Elections!

[Razgovory]

Fuck shelf.
I'm still crying about Bailout Bevin losing to Mitch Macullun,
Fuck Kentucky.
How the fuck can you vote for a big government republican when you know that big government is the problem?
Fuck Kentucky.

The Tea Party is finally being put down.  It was a rabid dog and tried to bite the hand that fed it.  This is how you deal with rabid dogs.  McConnell can hardly be called a "big government", and besides you work for the government.  If someone who was genuinely serious about reducing the size of government and spending they'd fire you.

[derspiess]

The Tea Party is finally being put down.  It was a rabid dog and tried to bite the hand that fed it.

It left its mark, though.  Pretty successful as far as protest movements go.

This is how you deal with rabid dogs.

Easy there, tiger.

McConnell can hardly be called a "big government", and besides you work for the government.  If someone who was genuinely serious about reducing the size of government and spending they'd fire you.

McConnell changed his tune recently but in the past he's been a big spender, like many of the other old establishment GOP senators.

[Sheilbh]

Two interesting features from the local elections in Northern Ireland.

1 - UKIP won a couple of councillors. It's odd because for the most party Northern Ireland still mainly has Northern Irish parties which deal with their political situation but are pretty detached from the UK. The Tories tried (and catastrophically failed) to establish themselves in Northern Ireland in 2010. Their theory was that now there's peace it'd be good to try and 'normalise' Northern Irish politics. It didn't work. It'd be funny, ironic and good if UKIP sort-of managed that

2 - On the other hand dissident Republicans who are anti-peace process and opposed to Sinn Fein as too moderate have won a few seats in working class Catholic areas. Which is a bit depressing and a sign that the extremists still have a base and some support

Edit: Also a couple of dissident Unionists

On the upside it looks like the non-sectarian Alliance party's vote held up

[Razgovory]

The Tea Party is finally being put down.  It was a rabid dog and tried to bite the hand that fed it.

It left its mark, though.  Pretty successful as far as protest movements go.

This is how you deal with rabid dogs.

Easy there, tiger.

McConnell can hardly be called a "big government", and besides you work for the government.  If someone who was genuinely serious about reducing the size of government and spending they'd fire you.

McConnell changed his tune recently but in the past he's been a big spender, like many of the other old establishment GOP senators.

Did it really leave it's mark? It failed to keep Obama from being reelected.  If we consider McConnell a big spender then we must consider the whole of the GOP as a big spender party, and their claims that they for "fiscal responsibility" a lie to dazzle rubes.  I'm okay with that, are you?

[Sheilbh]

I read this piece on the disconnection of London and the rest of the country by Charles Moore, journalist and Thatcher's biographer. He's a Tory Eurosceptic, so not UKIP, but I thought it striking how Tamasian his argument is. Albeit the opposite of Tamas's actual view:

Local elections: The capital fails to see the heartache and pain beyond
'London' has become shorthand for faraway people with no grasp of the nation's problems


Ukip leader Nigel Farage celebrates with local councillors in South Ockenden Photo: Getty Images
By Charles Moore8:30PM BST 23 May 2014 Comments1253 Comments

"These results show London as an open, tolerant and diverse city," tweeted Tessa Jowell. Dame Tessa, Labour MP for Dulwich and West Norwood, Minister for the Olympics under the last Labour government, is a liked and respected figure. Nevertheless, her tweet could have been precisely calculated to turn the stomach of anyone living more than 10 miles from Hyde Park Corner.
London, in her implication, is an open, tolerant and diverse city because so few of its voters went for Ukip in Thursday's local elections, whereas so many did so in the rest of England. Not only is she saying how wonderful London is: she is also saying how frightful the rest of the English are. Unintentionally, she expressed the metropolitan sense of moral superiority of which the electorate has now had more than enough.

The same point was put the other way round yesterday by Suzanne Evans, one of the articulate and seemingly sane spokesmen whom Ukip is at last managing to rustle up. The difference in the results, she said, was "because London is its own person – its own body, its own character – and it's very different for the rest of the country". She thought that London finds it hard to understand "the heartache and the pain" beyond.

Actually, this "London" of which they were speaking is mainly inner/middle London. The suburban bits – Havering, Bexley, the sort of places where Dame Tessa never goes to dinner – have moved towards Ukip like most other parts of England, and share their anxieties. It is surely no coincidence that Nigel Farage lives (and voted) at Cudham in Kent, just where the Greater London limits lie.

One reason Tessa Jowell and co can feel open, diverse and tolerant is that, like Harry Enfield's character, they are "considerably richer than yow". The average house price in London is now reported to be £593,763. This is well over 20 times more than the average wage (£26,000). It is highly unwise to borrow more than four times your annual earnings to buy property, so no new family paying the standard rate of income tax can remotely afford to join the property-owning democracy and live in Jowell's London unless they have private capital of their own.

On a day trip from Gillingham or Southend (which could easily cost them about £200 for four unless they take a packed lunch), these frustrated citizens can wander the silent and shuttered streets of Belgravia and Holland Park and admire the empty palaces where Russians or Arabs park their money but not their children. Such an average family would not be human if it did not sometimes ask itself how much all this openness, diversity and tolerance do for it. Hence the rise of Ukip.

If London is, in Suzanne Evans's phrase, its own body, it has a very rich head. As well as the numerous multi-millionaires from the financial services, many of whom are not British citizens and therefore cannot vote, the head consists of top lawyers, media and advertising executives, lobbyists, civil servants and those industries and quangos that prosper from government contracts. It also consists of those who formally rule us. If you look at the present Cabinet, I can find only two English members – Patrick McLoughlin (a former Derbyshire miner) and Owen Paterson (a former Merseyside leather manufacturer) – with private-sector careers pursued completely out of London.

This head forms a collective view without even realising it. By polling day, BBC producers had sent out so many anti-Ukip tweets and emails that the corporation's newsroom was forced to issue a belated instruction telling them not to. Their unthinking hostility was perfect propaganda for Mr Farage.

That is the head of the London body. Its hands, however, are often those of immigrants, many of whom serve – as nannies, cleaners, drivers, doormen and waiters – those at the head. Most of these probably can't or won't vote, but those who do tend not to share the resentments of the wider population because they feel happier to be here than in, say, Somalia. They tend to live in public or rented housing, often subsidised, rather than trying to buy.

They may also be corralled into the divisive ethno-religious politics of the modern inner city. In Thursday's elections, to take a preposterous example, a group of Muslim councillors in Newham, who had defected from Respect, were permitted to campaign for an Islamic state under the banner of the Conservatives. But for the most part, the immigrant vote is Labour's. It is almost a deference vote: people like Dame Tessa are the benevolent feudal lords giving handouts to the ethnic serfs. It is easy to be "tolerant" of people whose presence reinforces your economic advantage rather than challenging it.

Yesterday I heard a BBC reporter, in a comical but telling slip of the tongue, describing London as "ethically diverse". This is true. A strange coalition, first forged by Ken Livingstone, somehow knits together gay-rights activists with Islamist fanatics who want homosexuals thrown off cliffs, the more right-on sort of cosmopolitan entrepreneur with the most bloody-minded public-sector trade unionist. As long ago as 2010, Labour's national membership was revealed to be more than a fifth drawn from London (though London is only 12.5 per cent of the national population), with five times as many members in Hampstead as in Hartlepool. This trend has strengthened, and Ukip's incursions into Labour's northern territory on Thursday are a reaction against it. Ed Miliband sits for a seat in Doncaster (where Labour just lost two council seats), but his heart, and his house, are in Primrose Hill.

It is true that Ukip supporters are very concerned about immigration, but for the most part their animus is not against immigrants themselves, but against this occupying army of the powerful in central London. In particular, voters have come to see all the three main parties as no more than different brigades in the same force. When David Cameron made his Conservatives go big for single-sex marriage, for instance, lots of people from out of town were outraged, but even greater numbers were simply perplexed. Was this the issue that mattered for the life of a nation in hard times? That view was shared by more than half the population, but none of the three established parties expressed it.

Another example is petrol prices. Large numbers of Londoners do not drive and so give little thought to the cost at the pumps. Outside big city centres, however, the car is a virtual necessity for work and family. It took the reaction to the "omnishambles" Budget of 2012 to get the Coalition to see that this might be a more salient political issue than leading the world in carbon reduction. Even today, public figures play with wind turbines on our utility bills as gaily as Marie-Antoinette pretending to run a peasant dairy in the gardens of Versailles. They seem puzzled at the hostility this generates.

This separation between capital and country is a fairly new thing for Britain, and a dangerous one. Hitler is said to have been envious of the British phrase "the Home Counties" because it showed that we regarded London as our heart. Today, the word "London" in political rhetoric has become rather like "Washington" in America – shorthand for faraway people who do not understand the rest of the nation. Link it with "Brussels" – as Ukip unhesitatingly does, and will again as the Euro-results come in – and you have a place apart from its hinterland. That is not a clever idea in a parliamentary democracy.

I love that slip of the tongue that is very true. London is ethically diverse. See Ukraine

Also I've seen a lot of Labourites sort-of pushing the Tessa Jowell line (in general I yield to no-one in my love for Tessa Jowell, but she's wrong on this) that they won London and London's the 'future'. I'm not sure that's the best line for a party trying to win a majority of seats from the 85% of the population who either can't afford or don't want to live in London

Tomorrow Euro-results

[Liep]

I voted. Think it's the first time I voted in shorts weather. There were only two parties out of eight that didn't run on a platform of less Romanians, less EU and more money for us, us, us, so I picked one of them.

[Josquius]

First results so I've always wondered, Tyr, do you know why Sunderland is always the first to report? Is it like a badge of local pride or something?

Even when they cut to Sunderland South during a general election there's always council workers running with the ballot boxes to get counting

Those two first results are very good for UKIP and seems to tally with the theory that they could do well in traditional Labour areas of the North. Safe Labour areas of Sunderland - LAB - 47.8% UKIP - 30.1% CON - 14.3% GRN - 4.8% LDEM - 3.1% and no percentages but in St. Anne's 1022 votes for Labour, UKIP second with 702.

Edit: I just read an article. Apparently Sunderland use lighter ballot papers and rope in sixth formers to run in the boxes during a general election. All to count the quickest. Why?

Yeah, I've no idea how or why it started, but they always want to be first. I guess its a way to put the city's name on the map. Sunderland council bosses tend to be a bit self conscious about their 'new city' status and Newcastle's shadow looms large.

1 - UKIP won a couple of councillors. It's odd because for the most party Northern Ireland still mainly has Northern Irish parties which deal with their political situation but are pretty detached from the UK. The Tories tried (and catastrophically failed) to establish themselves in Northern Ireland in 2010. Their theory was that now there's peace it'd be good to try and 'normalise' Northern Irish politics. It didn't work. It'd be funny, ironic and good if UKIP sort-of managed that

That is interesting.

[Liep]

It seems the Voteman cartoon might have been successful even if it was retired early, officials estimate we get around 60% participation which is highest after the vote-or-you-break-the-law countries.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-politics/10829678/Denmarks-voteman-cartoon-pulled-Oral-sex-extreme-violence-and-dolphins-just-too-damaging.html

[Sheilbh]

There's a few exit polls in the Euros coming up.

One interesting point is it seems that turnouts up in some countries (France, Germany, Spain) that are basically Old Europe, but continuing to plummet in New Europe. It's a bit strange really

Edit: But this could be the first European Parliament election in history with higher turnout than the previous one.

[Liep]

They're already going mental on the news channels. Shouting politicians, 3D projections of Europe, explanations of what a patent actually is (we're voting on the unitary EU patent), promise of upcoming exit polls, fear Le Pen, overexcited anchors, etc.

In other words: ELECTION NIGHT!

[Liep]

EXIT POLL: WOOO! The Socialists surprises with 11.9%. Of course, so does the right wing nationalists with 23.1%. Most importantly thought, the liberals are getting their arses kicked.

[Zanza]

I voted a few days in advance via mail. I had one vote for the European Parliament, one vote for the regional council. And 60 votes for the municipal council and you could give those 60 votes to various parties and up to three to one person. WTF. Who comes up with such a silly system?

[MadImmortalMan]

Been watching results from a nearby pub where everyone is drinking radler and watching the tv. I can't catch much, but what I saw so far was black, red, blue, green, other blue, pink, grey. In that order. 

[Sheilbh]

So, SYRIZA topped the poll in Greece and it looks like Golden Dawn are third with 10-12%. Also FN in France and the People's Party in Denmark. I think the Freedom Party did very well in Austria too and it looks like the more sensible German Eurosceptics won around 6-7%.

What's also striking is the rise of the (often Eurosceptic) far-left at the expense of the centre left. In the Netherlands the Socialists overtook Labour for the first time ever, SYRIZA obviously did well, but a few other countries like Denmark seem to have the left doing decently well.

Iberians! Why's there not been any populist response in Spain and Portugal? Other crisis countries have thrown out long-governing parties (Greece, Ireland) or turned to new ones (Greece, Italy) and non-crisis European countries in general have seen a rise of left and right populists. Why hasn't that happened in Spain and Portugal?

Generally the picture basically looks like the centre cannot hold. Turnout's up minutely. One weird thing is how low turnout is in Central and Eastern Europe which according to the polls tends to be the most pro-European:


Edit: Oh and Sinn Fein's leading the polls in Ireland

Edit: Incidentally I hope our European friends start looking at these other countries rather than moaning about UKIP. Compared to this lot Nigel Farage's Mary Poppins.

[Admiral Yi]

I'm rooting for SYRIZA to win national elections in Greece.