UK PM to announce general elections on May 6th!

[Vidboy10]

Gordon Brown will announce on Tuesday morning that the general election will, as expected, be held on 6 May, BBC political editor Nick Robinson says. Robinson says. The prime minister will go to Buckingham Palace to ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament. On returning from the Palace he will formally confirm the date and make a speech in Downing Street in which he will dub the election "the big choice". The economy, taxation and public services will be key battlegrounds. The campaign will also feature, for the first time, live television debates between the three main party leaders. It will be the first time that Mr Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have faced a general election. Their parties - along with a host of other smaller parties - will be fighting for 650 seats, four more than currently exist because of constituency boundary changes. To secure an overall majority, a party must win at least 326 - if no party makes sufficient gains, the result will be a hung Parliament. After 13 years in power, Labour enters the election with a notional majority of 48 seats, meaning that a loss of 24 seats would see them lose their overall majority. Whatever the result, the make-up of the House of Commons will change significantly following the election, with 144 MPs so far having announced that they will stand down. Tax and spend Polls in recent weeks have suggested a narrowing of the Conservative lead over Labour, and it is clear that the economy is set to be the number one issue. On Monday, the prime minister defended Labour's record on dealing with the recession and laying the foundations for recovery. He said Tory plans, in particular to reverse Labour's planned National Insurance rise, were a risk the UK "can't afford" and could send the country into a "double-dip recession". into a "double-dip recession". For their part, the Tories say the NI rise would lead to job losses and argue that by making £6bn of government efficiency savings this financial year they can remove the need to implement most of the policy. The Conservatives say they could bring down the UK deficit without any tax rises on top of those already announced - including a levy on bank transactions - and have said they have no plans at present to raise VAT. The Liberal Democrats have accused the Tories of "treating people like fools", claiming their NI policy is uncosted, and while unwelcome, a rise in contributions is unavoidable. They have set out plans for £15bn of public spending cuts, a "mansion tax" on properties worth more than £2m and an end to income tax on the first £10,000 of earnings. The economy has already been the subject of one live television debate - between Chancellor Alistair Darling and his Tory and Lib Dem counterparts - on Channel 4 last week. It will again be the focus of one of the live leadership debates to be held during the formal election campaign on the BBC, Sky and ITV. The other two will cover domestic affairs and international policy. domestic affairs and international policy.

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[Danny600kill]

Finally !

All I've got to say is bye bye Brown and hello Cameron

 

[emigre]

The real funny thing is that the election is like being asked to be shot or stabbed. I honestly have no faith in the major political parties.

 

[TrolleyDave]

It's going to be an interesting election. New Labour are hated by pretty much everyone. Tony Blair left them with a huge mess and Brown didn't do alot to clean it up. Even though they're completely hated and the country is screaming out against alot of their policies they just seem to be carrying on with business as usual. Even the policies revealed so far address very little of the issues that are on peoples minds.

I've never been a fan of the Tories but in all honesty I see very little difference between New Labour and Conservative. Their policies differ slightly obviously but not to the extent that the old Labour/Tory divide use to be. At least they have addressed a few of the issues of the day. This will definitely go in their favour. Lab/Con basically both serve the corporate masters though.

The mood of the country definitely isn't right for the softly softly approach of alot of LibDem policies. UKIP are a one policy party and most of their politicians seem like complete tossers. The English Democrats might steal a few seats. Although to me they seem to be the BNP with less racism. Having dealt with a couple of their politicians I'm really not a fan. The Greens might actually do quite well. There's alot of talk of people casting a "protest" vote this year and that protest vote is split between the Greens and the BNP. Hopefully there'll be more Green than BNP.

The thing that's going to make this election interesting is the fact that the BNP might actually get a few seats. They're not running enough seats for an easy victory, but if the votes are split enough between all the various parties they could scrape through. It's a pretty shameful state of affairs in my opinion. The fact that people are even thinking that they're a legitimate choice for the future of the country is shocking. Ten years ago they were universally hated, now I hear regular people saying they're thinking of casting a vote for them. That's really the example of how bad Labour have run the country into the ground, regular people are thinking of voting Fascists in simply because they feel they have no other choice.

 

[FAST6191]

My policy of no voting remains the same as it has always been (not to mention a few technicalities surrounding my ability to engage in such things). The few politicians I have met have been unable to engage in the simplest of debates (this despite being lawyers of various forms and not the court averse kind) and while I hate to generalise the fact that I could draw such a conclusion as quickly as I did and that they had not been called on it surely speaks volumes.

The only things I am curious about is the level of dirty tricks, quick votewinners and level of BS that will be played and how hard they will try to come down on those who will engage in voteswapping (various seats are "sure fire" so people call those in less certain seats to swap votes in an effort to change the overall outcome usually to the end of preventing a given party coming to power). I must admit I do find the idea of using seats rather than percentage on a national scale to be very odd (local seats sits fine with me) so I see no moral problems with such a thing.
I suppose to end I will echo TrolleyDave's sentiments with something along the lines of a quote in "politicians do not relate to the people- they relate to other politicians" and all that I have seen seem to favour policy by tabloid rather than policy by science/rational thought (see any number of examples in drug, IP law, identity, high end policing, low end policing).