Is David Cameron Trying To Commit Political Suicide In Scoltand

[gordiescotland1]

What he said of course was true but the way he said it or the fact that he said it at all was not helpful given the toxicity of the debate in Scotland it could make more people determined to vote the SNP

http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/independence-false-dream-will-fade-david-cameron-1-3756564

[ToraToraTora]

no jim, just pull Labour down.

[jim360]

Achieves little as long as the Tories are also down.

[mikey4444]

The elephant in the room here is not the Labour Party or the SNP. Its the Tories complete inability to recover from the wipe out in 1997. They have had 18 years to make up for lost ground, and they have ballsed it it up, big time.

Whether its the SNP or Labour that has the majority of Scottish MPS in Westminster is almost immaterial, because they will both be anti-Tory.

[ToraToraTora]

mikey me old china, you're like a broken record, 1997 was 18 years ago, I know you love to relive the Blair wonder years but the Torys have recovered enough at least to put Dave in No 10. I cannot see your man getting him out, you are going to have to start living with that. Labour need a new man, not the back stabbing anti British wretch they have. I admire your loyalty to them but even you must see that Ed is never going to be PM.

[Old_Geezer]

No time to look at the link but I'd have thought if Cameron had written off the chance of getting a Tory elected north of the border, getting folk to vote SNP rather than Labour would be a major aim.

[steg]

I would of thought getting folk to vote LD would be their aim as they are partners in government and any labour or SNP would be anti Tory

[ToraToraTora]

Dave has "bullied" Ed into ruling out a deal with the SNP.

[sandyRoe]

Cameron won't do a Heath act and sit huffing on the back benches. More likely he'll don the ermine and find himself a comfortable seat on the red benches.

[steg]

Yes so we keep hearing, but Ed can't stop the SNP voting with labour against the torys

[mikey4444]

TTT...(me old china ...I like that bit !)....


My point was that 18 years is a very long time for Scotland to be without a representative number of Tory MP's. They must have some popularity north of the Border but it isn't coming through in seats at Westminster. If the Tories had the same proportion of seats in Scotland now, as they did during the time of your avatar, the SNP wouldn't be so much of a threat as it is now.

I am still not sure why the Tories haven't been able to make up any ground on 18 years ago. It can't be the Referendum, as that has only been an issue for the year or so.

In Wales, in 1997, the Tories were wiped out, but in 2010 they increased their total from 3 to 8, a respectable achievement, in a country where the Party isn't exactly loved.

So, if it can be done here in Wales, why has it been such an abject failure in Scotland ?

[steg]

Unless labour support the torys themselves

[mikey4444]

The Tories only response to the threat of the SNP is to drag Tebbit down from the attic and use him to encourage Tory voters to vote Labour !

If that is the best that the Party can do, perhaps Tebbit is also right in saying that the Scottish Tory should disband altogether.

[Hypognosis]

A government where ideological hobby horses fail and only bills which win the consensus of *all sides* can succeed is pretty much my ideal.

If the Scots go all-SNP, the Welsh go all-Plaid and NI is already mainly DUP then they can moderate the actions of whichever party ends up, notionally, in power.


What price proportional representation now, Mr Cameron? Here, have some AV fudge. You like fudge, don't you?

[Gromit]

TTT,
Cameron's biographer:

// Electoral success alone holds the modern Conservative Party together. Cameron’s failure to win an outright victory in the 2010 general election weakened him severely.

The Conservative Party in the country, and a hardcore group of MPs, have never forgiven him for not winning against a heavily discredited Labour prime minister at a time of economic crisis brought on by Labour’s policies in power. The one thing that a blue- blooded Conservative understands and respects is winning. That’s why they loved Thatcher. She won three general elections for them.

Entering a coalition with the despised Liberal Democrats compounded his error in their eyes. His critics wanted him to head a minority government and win a general election a few months later, as Harold Wilson did in 1974. //

by Anthony Sheldon official biographer.

http://www.standard.co.uk/comment/anthony-seldon-david-cameron-could-be-scuppered-by-his-own-party-9258839.html

Conservatives want a Conservative Government NOT a Coalition one. The want a Conservative Prime Minister not a Conservative leader of a Coalition.

That is why they will not tolerate a failure to win in 2015.

[jim360]

There is a certain irony, Hypo, in that the failure that is FPTP is even more clearly a failure when it is giving the SNP something closer to 50 seats, as opposed to the 25-odd they'd have had under pure PR!

[steg]

Jim ,It's the same rules as last time and the time before that and so on, at the end of the day there will still be the exact same amount of Scottish mp's in Westminster as last time and time before ,maybe not representing the party of your choice but it doesn't make it less legitimate

[mikey4444]

Hypo...Can I assure that that there is very little chance of Wales going all Plaid Cymru....they only have 3 MPs out of a possibility of 40 now and its almost impossible to imagine that they might get any more, let alone a further 47.

[mushroom25]

really mikey?

the SNP has consistently held between 2 and 6 seats in scotland since 1979, when they slumped from their high water mark of 11 in 1974 - even in 1997 when the tories were obliterated, they only won 6 of the available 72 seats. their MEPs occupy 2 of the available 6 scottish seats, and they currently hold 64 of the available 129 seats in their own parliament. and yet all polls and pundits are forecasting the SNP will win all 59 available scottish westminster seats, with an unheard of huge percentage swing that would have broken robert mckenzie's famous apparatus.

so why is such a huge swing inconceivable in wales?

[ludwig]

// Dave has "bullied" Ed into ruling out a deal with the SNP. //

Anything any politician says is potentially a lie. Once the votes are in, they'll all be running round like headless chickens attempting to broker whatever deals suit them best at the time.

Anything either promised or ruled out before the election will be ignored - sorry, I mean 'reappraised in light of the changing circumstances, with the best interests of the country at heart'.

[jim360]

Steg -- you misunderstand me. I wasn't arguing that so many SNP MPs would be illegitimate, at least no more so than any other MP's party. It's just that their already significant rise is going to be exaggerated greatly (almost double, probably) by a system that is according to some -- mainly those who don't want the SNP to have any sort of power -- the best way to choose MPs. It is not -- and the contrasting fortunes of UKIP and the SNP will show this pretty clearly, if it wasn't already.

The SNP deserve their success. They have been lucky in their enemies of late, the way that the main parties have utterly misjudged and mishandled the situation, but have played the hand dealt to them very well.