Could the Lib Dem race still spring a surprise?
February 16th, 2006
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Just two week to go before new leader is elected
The chopping and changes in the betting chart above show the extraordinary fluctuations there’ve been in the Lib Dem leadership race from the day after Charles Kennedy announced his resignation just six weeks ago. The chart shows the implied probability of success based on the Betfair betting exchange market.
In the first phase the money piled on Ming Campbell after a YouGov members poll on the morning of Kennedy’s resignation showed him beating Hughes by 49-21.
Then, just four days later, the sentiment moved sharply away from Ming after a lacklustre debut in the leader’s slot at Prime Minister’s Questions. Simon Hughes moved into the favourite’s slot.
This was followed by the awful final part of January for the party when Mark Oaten pulled and ahead of the rent boy allegations and Simon Hughes was forced to go public about his gay past. Then Hughes got a boost again from an unusual ICM panel survey.
All the while the former MEP, Chris Huhne was slowly gathering support until the second published YouGov members’ poll last week that put him just ahead.
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So is it all over? Will Chris Huhne take over the job in a fortnight’s time?
After predictring the Tory races of 2001 and 2005 to within one per cent it’s very difficult to argue against YouGov’s record in membership polls and there’s little doubt that the momentum was with Huhne when the ballot papers arrived last week. But Ming did marginally better in the Question Time debate and has had the advantage of being acting leader when the Dunfermline sensation happened.
I’ve taken another set of soundings from Lib Dem members that I know to see if there have been changes since I last spoke to them. The message I have got is that there is very little movement. Most have already voted and they’ve not changed their mind from my conversations earlier in the month. Those who were split between Campbell and Huhne seem to be just favouring the younger man.
My prediction. I think that Huhne will just scrape in but by a very small margin over Campbell. But I am not confident enough to throw all my money behind him and I am continuing to bet on Ming whenever his price eases to above 1.75/1. I’m in profit whichever of the two gets it.
Mike Smithson
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I still think the Liberal Democrats will have traded down in every leadership change since David Steel.
None of the 3 will have anything like the appeal of Charles Kennedy.
With Labour ex Blair and therefore with fewer ‘free’ votes available for a protest party and Cameron snatching votes from the centre - this is a huge poisoned chalice.
I guess they might well lost half their seats.
But when Tony Blair eventually goes his party will be losing the most extraordinary vote magnet of modern times. There simply is nobody else to touch him from any of the three main parties. Blair is just incredible.
Brown, or whoever, will enjoy a honeymoon but he is is nowhere near to Blair in terms of popular appeal and as an election strategist.
If Blair is the Chelsea in terms of his appeal none of the others in any of the parties are even in the Premiership.
When TB finally moves on UK politics will be wide open.
James , Kennedy’s appeal was very limited when he started.
Anyway, the Dunfermline result result may suggest the leader is overvalued, if anything there, it was Nicol Stephen who was the main figure, who is he, most people would ask. Despite the press, I still feel, it’s the policies and events, that finally count.
[2] The “New Labour” project was consciously modelled on Bill Clinton’s success in the States. It may seem to have been a remarkable success but the chickens are now coming home to roost - we have a very different political system and Blair’s contempt for Parliament, which has been constant throughout, is now clearly a liability. Clinton, after all, only had to win two terms. This is not to say that Blair is wrong to believe (as his actions suggest at least to me that he believes) that Parliament is simply incapable of meeting the triple challenges of globalisation, climate change and “al-Qaeda type” terrorism. I hope he is wrong if that is indeed what he believes - but if I had any reasons to think so, I would give them. In truth, I just don’t know.
My feeling is that the tide is ebbing for Huhne. The key reason for this is not principally that he was a bit dull and disappointing on Question Time, nor that he got into some local difficulties on Tuesday over women and ethnic minority candidates and shortlists and quotas. The underlying reason is that Huhne has been a bit of a “none of the above” candidate. As people did not know very much about him, they projected their wishes upon him. As people find out more about him, they do not become more enthusiastic.
I have had a go at explaining this here.
Someone here (I think) made the point that Huhne has more support among MSPs (who know him little) than MEPs (who know him well). This is why the campaign is still open. My feeling is that Ming Campbell - the Olympic athlete - will be ahead at the finishing line.
What is so surprising is how a small gap in one opinion poll is reflected in a such a huge gap in the odds.
5. It was only a matter of time before the “none of the above” party elected a “none of the above” leader…
re 6 Peter. There are no prizes for predicting the second place. A winner is a winner if only by one vote.
As I said I am hedging my bets.
Have you seen the piece on Chis Huhnes views on cannabis - goes back to his days at Oxford - but I think a bit more probing of his past views will begin to bring the shine off him . alos tax policies held up to be rather incredible .
Time to stay safe with Ming - if they can win Dunferline with Ming in charge - and agianst the backdrop of Oaten - why risk all on a new untested leader
Thye article on Chris Huhne is in the Times today
9. The tax policies I’m afraid are indeed incredible - massive tax relief for the lower paid all funded by swingeing taxes on things that hurt the environment. It sounds great but is really just another version of the ‘50% rate for the super rich’ - a policy designed to fool people into thinking that lavish promises can be paid for by squeezing a small number of (unpopular) people. For someone with an economics background it is very disappointing populist stuff.
[11] Why are “sin taxes” bad economics?
8 … there are on betfair - the Lib Dem forecast market
Peter (6) - The odds are not surprising if, as I assume, they genuinely reflect the weight of money for each candidate. If Huhnes backers rich then their money will be causing the position that Huhne has as relatively strong favourite, but they could be both rich and wrong!
Unlike Mike my book is heavily towards Ming, but from my (financial) point of view at worst the race is neck and neck - and all the, admittedly patchy, evidence I have is that Ming is 5 - 10% ahead.
We will see on the day - but a neutral poll (not commissioned by an interested party) would be wonderful!
2.”But when Tony Blair eventually goes his party will be losing the most extraordinary vote magnet of modern times. There simply is nobody else to touch him from any of the three main parties. Blair is just incredible.”
He just helped his party to lose 47 seats in a GE.
And don’t start the “he was in such difficult conditions, it’s a miracle he did so well” thing, because he was responsible of the situation his party was in.
Has not gone without comment. http://innerwestcentral.blogspot.com/2006/02/updated-chris-huhne-approves-of.html
14 - But the odds on Betfair bear no relation to the amount bet and matched . Huhne 156,000 Campbell 431,000 Hughes 128,000 . On these figures Ming should be long odds on .
Andrea, I just love it when Labour supporters like you fail to see Blairs appeal to everyone else.
I agree with Mike, when Blair goes and the Brown honeymoon is over you will all be reminded of what being in opposition is like.
re 9. Whow. the anti-Huhne forces are getting desperate if they think that something that he wrote while a student more than 30 years ago can impact on the race. That is just pathetic.
Icarus 14. Your idea that the YouGov poll was not neutral is a nonsense. The firm puts its name to it and will be judged by the outcome.
Campbell did himself no good at PMQs yesterday. His little joke made him look pathetic. He is completely out of his depth.
Anyway everybody I know has voted.
We do not want an elderly care-taker but someone who can take us forward. Sadly Ed Davey is not in the race but Huhne is and let’s hope he clinches it.
18. and I love when tory supporters like you always see tory’s appeal everywhere, but then you even fail to unseat an hard-left MP like Bob Marshall Andrews in a “middle England” seat.
20 ‘Ouch!’
County councillor - calm down. The general view seems to be that Ming did well yesterday. One prominent Huhne supporter worte “Bloody Hell! Ming was briliant at PMQs”
http://pigeon-post.blogspot.com/2006/02/ming-at-emetf-hustings-updated.html
And of course AHM said so here yesterday!
21. ah, and I’m not a Labour’s supporter. I mean I would have voted for many Labour candidates, but I’m sure I would have not voted for many of their candidate too.
It is clearly going to be close between Ming and Chris.
FWIW I detect a slight move to Ming.
However I also think that this process has shown up the great difficulties that the pollsters have with the Lib Dems- leaving aside the one or two dodgy polls that looked at “supporters” rather than members. Too many people get wrapped up in silly beard and sandals stereotypes and fail to notice the reality: a pretty independently minded group- in other words this electorate is very difficult to second guess.
Peter 22 - I know you are the self-appointed web cheer-leader for Ming but if you had been in Dunfermline last week you would have discovered that your man is not even popular amongst the locals. There was much talk of a “write-in” for Charlie.
Huhne, I agree, is a risk but then so is Ming.
Now that TB has seen off the rebels and avoided a stream of government defeats and bad headlines, I wonder if he’s having second thoughts about the power handover. Hope Gordon hasn’t bought all those pink ties for nothing.
26 - Co Co - from my own soundings of local party members (ie not activists) at our recent constituency dinner, CK is clearly held in high regard and viewed with warmth. But at the same time members understand the reasons why he had to go - in other words all this “write-in” stuff is sentimental talk (which may be more prevalent in Scotland due to CK’s origins) that won’t be matched by action.
All 3 candidates have strengths and weaknesses, but we are in the fortunate position that whoever wins will have the support of a talented front-bench team.
22. Sorry to bring you back to realism. MC was very, very average yesterday, sounding very lack lustre. If LDs think he should lead them — they’re destined for years in the wilderness.
27. There weren’t enough rebels in previosu votes for the government to lose anyway. Newspapers exagerate the risk IMO. If Hilary the Clueless had done her job right, the government should have won both votes with a reduced majority.
It must be said that some previosu rebels on these issues backed the government or abstained these isseus.
Like some posters said yesterday, they could have done it because the feeling now is to “stay togethere” and fight the tory’s and LD’s threat.
29 et al. - Also, to bring people back to reality, PMQ is relatively unimportant - Hague permanently got the better of Blair (as again yesterday) and it did him no good at all.
29 et al. All Campbell’s performances at PMQs have been weak imho. But as Lennon points out, very few people watch it and it only rarely provides clips for the 6 and 10 news bulletins, which is where most people get their news.
However, Campbell is much better on TV interviews than in the House. He comes across as wise and authoritative.
My conclusion therefore is that his Commons performances should have little impact on the voting.
I write this as a Tory, so you may well ask “What the Hell’s it got to do with you?”.
32 add. And those who heard William Hague on the Today programme may also start to recall why he wasn’t the hit with the public that he was in the House. He said very little and said it in a very dull way.
33 - Although he was on a bit of a hideing to nothing, Bush is really unpopular in this country so you dont really want to highlight the fact that you’re going there to build bridges…
26 - And yet the Lib Dems still scraped in despite the supposed unpopularity of their stand-in leader and neighbouring MP! Funny that.
I am a Ming supporter but have nothing against Huhne, and I think that is very widely shared by Ming supporters. Hughes was far more of a worry in the sense of simply having the image of a wild-eyed wilderness man who is quite likable but not very electable. On paper and in terms of presentation, Ming and Huhne pass the credibility test. I believe the electorate could envisage either one of them carrying a ministerial red box in a way which is much more difficult with Hughes.
However, I do detect a feeling that support for Huhne is just ebbing a little. His launch was exciting - a bold move which the independent-minded Lib Dem membership admired. But he was shaky on Question Time and there is a feeling that he has been too keen to tickle the tummies of activists and not keen enough on developing an appealing, outward looking agenda. The older Campbell, who Huhne has been rather ready to dismiss as a short-term choice, actually comes out as having a much more long-term view on policy development.
28 - Similarly in my constituency. Our MP - a Huhne supporter - gave an excellent and open account to members of the circumstances and there was sympathy at the meeting for CK, concerns expressed as to how the whole matter had been handled by the party, but ultimately unanimity in the understanding that CK had to step down because of his alcoholism.
33 - Baskerville - a good point. Think of Hague’s voice versus Campbell’s. That said - “Today” is probably not much more influential than PMQs.
I would agree with Cicero in that my soundings of people who’d made up their mind split roughly evenly between Ming and Chris (note: this was a very small and unrepresentative sample!). There did not seem to be much sentiment in favour of Simon, hence Simon’s secoind prefs will probably decide the outcome.
I apologise if my plea for a neutral poll was taken a slur on YouGov.
As far as I am aware two polls have been carried out by YouGov but only one was published, presumably because whoever paid for it did not like the result. There is signifuicant margin of error in polls which is ignored in the “result” as shown in the headlines.
If the first poll that YouGov shows a different result from the second but is suppressed, then I do think we are in danger of being mislead. My complaint is not with the fairness of the poll but that the (biased) commissioner of the poll decides whether to release it or not.
31: ‘PMQ is relatively unimportant’
Well, you wouldn’t have guessed that from the reaction of some on here and elsewhere when David Cameron had his hiccup last week: the wheels are coming off; exposed as shallow PR man his is etc.
I’m not sure PMQs is entirely irrelevant. If IDS had dazzled with his brilliance (as opposed to his ineptitude) every week would so many of his colleagues have rushed to boot him out? Perhaps we can say that if you’re competent at PMQs the effect is neutral; if you’re hopeless dark mutterings begin and then…
29 et al (cont) - I think Ming’s done just fine at PMQs. And if he gets the job, as I think he will, he’ll get better at it.
Where I don’t agree is that Hague bested Blair yesterday. Hague got in a good joke, but Blair is without doubt the best debater in the House. Even, perhaps especially, when he’s in the wrong (as he was yesterday). Simon Carr makes this point very well in today’s Indy.
26 - spot on - Peter’s constant cooing for Ming is getting tiresome and the anti-Chris stuff increasingly far-fetched.
I’m not surprised at all about the costings Andrew Pierce cites. It just goes to demonstrate that what is being proposed is genuinely radical - and yet achievable, and will be costed.
Of course it wasn’t long ago that everyone was raving about a flat tax. This is basically the progressive version
The key thing now is to listen to that hard-to-reach group - the Lib Dem non-activist member. I tend to the view that it’s very close, wouldn’t like to call it either way, but Simon Hughes transfers will decide it.
12. ‘Sin’ taxes are not necessarily of themselves bad economics; that wasn’t what I meant. What is bad economics is to pretend that they can provide a huge sum of additional revenue which will not impact heavily on ordinary voters. The only sin taxes I can see which would really raise a lot of money would be on petrol or household fuels…and the consequences of raising those taxes would in fact be highly regressive. Suggesting you can get the money from the corporate sector is a fantasy - you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of small businesses, but larger firms will just shift activity abroad.
39.”Hague got in a good joke”
somtimes I got the impression that people think Hague is great just because he sometimes has good jokes!
Kennedy: At general election time I was working in an office where people occasionally discussed the election. There were several people who were generally sympathetic to the Lib Dems, but could not vote for them as they regarded CK as a joke of a leader. These people mostly ended up not voting at all.
Likewise there others who are sympathetic, but regarded CK as a lightweight, so voted for a heavyweight party leader (Howard or Blair).
CK is warm and personable. But he was not necessarily the great vote winner people think. He was also indecisive, and lacked direction, and in the last year, very unreliable.
Every single Lib Dem member I have spoken to think CK should have stepped down sooner.
James L at (1) - we’ve heard it all before. There is affection for CK in the party, and he may have a role to play, but it is time to move onwards, and upwards.
35.”wild-eyed wilderness man ”
best description of Hughes I read here!
41 - There are issues with ’sin’ taxes and green taxes that the yield will dramatically decrease if they’re effective!
37 - Icarus, I think it’s entirely fair to hope for a poll that has not been paid for by any one of the campaigns.
I have been polled 4 times by YouGov: on two of those occasions the slanting of the questions have made it very easy for me to identify who had paid for the poll.
That is wrong in 2 ways. First, the questions shouldn’t be phrased in such a way as to allow me infer that kind of info. And, secondly, because I suspect I gave slightly different answers as a result of knowing who was collecting the information.
MS is exactly right when he commends TB on his vote winning performances. He is head and shoulders above all the other leaders, and potential leaders, including GB. Obviously, grandpa Ming, CH and SH look thin beer in comparison—but then so does DC.
GB won’t win a GE if his opponents make the ‘yesterday’s man’, or the ‘past not the future’ impression stick. If he can avoid looking like that, I guess we’ll have him for a while yet.
Where does that leave the LDs? The floating voter (FV) has no interest in their policies. And all their potential leaders are unknown to the FV. Any of them will have a shot at making GB look out of date, but grandpa Ming could not possibly do it convincingly.
Does anyone know just how much YouGov charges for a poll of Lib Dem members like the one we saw the other day?
48 - it is said to be about £5000.
43 - I would be a bit more positive. CK definitely has a role to play in the future.
45. Yep joking aside you can quickly erode your tax base with these sort of impositions if you are not careful. The massive increase in imports of bent fags and loose tobacco in recent years being a good example. Sitting in my local you can observe most of the regulars enjoying roll ups labelled in many languages.
The more I see of Huhne the more I like him (as a Tory). God he’s dull.
50 - agreed, the party will have him. It’s up to him if he is still interested, and I think he needs a few months to sort himself out.
I wasn’t suggesting anyone should be at all satisfied with predicting second place, but I don’t think a 3% lead in one poll should imply a lead of nearly 20% in probability implied by the odds on offer.
17 - Good point!
David R Agree entirely! I have said before he is like a cross between David Davis without the charm and Alistair Darling without the nous.
Every inch the European bureaucrat.
52, 56 - now is that truth, bluff, or double bluff?
On the evidence we have, and it is very sketchy, it appears the Huhne and Campbell have it betweeen them. All the members web site polls I have seen have Huhne ahead but …., all agree, SH appears well back, at present anyway. If these are right, and it is of course potentially a big if, then SH’s second preferences may decide. Again those web site polls suggest that upto now more go to Huhne than Campbell. BUT THE WEB SITE POLLS ARE PROBABLY COMPLETED BY ACTIVISTS.
Me, I do not know, suspect it will be close, and after the second preferences are added, maybe even closer.
56. Marcus, are there any non-tories you like or you could think he has some sort of vague appeal?
Tabbers, if you have to choose your leader based on who you think we Conservatives like/fear the most then you guys are in more trouble than I thought!
60 - Marcus, I’ve already made my choice based on my view of their relative electoral appeal, and policy set.
I’m just curious, because I know on what basis I would be giving advice to you
57 - i swear on the holy bible that I am more than happy that you haven’t kept Kennedy and are going to replace him with a man who will never be a major chat show figure.
I dont fully understand the money staked on Betfair (Mark at 17) figures, but they seem to be the sum of the liabilities and and the money staked. So £1 staked at 10 shows as £11 traded - the layer could lose his £10. I am not sure the toatls shown as traded are a useful guide. But on Betfair the current price shows, like any market that as much money is prepared to take the price as to lay it - hence the price stays the same (as it has done for some time).
59 - Ah but I am much less partizan with my slagging off
I see we are about to try and perpetuate the uncomfortable relationship we have with the mad right over the pond 
60 - Rubbish! All parties nowadays like to choose appealing leaders. It’s not indicative of trouble; it’s common sense. Why, even, the Tories sussed that out in the end. You chose DC for precisely that reason you knew he would be a greater fear to Lab and Lib Dems.
64. who’s the “mad right over the pond”?
43: I just don’t agree that Charles Kennedy was a vote-loser. I suspect he was key to winning some of the university cities, for example. Your non-election voters might easily have found another reason not to vote Lib Dem if someone else had been in charge. The Lib Dem appeal is basically to anti-politics- as Dunfermline showed, their consummate grassroots organisation is much more important than their leadership.
66 - Bush
O/T but related to yesterday’s speculation abour Irish Passports. To get an Irish Passport you have to be an Irish Citizen. My wife qualifies as a citizen (Irish parents), and presumably my children would too. The rules on being the spouse of an Irish citizen seme to indicate you need to be living in Ireland to qualify.
66 - when I first read that I thought it was a typo, and was to do with saving the po(u)nd.
The people the devil uses when he wants to get anything done (copyright South Park) the Republicans.
**shiver**
I thought the “mad right” were a counterbalance to the “loony left”. Although perhaps Blair’s rebels over civil liberty issues should be called “loony liberals”.
66/68. thanks.
re 46. The big problem is that, sadly, the Lib Dem contest is not seen as a big enough news story for a newspaper to want to invest £5,000 is commissioning a members’ poll.
My guess is that the Telegraph, which commissioned the January 7th poll, will want to do another survey before the results are announced. YouGov, no doubt, would like to do something that updates last week’s poll because that will be the one that is quoted as “their record”
Given that the paper is the pollster’s biggest media client then they probably get it a much lower rate.
72. SBS, but so Corbyn and co are “loony liberals” when they rebel over civil liberties and “loony leftists” when they rebel over education or NHS?
BTW …… for those still awake in the Lib Dem leadership ………. yawn Zzzzzzzzzzz ……… sorry ….. I’ll hope to have a few snippets later this evening ……… no !! wake up there !!
by Jack W February 15th, 2006 at 7:18 pm
Jack stayed up half the night waiting for your pearls of wisdom - - perhaps you fell asleep - What news from the Rialto?
72 - the liberati, please
44 - Thank you very much, Andrea. Maybe “wild-eyebrowed” would have been better though judging by QT last week!
47 - I don’t think his age is what will make Brown look like yesterday’s man. It is more his familiarity and general approach to politics. If it’s Ming, I would guess he will continue on the “bridge to the future” theme - an unsubtle message that he will be the hand on young Dave’s shoulder (or possibly the shoulder of a new Labour leader) in any coalition. I don’t think wisdom and experience - or at least the perception thereof - go out of fashion just because people are a bit bored of Brown. Huhne risks appearing to be a poor man’s Dave - a risk I think he can avoid but which is there. I think it is much clearer what Campbell’s USP will be in 2009/10.
On policy, I think you underestimate the significance. Few people can name any party’s policy beyond one or two headlines and this is even more so for the Lib Dems. What does matter is whether your opponents can realistically paint your policies as extreme, or wacky and/or self-contradictory. To do that successfully, there has to be an element of truth in those charges. A robust and lean policy agenda, clearly articulated to opinion formers (heavyweight journalists, lobby groups and business leaders) actually matters a great deal in terms of building a “these guys are serious” image rather than an “in lighter news, the Lib Dems were out campaigning in Runcorn today” picture.
76.”What news from the Rialto? ”
the water is under control!
SBS “All parties nowadays like to choose appealing leaders. It’s not indicative of trouble; it’s common sense”
Unless, of course, you sack the most appealing leader and try to convince yourselves that everything will be fine.
63 I understand your logic but it appears you are not correct £2 on Simon Hughes at 15/1 shows up in the total as £4 matched . Perhaps our admin can explain . I agree that the ptice has stayed pretty constant for some days with a slight drift away from Hughes but even there noone is rushing to lay him although 1 or 2 posters have said it is guaranteed free money .
75 - Andrea, its all to do with the twin-axis approach to politics; you should really define yourself in a quadrant rather than in two dimensions.
54 - not sure about the statistics on this issue. Understand a 3% lead is within the margin of error. But the lead in implied probability of victory will always be bigger than the poll lead. A 20% poll lead would lead to a massive lead in implied probability of victory (ie. far more than 20%).
80 - “leader” being the operative word, Marcus.
75 - Just like the definition of a terrorist! My freedom fighter is your terrorist or insurgent.
80 - did you really have “the fear” for CK? Come on, in time MC or CH will be more of a threat than CK in the last year. Just as DC is more of a threat than JM, WH, IDS or MH.
74 The problem is that even a new poll by YouGov (even without the questions that Stephen Tall describes as “slanted”) will still be a YouGov poll. It would be more credible if another polling organisation with a different approach were saying something similar.
I do think we will have a surprise when votes are opened.
82. Tabman, I think you should add dimensions, because 2 are not enough!
Anyway I pleased by this love you’re showing for Corbyn today. I doubt he’ll join Sedgemore anyway.
Not sure I totally agree with the definition of Blair as ‘the most extraordinary vote magnet of modern times’. Wasn’t Labour’s vote share, in the last GE, the lowest for a winning party on record? Didn’t Blair’s war in Iraq provoke the greatest protest march in the history of demonstrations? Hasn’t his party just lost a by-election in their 20th safest seat, or whatever?
No, Blair is not an extroardinary vote magnet. What he is, is an extremely nimble political careerist, able to dodge the flak produced by his own lies and mistakes by getting others to carry the can, or foisting the blame elsewhere; he has also been confronted by an Opposition uniquely enfeebled by historical standards.
But I agree that Blair’s bullet-dodging skills have been crucial in keeping Labour in power; when he goes everything will indeed change. And good thing too.
82 - I’m starting to think that even the twin-axis approach isn’t really very good (although better than the linear alternative, and have been trying to come up with a useable 3 dimensional approach.) Only problem is that I suspect that I want one that is non-euclidean, and am thinking about working with the surface of a hypersphere. Perhaps I’m trying to be too mathematical… :confused:
82 - see also this, Andrea.
75 - yes. Always interesting to see Kate Hoey rebel. She had been touted as “most likely Labour MP to defect to the Tories” - perhaps Rik W can let us know.
89 - seanT - let’s qualify that, then.
Blair is the most extraordinary vote magnet where it matters in our times. He is extraordinarily adept at finding the political G-Spot of those crucial 800,000 swingers. The legions of non-voters in the urban seats don’t matter a damn.
92 Other than TB
90 - if you wanted to accurately model the “distance” between everyone, I think you’d need as many dimensions as you had respondents (though I can’t think of a snappy proof for it).
If you want a three-dimensional approach you could adapt what Chris Lightfoot has done, and not impose your own axis definitions on the methodology, but take the three biggest eigenvalues of the correlation matrix between questions on a survey, and use the corresponding eigenvectors as your axes.
http://ex-parrot.com/~chris/wwwitter/20050415-my_country_right_or_left.html
91. Tabman, I ‘m fully aware about all the dimensions you could come up with. I was just pointing out about the attitude of other parties toward the Lab rebels.
Maybe it was more directed to the tories: Corbyn is an old dinosaur (copyright to DC) when he’s against education reform, but then a great liberal when he votes againt Blair’s terrorism bills.
92 - “Hye nye Keet Hoy”
92/97. Book Value and I recently have a deep political discussion about her……. and her hairstyle!
Who would like to join forces and commission a new YouGov poll? 100 punters at only £50 per pop - you could make the money back bettting on the outcome!
I think Kate Hoey would now be happier within the Conservative Party (I’d be happy to have her in the Conservative Party). Burning bridges can be very difficult though.
92. She is certainly more comfortable in the company of many Tories than most of her own side. Having said that, so is BMA and I really don’t think he is going to join us. More likely he would join the Lib Dems where he could keep that impeccable Orange Booker Brian Sedgemore company.
100 - Her election leaflets were very un Labour.
99 - Correction — You could make the money back betting before the outcome was generally known!!!!
101 - Fred, just give Commieron a few more non-policy announcements and the BMAs of this world will be flocking to your embrace
102. more than “vote Glenda, bash Blair” slogan? ok, she didn’t really write it on her leaflets, but according to The Times it was the best description of her campaign.
Another one tipped to defect to the Tories was Jane Griffiths, late of Reading East, but I believe they would not have her. Would have been Rik W’s MP at one point, I believe.
105 - no wonder Bullseye didn’t make as much headway as he might; the anti-Blair vote was already going to Hoey.
104. Tabman, try to imagine the “Cameron joins the Campaign Group” headline!
SBS I viewed Kennedy was a leader I knew appealed to regular voters. He was seen as an honest bloke and, compared to either Howard or IDS was far more likeable and scored better with the public and therefore was an asset to your party against ours at election time.
Set against that was his complete failure to give your party a serious steer on it’s idealogical direction but I suppose it’s proof that you aren’t seen as anything more than a protest vote that it didn’t really seem to matter at the polls last time.
Do I fear any of the three on offer now? I recognise that Hughes would make the Liberal Democrats strong in Labour areas because he would stress issues that disaffected labour voters would relate to.
In an ex Conservative seat like Torbay that could work two ways, ex Tories would be more likely to come back to us - but set against that would be that more labour voters might be happy to vote for the Lib dems - a big squeeze on labour votes is how they won this seat.
On balance I fear Hughes a bit more than Campbell, and I don’t fear Huhne at all; mainly because his european position would help Conservatives in the SW hugely.
106. Don’t forget the Venerable Helen!
The interesting question, Mike, is why?
Most contributors here would regard Blair as being, at best, mediocre as a statesman (though brilliant at PR and political tactics). What do the public see in him that we don’t?
That’s in response to Mike’s comment at No. 2 btw.
111 - he seems to be able (for that crucial subset of swingers) to personalise their anxieties.
109 - CK a clear asset in 2001, but rather shambolic in 2005, despite the Iraq issue. Your Torbay comments are pretty accurate, though. Lean left, squeeze Labour, but lose Tory votes - don’t know the net effect.
106 - Well she’s now a bankrupt.
111 - I think he’s a bloody brilliant politician. Can’t wait for him to go.
95 - Thanks BV, interesting… I was trying to come up with the axes objectively, to cover politicians and politics of all time, (with the assumption that the general political space would move around the surface of the hypersphere over time). Was also thinking that to get distances to do sensible things you might a Hyperbolic effect too… Oh well, will mull over in the back of ones mind whilst actually working!
115 - and living in Latvia.
O/T - but interesting bit in the Indy today about who could be next UN Sec General (one possibility is Latvian President). Any odds on it yet? My money is on a European - not from the east (Russian veto). Blair? (joke!).
It’s not going to be much of a contest, Campbell will win quite clearly.
Regarding the ridiculous idea that tories are now knocking Huhne because the’re afraid of him. Wake up!!! They’re laughing their socks off as they come to realise that the guys a non-entity with policies leakier than a rusty bucket. As some lib dems seem to be voting for him without really knowing him he’s a disaster waiting to happen. If there were many labour supporters here they would also be stifling the sniggers at your headlong rush into oblivion that he would represent. Lib dems - you’re being played for mugs.
Huhne as leader - bye bye lib dems, both personally and electorally. Listen to your voters or die (metaphorically of course).
118. Teaching English….Reading Labour Party couldn’t contain their joy!
Thatcher and Blair seem to be despised by their opponents as much as loved by their supporters. In both cases they survived with the support of 40% or less of the voters because of the split opposition. What good leaders of the country need to do is gather support without attracting the hatred of those who disagree with them.
I think that this is what Cameron is trying to do, and may succeed, unless, as is possible, his own party members rebel against his neo new labour policies. I suppose it is easier, if like Kennedy, you are not seen as likely to form a government but I would argue that the hatred of Liberal Democrats shown by some of the activists of the other two parties is not shared by most voters. If this can be used by whoever becomes leader at the next election when we have a chance of being part of Government (see Scotland /Dunfermline) then who knows what may happen.
113. What kind of anxieties do swingers have? I always thought they were very relaxed, easygoing people.
re 87. I doubt if any pollster other than YouGov could mount such a survey. What they need is a list of Lib Dems members to create a properly adjusted sample taking into account ages etc.
You might recall that in the Tory race ICM was the only other pollster to do a survey. Its figures were DC-DD 76-24 although the survey took place five weeks before the ballot closed.
I think that you are clutching at straws by attacking YouGov. David Davis did the same at this stage in the Tory campaign.
Tabman, SeanF, etc.
Yes, you have a point. Perhaps I wasn’t giving Blair quite enough credit; he does know how to win elections, by pleasuring the swing voters, even if he isn’t technically a ‘vote magnet’.
But I still think my point about his Teflon-ness is important. When you think about it, the fact that he has survived Iraq - more or less intact - is truly remarkable. He led us into the most unpopular war since Suez. There’s strong evidence that he lied in the process. He did it to help a US president reviled by his own party. 100 British soldiers are dead, and for what? etc etc
All this would surely have brought down any other PM.. yet Blair has bodyswerved the whole business, and come out grinning. That IS a great political gift.
I don’t like it, obviously. I think he’s cheapened our politics. I think history will judge him harshly. I reckon the whole thing will haunt Labour for a decade. But the sheer political legerdemain is impressive, in a frustrating way. He is indeed ‘extraordinary’.
121 - I disagree I dont despise blair at all. He’s not actually done very much i disagree with violently aside from the Iraq war. Obviously I’m not a major fan of a lot of his policies but not a lot for me to hate him for.
The young Huhne’s drugs article in its entirety is here.
123 - Mike, I am not attacking Yougov - merely saying that the question as to whether yougov is accurate in this case would remain until the votes were opened.
Good point on ICM, though.
I think that reactions towards Thatcher were (and are) much more strongly partisan than those towards Blair.
I think Tabman has probably hit the nail on the head.
I don’t despise Blair as a politician; I certainly despise him at a moral level.
Hurrah a politician that talks sense on drugs. Vote Huhne.
re 119. Dream on Sir. You are yet another Ming-fantasist.
It was interesting in Dunfermline that the activists who had travelled hundreds of miles to help were, in the main, strongly pro-Huhne.
Ming might win but it will be very close.
118 Viara Vike Freiberga- President of Latvia- is a steely and very impressive woman. When Chirac met with her, she gave him so much what for over his asinine remarks about CEE and NATO, all in perfect French (she lived 40 years in Montreal), that he emerged from the meeting sweating and pale. So the Russian veto would probably be combined with a French one. A real pity- she is great!
Griffiths in Riga?? How come?
28. His genius has been not to alienate very large constituencies. The groups who are most bitter about him - farmers, hunting people, and anti-war lefties are relatively small. For me, his callous behaviour during the foot and mouth outbreak earned him my undying hatred, but I am not very representative.
131. She’s teaching English in Latvia now.
http://janestheones.blogspot.com/
130 - new around her eare you? I’m a lib dem voter but not member who would like Hughes to be the leader.
Campbell is clearly ahead and you know it, all the arrogan posturiung coming from Huhne and his camp cannot conceal that.
One thing that I can tell you, if lib dem members are rushing to support Huhne then your voters are going to vote with their feet and you’re gouing to lose seats.
Just what do you want - someone who will tickle your policy fancy at the expense of someone who will get votes? Dream on indeed…..
A bit O/T but I see there is another Council Byelection in North Wilts DC Lyneham Ward . In November the Conservatives gained the seat from the Lib Dems by 1 vote although as it was a split ward there was a small swing to the Lib Dems . The Lib Dem candidate is I believe last November’s losing candidate .
134 - Damn my typing, at least you can tell that I feel very strongly about the position you are taking and post before checking it.
132 My own impression from, I dare say, the polar opposite position to Fred is that he hasn’t been strong enough against the farmers, hunters and truck drivers and has tried far too hard to appease these groups which are his natural enemies.
132 - Reminded me of a Dilbert quote - “Every system shafts somebody, the thing about democracy is that is shafts people that are lazy and people that are stupid. Lazy people cant be bothered to complain, and stupid people dont realize they are being shafted, it’s an inherently stable system”
“Every leader alienates somebody, the thing about Blair is he alienates people that already dont like him, people that are too small in number to make a difference, or too lazy to complain”
Ming was woeful at PMQs his voice broke has he tried to speak over 1 Labour heckle of “behind you”…Hague superb, Blair pretty good too…welcome back 2 party politics.
134 I don’t understand why ukpaul is so sure Campbell is clearly ahead. I talk to lots of Lib Dem members and it’s easy to find Huhne supporters, not difficult to find Campbell ones, but harder to find Hughes backers. I have no problem accepting that this group might be a bit self-selecting, but I can find no evidence at all that anyone is clearly in the lead.
137. Well if you think hiring gangs of thugs to beat farmers’ animals to death and then burn the corpses on bonfires is not being hard enough, then I dread to think what you might have in mind.
125, 128 and also Blair hasn’t especially alienated the business community. Of course many if not most small business owners and executives will still vote conservative, but the spitting feathers fury of the 70s and 80s towards the Labour Party just isn’t there. Probably has had significant implications for Conservative fundraising from the corporate community…
Don’t see anything the matter with that article at all!
a key factor in Blair’s apeal is the way he rose to prominance without creating a clear identity.
Theres a famous anecdote where kinnock mentions him to Foot as ” very capable one of my lot” ( Centre)
and foot replies ” on the contrary I had a long conversation with him the other day he’s clearly one of us ( on the left).
His first Patron was Hattersley ( right) and when he moved under Kinnocks patronage he was largely engaged with policy review and defininng himself AGAINST the Lab party as it then was.
He’s often seen as an Instinctive rather than Ideological politician.
Its arguably his greatest strength that people can project all sorts of beliefs onto him.
What we don’t want is a dull leader. Remember the tedious David Steel? Years of boredom with the self-styled “militant for the moderate man”. Please no…..
I really do think SH’s chances are being WILDLY underestimated. the SH visit here in Canterbury on Monday was packed with members backing Simon.
Some money to be made here…..this will be another Dunfermline.
One aspect of the yougov poll that has been ignored is the 16% undecideds. It may be that nobody has changed their mind since the poll but if that 16% all swing one way then that will affect the result.
Will they all go one way? History tends to say no but history is talking about general elections. In this case are the 16% most likely to be ‘armchair’ members with less knowledge of all candidates and more prone to vote for the big names, Hughes or Ming. If so I’d expect Ming to win the first preference vote with a close battle for second and then Ming to win overall whoever comes 2nd.
137 - He’s banned hunting what else is he supposed to do to show he’s tough on the hunting community?
If CH wins maybe we’ll have to revive our spoof alternative to Focus - “Moderation” - the newsletter of the Party for Moderate Progress Within the Bounds of the Law ( with apologies to Jaroslav Hasek )
140 Agree. Hence running it through the filter of armchair members why most of us think it’s too close to call…
140 - even if it is close on first preferences (and I wouldn’t put it past lib dem members to vote, like turkeys for Christmas
) Campbell will clean up on second preferences.
You don’t seem to realise what a divisive figure Huhne would be and how, added to his clear presentational dificulties, this would be a disaster for the party.
Perhaps Lewis had something like Stalin’s treatment of the Ukraine in mind, Max and Fred.
re 134. Am I not allowed to have a view because I am a relative newcomer? That is not very welcoming. Is this some sort of exclusive club?
Activists - people who spend their leisure time knocking on doors, producing and delivering leaflets and raising money - want someone as leader who they think will be best for the party. They also want to feel that they matter in the selection process.
Ming was a popular choice early on but his limitations have become apparent as the campaign has gone on. He has looked as though he expected the leadership given to him on a plate and resents having to fight for it. That has done him a lot of harm.
Huhne is not perfect but he built up a good reputation making Oxford West and Abingdon into a winnable seat pree 1997 and is seen to have done as good a job as is possible as a Euro MP.
As a genuinely undecided voter in the Leadership election I am amused by the rather crude. attempts to talk up Ming’s campaign & talk down Chris’s. This campaign I still very close, My guess, and without more polls it has to be a guess is that they are roughly nec & neck in the higher 30’s with Hughes in the higher 20’s. All to play for and Simon’s second preferences to decide the final outcome.
On Kate Hoey, she’s no Tory, she is in fact old Labour, but rightwing old Labour. Runnng against her last year was fascinating, with us both copeating as to who was the most anti-Blair candidate. She ran as a rebel, the fact that she held me to a 6% swing was a reflection of her ability to persuade voters in vauxhall that they could still vote for Labour & against Blair at the same time.
In some sense what Blair represents is …
non ideological
common sense
dont change the system its the best there is
Individual Aspiration
small c ,one nation Conservatism i guess
52 - You rushed to judgement about my allegiances, not a good idea when, as you say, you are a relative newcomer. Anyway, no harm done.
Members thought that IDS would be good for the tories, look how wrong they were and out of touch with the voters. At least the tories appear to have learned their lesson the hard way.
Your pluses for Huhne hardly add up, for me, to someone capable of being a media friendly figurehead of a third party.
53 - I quite like Kate Hoey, one of few labour MPs that I could say that of, she’s not afraid to think for herself and that;s always good in my book.
90/95:
David Sanders did a paper based on the BES data that identified four independent axis that described political opinion.
1) The traditional left-right economic axis
2) A “law and order” order
3) Attitudes to minority groups
4) Attitudes to feminism
(The final axis was relatively unimportant and didn’t do as much to describe the electorate as the others)
The important finding was that attitudes towards minorities was independent of views on law and order when these have both traditionally been shoved on the same axis - hence, people could believe in locking criminals away and throughing out the key, but also strongly believe in gay rights and looking after asylum seekers.
146 - It is highly unusual for undecideds to all go one way. They tend to split in a way which is fairly similar to those who have already decided - although the small differences can make a real difference in a tight race. As it happens, I consider that 16% undecided at that time was a surprisingly small number. I suppose some people who are undecided just go for whoever they are leaning towards but may not be strongly committed.
Sure, TB has great appeal, to enough people. But listing his stregnths on here at length….? Its lunchtime, have a beer, cheer yourselves up.
Grandpa Ming’s sales line is apparently ‘the bridge to the future’. If he can sell that, he’s been in the wrong trade.
150 - if Chris Huhne were a liability in any way, I wouldn’t be supporting him. On that score he is streets ahead of both Simon and Ming in my book.
I find the argument of a torrent of Hughes 1, Campbell 2 ballots frankly ludicrous, and untrue in the cases of the Hughes supporters I’ve spoken to.
160 - A serious question as I cannot see it at all, how is Huhne going to appeal to voters who are undecided between lib dems and labour in their marginals and with tories in theirs?
157. That is an interesting and quite surprising finding Anthony. That said, when canvassing in Lyme Regis I did once meet a voter who wanted the immediate introduction of the euro, hanging, and unlimited immigration. He told me he intended to vote UKIP (!)
161. I suppose someone like Huhne could go down well in places like Hampstead or parts of Isligton South.
163 - So the idea is that Huhne will squeeze the green vote?
(as a side issue the IFS seems to have screwed up his idea of green taxes being practical without tax hikes elsewhere).
Fred @ 157 - There’s always one in each year’s canvassing to cheer you up, isn’t there and that one’s a gem.
I have a new rule of canvassing, if they answer you from the upstairs window, just mark them down as NV (Not Voting).
164. Yes as I noted earlier on this thread his tax proposals are quite unrealistic. The Lib Dems have tended to produce airey-fairy economics proposals in the past too, so nothing very new here - but in the context of their professed desire to break away from being a minority party their unwillingness to raise their game in this area is a problem.
64. not the Green in particular, but the middle-upper class who could accept a mix of economic liberalism softned by attention to environmental policies and social liberlism.
O/T and picking up yesterday’s thread re the Liberals in the 1920s, one of the lessons that I seem to pick up from my reading is that the Lloyd George Liberals (LGLs) allied themselves to policies at odds with the grass roots, and ignored electoral organisation out in the constituencies.
There seem to be some potential lessons there for all parties in the current climate.
167 - The problem is that that seems to be exactly what Cameron and his ‘Notting Hill’ tories appear to be aiming for.
67 - Hmm, that sounds like me but I’d never vote green in a general election and his appeal is elusive. Just goes to show that you can never guarentee appealing to the people who you expect to appeal to.
157: Yes, one of the charms of politics is the way people refuse to be put into neat categories. But partly, too, people like to vote against things. I’ve got a voter who fits Mark Senior’s fags backlash prediction: he’s always voted Labour, but will voted LibDem at the next local elecion because of the ciggies ban. I pointed out to him that the proportion of LibDem MPs who voted for the ban is as high as Labour’s and anyway he should vote against me if that’s how he feels, not some uninvolved councillor. Yeah, well, he doesn’t care - he wants to protest about smoking ASAP and he won’t vote Tory so…
Had some (well, three) nice letters from people who said that the fact that they’d been consulted on the decision and influenced my vote and a ban had resulted had made them feel re-linked to the democratic process - ‘I really feel quite excited by politics again and I haven’t felt that for ages’, one wrote. Certainly it got a lot of people involved - I had more spontaneous letters on this than anything for a long time, perhaps because it’s a straightforward issue on which people feel they can fully understand the pros and cons and reach an informed decision - unlike, say, a solution to traffic congestion, on which many people just feel baffled frustration.
Only one so far, though, Mark.
169 - except that although this appeals to Lib Dem voters, it is anathema to the Tory core vote (see also my 168).
72. But not enough to stop them voting for him ?
172 - Indeed Tabbers - how do you appeal to other parties voters without disenfranchising your own? I think that Cameron is hoping that pure hatred of Blair will be enough to keep them on-side, but perhaps he could do with a Liberal history lesson… or maybe we are just too hopeful of the death of the Tory party
Having read the anti-Huhne postings today, I think that it is the clearest sign yet that he is in the lead and the desperation that has set in with the Campbell campaign.
I can’t really believe the nonsense that is being talked about the Lib Dem MEPs and why more aren’t supporting Chris. There are only about 11 or 12 of them, and they are hardly the most representative group of Lib Dems (Emma Nicholson???!!!, Sarah Ludford???!!! to name but two..). Don’t forget that these people have their own agendas too.
If anyone doubts Chris’ ability to win over the people he works with, look at the large numbers of Eastleigh, Hampshire and South-East members, activists, councillors and MPs that he has supporting him. Also read the comments in the press from the journalists that have actually worked with him (e.g. Francis Wheen, Hamish McRae, Stephen Glover etc), rather than the Tory attack dogs.
As far as the MSPs are concerned, they are not supporting him out of a lack of knowledge, they have worked directly with Chris on the Steel Commission and have been sufficiently impressed to back him over Ming or Simon.
I’m sure Chris will win and I’m sure he’ll be a great leader.
171. Yes Nick P I know quite a few people who get very excited by the idea of having things banned as well. I’m unsure they are very good role models though.
174 - I don’t expect it to die (well not yet, at least
). If you want to look for historical parallels (”Just a bit of fun”!) how about the charismatic lawyer, on the extreme of his party, leading his country in a war, who splits the party and falls out with his main rival?
From the sounds of tory supporters on here I doubt that Cameron will lose their support, they appear to have had their fill of the wilderness years. Blair managed it in 97 with old labour, all that remains is for Blair/Brown to ‘do a Major’ for history to repeat itself.
This is a joke
but it did occur to me that if Huhne were elected we would have
Labour trying to become the Conservative Party
The Tories trying to become Lib dems one week, NuLab the next
Lib Dems trying to become “nice” Greens.
I don’t think this is true btw. Andrea has a more accurate view above.
175 - I think you are overestimating the importance of people who criticise Huhne on this site. I very much doubt any of his critics here have access to information suggesting Huhne is in the lead (beyond that in the public domain). The fact is that Huhne has emerged as a serious contender who could win, and is being subjected to more scrutiny and criticism both fair and unfair than he was a few weeks ago. Everyone accepts that. But I it is hardly a sign he is in the lead or that other campaigns are desperate. Are people at the forefront of the Campbell and Hughes campaigns really likely to waste their time preaching to non-Lib Dem members and the already converted here? Be sensible!
178 - OTOH there is an awful lot of emotional energy being invested in DC as the Tory Messiah (He’s not .. he’s a naughty boy
). Much in the same way that the turnover in football managers is much quicker nowadays because the media fuel the bonfire, if the DC bandwagon stutters in May, or doesn’t perform according to plan, then the currently gruntled might become rather disgruntled. And as they were keen to remind us in early January, the Tories are not sentimental when it comes to underpforming leaders. The expectations are awfully high.
And before anyone has a go at the Lib Dems, optimism and expectation are different things
75 - You’re still deluding yourself. The reasoning that if someone is being attacked is because they are a good choice is, quite frankly, self serving rubbish.
He’s being attacked because *he will lead you to oblivion*, your bloody minded response shows how you’re being completely out-foxed.
“I’m sure Chris will win and I’m sure he’ll be a great leader. ”
As a lib dem voter that statement chills me to the bone, you’ve misread the situation fatally.
Tabman - I can tell you from within that Cameron’s authority over the party is absolute, and that authority is based on the wholesale expectation that he is our leader for the long term.
I agree totally with an earlier posting. Conservatives have had it with being in a party emasculated by our own bickering and sniping; and it just won’t happen with Cameron no matter what he does.
It is the turn of other parties to suffer from internal splits, divisive leadership coups and being a national media laughing stock for a while.
181. Tabman, your desire to see chaos within the Tory party does you credit, at least for consistency. Cameron won because he promised change and looked the part. He has now introduced change and some people don’t like it. He only won 67/33 after all. Realism has made a comeback in the grand old party and members, including members of parliament, are neither getting carried away nor preparing to panic if we don’t make sweeping gains in May. We wanted to see progress, we’re seeing it. We knew it was going to be a long game and that there would be setbacks on the way. That’s politics. Dave stays as leader for the duration.
183/184 - you’re nothing if not consistent
I wasn’t forecasting chaos, just pointing out the potential for disappointment.
Actually I was just getting bored of talking about our leadership contest and wanted to indulge in my second favourite passtime.
Baskerville…..”We wanted to see progress, we’re seeing it.” -except in Scotland!
185. Tabman, you should know that you shouldn’t dare to criticize Cameron! It’s a new national policy…but I’m not subjected to it, while you’re
183/4 - and to be fair to myself (no-one else will be
), I was also drawing parallels with current Labour travailles. Perhaps you’d care to join me? 
86. Cons only have to win over the UK once, then prevent Celtic MPs voting on English matters for all time and NuLab are stuffed for the forseeable.
188. which are always the same…the only different the majority isn’t 160+ anymore, but just 64.
164: If any parties espouse “airey- fairy” economics, I’d say it was those that like to pretend that good services don’t need increased taxation to pay for them, ie. the Tory & NuLabour parties.
It was most amusing to hear the callers on 5Live! yesterday who all said how terrible it was that that “poor woman didn’t get Herceptin treatment approved”. Not a word of course on the massive hikes in tax such cutting edge medical treatments would require if this principle was applied generally to the NHS.
155 ukpaul is not quite right in suggesting Tory members made a mistake electing IDS and that he was unpopular with voters. Polls and actual votes in local and European elections show IDS was more successful than his critics imagine. Ironically, IDS was defenestrated in the aftermath of an unexpectedly good showing at the polls.
IDS’s big problem was that he was lousy at PMQs. This demoralised Tory MPs who were thus easily persuaded by serial plotters like Maude and Portillo. Michael Howard, the party’s saviour, proved no better than IDS at attracting votes which was really quite remarkable given the government’s increasing unpopularity.
190 -
“When I get older, into third term, many years from now,
Will you still be voting with me down the line, off-line briefings, mutter and whine?
If I’m away and missing a vote, would you take the floor?
Will you still need me, will you still keep me,
When my majority’s sixty-four?”
189 - But Labour would just need to win a UK majority to reverse that - Scottish and Welsh MPs would indeed be able to vote for reversal because it would not be an English matter. It would also be presented as a British version of the Enabling Act - certainly looks a lot like legislating to increase your own majority without an election - and why bother when it would be reversed the second the other lot got in?
193. Chris Bryant: yes, but now take off your shirt!
Jeremy Corbyn: NO, I knew I should have paid a visit to Granita that day
94. While it is easy to deny the democratic issues by not changing the status quo it would be a remarkable act to reinstate an obvious anomaly and unfairness which would would be impossible to sell to the English voter (or RW press).
194. You miss the point, I think. No Labour government would dare to reverse such a Tory move - ‘oh we’re going to back to the old system where Scots MPs can vote on English affairs but you English have no say over Scotland’ - simply untenable. Once a Tory government does that, it’ll be set in stone and Labour will have to accept it. Just as the Tories now accept devolution.
So this is a big problem for Labour, and they need to come up with creative solutions before it nixes them. Alternatively, they could go for PR and thus prevent any more majority Tory governments…
Fred @ 164
I don’t understand your point about Huhne & green taxes. Am I right that you are a Tory? The Tories have been comitted to shifting the blance of taxes awayfrom firect income taxes and onto indirect sales taxes since Thatcher became Leadr in the mid Seventies. What Huhne is proposing is broadly a progressive reinement of that. While its perfectly possible to disagree with a shift away from direct taxes onto eco-taxes, it hardly seems to me to be the airey fairey economic plan you are suggesting.
I’m a supporter of green taxes, (not ncessariily as yet of Chris Huhne though), but I do recongnise there are potentially problems with them. The major problem is the impact that green taxes have on the poor, they raise the cost of goods & services, like petrol for instance and it is those on fixed or low incomes who suffer most. What is interesting about Huhne’s ideas is that he is proposing to use the extra money raised to massively raise the income tax threshold, so taking the poor & low paid out of the tax system altogether & thereby giving them more money in their pockets to cover the increased cost of goods. The beauty of this approach is that rasing the threshold of the poorest also means big tax cuts for middle income earners as well.
This combined with the likely abandoning of the 50% top rate tax proposal, would have the LDs entering the next lection committed to pretty massive direct income tax cuts for the low paid & middle classes, funded by increases in green taxes. As I say although you might not like it its hardly economic illiteracy.
Chris Huhne is the safe pair of hands but nothing different or particularly special. As the best communicator I think Hughes might do better than expected.
The biggest problem with choosing Huhne is that he is doing well for all the reasons that David Laws, Nick Clegg or Ed Davey should have done well for. And those 3 are all far more talented.
I see an article in today’s Spectator describes as ‘ominous’ the Yougov poll giving Brown a six point lead of Cameron Mike demolished on the last thread. Don’t these have-a-go amateurs look at this website? I mean really…
98
It doesn’t add up.
“THE front-runner in the race for the Liberal Democrat leadership has been told that his tax plans could cost £21 billion.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that Chris Huhne’s commitment to exclude people on the £5.05-an-hour minimum wage from paying tax would lead to an increase in income tax equivalent to 5.5p in the pound. Mr Huhne has pledged to increase environmental taxes to meet the cost of his programme.
Stuart Adam, a senior research economist at the institute, said: “As a first approximation, this income tax cut would cost roughly £21 billion, some 1.7 per cent of national income or 4.2 per cent of the total revenue the Chancellor expects to receive this year.
“It is almost equivalent to the total amount that the Government receives each year in fuel duty. Mr Huhne’s proposal is an enormous tax cut by recent standards and may require an equally big tax rise to pay for it.” ”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,17129-2042666,00.html
If an economist can’t put together a good economic policy what hope for other areas of government?
196 - The first point is that the only people who care about the West Lothian Question are a small bunch of anoraks. That doesn’t mean they’re wrong but you can’t pretend it is high on voters’ list of priorities. It is akin to Lib Dems who still say PR is the number one big issue - it might be right or wrong and polls generally show people in favour, but it is a fringe issue for normal people. Secondly, an incoming Labour government just says, “It is an important matter of (unionist) principle that our representatives all have the same weight no matter where in the UK they come from. If English regions want assemblies similar to those in Scotland and Wales, that’s fine, otherwise it’s an anomaly we all have to live with in support of the wider principle”. That argument might well not be right, but it just about holds water and is no more absurd than the justification for any number of bills governments of all colours have introduced over the years. I can’t see an incoming Tory PM bothering with this sort of nonsense and if they did it wouldn’t alter the long term landscape as you suggest.
Bullseye, I like the idea of tax cuts for the poor. But tax cuts for the poor funded by increases in fuel duty won’t really work will they? You have to have a reasonable income to gain from income tax cuts. The people who would gain most would be middle class people living in London who don’t use the car much.
So one would need a serious of other measures to redress the situation.
The problem is that there are never quick and easy solutions to these things. If there were, someone else would probably have done it already.
02.
If DC didnt care about it why did he set up his constitutional policy wonk 18 months in the long grass committee ?
201 - All that proves is that if you want three views, ask two economists. The IFS comment certainly doesn’t ring true though - surely it is utterly inconceivable that the tax paid by those on the minimum wage totals 4.2% of government revenue as the article implies? I would be interested to see both their arguments in full - I suspect the Times is misrepresenting the views of both men.
202. Wrong, lightweight and specious. An increasing number of people DO care about the West Lothian question, and politicians know this. Why else do you think GB is desperately bigging up his ‘Britishness’?
A Tory government will sort this out, and it would be very difficult for any Labour government to reverse this: to spend time in the Commons carefully disenfranchising English voters. You really think they could get that past the people?
As if.
Next thing you’ll be telling me that a Labour government could lie through its teeth so as to invade a non threatening power at the behest of a born-again Republican president.
Oops.
204 - Because Dave can’t see a policy area without feeling the need to pretend to be interested in it by setting up a meaningless talking shop consisting of a bunch of vacuous west London boys?
206 - seanT, you’ve slipped again.
Millions of voters have been disenfracnhised for decades by FPTP yet, as the Tories are keen to remind us, they just don’t care enough. Its the same with this. You might get in a lather about it because you think you’ve “won England” (yes, yes, yes, you got the most votes last time) but Josephine Public won’t get her nickers in a twist about it.
206 - Hmmm, I am reminded of numerous tedious debates with fellow Lib Dems along the lines that if only we trumpeted the benefits of PR in our election leaflets we would probably get a Commons majority of 500. Having only fairly recently escaped from ours, though, I am perfectly happy if the Tories wander off down there own particular cul-de-sac.
I have to agree that much to my chagrin very few people actually give a monkeys about the WLQ.
And I am very impressed with the unity Cameron has got. I was in the house talking to some right-wingers recently and not a peep of dissent.
The problem with Kate Hoey, IMHO, is that she was able to create a rather effective coalition of anti-Blairites behind her. My ex-, with whom I keep contact if only for political gossip, lives in Vauxhall and as a staunch Tory voted for Hoey. Why? Because that an MP would be elected who would vote against Blair as much as a Tory one would.
71 Unfortunately Nick , there will be a lot more than 1 vote lost in the fags backlash . When the voters or quite likely usually non voters on Labour inner city estates realise their leisure choices have been banned by Nulab then they will stir themselves into a protest vote . Wrongly as you say it may go to Lib Dems on this , but my worry is that it will go to someone like the BNP
Lennon, re hypersphere posts… I’m pretty sure that there is a 3D representation of political beliefs, but it is best expressed as a Riemann hypersphere.
Put left/right on ecomnomic issues as x axis , liberal/authortarian on social issues as y-axis and put idealist/unconcerned to show level of interest in politics on z-axis. (pragmatist is at z=o, utterly inconsistent hypocrit z= infinity, and unrealistic idealist z= -infinity)
Then when you project onto the Riemann hypersphere you get all point infinity people lumped together (mad idealists, unconsiable hypocrits, fascists, anarchists…) Not a bad congruence…
208. Er, I never said this was the number one issue, nor did I say FPTP was any good or not, I’m just pointing out that it is an issue of rising importance, as is evidenced by dear Gordon’s desperate attempt to reaffirm himself as a British politician, within a renewed idea of Britishness. You think he’s doing that because he loves Yorkshire pudding? or just because he’s a Scot sitting in Scotland who is desperately worried that that might count aainst him in a GE?
Come on.
Indeed I seem to recall a bit of spin from a Blair aide a year or two ago, who told Boris Johnson that ‘Gordon wll never be PM, because he’s Scottish.’
You can be assured that Labour are well aware of this problem, and its rising salience, and they would love to fix it in a way that doesn’t seriously damage them. Trouble is, its not obvious how they can do that.
This is a bit of a polemic, but it is relevant to the topic, so please go with it. I have a different view on the current political scene to many, so I’ll try to explain my way of thinking. I feel that we, being everyone, are moving very quickly towards a much better state of affairs than we have experienced for a very long time. Generally-speaking, events are coming up and being reacted to much more quickly than they ever were before. For example, the Iraq war. 1 to 2 million people demonstrated against it in London before it even started. Contrast that with what happened over Vietnam in the USA - it took years before there to be large-scale demonstrations.
People are becoming more and more savvy, and far less trusting of politicians. Blair is really helping with this change - only a minority believe what he says any more. And when more publicity is given to the insidious enabling law that is being touted around, http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/regulation/documents/bill/ria.pdf more and more people will begin to ask questions. A lot of people may act like sheep most of the time, but they aren’t really sheep.
So many want new ways of doing things and it is my firm belief that those new ways will be thrust upon those who refuse to change. And so it is with the Conservative Party - we have Cameron leading the Tories, and within a few weeks of winning the leadership election appointed the Editor of the Ecologist magazine to head up a policy group. Incredible! But true. And as far as I’m concerned, very welcome.
So what is the relevance to Huhne and Ming etc? Well it’s this. Huhne is full of new ideas. Ming, capable though he is, comes across as … well no matter how capable he might be, he appears to lack get up and go. Unfortunately for Ming, he’s not going to grab everyone’s attention, is he? And that is what is needed nowadays. Whether it’s through charisma, as with Cameron, or ideas, as with Huhne. There has to be something there to attract interest. I feel that LD members are attracted by the new ideas themselves - that has always been the LD strongpoint - and realise the potential. He displays the intellect that people can believe will cope well with the fast-changing times and come up with the new ideas that are and will be necessary. Ergo, Huhne will be elected as LD leader and the beliefs which I’ve set out (coupled with the YouGov poll) tell me why.
I read on one blog, about QT, that Huhne ‘lost’ the question about Iraq. The first thing he said was that we have to withdraw because we are part of the problem. But just days later, Basra Council refuses to have anything to do with the British Army. He wasn’t wrong.
Notwithstanding what I’ve written, I’m not a Huhney. Left and right are very last century and this is a view which is gaining a lot of credence. Similarly, the policies and ideas are far more important than who is presenting them, be it any one party or poltician.
One last point. Psephologists specialising in leadership elections may like to answer this one: how many candidates coming up fast on the outside go on to lose?
Woops! Annuitant’s mask has slipped. That was me really.
Comment to Comment 5
Anyone that thinks the tide is ebbing for Huhne has not been ringing Lib Dem party memebrs in the last few days. His position is stronger and stronger amongst activists.
As regards armchair members, as his visibility increases so his support improves - and this applies even if he only manages a draw with the other candidates.
Sean T re 206 what’s so bad about being a born-again Christian?
214 - That people like a bit of “Britishness” has nothing to do with the West Lothian Question. Politicians of all parties have always tried to wrap themselves in the flag in search of a vote or two, and they always will.
114.”Indeed I seem to recall a bit of spin from a Blair aide a year or two ago, who told Boris Johnson that ‘Gordon wll never be PM, because he’s Scottish.’”
the name of the aide was published or was it just the usual “anonymous source”?
On “green taxes” - yes, the London problem is obvious. As a potential winner from the Huhne plan, I would nevertheless argue for dealing with it by a corresponding Council tax increase in London. Obviously, none of us can yet say what the detailed figures ought to be. Tories need to be careful - are they opposed to taxing income (in which case they should agree with Huhne in principle) or to progressive taxation whether of income or expenditure? (Fred’s argument IIUI is that globalization means it’s a dead duck anyway - I think it will be, but not for a fair while yet BTW)
Whoever in the 1980s failed to sell to Mrs Thatcher the idea that full-time students could defer (a signficiant proportion of) their Poll Tax liability - perhaps by the kind of loan system that we now have instead of student grants - which would IMHO have avoided all the associated civil disorder - did the “flat tax” cause long-term damage in this country. Other countries, whether in the Baltic or not, don’t have this vividly painul memory.
210. Grr, I reiterate - I’m not saying that the WLQ is a burning issue for millions, just that (in agreement with Jamie) I think it’s an obvious democratic anomaly that, once righted by a Tory government, will be very hard for Labour to reinstate. And this will have serious repercussions for any future would-be Labour government, given the greater conservatism of England compared to the UK as a whole.
I think the devolution comparisom is a good one - it wasnt hot topic over breakfast across the majority of Sco + Wales but once done its not likely to be reversed.
218. Crikey, a very jumpy comment board today! Maybe I’m being obtuse - all I meant by that remark is that a born-again Republican president is not the sort of person who immediately recommends himself to your average Labour MP. The British left simply has a distaste for American evangelicals, a fact which is surely inarguable.
As it happens, I’m probably one of the few people in Britain who has some regard for Dubya. But that’s by the by…
202: James expresses my view on the WLQ exactly. More generally, people want good policies, and are profoundly uninterested in structures. I’ve had I think two letters on the WLQ/English Parliament/etc group of issues in nine years as MP.
If that sounds like partisan pleading, I’ll add that my constituents, so far as I can tell from what they write about, are equally uninterested in our introduction of regional assemblies (which I voted for), have no wish to elect them as we suggested they might like (which I also voted for), are barely interested in Lords or electoral reform (both of which I support), don’t much mind where policing or PCT boundaries are drawn (nor do I), and don’t care whether there are unitary or binary local authorities, unless it affects the level of council tax. I think it’s a reasonable criticism of all political parties that we spend too much time debating the structure of public affairs when we ought to be focusing on content.
[224] Sean T, I thought you were in the Far East…
220. I think it was Jonathan Powell, but someone on here who is better informed can probably say for sure…
Anna - thanks for the Riemann Hypersphere comments - kinda what I was thinking of as a basis to start with. Will come back for more suggestions when I’ve figured out what I’m actually trying to do!
224 Sorry Sean! I just get annoyed when people try and juxtapose being born-again with invading Iraq or blowing up abortion clinics…
227. yup, thanks. I googled and it’s him.
203.
Nick - obviously Labour turkeys aren’t interested in voting for Xmas.
228 I’m still working on a Norm function for it. I think the consistency (z) - axis probably needs to be a logarithmic scale as a fair dollop of inconsistency doesn’t necessarily change one’s voting behaviour or self-perception markedly…
232 - In fact you could argue most of the populace suffers from a fair amount of inconsistency…
Might actually be the case that a double logarithmic function is most appropriate for the general populace.
Remember Hugh Grant dancing round the room in Love Actually, to the Pointer Sisters Jump (For Your Love)? Well the Hungarian PM has released a video in the election campaign over there of him doing just that. lol http://smh.com.au/news/breaking/hungarian-pm-does-a-hugh-grant/2006/02/15/1139890775113.html
222 - seanT, I’m not sure that England is any more conservative than Scotland (indeed there might be a body of evidence to show its less conservative) - its just that (at present) being conservative in Scotland means voting Labour.
236. Yes, fair point. As a fellow Celt I find the apathetic, tribal, reactionary-conservative socialism of Scotland (and Wales) very depressing. They’ve only gt to look across the sea to Ireland to see what a tax-cutting fiscally right-wing regime could do for their economy. But instead they keep voting in these air head lefties. Sad.
2. Mike, I must object to your Chelsea-Blair analogy.
If Blair is the Chelsea of politicians this implies he was completely useless and underachieving until 2003, with very little support, until a dodgy Russian came along and invested £400m into his campaign.
Instead you are looking for a team that has had consistent success since the early 90s. Arsenal, Man Utd, Juventus, Milan and Bayern Munich would be better options.
P.S. Andrea - I’m on a work colleague’s computer now (for a brief 10 minutes). I don’t want a repeat of Matlockgate, ok?
148 - ah! A Jaroslav Hasek fan - how pleasing!
How many backbench Labour MPs feel like the Good Soldier Svejk?
138. Julian, but the main question is why you’re not working! maybe your boss will get a short note soon…..
236 - what sort of a celt are you?
238 - Matlockgate - how intriguing. It didn’t involve Matlock Bath did it?
241. Tabman, don’t get too excited…..I’ll email you about it later.
242. Cornish. Kernow bys Viken! But now I must bid you goodnight, cause night is falling on the Chao Praya River.. Peace to all.
comments passim. The West Lothian Question only becomes a hot political topic when the prime minister, and thus prime mover of political activity, comes from Scotland or Wales… step forward one Mr G. Brown.
Do you really think the Tories will refrain from attacking Brown over this? DC may not like Punch and Judy, but when GB is throwing off his kilt and stepping into a pinstriped suit and a bowler hat, HMO has a duty to kick his Kircaldy ass.
244.”DC may not like Punch and Judy”
DC says he doesn’t like Punch and Judy and the first thing he did was “punching” Hilary, the Clueless! But she probably deserved it
244 I thought you lot were meant to be Unionists rather than English Nationalists.
243 - your fellow Cornish Celts are a rather sensible lot, prefering rugby to football and being the only county in the UK to elect a full set of LD MPs
247 -
But thing you’re technically wrong about the county of Lib Dems… How do the Scottish Counties work - surely Orkney and Shetland are there own county… 
[247] Shouldn’t that be “preferring football to soccer”
?
I still think that MC will win in spite of the activist vote (which probably is bid for Huhne). Luckily the armchair members are pretty good at picking the most appealing candidate from the perspective of someone who is not fanantical about politics, and there are about 45 million of them who get the say in the votes that count.
I think you should ask the MEPs why they are not supporting Huhne rather than guessing the reason.
247, 248. The Cornish are a contrary bunch. Very eurosceptic, traditionally royalist, and commonly libertarian, they nonetheless vote for MPs - Lib Dem and Labour - who hold completely opposite views. I blame Methodism.
248 - well, its their own count[ies], but yes you’re right. Also Montgomeryshire, and Brocknockshire and Radnorshire. Similarly Caithness.
I should have said “England”.
249 IA - quite probably - I have an excuse though!
205 I agree with you.
Without knowing what they have costed and how we can’t possibly judge Huhne’s plans.
Have they included just the low paid, have they included all taxpayers, have they assumed any compensating changes elsewhere in income tax rates?
As I understand it Huhne has set out an objective - raising the income tax threshold - and the IFS appear to have costed one element of it.
[252] An excuse? I can think of at least three…
252 - and Cardiganshire …
254 - state school, Cambridge, LD
Must admit - to say they all talk of a nice contest, they are all making snide comments against each other!
Interesting that Huhne has reportedly got a £21 billion black hole in his tax plans!
ukpaul @ 201 leaving aside views on Huhne ( I am not aligned to any candidate) the point of the article is a bit odd, of course this is a tax cut that would have to be paid for by increased taxes elsewhere - green taxes, which is exactly the point that Huhne is making.
Peter @ 203 - Actually you don’t have to be earning much at all to benefit from tax cuts as we tax people at minimum wage in this country. Also the fact that cutting tax for the poorest also help the middle class who essentially fund public services through their contribution is one of the reasons I support green taxes in the first place
To be fair to Huhne, I’m alway very distrustful of IFS caculations. For one when it comes to tax cuts, they seem to assume it is a nil sum game. In other words that the money you take out of the system by cutting taxes never returns. This is a mistaken view. Most of the money people would get from tax cuts would be spent again either on homes (attracting Stamp Duty) or goods (raising money through VAT) which in turn increases the profits of business’s who therefore pay more corproration tax.
225 - Nick, as one of your constituents, I’d like to point out that I’m ferociously interested in all those subjects that you mention. But that’s because I have a rather nerdish regard for matters constitutional and geographical, and, being moderately healthy and childless, can afford to take a more detatched stand from those issues that we suppose politics is more about. And I’m probably far from representative.
In my experience, most people are interested in where you draw the boundaries, what the structure of local governemnt is, etc. - but largely only inasmuch as it fits in with their preferences of what they want to call their locality e.g. no, this isn’t Manchester, it’s Cheshire. These arguments almost never take consideration of who would provide the best local government. A lot of heartcahe here could have been avoided if people felt able to infer that changing local authorities didn’t involve changing geography, and that, say, living under the auspices of Wirral borough council didn’t preclude living in Cheshire.
James M @ 257
This is getting stupid. Everyone knows that a tax cut has to be funding elsewhere. While you can attack Huhne for the type of taxes he wants to increase to pay for his cuts, you have to be blind, deaf, dumb and stupid not to notice that he is infact calling for increased green taxes to pay for his proposed tax cuts.
Huhne was very firm on inheritance tax when on QT. I note the Daily Express is now leading a campaign for its abolition. IHT bites more severely in the UK than in most countries, and many have no IHT. The problem is that the truly savvy pay none, and set up all sorts of sophisticated ways of avoiding it, legally.
Until recently IHT gathered little money for the Treasury; only in recent years has it become significant, due to surprising house price rises.
[256] Two out of three (I’m a grammar school boy myself :)) - I was thinking occupationally…
After Chris Huhne’s visit to Chippenham on Sunday (12th), I spoke to more than a dozen party members (i.e. Lib Dems whose views genuinely count, as they have a vote). All but one were undecided beforehand, but were sufficiently impressed by Chris Huhne to decide to vote for him as their first choice. However, you must bear in mind that members who strongly support either of the other contenders were less likely to attend this meeting. Elsewhere within the North Wiltshire constituency (Tory, but strong Lib Dem presence), many members are voting for Ming. So I am guessing that here, Chris Huhne has edged ahead of Ming. There is less support for Simon Hughes.
As for me, I’m still listening and watching.
Surely Simon Hughes will win the leadership as if he is in third place, then in Libdem world that means he is the winner!
194 - Not if the Tories also added a provision to the Standing Orders of the House of Commons along the lines of “A two-thirds majority of all Members of the House shall be required to amend or repeal the Standing Order relating to the rights of Members representing non-English constituencies in certain divisions”.
Barring a Labour landslide even bigger than 1997, Labour will never have two-thirds of Commons seats. They would need the Lib Dems and perhaps even some minority party MPs on their side to get rid of such an order.
The two-thirds majority provision to change rules of order/standing orders is common in other legislatures.
264 - Sara - are you from N Wilts? I originate there. Drop me a line tabman@thatsaid.co.uk
261 You are correct that tax cuts have to be funded elsewhere but I recall an article in the ST some months ago where a leading Republican NeoCon was arguing for a 10% cut in Income tax without any need to raise other taxes to compensate
266 - I think that this would contravene the central pillar of what passes for a constitution in this country - parliament shall not bind it’s successor. Or if they did pass it, it would be perfectly constitutional for a future parliament to repeal the two-thirds bit.
246 - It’s because we’re a Unionist party that we should be looking to prevent any break-up of the Union due to one or other part feeling dissafected - something, admittedly, we singularly failed to do in the 80’s & ’90’s. If England votes Conservative and has Scottish and Welsh MP’s impose legislation that is found unpopular then the WLQ will, I believe, become an issue.
People in Scotland & Wales got extremely pissed off with English Tory MP’s imposing laws on them that they did not support. I don’t know what people think is uniquely different about the English that makes them less likely to react the same way.
So far as I know only one poll has been done in Scotland on the subject and showed a majority in favour of Scots MP’s not voting on England-only isues.
270 - “People in Scotland & Wales got extremely pissed off with English Tory MP’s imposing laws on them that they did not support.” - true.
Some Scottish Education legislation from 1992 to 1997 was even opposed by a majority of Scottish TORY MPs.
The suggested solution, though, is constitutionally unworkable. You can have an English Parliament (though that, IMO, is a poor halfway-house to the break up of the Union) or a UK Parliament, but you can’t make Westminster as currently constituted fulfill both functions at the same time, unless you devise some sort of dual government. Certification of Bills would be time-consuming and controversial, NI legislation would potentially be a huge problem, and I can’t see how this could be applied the HofL.
261. Yes he is but the problem is, as I outlined earlier, that there is no conceivable green tax that could raise the kind of sums necessary. Raising the income tax threshold to 10k per year - not a bad idea in itself - would cost £30bn a year. This is not far short of the total yield from corporation tax every year, and is around a quarter of the yield from income tax. Looked at another way, this sum is 30% more than the total annual yield from fuel duties, four times the current yield from tobacco tax, thirty times the yield from air passenger duty, and forty times the yield from the climate change levy.
The sums simply do not add up, that is why I called it airey-fairy. There is only one realistic way you could fund a tax relief on this scale, and that is by holding public spending growth down below economic growth over a number of years and raising the tax threshold bit by bit with the savings. This is the nub of the whole issue - people have got to get real and understand that the reason the tax burden is high is because public spending is high too. There is no magic source of funds which can be tapped to give everyone a big tax cut while maintaining high growth in public spending.
272 - I don’t think “English votes for English laws” makes much sense if you don’t have an English executive. Otherwise if you have a UK majority for one party and an English majority for another, you end up with ministers for health, education etc who can never expect to pass any legislation.
273 - I have no details, but surely if the allowance was raised to £10,000, there would be a commensurate rise in the basic rate of income tax, so that for those on say £35,000, just sneaking in as basic rate taxpayers, the net effect was, at best cost neutral? Those at the bottom gain, those in the middle - no change.
273. Don’t see the problem, and if there is a problem it’s not beyond the wit of man to fix. Whenever there’s a law on a matter devolved to Edinburgh, Scots MPs in the Commons don’t vote. How hard is that?
The alternative, persisting with a system where Scots MPs vote on things like English pub-smoking laws, is grotesquely wrong, and is more likely to lead to the break-up of the Union than anything else.
261 - Bullseye - I never said that it wasn’t obvious that if you reduce taxation somewhere, and you want the same overall levels, you need to increase other taxations or create new taxes. I was merely pointing out that Huhne had been accused of having a black hole - something politicians often accuse each other of. I had not seen it had been reported earlier in the thread.
That Hungarian Opposition Hugh Grant video is superb.
274 - Precisely. There’d be a built-in constitutional deadlock, which you can’t resolve satisfactorily within Westminster as currently designed. What’s interesting, in many ways, is the way Conservative thought is tentatively moving towards the kinds of solutions that only a written constitution can solve.
275 The maths doesn’t work. Skew the tax rate so that those earning £35,000 or more pay the same amount of tax, reduce the tax bill for those earning less than £10,000… The overall amount of tax has still been reduced. To keep the books balanced you would need to raise the basic tax rate so that people earning more than £10,000 paid more tax than they do now…
279 - but the point is that that scheme would still reduce the requirement for replacement funding below what the IFS has quoted.
278 Or just introduce a convention that says Scottish MPs are expected to absent themselves when legislation doesn’t affect there constituents…
Conventions are very powerful in our constitution, for example it doesn’t say anywhere that the PM has to come from the HoC, but by convention he does now…
2789. I’m not sure I agree, and even if you are right - at the moment the system depends entirely on the English putting up with a rotten deal, and tolerating a system that discriminates against them. The whole ramshackle edifice is built on the shifting sands of an injustice. It should be fixed before it falls over and flattens people.
280 The IFS has probably looked at how much money is taken in taxes on earnings less than £10,000. Bumping up the rates on bands over £10,000 could regain all this money, however in the end having exempted some people from paying tax, the burden will fall more heavily on others.
273 et al. Without going into the details, those on low incomes pay the highest marginal rates of tax. The emphasis must therefore be on integrating the tax/benefit systme to end this.
In light of various comments on the Times story regarding the IFS costing of Chris Huhne’s income tax proposal, I append below the raw material we gave the newspaper when they asked what it would cost. As we (and various posts here) have pointed out, this would presumably be only one part of a package of changes - Mr Huhne has said that overall he is not intending to increase the tax burden. We also point out that any costing of a change this large is necessarily a rough approximation, not least because the change would alter taxpayers’ behaviour (and it is unclear whether this would make the reform more or less expensive):
“Liberal Democrat leadership contender Chris Huhne has proposed that people on the minimum wage should be taken out of income tax. Defining precisely what this implies in practice depends on how many hours a week and weeks a year you assume that people on the minimum wage work.
Let us assume for the sake of argument that Mr Huhne were to double the existing personal income tax allowance this year from £4,895 a year to £9,790, and that he would retain the additional £2,195 allowance for the 65s-and-over and £2,325 for the 75s-and-over. This would mean, for example, that a person under 65 on the minimum wage working 37½ hours a week for 52 weeks a year would no longer be liable to income tax.
We also assume that the increase in the personal allowance eliminates the lower 10p income tax band and eats into the band of income at which the basic 22p rate is paid, so that the amount people can receive before paying the higher 40p rate is unchanged:
Current system (for under-65s)
Band of income Income tax rate on band
£0-£4,895 Zero
£4,895-£6,985 10%
£6,985-£37,295 22%
£37,295+ 40%
Alternative system (for under-65s)
Band of income Income tax rate on band
£0-£9,790 Zero
£9,790-£37,295 22%
£37,295+ 40%
As a first approximation, this income tax cut would cost roughly £21 billion, some 1.7% of national income or 4.2% of the total revenue the Chancellor expects to receive this year. But the true cost could lie several billions either side of this figure, both because it is an approximation and because the reform may encourage people to change their hours of work or to seek more or less highly paid jobs. Around 23 million people on incomes in excess of £9,790 would receive an income tax cut worth £826.10 a year, around 6 million on incomes between £4,895 and £9,790 would receive an income tax cut less than £826.10 but greater than zero, and around 19 million would receive zero because they do not pay income tax.
We have looked at the impact of raising the personal allowance in isolation. To say anything meaningful about the implications for families and the public finances, we would need to know the details of the whole tax and benefit reform package of which it would be a part – and the timescale over which the reforms would be phased in. Mr Huhne has said that his income tax cut would be paid for in part by a rise in environmental taxes. He has also said that he would also increase benefits for poorer people who would lose from the increase in environmental taxes, but would not be compensated by lower income tax bills. He is also considering other changes.”
276 - But, as book value points out, the fundamental problem is that, if the situation does arise, there would be effectively no government for English issues: the UK government would not be able to carry its legislation, and the Opposition would not have enough support to take office. That’s not a situation Westminster’s designed to cope with.
280 - Yes.
What does this “£30bn” figure actually take into account? Does it assume basic rate remains at 22%?
281. But that would mean that a Scottish MP who held a cabinet post would not be able to vote in their own legislation if it only affected England? That surely isn’t the best state of affairs?
284 Nope! The marginal rate of tax is how much tax you pay for every extra pound earned. For someone on £100,000pa it’s 40%, for someone on £1,000pa 0%. However you can claim that there is a band of lower income earners (£6,000-£12,000ish) who pay a higher proportion of their disposable income in tax.
288 - But is it any worse than a cabinet minister making decisions for which he is not accountable to the electorate.
282 - I’m not sure the situation is hugely unjust. It is very unlikely that a government under present conditions could continually carry legislation which most people in England opposed without suffering for it at a succeeding election. But the resulting solution would, short of break-up, have to be regional government: the units would be the best size for carrying out the sort of functions that Cardiff and Holyrood have. But the demand isn’t there.
285 What is happening to the Times statistical reporting? They are assuming that no change would be made in the tax rates accordingly with the bands. Surely you should assume that marginal rates must be increased to pay for the band changes???
291 Wait until North Sea oil runs out…
289 - but when you factor in means-tested benefits as well, going from unemployment to a low-paid job can see you gain almost nothing in your pocket, even if the marginal rate of income tax alone is low.
290. I’m not sure, but both questions would be answered by an English Parliament.
My fear is that if we stop Scottish MPs voting on English only issues it would have implications for them holding posts in the cabinet.
For example, if GB was Sec of State for Health, would it have been right of him to have drawn up the no smoking in public places legislation for England if he was unable to vote for that legislation in parliament?
291. It hasn’t been an issue until now, but that is likely to change when the PM is Scottish and representing a Scottish constituency. It’s really not intellectually sound to argue that because finding a solution to an injustice is difficult that we put up with it. This injustice will be personalised and crystallised for many when Brown takes over, and a solution will have to be found sometime. The solution that best reflects our traditions is that suggested above of a convention that Scottish MPs do not vote on ‘English’ bills. We already have a convention that identifies ‘finance’ bills that the HoL cannot block, so why not a similar convention on ‘English’ bills? It’s hardly England’s fault that the Labour party introduced a shaky system of partial develotion and cannot now find itself an English leader.
295 - I believe that in the last Parliament, Peter Duncan (not ex-Blue Peter), sole Tory MP, did not vote on English issues. This time round the Tories have a different MP for Scotland. I think he may have voted on English issues - not sure… Andrea…!
281. I would ban Scottish MPs for being ministers whose power is solely over England eg Health and Education.
They could still be Defence secretary.
289 - Anna, you’re making the mistake of ommitting indirect taxation in your calculations.
291. ‘The demand isn’t there’ sounds like the sort of thing Tories said about devolution. I suspect most of the objections here are sophistry. If I were a Scottish MP I simply wouldn’t vote on English issues (especially unwhipped things like smoking etc) on principle. How could I? It’s just wrong. The fact that Scottish MPs continue to vote on matters for which they cannot be electorally held to account just shows their rank hypocrisy, and the moral myopia of politicians.
299 - to be fair, “marginal rate of tax” usually refers to income tax.
294 - exactly - meaning, that for every extra £1 earned the increase is equivalent to a much higher marginal tax rate.
[Anna - as a Chartered Accountant I don't need lessons in tax from you]
299 Like inheritance tax, capital gains…
294 Bookvalue, I tried to find a benefits calculator to work out what benefits you lose. For earnings of £1,000 you don’t seem to lose anything (but I may well have that wrong as the system is rather complex) However, if you start earning more than your personal allowance, marginals do become high when you take into account benefit losses, so point taken…
300 - The lack of demand relates to regional government (by that I mean English regions, rather than the whole nation). The principle that the Parliament of the Union should have an equal right to legislate on all matters in all parts of the Union has been breached before by Irish legislation (although it’s fair to point out that the 2nd Home Rule in 1893 dealt with the WLQ in this fashion). Asymetric devolution has also been pracitsed reasonabl successfully in other countries, such as Spain.
203 - VAT
I am not sure how major a factor having a Scottish MP as Minister for an English only vote. Is it better than the break up of the union?
The simple fact is that the Scottish MP will create policy after discussions with english colleagues. They will then have to fight to get that policy through. If that policy is unpopular there party could still be voted out of office - thus they are jobless and they can still be voted out.
Certainly an interesting situation.
205 - Wouldn’t the amount of VAT paid by higher earners depend on how much of their income they spent?
I’m sorry, but not being a chartered accountant I don’t follow the argument on indirect taxes… I take bookvalue’s point on benefits though.
302. Have yoy ever thought of moving into lion-taming?
I also do not agree we need to go down the line of regional government, unless there was real desire. It annoys me a little when politicians says - Scotland, Wales and the regions of England - why are we not classed as a whole country? It would be much better to devolve power down to the largely popular county system in England.
Are there counties in Scotland?
308 Fred, I apologised for the other evening. It was just the hormones talking…
307 - VAT is essentially a flat tax - charged at the same rate regardless of income, and so is regressive.
308 - Fred, I’m married. It would be a busman’s holiday.
297. His position is the same of Peter Duncan:
http://www.davidmundell.com/news_detail.asp?newsID=45
Fred @ 273
You are right there is no single green tax that can make up for a £21bn tax cut (I’m not sure where you get the £30bn figure from), however there are a range of taxes that could be introduced, from a plastic bag levy through to a land tax that could do just that. Equally a shift of that kind of magnitude would have to be phased in over a period of time (2 Parliaments perhaps?).
On your other point abouyt public spending I very much agree. I think Govt spending is far too high a proprtion of GDP & support the ‘Davis formula’ of sustained increase below the level of annual GDP growth. This is alas, still a minority view in the LibDems, but I live in hope.
285
Thanks for a very helpful post clearly the costings depend on a whole series of assumptions. Cou8ld you tell us what your general calculation would be of how much the aboloition of teh age related allowance would save in that package?
311 I thought the point of exempting essentials like food and water from VAT was to mitigate this?
Did not the LibDems propose an English Grand Committee (akin to the Scottish GC) as a solution to the West Lothian Question?
309 - the medieval Scottish counties were abolished in the 1970s local government reform. The unitaries created in the 1990s effectively recreate a couple of these counties, but by no means all of them.
The great problem with county devolution is that most counties are so small they simply wouldn’t be able to cope with the burden, even if you bulked up their governance structures. While a region might be potentially be able to raise a large proportion of income from taxes, counties would be forced to go cap-in-hand to Whitehall to exercise these functions, reducing the devolutionary benefit considerably.
309. Surely the counties are too small to devolve power too? I agree they are more popular and people identify themselves more with their county, but I don’t think they are large enough to take major policy decisions.
316. Faster, clearer and more indepth than my post!
297/313. actually he voted on some English issues too. For ex. he voted in this division:
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/division.php?date=2005-12-01&number=113&mpn=David_Mundell&mpc=Dumfriesshire%2C+Clydesdale+%26amp%3B+Tweeddale
319 - thought he had.
Re: regions - some counties and large and populous enough to be considered regions. eg. Kent, Essex and Hants - even taking out the unitaries created within them, are all about 1.2 million. I can see no point in a doughnut shaped SE regional assembly being elected. I see nothing in common between East Kent and North Oxfordshire. Or Lakeland and Liverpool. I would stop devolution at a London assembly, and the other constituent countries. There is no English equivalent of the German Lander. I think this government have realised that now.
West Lothian - not heard of the English Grand Committee - sounds reasonable…
320- you were right. So he thinks they shouldn’t vote, but then he actually vote
314 - well, to a point. But how much do people on low incomes spend on things like booze and fags?
IIRC John Major used Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees to stave off demands for devolution in the mid-90s. That failed.
Thanks for that information regarding Scottish counties.
I take the point onboard regarding county size but I am not convinced this should be a barr on having more devolved power, even if it is not quite as advanced as some might like.
In the end, as other replies have stated, people feel comfortable with the county structure and it has done a pretty good job. I see no reason why they cannot have greater control over more issues.
324 - trouble is, I live in Berkshire. Which does not exist. I’d feel more comfortable with a county council. At the moment we have endless bickering between the unitaries - “Our council tax rise is smaller than theirs” “We do free bus passes, they don’t” etc
I live in Lancashire - we have a county council, although Blackburn Unitary on the doorstep.
One issue I would be interested to find out more on is how viable or useful merging local borough councils could be?
E.G
Westminister –> County –> Merged Borough e.g Lancashire East/West –> Parish Councils. Perhaps with Unitary councils for major cities/towns?
In fact could someone explain to me more about Unitaries. What extra powers do they have, and what criteria is there for them being created? I have never lived in one.
326 - basically unitaries combine the powers of a borough council with a county council. So where you are, cleaning the streets is the responsibility of the borough council, whilst education (to take one example) is the responsibility of Lancs county council. But across the boundary in Blackburn, both street cleaning and education are the responsibility of Blackburn unitary authority.
Cheers Book Value - so Blair talked about preferring Unitaries in his region when it was up for discussion. Presuming it is larger towns that get unitaries, what are the left with - counties?
Surely that is a patch work picture which will be left?
328 - typically it tends to be the larger towns that end up with unitaries, as you say (with some exceptions - Cambridge isn’t unitary, for example). It is a bit of a patchwork, yes.
285 - Most interesting and thanks for putting it up. As I suspected, the Times report appears to have misrepresented both Huhne’s and the IFS’s position sadly. It appears in summary that the IFS has worked out how much it would cost to raise the threshold to just under £10,000 holding everything else equal (which of course would be a huge tax cut for every earner, not just those on the minimum wage) whereas Huhne was not proposing a tax cut for every earner. It would really have been better to get Huhne’s campaign team and the IFS to have a chat about what was proposed, but I suspect it would have made a less interesting story!
An exception is Rutland - which is restored as a unitary county - very tiny. Is that efficient?
Also, the whole of Berkshire was scapped. There are no obvious large towns in the unitaries of Bracknell Forest or West Berkshire - just smallish towns and some smart villages. In the case of West Berkshire, quite a chunk of metropolitan Reading is chucked in too.
In most of the rest of the country it appears quite sensible to have unitaries that exist - eg MK, Medway, Brighton and Hove etc. Seems sensible for an urban area of say 200,000+. But smaller than that, I have doubts.
A day or so back, I mentioned the laziness, stupidity, incompetence, political bias and malice of print journalists. I apologise for missing out the BBC. I have just heard on the six o’clock news on Radio Four that there is going to be a meeting of EU ‘Heads of State’ to discuss some matter of great pith and moment. I was wondering what HM the Queen, the monarchs of Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain and Belgium, the Presidents of Ireland, Germany, Italy etc. etc. are going to discuss in the absence of their heads of government …
I remember hearing Jack Straw refer to Blair as our ‘Head of State’, but then all the pejorative adjectives above apply to him, as well, of course, as brown-tongued.
331 I have never been to Rutland, but I believe that many services are subcontracted to next door Leicestershire. This might be wrong - but the model put forward by Gershon and others seems to be that authorities should pay consortia to provide services. Lord Bonkes is - I think - ahead of the game.
333 - so if Rutland are not happy with their sub-contractor, can they ask for tenders - and award the contract to, say Cornwall, or Cumbria? Or EDS?
Back on topic . If Hughes is completely out of it why has there been a modest amount punted on him on Betfair this afternoon . The so called guaranteed easy money available to lay him is now even greater and there seems noone confident enough that he has no chance to take it .
322 I’ve no idea Tabman. What % of income does someone on £5,000pa pay on cigarettes and alcohol?
336 - looking at the amount of debt people get into, I’d say about 120%.
333 er dunno, SBS. I have read an article on it somewhere and will send to you.
On the topic - all three camps say it is wide open
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4720346.stm
Shock new polling evidence that may just change betting, the LibDem leadership contest and the entire future direction of British politics: the old LibDem man over the road who only joined and put up a LibDem poster to annoy me has swung from Sir Ming to Huhne in the last day. As we clashed he was posting his vote, and as I mocked that he was voting for the only person older than him in the party he revealed the shock news that he had defected. I need a bit of a sit down.
339 You have a great relationship with your neighbours then, Tone…
I posed this question while ago, but it was probably overlooked.
It is: in a leadership election, has there been a candidate whose come up very fast on the outside and gone on to lose?
335: here’s a report from today’s local paper:
” Days after the Liberal Democrats defied the odds to win the Dunfermline by-election, one of the party’s leadership contenders was in Canterbury forecasting a similar victory in Kent.
Simon Hughes vowed, “It won’t be long before we win a parliamentary seat in Kent”.
Mr Hughes was visiting as guest of the City Council’s Lib Dem Leader Cllr Alex Perkins.
A crowd gathered to meet the MP for Southwark & Bermondsey at the Thanington Resource Centre on Monday. Mr Hughes told them: “It’s good to be back in Canterbury…Kent is a wonderful county in which we must make headway. It is the Garden of England, but not all the flowers have bloomed yet.”
He is favourite to take over the party leadership following the resignation of Charles Kennedy, despite becoming embroiled in a debate over his sexuality.
Mr Hughes admitted: “It wasn’t the easiest time of my life. There are no perfect individuals or politicians; everyone has their problems. Perhaps I didn’t handle the situation as well as I could have done but I haven’t run away. I have faced it and I hope that has shown people I have what it takes to lead this party. I believe I can win.”
There’s more - best of all that a delegation of Gurkhas turned up to meet him as well. Two page spread, 4 colour photos. Front page strap line.
I was at this meeting & it was packed & enthusiastic. I still think SH’s chances are much better than all but a few posters here.
342 - “He is favourite to take over the party leadership following the resignation of Charles Kennedy, despite becoming embroiled in a debate over his sexuality.”
Er…
I think the Lib Dems winning a seat in Kent is marginally more likely than SH winning the leadership. In the 17 seats in Kent, I think the Lib Dems have 2, possibly 3 second places. Andrea…?
Both possibilities are more remote than an asteroid wiping out the whole of Montgomeryshire.
Cookie - yes, I think your points are pretty valid. I wonder how folk in Long Eaton feel about having a Nottingham postcode.
Of course, if you wrote to me about these things instead of only via pb.com then I wouldn’t be able to claim that nobody ever writes to me about them.
You’re an active Conservative, I think? - but that needn’t stop you if you’d like to.
344 A post- Howard Folkestone & Hythe is the best immediate prospect for the LibDems in Kent. Addition of the very Tory Tenterden area won’t help though.
344 - yes, 3 second places, 14 thirds in Kent. So which seat is it to be? I think Tunbridge Wells is the best bet. We’re only 23.5% behind the Tories…
313. The £30bn cost I mentioned is the Treasury’s estimate of raising the income tax allowance to £10k. This was calculated in response to a query by the Conservative party some time ago. References to this kind of sum being raised by a plastic bag tax and a land tax can are really fanciful - you are going to have to do much better than that. You would need to do something like double the excise tax on petrol to get even close - that means adding 50p a litre to the cost of petrol. A great vote winner I’m sure.
Lennon, re hypersphere posts… I’m pretty sure that there is a 3D representation of political beliefs, but it is best expressed as a Riemann hypersphere.
Put left/right on ecomnomic issues as x axis , liberal/authortarian on social issues as y-axis and put idealist/unconcerned to show level of interest in politics on z-axis. (pragmatist is at z=o, utterly inconsistent hypocrit z= infinity, and unrealistic idealist z= -infinity)
Then when you project onto the Riemann hypersphere you get all point infinity people lumped together (mad idealists, unconsiable hypocrits, fascists, anarchists…) Not a bad congruence…
by Anna February 16th, 2006 at 2:26 pm
Sorry only just caught up with this - Dont you love it when they talk dirty!!!
Fred, I think we are agreed on this forum that this raising of the personal allowance would be in tandem with a rise in the basic rate, so the benefits would be felt less by those closer to the higher tax limit. Don’t know how much this would raise, but if the basic rate was set so that a higher rate tax payer would be no better or worse off, a large sum would be knocked off your £30bn.
Huhne’s tax plans are incomplete; so are Osborne’s; so, regrettably are Brown’s, I would guess!
342/44. so a couple of days ago he was in Birmingham and he predicted gains in Ladywood, Hodge Hill and Perry Bar for a total of 7 seats in the West Midlands.
Now he goes in Kent and he predicts gains in Kent.
which region will he visit next? Let’s hope he won’t stop in Belfast, otherwise he’ll try the decapitation strategy over Gerry Adams and the consequences could be fatal!
349 -
Just as bad as you and Tabbers talking about Accountancy… :-p and it made sense to me! 
Before boundary changes the situation in their second place in Kent is:
Sevenoaks 30.0% majority
Tunbridge Wells 23.5%
Folkestone & Hythe 24.1%
Except for anoraks like us and a few media, is anyone really interested in the Lib Dem leadership contest.
My, they speak about nothing else, all over the country, I don’t think.
As for SH’s predictions, given his record in the last Mayoral poll (”It’s Simon vs Ken”) I’m quite sure we can ignore any forecast he makes.
353 The NuLabour revival in the 90s really hit the LibDems in Kent. in the 1992 general election the situation in Kent was very different, in Canterbury, for example, the LibDems were second on 33%.
Kent is one of the areas of the South east where there is a large & very soft Nulabour vote to be harvested by the LibDems next time.
351 - He’ll not have to worry about Gerry Adams any more, Andrea. Surely him and McGuinnes will be two of the first to get locked up under the new legislation. Then again . . .
ColinW at 357: “Kent is one of the areas of the South east where there is a large & very soft Nulabour vote to be harvested by the LibDems next time.”
Or by David Cameron, which is probably slightly more likely.
358. Max, I though Jenny Tonge was the first….
358 - NI is excluded, but I’m not sure exactly how that’s worded. If you make a speech in GB praising IRA crimes within GB, is that still excluded?
361 - for clarity I mean IRA crimes that were committed within GB.
361 - If it affects Scotland the next Old Firm game should make for interesting viewing!
357. Colinw. you could pass Labour for the second place in Ashford, Canterbury, Maidstone or Tonbridge and Malling, but considering it’s likely the tories won’t lose votes next time, it would be difficult to win a seat from them (but there could always be a new Solihull. never say never)
This weeks guests on QT are cabinet minister Peter Hain, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons Theresa May, LibDem Lord Razzle, NUS President Kat Fletcher and broadcaster John Sergeant.
Any good by-elections to watch for tonight?
261.”If you make a speech in GB praising IRA crimes within GB, is that still excluded? ”
do you think John McDonnell is at risk to be locked up? at least Hilary would have less problems!
352 - Lennon there’s never a bad time to discuss Accountancy. My girlfriend was just commenting on how interesting it was to listen to me and my dad (also an accountant) discussing the accounting treatment for the Single Farm Payment - riveting stuff I’m sure you’ll agree!
Although I have a sneaking suspision she may have been being slightly sarcastic.
359, 364. Depends on how good the LibDem campaign is locally. Usually it’s pretty crap here except in the locals, & in the 1992 GE.
331- I believe that Unitary’s need to be at least half a million people to achieve economies of scale. Brighton and Hove with half ot that would benifit if it went back into East Susssex creating a Unitary of around 3/4 of a million.
Does anyone know if the Government favours whole County Unitary’s or smaller split County Unitary’s ?
The vast majority of District and County Councils are now Conservative controlled. Is Mr Milliband trying to set blue against blue?
359 - probably by both. Note the Lib Dems were below their 1992 level in Kent in 2005. There is scope for growth, but alas no seats.
367 -that is one of my favourites, Max…
Max - take care!!!!
“My girlfriend was just commenting on how interesting it was to listen to me and my dad (also an accountant) discussing the accounting treatment for the Single Farm Payment - riveting stuff I’m sure you’ll agree! Although I have a sneaking suspision she may have been being slightly sarcastic.”
She might one day meet a Lib Dem and find FPTP and STV much more interesting… which they are, of course! Winning here!!!!
372. John13, are you trying to steal Max’s girlfriend?
You LDs have no shame!
350. 1p on the basic rate yields about £3bn so you could theoretically fund your tax allowance scheme by raising the basic rate by a ‘mere’ 10p in the pound..except that the 3bn is calculated using the existing allowance structure, so the actual yield from every penny extra on the basic rate once you have brought in your 10k allowance would be rather lower than this. I don’t have access to the information to provide an exact estimate, but it doesn’t matter. You cannot fund this proposal with a 1 or 2p rise in the basic rate, it would have to be massively higher than that. I repeat for the last time today, the arithmetic of this proposal simply does not add up. There are no free lunches. Tax cuts on this scale can’t be financed by the creation of new wonder taxes that yield billions unthought of before, nor by little tweaks to other areas of the tax system.
65 Glasgow Milton ward on Glasgow City Council
365. A LD/Con marginal in Monmouthshire County Council too
372, “Wow, that’s a HUGE quota to elect a member”
377. John, think about the bar-charts!
Andrea: I notice that at the top of this thread you were discussing the impact of Blair’s popularity on the
General Election results.
The academic analysis of the authoritative British Election Study by Geoffrey Evans and Robert Andersen, “Impact of Party Leaders”, in Pippa Norris and Christopher Wlezien (eds), Britain Votes 2005 (Oxford University Press 2005) suggests that “Blair’s decline in popularity lost the Labour Party votes and seats. It probably cost them more votes than anything else at this election” (p.177). They estimate that Labour may have polled 40% rather than 36% had this leadership effect not operated (p.176).
I myself think that leadership effects are usually over-estimated, and would offer a mere opinion that Blair was moderately positive for Labour’s performance in 1997 and 2001 (but that they’d have won by over 100 with soemone else) and moderately negative in 2005 (and they’d have won by over 100 with someone else.
365/76. The by-election is the Lyneham Ward in North Wiltshire should be interesting too. It was a split ward ( a tory and a LD)
Ok so what would council unitary’s mean? Would that mean there would no longer be Borough councils within counties?
Also any ideas why county council’s have tended to be more Conservative?
Wow - Peter Hain has just essentially given the reason for ID cards - a natural progress of technology. I thought it was to stop terrorists mainly?
379. Robert Waller, thanks for the info.
383, no problem, Andrea: I think it suggests you were right.
Nay, Andrea, far be it from me to steal Max´s girl-friend - I was just pointing out the risks involved in discussing the accounting treatment for the Single Farm Payment when they could be talking about STV. Now, I am sure that Max is very sound on the subject of the accounting treatment for the Single Farm Payment (as an accountant and a Tory, he would be), but I can assure you that no girl can resist the fascination of STV. But I was talking in generalities, of course - I am not a bad bart.
On the subject of byelections, I think there are five: apart from those mentioned above (Lib Dem seat in Monmouth, Lab seat in Glasgow), there are three seats that the Tories are defending - in Ashford, St Edmundsbury and Mid Beds.
Just back from Bar Billiards I won but team lost . Sob . I remember the 60’s when all the economic wisdom was that the Balance Of Payments had to balance every month or be positive or the country faced economic ruin . This is now known to be a fallacy . Are we in danger of putting the same emphasis on tax take ?
384. Robert, could we another mini-bet like a couple of days ago? Even if we were both wrong
for DC at 369
white paper in late summer; I expect a mixture of County-wide unitaries, and some joined Districts. Cheshire could be most interesting in the North West, with 3 lots of co-joined District pairings. As for the northernmost NW sub-region, we need to have the bulk of a county-wide unitary to counter the weight of Manchester and Merseyside.
BTW council tax up 4.97% today (LD & Con partnership) and Lab opposition proposing 3.5% and balancing by raiding the reserves.
re 171 Well Nick how about those consitutents of yours who tell you tht ID cards are a bad thing. I supose they get ignored because you’re programmed to do the whips’ bidding. Still there’s some brownie points from the disingenous letter in today’s Times. So it’s going to be entirely voluntary is it and no-one need ever carry one except when they want to visit the GP/hospital collect benefits, open a bank account or whatever host of things NewLab wants to monitor us for. And if the police stop you in the street it’ll still be entirely voluntary to say that you’re not going to show it will it? Pull the other one.
Hains struggling over ID cards. He’s a rather incompetent debater isn’t he.
So is their a bet on what colour Portillo’s one tone Ralph Lauren shirt will be tonight? I am sure some bookie must do this bet?
I will go for Green tonight….
380. ops, that by-election is next week!
380 The Lyneham Byelection is next week . The Conservatives gained a seat in this ward by a majority of 1 vote last November in a previously split ward . There was technically a small swing to the Lib Dems .
Apologies- I overlooked the LD defended seat in Test Valley also today - but I think you will find, Andrea, that Lyneham (LD defended) is next week.
As I know Andrea is interested in these things, the Conservatives gained a seat on Test Valley Borough Council in Hampshire tonight, from the Lib Dems. Last contested in 2003 the Lib Dems held all 3 seats in St Mary’s Ward, actual result this time Lab 182, Lib Dem 485, Conservative 584
393/94. yes, I’ve already found out.
395. Thanks COlin Wade. It’s a good result for the tories.
I gather there was another one in Kent as well.
395. This means we’re going to win the next election then
398 - No but the traffic is in the right direction, and in a borough next door to Huhne that matters.
397. In Ashford
Good Test Valley result there for the Tories.
389: yes, it’ll be voluntary because the police won’t need it as they’ll have the register with your biometrics. You claim you’re me, they check your fingerprints against the data base and find you’re not. This is why serious opponents focus on the register, not the card.
As the constituents who are here will (I hope) agree, I’ve done all I could to consult people over ID cards - held a public meeting with opponents, propagated the arguments on both sides in a leaflet to every home, put it prominently in my election address, and asked people to let me have their views. There was a large majority in favour (about 600-200 from recollection, but it’s a while back now), though as it’s a straw poll it’s of limited value. But as I proposed it (with support from LibDem Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten at the time) when the Government was still opposed, you can’t really say that I’m doing it at the whips’ behest. What further consultation would you like me to undertake?
349 Icarus, maths gets much dirtier than that. This time last year (no joke) I had a course of lectures on group action and G-Spaces… Just think how unfortunate the reasearcher must have been who came up with those names…
395 Yes a decent result for the Conservatives although strangely they only put up 2 candidates in 2003 and may well have took 1 of the 3 seats if they had put up 3 .
399. It was a bit tongue in cheek. I was doing what some Lib Dem contributors tend to do when they have a by-election win. It’s good that we are winning in that kind or area as that’s where Cameron should appeal. A few marginal northern council wards would be interesting.
Pardon my ignorance - but where is Test Valley - is it near Southampton?
SNP gain in Glasgow
http://www.snp.org/news/snp_press_release.2006-02-16.1734248557
405 http://www.testvalley.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=224
Lord Razzell has just confessed to being a political gambler. Does he post on here?
388- Ian,thanks. Surely the exercise would be to create something less complicated so having a combo would not solve that.
381- James, County Unitries would mean no more District/Borough Councils. The Conservatives control most of the Counties as they tend to be the larger more rural areas.
Glasgow Milton result - I see Marcia has got in first. Libs - not a good result compared to last week
Vote % % Change
SNP 773 49.6 +17.1
Labour 623 40.0 -12.6
SSP 93 5.9 - 4.7
LibDem 44 2.8 - 1.4
Con 29 1.6
Does anyone know what Labour have done in Scotland recently to get such big swings against them, or is it just bad luck?
405 the St Mary ward is in the North West Hampshire constituency, I think
406. Good results for the SNP. I thought they were declared dead just a week ago….
Anna
This has not helped Labour
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4690614.stm
413 It’s the same in England though http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4660862.stm.
Wonder if we can expect the same swings against Labour south of the border???
411 - They’ve lost a lot of council seats since the last election in 2003. A number to the SNP, Independents, Lib Dems ourselves. The problem seems to be that they don’t put much effort in whilst the other parties target the ward very hard. For instance in Milton both Alex Salmond and Nicola Sturgeon were involved in the campaign - you can bet Jack McConnel wasn’t.
A good result for SNP . They were the clear challenger in this ward . Labour do seem to be in trouble in Scotland ,
415. Max, Nicola Sturgeon tends to be everywhere! Everytime something happens in Scotland, I find at least a quote by Sturgeon!
415 If Jack McConnel did campaign their vote might fall even further. It has not been a good week for Labour with all negative headlines.
Portillo’s shirt… has he been watching Brokeback Mountain?
419. and who is Diane in his version of Brokeback Mountain? the sheep?
419. He’s going to chop some trees down after the show.
After his recent affairs, you could make a joke about wood but this isn’t a carry on film.
420 - dunno, but I bet he wouldn’t “go to Mexico” with her…
Hain was dire on QT (as are all cabinet ministers at the moment), Razzel is his normal bullish LibDem self, John Sergeant fantastic, Theresa May a safe Tory pair of hands and Kat Fletcher is the reason why I’m glad not to be a student anymore (politically speaking).
Incidentally,anyone whose interested can find out past council by-election results in Scotland going back to 1999 on the Scottish Lib Dem website. The Scottish Politics site has them going back to 1995.
I am surprised that the LibDem candidate in Glasgow Milton only polled 44 votes and a decrease since 2003 - I was expecting a Dunfermline bounce.
424. Did you get that e-mail I sent you yesterday Max?
423 - good question time. Hain was in trouble a lot of the time - it was 4 against 1. He did much better than most Labourites would have. I imagine Milliband, Jowell or most Cabinet ministers (save John Reid) would have been dreadful. Hain is really a rotweiler.
The others were all pretty good. What are NUS Kat’s politics? In my day all NUS Presidents were all NOLS (National Organisation of Labour Students / Lobotomised Sheep). I remember Twigg as NUS President; he was OK, but he was just so Labour. Is Kat independent of Labour? Or is she a Trot?
?27 - Quite interesting an drift politically in fact.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kat_Fletcher
?27 - “Quite an interesting drift” rather…….
426 - Just seen it now Woody. I’ll get back to you tomorrow and I’ll give you my new e-mail address. Sorry hadn’t checked that one for ages. The football’s pretty dissapointing but there’s always the cup!
428 - very interesting. I guess Kat comes from the group that used to be called SLS (Socialist Labour Students). They were the ones just to the right of Militant - and were still in Labour, but only just. They were really moderate and quite right wing in those days compared to SWP, Rev Comm, Militant, Socialist Organiser etc.
430. Jolly good. No bet on them for the cup I’m afraid. At least Millwall are going down. I got 7-2 on that.
431 - Blimey, Socialist Organiser, I haven’t heard them referred to for a while! For my sins I toyed with the Trots in my youth (pre student days in fact) but remember the hatred of the SWP etc as they were merely middle class people slumming it :-).
Ooooh more defections! This time from Labour:
http://labour-watch.blogspot.com/2006/02/three-more-leave-tower-hamlets-labour.html
Thought Kat Fletcher performed quite well on QT for a leftie student type. She said some pretty sensible things all in all, and it was only when the nutcase from the BNP in the audience started ranting (although he actually made a valid point beneath the ranting) that she showed her true leftie colours. But quite easy on the eye I thought. Theresa May put in a fairly solid performance, I think she is an asset to the Party, and John Sergeant said some good things tonight as “the voice of reason”, particularly on ID cards. Dimbleby was on top form too, particularly reining in Hain.
Peter Hain was fantastically awful, almost as bad as Rhodri Morgan the other week in his dissembling and failure to answer straight questions with straight answers.
Good edition, very much enjoyed it.
Does Diane Abbott talking to a baby whilst Micheal Portillo is making a point about political leaders children to Andrew Neil (who is also holding a baby) rank as the most surreal political TV moment ever?
Yes. What about her ‘done up like a kipper’ comments about GB earlier….?
don’t you just love all these brilliantly impartial reviews of labour cabinet ministers from members of the tory party?
438 - I imagine Diane Abott would place you in that category too
364. Don’t people from Orpington class themselves as being from Kent?
319. Actually a lot more “English-only” issues affect Scotland than you would think. Anything that affects the balance between public and private expenditure, e.g. top-up tuition fees, affects Scotland indirectly through the Barnett formula.
Perversely, Scottish Labour MPs loyally backing New Labour are in many cases indirectly voting for public expenditure cuts in Scotland.
Re:glorifying terrorism, are Che Guevara T-shirts still allowed?
That Glasgow Milton result is on the back of several recent SNP by election gains:
Nov 10: Loanhead, Midlothian: +29.1% (Lab -15.4%, LD -5.3%)
Sept 29: Auchtertool & Burntisland East, Fife: +21.9% (Lab -4.1%, LD - 11.3%)
Aug 11: Herbertshire, Falkirk: +27.2% (Lab -21.5%, LD N/A)
Jun 9: Kilnknowe & Clovenfords, Scottish Borders: +6.9% (Lab N/A, LD N/A)
The main point of interest is that it was a straight gain from Labour, in the Central Belt, in Glasgow indeed: the very bastion of Unionism.
I really enjoyed question time as a form of blood sport. Even I thought it was a bit unfair to have 4 against 1. I didn’t hear a single prop labour point in the whole show. Hain was truly awful but I can think a dozen cabinet ministers who would have been worse. I can’t believe an old civil libertarian like him can go on national TV and defend the impending fiasco. Ho hum.
I have always liked May. She’d have made a good leader in terms of the TV. not sure shed have coped with the parliamentary party though. Lord Razzel was ok, good applause but not very liberal. John Seargent is a national treasure. send him to the lords!
Just followed up what you were talking about after I went to bed, and three points in case anyone’s still hanging about on this thread:
1) As a Beeston person I can confirm that Nick went to great lengths to consult his constituents about ID cards. I was one of the 200 or so who was against. I still think they’re a bad idea, but it seems I’m in the minority in Broxtowe. Ho hum.
2) I can confirm that no girl can resist a man earnestly and enthusiastically discussing Single Transferable Vote. Just tentatively raise the subject in female company and you’ll be figting them off with a stick.
3) This Week last night was indeed one of the most entertainingly surreal programs I’ve seen for a long time. I thought Alexei Sayle was very good value. But why is he so surprised at Labour’s authoritariansim? Surely socialism is inherently authoritarian? Has there ever been a libertarian socialist government anywhere?
Head up in the Observer this weekend - poll of Lib Dem constituency chairs on the way.
443. Cookie - I doubt Sayle would have a problem with authoritarianism per se, but when it is not obviously directed against the enemies of socialism, this could be a problem.
443 :”Has there ever been a libertarian socialist government anywhere” . If you mean socially liberal, very obviously yes, many times over.
examples including countless governments in the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, and the current Spanish administration.
Socially liberal perhaps (in terms of attitudes to minorities, etc.) but not really libertarian in the sense of not bossing people around or drenching their citizens in pettifogging little rules.
The problem with these words I suppose is that they mean vastly different things to different people. But Labour are no more nor less authoritarian than I expected.
For me, the problem for me is that ‘New’ Labour and their authoritarian tendencies are unfortunately making the too-easy equation of socialism with authoritarianism much more common . ( although as we know New Labour are no longer socialist in any genuine sense)
“not bossing people about”
On economic questions maybe, but don’t forget on the touchstone questions of personal liberty - sexual morality, the family, drugs, censorship, etc, there’s still never been a British Tory administration so far that’s been as socially libertarian as decades of north-european socialist governments.
431 - Ah those halcyon NUS days. They were called SSIN in my days - Socialist Students in NOLS (NOLS neing the National Orgnaisation of Labour Students) - I always though the idea of calling yourselves by an acronym of an acronym was quite Monty Python.
More recently they transmogrified into the Campaign for Free Education, pulled on board a fair few left leaning independents and have won a fair few contests in NUS elections.
As a left wing Liberal I was, of course, always considered to be a dreadful rightwinger!
re 401 Nick apologies, you’ve probably done more consulting than most. It would be interesting to see if you still get the same results now that the costs will mount up.
And you know full well than unless you content yourself to be locked up in the country like in the Soviet Union in the old days its no more voluntary than income tax. I agree with you the card’s not the issue it’s the register which is dangerous. Also do I take it that we’ll be finger printed in the streets then if stopped by police.