Sunday, May 09, 2010

The Daley Dozen: Sunday


1. Charles Crawford on the psychology of coalitions.
2. Phil Taylor on the constituency where 1 in 16 votes were "lost".
3. Tony Butcher on why the LibDems should embrace a coalition.
4. Locus on how UKIP cost Cameron a majority.
5. Ellee Seymour on the small increase in the number of female MPs.
6. Iain Martin appears to have forgotten about Theresa May.
7. Ben Brogan on the offer being made to Tory MPs.
8. John Rentoul asks if Sky News is biased against Labour.
9. The Staggers on the best and worst of election night.
10. Cranmer asks if the LibDems are the most democratic party in the UK.
11. Tom Harris robustly defends FPTP as the least worst system.
12. John Redwood in praising the BBC shock.

3 comments:

Adrian said...

Thanks :-)

Not sure what's taking Cameron and Clegg so long. Some of the differences are moot, eg. Trident, which Cameron would get Labour support for anyway. Voting reform can be shelved for a year, citing the need to sort out the economic mess first. So I assume that it's the national finances that are (rightly) taking up most of the discussions.

R Mutt said...

On claiming UKIP votes: the Frum article Defending Cameron’s Tory Rebrand was interesting:

"Are Heffer (and Levin after him) arguing for a strategy aimed at swinging those extra 550,000 UKIP and BNP votes to the Conservatives? Such an argument would overlook some important considerations.

1) 80% of all the net new votes cast in 2010 over 2005 went to the Conservatives. That’s a good result. (George W. Bush gained only 70% of the net increase in votes between 2000 and 2004.)

2) Heffer takes for granted that the Conservatives could have somehow reached those 550,000 net additional UKIP and BNP votes (or even the entire 1.48 million grand total of the two), WITHOUT losing at least equal numbers of metropolitan, ethnic and female voters. That seems unlikely to put it mildly."

Nigel said...

Iain Martin hasn't forgotten anything, apart from what it is that Caroline Spelman does (Communities, Local Government, and claiming nanny expenses):
"...The Tories Villiers (Transport), May (Welfare) and Spelman (can’t remember) can’t be feeling very confident tonight of making it into the full cabinet..."

It would be both odd and dangerous to leave Theresa May at the DWP. It's one of the really big spending departments, and needs an extremely effective minister running it.