So, despite all predictions over the last couple of years the Lib Dems are apparently not electoral history. The Brotish public are nothing if not stupid?

Well, quite.

Anyone is electable, this is obviously a pocket in much the same way as my constiuency, where the electorate feel comfortable with the LibDems compared to the alternatives - they had an MP who was an idiot but that wouldn't persuade enough of them to vote for something else.

it mean nothing in the grander scheme of things.

I think it may come to be seen as meaningful. The voters do not like the 3 main paties. UKIP has become the new LibDems - partly as a protest vote, partly because of their message and partly because they have (relatively speaking) a charismatic leader and one who talks plain English.

What might this mean? It is difficult to say but four of the more obvious options for the Tories are:

- a coup to remove the leadership. Osborne is now seen as a figure of derision even in the right-wing financial press and Tories have always hated Cameron. Gove looks favourite for the leadership.
- keep the leadership, but lurch to the right in order to nullify the UKIP challenge. They have a difficult over the EU though as despite the talk they are not defending the UK's national interest over the cIty.
- no change on the assumption (possibly valid) that a large part of the UKIP vote will switch to them at a General Election, turning a third place in Eastleigh to a hansome majority
- if they keep the leadership and signals remain unchanged over the next year or two to sign a pact with the LibDems to fight the election together "in the national interest". That would enable them to say they have a mandate to finish their project of dismantling the welfare state.

For the LibDems - they will be comforted for the time being. They may feel vindicated to fight the next election alone. Alternatively, both Labour and the Tories may be grovelling to form an alliance with them in order to see off the other major party.

For Labour - shows nothing other than Ed does not look to have a hope in hell of gaining the votes in the South that his party would need to gain electoral victory.

UKIP - all to play for. Keep banging on with the same messages and with the same leader and they could gain seats and even hold the balance of power.

Others - short of a new, well funded party arising and connecting with general public opinion not worth considering.

No chance. They're a lunatic fringe party and I doubt they'll ever hold more than a seat or two in parliament, if that.

They could be very useful in splitting the Conservative vote.
i.e. Tempting the rabid-nutcase-rightwing away from the slightly-less-rabid-nutcase-rightwing.

Spot on, look at the depths they go to for putting someone up for Question Time, Neil Hamilton for christ's sake, a proven liar. Mind you Labour did itself no favours with Ms Eagles, she looked out of her depth and seemed to be thinking of things to say to fill in the time.

That would be nice. At least they'd have served one useful function, in that eventuality.

Labour seems to be doing itself no favours across the board, at the moment.

Can't help but think that the political landscape needs a new substantial left wing party, leaving existing labour and tory parties as the major centre left and centre right parties with the more right wing tories gravitating towards UKIP. That would leave us with four main parties and probably more coalition governments. No place for the lib dems, but as first past the post would probably need replacing too, their legacy would be that albeit indirectly they'd have helped bring about electoral reform. Be interested to see what more knowleagable political types think!

I caught the last bit of the program and she made some good points in reference to the question on women in politics and compared to that Tory bimbo (that rather derogatory term is the only word I can think to describe that woman) has clearly got far more grey matter between the ears.

However right at the and said bimbo trotted out the usual boring script when talking about bankers bonuses that it was all Labour's fault for not regulating the bankers properly. As has been mentioned many times on here this is complete hypocrisy and what labour need to do is start being more combative and point this out. Eagles just sat there and let her rant on when what she should have done is cut her off mid-stride with the charge of hypocrisy.

She also let Hamilton witter on about banks have to pay bonuses because if they paid a high salary they would be stuck with having to pay it each year whereas with bonuses you don't have to award them. Never mind they always seem to be awarded and it's the desire to earn a bonus (as opposed to working for a salary) that encourages risk taking in the first place.

These are simple points to make yet for some reason more often than not Labour politicians on the panel seem content to let the Tories speak their piece unchallenged.

If they think give 'em enough rope and they will hang themselves is going to work, it won't and if they think trying to be less confrontational is going to win them any votes they are wrong.

There is a ton of ammunition out there for them to have a real go at this government but they repeatedly pass the opportunity by.

The question is how you build such a party.

It was being pointed out in the opinion polls earlier in the week the desire to keep the Tory candidate out was probably going to result in the Lib Dem's holding the seat which they only just managed to do with a vastly reduced majority.

An anti-Tory vote is never stupid in my book so the word I would use for the Lib Dem voters of Eastleigh was pragmatic not stupid.

The big news is the UKIP vote and the effect that is going to have on politics. I am sure there are already calls from within the Tory party to be even more Euro-skeptic than they already are. The number of MP's who are in the extreme Euro-skeptic fold of the Tory party (i.e. are really UKIP'ers in disguise) are in a minority so it's going to be interesting to see if that particular tail can wag the dog even more than it has been doing.

My own view is there is no point the Tories or Labour for that matter trying out UKIP, UKIP. They need to start making the case for Britain remaining in the EU and stop trying be UKIP-light. That is the official position of both the Tory and Labour parties (and the Lib Dem's of course) so instead of running scared of UKIP they need to stand up to it and start exposing the flaws in the UKIP position. At least then we would have a proper debate instead of all parties (bar the Lib Dems) trying to take a piece of the Euro-skeptic pie.

You were listening to Ken Loach then

No it was an original idea of mine honestly! Maybe he has been listening to me.

There's two and a half years to the next election and plenty can change in that time, hence I can see why Miliband etc won't make predictions about what the economic plan will be just yet.

The conservatives think they've got the discussion sewn up with the two responses "What would you do instead?" and "There you go, more uncosted and unfunded spending plans from Labour".
They'd add up every mention of anything new, every opposition to a cut, and total it all as "extra spending" and "same old Labour".

However, hanging back too long and allowing the conservatives to set the agenda looks like inactivity, I want to see some attack, rebuttals of nonsense, economic sense and genuine ideas rather than the same old party-line dross.
Labour should be arguing vigorously on their own terms, not allowing the conservatives to set them up to knock them down.
As you say, there's plenty of ammunition out there.

You start it, I'll join, could do with a bit of marching, chanting and the like to cheer me up. Used to love the old Militant meetings in the 80's.

Quite. I think there is now no doubt whatsoever that they made a colossal mistake in appointing the wrong Milliband brother. Ed seems to think that if he just keeps his head down and does nothing controversial the next election will win itself. I think he'll find that he's deeply mistaken.

Remember the early Thatcher years when the SDP broke away?
Unless you want to hand a whopping majority to Cameron, I wouldn't split the left vote right now.

I think that Miliband (E)'s mention of his intended restoration of the 10p tax rate funded by a mansion tax is a toe-in-the-water for moving away from the Blairite/Brownite ideals and, by saying it was wrong to remove it, show he doesn't adhere to everything that Brown did.

All a bit timid though, I'd like to see more.

This is my worry. I'm no fan of 'style over substance' politics, but Ed seems to have neither. I reckon David would have made far more headway as leader by now, but I suspect at the time he was seen as being too close to Blair.

I read earlier that if the swings were repeated across the country, Labour would return with a 66 seat majority.


Farage's solution to the economy? "stop paying the EU and halt all overseas aid." Sounds like a well thought out plan

To be fair, she was second best panellist after Loach. He hit the nail on the head by saying that the Unions should not give funds to Labour because they don't represent their members nor anyone in particular.

As Ken Loach said - the Unions should fund one.

Things got a bit awkward last night when Hamilton opened up his answer to the GropeGate affair by stating he was probably the only one of the panellists to have been charged with rape. The guy is a grade one pillock.