Meanwhile in Great Britain, the Labour Party is on its way back!

[Rosa Luxemburg]

In the next General Election Labour will sweep the election. The Liberal Democrats and their horrible Tory (Conservative) partners will be trounced.

[shenmue]

1. Yay!

Good luck to them.

[Prophet 451]

2. I hope I can hold out until then

I'm disabled, physically near crippled and mentally wildly unstable. This bunch of vandals has not only slashed my benefits by several hundred pounds a year (because they've imposed rules that we must pay 30% of the council tax as well), they've imposed the harshest disability test in the world and they and their media catamites (I'm bisexual, I'm allowed to say that) have also trained the public to hate me as a workshy scrounger.

I have to walk with crutches these days and my mental state flips on a dime. In the space of an hour, I can go from more-or-less functional, to sobbing hysterics, to carving my arms up with razors, to screaming at the voices only I can hear, to hysterical sobbing again because by now, the visions have started. And I can feel that hate from the public. I can feel their view of me as someone who could just snap out of it if I wanted to. And the disability test, I don't even know how to describe the kind of terror that causes in me. I think I may have managed to avoid it this year because when it last came up for renewal, my SO and my doctor both said they feared for my life whenever I was reassessed.

Forgive the rant. I've had to avoid domestic news entirely for over a year now. I voted LibDem last time and bitterly regret it since they sold us out by propping up this sociopathic pack of savages. Labour aren't perfect, Lord knows, but they aren't actively evil.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. The country should be brought to a standstill and the Tories and their LibDem poodles ousted

all out strikes. Clean out the Tories. Hopefully the pendulum has swung enough to the left by now.

[Chan790]

4. This is what I never understood from an American standpoint.

(So I'll ask because I'm probably not the only one.)

Why on Earth would either the Liberals or the Labour ever coalition with the Tories? That'd be like the Greens or Working Families, in the states where they're the difference in the state legislature...throwing in their lot with the GOP. What do they get out of it that they wouldn't get out of coalition with the other left-of-center party? (Parties?)

[Rosa Luxemburg]

5. The LibDems could have hooked up with Labour

where I used to live the Lib Dems were really Tories.

[Hippo_Tron]

15. The Liberals are a centrist party, ideologically between Labour and the Tories

We get the false impression of them being generally to the left of Labour, because they opposed the Iraq War while Tony Blair was kissing Bush's ass. That was an exception to the rule, not the rule.

[Arkana]

16. Ah, so that Nick Clegg fellow everyone in America heard about

wasn't really some paragon of liberalism.

I dunno. Brits always say they don't understand American politics, but British politics aren't easy either. How do you keep track of all those parties?

[flamingdem]

6. Anti-immigrant UKIP on the rise too

http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/culture-war-crisis-mainstream-politics/831

The culture war behind the crisis of mainstream politics

As the local election results are still coming in, some commentators are calling it a “political earthquake”. But the facts are more complex. Whatever seismic metaphor we use, I think its tectonic causes are cultural and – unlike mere politics – irreversible.

- See more at: http://blogs.channel4.com/paul-mason-blog/culture-war-crisis-mainstream-politics/831#sthash.Ldh6LKog.jnkFPMCY.dpuf

[Rosa Luxemburg]

7. I remember the days of Enoch Powell

[Spider Jerusalem]

8. Unfortunately it's looking like Ukip are going to get the most overall votes.

The Lib Dems appear to be facing a rout (on the current trend it's very possible not a single one of their MEPs will be returned); Labour are looking like having the most seats after the next election, but I wouldn't bet on a majority at this point (it may end up with a hung Parliament and a Labour minority government).

Disaffected Lib Dems seem to be turning back to Labour (a lot of people wouldn't have voted for the Lib Dems at the last general election if they'd known they'd be getting a Tory government out of it), and disaffected voters on the Tory right seem to be turning to Ukip (mostly thanks to anti-EU and anti-immigrant sentiment).

[Rosa Luxemburg]

9. The European elections are always weird

not really any indication of what will happen next British General Election

[Spider Jerusalem]

10. True

Ukip came second in the last EU elections and only managed 3% a year later, and not one MP at Westminster.

[blkmusclmachine]

11. Who's "counting" the votes for the NeoNazis?!?!

[Tom Ripley]

12. Is this Neo-pre-Blair Labour?

God, I hope so.

[Spider Jerusalem]

14. I wouldn't be holding my breath for them to reinstate Clause IV anytime soon.

(Clause IV was the bit in the Labour Party constitution calling for collective ownership of the means of production by workers, by the way.)

[TheKentuckian]

13. It seems to me that no matter which of these parties are in power things go in the same direction

Starting to seem that way everywhere, what we "small people" get to vote for is rhetoric and a face. The controls are locked in on the center of the sun.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

17. Your confidence is misplaced.

Labour is a little way ahead in most polls, partway through an electoral cycle at the point where the Tories are probably at their lowest ebb.

It's not unlikely that Labour will win the next election, but it's far from certain.