I did a bit better on my political predictions than my HE one last year. So here goes for 2015:
1 – There will be a General Election. Note the singular, not plural.
2 – After the election, a majority coalition will be formed. There will not be a minority government; it will be Conservative/Lib Dem.
3 – The combined vote share of Labour and Conservative parties will be lower that 65%.
4 – The Conservatives will be the largest party in vote share and number of MPs.
5 – The Lib Dems will hold on to 40 (+/- 4) seats.
6 – The SNP will storm the election in Scotland, but not as strongly as currently predicted. I’d say they’ll take half the seats (30 +/-3).
7 – UKIP and the Greens will take a big share of the vote, but have less than 10 seats between them (6 and 1 respectively).
8 – The Conservatives will lose 25-30 seats to Labour but gain 10-15 from the Lib Dems in the South.
9 – Labour will gain a lot of seats from Conservatives and Lib Dems, but will lose a chunk to the SNP, so will only be marginally better off.
10 – In the face of another Conservative led government, the SNP will go back on their pledge not to vote on England (Wales and NI) only matters, and they will make a big noise about this! They will shamelessly say that this is the will of the Scottish people after they voted to stay part of the UK.
11 – The SNP’s behaviour will be catnip to Conservative MPs and there will be some shambolic attempts to resolve the ‘West Lothian question’. It will end up like House of Lords reform, with a majority in favour of change, but nobody agreeing on the solution!
12 – The results of the election will demand a debate about electoral reform, because the splintering of votes across 2 large and 4 substantial ‘others’ will produce distorted results with very few MPs winning their seats with an absolute majority, I’d even say that most MPs will be elected with less than 40% of the vote.
13 – George Osborne becomes Foreign Secretary, Philip Hammond Chancellor, Theresa May will be Cameron’s effective deputy (like Hague has been in this Parliament) not sure she stays at the Home Office though.
14 – Nick Clegg is re-elected and remains deputy PM.
15 – Ed Miliband resigns, putting the Labour Party out of its misery!

Elsewhere in the world:
16 – Jeb Bush will not be a Presidential candidate at the end of the year.
17 – Hilary Clinton also will not be.
18 – Euro countries (after much flapping and hyperventilating in the media) elect moderate governments).
19 – Angela Merkel will announce that she will not stand for a fourth term.

3 responses »

  1. hbgibson says:

    You really think the LibDem vote will hold up enough to allow a coalition?

    • derfelowen says:

      I think their national vote share will collapse! They’ll probably just about scrape double digits, but national vote share is pretty meaningless to a party that has 57 seats and it’s sole aim is to retain as many of those as possible.

      I imagine the Lib Dems message of “we make the Tories less evil and Labour more competent” will go down relatively well in constituencies that have returned a Lib Dem MP for a number of years. Also, as I think votes will be splintered in a lot of constituencies, so 35% could be enough to hold on as disgruntled former supporters spread themselves thinly to Labour, UKIP, Tories and Greens.

    • derfelowen says:

      I think it will add to the demands for electoral reform though if Lib Dems and Conservatives combined have less that 50% of the vote but still form a coalition. One of the more potent arguments (used early on in the Coalition but dropped later) was that the parties combined had a majority of MPs and popular vote at 58.1%.

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