Now that's an interesting one and it'd be fascinating to know if Labour had their ears to the ground.



It's been pretty clear for a long time Labour's working class vote was on the wane, for a number of reasons.

- The tradition of voting Labour "cos me dad always did" is slipping. Mainly because:

- The unions are dead. That traditional association with Labour is increasingly dying out as older generations pass. Newer generations simply don't have that connection. On that note it always fascinated me you could sit in a working class pub and hear conversations that would make Nick Griffin's toes curl, but those same people would then go out and vote Labour - cos that's just how it was.

- Rightly or wrongly immigration is a huge issue, with complaints of immigration driving wages down and not a small amount of often vocal zenophobia. Bearing in mind Labour opened the doors in 1997, UKIP and the Tories seem the most likely to do something about it. In fact anti-Tory rhetoric seems to have been outweighed by anti-immigration feeling.



On another note I was with a number of staff from the Chambers of Commerce of major city last night, as well as many significant business figures (a mix of entrepreneurs, SME and large/global corporates). Almost without fail they were hoping for a Tory or Tory-Lib Dem government. Definitely not Labour. In economic terms Labour were seen as bad news, moreso if the SNP were pulling the strings.

My understanding of Gilts is that they are sold at a fixed interest rate - selling them short only changes the relationship between the face value and the interest rate not the government's ability to pay as the face value remains the same? If the government issues 10n at 5% it repays 10.5bn back regardless of market sentiment. Are you seriously suggesting that the UK will default on its debt and that it will not be able to borrow unless the bonds have a % 15-20%!!

The short positions themselves won't have a direct monetary affect on the solvency of the country, they're simply a way of cashing in on the consequence of the bond market collapsing though as sentiment grows for these trades, those who are long will go short which will accelerate events.



This country's so called "strong economy" is dependent on liquidity to keep the bubble inflated whether that be low interest rates, quantitive easing (money printing to you and me) and "Help to Buy" etc. but the laws of mathematics mean you can only do this for so long because the velocity of money eventually slows. The government can keep printing money to target inflation but this devalues the currency and exceeds the interest rates on the bonds or deflation kicks in and the economy grinds to a halt and revenues dry up - either way the bonds markets goes under.



When the bonds go, the currency goes with them which compounds the need to raise interest rates further (Russia recently had to raise interest rates to 17% to protect the Ruble) and there's absolutely nothing that can prevent this scenario from unfolding because 35% of the bond market are foreign buyers so it doesn't matter what anyone thinks.



When Thatcher said the market will have the final say she was right - this country will go under as a result of her time in office because when you turn the economy into a service economy like ours which is 70%, there's only so much financial engineering you can do before the chickens come home to roost.



The collapse of the country will be a good thing to wipe out baby boomer's pensions and their two holidays a year, and instead allow the young people of this country at least a fairer society - even though a poorer one.



The Tories know nothing.

I dont think the referendum was lost because the electorate wanted electoral reform but not AV. If any other form voting had been put to the electorate it would have received the same response, give or take a couple of percentage points. Largely because the campaign to retain FPTP tends to swamp the reformers.

Opinions such as this belong in the dark ages.

Typically predictable comment from a typical economically illiterate tory.



When I say a "poorer society" I mean in the context of it being an inevitably - not a desire, but because you have a picture of Thatcher, you won't have an understanding of how wealth disparity happens and understand that Thatcher's legacy is a country on the road to default.



It is fact that the biggest gain of wealth for asset holders happened from the late '80s up to the financial crash - a large proportion of these asset holders where obviously baby boomers gained their wealth through property prices and pensions with large holdings in UK Government bonds.



So this group of people with their "I've worked for what I've got attitude" lack the understanding that they haven't actually "worked for what they've got" they've simply fell into the "rentier class" as a result of loose monetary policy and wealth transfer schemes such as "Help to Buy" which means hard work young people feed asset prices so baby boomers can use their pensions to go on their two holidays abroad a year.



A collapse of the bond market will simply be the laws of mathematics taking the course of "reverting to the mean" so all these pensions will get wiped out and the country will have to start producing again which will create jobs for young people.



Make no mistake about it; there will be no reflation of the bubble economy next time round.



As so happens when I debate with Tories, they act as if they're smug and knowledgable with their stock phrases such as "we have a strong economy" and as soon as I start schooling them they disappear - I expect you'll be no different.

Yeah, I'm incredibly worried about a party which effectively exists within a vacuum, hyper-inflated by outside cash which can be withdrawn just as easily as it was injected in the first place, threadbare in terms of core infrastructure, policies etc. - not to mention meager ties to the establishment which, say, the Tories can boast going back centuries through blood ties. UKIP is just another in a long, long line of political implements meant to hoodwink the electorate into an expedient belief system. Like all implements it will be tossed aside the moment it has served its purpose.







Of course Labour saw it coming and if you seriously believe the grandees of the Labour Party went "all in" behind The School Prefect because they honestly believed he represented the best hope for the nation you're a fool. It was a job none of them wanted. So they gave it to the eager beaver kid who doesn't mind taking dirty jobs if it'll propel him three steps up the ladder of power.



This election has been a sick joke from the beginning. And the joke's on us.

Just like Labour you seriously have underestimated the public feeling on several core issues. 4 million people voted for Ukip amost twice as many as voted for the SNP and many of them switched from Labour.









The only fools here are those that cannot except that Labour was routed in Scotland and embarrassed in England because is was represented by oddballs and incompetents touting out of date rhetoric and unable to put up a serious case to deal with the important issues of the day.

Thats the really inexplicable thing - right wing party appears on the scene, further right than the Tories and attracts core vote from dirt poor traditional working class Labour supporters because of their Nationalistic jingo, borderline racism and absolute xenophobic policies, and will now quietly fade from the scene for another five years.



I call conspiracy theory...

In five years time we'll be looking back on UKIP as we now do on the BNP. UKIP's high-water mark was the last Euro elections

You have to actually know what you are talking about before you can start schooling anyone - something you quite clearly don't.

Agree with that - their vote is a reflection on the abysmal quality of the two major parties.



I would have liked to have seen Len McCluskey interviewed after his engineered Labour leadership performance. It would have been almost as funny as when Jim Ratcliffe put him back in his box.

When I predicted riots by summer 2017 I meant by "real" people not those posh kids who are rioting today.

So you are "excited" about repealing these rights then?







Or is it to be some kind of a simpleton's pick-n-mix?

Our government has already overridden Art. 8!

Now we all know that the vote in Thanet was rigged against Nige.



A combined operation by MI5 and the CIA conspired to rig the vote by stealing the ballot boxes and then burn them in a Paris tunnel. Joe Biden knows exactly what happened but is desperate to cover it up. And we all know it's a conspiracy anyway. Jet fuel doesn't burn hot enough to melt paper.

If only there was a thread I could find some evidence of this...perhaps someone has read a book uncovering evidence of this dreadful conspiracy and might be kind enough to post a link whereupon I might find said publication...

It's not take long for the first protests to begin.



Kicked off in London this evening.



BBC were strangely quiet in reporting the protest until it went viral all over twitter at which point they had to report it due to accusations of censorship

And not the other middle-class s parading around in Anonymous masks.

It's got to be raw, vibrant and from the streets Toxtethtian and Brixtonian like.

We live in hope.

Break my post down then if you disagree.

A quick comparison between FPTP and PR:



Number & share of votes:

Conservatives - 11.3m - 36.9%

Labour - 9.3m - 30.4%

UKIP - 3.9m - 12.6%

Liberal Democrats - 2.4m - 7.9%

SNP - 1.5m - 4.7%

Green - 1.2m - 3.8%

DUP - 184,260 - 0.6%

Plaid Cymru - 181,694 - 0.6%

Sinn Fein - 176,232 - 0.6%

UUP - 114,935 - 0.4%

SDLP - 98,809 - 0.3%

Alliance - 61,556 - 0.2%

TUSC - 36,327 - 0.1%

NHA - 20,210 - 0.1%

TUV - 16,538 - 0.1%



Number of MP's under FPTP

Conservatives - 331

Labour - 232

SNP - 56

Liberal Democrats - 8

DUP - 8

Sinn Fein - 4

Plaid Cymru - 3

SDLP - 3

UUP - 2

UKIP - 1

Green - 1

Independent - 1



MP's under PR

Conservatives - 242

Labour - 199

UKIP - 82

Liberal Democrats - 51

SNP - 31

Greens - 24

Others - 21

YES!!! Bloody brilliant result. The cherry on the rather large cake was seeing Balls get booted out.

The bleating of Jones, Toynbee et al is music to my ears.

Hopefully this'll see the Labour party and it's band of hypocritical acolytes banished to the margins for a good while.

At least those on welfare will be spared Rachel Reeves and her plan to hit them harder than the Tories, what sort of heartless, socially bereft would vote for a party that would do that?



Haven't laughed as much since Quisling Benn popped his clogs.

The Labour party pulling itself apart with half of them wanting to lurch further to the left and the other half wanting to move back towards the centre. Whatever happens half of them aren't going to be happy.



It also looks like there will be open war as to the ongoing role of the trade unions in the future of the party.



It's going to be a long way back into office for the Labour party.

The problems of the Labour party will be like a vicar's tea party compared to the interfighting that will now ensue in the parliamentary tory party. Once the dust has settled (should be after the summer break), then Camoron's real problems will start to surface.



He's going into the next five years with a smaller majority than Major enjoyed and an equal number of right-wing nutjobs. Farage won't be needed to "hold Cameron's feet to the fire" over Europe, he's got plenty on his own team to do that. He'll no longer have the LimpDems to blame for not being able to implement ALL of his manifesto commitments. Now the UK public will see him for the sneaky, conniving bully that he is.



Labour may be looking at a few years in the wilderness but the last thing they should do is even consider a return to Blairism. No matter what the likes of Mandelson may say, Blair was 20 years ago and thanks to him and his bessie GWB, the world is a completely different place. Labour have suffered far worse defeats, they'll get over this

I agree Labour cannot go back. Blair was the right man at the right time. But times and needs move on.



In the short-term it is difficult to see where Labour can go. Over time they have got to hope that the union doesn't break, PR is introduced and / or the Tories sh*t on too many people that people have nowhere else to turn.