On By-Elections Still to Come
Mar. 4th, 2013 02:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danieldwilliamThere is another by-election out there and beyond that another, speculative one.
Martin McGuinness has resigned his Mid-Ulster seat on the not unreasonable grounds that you shouldn’t sit in two different legislatures at the same time.
Mid-Ulster looks to me to be a safe Sein Fein seat. McGuinness’ majority is over 15 thousand and he polled more than 52% of the votes cast. I don’t know enough about Northern Irish politics to guess if this means that you could stick a Sein Fein rossette on a donkey and the good electors of Mid-Ulster would suffer it to represent them (1) or if McGuinness’ personal stature was compelling and in his absense Nationalists votes go elsewhere.
Why is this of interest to me?
Well, the current real majority of the Government is 78. This excludes people like the Speaker and Sein Fein Members who don’t vote. You can just about construct a counterfactual where a rainbow coalition of the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, Respect, NOT the SNP but the SDLP cobble together a government. That unlikely coalition is currently 1 short of a majority in the House of Commons.
I wonder if anyone has told the good voters of Mid-Ulster. (2)
A Labour vs Conservative by-election, my speculative by-election would give the fantastical Rainbow Government a majority of 1.
If you throw in the SNP the majority climbs to 13. What would induce the SNP to join such a rag-tag band of misfits, mercenaries and forlorn hopes? Perhaps a lost referendum in 2014 and the promise of Devo Max.
(1) Given that returned Sein Fein Members don’t take up their seats pehaps a donkey would make a very elegant protest vote. Or perhaps Helana Torry has some, hitherto unknow Republican sympathies.
(2) An SDLP member returned in Mid-Ulster would make the scores on the doors 321 to the Rainbow Alliance 321 to the Opposition. Sqeaky Bum time for the lead partners in the coalition.
Martin McGuinness has resigned his Mid-Ulster seat on the not unreasonable grounds that you shouldn’t sit in two different legislatures at the same time.
Mid-Ulster looks to me to be a safe Sein Fein seat. McGuinness’ majority is over 15 thousand and he polled more than 52% of the votes cast. I don’t know enough about Northern Irish politics to guess if this means that you could stick a Sein Fein rossette on a donkey and the good electors of Mid-Ulster would suffer it to represent them (1) or if McGuinness’ personal stature was compelling and in his absense Nationalists votes go elsewhere.
Why is this of interest to me?
Well, the current real majority of the Government is 78. This excludes people like the Speaker and Sein Fein Members who don’t vote. You can just about construct a counterfactual where a rainbow coalition of the Labour Party, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru, the Greens, Respect, NOT the SNP but the SDLP cobble together a government. That unlikely coalition is currently 1 short of a majority in the House of Commons.
I wonder if anyone has told the good voters of Mid-Ulster. (2)
A Labour vs Conservative by-election, my speculative by-election would give the fantastical Rainbow Government a majority of 1.
If you throw in the SNP the majority climbs to 13. What would induce the SNP to join such a rag-tag band of misfits, mercenaries and forlorn hopes? Perhaps a lost referendum in 2014 and the promise of Devo Max.
(1) Given that returned Sein Fein Members don’t take up their seats pehaps a donkey would make a very elegant protest vote. Or perhaps Helana Torry has some, hitherto unknow Republican sympathies.
(2) An SDLP member returned in Mid-Ulster would make the scores on the doors 321 to the Rainbow Alliance 321 to the Opposition. Sqeaky Bum time for the lead partners in the coalition.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-04 02:53 pm (UTC)Also, if we're waiting for a failed referendum then we're only 6 months away from the next election anyway.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-04 03:09 pm (UTC)But there are some advantages to all of the participants in having it run for a bit.
The Tories look like there were hounded from office. Good for Labour.
The Lib Dems can portray their decision as a principaled stand against UKIP inspired Tory nutjobbery – a nutjob too far.
The various nationalists get goodies for their home town and in the case of the SNP a nice win to compensate them for losing the referendum.
The Greens and Respect get to remove a Tory government.
So, if I were planning this I’d bring the government down, rush through the required goodies for votes legislation. STV for local government, referendum bill on Devo Max, big jobs programme in Northern Ireland, Brains Beer to the be the official beer of England Rugby, ennoble George Galloway or make him ambassador to the Antartic Treaty Convention or the Klingon Empire, a massive great wind turbine off the coast of Brighton.
Then collapse the Rainbow government, have the general election six months early.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-04 03:40 pm (UTC)The alternative for the Labour Party to trying to build and run a Rainbow Coalition would be to move to a general election but I’m not sure how co-operative the Lib Dems would be.
no subject
Date: 2013-03-04 05:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-03-06 09:30 am (UTC)