UK General Election: Ed Miliband quits as Labour leader

[T_i_B]

Source: BBC

Ed Miliband has stepped down as Labour leader after his party's disappointing general election showing.

Labour suffered heavy losses at the hands of the SNP, with the Tories forecast to achieve a majority.

In a speech in London, Mr Miliband said it was "time for someone else" to take over the leadership and confirmed deputy leader Harriet Harman would be interim leader.

Earlier the Labour leader, who took charge of the party in 2010, said it had been a "very disappointing and difficult night" for his party, which is forecast to win 234 seats, compared with 258 in 2010.

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-32633388

[philosslayer]

1. This is very unfortunate

Mr. Miliband was determined to make Islamophobia a crime. I was hoping he would prevail.

[T_i_B]

2. Unfortunately

He was never a political leader you could get enthusiastic about, and under his leadership Labour simply drifted.

[seveneyes]

4. make Islamophobia a crime?

What the hell does that entail? How exactly does one make an anxiety disorder illegal?
Would it preclude drawing cartoons of religious icons?

[totodeinhere]

7. How can you make a belief a crime? n/t

[Helen Borg]

3. Last minute surprise by Tories?

How strict are they in monitoring things for fraud over there?

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. It's hand-counted paper ballots

and they are pretty secure. The postal voting method is wide open to fraud on a small scale (eg claiming extra adults in a house, or one that's really unoccupied, and hoping they don't get called for jury service before you take them off the register again), and there have been some instance of that in local elections, but I don't think they'd be able to organise that on a large scale.

[LeftishBrit]

5. Inevitable that he's going; but the whole thing is so depressing

Miliband was caught between the devil and the deep, and made the wrong choice. Keep options open with the Scots and invite even more 'Red Ed could be elected and be manipulated by the evil SNP!' scaremongering from the RW press; or rule out any deal with Scotland, and lose the whole of the Scottish vote rather than just a lot of it. He chose the latter.

Also, UKIP seems to have replaced the LibDems as the 'None of the Above' party, as well as of course appealing to its racist core base. It had been thought that UKIP would take votes from the Tories, but they seem to have taken them from Labour just as much.

At least UKIP only actually won one seat.

[T_i_B]

6. Scotland has the SNP

But in England we have effectively gone back to 2 party politics thanks to the demise of the Lib Dems.

But Labour has also gone backwards in a big way. Caught drifting aimlessly between a rock and a hard place.

[muriel_volestrangler]

11. But Labour lost it in in England and Wales, not Scotland

Even if Labour had hung on to every one of their Scottish seats, they'd still have been way behind the Tories.

If the Tories win St. Ives from the Lib Dems (the one remaining result at the moment), I think what will have happened is, from 2010:
Scotland:
SNP win 40 from Labour, 10 from Lib Dems
England & Wales:
Con lose 1 to UKIP, win 27 from Lib Dems, and lose 2 net to Labour (which I think is win 8, lose 10)
Labour win 2 net from Con, and 12 from Lib Dems
Lib Dems lose 39 - 27 to Cons, 12 to Labour

Since the Tories have an absolute majority, we know that even if Labour had taken all the SNP and Lib Dem seats, they'd still be behind.

[iandhr]

8. Will he go to the back benches now?

Or do something else.

[T_i_B]

9. Might do

Might become part of the next shadow cabinet.

He might even follow his brother out of politics altogether.