http://www.littleatoms.com/society/britain-we-thought-we-knew-does-not-exist

If, 15 years into the 21st Century (when we are continually told traditional media is in steep near-terminal decline), the Labour Party cannot work out how to at least neutralise bad press, then they're not exactly inspiring confidence that they'll be able to govern, are they?

The…

In the last couple of decades, Newspapers and Newdesks appear to have transformed from journalism (with ethics), to entertainment (business oriented). Hence, the somewhat leftish "media"…

In New South Wales, where Rupert Murdoch’s power is such that State Governments effectively govern via the Daily Telegraph, State Labor last attained power by making…

Riddle me this: If 'The Media' is the problem, how has Labour, or any other left-leaning party, ever managed to win an election, ever?

I'm not an expert on 20th-Century newpapers and other media outlets, but…

Personal best 18 negs :)

This is being totally ignored by the "New Labour" crowd. There was hardly any policy being put in front…

It has parallels with the infamous Generation Lost newspaper ad here in NZ,…

...and continue to get the basics wrong in the post-wipeout blame game by immediately shouting that the solution is MOAR BLAIR.

There's some truth in that, but absolutely not for the reasons thay think.

New Labour…

Yep. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/generalelection/hours-after-the-election-the-dwp-says-it-is-looking-to-cut-a-disabled-access-to-work-scheme-10237191.html

Labour today is waking up to something much worse than failure to win. It has failed to account for its defeat in 2010, failed to recognise the deep sources of its failure in Scotland, and failed to produce any kind of intellectual diversity and resilience from which answers might…

But it looks like this is going to be a terrible result for people with disabilities, and their carers.

And guess what one complete idiot has pretty much guaranteed will be leading every newspaper and television report of the protests in Whitehall: Obscene graffiti on the memorial to "The Women of World War II"…

For UK Labour, see NZ Labour, USA Democrats, etc. It's a perennial problem, even a growing problem, but I don't…

You mean NZ is actually leading the way????

I see Cameron has already announced council tenancies will no longer be for life but only short term. Sounds familiar. What's the bet the next step is selling them off to private providers.

Good God, what a prime plonker. At least Ed Miliband (and Nick Clegg) managed to leave the stage with some dignity, while Brand is living his ex-wife’s lyrics…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTHNpusq654

Unbelievably, [[http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/may/08/russell-brand-stages-climbdown-over-support-for-ed-miliband-labour-comedian|he now appears to be doing…

Which is pretty much the same for the NZ Labour party. I look at them lately and think "Would Fraser, Savage, Nash or Kirk…

And here's the Guardian leader, which really gets to fashionable bogeyman-free heart of where it went so badly wrong for Labour:

In trying to make sense of a defeat on a scale that so few…

And what about those horrid occupy types. Just imagine the dry cleaning bills if they'd had their way.

And Russell Brand speaks up for the need for compassion as there is going to be a lot of meanness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRUQ6aPvs58&feature=share

Wonder who will have the most influence by the time of the next…

'Lazy'…

Show ponies who weren’t also elected mayor could indeed “simply resign”, but that would not “let in the next…

http://news.sky.com/story/1480319/inquiry-to-be-held-into-election-poll-accuracy

Suggestions of herding effect – not publishing polls that disagree. This seemed to be the case, with variation around the polls reducing significantly in the last few days.

Also interesting is the FPTP nature of things. If it had been PR then Conservatives+UKIP would have less…

Replacing FPP is "like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas".

I think the UK result is the right one for stability as Key's re-election was here.

I'm also glad that scary UKIP outfit has been largely sidelined....another plus for their first past the post…

Even those of us who sympathised with the workers (there was much community…

First, a cheerful PAS welcome Ieuan! I can understand that read, but of course it wasn’t a surprise that the SNP was going to have a very good night. But in fairness, when that BBC…

There's an article somewhere…

Perhaps a month or two too soon as far as the 'yes' camp is concerned. It seems that the momentum of the pendulum is swinging Scotland towards independence, or a variant thereof. If Scotland wants to stay in the EU, but England wants to leave…

Yamis that's a good point. So every second election is more of a "mid term"..

And that was a year after the sudden death of a fairly charismatic Prime Minister. Probably not the only reason for the loss, but hard to discount as significant.

If the average MP age is still over 50, current opposition MPs face the prospect of never being in power.

Last 1 term government in the UK was the Conservatives 1970-1974 That’s 40+ years.

New Zealand: Labour 1972-1975. That’s 40 years.

Canada: Liberal Party 1980-1984. 31 years.

Australia: 1974? help me out. That’s 41 years.

USA: (presidential) Democrats (Jimmy Carter 76-80).…

I’m relying on wikipedia for this. That’s 40+ years… [off to look at other countries].

New Zealand: Labour 1972-1975. That’s 40 years since it’s happened here.

Canada: Liberal Party 1980-1984. 31 years.

Australia: 1974??? help me out. That's…

The Maori Party comes to mind too.

Works both ways.

I’m sure the newspaper proprietors and hardcore Labour partisans would love everyone to believe that, but I’m just not buying such a simple reason for the polls getting it this wrong. For a start, you can’t…

Really? My understanding was that London was one of the only areas of the country where Labour made significant gains in vote share over 2010, with some high-profile pick ups, like Bermondsey and Old Southwark.

This election result may see UKIP activists focus on electoral reform in large numbers.

Rich, MMP is entirely unsuitable for local elections in New Zealand, for the reasons given…

Interesting to see Labour's vote share in London was soft too. Tooting stayed Labour but Khan didn't gain much, just a couple of hundred votes, so he is still well and truly…

1) A horribly uncharismatic leader;
2) an electorate who don't see sufficient in-house-cleaning taking place after Blair shat on the carpet.

Edit: bonus round. Dear Mr Clegg, that's what happens when you break all your…

On a more unexpected note, our votes actually counted, as the long-time Lib Dem local MP lost his seat.…

Now anyone want to take a guess why Labour isn't having a very good night?

It's not in the tradition of the party that granted India and many other countries independence last century. They need to accept that the degree of…

The second is correct: the first was nonsense, as you've tacitly admitted.

Point taken Russell but it does underline again the suspicion one should attach…

Also Burnley from LD.

The EU ought to provide a refugee option for UK citizens to renounce that and become citizens of the EU, with a resettlement grant paid…

You definitely don't want to be disabled in modern Britain. But there is…

This causes significant issues in Australia. Commonly no group has a clear majority, and there…

Can you also explain exactly how the unpredictability arises in your scenario? I'm willing to accept your claim that no election…

– One nation in the kingdom (Scotland) is entirely detached from the rest of it – in popular feeling, but not in legal fact.

– One province in the kingdom (N. Ireland) will provide the seats for the English party (Conservatives) to govern the…

IANAPS but I think that single-electorate instant-run-off voting (as used for the Australian lower house, or the Wellington mayor, isn't strictly STV.

With STV you have multi-member electorates, and the effect is that the number…

A voice from the future? Oracle says "the recession will continue indefinitely"?

Like most of the other predictions, that couldn't be further from the truth. The result is a clear-cut mandate to continue the economic stability that Cameron and his mob have delivered since…

Australia uses approximately 20 variations on preferential voting, all of which can be called STV. Typically each of the five different votes I cast will use a different electoral system. At federal senate level I must…

I also have…

During the last mid-terms, someone on the internet did a slideshow of politicians eating things. If any PAS reader is contemplating standing for Parliament, at all costs avoid battered sausages on sticks. Think about it.

Good god, this…

I can see how STV is a fairer system on an electorate-by-electorate basis, as it reduces the ability for a candidate to benefit from splitting the votes…

But the ploy of constantly showing public figures in "ugly" photos is deliberate. I even read about the tactic in Dirty Politics.

Anyway, polls have just closed. Let the crisis begin!

I've been thinking about this a lot more than I should and I'd say "probably not." (And anyone getting ready to smite me... stand down and keep reading.) But it was still…

The briefest of looks at the results (libdems win under a quarter of the seats of labour, on 23% of the votes compared to labours only slightly bigger 29%,…

One of the main reform organisations, if not the main one, is the Electoral Reform Society. Their preference is some form of STV. Darren Hughes works for them now and…

It was a referendum on AV, not MMP. The background is here.

Greens here have been criticised for moving away from their core green issues and…

Apparently their owner has…

– Apart from what's already been said, I think we're going to see a substantial rise in the green vote. There's a lot of very disgruntled ex-labour, ex-libdem champagne socialists out there.

– I live in the UKIP heartland of east england. It's very…

Given the number of people who have commented on that, you really do have to wonder, as Russell says.

It was 2011, and the question was: "At present, the UK uses the "first past the post" system to elect MPs to the House of Commons. Should the "alternative vote" system be used instead?"

That is, 2/3rds…

The MP, S Khan, Labour, had a close run in 2010, but it seems he feels safe in 2015. Tooting/SW London seems to be slowly trending Conservative, but in 2015, Labour is strongly ahead across London and so it…

The Telegraph's editor sends every one of its a readers an email beseeching them to vote Conservative. This is getting embarrassing now.

1 2pt Lab lead
1 1pt Lab lead
5 ties
4 1pt Tory leads

Dead heat, although seat allocations vary more widely.

See you in the morning!

Killer fact: the three election-eve polls have all basically converged to a Labour-Conservative dead heat. In each case the positive movement is with Labour. In the Ipsos poll, Labour are up five points. Interesting.

The Election Unspun infographics linked to above by Ben Campbell are pretty stark. [[http://electionunspun.net/partisanship-unspun/partisanship-on-front-pages/|The Telegraph has gone way…

Polling station in my bit of South London had a queue for…

And Alfie and Russell: ditto me. This election coverage is far nastier than the Thatcher triumphs of the will. I find it difficult to reconcile level of venom with the buttoned-up, more reticent British character.

The Murdoch press has adopted their owner's head-kicking style with enthusiasm. Combine that…

The seizure-inducing pop-up for their latest Clinton-scandal book was pretty alarming.

But this does lend some weight to the idea that The Sun had an additional motive for showing the bacon.

I find all those people saying "Ed Miliband's not a real Jew!" rather amusing if it wasn't so serious. It's a Breitbart link, so I'll issue a trigger warning.

Thanks for the reasoning.

A New Zealander I know in London says all the Kiwis and Europeans she knows are quite perplexed at the widespread view that taking…

In normal countries, when there is an election with an inconclusive result, there is a round of multi-party discussions to arrive at a grouping of parties that can…

In each area, Labour could go further and be bolder. But the contrast between them and the Conservatives is sharp. While Labour would repeal the bedroom…

Pragmatic on more than just the readership level – a SNP which succeeds enough to weaken Labour's Scottish base, but not enough to make a Labour-SNP coalition government possible nationally, seems…

Thanks! I will use some of that in my Media Take roundup this weekend. Fascinating.

I've also been writing code to safely read the UK newspapers automatically, without risk of human exposure.

My less fortunate colleagues back…

True.

How many #JeSuis hashtags have there been since it was coined for Charlie Hebdo? Hundreds?

Do a #JeSuis…

#JeSuisUnconvinced

I mean, they won't ever shut it down such that only the insured get treated, but you can see charges for same-month GP visits, waiting lists that last until after you die, most services provided by for-profit corporations, etc.

Yes, that!

It is actually a hard choice – on my trip back to the UK last year, I found Milliband and Balls to be deeply underwhelming. The British electorate may well vote for the Devils they already know, like they did in 1992. But it…

With just over 12 hours until polls open, and with mounting public feeling, the Sun’s pig-themed front page has inspired the hashtag #JeSuisEd.

The messy-eater selfies are intended to give the Labour leader some comfort that none of us look exactly prime ministerial when eating…

It's that kind of hyperbole that puts me off the progressive movement. I will cheerfully bet you my life savings that even if the Conservatives win by a crushing landslide and Cameron rules by fiat, your…

The reasons:
– one needs to register to vote every year, which involves filling out a paper form, having it it witnessed by another Brit (I’m surprised they don’t require a member of the Ancient And…

https://youtu.be/XRsg5fnifdY

So I'm seeing, on Twitter, a whole bunch of English people who live in safe Tory seats saying they'll be voting Labour, and it's worth doing, because of the idea that the party that gets the highest % of the…

As election night entertainment, FPP wins. Candidates up on stage, no hiding place for the defeated. British voters/viewers watch human beings, we just watch numbers (and endure commentators instead of returning officers). Great fun, I'll be glued tomorrow.

In 2010 New…

Wow! Go Stella.

Rupert pulling a race card? Say it ain’t so!
(Actually, I didn't know he was)

You have to wonder.

[edit] Snap, Paul.

And God, I wish the media gush around this would be a little more upfront that the overwhelming majority of Brand’s umpty…