DXBtoDOH

Major did win an election. The 1992 GE.

May has to her advantage that the Labour party is completely and utterly unelectable at the moment.

iggle

I was only a baby so maybe i understand the satiation differently.

But didn't major leave the UK in a financially fantastic position and TB ****ed up the UK?

DXBtoDOH

What do you mean by 'elected'?

We don't vote for the PM. We never have. We vote for the MP (substitute the party for most people). Tories won 2015 outright and received a governing mandate. We're just swapping one Tory leader for another as the governing mandate remains.

You youngsters have become too corrupted by by US style politics where the president is directly elected. But Britain, like most of the world's democracies, has a parliamentary system.

And there will be an opportunity in the next few years for a GE (no later than 2020) for people to vote and they can deliver their verdict on May's performance by punishing or rewarding the party. That's how the rules of democracy works in the UK.

Millhouse

Yes, he did.

How Thatcher left and Major got in was the brutal bit.

DXBtoDOH

Correct.

Major started off in a bad shape following the 1992 election when Britain was knocked out of the ERM and the country was plunged into recession. It destroyed, in many people's minds, the Tories' advantage in economic leadership. While Major did lead the UK out of the recession and onto solid economics by 1997 he still got no credit for it.

Truth be told, people were tired of the Tories by then. 17 years in power, plus all the endless scandals in the last few years of Major's government.

As has been oft said, 1992 was the election the Tories should have lost (they won by a whisker) because then it would be Labour who'd have suffered the blow of leaving the ERM. Tories would likely have won in 1997 as a consequence and things could have been quite different today. None of Blair/Brown's spending plus none of opening the immigration floodgates (pre-EU). Although what the EU situation would look like I have no idea.

Millhouse

We will overlook the fact he was PM from 1990 then.

iggle

I liked Major, that why i was a little concerned on my own position of Brexit because he was very much in the Remain camp.

I'll give you an example

Tony Blair said we had to remain - ******* GET OUT NOW!!!
Ed Milli said we had to remain - hahaha GET OUT NOW
Jonnyboy said we should remain - Oh shi...Maybe we should do

martinbkk

I thought the idea of an election was to elect a party, and its manifesto, not an individual.

Obviously who the party chooses to front their show should be suitable and appropriate (whatever you want that to mean) but so far as being elected is concerned its an internal party matter. Join the party and have your say. Though if their is only one nomination for the job I suppose its a bit of a mot point.

Meow

No.

Let's remind people of the debacle of leaving the ERM and Black Wednesday. All the sleaze which forced his "back to basics" campaign. Major is not the lightweight people think. He was Chief Whip for a while and the nice guys don't get that job.

There are good reasons why Labour got in with such a big majority in 1997.


I think a number of people around here need to read up on UK political history and this comment is not aimed at anyone in particular. I am not a Tory, but neither am I Labour. I do however remember the long years of Tory domination and it wasn't healthy. Not all bad but no party is all good either.

Millhouse

The Tory sleaze was terrible. Then again, the replacement's lies and war crimes were not much better. Personally, I think Blair/Brown did more damage to the country long-term.

I'd rather my MP get caught paying for coke and hookers on expenses than starting illegal wars or putting so much pressure on people running the independent inquires that they commit suicide (or are killed).

Cameron has done nothing really. Except waste 0.7%GDP on foreign Aid (and before the lefties all say how good this is - the implementation is terrible. I have worked with DIFD).

Meow

I don't really care what they get up to in private and think the intrusion into people's lives has gone way too far.

They'll all a bit rubbish. We should set up a party Milly as we'd be so much better than those numpties. *frantically hides all the skeletons in the closet*

Millhouse

I'd have to rent an underground warehouse for all of my skeletons.

Iggle - that says warehouse, not whorehouse.

scrubbedexpat141

OK...but.... do you really think that people vote for their local MP? Or perhaps even know their name? I think most will vote for 'their party' pretty much forever. Mum was swung to Lib Dems away from Conservatives (but was a complete waste of a vote because she's in pure Tory heartland).

Or do you think those undecided voters look at who the leader might be?

Look at what we and others say about Corbyn. Nobody in their right mind is going to vote (indirectly by voting for their local Labour MP) for that man to be leader of the UK.

DXBtoDOH

You're right in that people rarely vote for the MP solely for the MP (though it's been known to happen, don't underestimate the support an active MP can receive through his/her work in the constituency, especially among those politically neutral).

Most people still vote for the party, regardless of who the leader is. 1/3 will always vote Tory, 1/3 will always vote Labour. Traditionally the middle 1/3 was up for grabs but it's evolved to a 5% swing between the Tories/Labour as the remaining middle 1/3 waste their votes on unelectable parties for a variety of reasons. Interestingly enough, a strong and charismatic leader is probably more important to the parties these days to win that smaller 5% swing group than in the past. But the rules remain the same. The parties can and do swap leaders in the middle of a government.

I actually support this ability. There are times when it's clear a PM has lost his/her authority and need to be replaced for the sake of the country instead of waiting for the next general election. This is one of them. Cameron was discredited by the referendum among his own party grassroots. A new PM allows the healing to begin quickly. Calling a new GE so soon after Brexit is risky and potentially destabilising. Not calling a GE allows wounds to be licked, Labour to regroup and figure out what the hell they're meant to be with a decent opposition platform and leader, and more importantly, and a sense of continuity and order while still sticking to the frameworks of the British political process.

Meow

I think quite a few people vote for a specific local MP, especially if they have a real interest in politics. A good MP can make a real difference of they are active locally.

I don't any vote is really wasted as if everyone thought "my one vote doesn't matter" no one would vote, or we'd get the situation we are in now...