British Elections are Weird
I have been following the British Parliamentary elections all night and final numbers are not in. But we have the outgoing government with the following numbers: Conservative 302 and partners Liberal Democrats 56 plus maybe NI Democratic Unionists 8. In a system where you mostly need 326 for a majority.
Now we are coming up on a situation where the Conservatives might end up with 326 on their own (but maybe not) but where almost all of that was poached off their one time partners the Liberal Democrats. Which depending on the breaks means a much narrower majority. But based on the coverage I have been watching all night this is going to be posed as a huge victory for David Cameron and the Tories. Even though his overall majority in Parliament might be shaved to just about nothing. Because SNP. Or other acronyms. I find all this fascinating and invite others to weigh in on this Open Thread.
12.4% of the voters picked UKIP. Which at this second has one MP (Member of Parliament).
I despise UKIP and the horse that Nigel Farage road in on (and which didn’t actually carry him past the post to take even that one spot). But something is wrong here.
To be honest, I am really having a hard time following this. The news (Aljazzera and others) refer to the conservative/liberal etc parties but what they are saying they stand for sound opposite of what we in the US consider conservative. At least that is how it sounds to me.
Not knowing the issues, though I thought austerity was one big one, the news made it sound like with the conservatives/Cameron in charge the austerity would be over?
Conservatives now with 329 seats – a clear majority. FTSE 100 up 2% on the news.
Webb not happy…….
Krasting you know even less about my views on British politics than you do about Social Security.
I am not happy that Cameron has a majority on the other hand I despise New Labour. And if nothing else the results last night show that the Blair-ite era of New Labour where the Party leadership mirrored some combination of New Democrats and Blue Dogs is dead, dead, dead. Basically you had Milliband and friends arguing that they could do a Kinder Gentler Austerity than the Conservatives. Well fuck that. Hopefully Labour will do something like the Democratic Party is doing and get back to its progressive social democratic roots.
And ditto for the Liberal Dems who sold their own birthright to lash themselves in coalition with the Conservatives. With the result that about half of their seats went to actual liberals (in the U.S. definition) and most of the rest to the Conservatives. Seemingly on the basis of why vote for Conservative Lite when you can have the real thing.
Meanwhile the Scotish Nationist Party swept Scotland with 56 of 59 seats. And are both anit-austerity and anti-Trident and so pretty much represent the progressive wing of the country and perhaps are posed to join with a leaner, more left Labour Party to form an effective opposition. That will depend in part on how deep the leadership purge is on the Labour side.
On the whole I am somewhat hopeful. In the last government you had Conservatives, Liberal Dems, and Labour effectively united as Austerians with UKIP shoring up the right flank. Now UKIP despite getting 12% of the vote are totally marginalized and the Conservatives standing on their own as champions of an uneasy Troika of EU membership, the Union, and Austerianism. In the meantime there is space for the regrowth of the Left out of the insurgent SNP and Old Labour and the social liberal remnants of the Liberal Dems.
Interesting times.
Yes Webb, you are da man. An modern oracle. It does not matter the topic. On SS you know much more than anyone. You know more than the CBO, the advisory board, low lifes like me, – everyone must bow to you. Same is true on the conduct of Fed policy – only you have the facts. And only you has an opinion of any merit at all.
I think the word is Hubris – look it up.
Oh, I guess theses Harvard/Dartmouth professors are all just liars as well. That are they are just ignorant (unlike you, they don’t have a few years of college accounting under their belt). Possibly they should have consulted with you on this study. You would have set them on a different path and conclusion. After all, SSA has never, ever, bent the facts to spin a story – right?
The Harvard Study:
http://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/jep2e292e22e239.pdf
For those not as smart as Webb, an easier read on the report:
I wish I could figure out how much of the SNP vote was in support for the SNP political agenda or instead a vote for Scottish “nationalism”.
Little John yes indeed. And then which part of SNP’s agenda.
SNP is anti-Trident. Labour is for.
SNP is anti-austerity. Labour is at least austerity-lite.
SNP is of course for devolution or independence. Labour not only opposes either but did so in a quite nasty and condescending way.
Somewhat more than half of Scotland voted against Independence but maybe got a little pissed at Labour in the process. Which added to the other issues might well have made the wipe-out a vote AGAINST Scottish Labour as much as a vote for nationalism as such.
Anyway it looks to me that any path back to power for Labour means coming to some accomodation with the SNP. Which on economic issues is more a natural ally of Labor, or at least Old Labour, as not. So yes we will see.
Krasting in my years in the blogosphere I have come across any number of annoying and in my view misinformed and even malicious bloggers and commenters. And after an exchange or two generally found it the better part of prudence to just stop crashing their parties. That is my right to free speech stops right at their front door.
Others can’t leave it alone. Instead after clashing with the party host and even being requested to leave keep coming back and demanding entrance and to be heard or maybe just throw some eggs at the house.
Which gets us to you. You Krasting are an egg thrower. You are intent at egging Webb’s house just because. Hence your 10:33 which was a pure taunt accompanied by an attempted jab in the ribs. “Ha HA!! Scored one on Webb”. Which raises the question of why that is important to you. Something that is reinforced by your 7:09 which is a weird combination of taunt, whine and appeal to authority.
I have reason to reject that Harvard study. Reasons largely developed in a non Angry Bear forum whose proceedings are by argreement off the record. But in the end it is just one study, one that has the magic talismatic name ‘Harvard’ attached to it. To which my reply is “So what? Can you explain WHY their results are well-founded?”
And in my experience you can’t. When you produce specific arguments they tend to be based on your own data series, whose methodology you refuse to disclose. Otherwise you continually appeal to authority. Which on the whole means little too me.
Look if I irritate you then take my example and just leave the party. Tell yourself “They’ll miss me when I am gone”. And maybe you will be right. But answer me this:
“How can we miss you if you won’t go away?”
And Krasting I just read through that study briefly and ironically it mirrors some of my own critiques of Social Security methodology over the years. Except that my focus has been on economic projections where this study is on demographic ones. My view is that the economic projections have been too pessimistic and so underprojected solvency. On the other hand with the exception of the immigration numbers I have mostly left the demographic ones aside. Above my pay grade. Interestingly though Arne Larson, who also was a contributer to the Northwest Plan to some degree shares the conclusions of this Harvard study, he too thinks (or thought) that demographic projections of the Trustees were too rosy. Which is why Dale as principal author accepted the automatic adjustment mechanism of “triggers” which explicitly allowed for the Plan to be adjusted for new projections that were either more OR less optimistic than Intermediate Cost. Which is to say that “triggers’ automatically compensates for differing outcomes.
It is worth noting that the authors of the Harvard Study ONLY consider ONE major demographic factor and never actually quantify its effect on solvency. And it seems to me that their major appeal is simply for more transparency in the methodology of the Office of the Chief Actuary in producing the annual Report. To which I can only reply “From their lips to God’s (or Steve Goss’s) ears”. But otherwise I just don’t see the justification for the “Sky is Falling!” interpretation that the CBS Report put on this. Instead the opponents of Social Security seem to have seized on this for another occassion of monkey poo flinging hoping that some sticks.
Not that ANY of this is on topic for this post. But I guess you saw my byline and couldn’t resist some fecal fun of your own.