A Question for all you politically exercised members…..

“.. an undercarriage leg stuffed up her bum and a couple of bullet holes in her head” – Sturgeon. Mmm – food for thought!:D

Hmmm an undercarriage leg stuffed up her bum and a couple of bullet holes in her head, the graphics bod applying them was obviously not a fan

Sorry if I have gone on about this. I’ll shut up now as well.

Trekkie – thanks and whilst I appreciate the debate I don’t think we are or have been “singing from the same hymn sheet”. I started this and have continued to discuss “parties” not “individuals”. So perhaps that’s where the lack of understanding or agreement lies. But enough is enough – I’ll leave it with you and others to continue.

I still don’t understand why both LBC radio and Classic FM deem it newsworthy any time Nigel Farage opens his mouth. :sleeping: For such a small party, UKIP get brilliant coverage, which I can only assume goes down really well on this forum. Remind me again, who has more seats in the House of Commons, UKIP or Plaid Cymru? UKIP or the SNP?

I am sorry Charlie, whilst I understand what you mean and you have expressed yourself clearly, I do agree to disagree as above.
It is not merely playing with terms, it is an important legal distinction we are discussing. No one party represents the whole of the UK, as no party has 100% of the parliamentary seats in any of the constituent parts that make up UK&NI and certainly not nationwide as a whole. We recently had a coalition government but they did not represent me as I disagree with their approach. My local MP represents me in parliament, even though I didn’t vote for him and certainly don’t like him on a personal basis. You may say this is just semantics, but in my mind there is a clear difference between the government as a whole, a party whether nationwide or not and ones’ own MP.

Many people vote on party lines as you are suggesting, perhaps the majority, but others vote for the person of their MP. This is why the LibDems are likely to have a greater number of seats than their national poling data would suggest, as many sitting LibDem Mp’s are seen to do a good job as constituency MP’s.

I think the confusion is that Portagee and I are, I believe, trying to explain that in constitutional/legal terms whatever you wish to call it, any person who is elected an MP is a representative of their constituency. They may have stood as a parliamentary candidate for a party, whether a nationwide one or what you refer to as a regional one but legally they are all the same, a constituency MP. They then may take a ‘Nationwide’ party whip, but not all in any party will do so on every vote. Those Tories who defied the whip recently on the Speaker’s debate and earlier on the labour MP’s who voted against the Iraq war for example. MP’s can and do get the party whip removed if they have been naughty boys and girls, or decide to remove themselves from the whip if they fundamentally disagree with the way that the party they stood for is moving. They are still then MP’s but independents until they take another whip.

If a party is within the UK then they are a party of the UK&NI, but not necessarily a nationwide party as you have so clearly expressed. Perhaps if this term was used rather than a national party representing the UK&NI there may be some agreement?

That’s irrelevant. As you or someone else reminded me elections to the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly are quite separate, regardless of who the candidates might be.

You are playing with terms now. Nations, regions, countries – whatever we call them does not alter the point that I was making in differentiating between those parties which only represent a part of the UK and those which represent the whole of the UK.

It’s not splitting hairs, differentiating Labour and Scottish Labour, because it’ll be the same Scottish Labour activists that will come to my door ahead of the next Holyrood election, beating the drum for a candidate who wants to save local services that their Westminster colleague they were promoting, has just voted to cut at a UK level.

Oh and Scotland and Wales are constituent Nations along with England that together with Northern Ireland form the United Kingdom. The SNP and Plaid represent the interests of these nations. Only if the SNP represented part of Scotland, or conversely presented candidates into Northern England could the area of interest possibly in the right circumstances be referred to as regional within the UK.

It is splitting hairs to differentiate between Scottish Labour and Labour etc. They all stand as members of national parties, national referring to the nation of the United Kingdom. The SNP and Plaid are “regional” parties representing only those in the partially devolved countries of Scotland and Wales.

Ah, but once the Scots get power by the back door will they want independence still?

In retrospect the referendum vote was the luckiest thing ever for the SNP

Moggy

I admit that I was one of those that voted Yes at the referendum, even though I had doubts about whether Scotland would be as successful in today’s world as opposed to another few years building Scotland up within the current framework, letting Scot’s and other countries looking in, see what the Parliament in Edinburgh can has achieved and could achieve more. In some ways I think Westminster saw this and actually forced the referendum to happen whilst the economy was at a low, whilst Greece had pulled the Eurozone’s knickers down leaving it very exposed.

What Westminster didn’t foresee was what actually happened “a good defeat” for the Yes campaign and the SNP. That the SNP haven’t crumbled and crawled back into the Highlands, that the promises they as NO campaigners made hoping they wouldn’t have to go through with are not just being coming back to haunt them. But with a likely 30+ or perhaps even 40 SNP MPs they are having to act on them to the discomfiture of the Westminster establishment.

Once again you miss the point or perhaps I have failed to articulate it. Plaid Cymry and the SNP are NOT national parties, all the others are and therefore represent the United Kingdom. Labour, Tories and Liberals are contesting every Scottish seat and UKIP 41 of the Scottish seats. The SNP are not contesting any seats outside Scotland. Plaid and the SNP only represent Wales and Scotland respectively. So I do not accept your argument. All of this notwithstanding the deficiencies of our electoral system, about which we agree and accept is unlikely to change in the forseeable future.

None of this has anything to do with nationalist policies for separation, as you seem to suggest.

You seem to be mixing yourself up here by the National, of course the SNP are a National party that’s what the N stands for. Perhaps it would be better to refer to “Westminster Parties”, but still there is confusion. You suggest that the Westminster Parties are standing in all the seats in Scotland, yet the people with the funny rosettes in Blue, Red and LibDem Gold (as opposed to SNP Yellow) that come to my door all have the word Scottish written on them… Scottish Conservative, Scottish Labour or Scottish LibDem, their leaflets are all the same, pictures of Hod-it, Dod-it and Skelp-it (sorry that’s Cameron, Miliband and Clegg) with their Scottish Party name. Where are these Westminster or UK parties that you refer to. The only one I’ve seen that is a UK party is UKIP, and the least said about them the better in these parts.

I am voting for our sitting MP, Jack Lopresti he at least has served in Afghanistan and supports Military charities among others.
So there you are Paul 178 is voting Conservative. As long as me and my wifes Pension and disability payments are ring fenced the rest of the country can go to hell in a handcart. Selfish you bet but I have been through harder times than many people and I would like what is left to me to be secure and as comfortable as possible.

An MP should first and foremost be a constituency MP, and if you feel that this is the man for your constituency then I’m please that you have someone like that in your area. I’m sure that many of us would love the chance to show support for someone who has been there, not just talked the talk, but actually walked the walk. I hope that he is able regardless of his party influence matters in some way that makes life better for you and your wife.

Boom! Boom!

Oh no – please!!!!;)

Truss surely she has all the support she needs!:D

I’m in a safe conservative seat with a useless trollop of an MP. Elisabeth Truss.

Torn between wanting to contribute to keeping the economy on track, and wishing she would just go away.

Decisions, decisions.

Moggy

We’ll have to agree to disagree, Trekbuster.

I am voting for our sitting MP, Jack Lopresti he at least has served in Afghanistan and supports Military charities among others.
So there you are Paul 178 is voting Conservative. As long as me and my wifes Pension and disability payments are ring fenced the rest of the country can go to hell in a handcart. Selfish you bet but I have been through harder times than many people and I would like what is left to me to be secure and as comfortable as possible.

I am not missing the point, I am agreeing with you that they are not contesting seats nationally. I disagree with you about the rest.
They are parties within the nation, if with a regional emphasis as are the Scottish Conservatives, the Scottish Labour party etc. and are as legitimate in their representation as any other party in any UK parliament and so are as able as any to influence the make up of any Government on a constitutional basis.

Some elements of the press are trying to delegitimise the role of SNP Scottish and Plaid Cymru (note spelling) Welsh MP’s and their voters but not the right leaning NI parties such as the DUP which shows their wilful disregard for them, and the paucity of their argument.

Once again you miss the point or perhaps I have failed to articulate it. Plaid Cymry and the SNP are NOT national parties, all the others are and therefore represent the United Kingdom. Labour, Tories and Liberals are contesting every Scottish seat and UKIP 41 of the Scottish seats. The SNP are not contesting any seats outside Scotland. Plaid and the SNP only represent Wales and Scotland respectively. So I do not accept your argument. All of this notwithstanding the deficiencies of our electoral system, about which we agree and accept is unlikely to change in the forseeable future.

None of this has anything to do with nationalist policies for separation, as you seem to suggest.

We are voting for a government of the United Kingdom. Neither Plaid Cymru nor the SNP offer representation either of or for the United Kingdom. Quite the opposite on the case of the SNP.

Portagee has it correct.

Scotland and Wales and NI ARE part of the UK therefore any Plaid, DUP, SNP etc. MP’s when voted in to the Westminster parliament do offer representation to those people who voted for them in the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland just as much as the Tory who is going to win in my constituency. As many MP’s will have been voted for by fewer than 50% of the actual vote vote, and by way fewer than 50% of those eligible to vote, this means that the greatest part of the population will not have voted for whoever does form a government, as happened in 2010.

But it is our system. Love it or loath it.

As they have been voted for in a democratic process, they are have as much right as any other to be involved in sorting out a government for the UK as a whole. I am one of many who are uncomfortable about this, but there it is.

If you are arguing that As Plaid and SNP have as a root of their policies the desire to leave the UK are therefore not fit to be national parties, many people in the UK do support them knowing this. It doesn’t make them less valid at the current election as they are fighting in a national election on these policies.

These parties are are relevant to all of us, whether we like it or not.

‘Now though that it’s the SNP, the Westminster parties are terrified that Scots might actually have enough influence to change UK politics forever’

But the reality is that Nicola Sturgeon is just old school Labour rebranded ! She wants nuclear disarnament and an end to austerity -coupling that with debt repayment pretty much when she feels like !

She isn’t offering anything new .