Er... well, you'd have a job, they don't turn up or vote, do they? Hard to have a voting coalition with someone who doesn't vote, isn't it?
That's the most likely outcome, yes. I see Cleggie is going on about the dangers of a right-wing pact with the tories, UKIP and the DUP. God KNOWS what those people will want in exchange for their votes.
If the Conservatives only need UKIP and the DUP to get to a majority, then the problems are a lot bigger than the concessions Paisley's heirs will want. Labour will have most likely imploded in support for that to occur.
UKIP are going to be largely irrelevent with regards a coalition unless they exceed all expectations. They'll have at best 3 or 4 MPs (I'm going for 2 max), so if they're needed to help to Tories get a majority then it will be taking them just one or two over. Hardly stable. The DUP will get 7-9 so if they're just short could help them in, but Dodds has ruled out a coalition last year and also said that any agreement would require the removal of the Bedroom Tax. I don't see Labour going into coalition with the SNP. If they are just short of a majority I can see them preffering a confidence and supply agreement with what's left of the Lib Dems. They could also run a minority government far more easily than the Tories, as I could see the SNP, Plaid, the Greens and the SDLP all backing a reasonable Labour Queen's Speech that locks out Cameron and then offer support on an issue by issue basis. What is quite amusing, however, is that if the Tories had backed the AV referendum then they would be in iwth a far better chance of forming the next government as it would go some way to mitigating the losses to UKIP.
Maybe for an election or two, but what are the odds that it doesn't go back to a two-party hegemony? It is first-past-the-post.
I'm just thinking about this time around. UKIP will peter out once Farage is gone and the real fruit cakes take over, but the Tories would have been the main beneficiary of alternates from UKIP voters.
I just don't see it. You can't have a workable coalition with a party with just a handful of MPs - maybe if there were a few such parties taking them over the limit, but a couple of byelections could bring down the government in no time.
Someone was asking about pre-election coalitions/pacts earlier, and it has happened. The Scottish Unionists took the Conservative Whip in parliament for years before the parties amalgamated and even provided two Prime Minisiters that lead a Tory governement but weren't part of the party (Bonar Law and Douglas-Home). The Ulster Unionists also took the Tory whip for a while, and Labour have a number of MPs from the Labour Cooperative agreeement.
Well, I'm old enough to remember when the party election broadcasts from the tories were prefaced with, 'By the conservative and unionist party of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. We're going back a bit though.
Technically, I think that is still the name of the party, though I doubt anyone really calls it that. Besides Bonar Law and Douglas-Home, I believe that Neville Chamberlain himself never actually used the term "Conservative" on his ballot paper but used "Unionist". The Chamberlains were originally members of the Liberal party and became "Liberal Unionists" over the issue of Irish Home Rule. Even after the Liberal Unionists merged with the Tories, lots of them still used the term Unionist. Churchill after his "re-rat" from the Liberals back to the Conservatives used the term "Constitutionalist" in elections.
You're unable to grasp the meaning of the word theoretical. All I have ever said is that as long as adding UKIP to the coalition gave the Tories a majority, they would prefer to do so over adding Lib Dems or Labour or SNP because UKIP was closer to their ideological positions. It does not, and will never mean, that anything is possible. You're just not a smart person.
Well, that's what I was saying before, it wouldn't please either parties voters to have a coalition as such. Can you imagine Salmond sitting around the table with ANY English government... his supporters would go apeshit. He'd be 'tainted' in their eyes. The fact is that labour and SNP agree about most things worthy of discussion. Even the trident thing is something the SNP will whinge about but won't want to rock the boat too much... as much as anything because of the 7,000 jobs associated with it in a relatively poor part of Scotland. Can you imagine it? 'Oh, we've just got some influence in government and our first act is to send 7,000 jobs down to England' Yeah, that'll go down well. The lib/dems WOULD go into a coalition. In fact, you'd have to fight them off it with a stick and there might even be an advantage for labour... but there are dangers as well. With the lib/dems in coalition with the tories, the 'meeja' will just accept that anything popular came from the tories, not the liberals. With labour it will likely be the OPPOSITE. They'll get the blame for any pain and the liberals will get the plaudits for everything else.
As it happens, it's my birthday today and I've decided to knock off 10 years and start going backwards so instead of being 60 I'm a actually 49, next year I'll be 48 and so on
England won a WC? I was told there was a Soviet linesman in need of glasses and fans entering the pitch when the game was still played.
here is a clip, see last few minutes. Actually that may have been the only time the "Brits" have beaten the Germans in soccer.
If Labour is the larger party, I think you would get a confidence and supply agreement from the SNP and/or the LibDems and that would be it. While the LibDem rank and file might like to join a coalition, would the LibDem leadership want it? I mean, they need to show some degree of difference between them and Labour. Unless Labour goes back to the Michael Foot days and starts to threaten to nationalize everything, what exactly do the LibDems stand for other than being more pro-Europe than the other two parties?
Great to see Farage make himself look like a tit by slagging off the audiance and the bbc in tonights debate
Not anywhere near the ball going into the net there wasn't and it was 4-2. Of course, we can't ALL have the refs bought and paid for like ze Germans, can we Looks like another linesman has got himself a new Merc, eh?
There's virtually no difference... that's the point. Regarding the lib/dems, if anything, it's the other way around. I suspect the leadership would walk barefoot over broken glass to get seats around the cabinet table. The rank and file might think differently but I doubt it.