If you think the Scots are from now to eternity going worship in gratitude at the feet of the SNP because they *think* they've gained some woolly concept that doesn't survive outside of political philosophy classes you are mistaken.

Labour will be back - "New" and "Improved" in four years as the "Only Sane Choice". Here they will save us (once again) from the "Heartless Monster of Conservatism". In Scotland they will likely be re-branded as "Traditional Labour" hell bent on kicking out SNP who - after a hellish four years in which they've been castrated by massive pressure from across the border, rocked by scandals and the victim of all manner of dirty tricks - will be facing the wrath of their own electorate for "selling them out".

If Machiavelli were alive he'd doubtless point out that even now - at the height of its supposed supremacy - the SNP wields little power. Scotland is a dirt poor little backwater. It exerts practically no influence outside its own borders and it certainly isn't able to stave off the attentions of its more powerful neighbour by punching it on the nose.

Right now it's the calm before the storm. I'll give them two years before the murkier elements of projected British power have them tearing each others throats out. Then enter "New" New Labour on a white horse.

It's the oldest scam in the book.

It's not as simple as just blaming Ed Milliband. The rise of UKIP and the SNP plus the collapse of the Lib Dems is what ultimately did for Labour in this election.

The Labour vote held up ok in England & Wales. It was Scotland that took 40 odd MP's away from Labour plus UKIP siphoning votes in some constituencies that were only narrowly held or gained by the Tories, plus too many Lib Dem constituencies turning blue instead of red.

But it isn't quite the disaster for Labour that's being made out. Nor is it a brilliant victory by the Tories. The Tories have benefitted from those issues Ive mentioned but their support is wafer thin. If the Lib Dems produce a decent leader and speak sensibly for 5 years then those Lib Dem constituencies will return and the UKIP vote has a good chance of collapsing if Farage isnt leader.

Having said that there was plenty Labour did wrong. Not challenging the austerity/over-spending/Labour crashed the economy charge laid at their door from day 1. Not advising Milliband well enough (bar one or 2 moments he only got going in the campaign by which point it was too late). But the main issues for me were:
- putting Ed Balls as Shadow Chancellor - he's been terrible. Could never properly challenge Osborne or the Tories even when the economy was shrinking. And just comes across as if he doesn't really know what he's on about.
- not having a strong enough shadow cabinet/leadership around Milliband. When you compare to what Tony Blair had at his disposal (Brown, Blunkett, Cook, Mandelson etc).
They need to change that if they want to win next time.

Nick Clegg and Nigel Farage have resigned has the leaders of their parties.

I think most of the smart Labour politicians saw the writing on the wall the minute UKIP appeared on the scene, their coat-pockets stuffed with wads of cash from corporate benefactors.

As stated, I don't consider UKIP a political party. It's a brazen tool for election-rigging. You tell people the "Fuzzy Wuzzies are breaking down the doors and about to steal what's rightfully THEIRS" and they'll be queuing down main street to vote for them.

The decision that this was to be a Tory double-term was taken ages back. And UKIP was the safeguard to ensure no one reneged on the deal.

This explains why the Labour effort over the last few years has been so obviously half-hearted. I mean, no one with a shred of intelligence would ever make Milliband the face of a major political party. Ed Balls knew the score. He realised it's better to not be around for the next few years whilst Labour go at each other with knives. By spending some time out he freshly launders his image just in time for the next election when Labour is destined to "Save Britain" from heartless Toryism.

To be honest, I don't even know why I'm framing this within the context of political dichotomy. There truth is there is really only one political party in Britain containing multiple factions. They'll happily fight each other. But should "The Party" itself be threatened they'll happily link arms and defend what they see as an attack upon their class.

Until people wake up and recognise this scam for exactly what it is we will forever be under their boot heels.

And will now be rewarded for their efforts in spades. Jobs done.

Don't be ridiculous. I'd sooner vote for you.

So has Miliband, using the word 'friends' every 5 seconds.



Hopefully he won't have any connections through which to find a good job, or he'll feel Mugwump's wrath.

I am not clear why you are so sure that the SNP will fade and Labour resurrect. The Tories have never recovered in Scotland, despite being extremely strong in the past. On holiday in Scotland last year I was surprised just how strong SNP sentiment is.

You are also assuming nothing will change. It is going to be hard for their not to a reworking of our system - probably very significantly increased devolution to Scotland allied to the same for Wales, NI, London and parts of England. That will serve to fracture the anti-Tory parties power.

Blimey, I would hate to see your definition of a disaster!!! Lost 30(ish) seats, wiped out in Scotland, lost their Shadow Chancellor, Shadow Foreign Secretary (to a school girl), Chief of Election Strategy and their Leader in Scotland.....in what was supposed to be the closest election in a generation, I am not really sure how it could have been much worse for them to be honest?

I agree. There is also one other factor. Luck.

The collapse in the price of oil handed the Tories an economic gift not of their making on a plate. It undermined Labour's "cost of living crisis" stance which before that happened had quite some traction. The fact the electorate have not realised the respite will be temporary is testament to the stupidity of most of it.



I think the UKIP factor will diminish pretty rapidly whatever the outcome of any EU referendum but I think the Lib Dems are toast for a long, long time. They are back to where they were in the 60's and 70's which was tantamount to being politically irrelevant.

As to Labour and Tories, Labour have potentially dodged a bullet and I don't mean dodging any impending economic disasters.

Even had they won their target seats they would be a minority yet would feel obliged to vote down a Tory Queens speech. Even if the rules say that then Labour gets a go at forming a government and if they did despite the fact it would be technically legitimate the Tory press would never have it. They would in my view have set themselves up to fail far worse than now between now and the next election. For that not to happen they would have had to have been very successful and given the current economic state of the country that would be very hard to do.

The Tories might be delighted today but reality will soon set in. I was half convinced they didn't want to win this time given the way the economic pointers are going. They have cut and sold just abut all there is cut and sell. Not much low hanging fruit left to prune and they have no other ideas. It won't take much for the odd by-election to turn them into a minority government and even as it is, the sh !t wiil hit the fan pretty soon internally with them. They are a divided party when it comes to the EU and other things as well.



The point about not challenging the austerity/over-spending/Labour crashed the economy charge is spot one and one I have made before. Miliband only started to do that in the last few weeks. Too late.

Most of the shadow Cabinet were pretty anonymous it must be said.

I can't remember which senior Labour politician it was was but they said they thought the biggest test of Miliband's leadership was if he dared not appoint Balls as shadow chancellor. At the time I thought he should have gone for Cooper, balls wife but it didn't and despite Balls having probably forgotten more about economics than Osborne will ever know, he was damaged goods and could not articulate his points well enough. Overcoming a stammer as he has done is not to be decried but alas as a politician if you can't articulate yourself well enough you are at a severe disadvantage regardless of how bright you are.

If the Tories go through with their promised £12bn of cuts and people pull out of their lethargy, there will be riots when thousands more disabled and terminally ill people commit suicide after IDS and ATOS's "mistakes" in deeming them fit to work and cancelling their help.

Or when the Tories savagely privatise the NHS - something they laid the groundwork for on the last day of parliament by forcing all NHS contracts to be put out to tender.

Or when they take away all support for anyone under the age of 25, despite the lack of job creation and the highest youth unemployment on record.

So one of those reasons, probably.

Ed Miliband has quit as well.

The Tories aren't interested in Scotland at the moment. Which is why they've never really poured serious money into the region in an attempt to buy votes.

Support for the only real Scottish Party has pretty much always been strong. I mean, why WOULDN'T it be (kind of makes one wonder how the SNP could possibly have lost its referendum ...)? But it's one thing to exert influence within the over-arching framework of British government - a bit like a Turkish satrap who ultimately must bow before the Great King of Persia. It's something else to tell Artaxerxes you're going to run his kingdom for the greater benefit of his subjects. Especially when you wield absolutely no political clout and don't possess a couple of thousand bloodthirsty Macedonian mercenaries to serve as an incentive.

Until this point the British establishment has been happy enough to indulge the SNP's little fictions of power. But the moment they decided not to stick to the rules and called for a referendum the gloves came off. They might as well have brandished an IRA flag because from herein they represent a threat to hundreds of years of "successful" establishment.

This election result will only exacerbate tensions. Sure, the SNP can rely on the average Scot's sense of patriotism and dislike of England. But that only stretches so far. If history teaches us anything it is that it doesn't take a great deal of economic strife before even the most entrenched loyalties begin to disappear.

Salmond and company will very shortly reap the whirlwind. And it won't be pretty.

This.

Sales of rose tinted specs are doing well today.

Well, we do know that the Tories are at the very least [ipreparing [/ifor major civil unrest. For instance, Boris recently shelled out a couple of million on two giant riot-control armoured vehicles with whopping great water cannons attached.

Presumably he doesn't want his City of London chums having to commute to work in fear of their safety ...

He should return to being a corridor prefect at Eton.

Seriously, tho - Milliband is just so FREAKISHLY the sum total of every swotty little snot wearing a school prefect badge you ever had to put up with.



I mean, if you were deliberately aiming to lose an election based purely on perceptions of the leader is there a better candidate to pick?

Labour lost this election 4 1/2 years ago when they chose Ed Milliband to lead them. Totally unelectable. Like a masochistic contortionist the Labour party managed to kick itself in the face while lying battered on the ground.

I do wonder what the LimpDem supporters were doing yesterday. Are they angry that their party sold them out by turning Tory? If so then going out and voting Tory (which many seem to have done) doesn't make a lot of sense.

Joking aside (and laughter is a good way of dealing with despair), this seems to be a resounding victory for nationalism. The Tories and UKIP did well with the white working class and that appeal has to be nationalism, leaving the EU, English laws for the English. The SNP by definition only want to leave the UK.
The two parties fully commited to the Union and to the EU are destroyed. Let the rhetoric and the animosity beteween England and Scotland commence. The war on the EU will kick off as well.

Nationalism always works out well in Europe doesn't it.

We were in Skye a couple of years ago obviously before the referendum. Also visited friends in Edinburgh another time. Both before the referendum. Evidence of the SNP and even nationalism? Hardly any. I saw one car sticker in Skye and most of the people we spoke to never mentioned it and those who did were quite hostile.

Something dramatic changed but lets not forget the electoral system has played a part here as well. They got around half the vote yet virtually all the seats. That is a dramatic increase in seats for that sort of share of the vote. So in theory it won't take much to rob them of those gains in terms of a swing. The problem is not the SNP's strength but the weakness of the opposition. It ought not to take much to move that result dramatically the other way but there isn't any party offering up anything to do that.

Ian Duncan-Smith, Micheal Foot? It's close, but Ed Millibland wins it for me.

I think Jimmy Saville would have done better than Ed Balls.

Sturgeon's face couldn't hide their real dissapointment. Their real objective was to be in government in Westminster with a coatlition with Labour or governing by proxy by propping up a Labour minority government. They have nothing now. 1 seat or 50 makes sod all difference when a majority Tory government is in charge. They set their cards on the table by going after Labour - not the Tories. They are not a UK national party, they can never win more than they have in Scotland and maybe the Scots will see that. Better a friendly Labour government that relies on Scottish Labour MP's than a toothless SNP just making a farty little noise in Westminster.

There is also a reason why Salmond has only recently popped his fat f*****g head up. Many Scots think he's a total t0$$er.

The Labour party itself voted for his brother. However because the Trade Unions have a large amount of votes in who is the Labour leader, they voted for the union friendly Ed.

I made the same point time and again elsewhere with people saying they were going to vote SNP. Voting for a party that can only win 50 odd seats is a pointless exercise in a UK-wide election.

Most of the reaction I got was along the lines of "Scotland's voice has to be heard" or "The Unionists said Scotland was important to the UK" (as if that meant they could vote SNP and a UK government would take them seriously). It was pure fantasy.

They clearly banked on a hung parliament as that was the only way their MP's could have any influence.

What they didn't count on was this potential for influence probably cost Labour a shed load of votes in England so not only did their success hurt Labour in Scotland it hurt it in England as well robbing them (the SNP) of the goal they were after.

They have been politically naive in that regard and when the dust settles I do wonder what those ex-Labour voters who voted SNP will think as the Tories get to work. Will they accept they helped deliver a Tory govt or will they stick their heads in the sand and deny the potential success of the SNP had no bearing elsewhere?

It wouldn't surprise me if they blame English voters saying fear of SNP influence means the English voters don't want Scotland to have [iany[/i say at all regardless of supposedly wanting Scotland in the Union and regardless of how the vote went.



Quite right. They kept him well out of the way.

History is repeating itself.

The vote in Scotland for the SNP mirrors the IRISH vote in 1918 for Sinn Fein, and in many ways is more overwhelming.

Previously Ireland had been ruled by the Irish Parliamentary party, but in 1918 this all changed as the nationalists swept to power, winning all but a few seats in the North of Ireland.

There followed a long civil war of which the end result was the Irish Republic.

So far the revolution in Scotland has thankfully been a "velvet" one.

However the London political establishment must learn from the mistakes of the past, and not try to impose their will on the Scottish people.
Any attempt by the Tories to invoke austerity measures up there, or impose Trident on the Scots, will likely be met with resistance that made the poll tax riots seem like a minor disagreement.

Cameron will need to tread very carefully to avoid major civil unrest, his only answer will be to devolve more powers to Scotland, whether his party will accept that is another thing though. Irish home rule was knocked back for many years by Tory grandees in the Lords, alongside Imperial distractions in Europe. Could we see something similar occurring for Scotland?

With regard to the rest of the UK. England and Wales may live to regret what they have voted for.
The Tories policies are to make massive cuts to social and Welfare spending. This will create a society more divided than ever.
I noted with interest how Labour grew its support in many London Boroughs, at the same time some areas of recently gentrified London saw large swings to the Tories. This points to a London that is becoming more divided and ghettoised. With increases in social and wealth divisions I foresee the potential for riots in London, the like of which have never been seen before in the UK.

I think the Labour party is effectively finished as a unified entity.
There will be massive pressure from Scotland and traditional labour elements to move the party back to the left were it once stood proud. At the same time the Blairites who have changed the whole complexion of the party in recent years, will be demanding it needs to move further to the right, and become effectively a party of Tory Wets. Labour will be stuck between a rock and a hard place, as a move in either direction will potentially cost them votes. Hence I suspect a split will occur, perhaps on national grounds, though maybe along the lines of the SDP, Labour split in the 1980's

UKIP as Mugwump has stated were nothing more than the establishment playing its game of chess. Their mythical rise to power based on nothing more than media created hyperbole, has succeeded mainly in taking votes from the more ignorant Labour voters who lap up the mantra of the Sun and Mail, that its all Jonny Foreigners fault, and vote for anyone but the Conservatives. Tory voters with their naturally conservative ways were always likely to take the safe conservative option, and vote for what they felt safe with when push came to shove.

The Liberals. They were seen as a more centrist and inclusive party at the last election, so people voted for them to see if it would shake things up a bit. When they jumped in bed with the tories and showed themselves as nothing but Conservatives in Yellow ties, their days were numbered. Why after all vote for a party that walks like a tory, talks like a tory and works with a tory; but isn't a tory, when you can vote for the real thing instead.
Similarly there were many who felt betrayed at the Liberals revealing their true blue colours. As a result they jumped ship to Labour and the Greens.

There's an unwritten rule in politics which goes back to the beginnings of recorded history and is just as valid today:

Appeal to the working class, plebian ... call it what you will, vote at your peril. It sometimes comes under what's known as the principle of collegiality. One of the major reasons for the collapse of the Roman republic was the politically explosive actions of military tribunes such as Julius Caesar, Gaius Marius etc. who instead of conducting politics through the notoriously conservative Roman Patrician and Optimate classes (of which both were members) chose instead to bypass the Establishment completely and appeal to the mob. There were some good reasons for doing so as the Roman oligarchical system stifled all attempts at even the most minor reforms. But the dangers of upsetting tradition and business elites were invariably lethal.

Both became victims in a gradual slide into civil war with the populist leaders (or Popularii) on one side and the establishment (represented by names such as Cato and Pompeii) on the other. Eventually the Republic could stand no more and Augustus' Imperial "Principate" came into being.

From the days of Rome this political truth has been affirmed on countless occasions across all manner of cultures. This is the reason the differences between political entities have been far less noteworthy than the similarities. You just don't do it.

Of course, things become complicated during times of civil strife. Whilst the dangers are no less lethal - the opportunities (certainly for reform) are far greater. A good example would be Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration elected into office during the worst of the Great Depression. Like Julius Caesar, Roosevelt was also of the Patrician class. But he was far more shrewd at judging precisely what he could and could not get away with without crossing the invisible line and being killed off. Indeed, there was at least one serious plot to overthrow Roosevelt and install a fascist government which was broken up when the man the plotters (the Du Pont and Ford families - amongst others) chose to lead the putsch, two-time Congressional Medal of Honour winner, General Smedley Darlington Butler, blew the whistle. The plot was hastily suppressed and those involved never faced charges. But had Roosevelt pushed his luck just that bit further by hiking taxes on American industry ... who knows?

This is why I believe Alex Salmond miscalculated monumentally in pushing for a referendum. It was too far and too fast for the conservative English establishment. And he never had a strong enough hand to force it through anyhow. There was no way that vote was ever going to be carried. To push it again would be suicidal. In any case, the SNP is now a target. Like the Communist Party during the 30s and early 40s it will undoubtedly be attracting the attention of domestic intelligence services. Phones will be bugged. Calls will be monitored. Senior officials will be monitored and their meetings scrutinised.

You can bet all manner of what Richard Nixon used to term "political dirty tricks" will be employed to neutralise their influence and call into question their competence. Newspapers will dig into their private lives uncovering every little embarrassing affair. The tax system will suddenly become interested in every last invoice and receipt. Blackmail. Bribery. Perhaps worse. Politics is a dirty, squalid business. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a fool.

Well major cities, including London are largely Labour. In these places the effects of "austerity" are hardest felt. Londoners, for example, are creaking at the seams, despite it being at the heart of the country's prosperity. There are now at least nations - Scotland, urban rest of UK and rural + suburban rest of UK. All three have widely differing needs and one has to wonder whether a public school dominated Tory party will understand the needs of urban Britain (they may well spend time on Scotland because it is obvious something needs doing), which may get pushed to breaking point (especially as the economy may well drop back).

The other possibility is that they will evolve financial responsibility to big cities / areas (like as with Manchester). Then they'll leave the Labour areas to rot to show how bad Labour are at controlling budgets (which will be starved). We could have the spectre of a few Detroits up North!