Harringay online

Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!

SNP took Scotland because of the national distrust, one could even say loathing, of Westminster
Labour didn't do enough to convince voters that they were the party of government
LibDems were tainted by their association with the Conservatives and their seats were shared out willy-nilly
UKIP became the third party in England on their share of the vote but not their share of the seats

What's your take?

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The SNP took Scotland as the Scots want a party that believes in social justice and to many of them that isn't Labour anymore. For the SNP to take seats in Glasgow and Kirkcaldy is actually shocking to me as an ex pat Scot who has worked in both places. These should be Labour heartlands, they always have been. 

Labour played the referendum all wrong and it's cost them.

The sad thing is it could have been so different. Ed Milibean has been pathetic but that doesn't explain it. Labour have tied themselves to the US Democrat 'triangulation' model where you eschew left wing ideas(NHS, council housing, pro immigrant, public ownership of utilities) and embrace the free market. The idea is to just take the middle class swing vote from the centre ground. Trouble is you end up without a 'brand'. In the end, I think people either didn't vote or decided to stick with the devil they knew. Not sure a change of leader would make much difference if Labour keep on the same path, which they look likely to. Good showing from Greens in Tottenham at 9% though.

I disagree Mr Aperture

public opinion polling shows that if people voted according to their views, the Greens would be voted in. People consistently agree with a fully funded public NHS; they also massively want British Rail nationalised and a simple majority want the other public utilities taken back into public hands. 

If British Rail had received the current subsidy given to private operators it would be a world class system. The problem was that successive governement used it(and the other public utilities) as a cash cow. The breaking up of a unified structure into a confusing mess of separate operators with a confusoply fare structure is insane. NHS contracts are now being handed to private companies and the commissioning bodies are now making decisions based on cost rather than clinical need. That is, the NHS has been groomed for full scale privatisation. Please look into this matter further and you will see my points borne out.

I do however agree that the FPTP post electoral system is grossly unfair. The emergence of the Greens and UKIP shows this. UKIP have got a substantial vote, three times more than the Greens and look like having one MP apiece. I hate UKIP, but their voters deserve representation.

I think that is the main message for me. The current voting system is dead and utterly discredited but acceptance of change will also mean the acceptance that smaller parties, love them or hate them, will gain parliamentary representation.

Agree too. Greens and UKIP should make common cause on PR. Five million-odd votes between them and yet two seats among 650? This cannot be fair. However, as before, the Conservatives have no interest in PR.

Well the opportunity was offered and refused only four years ago when the referendum on the Alternative Vote version of PR went down by 2 to 1 (on a 42% turnout, mind you).

In my lifetime I've seen the sale of the utilities, the transport system, a substantial chunk of the social housing stock and much of the infrastructure of the service element of the NHS.
The Post service was sold in a massively undervalued flotation.
There are further proposals to flog more housing from public ownership.
The largest civil energy project in the UK - whether you agree with it or not - the Hinkley Point C scheme is underwritten by French and Chinese money.
Half of our printed daily media is owned by proprietors who don't pay UK resident tax.

On a local level, es-socially owned flats on Woodberry Down are on sale from Far Eastern consortia.

If anyone else can think of any further assets or publicly owned wealth-creating systems which the Tories can flog off to enrich the minority at the expense of the majority, then now might be the time to declare them.

Who would be a young person in this most hope-depleted of times ?

Not just the young - Who'd be anyone except rich in the last 5-10 years? I'm 40 and gave up hope of owning shelter when I began having to compete with tax exiles buying property assets in currencies stronger than what I'm allowed to earn.  This isn't new - it's been the case since the last lot were in.  Labour cannot complain about the housing crisis in the UK, their fingerprints are all over it too.   

Massive nuclear disaster is our only hope...

We shouldn't give them ideas! Whatever you can think of, it's probably already happening.

As someone once said: the People have spoken - the B**tards.

Most meeting the people events have been bogus and heavily stage-managed with even journalists banned. A technique introduced by Blair who was a shiny but rapidly tarnishing aberration who in retrospect almost destroyed his party by ditching its principles and core voters. To be perceived as different from the Bullingdon boys Labour needed to return to leaders not afraid to face ordinary people in streets and halls far from the Westminster bubble, like the young MacDonald, Attlee and Wilson - who famously said Labour is a moral crusade or it is nothing. 

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