminster, civil war will rip the party apart as the unions seize control and force the party back to socialist far left. Policy making and decision making will cease within the government

Meanwhile, the worlds financial markets will see the political chaos, pull the plug on our credit rating and that will be it, game set an match. The economy will collapse, and the World Bank will be forced to step in, as it did with the Wilson Government. We will then be a prime target for the EU vultures to take further control of us.

THis is not speculation, this is based on previous times in our history when we have been in this position. We are the 5th largest economy because we always have had majority governments. If you want examples of what happens to countries with minority rules, look at places like Italy, Argentina, Brazil. 3rd rate counties because they cant be ruled decisively.

"By Fliight
Lincstash is a fairly new poster who never seems to come back and argue (his) her case."

umm decidedly not true, ive had some fair toing and froing on several threads. Maybe you shoud lread more topics..........

"By MrsWobbleTheWaitress

3. Can someone explain to me why, if the Lib Dems, for example, get the most votes, they wouldn't have the most members of parliament? "

Because its not one election. Its 651 elections running simultaneously, and the number of votes t win each one is different every time. Some seats you might win by getting 100 votes, some by 30,000 votes, so the total number of votes is irrelevant. Its the total number of seats that matters. Each Constituency is approx 65,000 voters though, so its not unbalanced per seat, so the system reflects local choices.

'This is not speculation...'

This is in fact total nonsense

"By policywonk Sun 18-Apr-10 10:05:45
The fifth largest economy in the world is Germany (UK is the seventh). Oh. Oh, look at that. Germany has had coalition governments for most of the last 50 years. As have many countries in Europe that are doing just fine, thank you."

Right. but thats germany, not here, and there in the Euro, were not. Entirely different situation. We have our own currency.

As we have the largest national debt in history, the financial markets are already shitting bricks about our credit worthiness. Once the Unions set about tearing labour apart (and I dont know why you people keeping ignoring this, is fundamental, and will be catastrophic for the country if Labour are in power at the time), the markets will get even more jittery and cash will start to flood out the country, and our credit rating will then get downgraded, and we are in knee deep doggy poo land then.

Let me detail this threat, because half the people who intend to vote labour sinply appear to have no idea whats in store.

United Left, the dominant Left-wing faction within the unions have been sent out draft motions to supporters at branch level to be proposed at the Unite national conference in May.

They state: 'The union believes that the replacement of the New Labour leadership of the Labour Party is long overdue and that the party should return to its founding principles.

'We therefore endorse a strategy to both encourage our members to join the Labour Party, regaining it at grassroots level, and to select trade unionists who share our vision as prospective parliamentary candidates.'

United Left predict that other militant unions - 'many of whom pay substantial amounts to New Labour' - will join the battle to reclaim Labour by the extreme Left.

Unite believes that Labour will have no choice over switching political direction because the party will collapse without its huge donations. In 1997, 40p in every £1 of the party's funds came from the unions. Now it is double that figure

The Unions have Labour by the balls, and they have every intention of winding back to 1972 and the Winter of Discontent. Nearly 150 seats that Labour is contesting at the election are directly funded by Unite. Thirteen members of the Cabinet - half of the total and including Mr Brown - have received a total of £33,000 from the union. 167 Labour MPs and candidates are also paid-up members of Unite.

The United Left is led by 'Red' Len McCluskey, a 59-year-old former Liverpool docker who is personally overseeing the BA strike. Why do you think Gordon brown has kept his head down and said nothing about it - because he darent.

Vote labour, vote for the Winter of Discontent.

Sorry, Lincstash. I've seen a few of your OPs but evidently not all of them. Do carry on.

Flight, it's not so much he/she doesn't return to the thread, more he/she never truly enters he debate, preferring instead to spew forth reams of (pre-prepared?) invective...

I concur on the invective. Strong views, as I said! But it's a free forum. And I have no idea whether the invective is right or not.

Lincstash is male, BTW, I seem to remember him mentioning this before.

(Not that it matters, just the he/she thing gets a bit clunky to read)

MrsWobble, PR is Proportional Representation.

Sorry, this explains it more clearly (and other systems like the one we have currently)

Lincstash is definitely forthright, but is knowlegeable and livens up political debate

knowledgeable

"It's an abortion>"

Yes, I thought use of the word "abortion" in the OP was at the very least ill-judged. Certainly it's quite unpleasant.

I also think the arguments put forth are nonsensical scare-mongering. Within the UK alone there are both coalition and minority governments (Wales, Scotland) and they seem to be working fairly well. As others have pointed out, many countries around the world operate successfully with similar set-ups.

We clearly are in desperate need of some form of PR: adversarial politics hasn't been doing us much good, and so many people are reluctant to vote because they see that their vote doesn't make any real difference to the outcome.

So despite detailed quotes, you dont believe the Unions intend to eject the Brownites and Balirite and turn Labour back into a socialist party ?

Or is it that you dont want to believe it, dont want to face the fact it might be a disasater voting labour, and instead want to just be in denial instead.

Ive provided you with the truth. I will be back here to say i told you so when it happens.

Isn't it time they adapted 'The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists' to film?

The OP's post is not only rambling right wing nonsense, it is also barely even English. What is it with our rightist friends that they are hardly able to write?

Also, why do they hate even the whiff of a bit of democracy in our oligarchy? Surely, not a parliament which reflects the numbers of votes cast!? How awful.

In that case it's even more clear that we need electoral reform that will actually deliver the Government that people vote for.

The only reason there's such a risk of a hung Parliament is because any other party needs such a massively disproportionate share of the vote to beat the outrageous bias towards Labour in the electoral system.

"By Coolfonz Mon 19-Apr-10 00:03:15
The OP's post is not only rambling right wing nonsense, it is also barely even English. What is it with our rightist friends that they are hardly able to write?

Also, why do they hate even the whiff of a bit of democracy in our oligarchy? Surely, not a parliament which reflects the numbers of votes cast!? How awful. "

1. Show me which parts are factually incorrect then, or stop posting crap.

1. Obviously its english, and its as good as yours. Please stop posting crap.

1. Im all for democracy, however the labour party isnt. Where did i say i was opposed to democracy. Please quote my post where i stated that, or withdraw that remark and stop posting made up crap.

1. The problem with proportional representation is that its creates weak minority rule. We wouldn't have become one of the most influential countries in the last 1000 years of western history had we had weak ineffectual government. We got there by having decisive majority governments (apart from the last bunch of incompetents)

No, seriously your grasp of grammar, spelling and sentence construction are sub-GCSE.

You speculate wildly for three paragraphs then say "THis (sic) is not speculation." It is speculation, yours. Loads of it.

The World Bank stepped in to aid the Wilson government?

You are ranting, making stuff up and you can barely write. Do you work on the Sun?

look at chinas economy i am advocating a Stalinist one-party police state in the interests of market stability.

gawd, is lincstash ever a bloke...

lol custy. there was an interesting doco on hung parliament in scotland on r4 the other day, general consensus was that it was a good thing, forced them to get a long and stop all the wanky party posturing.

AH, so you dont actually have any real counter arguments, so you've resorted to posting vague insults and general rubbish.

Unfortunately, its really hard to take seriously anyone who thinks its smart to name themselves after a shallow, facile American TVs show, especially when they post on the same intellectual level.

And i must correct myself, it was the IMF not the World Bank that Wilson had to http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/sterling-devalued-imf-loan.htm borrow £3.9B in 1976 (in fact he didnt, he resigned).

Oh look, another labour balls up resulting in us borrowing shit loads of money......

"one of the most influential countries in the last 1000 years" - are you having a laugh? Or is your grasp of history as poor as your argument?

Umm, so you think us having the largest empire on the planet for a period of 250 years had no effect whatsoever? Or the fact the Industrial Revolution started in the UK, and the UK remained the centre of it for 150 years ?

Had you not noticed that English is the second most widely spoken language on the planet? That didnt happen by accident either......I think you're the one that needs to revisit the encyclopedia....

oh god.

lincstash, some of that history is very shameful. very shameful indeed what we did as an empire.

the real history behind the industrial revolution...the working classes. the conditions, the babies in factory basements kept on opium so the parents and brothers and sisters ( as young as 4 or 5) could all work in appaulling conditions.

not a lot to be proud of infact.