The Cameron Circus comes to town
September 8th, 2009
Is he now facing up to to reality of what lies ahead?
This evening I attended (that’s me in the blue shirt in the second row) a Cameron Direct town hall meeting in Bedford when the Tory leader fielded questions that hadn’t been submitted in advance from an audience which I guessed was less than 50% Conservative.
This is all part of the by-election campaign that’s going on for the town’s elected mayor where his party is holding an open primary next week to select the candidate. You can watch the entire session here.
Several things stood out. There was very little in terms of attacks on Brown and where he did criticise it was in a low-key way. This wasn’t the knockabout Cameron that we know from PMQs.
He didn’t try to please the crowd. Maybe he is very mindful that he’s likely to become PM in the next nine months but there was nothing there to get the easy applause. Where tough things had to be said he said them. He didn’t tone down his view on issues like the need to continue the overseas aid budget - something that would have been quite easy to do.
He was much less personable than I was expecting. There wasn’t much humour and for most of the 55 minutes he was deadly serious. His only really weak answer came to a questioner who was moaning about bus service. You got the feeling that this was not something of which he had much experience.
Overall an impressive performance especially as this was all off the cuff. He has become a serious politician for serious times and is going to be very hard to compete against in a general election campaign.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Most Excellant…!
The Cameron Circus comes to town:
Did you see the freak show in the audience…………
Mike said “His only really weak answer came to a questioner who was moaning about bus service.”
To be fair i think he has more pressing issues than the number 19 Bus in Bedford!
2. Martin Day September 8th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
only pulling your leg old bean!
I thought his answer to the cute little kid right at the end wasn’t that great - though the fact he noticed at all does him huge credit.
I don’t think most of the answers are completely off-the-cuff though. If you watch many Cameron Directs you’ll see him use the same phrases and language… it has been very carefully honed.
It’s the mixture of thorough preparation and a real agility and adaptability that makes him quite formidable in this format.
FPT. 491.Tim, you might have thought my report was gushing, but all the points I made stand. And the camera focusing on Mike Smithson was no accident either. Darling was making a big set piece speech today, well trailed in advance, and he didn’t even make top billing. No, that went to what can only describe as a very glowing and positive extended segment about Cameron by the Political editor of the BBC.
Watch it before assuming that Mrs Tory bloomers here gushed about it.
I thought it was a pivotal moment, and Darling and his speech was very much demoted.
Mike, there was a much better view of you as the camera focused on you at the Cameron direct event tonight on the BBC 10pm news.
Incidentally how did you guess the audience was less than 50% Conservative?
I find such things quite hard to judge.
4
“To be fair i think he has more pressing issues than the number 19 Bus in Bedford!” lol
Did someone dare ask him the price of a prawn salad in the HOC Canteen ?
Thanks Mike. The contrast to Brown couldn’t be bigger could it?
6 - I wonder if Daves ever been on a bus (a pay bus, not a campaign bus)
7. Lib Dems have a secret sign to identify each other.
Many thanks for this. Cameron has shown an uncanny ability to raise his game, at the right moment, over the past four years.
6.only *be described* Doh.
Darling’s capitulation today marks the end of Labour’s economic credibility. A few months ago we learnt we’d gone bust but it wasn’t so bad as it was a Labour bust not a Tory one. Today Darling promised us cuts but of the nice, harmless Labour variety. Labour has flipped its lid.
10.
Tim,
“I wonder if Daves ever been on a bus (a pay bus, not a campaign bus)”
Only when his Bike was pinched !
Fair comments Mike. I attended one some months ago which was just as open and as you describe it. He was very impressive and didn’t just go for easy populist answers. People warmed to him.
I also didn’t like his answer on pubs scanning driver’s licences before they allowed you in.
Requiring ID to be shown is one thing. Scanning it and keeping it on file for ordinary customers (not just persistent local troublemakers) seems a step too far.
The civil liberties agenda extends to businesses (especially big businesses) as well as government. Cameron seems disappointingly weak in this direction.
That said, the way he actually answered the question was fairly creditable - admitting he didn’t really know, but nevertheless giving his honest gut reaction.
“a serious politician for serious times” — no wonder tim can only ask about bus timetables. Time for Brown to take his bus pass.
Cameron of course cycles everywhere.
Someones speared Mike, Did he ask a question about Dave’s Whysteria ?
11. AndrewG September 8th, 2009 at 11:08 pm
Is it something to do with Glass tables?
Front pages
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/The-Front-Pages-Of-The-UKs-National-Newspapers-On-Wednesday-September-9-2009/Media-Gallery/200909215377587?lpos=Home_Left_Promo_Region_0&lid=GALLERY_15377587_The_Front_Pages_Of_The_UKs_National_Newspapers_On_Wednesday%2C_September_9%2C_2009
I noticed Mike Nodding back to Cameron in agreement though!
18 - Ha Ha.
Cameron made a speech about salads.
19 -
Who the feck wants a PM who gets on the park and ride ? Jesus we want a mover and shaker not a chump !
20 I thought it was tattoed on the back of their neck….
23 tim, what was your last televised speech about, loser?
Isn’t Andrew Rawnsley looking old?
21. Guardian says the recession is “officially over” ?
23.
Don’t knock it - It was a “Green” Salad Speech though Tim.
25 - How about a Chancellor who’s a shaker not a mover.
http://i.thisislondon.co.uk/i/pix/2009/05/bike-415×595.jpg
31. Tim -
Talking about Shaking could lead you open to wanker jokes!
Paxman was really dismissive of Liam Byrne on newsnight tonight, even by his pretty heroic standards. What Byrne thought he was going to achieve by going on TV to announce that Labour had no policies and won’t have any until November, even though they ARE the Government, is beyond me.
Yet the meat of the debate has Labour and Tories correct. We need to keep the current stimulus, but no more for the next 6 months to try and avoid a double dip. We ALSO need really clear plans for much steeper cuts which the Tories and even Limp Dums are awake too.
Darling is definitely a mover (how many houses) not so sure about the shaker.
33. Liam Byrne looks like Ed Harris. Not relevant, but I felt it needed saying.
31.
Do you think George has a homemade salad in that rucksack Tim, Salads are going to get very expensive soon you know in the HOC canteen ?
29. Ghost
I think the Independent was claiming it was over in March.
But even they weren’t the first - Mark Senior was claiming it had ended before it was even officially announced that it had begun
I wonder if this means that the debt has gone away?
Unfortunately this country is full of fools who will now think everything is back to ‘normal’. They will get an unpleasant surprise when it comes to pay the bill.
Cameron mentioned cutting costs in Whitehall is next on the agenda.
Osborne to announce on Thursday.
14.Spend now, cut later after a GE = lack of leadership from a weak government.
Sell off the last of the State silver, cut costs but protect front line services = more of the Brownite political dishonesty speak with signs of desperation.
Newsnight Scotland giving Devolution a good spanking on our stagnating education system up here tonight. England has caught up and over taken us, looks like the last Conservative government were doing a better job than Lab/Libdems or the SNP have managed while running things.
35. Ed Harris
?????
Indeed the uncahritable could say Liam who????
How do you find out if there is going to be a Cameron Direct near you, and how do you get an invite?
37.
I think we are second least best placed
http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2009/08/dire-position-of-us-economy.html
33.A stimulus which is coming from the BoE rather than our government as well.
37. another richard September 8th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
Not just that but Double Dip is on the cards IMO.
38.
Do you think Osborne is going to suggest redecorating the whitehall buildings in “Osborne and Little” wallpaper to kickstart the manufacturing industry ?
Do we know whether Gordon does similar events?
No, don’t laugh. This is a serious question.
I went a fortnight ago to an equivalent Nick Clegg event in St Albans with about 300 other attendees. This was a similar format, Q&A, about an hour long. Nick was impressive, and had much improved since the leadership hustings a couple of years ago. There was a wide range of questions, with MPs expenses getting the biggest reaction in the church. What pleased me the most was the pro European response on a question about the EU accounts.
My thoughts though was that one of the key benefits of such an event, was getting in practice for a general election. For the weeks just before the election the party leaders will be flying by the seat of their pants, and practise via these Q&A sessions will have been most useful.
So my question again, is Gordon the odd man out?
“He didn’t try to please the crowd. Maybe he is very mindful that he’s likely to become PM in the next nine months but there was nothing there to get the easy applause. Where tough things had to be said he said them. He didn’t tone down his view on issues like the need to continue the overseas aid budget - something that would have been quite easy to do. ”
Quite so.
People often say Cameron is like Blair, but it’s not so. Cameron does not say different things to different people. He tells it straight and he tells it clearly - even if his message is one the audience don’t want to hear. But at the same time, he has a knack of being empathetic to the audience’s concerns.
And he has the cullions to face audience who are not hand-picked supporters.
33. Cityunslicker
A double dip is going to happen as soon as all the stimulus money runs out.
And the longer it is kept going the bigger the double dip will be.
What this country needs is a different financial mindset - you cannot consume more wealth than you create and living beyond your means leads to disaster.
29 - Without reading the Guardian article, I think it is based on the BBC’s report that manufacturing was up this month by a staggering 0.9%, three time the original estimate and the largest increase since 2008.
However, hidden in the forth paragraph was the fact the manufacturing output was actually down 10.2% on last year.
Not so much a green shoot, just gangrene.
41 Tells you how here
http://www.conservatives.com/Home/Get%20involved/Cameron%20Direct.aspx
page I watched tonights event on
Mike,
“He didn’t try to please the crowd. Maybe he is very mindful that he’s likely to become PM in the next nine months but there was nothing there to get the easy applause”.
Hmm. He’s not completely above fishing for a bit of easy crowd pleasing is he?
Jonathan Freedland says this in tomorrow’s Guardian: “Start with the most trivial point: after all, that’s what Cameron did. Of course, the public is right to be outraged by the money MPs lavished on themselves through dodgy expenses. But to link the deficit to ministers’ pay was little more than cheap demagoguery, seeking to turn justifiable anger at greedy MPs into a generalised loathing for public spending. Yes, I know the argument Cameron was making: that cutting the cost of politics is merely a way of leading by example. But to devote a whole speech to what he insisted is a looming debt crisis – one measured in the hundreds of billions – to a set of measures which at most will save £120m, a drop in the ocean, was fundamentally unserious. It was gesture politics.
47 “Maybe he is very mindful that he’s likely to become PM in the next nine months”
Indeed, the BBC report made it seem as if it’s a near certainty.
Maybe this is the point at which the BBC accepts the inevitable?
46 ‘Do we know whether Gordon does similar events?’
I doubt it. Not unless Downing Street can assemble an audience of 300 cloned Ed Ballses, preprogrammed with suitably fawning and sympathetic questions, and lobotomised to withstand the intense boredom and depression of such an event.
46 Was the audience restricted to LD members only?
BBC chooses Cameron
I have had some experience of the vast BBC, having worked on BBC1’s Question Time for a year (see my verdict on the BNP invitation in the next issue of the NS). I know that the truth that dare not speak its name is it is far too disorganised to be “biased” in any direction. But tonight’s ‘Ten; is just one tiny example of literally scores I have seen over recent years and months that show the corporation is now treating Cameron’s unchanged Tory party as, if not a government, beyond any doubt a government in waiting.
39 Christina - I think Cameron has already demolished Labour’s position on postponing cuts with his line earlier today: “The Prime Minister’s resolve to do the right thing reminds me of one of those fridge magnets: the diet starts tomorrow.”
55. …link
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/public-accounts/2009/09/cameron-bbc-corporation-sheep
Regarding industrial output these are official ONS figures for industrial output per decade since their records began (base 2003=100):
1950 qtr 1 36.5
1960 qtr 1 50.1
An increase of 13.6 or 37.3%
1960 qtr 1 50.1
1970 qtr 1 66.8
An increase of 16.7 or 33.3%
1970 qtr 1 66.8
1980 qtr 1 78.4
An increase of 11.6 or 17.4%
1980 qtr 1 78.4
1990 qtr 1 91.3
An increase of 12.9 or 16.5%
1990 qtr 1 91.3
2000 qtr 1 103.8
An increase in 12.5 or 13.7%
2000 qtr 1 103.8
2009 qtr 2 87.3
A DECREASE of 16.5 or 15.9%
50 years of steady increases with only a slight slowing from the 1970s onwards despite increasing competition from the third world and several energy crises followed by a steep decline as part of Labour’s ‘economic miracle’.
It looks almost certain that the 2000s will be the first decade in which industrial output was lower at the end than at the start. I wonder when was the last time that happened? Perhaps the 1340s after the Black Death struck?
51: ‘Jonathan Freedland says this in tomorrow’s Guardian’
Freedland, is he still around? I wonder how the man who wrote this
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2002/may/01/uk.fiveyearsoflabour
must be feeling these days.
47 In an unscripted session without a moderator its safer to give your gut reaction if you haven’t dealt with subject before. Cameron will have had these questions before and as Leader knows the line to take but it can still come across as false if you don’t engage.
Blair tended to go for set pieces pre 1997 - he was actually quite bad in interview situations before becoming PM (I recall a particularly toe curling US one) and in his unscripted early interviews as PM he wasn’t great, though he did use the “I’m a normal guy, trust me” approach pretty well.
50 Ted - Interesting map there. I had no idea that Cameron had done so many of these. He’s certainly not slacking!
56 - Richard.
Sadly for Dave, he wanted to cut in the middle of a recession, which would be very silly.
Or perhaps he just meant reducing salad sizes.
51.Shame Jonathan penned that article before watching the BBC news tonight. The bit about it being a drop in the ocean was well made.
52&55.Tim thought my post about the big set piece segment on Cameron tonight was gushing.
51 I’d say that was Public Speaking 101.
It will go down well, if people face cuts in public spending and rises in taxes, at least they will see the cuts at the top as well.
Of course the Guardian and most of its readers believe that no price is too high to pay for Government and that hoi polloi need to be mulcted of their tax dollars in case they find a way of spending it on themselves and their families first.
51 Sunder Katwala
That may be a fair point - though every little helps - and Cameron himself acknowledged it was about the message more than the money itself.
Not to mention, set against the backdrop of Labour’s massive own goals, it is more than good enough.
The Conservatives don’t need to spell out massive cuts if Labour don’t spell out any cuts at all. They only need to be further along and clearer in their intention if not their detail to win the ‘honesty’ debate.
46. Matt Pain September 8th, 2009 at 11:34 pm
Not been funny and i am not having a go at Clegg but who the hell would waste their time going to see Clegg? I mean has has less chance than Dennis Skinner of becoming PM.
50 It doesn’t tell you how to find out when & where the next ones are happening, or how to get a ticket.
62 We’re in a recession are we? I thought Gordon’s Economic Miracle had bougt us out of it.
The impression you left with was much the sames most people leave with. He might be a tad less humorous now but otherwise it is the same. He has never shied away from telling it straight at these events, even if he knows the answer is not popular.
I saw him do a Cameron Direct whilst in the background his aides were expediting his travel arrangements [Ivan had been taken ill on his journey to the hall]. The audience was unawares/very impressed. He got the nod he could leave and was out like a shot - his countenance quite suddenly changed.
He’s an impressive dude.
tim
Cutting waste is never a bad idea - it allows money to be spent on something more useful.
I would have thought a farmer like yourself would understand that.
Talking of very silly mistakes could you remind me what price Brown sold the UK gold reserves at?
62 A recession timmy? Whatever happened to ‘no more boom and bust’?
23. Better to talk of salads than be a fruitcake.
66 - Martin, David Herdson is here in God’s Own Country (overseas div). Where the hell are you?
60.just remember when the blair was slow handclapped at the womens institute,just showed he did’nt know where to put him self or say.
54. The NC event was open and I would estimate a similar 50/50 split in LD/others. I believe it was about the 48th of similar meetings NC had done, for example there was one in Luton South earlier in the summer.
66 No, Martin it’s not that, it’s the fact that the person who reported said there was a Pro EU response. Remind me what was the result of the European elections recently? Relevance?
50 you have to sign on to Twitter or Facebook as it says.
71 Speaking of fruitcakes, UKIP have annoyed all sides in Ireland.
http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=uk%2F0_0_s_1_0_t&usg=AFQjCNER9-COucJuus8ive2oueAHksHAsQ&cid=1307257565&ei=o9ymStC7G4jVjAfw7t_FAQ&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.offalyexpress.ie%2Fnews%2FUKIP-under-fire-from-Yes.5627153.jp
73 Blair was overrated.
41. It is advertised locally. They often leafet an area [not safe Tory ones] and put up some posters in the town. You might see these a week or two before the event. If there are two many folks, there is a ballot.
I wish the Meet Nick Clegg events were online like the Cameron Directs.
There are some Youtube clips
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68CkAFJOBk0
but rather thin pickings.
69 Let us remind ourselves of tim’s glittering career in both agriculture and education -
‘The Charitable status of Public Schools made my first fortune, and the arable subsidies my second.
by tim March 18th, 2009 at 5:14 pm’
51 Sunder - That would be a fair point if this was the end of the matter. But it’s not - it’s the beginning. Cameron addressed this point early in his speech:
I know that cutting the cost of politics will in no way solve our debt crisis.
Public spending on politics is a pinprick compared to the total amounts of money we are dealing with.
I understand that to really get to grips with the debt crisis we will have to take a look at those areas of massive government expenditure and see where savings can be made.
Public sector pay, gold-plated pensions, big procurement projects - whole swathes of state activity can no longer be sacrosanct.
The burden will be borne across the board.
But we cannot ask people to bear that burden unless we are prepared to play our part and take a lead by doing so.
To put it another way: Cameron has made a start by identifying £120M worth of very specific savings, in addition to existing policies such as scrapping ID cards. What savings have Darling and Brown identified?
“We believe the British people deserve the opportunity to register their views on reform of the voting system not later than the date of the next general election.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2009/sep/06/letters-to-the-editor
Interesting phrase - “not later”….
Hmm.
77 tim
Completely predictable - but good politics from UKIP.
Lisbon is in their electoral (though not political) interests. Annoying the Irish into voting yes helps.
Consumer borrowing continues to collapse in the U.S., as Americans are still paying off debt and reducing borrowing:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/08/consumer-credit-loan-markets-economy-banking.html
The striking dichotomy between individual fiscal discipline and federal government profligacy helps to explain the high level of public concern and disapproval for budget-busting government borrowing and spending, particularly as it impacts the healthcare debate.
The Freedland article alluded to by Sunder Katwala at 51
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/08/2010-election-age-of-austerity
84 - That has to be the reason for this leaflet
It will also argue that the final decision on sensitive ethical issues such as abortion and euthanasia will pass from Irish to European courts if the treaty is ratified.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/09/08/the-cameron-circus-comes-to-town/
84. Seriously I’m baffled as to what UKIP think they are achieving in Ireland. Another example of their tendency to quixotic cluelessness.
76 Well I don’t tw@tter and I don’t want to follow a political party on Facebook. Besides which, I don’t see a list of Cameron Directs up there. And the website says that Facebook has information on webcasts not Cameron Directs.
That’s if they can bloody find out when they’re happening… forgive me if I think it sounds like they’re cosy meetings of political anoraks and party members. How is Joe Public like me supposed to find out when they’re happening?
85. jings !!!
The larger point is that the Tories are starting out from a false premise. The deficit is simply not the gravest challenge facing our economy. True, our debt to GDP ratio stands at 55%. But the US, Germany, France, Italy and Japan all have worse numbers. Like a household m0rtgage, the headline figure sounds scary but we don’t have to pay the money back overnight. And, while 1nterest rates remain low, the cost of servicing that debt is manageable.
More important, as Darling argued, is steering us out of recession and ensuring that those currently out of work, especially the young, don’t end up as yet another lost generation. In this context, spending, say, £10bn on jobs or training will barely make a dent in the deficit, but for many thousands of Britons it could be the difference between a life of worth and a life wasted.
FPT - The Baucus ‘plan’ has no chance of getting anywhere, it’s like he took the worst aspects of various plans and shoved them all together. Anyone being charitable would say that he did it so as to not have to defend his position too hard.
84 - Sorry, this leaflet.
http://www.ukip.org/content/european-issues/1236-ukip-leaflets-for-irish-no-vote
Reminds me of the idiots at the Guardian who started writing to Americans telling them how nasty Bush was.
53 - priceless
69 - if you need a reninder on the gold sale ..:D
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article1655001.ece
it’s just about quadrupled in value since.. must be a Labour investment
83.Rod, this is the Guardian clutching at straws.
Polly Toynbee puts it this way.
“Eight months with untrammelled parliamentary power is a long time in politics. Start by trusting people to run their own democracy. Bring in proportional representation for councils right now, and promise a referendum on general election day on PR for Westminster. The Electoral Reform Society’s YouGov poll shows Labour would get a 17% boost for giving voters that chance. A potentially self-sacrificing act would be rewarded by voters. Watch how this would change the terms of political debate, while Cameron finds disingenuous reasons to reject a fair voting system.”
My fav bit is the way she tells us that the current Labour government polling in the mid 20’s, could get a 17% boost for giving voters that chance. And then she goes on and tries to sell us the idea that it would the most noble of self sacrificing gestures from Labour.
Jaw dropping, sheer bl**dy cheek doesn’t even begin to cover it.
62 maggie cut in the middle of a recession, and increased taxes, it allowed her to bring public spending under control, so Government was no longer part of the problem, laying the ground work for two decades of prosperity
re 7 well according to Ipsos Mori 25% of them must be practically certifiable.
89.”And, while 1nterest rates remain low, the cost of servicing that debt is manageable.”
Flash Harry, watch the newsnight debate when it comes online.
93 - A Scottish Tory against PR?
Your vote is historically as worthless as Aung san suu kyi’s
re 21 My God did you ever see a more parochial headline than that one in the Herald “Cameron calls for 10% cut in Scots MPs”
73. The most disturbing thing about the WI revolt, was the way that NuLabours friends in the media went all out to discredit the WI. If i remember correctly it got to the point that the Mirror was hounding one of the women present because her son was a member of the BNP.
James Forsyth at the Coffee House Blog - And, while 1nterest rates remain low, the cost of servicing that debt is manageable.
“Labour thinks that it can use it to get over the message that the Tories are more interested in looking after their well-off friends than protecting services. As David Cameron’s decision to wear a lounge suit, not a traditional morning suit, to his brother-in-law’s wedding demonstrated, the Tories remain nervous about the toff factor.”
Try finding a picture of Gordon Brown in a kilt…
88 - if you page down you see them shown on a map which you can enlarge. Clicking on one of the markers tells you teh date and venue.
http://www.conservatives.com/Get_involved/Cameron_Direct.aspx
89. Ghost
Its excess debt and excess spending that caused the recession in the first place.
And what happens when interest rates rise?
94 - Debatable.
There was another recession coming along pretty soon.
“What savings have Darling and Brown identified?”
They have not
But that is not the point , we know that Labour have admitted to 7% cuts in dept budgets across the board in their budget red book.
All Labour are saying is that THEIR cuts will somehow be painless and Tory cuts will end up tearing the first born from their mothers wombs.
Yeah well nothing new there.
Cuts are on their way - delaying them until next year is not going to make anything any better any easier.
If we want any nascent recovery to bloom those cuts must be allied with tax cuts and reform of the benefits system in order to encourage investment and the work (as opposed to the benefits) ethic.
102. I was quoting Comrade Freedmans denial/suicide note linked in 85.
Truly the rantings of a madman.
73 Blair was not over rated at all, he was no where near as polished as people think, that is true, with hindsight. But that was because Blair grew enormously in his job. By 2005 he was quite an accomplished performer, his performance in the Iraq war debate was exceptionally persuasive and passionate, his speeches to Labour conferences, again tended to be exceptional.
98.ChrisA, I noticed that, and your are right there. But I am hoping that the other major newspaper headlines will put it in perspective.
Daily Mail - Cameron the 10% axeman: Tory leader to slash Ministers’ pay, reduce the number of MPs, cut their perks - and then target public spending
“David Cameron has paved the way for spending cuts of 10 per cent as he proposed reducing the number of MPs and slashing ministerial pay.
He said driving the Commons gravy train ‘well and truly into the buffers’ would show Parliament is leading the way in a new era of belt-tightening.
Cutbacks ‘across the board’ were vital, he declared, to tackle the catastrophic state of the nation’s finances.”
93: ‘…she tells us that the current Labour government polling in the mid 20’s, could get a 17% boost for giving voters that chance.’
I think Anthony Wells rebutted that: nearly all of the 17% who’d be ‘more likely to vote Labour if they introduced electoral reform’ were plainning to vote Labour anyway. So another classic Toynbeeism.
100 - From the Speccie.
The inheritance tax pledge is fairly small beer in revenue terms but it is a big issue in terms of perception. Labour thinks that it can use it to get over the message that the Tories are more interested in looking after their well-off friends than protecting services.
Who thought that issue was going away?
No one serious.
105. Ghost
Apologies.
But remember when you quote an idiot always to use “” lest people think you’re the fool.
Daily Mail have George Osborne as the GQ politician of the year.
109. tim
And it will do Labour as much good as campaigning on fox hunting did them in Norwich North.
And shouldn’t you be in bed?
I always heard farmers had to get up early.
Looking at the map of CameronDirect appearances, I conclude that Cammo needs to get his arse down to Bristol.
Flashman -
Your premise is the desperate inept and dangerous policy that Labour down the ages has been reduced to. Sod the deficit sod the inability to pay. Just spend and bugger it.
Just spend spend spend.
Labours policy is to inflate the debt away - and to do that inflation will effectively impoverish you, YOU, and YOUR savings (or your ability to save).
Inflation ruins our competitiveness as well and thence our currency.
This is why we are poor and the Germans are rich. They value the strength of their currency.
Oh and high debt means high debt payments and high taxes and less money for other things due to servicing the debt.
labour have added to the national debt more than the total of all the debt in all the years of its entire existence.
We are having to pay for WW1 and WW2 all over again. Wars which broke us as a nation and YOU say — ‘nah - no problems’
Pathetic and ignorant twaddle Mr Flashman.
Oh and just because investment bankers are making money again helping rich companies take over bust ones - we think the recession is over.
Dream on.
103. Recessions come and go, the government can either be part of the solution or part of the problem. If the public finances are in a state of disarray then you cant be part of the solution.
Brown as Chancellor played his hand very well in the early years, as money flowed into the treasury like never before, he made a virtue of efficiency and running a tight ship, the government had bumper surpluses and paid down significant aspects of the national debt.
He then went on a spending binge like no other. This binge most likely resulted in the economy avoiding a small recession around 2002 / 2003, but since then we havent had a balanced budget (remember the ‘golden rule’?)
Right at the top of the peak of the boom, we had a spending deficit of about 50 billion, we had no room for if things go wrong, and then the shit hit the fan.
We had a low total debt (assuming we dont take into account the off the balance sheet fudges with liabilities for pensions and PFIs), but a structural deficit that would make an economist weep.
We have had about six years of serious mismanagement of the public services. Even without the problems we have had since the banking collapse, the level of public spending could not carry on as they were.
114. Go straight to 105 and do not borrow £200.
88. I say again !……………they put up posters and leaflet random swathes of the town [I did this]. There is an email address and a phone number. You enter your name in a ballot. The ballot is there to stop party members finding out first and booking it up in advance. The ballot take place about 24/48 hours before the event [I did this].
They are not advertised across the county etc
1. the one restriction on entry is that you are supposed to live in the constituency boundary.
2. they don’t have to spend a fortune on advertising and fog horn it because they fill up with far FAR too many people very VERY quickly.
I can TELL YOU that when the names pulled, we had people who were definate ‘antis’ [including Labour activists and councillors] but they came sat/asked/did what they liked, including speaking negatively to the press [I let them in and didn't identify them]. DC arrived seconds before he went on and had no idea who anyone was.
We also had to refuse party stalwarts who didn’t come up in the ballot and who were ringing up angrily.
We were told catergorically that he was prepared to take hostile questioning from anyone.
Brown and Cameron = chalk and cheese [or salad and fruitcake etc etc]
116 - Quotation marks, useful little buggers and highly “entertaining”
109.Note that the article states that *Labour thinks*.
Meanwhile Cruddas thinks that they have much more pressing problems right now.
James Forsyth at the Coffee House Blog - Cruddas’s intervention
Unfortunately, he and Polly are living on the same planet right now.
114 - confused herd fight.
Goodnight
119. Looks like Labour will be moving left in Opposition. Great news for Cameron.
tim, dear dear tim, - the IHT tax reforms benefit ordinary people - ordinary house holders.
Thats why it is so popular and labour are so scared by it. By definition the small numbers of rich, really rich, people only benefit slightly and are able to take measures to insulate themselves from it anyway.
The poor sodding vast swathes of the middle classes though - they get caught in labours net. And pay out big time.
But since when did labour give a shit about the middle classes.
Thats right tim, Never.
Good chap getting that one right. But its a given for labour innit?
Cruddas was spelling it out today for you wasn’t he??
Being of working class stock, Labour dont give much of a sh1t for them either, so who do they care about?
90 - UKPaul: at this point everything is on hold until the POTUS speech tomorrow evening, and - more importantly - the reaction to it in the 4 days afterwards (including the Sunday talk shows). Then we’ll have an idea how it’s gone down in the country.
It’s high stakes stuff - he needs a boffo performance.
“What savings have Darling and Brown identified?”
Military kit definitely. Labour sacred cows none.
122. “tim, dear dear tim, - the IHT tax reforms benefit ordinary people - ordinary house holders.”
Rubbish. To benefit from the Tory proposals you would probably have to be in the top 2% or 3% of the population by net worth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom#Wealth
117 Apols, didn’t see your post, just Ted’s. I will look out for posters just in case Cammo comes to NE Hants, bet he won’t though as it’s rock solid Tory. There was no campaigning at all last GE, although I did get two Tory leaflets, one for the wrong constituency.
125.Witan, did you see that report from Michael Yon I linked to in the earlier thread?
124- Obama will need to completely change tactics during tomorrow’s speech if he hopes to make a real impact. He needs to say, basically, ‘enough with the bullsh*t, here’s my plan, I need your support.’ If it’s just another campaign speech with vague platitudes and a few sob stories thrown in, it won’t be enough to substantially move the debate. People are beyond that already. I don’t expect him to do what he needs to do, but we’ll see…
Purely in the spirit of spreading joy among pb.com’ers, can I (hat tip Anthony Wells) recommend http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/index.html?regional_swing.html ? The whole site is good fun for figures fans, this particular page suggesting unusual regional patterns based on the Euros. As Anthony points out the statistical basis is wonky but at least the sample is large. As it’s based on the Euro results it shows a general Labour slaughter, of course, but the regional difference are what’s new: they net out mildly positively for the Tories, especially in the North (so much for the Telegraph), though not so much in the East Midlands.
Afraid not. Good stuff you have said. I will try and get to it tomorrow.
I wonder when the dimwits will get it into their heads that the IHT proposals do not benefit the rich but benefit the middle classes by taking them out of IHT.
If they do not understand that they will never understand what happened in the late summer of 2007 and what that should tell them about the next election campaign.
Labour supporters view of the IHT proposals is in the same class as ‘three million unemployed’, ‘the disaster of Black Wednesday’ and the Milk Snatcher fairy story.
Has tim really gone to bed?
Is it possible to emerge from the darkness and not speak about IHT?
129 - Given the mealy mouthed comments of Pelosi and Reid after the meeting with Obama - squishy was the word used - the indications are less than stellar.
But time will tell……
131 The first paragraph was to Christina. Sorry to miss your name out.
tim is down for servicing and upgrade.
Mr Palmer, I have an important question for you which Mr Crosby either declined to answer or failed to declare his ignorance.
Do MPs when addressing colleagues in the house still use the terms “The Honourable and Gallant Member for …” or “The Gallant Member for …”. I understand the address is used for MPs that served in the Armed Forces. Hansard debates in the 1950s show that it’s useage was very common.
Witan, just for you.
Michael Yon - Eight Years After 9/11
Christina could you give me the Yon link again please?
133- I’m not quite sure how it can be a great speech in terms of substance given where the process is right now, although it could always be sold as a success based on rhetorical style. I’m sure his media bobbysoxers will says it’s stupendous but it’s tough to imagine what he can say right now to win over the public. This is a speech that should have been given two or three months ago, or perhaps later once House and Senate bills were headed to conference. The fact that it’s happening right now reeks of desperation.
135 - Tim made 98 posts, every five minutes since 7.43 am…he took an hour off for lunch.
I think the bunker have contravened the work/ time directive well and truly today?
138.Witan, one step or should I say post ahead of you there.
132
Nah, its just shift change.
136. I missed your question, but the answer is yes. Unfortunately, AFAIK, there are no current Members entitled to the appellation.
The title “honourable and learned” is also still applied [for some reason] to those members who are Queen’s Counsel….
140 SimonStClare
I thought he had a farm to tend?
17. It’s good to see the Tories true feelings about protecting civil liberties are revealing themselves now they are inching closer to power. How shocking to learn your civil liberties will continue to be eroded regardless of who wins the next election.
I’ll be interested to see if David Davis continues his freedom fight should the Tories return to power.
Christina mind reader to pb.com.
Thanks
Christ almighty, what a tw@ Simon Heffer is
The weak leadership of Gordon Brown and David Cameron is a damaging disease – and it’s catching says Simon Heffer
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/6158163/The-weak-leadership-of-Gordon-Brown-and-David-Cameron-is-a-damaging-disease—and-its-catching.html
109
‘The inheritance tax pledge is fairly small beer in revenue terms but it is a big issue in terms of perception.’
Certainly small beer compared with the volume of public sector non jobs this government has created,not to mention the failure to reform the benefits system which even managed to shock Prescott.
Funny we were talking about party switchers on the previous thread and then…
“Two-term Vermont State Auditor Tom Salmon, a Democrat, announced at a statehouse news conference Tuesday that he will change his party and run for re-election in 2010 as a Republican. In a news conference in the Statehouse Cedar Creek room, Salmon said the Democrats had abandoned him and thousands of others like him. “In many ways, I am not leaving the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me,” Salmon said.”
http://www.wptz.com/news/20791780/detail.html
139 - I agree absolutely. That’s why I said it’ll take the 4 days to work out how it’s perceived in the country. Get beyond the hype, the talking heads, and see what the feedback is after the dust settles.
This is now the hail mary.
145 Ah, Mr Small Red Sausage has returned from the valley where he is a boy not an appendage.
147. Weaker than resigning to fight a bye election the day before your treasurer quits due to the Chairman doubling salaries without your permission ?
143 – Rod, do you know off the top of your head, which military rank an MP had to have achieved before gaining the snazzy title of ‘The Gallant Member’?
144 – He is also supposed to have a young family…I think a call to social services is in order.
143 RodCrosby
I have certainly heard the “[The Right] Honourable and Learned” used recently. A frequently broadcast example was Michael Howard being addressed.
I just wondered whether if we would soon be hearing the Prime Minister addressing a reply at PMQs in the near future to “The Honourable and Gallant Member for Falkirk”.
Thanks for your answer. My original question was one of those 3:00 follies!
51. 51.Mike,
“He didn’t try to please the crowd. Maybe he is very mindful that he’s likely to become PM in the next nine months but there was nothing there to get the easy applause”.
Hmm. He’s not completely above fishing for a bit of easy crowd pleasing is he?
Jonathan Freedland says this in tomorrow’s Guardian: “Start with the most trivial point: after all, that’s what Cameron did. Of course, the public is right to be outraged by the money MPs lavished on themselves through dodgy expenses. But to link the deficit to ministers’ pay was little more than cheap demagoguery, seeking to turn justifiable anger at greedy MPs into a generalised loathing for public spending. Yes, I know the argument Cameron was making: that cutting the cost of politics is merely a way of leading by example. But to devote a whole speech to what he insisted is a looming debt crisis – one measured in the hundreds of billions – to a set of measures which at most will save £120m, a drop in the ocean, was fundamentally unserious. It was gesture politics.
by Sunder Katwala September 8th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
No its not gesture politics? Where do you propose cuts of billions will come from? Answer: Nowhere. A series of “small”, manageable cuts is what’s required.
As Reagan once said: A million here, a million there, soon we start talking in real money. 120mn is not a bad starting point by any means.
155 - off the top of my head, wasn’t it Everett Dirksen who made that comment, and not Reagan?
153. I believe it is reserved for officers who have seen active service.
Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) was referred to using the title in 2008 by Mark Lancaster (Milton Keynes North East) in 2008.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080401/debtext/80401-0022.htm
154. I don’t think a Major in the Catering Corps is entitled to be addressed as “gallant”
I had thought that the various references to MPs being “gallant” (ex officers) and “noble” (heirs to peerages) etc, was discontinued in one of the early procedural changes instituted after 1997.
157 – Cheers Rod, and as recently as 2008, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it used before.
PS As in
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1414874/Its-all-over-for-the-Hon.-Member-says-Cook.html
But did this ever happen?
I have just finished listening to the Bedford town hall meeting.
Cameron is an impressive communicator. He manages to turn questions into platforms for policy statement without revealing that he never answered the original question. The audience didn’t feel mugged: rather like a stage magician relieving a volunteer of their wallet.
I think Cameron is genuine when he describes his role as that of a Chairman. He is the outward-looking face of his party, the team motivator and the summariser. He doesn’t come across as a rigorous thinker - like say a Hague or Rifkind, nor as an ideologue - a Thatcher or a Redwood. But we do get the impression that he is prepared to be ruthless in judging and appointing his team - a Macmillan perhaps as Mike S may have been trying to suggest.
Maybe we should all be paying closer attention to his team.
157. “I believe it is reserved for officers who have seen active service.”
[add].. “and still hold the Queen’s Commission.”
just to clarify…
RodC & John O
Thanks for the Hansard and DT links. Interesting.
I guess the full gamut of Cook’s proposals didn’t get adopted.
Maybe Major Joyce should be referred to as “My honourable and culinary friend”.
Mike, having witnessed a Cameron direct now, can you see Brown being able to cope up against Cameron in a leadership debate? They cross swords at PMQ’s regularly, but Cameron is out there meeting the real the public week in and week out at these events. He will in effect, have his finger on the electorate’s pulse in a way that Gordon Brown simple cannot, no matter how well his team try to prepare him?
163. Apparently not.
“the writing is also on the wall for the Crown Steward and the Bailiff of Chiltern Hundreds and the Manor of Northstead, the fictitious official positions to which an MP must apply in order to resign.”
“Still hold the Queen’s commission”
What exactly is meant by this. That the officer is still serving or that he held a rank (I believe Major and above) which he can continue to use in civilian life. Like the “Major” in Fawlty Towers perhaps.
I remember my father being a stickler on such matters and he only served a short-term war commission in the RNVR!
166. I’m not a military expert, but I’d guess it means “available for recall” i.e. not on the retired list.
PMs Attlee, Eden, Macmillan and Heath? all saw active service as officers, and thus would have been referred to as gallant around the time they entered Parliament, but by the time they became PM they had resigned their commissions and were not referred to as gallant. I think Callaghan was invalided out at exactly the time he gained his commission, so not sure if he was ever a “gallant”. Wilson volunteered, but his brain was put to best use instead in the Dept. of Statistics, so he was never a gallant. Home discovered he had a back back before the outbreak of war, so the least said about him…
167. should read “discovered he had a bad back”
Enoch Powell was one of Parliament’s most gallant MPs, enlisting as a Private at the beginning of the war and rising to the rank of Bridadier before its end. I believe he achieved this mainly through staff and intelligence work and never saw active service. Perhaps it was this last point rather than his ‘eccentric’ political views that disqualified him from being addressed as “Gallant”.
143 et al
Thats interesting. I know of at least one serving MP who has seen active service - Patrick Mercer. As to the still holding the commission what exactly does that entail? The reason I ask is that serving members of the military are barred from standing for Parliament so I am not sure how the two can be reconciled.
A task for pb.com might be to draw up a new list of “honorific titles” for use in the House of Commons. The aim would be to ‘bring ancient custom and practice into the 21st century’. It would need to reflect the more modern and varied backgrounds of the current MPs and PPCs.
A solicitor, in contrast to a barrister, might be referred to as “My Honourable and Duly Diligent Friend”.
169. Yes he was the only man to do so during the Second World War - to rise from a private soldier to the equivalent of a minor General, and one of only a handful in the whole of British military history..
170. I think you’ve got it arse-about-face. There was a loophole which allowed enlisted men to duck out of the Army if they became parliamentary candidates. Around 1962/3 there were a spate of such people standing in by-elections, effectively buying themselves out of the services for £150. There was no prohibition, as such, on soldiers becoming MPs. And I don’t think any of this applied to officers anyhow, but only to the lower ranks…
Lisbon.
From Daniel Hannan’s blog:
“I am increasingly confident that Britain will get its referendum. I’m not in a position to explain why at this stage, but our hand is stronger than is generally supposed. I know this won’t do for some of my readers, but I’m afraid that, for now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100008876/euro-sceptic-meps-hold-our-inaugural-conference/
Obama plans to come off back off the fence and demand a public option in his speech tomorrow night:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125240777810092069.html
This will cost him all GOP support as well as endangering his Blue Dogs in the House, but it is better for him to make some decision than to continue the indecision that has characterized his approach so far.
173 Lisbon
I would guess Hannan’s comment has been cleared with Cameron, as after his jaunt on Fox News he must be on Prison Service watch.
I guess the clue to his comment is in his location, Prague. A promise of delayed Czech ratification?
172
Sorry Rod but you are wrong. I posted on this a couple of weeks ago.
According to the electoral commission those barred from standing for Parliament include members of the armed forces and also other public servants such as judges and police officers.
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/__data/assets/electoral_commission_pdf_file/0007/79540/UKPGE-nominations-factsheet-FINAL.pdf
88. There was a Cameron meeting in Croydon which was only reported by the local newspaper after the event.
(Two threads ago, about names)
“Wendy” is not a recently made-up name; a few Wendys (of both genders) have been found in census records in the UK and in the USA as far back as the 1820s. But it was of course made much more popular as a result of the one in Peter Pan.
I am also reminded of the phenomenon of African leaders often having a Christian/European first name combined with an African surname - e.g. Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Julius Nyerere, Joseph-Desiré Mobutu, Hastings Banda, Milton Obote, Kenneth Kaunda.
171. Tony Banks once referred to Nigel Lawson as “the fat bounder” and when the Speaker told him off, he changed it to “The Honourable and Corpulent Gentleman”
!mih ta egdirf a werht enoemos esuaceB ?ekib sih ffo llaf yob eht did yhW
?daerht weN
.oN
.daerht dlo emas
28 “Isn’t Andrew Rawnsley looking old?”
Yes, he looked 40ish for about 15 years and suddenly he looks 55, which I imagine is about his actual age.
183 Oops - just checked Rawnsley out on Wiki and he’s only 47 yrs of age, must be the studio lights.
185 Newsnight last night showed that dramatic clip of Brown at PMQs less than three months ago still brazenly stating that Labour would increase public expenditure - this was quite extraordinary as everyone knew this simply couldn’t happen and it simply demonstrated the extent to which he had totally lost it.
Morning all, quick post before I dart out to work. Totally off topic. Today is 09/09/09 which will no doubt amuse some people, there being only 3 more such dates remaining this century. However going back 2000 years to another 09/09/09 we find that Publius Quinctilius Varus came up against the combined Germanic tribes under Arminius (anglicised as Hermann, so Hermann the German) and was destroyed at the Battle of the Teutoberg forest. Like I said totally off topic but I always remember the battle as it was one of my late father’s favourites.
166 Quite so, Christina, there’s simply no substitute for meeting challenging audiences. Imagine how battle-hardened he will be going into the GE campaign in just a few months’ time, compared with Brown’s stage-managed events shaking hands with a few smiling nurses or compliant leftie teachers.
Btw, whatever happened to Populus polls?
Labour really have no idea whatsoever how to deal with Cameron do they? It is doing their heads in that people actually like what they see. BUT HE’S A TORY! you can almost hear them scream. BFD.
Dave seems very straight up to me. He doesn’t seem to play little bullshit games. He says what he thinks and he thinks clearly. The whole Labour party have become so institutionalised in the habit of lying and spinning that they have no response when someone else just starts being honest.
Dave says ‘we need cuts’. Labour = Does not compute.
Most people in the country realise public spending is out of control and very wasteful. Labour = Does not compute.
Everyone is now seeing that the last 12 years have been a ridiculous lie and a financially ruinous fantasy. Labour = Does not compute.
Gordon Brown is painfully and cruelly exposed as a charlatan. Labour = Does not compute.
Dave is moving the world of politics towards one of enforced transparency (and therefore one that is fatal to the Labour worldview). Labour = Does not compute.
If Labour is to have any chance of avoiding a meltdown at the GE then first thing they need to address is their denial. They just don’t see their record, their style, their leader, their team or their ideology with any objective clarity. Maybe the truth is just too paionful and they prefer to stumble on unchanged towards their nemesis.
@189: That’s bang on. And exactly the same problem the Tories had in 1997.
Afternoon all from the shores of Lake Taupo in New Zealand
Re: 189 - The fact remains, however, that Labour won clear majorities at three successive GEs and the vast majority of people bought in to the Blair/Brown “deal” until the roof fell in.
The profound psychological impact recent events have had on people’s views of Government is witnessed in the wave of changes that started in Australia and which have encompassed much of the western world.
We miss the certainties of the good times, we miss cheap food, cheap fuel, cheap credit and above all rising property values. We hate the uncertainties of the present and the pain of the future.
We are moving into the post-baby boomer era and new policies and new social structures will be required. I don’t know if Cameron can deliver these - I doubt it frankly. All he can do is play to the zeitgeist and clearly he is doing that.
191 and the vast majority of people bought in to the Blair/Brown “deal” until the roof fell in.
“Vast majority”….. hardly, in fact in England more people voted Tory than Labour in 2005.
Re: 192 - That fact is wheeled out every time, Peter, as some way of denying the result of the 2005 GE which was a clear win for Labour. They were the largest of the minority parties once the votes were counted and under FPTP, they won a majority of seats in Parliament.
In addition, I very much doubt that if the Tories had won in 2005, there would have been any significant difference to the course of events from late 2007 onwards.
194.A bit of news and a bit of shameless advertising.
The news is that betfair a running a bot on at least one GE market (Most Seats) and this is new.I suppose it makes for a bit of company in the small hours.
The shameless advertising is that I have put in a few offers on the Party Line market and am gradually easing myself back into the game.
I expect a fresh thread any second now.
LAST !!!!!!!!
191 Stodge. Yes I think this is true. I do, however, think that the broad theme of ‘living within our means’ is where we will have to go. That is Dave’s core message and brutally at odds with the lefty view of ‘jam today’.
All western countries will need to bring their deficits and their spending in line with what is socially and politically and financially acceptable in each place. For the EU this will mean higher tax and spend. Elsewhere probably alot less so. Any politician who tries to force the balance away from what is realistic will get pummelled.
In the UK, I think Dave is on a journey to get the establishment and the bureaucracy in line with most people’s view that spending is OTT and very wasteful. Our future public sector will be smaller and alot more accountable. Good.
In the USA, Obama has an even scarier problem. He has misunderstood his mandate and is trying, so far unsuccessfully, to socialise an essentially conservative country. His health speech today will be make or break for his presidency. FWIW I think he will make the mistake of pushing on doggedly to a ‘public option’ solution and that this will cause widespread outrage among the 90% of the population who are happy with what they have today and don’t want big government in their face. Maybe this would be good for another thread (Mike? Mid terms betting?). I think Obama has blown it already, only a few months in. (The arrogant commie). Running as a moderate and then letting Pelosi set his legislative programme ain’t too smart!
191 Stodge - the general thrust of your post at 191 is correct. People of a certain age, probably around >45 years or thereabouts are concerned that the “good” times have gone, probably never to return, at least that’s certainly how I see it.
I never cease to be amazed by people’s seemingly limitless optimism. When I express my genuine concern about bringing children into the world now and the awesome problems they are likely to face over the next 80-100 years (or whatever life expectancy might be by the end of this century. Usually I get a “they’ll get by” type
response accompanied by an unconcerned shrug.
196 But people do get used to things. Even the most appalling things. One look at people’s mindset during wartime conforms that.
There’s no fundamental reason that we cannot adjust ourselves to a different relationship with the state, with foreign powers, etc.
We have become lazy. I look at the way people live and work in other countries and it amazes me how feckless so very many people in western countries are.
Stodge, I don’t think Peter is arguing that Blair and Brown didn’t win the elections. But your suggestion that “the vast majority of people bought in to the Blair/Brown “deal”” is clearly not true even in 1997.
This is not meant to start an agument about FPTP, simply to point out that your statement at 191 is clearly wrong.
194
“The news is that betfair a running a bot on at least one GE market ”
Tim?
I don’t think Cameron should start making “gesture” promises over things he should have no influence over (eg. House of Commons matters).
195 It’s incredible that, even now, most people I would venture to suggest have absolutely no grasp on just how serious is the state of the British economy and therefore just how much pain we are set to endure before things return to anything like “normal”
Tory MPs are clearly under strict instructions to deny the merest hint that cuts in the NHS budget might actually be necessary, despite everyone being fully aware that huge inefficiences, waste and, yes, huge over-employment exist therein. It seems that rather than address these problems, most would instead be prepared to accept fees for Doctor’s appointments, doubled prescription charges, daily “accommodation charges” in hospital, for all these appear unavoidable within the next 2-3 years as it becomes self evident that anything less will mean that the level of public spending simply cannot be held within manageable levels.
For the past 10 years, or more specifically the past 5, this government has closed its eyes to the inevitable day of reckoning that lay ahead as a result of it having Champagne tastes, but with only Ginger Beer pockets. That’s Brown’s legacy for which he will never be forgiven.
201 - The gesture on a salad show how serious he is and ready to assume the burden of power.
For those who missed Robinson piece on David Cameron on News at Ten last night its here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_5350000/newsid_5351100/5351140.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&ms3=6&ms_javascript=true&bbcws=2#
200 This ‘gesture’ politics thing confuses me. Dave has said we need cuts and he’ll outling Tory plans in 3 or 4 waves.
First will be the implications for politicians - we got that yesterday.
Next up is Whitehall - I think that comes next month.
Then quangos - we got a hint yesterday but there’s obviously more to come.
And then there will be broader spending reductions - but I suspect this will be much more circumspect as he has an election to win. There’ll be no Brownian ’spending increase’ type lies but some directional statements with, for some, a lack of detail. No opposition leader will lay out his first budget before thebloody election though will he?
Dave mentions subsidised salads as an example in part of item one and the tims of this world start bangning on about gestures. STFU. From my perspective Dave is slowly but clearly laying out the state of things to come. And he’s at least not lying.
Where’s Gordon in all this? No-one knows if he’s even still alive.
196 To be fair, children being born today face a far less challenging world than they did in say, 1800, or 1300. So “they’ll get by” is not a bad response.
Gordon’s ALIVE?!
202 Tim thats just pathetic, and you are posting something you clearly don’t believe yourself, unless of course you ARE completely deluded.
201 Reading Jonathan Freedland et al, they have no idea of the extent to which gilt-buyers will hold the government’s feet to the fire in years to come.
204 - Patrick I think he said Thursday is when Osborne will spell out some changes for Whitehall.
205 Sorry Sean, I can’t agree, there speaks a youngish father methinks.
Call me a prophet of doom if you wish, but I can foresee problems ahead, out of all proportion with those faced by previous generations I’m afraid.
201- Peter.
Charging for Doctors appointments are likely to be the best way of increasing health costs as the people most deterred from accessing health care early would be the poor and the already ill, exactly the people who are cheaper to treat the earlier they access health care.
Prescription charges is a similar argument, but given the exemptions, more of a pinprick.
If you want to charge you need to pick an area where demand is not likely to be affected by charges - For example sports injuries, or charge fat people.
Both again, counterproductive as most charges are, but not as counterproductive as the charges you propose.
Having watched last night’s Cameron Direct, even more than ever we must conclude that Dave “has it” - that bit of stardust, that political magic that must delight his followers and invoke despair in his detractors.
His bit about cutting costs in Parliament is genius. We know this to be true because of Tim’s utter hysteria about it. Who on earth could it possibly fail to appeal to?
Is OGH having a lie-in or is he simply adjusting his positions after listening to Dave last night?
202 - Tim’s a petty boy
209 OK. We will get a structured look at spending plans from Dave and George. That is actually very brave given their poll leads and the state of the Labour party. They could just keep mum.
One key point alluded to by Dave and addressed specifically in the press is the market risk of the Tories not winning. If it started to look even a tiny bit likely that Dave is not to be PM then the debt markets, which are currently pricing in a Tory win, will reert to a pricing that assumes 5 more years of Gordon - and therefore no serious effort at all to deal with debt. Therein lies a speedy collapse of the gilt market and a trip to the IMF. We literally cannot afford Labour right now. (Unless of course Darling starts making unequivocal commitment to cuts on a meaningful scale and identifies very soon where they will come from - if such sentiments are still believable from a Labour politician).
At least Hammond on newsnight said they would honour contributions already paid into public sector pensions like LGPS.
I bloody well thinks so government should honour contracts.
Even a tory one.
211 Tim, I am not “proposing” these types of charges, far from it, but merely pointing out that they, or something akin, will probably become inevitable unless a no holds barred review is undertaken of the truly gargantuan and out of control levels of current NHS spending.
The scariest comment on Newnight last night came from Fraser Nelson when he said that senior Civil Servants were actually working on a plan, for cuts of not 10%, but for one of 20%, should this be ultimately be required by the IMF and our creditors to persuade them to pump the necessary funds into the British economy.
It’s Callaghan and Healey all over again, we never learn do we?
216 One can require much higher contributions towards pensions from public sector workers and still be honouring one’s contract with them. I suspect that that is what will happen (in fact, it’s already happening).
218 To be fair, I think “we” are psychologically much better prepared for spending cuts than the political class are.
There wasn’t much humour
I think even in the “TV Cameron” you notice the lack of humour. He isn’t quite as unnatural with it as Thatcher used to be, but he’s not good. Given that Brown is notoriously poor at the lighter styles of communication, including humour, perhaps this is an area where Clegg with his self - effacing (sometimes inadvertent!) humour can score.
218 Sean, you (and us, here) ARE the political class!
NB Everyone tries to weasel out of being described as a “politician”!
221 In general, humourous politicians aren’t taken seriously, which is a pity.
BTW, Richard’s figures for industrial output are pretty damning, aren’t they? This will likely be the first decade since the start of the industrial revolution in which industrial output finished lower than it started.
218 Alistair Darling has a short column in the Independent today. Its headline is “There is going to have to be slower growth in public spending” - not cuts but slower growth. He sticks to the line in the last PBR and Budget that his plans to halve the deficit over 4 years ensures “fiscal sustainability” - while the assumptions underlying the forecast remain on the optimistic side.
I posited a week or so that if Labour polling recovered the markets would respond badly and a secondary crisis develop - a sort of auto-corrective on Labour recovery. If Brown and Darling continue with “slower growth” then that seems to me highly likely.
222. Amateur (and not very successful) politician, in my case.
223. The trouble with political jokes is they get elected.
219 Sean that seems a sensible stance, I hope it continues.
Both main parties should at least state their position on this issue, so there is some fair equitable chance of living income in old age for millions of people currently working within the public sector.
On buses: There’s a bus service round me which has adverts emblazoned all down its side about climate change, driving less, carbon emissions etc. balh blah blah, but The maximum number of people i have seen on the bus in 5, and very often it is nil.
So the correct answer about local bus service complaints, given that they are so underused and do about 10-15mpg at best, is that we’d all be better off if they were cancelled - no subsidies, less CO2. However, I can understand why he found it difficult to answer like that…
224 So Darling equates a 7% deficit four years hence (no doubt a massively over optimistic estimate as usual) with fiscal sustainability ….Strewth!!!
His use of the term “slower growth in public spending” sounds like a Brownism. Perhaps he has been called into the Headmaster’s study for a good talking to.
We have a truly horrific level of debt. A structurally unsustainable level of debt. To clear the debt we will need:
A. To stop adding to it.
B. Pay it down to a susainable level (30% GDP, 40% GDP ?)
A implies savings or tax increases on a scale equal to the annual deficit sooner or later. B implies running a surplus. A what? What was that word? Surplus. Never heard of it mate.
That’s right. The UK government NEEDS TO RUN A SURPLUS.
Now go figure what that means for the public sector.
229…Darling’s contribution to the debate is meaningless. he and his cronies will be gone within 10 months. why bother giving them your time?
Freedland makes the common mistake of confusing gross debt with current deficit. It is the deficit that is by far the more important. The IMF gets twitchy whenever a state gets above a 10% deficit.
UK deficit is gettting on for 14%.
228 - It would also contradict everything Boris is doing.
219 - We also need to look at more flexible retirement ages/work patterns/release of property equity/variable tax rates in old age etc.
233. you are Ed Balls and I claim my £5.
131. “Obama will need to completely change tactics during tomorrow’s speech if he hopes to make a real impact. He needs to say, basically, ‘enough with the bullsh*t, here’s my plan, I need your support.’”
Maybe it’s happened already but i’d have guessed the opposite. I’d guess a very emotional Blairesque performance aimed at guilt-tripping the white folks e.g ‘if you don’t support this you’re a Nazi who wants hispanic kids to die of cholera’.
@@@
Rawnsley looks old because he’s had his head stuck up McDoom’s a**e for ten years. In my opinion he still gives the best insight into what’s going on behind the scenes *if* you can read between the lines of what he says.
@@@
The “£120 million is small beans” thing is important imo. One of the problems with the left is the low proportion of people who have a good head for numbers - there’s almost a left brain, right brain thing going on. This may be why certain jobs have loads of guardianistas e.g media and graphic design while some are almost guardianista free e.g building sites and engineering.
Whatever the truth of that, anything along the lines of, “money doesn’t grow on trees”, “look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves”, “robbing a billionaire and divvying it up between 50 million people is only twenty quid each” resonates with the average person much more than it does with the average BBC interviewer.
Matt’s on the money again, on the recession “ending”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/?cartoon=6158488&cc=6119252
231 “he and his cronies will be gone within 10 months.”
10 months?? Yeeks, please tell me it’s now less than 8 months.
232 - I don’t think theres a need to get too hysterical
Moody’s downgraded Ireland’s triple A status in July. But it said Britain had significant advantages that were likely to ensure its debt remained affordable even though it was set to double to 80 per cent of national income in coming years.
A high proportion of UK debt is long-dated, which will keep costs down even if interest rates rise. The average maturity of UK sovereign debt, at about 14 years, is twice as long as France’s and Germany’s and three times as long as the US’s, so its cost will not rise rapidly if interest rates rise.
We don’t wa
230 Patrick I honestly believe, which ever goverment is in power in 2010 initially it will be tax increases taking the strain.
For example 22.5% Vat rate.
I can`t honestly see the welfare budget for unemployment, housing, child care, being reduced with any significance to the numbers you are alluding to.
229. “224 So Darling equates a 7% deficit four years hence (no doubt a massively over optimistic estimate as usual) with fiscal sustainability ….Strewth!!!”
It shows you how much Labour and James Gordon Brown have buggered up the economy that such a deficit is considered by them to be - not that bad. Only a year or so ago we would rightly describe a deficit of that level as being a catastrophe.
233 Blimey - tim said something sensible. Fully agree on retiring later and post retirement tax advantages. Pushing public secotr retirement back 2 or 3 years would save a huge amount.
Of course the gorilla in the corner of public spending is social welfare - benefits.
Dave must somehow find a way to get the army of welfare recipients off their sofa - and to try to separate the genuinely unfortunate from the lifestyle feckless. What a shit sandwich that is going to be!
O/T I wonder if the bookies will look into Speech Debelle winning the Mercury Prize. There was a “very large bet”* placed at 33-1, which took her price down to 4-1 the day before.
Things that make you go “Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…….”
*admittedly, the source for this was a radio journalist - so it could have been just a couple of hundred quid!
238 - tim
You’ve just made the same mistake of confusing national debt and the deficit.
191. “The fact remains, however, that Labour won clear majorities at three successive GEs and the vast majority of people bought in to the Blair/Brown “deal” until the roof fell in.”
Not sure that’s anywhere near true. The majority bought into the anti-Tory thing allowing ZNL to slip through the cracks.
241
Already done it in Norway. Retirement age here is 67 and there is talk of pushing it to 69 or 70.
Mike, it looks like we’ve run out of things to say about Cameron Direct
Can you put up Test Card “C”, or “D” will do if you’re pressed.
242. I don’t know what the bet the journalist was referring to, but there was some good money for her at 33/1 shortly before the nominations came out (ladbrokes have been betting on this for months). She was 14/1 once the final shortlist was announced and we some well informed cash for her at that point. She was never much bigger than 7/1 in the last few weeks and there were no out of the ordinary market movements around her leading up to last night.
Saw the headline on this and thought - “Oooh - that’s a bit of ambitious troughing!”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8245299.stm
229. RE. the deficit…just imagine what might happen if, 4-5 years from now, we have a deficit of 7% of GDP and we go into another recession (perfectly possible - the gap between the last two was abnormally long).
We might then be looking at the deficit ballooning to wartime levels around 20% of GDP. It’s a scary thought. This is the result of Labour’s reckless behaviour from 2001 onwards.
243. Quite so. Some Labourite twerp on here the other day was arguing - with me - that the deficit didn’t matter, it was trivial, what really matters is debt, yadda bladda.
THEY BOTH MATTER - DEBT AND DEFICIT
And right now the bigger concern is arguably our deficit: the highest in the entire world. If banks decide it is just too big for comfort, we are screwed. We’d go bust. Then we really would see apocalypse, an Iceland-type situation, maybe even worse. The IMF would wade in and we’d see huge tax increases, public sector spending slashed by a third, etc, it would take us decades to recover.
And we aren’t far off that situation right now. That’s the measure of the clusterf*ck Labour have wrought.
Guido just pointed out that 10 mins or so ago it was 09.09 09 09 09
251. It seems like only last year when it was 08.08.08 08.08.
On the other hand, Britain may have been turned into a desolate and ruinous wasteland, but I have just had a lovely seafood penne, I enjoyed an utterly butterly evening last night, the sun is shining on soi 4, and I have now finished the 2nd Tom Knox thriller.
So its swings and roundabouts.
O/T Wow, after his big defeat last night, I see Murray has gone right out from 4/1 to 50/1 with Betfair to win SPOTY. Even I would have to concede to that being value!
248 Interesting that the Audit Commission decided today was the time to release their report on how more effective housing stock improvements are than new homes isn’t it? Another Government initiative immediately questioned and what the spin doctors hoped would be a good news, investment, jobs & homes story becomes less clear.
IIRC a large proportion of the cash for this has been taken from the council house/housing association regeneration fund - so taken from improving housing stock to build new, exactly the opposite of the Audit Commission recommendation.
255
Meanwhile H Harman does her best to appeal to the middle classes..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6159537/Middle-classes-to-lose-out-under-Harmans-equality-plan.html
254. What odds could you get on Murray never winning a slam? I don’t think he’s got it. He’s pretty damn good, but… just not quite that good…. in an era of Federer and Nadal that isn’t good enough.
And he is already 22, almost middle aged in modern tennis, with younger men coming up behind him.
I hope I’m wrong. Maybe he could sneak a victory at the Aussie open, when no one is looking.
250. You are overstating the case Sean - outright collapses in developed country bond markets are very rare, mostly because the mere threat of them is enough to get governments scrambling to adjust.
But it is certainly true to say that missteps over the next year or two could make the situation much worse and the danger of an embarassing emergency budget (or more than one) is quite high.
It will also be many years before we are free from the grip of public sector austerity - though that is not entirely a bad thing.
256, I think he has got the talent. I’d be pretty surprised if he never won a slam.
Ted - Gordon Brown has raided the communities department’s own Decent Homes refurbishment initiative and other capital programmes to pay for the 30,000 extra social homes announced in his draft election manifesto, Building Britain’s Future.
200,000 homes will remain in disrepair if Decent Homes, the programme to bring all social housing up to decent living standards by next year, is abandoned.
Read more: http://www.building.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=3143773#ixzz0Qb2h9sMx
257. A fair point. I don’t think we’d actually go bust because, as you say, any government would take emergency action to prevent that happening.
However an IMF intervention is far from impossible. After all, it has happened in living memory - under the last Labour government.
Meanwhile the Heffalump savages Brown and Cameron.
Whom does he want to lead the country? Nick Clegg…?
259 Is there any element of Govt activity that this current crowd have not managed to f*** up?
Any?
Just one?
“Five more years!”…
233:
Boris is Mayor of London. London has enough population density to make buses make sense.
90% of the country, including Bedford, does not have the number of people to justify lots of buses going everywhere. It is a completely different situation. Buses running round near-empty on country lanes is madness.
The fact that even Labour acknowledge that our debt ratio is set to reach “80 per cent of national income in coming years” shows how shockingly bad Brown has managed our economy to his “40% limit”.
This may not matter much to a large % of voters but it will matter to the commentariat because it is one of the few statistics that they will remember Brown spouting.
He, he, he…!
Have al-Beeb turned…?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8214272.stm
260. I think you misunderstand why the IMF intervened then, though.
It wasn’t really because of the fiscal situation (though that was a contributing factor) but because the UK had run out of foreign exchange in a futile attempt to defend sterling and defend a contradictory set of policies.
The UK faced a total collapse of its external credit - which is a lot worse then getting the rating knocked down by a notch or two. The IMF provided balance of payments support, rather than budgetary support per se. The cuts in public spending they demanded were the quid pro quo for this.
241 “Dave must somehow find a way to get the army of welfare recipients off their sofa - and to try to separate the genuinely unfortunate from the lifestyle feckless. What a shit sandwich that is going to be!”
One thing is if someone has a fixed £100 a week outgoing and only £80 coming in then a government can either try and top up the £80 or cut down the £100.
Personally i think it might be better if the welfare system was more about reducing the outgoings e.g social housing, subsidized public transport between home, work, school, shops etc. Reduce the amount of money people need.
When the history of the Labour government 1997-2010 is written, of course there will be mention of the many disastrous wars, the world’s highest deficit, the utterly ruined economy, the half million Iraqi dead, and the historic disgrace of all politics, but there will also be the balancing argument.
Never forget the great ACHIEVEMENTS of this government, as set out by a Labour pundit last week:
Gay rights, the South Downs National Park, and bus passes.
Interesting one from Canada, implications for countries with fixed term parliaments
Toronto Star – “It’s now up to a judge to decide whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s snap election call a year ago was not just politically self-serving but also illegal.
Lawyers squared off today in the Federal Court of Canada in a case that could set a precedent across Canada, and even around the world.
Arguments began exactly one year after Harper forced an early campaign last September – the third in four years.
He did so despite passing changes to the Canada Elections Act in 2007 that set the next vote for Oct. 19, 2009, unless the government fell on a confidence matter first. Federal votes were to be held every four years after that.
The law does not clearly prohibit the prime minister from pre-empting a no-confidence vote and asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament, which she agreed to do.
Still, watchdog group Democracy Watch says Harper’s opportunistic move broke the spirit if not the letter of the legislation – what it calls the “convention” established by the law.
Co-ordinator Duff Conacher said outside court that Harper either broke the law or his 2006 campaign promise to ban snap elections at a prime minister’s partisan whim.
He also claims Harper’s action breached his Charter right to a fair election, a right affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada.
Conacher wants a clear ruling that what Harper did was illegal.
“It was exactly the mischief the (fixed-date) bill was designed to stop,” Democracy Watch lawyer Peter Rosenthal told Justice Michael Shore.
Democracy Watch says there was no reason for Harper to force last year’s vote, other than his hunch that he could win majority power. He did not. And his minority government now faces growing pressure for another election this fall – the fourth in five years.
Shore reserved judgment and likely won’t release his decision for weeks or months.
When it comes in, it will set precedent for fixed-date election laws in B.C., Newfoundland and Labrador, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. It could also help guide interpretations in other countries that commonly review Canadian law.
If Democracy Watch wins, Conacher said his group will consider a class-action effort to recoup the $350 million taxpayers spent on the last vote. It will also push for a legislated 30- to 60-day “cooling off” period to allow all parties fair chance to prepare for future campaigns before they start.
Government lawyer Robert MacKinnon stressed that the fixed-date election changes in no way diminished the Governor General’s discretion to dissolve Parliament “as she sees fit.”
“Democracy Watch is wrongly asking a court to consider what is essentially a moral debate on political fair play – not a legal matter.”
At issue is whether the Harper government’s 2007 changes altered the “constitutional convention” or past practice that allowed prime ministers to engineer sudden elections without being defeated in the House of Commons.
Democracy Watch argues they did. Leading constitutional experts have taken contrary positions.
Rosenthal and the Liberal opposition cited remarks by Attorney General Rob Nicholson – then minister for democratic reform – and several Tory MPs during fixed-date debates in 2006.
Nicholson and others offered repeated assurances that cynically timed votes would be a thing of the past.
“This prime minister will live by the law and spirit of this particular piece of legislation. He and this government are driving this democratic reform,” Nicholson said as he introduced the legislation in Parliament.
But he also stressed in the Commons on Nov. 6, 2006, that the bill would not mean Harper could only visit the Governor General if he’d suffered a no-confidence defeat.
“Moreover, if the bill were to indicate that the prime minister could only advise dissolution in the event of a loss of confidence, it would have to define `confidence,”‘ Nicholson said at the time.
Any subsequent shut-down of Parliament could then be challenged in court, he added – “something that we certainly do not want.”
264, doubtful. If they do become a little less rabidly anti-Tory/pro-Labour it’ll be due to fear of having the licence fee cut.
O/T Finally, around 12 days after everyone else, Betfair has a winner’s market up for Strictly.
There are some tasty prices too, including a tiny amount available for Martina Hingis at 14/1, compared with best bookies’ odds of 10/1.
270, aye, I was lucky (hopefully) to get 8/1 for Hingis to be Top Female.
Not had many other bets accepted though.
264 - to paraphrase Cam’s alleged remarks to Mark Thompson…
“I am the only thing standing between the BBC and my backbenchers”…
265. I bow to your superior knowledge of that incident, I was but a lad at the time: I presumed the IMF intervened simply cause we ran out of credit, i.e. no one would lend us a fiver til Tuesday.
On the other hand, I have NOT forgotten Mandelson’s remarks on the IMF a few months ago, when he said that going to the IMF shouldn’t be seen as stigmatising.
http://baselinescenario.com/2009/04/05/mandelson-moment/
It did seem at that point that the government was preparing us, emotionally, for the ghastly sight of us running to Washington with a begging bowl.
264: How come we don’t have a fiscal stimulus plan?
Interesting that yet another of Brown’s “dividing lines” has been defeted by the Conservatives. “Cuts vs Investment” is a battle Brown has conceded defeat over.
Brown looks incapable of holding the line on any position. 10% tax, Gurkhas, Closed enquiry into Iraq, etc etc.
256 - I thought the consensus view is that male players tend to peak around 24-26? Murray will be about the right age when Federer should be well over the hump (he’s 29 now) - although with Fed anything is possible. His biggest rival will probably be Nadal, but he’s quite a physically fragile player and I would expect him to continue missing some tournaments as they conduct running repairs.
So Murray’s missed a reasonable chance but it isn’t the last or best he’ll get.
275 Unfortunately for Gordon, all his lines in the sand were put there at low tide.
His inability to read a tide-chart says it all.
267 Bus Passes, provided by this Government? It is said that these are to be withdrawn, or at least means tested, on account of them proving to be too expensive.
Compare and contrast with the 171 chauffeur-driven limousines provided for HMG as referred to by Dave yesterday.
275, with one exception.
He won’t leave the job. And the PLP are about as effective as the Maginot Line when it comes to ousting him.
274
Slackbladder
We do - switch to 2009
Let’s say Cameron has to go to the IMF two years into a new Tory govt. Who gets the blame? The Tories (like Labour did in 1977 following the inflationary Heath/Barber boom) or Labour? It seems people have short memories.
274
Slackbladder
We do - in 2009. Adjust the slider
280, depends. The Tories need to work hard now and in their early days of government to lay the blame firmly at the door of Labour.
275. And Lockerbie.
This is because he rigidly follows the Smithson-Thomas Rule: given a choice of policies, Gordon Brown will - after much dithering - always choose the option most damaging to himself and his party.
He is incapable of holding the line on key positions coz he nearly always chooses the wrong position in the first place. He is a political clown.
272
He should step aside (I regard the BBC as complicit in the mess we have now (’inform, entertain, educate’ anyone?)
274
Can’t afford it, guv’nor
273. Well it’s quite possible that Mandelson doesn’t really understand the situation either.
I also imagine he might think the idea of an IMF rescue for the UK would help advance his agenda for the UK’s absorption into the coming EU superstate. It’s certainly notable that quite a few of the usual suspects have been leaping up and down during this crisis trying to tell us what a wonderful idea the euro would be…
I caught the last 15-20 minutes. My favourite was the kid at the end with the question about what he’d do first. I thought he was quite personable in how he fielded that one, but yes, over the course of seeing a few of these he is quite serious throughout, but I think it works for him.
PS: Shameless plug for my challenge in support of Help for Heroes: http://bit.ly/NcCVq
Don’t know if anyone has spotted this yet in the FT
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1ac61ac-9ca4-11de-ab58-00144feabdc0.html
Experian indicates that the voters hardest hit by the crisis live disproportionately in Tory-held seats - 28 per cent of such people live in Conservative seats and 21 per cent in Labour ones.
The key Labour marginals - seats falling after a swing of 6.5-8.25 per cent - were found to be broadly typical of Labour seats as a whole in terms of the numbers of crisis-hit voters, with 21 per cent of the electorate in the most vulnerable group.
So on this basis the swing from Labour in those marginals should be less. The question is whetehr given the size of the swing to the Tories nationally these marginals are lost, even though the recession isn’t hitting them as hard.
SeanT “the Smithson-Thomas Rule: given a choice of policies, Gordon Brown will - after much dithering - always choose the option most damaging to himself and his party.”
Probably because he just does not delegate enough minor stuff to others which would allow more time for a wide range of inputs on key matters.
Brown really is a terrible Manager and has been promoted about 5 levels above his real grade.
280 “Let’s say Cameron has to go to the IMF two years into a new Tory govt. Who gets the blame?”
Depends what’s happened to the BBC in the interim.
280. A fair point, Jonathan, albeit a mischievous one…
If an IMF bailout looks at all possible, then the Tories must do it very early in office, and say: We did this cause Labour have so screwed the economy. People will buy that if it happens in the first year or two. If it happens in year three or four, then they won’t.
The alternative is for Osborne and Cameron to have some grand announcement at the beginning of their term of office: saying: this is where we are, this might happen, this is how bad it is, this is the worst case scenario - be totally honest. Again that would win them enough political capital to ride out any IMF intervention.
You maybe forget the Tories are 15 points ahead in the polls DESPITE admitting they will be making serious cuts in public spending etc etc. People have now accepted that awful times demand serious measures. They understand we are facing austerity, and they are saying: OK let’s do it.
So the Tories will have a window of opportunity for quite drastic changes.
280 The time between now and then will perpetually paint the bust as Labour’s fault. When the no-holds-barred warts-and-all biographies and diaries of New Labour start coming out - and we start hearing about the advice ignored, the rows, the fights, the cock-ups - nobody will be left in any doubt as to this having been a period of very poor governance.
282 Well we’ll have to wait and see.
As Obama seems to prove. Less than one year into office, things can appear rather less rosy. Espeically with an inexperienced team at the helm. It’s always easier to oppose than govern.
Who knows an inexperienced Cameron team may prove that Brown was actually doing a good job after all by just keeping most of the plates spinning.
Perhaps this in part explains Cameron’s new restrained tone.
288
“Brown really is a terrible Manager ”
He may be but being PM is more like a Chairman’s role.
I would argue that Gordon’s lack of empathy - to see things as others do - is far more important.. He is consumed by a hatred of Tories and a love of his own voice and ideas… not much space to consider how others think or fell.
Note it’s “I,I,I” when he speaks..
264, 272 Love it - let’s hope Thompson is shaking in his £816,000 per annum boots. I wonder whether he’s hoping against hope for the right result next May and has ordered in the crates of champagne, just in case?
281: But not in 2010, when most other countries are going strong.
Hmmm this shouldn’t be the case should it?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/sep/09/credit-rating-uk-moodys
Won’t be needing the wheelbarrow to carry the cost of a cup of coffee after all.
292, disagree with your comparison. Obama was all positive, from what I saw. Cameron is being partially positive but more and more he’s emphasising the need for cuts, necessary pain to get things back in order.
Brown is not doing a good job.
289. Good point, SkyBBC won’t want to rock the boat and so will blame Labour when they are told to do so.
madasafish “He may be but being PM is more like a Chairman’s role.”
No a Chairman needs the basics of a good Manager, that is bringing out the best from those who report to them. The Chairman role also has added responsibilities requiring excellent people skills in dealing with all the other stakeholders.
266, that approach is more expensive to administer - with the extra bureaucracy in processing all the food coupons, maintaining social housing, etc - and widens the gulf between welfare claimants and workers.
As with tax, the first priority should be to simplify the system, and so reduce the cost of administration.
Sean - the question is will the Tories take so much demand out of the economy that they spark a double dip recession
From the FT, I’m sure Mike will comment.
The key swing constituencies that the Tories need to capture at the next general election to win an overall majority have been less affected than most by the recession, research shows.
The economy is a key factor in voting decisions, so the findings suggest the government may not suffer as much electoral damage as some are predicting.
280. Had Labour had the sense to reverse Heath and Barber’s crazed policies rather than compounding them, they wouldn’t have had to go to the IMF at all, of course. But there was no danger of that when swivel-eyed lunatics like Tony Benn and Marxist trade union leaders were at the top table.
The IMF debacle in 1976 represented a failure of the entire post-war political class. After it, sanity returned. Until 2001.
291 “When the no-holds-barred warts-and-all biographies and diaries of New Labour start coming out……”
When oh when can we expect the Blair diaries? Late May 2010 would be my guess.
304
Not if the Tories cut a few taxes judiciously…
304 tim - Since Darling is proposing the same (at least, that appears to be what he saying, although unlike Cameron he doesn’t use clear language), Labour won’t be able to use that line.
296. As the article makes clear, the UK’s credit “upgrade” - or, rather, “credit downgrade threat retraction”, has happened precisely because both parties now accept the need for major spending cuts.
But this position was forced by the Tories, who grasped the nettle first. The government is following sheepishly behind, dragging its heels and whining.
As others have said, a little confidence is returning in the markets, vis a vis the UK, because the markets expect a Cameron victory and a competent Tory government within a year. Any threat of a Labour revival would spook the sh1t out of everyone.
Maybe Gordon is doing the country a service by being so lamentably pathetic.
296. That article proves what the Tories have been saying all along. We need cuts to keep our credit rating.
“A downgrade, which would drive up the government’s borrowing costs, looks to have been averted because of the growing political consensus on the need to cut public spending as the economy recovers, according to the Financial Times.”
290 - Sean, The plan is for the Tories to do this
“Under consideration is the compilation of a Domesday Book analysis of Labour’s legacy. It would be one of the first acts of an incoming Conservative government. New Cabinet ministers would be ordered to prepare an audit of their portfolios. Four to six weeks later a Domesday statement of the extent of public borrowing,”
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/torydiary/2009/01/tories-consider.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/3307151/the-tories-are-right-to-be-thinking-about-how-to-buy-time-oncethey-are-in-government.thtml
310. Correct Sean - Brown’s line about ‘Tory cuts versus Labour investment’ has been a massive and humiliating political failure.
The opposition are calling the tune re. government policy already - Labour are effectively already out of office.
It’s unusual not to have heard anything before now from Mike …. I trust all’s well in the Smithson household.
283 I would guess that the scale of public spending restraint will be sufficient to enable the government to keep borrowing money. IMF intervention is a humiliation that they’d wish to avoid.
305 I’d read elsewhere that it was Labour’s heartlands that were seeing the biggest rise in unemployment.
299; Moody’s probably factoring in a Tory victory,
295. But the flip side of that argument is that Obama’s difficulties of getting to grips with government should make Bush’s administration seem a bit rosier in retrospect. It doesn’t.
It’s probably fair to argue that the government deserves some credit for hauling itself out of the darkest recesses of the ordure filled pit into which Brown led it; but that’s little credit to Brown himself. Note though that a lot of it is down to Darling: warning it would be the worst recession for 60 years when Brown was denying there was a problem, admitting that of course cuts were needed while his boss was banging on about zero per cent increases in spending etc etc.
And one, maybe the only thing, Cameron will have in common with Obama is that he will inherit a godawful mess. Still, lucky for him most of us have pretty low expectations of him in office. “If you could try not to make things much worse, Dave, that’d be something.”
Not sure I buy Coldstone’s marginals argument. I understand the West Midlands is one of the places hit hardest by the recession: a lot of swing seats there.
Anyway the Tory lead is so huge in England - 20 points! - it almost doesn’t matter where the votes pile up.
And here is some food for thought for lefties, from the Economist, on Labour’s doomy future:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14362520
As all is quite here, there is an interesting HYS at al-Beeb…:
http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?forumID=6979&edition=1&ttl=20090909101415
Sadly it reflects how far nEU-Labour have undermined our society!
317 Well some Tories here were (unfairly IMO) recently comparing Obama to Carter. I guess that would make Dave Cameron, Dave Callaghan.
316
What! those wondeful people who gave us the ERM dsaster, possibly.
Could all be in vain anyway.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1212107/World-end-today—Well-9-9-09–doom-mongers-predicting-disaster.html
Of course which two newspapers give most coverage to disaster scenarios? couldn’t be the Express and errr Mail could it!
321 - Ah But the then Labour economic team, including one Gordon Brown, were in favour of ERM membership.
320. The difference being there is already evidence that Obama is struggling in office, whereas your comparison is based entirely on what you hope might happen.
Mike,
you taking a liking to Cameron isn’t good for anyone!
321: Well Labour’s responsible for the gold selling disaster…plus numerous others.
324 - Why not? It’s good for us evil tories. Sorry Baby eating evil tories.
318. SeanT.
An interesting article.
After reading the first sentence (”TWO years ago, as it entered Britain’s politically feverish autumn, the Labour Party was glorying in the gravity-defying poll bounce achieved by its new prime minister. “), however, my reaction was “we remember”…
303. “that approach is more expensive to administer”
I’d have thought reducing the cost of the basic neccessities of life for everyone would be fairly easy to administer, but i can’t say i’ve thought about it too much so i’ll take your word for it.
324
Perhaps OGH is just honest about what he thinks, rather than blowing with the wind like most LDs.
One of Obama’s problems, IMHO, is that he came into office with massively inflated expectations on the part of his supporters. Cameron won’t face that problem.
If OGH isn’t here monitoring the site, does that mean we can all be terribly rude to Tim and the rest of the Labour supporters on here?
Only Kidding, anyone got a mobile number for Mike?
330 Yeah right. If we hadn’t had Mr Dave “Let the Sunshine in” Cameron I might believe you.
330.Sean, good point. He also had a hell of longer way to fall from that pedestal he was put on than George Bush ever did too.
322/325
All political parties will have their ups-n-downs when it comes to the economy, more downs than ups.
As for the ERM, well a bit like Iraq-n-Afghanistan, both supported by the Tories, don’t stop them criticising the government’s decision does it, ‘Yes we were for it, but we wouldn’t have done it like that’ they all say that.
p.s.
Are the Tories going wobbly on Afghanistan?
323. Surely any sentient being would expect Obama to be struggling with
a) Sorting out the economy
b) Sorting out Iraq/Afghanistan/Pakistan
c) Trying to pass a healthcare reforms when other presidents have tried and failed to do the same thing.
Struggling in office is part of the job: if you’re lucky you get off to a smooth smart before the proverbial hits the fan, others inherit a ready shit-besmattered fan. (Obama’s only lucky break is the loud and vociferous fringe of nutcases shrieking about socialism and his birth certificate and other such obviously preposterous lines of attack who have hijacked the republican party).
The Obamassiah had massively inflated expectations from his supporters *and* the centre - same as Blair. Cameron has the advantage on both of them in that regard imo, although it does make the actually getting elected bit a lot harder.
Interesting last paragraph in Hannan’s latest blog..
“I am increasingly confident that Britain will get its referendum. I’m not in a position to explain why at this stage, but our hand is stronger than is generally supposed. I know this won’t do for some of my readers, but I’m afraid that, for now, you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100008876/euro-sceptic-meps-hold-our-inaugural-conference/
320 Despite the best hopes of Conservatives, the Government will get the blame not Labour if things unravel post 2010.
Obama took ownership of recovery when he took the Oath, and while Democrats can try to blame their predecessors, voters look forward not back. They judge how he is performing against promise. He said he had the solution, that’s what voters look at.
Same will apply to Cameron’s Government. If the IMF are called in to the UK it’ll be Osborne who has to resign, no use saying “it’s Gordon’s legacy” as part of the Conservative promise is that their policies will resolve the mess to ensure public services, spending are affordable.
You can refer back to the bad old days when you have improved things, not when they fall apart. Unfair perhaps but that’s politics- Thatcher gets the blame for the world recession which hit her Government and drove up unemployment in the first years of her premiership, when the seeds were sown under Callaghan and arguably the recession would have been far worse if Labour had won in 1979.
Re previous thread “Tories 20 ahead in England”
Very ggod news that we get England only poll results.
The key question is does this show significant different swings than the national poll figures.
Using August MORI figures gives the following
England Mori shares Con 45,Lab,25,Lib 18
England GE 05 shares Con 35.7,Lab 35.5,Lib 22.9
Change Con +9.3,Lab-10.5.Lib-4.9
Swing Lab -Con 9.6%,Lab-Lib 2.8%,Lib -Con 7.1%
National Mori shares Con 43,Lab 26.,Lib 17
National GE 05 shares Con 33.2,Lab36,2.Lib 22.6
Change Con +9.8,Lab -10.2,Lib -5.6
Swing Lab-Con 10.0%,Lab -Lib 2.8%,Lib- Con7.2%
Conclusion swings virtually identical
Can someone go and check Mike’s pacemaker is still switched on.
*fraternally worried about OGH*
330 PS I would say the Tories here have huge expectations of Dave. Why only the other day people were talking about their hugely radical plans on education etc.
There are also risks of his version of “Whiter than White” yesterday. The first whiff of a Tory MP doing a deal or taking some cash and the Tories are more screwed than when Screwy the Screwy Squirrel got his nuts stuck in the London Eye.
332 I really don’t think that the public think things are going to get rapidly better under a Conservative government, and that’ll be a real advantage for that government.
338 I think that Cameron and Osborne are likely to be aware of that danger.
330. One of Obama’s problems, IMHO, is that he came into office with a massively inflated ego and promises that he didn’t know how to keep.
High expectations by his many supporters in the commentariat, have proven nothing of the sort, and he is now floundering because his whole election campaign was based on a lie.
The picture at the top of the thread suggsts Mike has had to go to Casualty to get a large red spear removed from the side of his neck.
Rough old place, Bedford…
332/341 Jonathan - It’s interesting to see the progression in your (plural - Labour supporters in general) views on Cameron and the Conservatives. You’ve moved from ‘He’s a lightweight and the electorate will see through him by the time of the election’ to the new position of conceding that he’ll probably win, but that he’s bound to fall over shortly afterwards.
341 We are constantly assured that there’s no public enthusiasm for a Conservative government, and that’s right, there isn’t.
341 ‘The first whiff of a Tory MP doing a deal or taking some cash’
Why are you judging the Tories by Labour’s standards Jonathan?
338: They have six months to play the blame game….after that..well no one wants a return to ‘under the previous labour/tory government’ kind of excuses…
334: Coldstone September @ 10:36
“Are the Tories going wobbly on Afghanistan?”
If you mean are they questioning what are our objectives for being there, whether we can afford the blood and treasure that will be needed to achieve those objectives and if we can’t should we get out ASAP. Then I bloody well hope so.
341
Johnathan
Well as the papers and Labour keep telling us that there is no mass enthusiasm for the Conservatives, and Heffer keeps telling us Dave is shallow and a lightweight, anyone who has high expectation of Dave is clearly mentally deficient or cannot read!
348 Slack - Blair kept the blame game going for almost a decade, very successfully. Brown and Balls still try it from time to time.
348. You can heap a lot of sh*t upon Labour in six months, and there will be no shortage of willing hands to do that job.
Maybe OGH snared Cameron in a honey trap?
341. This is piffle. I’m fairly rightwing and very keen to see this government defeated and a Tory government installed (you noticed?) but I have absolutely no expectations that they will get the milk and honey switched on by 2011.
All I want is for them to 1. scrap horrible Labour laws - ID cards, Harman’s hate-the-whitey bill, etc - 2. do something about Europe - and 3. begin the slow painful process of rescuing the economy.
The first they will do, no question, The 2nd will be hard but I am so cynical on this I shan’t be disappointed if they fail. And 3, I’m only asking them to stop making things worse, at least at the beginning.
My expectations are NOT high: partly because Labour have been so catastrophic almost any government will be an improvement.
liberal agenda = national suicide
will Cameron be any different,
probably not.
“Former Islamic extremist, feels we have given in to the fanatics”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1212114/ED-HUSAIN-I-Islamic-extremist-feel-given-fanatics.html#ixzz0QbK4xzYL
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1212114/ED-HUSAIN-I-Islamic-extremist-feel-given-fanatics.html
351: Exactly…as I said, 6 months to access the situation, work out what the issues and problems are. Then look forward and come up with solutions.
350. Do you think Hefferlump will support Farage in the GE campaign? He seems to be a natuaral supporter of UKIP policies.
354 We’ll see.
343 - very good point weathercock,
amazing how many articulate posters on this site believed the bullshit
SB 348 - “They have six months to play the blame game….”
Why?
Tim’s still doing it more than a quarter of century after Maggie’s heydey. That’s so long ago, Liverpool were still our soccer champions!
I have a video collection of Liverpool’s finest footballing moments, but my Betamax has broken down.
334.Leadership.
338.Ted, Obama might have taken ownership of the recovery in America, but then that is partly linked to when he took office.
Cameron and the Conservatives are not attempting to do that right now, Brown and Darling are. Instead, they are laying out the frame work for having to take the tough decisions to combat the extended debt hangover left over from this recession, and they want that responsibility nailed onto the current shower in the way that the Tories were blamed for under investing in public services last time. They dined out on the bonus of that strategy for many years.
Brown also took a very dishonest route when he tried to claim all the credit for the recovery that started under the last Conservative government, he went further, he told us that he had ended the boom and bust cycle he was that clever. Already, there is a very honest expectation that where Blair was in an extended honeymoon six months after taking office, an incoming Conservative one is going to be much more unpopular. Whether that happens or not, its keeping expectations on the ground where Blair and his party did not.
357. weathercock.
Heffer is a UKIP supporter, as of his last public pronouncement.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/5408272/Euro-elections-My-vote-is-going-to-Ukip.html
357
weathercock
Heffer will support anyone but Labour and Cameron. Given the forced choice between the two he’d choose Labour. For some reason he appears to viscerally hate Cameron..
So would he support Farage? With his expenses record? Unlikely.
Mind you Bercow is doing his best to appear a high spending idiot so maybe Heffer will.
I suspect what Heffer thinks and says appeals to a small coterie of nutters and the Daily Telegraph staff. Any suggestion that the two audiences are synonymous is of course libellous…
But the in old real European Champions had to win their leagues.
364.But the in old days real European Champions had to win their leagues.
349. Are the Tories going wobbly on Afghanistan?
Did America go wobbly on Vietnam?
Should someone maybe have gone a bit wobbly about the Battle of the Somme?
At what point did Lord Cardigan wish he’d had a touch of the collywobbles about the Charge of the Light Brigade?
Sometimes you maybe need to chuck a wobble about a war that is pointless, incoherent and by most criteria unwinnable.
290, 305
the FT says
Experian indicates that the voters hardest hit by the crisis live disproportionately in Tory-held seats - 28 per cent of such people live in Conservative seats and 21 per cent in Labour ones.
So where do the other 51% live? They have got it the wrong way round: they mean that 28/21% of the electorate in the seat are in that category. doesn’t inspire confidence.
The article goes on
The study also found the key swing constituencies had disproportionate numbers of recent graduates, owner-occupiers in ex-council houses and former workers in unionised factories. This suggests the Tories could benefit from tailoring their message to them.
Even without any “tailoring” these are surely groups with very little to thank GB for. Negative equity and no job: thanks a lot.
I recall Mike saying yesterday that he was hoping to announce some good news this morning regarding Vipa, maybe he’s still tying up the loose ends.
326, “I’d have thought reducing the cost of the basic necessities of life for everyone would be fairly easy to administer …”
Take bread. Keeping the price down for everyone has been tried, but never successfully. Setting a maximum price, per weight so people don’t start selling bread by the slice, would mean no quality bread on sale, just the own brand stuff with the texture of wet cardboard, and that in short supply. You’d get a black market in good bread pretty quickly too. Alternately, the government could supply a standard issue loaf at a fixed price, but that means a bakery run by the civil service, with all the inefficiency and bureaucracy that implies.
Now, if you just meant for welfare claimants, the government could issue bread tokens, but they have to be distributed and collected back from the shops. It’s not like money, where the government can just use the same electronic transfer systems as everyone else, a great saving. On top of this, the government now has the task of deciding on a reasonable price for a loaf of bread. Mistakes in either direction will be costly.
All things considered, cash benefits are much simpler to administer.
341
I have low expectations of Cameron.
There just isn’t the room to manouvre, because of the deficit and debt.
Changes will involve huge pain (there would be even more pain if Labour were returned, because they are so criminally ******* incompetent and what is more, view their core vote with contempt - “Don’t worry. The abolition of your 10% tax band won’t hurt at all - trust me; I’m a Labour politician”) and we are stuck in the economic slow lane driving a 12 yo wreck, with low reliability and high maintenance cost.
I hope Cameron does his best to avoid punishing those on lower pay, because it is they who provide the flexibility in the labour market, but there are more of them than the ridiculously rich and they will end up bearing the burden
362. Yes, I missed that article.
363. Heffer seems to good to be true; a purposely placed spoiler perhaps?
Now I’m getting emproiled in a conspiracy theory.
341.Jonathan, then you are not taking the temperature of the Tory posters on here very accurately. Maybe you are mistaking this optimism for the nailed on certainty that anyone will be better at the job of PM than Gordon Brown has been.
I am also pretty sure that a Conservative government will have to come out with a real cracker or two, just to end up being seen as sleazy as the current lot too.
345, like with Boris
304 Richard - Since Darling is proposing the same (at least, that appears to be what he saying, although unlike Cameron he doesn’t use clear language), Labour won’t be able to use that line.
Dave was clar about salads and beer, I don’t think either of them were clear about much else.
If the Conservative think the recovery is weak, yet pull too much demand out of the economy too soon then a the chances of a double dip recession clearly increase.
I can send you a dvd of Liverpool winning the greatest ever game of football. 3 nil down at half time to AC Milan… A comeback Lazarus would have been envious of
“350. Do you think Hefferlump will support Farage in the GE campaign? He seems to be a natural supporter of UKIP policies.” by weathercock September 9th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Hefferlump has been publicly supporting UKIP for years.
http://tinyurl.com/ltb55x
The above video openly states that the Deputy Editor of the Telegraph is backing Farage and UKIP aat a UKIP public meeting!
355. “Former Islamic extremist, feels we have given in to the fanatics”
Back around 2000 just before i gave up being active there was a Labour meeting near me with a bunch of normal muslim bods from the local mosque saying there were all these nutters coming over from Egypt etc, taking over the mosques, importing fanatic preachers and brain-washing their kids. They wanted ZNL to stop letting them in the country.
They were ignored because Zanus will only accept a problem if it can be blamed on white people.
369 - Given that every Government since the war has striven to keep food prices high and redistribute wealth from poor consumers to rich farmers any change under an incoming Conservative govt is unlikely.
375, I happened to be watching that game. Very exciting. But I’d still rather watch the England rugby team’s first half against France in the Six Nations this year again
370
bono publico
With our annual budget deficit running at 14% of GDP it will double the existing debt burden of 55% of GDP every three years. So if things go on unchecked by 2015 debt would be 150% of GDP.
So cutting spending and increasing taxes will be essential. The price will be lower economic growth - or none - and pain for anyone reliant on the state..
Of course, you need only to look at where we are: record low interest rates, near record fiscal deficits and record QE: and the economy is - flatlining or possibly growing a little at best.
I think a double dip recession is inevitable whomever is in power as current debt levels are unsustainable and action to curb debt will inevitably cut growth.
The only way to beat this conundrum is to actively promote some new activities which grow irrespective of domestic demand . (see North Sea oil in the 1980s). What? No idea. create the right climate and it will happen.
http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7376561728799789618&ei=rnynSvCaDtTM-Ab86eAe&q=bromley&hl=en&client=firefox-a
Here is another link to the 2006 Heffer/UKIP video.
378
So why are food prices near a 20 year low.
What utter rubbish - as usual..
377. The creation of ethno-religious ghettos, as admirably described by Ed Hussain, is of course a deliberate (if desperate) act of policy on which Labour are placing their hopes for future electoral success.
My forcast is for a Conservative victory at the next GE if merderate proportions of say, a 66 seat majority.
All this talk of a hung parliament or a runaway 180 seat plus is IMHO just eyewash.
I base my comment on 2 factors:
1. The Momentum for the Tories is now to strong to stop.
2. The so called Liberal/Labour commentators in the media are (unfortunately) in a majority and will constantly hammer away at the Tories for all their worth, thereby eroding some of the conservative support.
I rest my case.
383 - is their any realistic possibility of having the 97 - 2010 Labour administration tried for high treason?
tim, how do you think your whole *Cameron salad riff* is working? One of your best efforts? You keep using the word “salad” quite near the word “Cameron” - again and again and again - so clearly you feel this inspirational piece of satire is going down well with the crowd.
By all means, carry on.
do pardons win votes? scousers vote ZNL anyway!
382 - Food prices are at a 20 year low?
http://img.thisismoney.co.uk/i/pix/2008/06/FoodPrices_470×297.jpg
Are you trying to outdo your financial statements for stupidity and ignorance?
380
I was trying to be optimistic but that’s what I was afraid of.
366: SeanT @ 10:57
“At what point did Lord Cardigan wish he’d had a touch of the collywobbles about the Charge of the Light Brigade?”
At no point, must be the answer to that. Just go and read about the man.
384..merderate=moderate. blimey, my fingers.
386 - hadn’t given it much thought, although I see you’ve reverted back to your “500,000 dead Iraqis” nonsense.
New thread
378 timmy, whilst you’re building up to the vinegar strokes is there any chance that you could produce some figures to back up yesterdays claim that 150 farms were claiming agro subsidies of £800,000 each please, or was it all simply bull$hit?
369. Fair enough.
Its an omen!
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2009/09/fox-spotted-in-the-commons.html
378. What a load of old tosh.
Governments of all stripes have conducted a ‘cheap food’ policy since the war.
Subsidies to farmers are, in reality, a subsidy to consumers allowing the production of foods that can then enter the supply chain at prices lower than the unsubsidised cost of profitable production.
Mike, I cannot see the new thread. Anyone else having problems?
326.
“Sorry Baby eating evil tories.”
Feeding Tories (especially those who cannot use hyphenation) to babies is surely a form of child abuse which has yet to spread to Doncaster, Haringey etc?
398. I can see it.
I don’t think there’s anything inevitable about a Tory majority. Lib Dem, Green and Respect voters in Tory target seats Nos. 100 and upwards realise that if they sit on their hands and vote eg Lib Dem they will be guaranteeing a Cameron majority and will pull back from the brink. They also know that a Labour majority is not going to be delivered by these seats and that they can safely vote for their incumbent Labour MP without any increase in the likelihood of Brown retaining his own majority.
The Cameroonian cheerleaders wont be cheering for long. Six months of a Cameroon government will probbaly be enough for people to realise a Brown Government was not too bad after all.