So what does this do to the seat calculations?
February 3rd, 2010
Is it really so different in the marginals?
I’m just catching up with the Ipsos-MORI aggregate data for all its 2009 polls which have been highlighted by Anthony Wells at UKPR who is suggesting it provides further evidence that opinion is moving differently in the LAB>CON marginals.
For what MORI has done is not only to show the aggregate data but to identify the shares by seat category with a particular emphasis on the marginals - something that is only possible because the aggregated data provides meaningful sized segments.
The main caveats are that the information is old, some of it going back thirteen months, and the sheer scale of what is suggested.
So what do we make of apparent swing of up to 14% in LAB>CON marginals where the majority is below 13.9%?
This is far bigger than anything we’ve seen in the specific polls of marginals from YouGov and ICM and suggests a whole new clutch of seats that could Labour could lose to the Tories.
To get to these numbers in this segment then the Tories need to be doing much worse elsewhere - and from the table we get the answer - swings of just 5% in constituencies that the party currently holds. A low swing here, of course, doesn’t matter.
To me the big problem with these numbers is that the differential between current Tory seats and the key marginals is just too great. As Anthony writes “Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another.”
So I’m taking the data as further evidence that Cameron’s party is doing better in the marginals but not putting too much store on the scale of the differential.
Whatever it certainly underlines my decision earlier in the day to close down Labour buy and Tory sell spread positions.
Mike Smithson
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First?
Interesting…a opportunity is arising I think
Good day for tories all round.
This reflects my view expressed for the umpteenth time in the previous thread. This, however, is an almighty shift so we do need to be careful to take it as gospel.
BTW My reckoning is that Ed Balls would lose his seat on such a swing.
The difference is ridiculous, best to ignore
brown and that question.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzzlpTeZmCI
£50k fund either Watts or Brown is a liar or has poor recall. only one of them can be right.
“Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another.”
That does seem a big difference.
I did an analysis of the seings between the 2005 general election and the 2009 local elections and that found the swing in Labour seats was 11.7% and in Conservative seats was 7.4%. There wasn’t much difference in the swing between safe Labour seats, marginal Labour seats and marginal Conservative seats but there were only small swings in safe conservative areas.
The Conservatives really did relatively overachieve in the 2009 local elections, whether that pattern will repeat this year is uncertain.
5. For some reason I read that as Ed Balls should swing….Amazing how the mind interprets things.
5. Hang out the flags!!
FPT 403 - Obama’s constant presence on the TV news channels, the huge overexposure (if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing), and his leaden delivery of late are conspiring to make his ‘charisma’ disappear quicker than Dracula at sunrise. Even SNL has him down and makes fun of him.
Add this to his apparently non-existent political instincts, the irritation increasing at his dogged refusal to take responsibility for anything, his irrational stubbornness and refusal to take advice, and the increased detachment from much of his own party, and as Scott Brown said, if there’s trouble in Massachusetts there’s trouble everywhere.
In terms of his arrogance, detachment from the country, refusal to take advice, confidence in his own infallibility, stubbornness, he has much in common with G. Brown of 10 Downing St, SW
Sounds loopy. If someone can come up with the overall, as opposed to the average vote shares in the various categories of seat I might try some statistical tests, but it’s a real chore working out the sample standard deviation of swing…
“My reckoning is that Ed Balls would lose his seat on such a swing.”
Just as UNS is only an average with approximately equal numbers of seats having higher or lower swings so UMS is only an average with approximately equal numbers of seats having higher or lower swings.
I would expect a lower than UMS in Broxtowe for example but a higher, perhaps much higher, UMS in Morley.
If UMS is 14% then there will be a few seats where it reaches 20%. Which gives good opportunities in constituency betting if you know which constituencies are likely to vary most from average.
9 Yokel
I’ve seen Balls’ wife, he should try swinging with Ben Bradshaw.
Was there not talk recently on PB of an analysis of Conservative / Lib Dem marginals ?
8. What was striking about the County elections was just how well the Conservatives performed on a pretty mediocre share of the vote. However, local elections aren’t Parliamentary elections, My view is that the Conservatives will overperform in Labour-held seats, but the differential certainly won’t be as great as MORI (or the County elections) imply.
I’d guess the outperformance (in terms of Lab - Con swing) would be 1-2%.
Could this be a sign of discomfort with incumbents? In the marginals we are challengers not currently in parliament, whereas in conservative held seats we may have been caught up in the expenses row.
13 I doubt if much of the PB community would be too displeased if Nick Palmer were to hold on by a whisker, while Ed Balls lost by a similar margin.
It was not such a good day for the Tories given that Grayling made such a fool of himself this morning. Liam Fox was equally ineffective on 4 news tonight. The partisan comments by Wells and Smithson do not reflect the situation as it is now. Some of the Mori data is past its sell by date ie 13 months old. The polls are narrowing as the electorate faces up to the unpalatable possibility of another dismal Tory government. Brown held his own today in parliament and largely ignored the rude baying of the blue mob. Cameron put in a better performance, he had to, given the amount of criticism he has taken in recent days from his own supporters. The lard guns are out today and Brown has done well to carry on with dignity as befits a Prime Minister.
Why not just use the Euro Elections if we’re going back over a year?
Here’s your London Marginals story for the evening
Boris Johnson to cut London’s police force
London’s Tory mayor to cut 455 police jobs – after winning election on crime ticket
As a long time lurker, I think it is time to make a comment.
Point1.
The established polls have clients to keep happy. There is an incentive, exploited or otherwise, to keep them funding polls.
Now consider ARS. It is new. It has no established client. It does however have a reputation to establish. If ARS is proved accurate, it will be the Bubbagump of the poll shrimping industry.
Remember how they laughed at Peter Schiff.
20 tim
here’s your National Marginals story for the evening
Brown wrecks UK economy; your kids are paupers.
14. I was thinking more of a rope thing….
I think it is possible that the core vote message does pdoduce these differences
18. Liam Fox turned up for Channel 4 News, while 4 (that’s 4, count ‘em) Labour Defence ministers bottled it. Bravely ran away from the fight.
5 more years!
I expect Boris will put the blame, rightly or wrongly, on ‘Labour cuts’.
Who do you think Londoners will believe Boris or Brown?
I do think that Brown was hoping to get to the election without the cuts narrative becoming widespread.
But now we’re getting daily job cuts announcements from local councils together with university cuts, defence cuts and now police cuts.
6. Labour has outperformed the national average in the marginals in both 1997 and 2001. Even if the Mori picture is overly rosy for the Conservatives in the marginals, I would still anticipate a better than UNS swing there partly because of the swingback against Labour’s gains there (helped by tactical voting that polling evidence suggests may well unwind), and partly because of the now quite well tested Tory target seats strategy, which must be having some effect because Labour keeps whinging about Ashcroft’s money.
re 15. There is a PB/Angus Reid marginals poll in the planning and we should get it mid-month.
This will cover both LAB>CON seats as well as LD>CON battle-grounds.
18 - I’m 5 hours, 4400 miles and a continent away from you, and you still seem to exist in a parallel universe.
Would you sell me some of whatever it is you’re smoking? It must be strong stuff.
18. Well Lily I wonder who Grayling picked that nasty habit up from regarding crime stats
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7780057.stm
Why none other than Mr ‘Dignity’ Brown himself
“Brown held his own today in parliament”
Lying to the House twice in a single session is not holding his own.
18 wtf is a lard gun?
12. Rough first estimate indicates this would imply an overall standard deviation of swing of at least 6% - probably more - which is crackers. It’s never exceeded 3.5% and at the last election was 2.5%.
24 - It was Boris’ decision to freeze the council tax, the decision lies with him.
11- Given the narrow, cloistered world Obama has inhabited both personally and politically, I really wonder whether he has it in him to reconnect with the wide array of people who once believed in him as an abstract embodiment of hope and change, now that the idealized imaginary President Obama has been transformed into the real President Obama. Bill Clinton was a Democrat who had the conservative Arkansas roots and instincts that allowed him to do it, but I don’t see how Obama can do it.
18 Lilly Allen
” Carry on with dignity ” would make a good film title for the comedy Brown’s government has become.
18. “There are no American tanks in Baghdad. We will drive the infidel American dogs out of Iraq!”
Point 2.
The Labour vote was 35% in 2005. Since then, it collapsed.
Do you think it credible that Labour has lost just 10% of its 2005 vote?
Think of the Labour voters you know. How many of them will vote Labour again. If 90% of them were still going to vote Labour again, Labour could be in hung territory.
So how many do you think would vote labour again? 90%, 80%, 70%?
I would guestimate between 30% and 50% of 2005 voters for Labour will either abstain or vote Cons, LibDem or BNP.
All things equal,
If Labour lost 10%, they would get 31.8%.
If Labour lost 20%, they would get 28.3%.
If Labour lost 30%, they would get 24.7%.
But all things are not equal. People are angry and frustrated. Turnout will change. Abstainers will now vote Cons, Lib, BNP. There will be no new Labour votes.
So what do you think? Me? I see Labour between 20 and 25%.
“This will cover both LAB>CON seats as well as LD>CON battle-grounds.”
I don’t see much merit in polling LD>Con marginals except separately.
Each LD seat is rather individual and an average swing will just predict Conservative gains in Eastleigh and Westmoreland.
This was published before PMQs. One of the advantages has already been lost…
As we now have clear evidence that the polls have moved, it worth revisiting the pros and cons of a March election.
Let’s assume the polls continue to narrow for a couple of weeks, with Labour’s share of the vote increasing. We then get towards ‘cut off day’ for calling an election on 25 March. The latest date for the dissolution to happen is 4 March, but not even Brown will leave it that late. For a start, a short campaign will not allow the TV debates to take place.
To help our dithering leader out, these are the advantages for Labour in going for the March date.
* Labour have the initiative at present. The Tories are on the back foot and have not got a clear strategy;
* The tax rises don’t kick in until April;
* The markets may move on the UK’s AAA credit rating before May;
* Brown avoids his appearance at The Iraq Inquiry, which both the opposition parties will exploit to the full;
* The Q1 GDP figures are not released until 23 April. A weak recovery is only good news for Brown if a double-dip recession is avoided;
* Counters against any unknown unknowns that may crop up;
* It will smother the adverse publicity caused by Andrew Rawnsley’s book that is published on 1 March; and
* Historically, governments who leave it to the last possible date or just before lose.
http://howarddenton.blogspot.com/2010/02/election-date-what-will-brown-do-part.html
Interesting figures.
Highly likely that the party head offices have much the same analyses.
Now we know why Sion Simon is running away from from Erdington
30 I just googled ‘lard gun’. It’s a gun with projectiles made of bacon fat to fire at Muslims (I think). What a nasty piece of knowledge to have. I wish I’d not looked.
18 Are you that talentless “singer” or daughter of the Sheriff of Nottingham? You certainly display a total lack of understanding of reality. Is your married name McBride?
18. You in The Bunker convinced that you are going to be saved by Armeeabteilung Steiner.
tim
In which case I expect many Londoners are deeply grateful to Boris for freezing council tax.
I suspect with the low regard with which the police are now generally viewed most people would prefer to spend their money on themselves than on the likes of Ian Blair.
“To me the big problem with these numbers is that the differential between current Tory seats and the key marginals is just too great.”
They are large, but surely a major theme since Thatcher’s gains in the CDE classes is that politics is no longer as loyalty based. Since 1979 we’ve only seen one hand-over of power, and there have been 13 years of eroding “loyalty” since then.
So why is it so hard to believe? Similarly, Labour can easily go below 1983’s percentage. In the theme of falling party loyalty, little community ties to Labour, etc, what reason is there to believe that Labour’s “core” is bigger than it was just before the Miners’ Strike?
Re 18
Reading that most entertaining post (you gotta laugh haven’t ya?) It finally struck me what it reminded me of:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbEBErvW-Uc
Mork Calling Orson come in Orson - Shuzbutt!
Re 46 Or this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdz4dCMGbbw&NR=1
A lard gun fires shots which splatter but fail to hit a target, lots of splattering by Cameroon et al but nothing of real positive substance. Negativity does not make a policy platform. Where are the Tory policies? O I forgot, they don’t have any worth mentioning. Laughing and sneering at Brown merely reveals Cameron’s inability to present himself as a serious contender for the role of Prime Minister
18 Extract from ” Carry on with dignity ”
Kenneth Williams: But Brown held his own in Parliament today
Charles Hawtree: Ooh I say, suppose it makes a change from that Nick Browne holding it for him.
Sid James: Lucky for him they attacked him with Lard guns I’d have used a Pork sword myself
Babs Windsor: hahahahha ooh you are cheeky
an important win for Fulham 1-0 phew!
32 Local government finance is almost totally controlled by Whitehall. There is very little discretion available to local authorities. Many police forces are cutting numbers.
At one level, one can blame the local councils for failing to raise council taxes even more than they already have done, over the past 13 years. More realistically, one can accept that they know their voters have reached the end of their tether.
Ah, I see the astroturfers have changed back from “Tory policies are confused” to “Tories have no policies”.
FPT re Birmingham mayors. They’ve already asked us once. Is it going to become like every Euro referendum there’s ever been.
34 - I’m with you: he needs to, but that doesn’t mean he can or will. Interesting times.
It’s interesting that there’s a consensus that LibDem MPs seem to be immune to national swings and it’s often mentioned on here that they tend to out-perform the party nationally. One has to assume that the reason for this is because they prove to be excellent constituency MP’s - so why the hell don’t the LibDems do better than they do. Also, I’ve been really impressed with Nick Clegg recently he’s the one who’s setting the traps for Gordon to step into and also the only leader who is coming up with the USP (Afghanistan / Trident etc). Just wait ’til the campaign begins and Clegg and Cable get a chance to their message across.
37. “For a start, a short campaign will not allow the TV debates to take place”
And he thinks this is something that will put Brown off calling a short campaign? To answer his other points:
* Labour have the initiative at present. The Tories are on the back foot and have not got a clear strategy;
Ish. The Tories have had a poor couple of months but that’s not the same as Labour having the initiative. They might have made fewer mistakes but that’s by doing nothing other than point out the problems with Tory announcements. OK for a while but governments can’t survive forever on that.
* The tax rises don’t kick in until April
Very true and a powerful argument to go early - unless the Budget amends it e.g. by a further “2 month stimulus”. BTW, shouldn’t the date for the Budget get announced soon?
* The markets may move on the UK’s AAA credit rating before May
Unlikely unless Labour introduce a ludicrous budget (see above).
* Brown avoids his appearance at The Iraq Inquiry, which both the opposition parties will exploit to the full
Another good point but it’s still only one day and one news cycle. Iraq will remain Blair’s War.
* The Q1 GDP figures are not released until 23 April. A weak recovery is only good news for Brown if a double-dip recession is avoided
Again, a very fair point but only if the statistics are released on April 23.
* Counters against any unknown unknowns that may crop up
True, but unknown unknowns can work either way and when you’re up against it, you’ve less to lose by waiting.
* It will smother the adverse publicity caused by Andrew Rawnsley’s book that is published on 1 March
Maybe. Or maybe Rawnsley’s book could become a key issue in the election whereas by May it will be old news.
* Historically, governments who leave it to the last possible date or just before lose.
But that’s because they were going to lose anyway, not because they left it late. I still can’t see him going in March (which is very soon now). Early April might still be a runner though.
25, David H,
I completely concur. I’ve been trawling through the data on the differential marginal swings (and magnitude of tactical voting) in 1997, 2001 and 2005 and have come up with the same conclusion, as well as an estimate of the size of the accumulated advantages - and what could be sensibly expected to unwind. I’m re-reinvestigating the data and modelling, because it’s quite a sizeable effect (the MORI data is somewhat reassuring to me)
7 It can’t be too difficult surely to ascertain who is telling the truth as regards the £50,000 allegedly paid to the Prime Minister’s office as claimed by Peter Watt, since if the payment of such a large sum did indeed take place, this would presumably have involved either cheque(s) or electronic payment(s) to the relevant account.
We have to assume any such payment would not have been effected using folding readies.
13 - another richard. I’m actually thinking that Ed Balls will survive the night. In fact the weight of Charlie Whelan will be put behind his campaign as there are plenty of “lobby grade” reports that he is their preferred choice for the next Labour Leader. I suspect he will continue to take the fight to the Tories and so will boost the morale of a demoralised and defeated PLP after the next election. UMS is - as you say - unlikely to exist as much as UNS will not tell us the whole truth. In fact this MORI report shows that the swing is lower in current Tory seats anyway. Now that is good news as it should presage a higher Tory swing in the marginals.
I actually don’t think these figures are necessarily realistic, but neither do I accept that a mathematical model will tell us how it won’t apply this time. The size of the task and the low base that the Tories are coming from could well see several election records broken and yet again there is still 12 weeks before the campaign begins, so events dear person, events…
18: ‘…Grayling made such a fool of himself this morning…’
I’ve noticed that squabbles over crime ’statistics’ - complete with a PC Plod getting inappropriately involved in the political process - have now become standard GE campaign fare. We had exactly this in 2005:
http://tinyurl.com/ya44w9l
(Though at least the Archbishop of Canterbury isn’t doing his bit for New Labour on this occasion.)
Attack
To look at Tory policies so far, it is hard to see any great vision for society. In the draft manifesto, one sees several Labour ideas inserted like pagan offerings to assuage a god of war. We find Labour’s commitment to tax the richest at 50p; a pledge to protect the bloated NHS budget; a pledge to increase foreign aid spending by some £4 billion — while cutting the military budget by about the same amount. At a time of war.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7014079.ece
Attack
Excuse me, but is there anyone out there who can tell me what the Tory Party’s policies are?
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1248304/STEPHEN-GLOVER-Excuse-there-tell-Tory-Partys-policies-are.html#ixzz0eVpWbUO2
40. b
“Highly likely that the party head offices have much the same analyses.
Now we know why Sion Simon is running away from from Erdington”
Sion Simon didn’t need head office analysis, he only had to look at the 2008 local election results in his constituency to realise things might not be as easy as he’s been used to:
Con 7045
Lab 5581
LD 2615
Oth 2557
58 If the Conservatives were to achieve a 6% swing, and just fall short of an overall majority, it would still be the biggest swing in their favour since before the War, so yes, records will probably be broken in three months time.
53 - Chris A, My understanding is that the proposals would be for a “Greater Birmingham” style authority along the lines of the GLA/Mayor down here. Basically it sounds like the West Midlands Council sans Coventry.
48. Lily Allen,
what are you on?
Put the lid back on the glue and stop Reading Alice in Wonderland!
I would like to have said welcome to the site, as a mew poster. However through your comments today you do seem no different to some of the deluded Labour tw4ts on here!
53 - even more to the point; does Sion Simon realise that the questions ‘would you consider, that at some point in the future, an elected mayor of Birmingham would be a good idea’, and ‘would you like Sion Simon as the elected mayor of Birmingham’, are going to have very different answers - no matter how many times he asked them?
57 - A dangerous assumption, perhaps.
48 I prefer to think that a lard gun is for shooting at lard just as an elephant gun is for shooting at elephants. So a lard gun would indeed be the weapon of choice for stalking Gordo “dignity” brown.
I don’t think you understand the gravity of the £50 000 slush fund issue. Or rather, I don’t think you understand anything much but I don’t think even the more intelligent members of your party see where this could go. To them it’s just Gord is lying: situation normal. But lying about billions you can get away with in politics: £50000 and a breach of House rules is a different matter altogether.
60 tim
yes attack, could you tell us what Labour policies are apart from political Micawberism - hang on and hope something turns up ?
Or maybe they’d like to run with those 1997 pledges again ? You know no more boom and bust etc….
59 - Graylings mistake, besides being on the radio in the proximity of a microphone was to localise all his inflated crime figures.
If you are going to runa campaign based on a false perception of crime statistics you have to keep it general.
People on the whole know there local areas better and his claims that everywhere is like the Wire make him look stupid.
“The reality is,” Chris Grayling said yesterday, “anybody in the streets will tell you that, any way you care to take official crime statistics, violent crime is going up.”
It is a shame the Shadow Home Secretary is so suspicious of statistics because, on this subject, he and they are in agreement. Turning to page 98 of the latest British Crime Survey, he would discover that 78 per cent of people believe knife crime in the UK has gone up a lot, and 62 per cent think the same about gun crime.
He would also see two other statistics.
When asked about their own area, views are different. Just 8 per cent think local knife crime has gone up a lot and 4 per cent gun crime. In other words, nationally people think crime is soaring — contradicting the official statistics, but agreeing with the Tories — while in the places where they have direct knowledge, they agree with the statistics.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7014059.ece
So sending out silly figures for each individual constituency is foolish in the extreme.
Running Daily Mail scare campaigns is the easiest thing in the world.
Unfortunately it is beyond Grayling.
62 I would like to see the entire cost of the war in Afghanistan funded out of the foreign aid budget.
I’ve yet to be persuaded of the moral case for giving aid to countries that can afford nuclear weapons programmes.
58. SLN
But why should the voters of Morley and Outwood care what Charlie Whelan wants?
I suspect bringing outsiders to campaign for him wont do Balls much good and indeed would highlight Balls being an outsider himself.
Labour activists in West Yorkshire will have enough to do on their own patches without helping out someone even they don’t seem to like.
63. I think Labour will be hit especially hard in Birmingham over the Cadbury takeover.
55. * Counters against any unknown unknowns that may crop up
True, but unknown unknowns can work either way and when you’re up against it, you’ve less to lose by waiting.
This is the one I was thinking of. The unknown that Gordo was not expecting today was to get slaughtered at PMQs, and blurt out a couple of verifiable untruths, while a Whitehall Mandarin eviscerated his record as chancellor across the street and tied him into the Iraq debacle.
38.
Craig,
Very well put in terms of % drop since 2005!
25/27% I think they will get!
22. “Brown wrecks UK economy; your kids are paupers.”
Only the kids? Another optimist.
57 PfP, that isn’t how the system worked. Mr Watt says:
Our very own credit crunch did not affect everyone in the party equally, however. Before becoming Prime Minister, Gordon went to some lengths to insulate himself & the Treasury from our financial troubles, setting up his own personal pot of cash at party HQ. This was money we could not dip into, since it was set aside for the Chancellor’s own projects.
Murray Elder helped secure donations from the Chancellor’s supporters. The money was registered as a donation to the party in the normal way, but instead of going into the overall pot for general use, it went into a separate hypothecated accounting unit, which we called “the fund with no name”. When I took over as finance director of the party in 2005, I was given an exercise book with a record of his deposits & withdrawals. All we at HQ knew was that it was for Gordon’s private polling. No-one asked for more detail, so I don’t know if that polling was to inform Budget decisions or his long-term campaign to become party leader.
Technically, there was nothing improper about it, but it always seemed strange that he should have his own stash of cash. Whenever the balance was running low, Murray would go off and secure more donations to top it up.
73 - another richard - Whilst they won’t I suspect a lot of Union foot soldiers will be dropped in all local sounding enough etc… They really do seem set on him as their choice as the next leader (for some reason). He really would be the Tories’ best gift considering what is likely to come after the election…
tim you are reduced to trawling google news and quoting the daily mail (!) in search of ammunition.
Take a break. Watch bbc news at 10. A majestic meditation on the theme of our Brave Boys being stabbed in the back by the treasury, prop. Lardmeister Brown. Enjoy.
69. “lying about billions you can get away with in politics: £50000 and a breach of House rules is a different matter altogether.”
Very true.
22% off the NHS capital budget looks like a rounding error.
£50,000 in a school jotter looks like fraud
It’s interesting that when it comes to examining the business of government in the quality press, the Tories are being treated seriously, whereas Labour appear to be written off completely. It’s whether and how the Tories can govern; that Labour can’t appears to be a given.
Must be dispiriting for Labour supporters.
Front page newspaper headline of the day?
Surely the Daily Mirror’s splash alongside their picture of John Terry’s wife alone in Dubai: Toni The Lonely
31 Rod because someone more emminent’s theory does not match your own does not make that theory rubbish and your own superior. We generally take the view that your swingback theory will bounce back and hit you on the nose come 7th May.
You continue to rubbish anything which does not agree with you. Why dont you apply for membership of the British Polling crowd which Angus Reid has just joined?
There are many reasons why we may see much larger swings in marginals than in previous elections.
1992 GE
Tory vote = 14 million
Labour vote = 11.5 million
LibDem vote = 6 million
2005 GE
Tory vote = 8.75 million (down 5.25 million since 1992)
Labour vote = 9.5 million (down 2 million since 1992)
LibDem vote = 6 million (almost unchanged)
so over 13 years and 4 general elections the two main parties shed over 7 million votes with the LibDem vote remaining almost unchanged albeit 2005 was a higher share of a smaller total.
Many of those 7.25 million lost voters will have died but surely less than half of them so there are around half those lost voters able to return to the fray and vote.
We also keep getting told that LibDem and Labour may swap voters giving the impression that no LibDem or Labour voter could ever vote Tory. However surely the fact is that among those millions of Tory voters who have gone since 1992, a great many will have gone directly to Labour or LibDem rather than the smaller parties or the “none of the above” party. That being so, why should many of them not now revert to the party for whom they probably voted in 1979, 1983, 1987 or 1992?
By their very nature most of these voters would have been in marginal constituencies and constituencies not thought marginal like Broxtowe (majorities 1983 15,000; 1987 16,500; 1992 10,000 )which went from Tory to Labour so it follows that if many of those voters who changed in 1997-2005 are returning to the Tory column, there may be a greater number because they will swell the numbers of new and other voters who intend to vote Tory probably for the first time.
74 re Cadbury
yes even Peter Donothing Mandelson has been bitch-slapped by Kraft this evening and told to mind his own business.
http://www.birminghampost.net/birmingham-business/birmingham-business-news/businesslatest/2010/02/03/mandelson-fails-to-get-cadbury-jobs-guarantee-from-kraft-65233-25752064/
After months of good performances at PMQs*, Gordon Brown stumbled badly today as David Cameron exploited the recent Chilcot testimony on MoD spending.
But amid the smoke and gunfire, it may be worth sorting through some of the claims and counter-claims.
…
Liam Fox was on sprightly form, but what caught the eye was a phrase of his on the scale of Labour’s deficit. The Government debt of £799 billion was, he said,
“the equivalent of borrowing £1.1 million every day since the birth of Christ.”
Now, on my admittedly rudimentary maths, his figures may be slightly out. I reckon that £1.1 million x 365 x 2010 (+ 34 days for this year x £1.1 million) = £807,052,400,000. That’s £807 billion to you and me.
But given that he worked out the sums in a car on the way to work this morning, maybe he can be forgiven the odd £9 billion. Unless, of course, leap years make a big difference. My head now hurts.
There is also the tricky issue of what the UK debt actually is. In Nov 09 UK public sector net debt stood at £870 billion. If you divide that by 2010 x 365…..no, my head really does hurt.
http://waugh.standard.co.uk/2010/02/when-defence-became-offence.html
Re 78 (AnneJGP February 3rd, 2010 at 10:08 pm)
Apologies, the quotation is from Inside Out by Peter Watt, Chapter 7, pages 104/5.
re 84 ER given that it’s predominantly the elderly who vote I think you’ll find that a majority of those 7.25m voters will have gone to that great polling station in the sky.
74 - From what I hear, the Cadbury deal is going down very badly in that part of the world. It isn’t as if Labour can afford to lose anymore votes if the regional sub-samples in the polls are to be believed (yes, obvious warning).
78 Anne - thanks for clarifying matters Anne. Nevertheless, the account, if it existed must have had a name, it must have had signatories and presumably someone within No 10 was authorised to make payments therefrom, again always provided that such account ever existed.
Now that the Tories welfare spokesman Lord Freud has heaped praise after praise on Browns handelling of the world recession by saying he has saved half a million jobs and that it was handeled better than the Tories handeled their two home grown recessions, how long before they are looking for a new welfare spokesman now that he has let the truth out of the bag?
http://redrag1.blogspot.com/2010/02/red-rag-labour-policy-has-save-500000.html
‘wait until you see the whites of their eyes’ A line from an ancient western. Cameron knows this, Brown should beware. The massive wreckage of our country is likely to be proportional to the carnage soon to be inflicted on labour.
Front Pages so far, and it seems the Premiership manager who had the super injunction is being named by the Telegraph (not that most people who wanted to know hadn’t already found out).
89
Of course the Tories never let any foreign companies buy any British ones during their period in office did they?
Well well!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/03/lord-freud-recession-unemployment-conservatives
Disappointing news for Watford punters - assuming May 6th is GE day the count will not go ahead on election night and be delayed till the following morning:
http://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/localnews/4832673.Election_count_will_be_delayed/
Here comes the latest astro-turfer with link to low volume blog in tow. Noticed he/she offered no apology to me yesterday evening, no surprise there then.
86 - Bit selective there Scott.
Waugh.
In fact, not a single witness to Chilcot has suggested that the armed forces ever had a problem getting the Treasury to foot the bill for the UORs - the cost of ammo, fuel, etc that are needed in actual warfighting.
89
Cadbury should be a thriving business under the ownership of American food giant Kraft, Conservative Shadow Business Secretary Ken Clarke has insisted.
He said: “What we have to concentrate on now is how to get the best out of the change that has taken place. There comes a point when there is no point in reminiscing about the Quaker foundations of Cadbury, nor even getting too worked up about whether they should have been sold or not.”
Mr Clarke, who will be in charge of Britain’s industrial policy of the Tories win the next election, said he and Birmingham MP Andrew Mitchell (Con Sutton Coldfield) would visit the Bournville plant to meet Cadbury managers once the deal was finalised.
But although they would be looking for assurances about jobs, they would go there with “a very positive frame of mind”, he said.
He was speaking as Cadbury shareholders continued considering whether a to accept Kraft’s £11.5 billion offer for the business. They have until February 2 to accept or reject it.
Unions are opposed to the sale and led a protest outside the Bournville plant this week.
But Mr Clarke said he believed Kraft had bought Cadbury because it wanted the business to continue being succesful.
He said: “It seems highly likely this deal is going to go through, and what Andrew and I thought is once the dust and controversy about the actual deal has settled down, then we would like to go along and discuss with the management what reassurances they can give about the future of the plant.”
He added: “I’m sure that Kraft have bought the business because it is a good business, which is going to improve the performance of their group.
“It has achieved growth, it has achieved profitability, and the aim will be to keep that and improve it.”
The Bournville plant was a modern, state-of-the-art facility, he said.
“The aim now must be to make sure this merger, what is actually the merger of two multinationals, is a successful merger.
“Kraft was so anxious to gain Cadbury that they sold their other businesses to raise the money for it.
“It is best to take as a sign that they are very optimistic about the future of Cadbury, and I would like to be reassured on the subject.”
In particular, the pair will ask for assurances that Cadbury’s new owners intend to retain jobs in Birmingham.
Cadbury’s roots lay in Britain’s manufacturing traditions of 100 years ago but it was already a global firm, said Mr Clarke.
“It has had a very good American chief executive who has been very good at buying Amercian companies in recent years.”
He added: “The West Midlands has been very hard hit by this recession, so Cadbury is very important.”
Mr Clarke’s opposite number in the Labour Party, Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, has also said he will ask senior Kraft managers for assurances about the future of Cadbury.
However, Lord Mandelson has been more critical of the prospect of Cadbury being sold, saying he was concerned at the level of debt Kraft had taken on. Despite this, Lord Mandelson has also made it clear the Government cannot block the sale.
Well the fag flogger in chief seems to like it.
On topic.
One of things I don’t get is why it seems so implausible that there could be a significant variance by any particular demographic category?
If you look at the variance between regional swings from the 2005 GE you have variances of 3.15% swing (SW 1.75% - London 4.9%) on a National Swing of around 3.1% (3.25% in England). Is it not plausible that the bigger the overall swing the bigger the potential variance?
The Mori national swing for the aggregate figures was 9.5% so could it be that swing varied from around 4% to 14% dependent on the demographics using a basic rule of national swing +/-50%?
It would seem to fit both scenarios (not that that proves anything)
Just a thought.
Anyway I need to go so feel free to shoot it down to your hearts content….
Toodle Pip……
89
in the last 12 months Labour have served up :
LDV
Marconi
Cadbury
not to mention all the smaller manufacturing companies that have hit the wall. What’s really bugging is the incompetent way the banks were bailed out without pre-conditions on helping SMEs.
Clegg’s point on RBS finding money to break-up Cadbury when they do nothing for the backbone of the local economy hit home.
97. Bit selective there tim
Waugh.
Yet Brown’s claim that he prepared the armed forces with “proper funding” - outside of any wars - is the real problem. He is flatly contradicted by Sir Kevin Tebbit (former Perm Sec at the MoD).
Tebbit told us today that he was forced to run a “crisis budget” directly as a result of Gordon Brown’s decision as Chancellor to “guillotine” the MoD budget.
well, it appears that the front page of the telegraph has disclosed it was avram grant who visited the brothel. Have the media won the privacy battle??
100 - Don’t forget that the help the government has handed, 96% to Labour constituencies, 4% to Lib Dem held ones…All in the best interests of the country I’m sure!
91 “Now that the Tories welfare spokesman Lord Freud has heaped praise after praise on Browns handelling of the world recession by saying he has saved half a million jobs and that it was handeled better than the Tories handeled their two home grown recessions, how long before they are looking for a new welfare spokesman now that he has let the truth out of the bag?”
Sorry, but your post is frankly baching.
102 - ewww, Avram Grant at a brothel.
97, wow, Brown paid for the army’s bullets *and* petrol?! He’s a fcking saint! Let’s start a campaign to have him canonised!
90 PfP, indeed, you are correct. Even if individual donations were collected in a tin, the cash had to be lodged in a bank at some point.
102 - Now just have to wait and see who the mystery 5th member of the Chelsea team to play away with a certain French ex-model is….talk of not being named due to yet another injunction. If the rumours are true, oh dear….
94. That is a bit weak isnt it.
You argue like my old mother. When she is proven wrong she says “Oh and you are NEVER wrong are you”.
It is bad enough that Labour let Rover go to a third world country. We cant even make chocolate anymore.
You really dont understand the anger at the Cadbury issue. Rowntree has already been done in by Nestle. Cadbury is the last straw. Don’t understand the emotional attatchment to Chocolate Buttons and Fredo the frog. I even hear Paul O’Grady (Lilly Savage) seething over it.
I see that even Tetley is now owned by Tata.
Labour is letting foreign owned countries take over our industries - from countries where foreigners cannot even own companies. This is not a Free Market. This Unilateral Surrender.
I see Soames is saying that Britain and Holland are the most crowded countries in Europe.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/parliament/2010/02/britain-and-holland-are-now-most-crowded-nations-in-europe-says-nicholas-soames.html
Well if he pi**ed off we’d have a a lot more space.
109 - and let’s not forget Terry’s of York.
I bought a chocolate orange last month - made in Poland by Kraft.
Ah, the flexible Labour market. One of Thatcher’s and Major’s many fine legacies.
Introduced in the face of fierce Labour opposition, if I recall.
109 - Labour is letting foreign owned countries take over our industries
I’ll be looking out for them now I know who’s behind it.
“Labour is letting foreign owned countries take over our industries - from countries where foreigners cannot even own companies. This is not a Free Market. This Unilateral Surrender.”
Oh don’t be silly - we have an open economy which encourages foreign investment. We’ve never insisted on reciprocal arrangements, and quite rightly.
The deserved fallout for Labour is from their absurd “We’ll save British companies” schtick blowing up in their faces yet again.
109
Really, during the 80’s our energy and water companies were sold off to foreign companies, by the Thatcher government.
Does the Tory Party oppose the Cadbury’s deal? will it be official Tory policy if elected, to ban the sale of British companies to foreign based companies?
I don’t think so!!
Bit of a hatchet job by BBC North West just now on Luciana Berger, the New Labour candidate for Liverpool Wavertree, parachuted in from London.
Q: “Who was Bill Shankly?”
A: “Pass”
Q: “Who sang “Ferry Cross the Mersey”"?
A: “Pass”
Ooops!
To voters: Will you be backing Luciana Berger?
Voter vox pops: Pass…
112
Can’t have been that fierece as the can’t offshore jobs fast enough, and where that fails the bring the offshore workers to the UK jobs.
112 The minimum wage and EU, EHR, H&S legislation are nothing to do with Major or Thatcher.
The minimum wage and EU, EHR, H&S legislation were introduced by Labour. It makes the cost of labour in Britain too high.
You have been in powever for 13 years with an absolute majority. Be some kind of man and admit your responsibility. We already know who is responsible and will vote accordingly.
You betrayed the working classes.
At least you could save that last shred of self respect.
Gordon may see this as ‘low-risk’, but in TV anything can happen..
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Gordon-Brown-Piers-Morgan-ITV1-Interview-Confirmed-Prime-Minister-To-Meet-With-Former-Mirror-Editor/Article/201002115541819?lpos=Politics_First_Poilitics_Article_Teaser_Regi_4&lid=ARTICLE_15541819_Gordon_Brown_Piers_Morgan_ITV1_Interview_Confirmed%3A_Prime_Minister_To_Meet_With_Former_Mirror_Editor
Ah, the flexible Labour market. One of Thatcher’s and Major’s many fine legacies.
Introduced in the face of fierce Labour opposition, if I recall.
by David February 3rd, 2010 at 10:31 pm
Must have been off the day that labour repealed all the legislation. Can you point me to the relevant source so I can bone up on Labours heroic defence of the British working man.
117
Rowntree’s was founded in York in 1862 by Henry Isaac Rowntree, who bought the chocolate company from the Tuke family.[1] In 1869 he was joined by his brother the philanthropist Joseph Rowntree.[1] The original factory was in the centre of the City of York, next to the River Ouse at Tanners Moat, but relocated in 1906 to Haxby Road in the north of the City.[1]
The Company merged with rival Mackintosh’s in 1969 to become Rowntree Mackintosh.[1] Rowntree was responsible for such British Empire chocolate favourites as Kit Kat, Smarties, Aero, Fruit Pastilles and Black Magic,[1] whilst John Mackintosh and Co. were behind Rolo, Munchies, Caramac and Quality Street.[1]
The company went public in 1987 and was the subject of a takeover battle between Nestlé and Jacobs Suchard in 1988. Nestlé eventually won control with an offer valuing Rowntree at $4.55billion.[2] After the Nestlé takeover the Rowntree chocolate ranges began to use the branding Nestlé-Rowntree, before eventually the Rowntree name was dropped from the packaging altogether, except on Rowntree’s Cocoa and the famous ‘fruit-pastilles’[3] and ‘fruit gums’ where Rowntree retained its name on the packaging.[4] The Mackintosh branding was dropped from all former Rowntree Mackintosh products, except for Mackintosh’s Toffee, which retained the Mackintosh branding.[5]
The Nestle-Rowntree factory in Norwich was closed in 1994 moving Rolo, Yorkie and Easter egg production to York.[6]
In September 2006, it was announced that the manufacture of Smarties was to be moved abroad causing 646 job losses at the York factory.[7]
In May 2009, Nestle launched Randoms, a new jelly sweet, under the Rowntree brand.[8]
The Tories didn’t prevent Nestle taking over Rowntrees did they?
Stupid Cnut.
91,
… so he congratulated them for not intervening, which was the right thing to do?
Cool. So Labour’s attacks on the “do nothing” party now look both stupid and hypocritical. Thanks for that, RedRag (and coldstone)
Apparently Chris Huhne is a hypocrite, I’d never have guessed…
http://guythemac.com/2010/02/03/utter-lib-dem-hypocrisy-over-crime-stats/
115- they did the same thing to Shaun Woodward, he couldn’t name the mascot of St Helens Rugby League team. He still won by a clear margin.
One problem with the various Cadbury arguments is that the majority of the owners have been foreigners for years! By some reckoning, if the ownership was not predominantly British, then the company was not predominantly British. All those people bellyaching about it should have foregone that last box of Dairy Milk and bought a few shares when they were just over a fiver each.
Same goes for the Man United fans who had a chance to own their club, but spent the money on tacky replica shirts instead.
“The minimum wage and EU, EHR, H&S legislation are nothing to do with Major or Thatcher.”
Right, er okay, not that I said that….you know, what with talking about the introduction of a more flexible labour market and all…..
“You have been in powever for 13 years with an absolute majority. Be some kind of man and admit your responsibility. We already know who is responsible and will vote accordingly.”
Er, you mistaking me for a Labour supporter? Whuh?
118 - “Mr Brown’s appearance, to be broadcast on February 14, will precede a new six-part series of Morgan’s Life Stories programmes.”
So obviously a last minute job….Make sure I put a date in my diary, not to watch (not that I ever turn on ITV these days, but just in case).
117. “You betrayed the working classes.”
The only part of the working class that Labour cares about are those employed by the public sector, they do not give a flying f*ck about the private sector.
117
pay your union dues so you fund the people who kill your job.
If Tony Woodley had spent his time fighting for workers pensions, new investment and british manufacturing, instead of political grandstanding ,he might have been worth his inflated salary.
“Must have been off the day that labour repealed all the legislation. Can you point me to the relevant source so I can bone up on Labours heroic defence of the British working man”
Um, whuh? The flexible Labour market is a good thing - see Freud’s comments, which is what I was responding to……sheesh……
5 - “BTW My reckoning is that Ed Balls would lose his seat on such a swing.”
Oh please please please let this be true.
[Scratches head]
Gordon Brown ‘demanded immediate defence cuts’ when Chancellor
Gordon Brown demanded immediate and deep cuts to military spending only six months after the invasion of Iraq, a letter seen by The Times reveals.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7014275.ece
123
it’s only a problem if you accept shareholder value is the sole consideration. I don’t it’s more US bollocks badly applied in a UK context, even Jack Welch the uberpriest of the movement now says it is wrong.
91: ‘…the Tories welfare spokesman Lord Freud has heaped praise after praise on Browns handelling of the world recession…’
Well, he actually said:
‘I was congratulating the government on not subsidising a process of adjustment but allowing the market and the contract between the employers and employees to hold sway…’
The market rules and Maggie lives! Hooray!
121 - But is there odds on him staying as welfare spokesman? Telling the world Brown did a brilliant job during the recession and better than the Tories did, will not go down well with Cam the Sham, will it?
100. I think that a foreign takeover counts as ‘inward investment’ and therefore gives a short-term, one-off boost to the GDP calculation. Which quarter’s figures will this appear in?
I’m beginning to think that if the Conservative Party won a majority of 150 seats in the House of Commons, the Conservative supporters here would be rejoicing more at the failure of RodCrosby’s swingback theory than at the ousting of Gordon Brown.
“Bercow breaks unwritten rules with challenge to boost backbench power”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7014319.ece
Um, whuh? The flexible Labour market is a good thing - see Freud’s comments, which is what I was responding to……sheesh……
by David February 3rd, 2010 at 10:42 pm
Here’s a tip. If you are responding to a post quote it, that prevents you looking a bit silly when people respond to what you actually wrote, rather than what you think you said.
‘DEVASTATING FINAL VERDICT’..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/03/mps-expenses-thomas-legg-criticism
Oh, dear, someone isn’t going to be very happy…
136 - Well it would be a very nice cherry on top.
50 alanbrooke, surely it should be “Carry on with Dignity” with Babs playing Dignity, to make it crystal clear there’s nothing dignified about it?
134: ‘But is there odds on him staying as welfare spokesman?’
He’s an arch-Thatcherite whose pointed out that the government’s reliance on Thatcherite labour markets has worked like a charm. The man should go far!
120 As I say, you argue like my poor old mum.
“Oh and you are NEVER wrong are you”
followed by:
“Oh leave me alone!”
You are just like an lonely 80 yr old divorce woman. Never wrong but somehow very alone.
LibDems and Conservatives, please note how the resident professional socialists turn their attention on me, like a pack of hyenas. They would like to squash me before anyone notices.
Well, I shall not post on here again. There is no debate. Just competetive posting. The last to post wins.
As I read elsewhere “There is no point arguing with an idiot. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience”
There is no point arguing with a madman. He
131
All political parties love the armed forces, when they are in opposition, its when in government and they are handed the bill, they go off ‘em.
Mr Fox would not be drawn on whether a future Conservative government would commit to defence cuts.
It was essential that defence policy was approached from an “empirical basis”, Mr Fox said.
The current running costs of the Ministry of Defence are too high, Mr Fox continued, and the budget “may have” to be cut.
Given the “car-crash” of an economic legacy left by Labour, Mr Fox said, it would be very difficult to maintain the current level of expenditure.
In other words yes, but of course it’ll all be Labour’s fault.
“If you are responding to a post quote it, that prevents you looking a bit silly when people respond to what you actually wrote, rather than what you think you said.”
Um, what I said was that the flexible Labour market was a fine legacy of Thatcher and Major introduced in the face of opposition from Labour.
If you want to complain about people “thinking what was said as opposed to actually said”, you may want to speak to the people who thought that that was a criticism.
143
You had a mother! my heart goes out to the poor woman.
136. Conservative reactions will be nothing compared to the pound of flesh the Smithsons will be extracting. Rod’d been very rude about Smithson Snr and and Smithson Jnr in the past few months.
We dont have a flexible market. We have rigid labour laws.
However, as with all Socialist regimes, the people must stay and look after their homes and families but the money and jobs always escape to freedom.
115. “the Conservative supporters here”
Well at least I could count on commiserations from the other 2%…
(About three threads ago)
LondonStatto Why should your third or fourth or fifth choice count the same as my first?
Because it’s my first preference out of the candidates available. If you want to keep FPTP, I could cheat the system by voting for my fourth preference candidate with my X vote (because it has a better chance of winning than my first three preferences) - but if I did that you would probably want to pretend that it’s my first preference.
————-
GeoffH wrote
Just because your call yourself Loony does not give you the luxury of accusing others of being “some deranged and insane maniacs”.
My devotion to the truth, and desire for rational and enlightening discussion, give me the right to refer to deranged and insane maniacs as deranged and insane maniacs if they are deranged and insane maniacs.
Your argument and that of others attempting to counter my point is mere playing with words.
It is you who are playing with words.
In AV there are no ’rounds’.
Of course there are - that’s the whole point of AV.
I mark my ballot for my favoured candidate and he comes top. My second and subsequent choices, if I have them, are simply not counted and I’ve had one vote and only one vote counted.
You have had that one vote counted two or three times - once in each round. I have had had three different preferences counted - again, on in each round. The fact that your second and third preferences are not counted at any stage is balanced by the fact that my second preference is not counted in the first or third rounds, the fact that my first preference is not counted in the second round, and the fact that my third preference is not counted in the first two rounds.
You, being a Loony, vote for another ‘no-hope’ loony and mark your second and subsequent choices. The no-hope candidate is discarded and your second choice votes are re-distributed and so on. You have had two or more votes counted.
The number of my votes counted is the same as the number of your votes counted - one in each round.
Those who make a sensible and serious choice have votes counted only once. Those who are indecisive or play the field get more votes counted.
What does that mean? What makes one person’s vote “serious” or “indecisive”, compared with someone else’s? What does “playing the field” mean? It is FPTP which forces people to play games and make guesses; AV allows people to be honest in expressing what they want.
Now if you want make sure all options and all votes are equal, then count all second and subsequent choices and redistribute those and not just the choices of the votes for losing candidates.
That would be (a) completely ridiculous, and (b) nothing to do with AV. What mechanism would you propose?
I’m quite happy with the idea of multiple genuine rounds of voting a la France to get to two candidates one of which must have 50% but, again, that’s not what’s proposed.
AV allows the same process to be done in one day, instead of spending vast amounts of money duplicating the whole process a week later.
What’s on offer is a system where some have more votes counted than others simply on the basis of whom they’ve made their first choice.
No it isn’t - you have simply restated the same inaccurate and untruthful statement that you started with. In AV, each voter has only one vote each only. That one vote is counted once in each of the rounds of the election. By pretending otherwise, you have clearly and openly demonstrated your own hysterically frantic insanity and derangement.
Oh dear.
Then the Chancellor, Mr Brown wrote to Tony Blair on September 26, 2003, forbidding the Ministry of Defence from switching resources to the front line. His guillotine forced defence chiefs to slash £800 million from their budgets, including future spending on helicopters, which they claim is hampering operations in Afghanistan.
But tim said that Gordo agreed to pay for bullets and petrol…
141 Jonny Jimmy
fair point Barbara Windsor as Dignity works better, but I insist Kenneth Williams plays Peter Mandelson and Hattie Jacques must be Hattie H.
137
Okay, if Bercow carries on like this I will seriously have to reconsider my rather poor opinion of him to date. This is a very good move and he should be congratulated for it.
“Rod’d been very rude about Smithson Snr and and Smithson Jnr in the past few months”
I wasn’t actually. But VIPA was seen no more. Job done.
146 sad, mad, deluded looney.
ciao politicalbetting. I leave you with coldstone, tim, their insults, their lunacy and the up and down polls (tip - remember Mr Smithsons Rule)
144,and yes,if you watch ch4 news mate,you would have seen what a bunch of cowards today’s and former defence labour ministers are,not one of them would turn up to fight they corner,fcuking pathetic.
153. I think Bercows been generally excellent. Can’t really think of anything he’s done wrong in the past six months?
** ANECDOTE ALERT **
This was a comment on my blog tonight:
Funny I have been a member of the Yougov panel since it started. I am not a member of the Conservative Party but generally support them. I have not been asked to take part in a political poll for months, wonder about that as I used to get them regularly. I agree everyone I speak to regardless of affiliation loathes Gordon Brown and say they will vote for anyone to get him out.
I could say the same about the YouGov panel. They only ever give me Brand Index crap these days - never politics.
155. Come back on visit us on election night. We’ll be having a party.
The news tomorrow will be Expenses as Legg delivers his report. Possible game changer? will support drop across the board for major parties?
144: Coldstone @ 22:51
As is often the case you make a good point.
Fox is, of course, dissembling. It would be very easy to maintain defence spending at its current level, it could be increased by, say, 10% without difficulty or affecting the general public. What Fox means is that a future Conservative government will deliberately choose to spend its limited money on things other than defence. I do wish they would be honest about the fact, and about how many jobs will go, never to be replaced.
154. I liked VIPA!
155 please dont go!
Most of us on here think tim and coldstone are spanners!!!!
158 - its pretty obvious that Youwotguv has too many Tories on its panel, so has to filter them out to get a representative sample.
Demographics, dear boy ….
Ed Balls’s seat is number 196 on the Tories’ target list (Rallings&Thrasher) requiring a swing of 10.5% to fall, but so far it hasn’t been decided when the count will take place. Maybe it’ll be Friday afternoon:
http://tinyurl.com/ye6vutz
74, 89 - From what I hear, the Cadbury deal is going down very badly in that part of the world. It isn’t as if Labour can afford to lose anymore votes if the regional sub-samples in the polls are to be believed (yes, obvious warning).
Birmingham Selly Oak: Tories have a strong local candidate. Labour have McCabe. Leaflets received from Tories. Nothing in the past year from McCabe … who, I believe, had some expenses “issues”.
150. There’s no point trying to reason with that pair of wind-up merchants.
The Alternative Vote is also known as Instant-Runoff Voting.
Geddit dimboys?
163 - Oy, what have I done, I couldn’t work out whether he was a Stalinist Thatcherite or a Hayekian Trotskyist.
Silly woman on Sky. Meets man stuck in the 11th century, who shows her a mobile phone, some wires, and a box.
Hey Presto we have a powerful and sophisticated bomb.
165 Ed Balls’s seat is number 196 on the Tories’ target list (Rallings&Thrasher) requiring a swing of 10.5% to fall, but so far it hasn’t been decided when the count will take place. Maybe it’ll be Friday afternoon:
http://tinyurl.com/ye6vutz
There may well be a lot of “postal voting”.
168,I’am still wondering tim,are you still on strike
Greece being run from Brussels
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/7150118/Greece-under-EU-protectorate-as-funds-shift-fire-to-Portugal.html
Looking at the Tories’ top 200 targets, the number of seats confirmed to be declaring on the night has now reached 110.
Recent additions to the on-the-night counting list are:
Portsmouth North / South
Bradford East / South / West
Keighley
Shipley
Batley & Spen
Colne Valley
Dewsbury
Huddersfield
Torbay
172 GHF
Dig deeper and I think you’ll find it’s Berlin
168 tim - i’m just being rude to you as usual - nothing personal
174
173. How many are confirmed not to be counting on the night?
A heavy postal vote will mean 4am declarations and beyond for a good percentage of seats.
re 170. We’ve GOT to have the “Did you stay up for Balls” moment.
Would any of those pontificating about the ineptitude of Barack Obama care to bet that he:
(a) won’t get healthcare passed?
(b) won’t get re-elected in 2012?
front pages,
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Newspaper-Front-Pages-On-Thursday-February-4-2010/Media-Gallery/201002115541865?lpos=UK_News_Left_Promo_Region_0&lid=GALLERY_15541865_Newspaper_Front_Pages_On_Thursday%2C_February_4%2C_2010
Lets ban postal voting!!!
All seats should be made to declare on the night!!!
(Or we could just have the polls close at 8pm…)
Why were Newsnight able to say what a danger the deficit is for Greece, what a wonderful job the Irish were doing, but can’t bring themselves to criticise the deficit here?
Before someone says bias, I think it’s timidity.
PMQs review in the Times
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/parliamentary_sketch/article7014071.ece
Dave read out a quote from his diaries: “Time after time, Tony Blair would say, ‘Yeah Paddy, I agree, but I can’t get it past Gordon’.”
The chamber rocked with laughter. Gordon looked thunderous as Dave shouted that, yes, politics needed to change with more transparency and accountability. “The one thing we shouldn’t change is the ability of the general election to get rid of a tired, incompetent, useless and divided Government!”
Gordon erupted. “He’s supporting the hereditary principle in the Lords!” There was more of this until we could see the PM gathering himself like the shot-putter again. I could almost see the crouching as he tucked the slogan into his hand and twirled. “We will vote for the . . . ” he paused (did I hear a grunt?) “alternative vote!” Then he shouted: “They are still voting for the hereditary vote!”
170 - 165 “Ed Balls’s seat is number 196 on the Tories’ target list (Rallings&Thrasher) requiring a swing of 10.5% to fall, but so far it hasn’t been decided when the count will take place. Maybe it’ll be Friday afternoon”
“There may well be a lot of “postal voting”.”
Votes might be counted on the Wednesday afternoon!
182,Lets ban postal voting!!!
especially in bradford
109. “I see that even Tetley is now owned by Tata.”
I know. An Indian company producing teabags. What on earth do *they* know about it?
165. “Ed Balls’s seat is number 196 on the Tories’ target list”
Don’t you believe it - it’s much higher than that; it’s just the 196th smallest majority to overturn.
186
Actaully lets just ban labour voters proper election!!!
35 S&S Absolutely. Obama has never lived in the ‘real world’ as most of us know it, so it’s going to be really tough for him to ‘re-connect’ with it (was he ever really connected?). The trouble with lofty rhetoric is that it soon becomes palpably empty without follow up. Trying to reconnect through a return to the rhetoric alone, given the achieve nothing record of the first year, is a losing hand.
But his biggest problem by far is that he keeps on breaking his promises even as he is restating them:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/rulings/promise-broken/
172. It’s really very grim indeed. The near future for Greece will feature soaring unemployment and possibly serious social unrest - and the ‘dividends’ will take years to materialise, if indeed they ever do.
The Greeks are going to pay a heavy price for allowing their corrupt political elite to persuade them that monetary union would bring a future of endless milk and honey. An unprecedented squeeze on living standards and national humiliation loom.
A bit of fun! http://prodicus.blogspot.com/
150. “Now if you want make sure all options and all votes are equal, then count all second and subsequent choices and redistribute those and not just the choices of the votes for losing candidates.”
That’s called Bucklin voting, and was ruled unconstitutional in the US on precisely the grounds you idiotically ascribe to AV/IRV!
“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt…”
190. “Obama has never lived in the ‘real world’ as most of us know it, so it’s going to be really tough for him to ‘re-connect’ with it”
What the hell are you talking about? What part of the “real world” has he missed out on that so many other Presidents have experienced? The Hollywood life style of Ronald Reagan perhaps?
If he’s so hopelessly out-of-touch, presumably you wouldn’t mind a wager on his re-election prospects?
192
normal not bonkers 
labour armageddon vs hung parliament depends on how this dynamic plays out amongst the undecides
vote for those who will win lets keep what we know
current polling does not help on this question, in fact it can’t as the question includes a dynamic feedback loop. notoriously unpredictable buggers.
my money (my real money) is on the former, but I may be wrong
191. I thought you were a proponent of radical fiscal restructuring?
Off-topic. I thought following Brown’s comments re the voting system, I’d do a bit of research into who appointed the members of the House of Lords. These figures are a bit rough and ready (and as at late 2009, so have probably moved a little further towards Labour since):
Hereditaries: 92, of which peerages created
- pre-Union: 21
- Walpole to Wellington: 12
- Melbourne to Salisbury: 14
- Balfour to Chamberlain: 24
- Churchill to Douglas-Home: 21
Life Peerages (including Law Lords not in the Supreme Court): 599, recommended by
- Douglas-Home: 1
- Heath: 4
- Wilson: 7
- Callaghan: 12
- Thatcher: 70
- Major: 112
- Blair: 351
- Brown: 26
Bishops: 24 sitting in House of Lords, appointed by:
- Major: 8
- Blair: 16
So more than half the entire House of Lords has been appointed by a single prime minister, Tony Blair. OK, that includes people nominated by other parties as well but it’s still a vast exercise in patronage. I’d be reasonably confident that such a situation is unique in parliament’s history.
Socrates. I have said several times on this site that I am not a betting man. But I am clearly on the record that Obama is IMO a one-term president.
Obama has worked in liberal political circles almost his entire career. Reagan, for all his Hollywood, had more than one string to his bow. Not so Obama. Continue your lovefest with the One and cry in 2010 and 2012.
Commiserations to Dave. I think I’d rather have root-canal surgery without anaesthetic than be interviewed by that globulous waste of oxygen Johann Hari.
Evening all.
Cadbury’s might be a bit like Woolies, in political terms.
The state of the UK economy was not the primary reason for Woolies’ failure. Woolies failed primarily because its business model was out of date; yet many people (who rarely shopped there) got sentimental about it, and Labour unfairly got much of the blame for the failure of what suddenly became elevated to a ‘national institution’.
In the case of Cadbury’s, the government is (quite rightly) completely irrelevant. It is as absurd to complain about Kraft taking over Cadbury’s as it would have been for Americans to complain about Cadbury’s takeover of Dr Pepper a few years ago, or indeed to mourn the 2008 demerger of Dr Pepper Snapple. This is not some little Quaker company hand-crafting quality chocolates in Bournville; it’s a run-of-the-mill multinational making mass-produced, mainly bulk-quality, sugar-based food products, supported by lots of advertising. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but such companies are bought and sold all the time.
Nonetheless sentimentality is important, and the sale of Cadbury’s might have an effect in the Midlands. More generally, the narrative may be turning. Suddenly journalists like Iain Martin and Brogan have decided, on the basis of one PMQs, that the Conservatives are on the ascendant again.
It’s largely froth, of course, just as the stories of Conservative confusion were largely (though not entirely) froth; all parties make gaffes or fail to get their message consistent, but the media are fickle in whether they collect those gaffes together and form them into a ‘narrative’, or ignore them.
James Forsyth in Coffee House asks ‘Was today a turning point?’. Quite possibly so - but not because Cameron and Brown have really changed much.
It’s the media narrative which may have changed today, not the fundamentals.
Anecdote alert.
Went to a Tory coffee morning. An ancient batty looking old girl sat silently behind the tombola. Suddenly she flug her arm out, grabbed my elbow and yanked me violently to her.
She hissed in my ear, ‘Dear, my father was in the army. He used to say, ‘Liberal Democrats. [SHOUTING NOW...] What is the point of them?’
She released her grip and looked passively ahead.
Gawd, I thought. ‘The woman’s a fecking genius’.
197 Socrates
Greece’s fiscal incompetence is what got it into this mess, the problem is that it can’t devalue its own currency to the natural level reflecting its poorer condition. Therefore internal prices will need to deflate instead. This creates a big problem for anyone with debt.
Rod Crosby.I hope you have a chance to see “Shooting the War” on BBC4, in particular the interviews with Esther Bejerano, a Jewish survivor from Auschwitz. She was fortunate to be accepted for the camp orchestra, which was required to play to calm new arrivals, who were unknowingly being herded to the gas chambers. The rest of her family were murdered.There are (or sadly were) so many similar witnesses to these attrocities, it is not unreasonable to assume Holocaust Deniers have a pathological problem.What do you think?
201. Richard Nabavi. It feels as though the tide is turning again. Which I think demonstrates that PMQs DO matter.
Not because the public pays much notice but because the political journalists do. And it’s they who largely determine the political temperature, narrative and direction.
199. Yeah, of course. The old right-wing talking point that “liberal” by definition, is out of touch. Never mind that the last Republican President was parachuted into every job he ever had by his friends and family in the elite, Obama, who pulled himself up from a one-parent family is the one out of touch. All those poor people he worked with on the streets of Chicago don’t count as real people as they were “liberal”.
Enjoy your moment. The short-term nihilism strategy of the GOP is destroying their long-term prospects. Change isn’t easy, but it’s here to stay…
158 - I’ve been a member of YouGov since November 2008. Until the last few months of last year, I received poltical polls fairly often. Now it’s almost never. I always say I will vote Conservative. I guess that’s not interesting for making the news.
203. Devaluation creates a big problem for anyone with foreign debt.
Cadbury’s is a private joint stock company.
Most of the original owners got out some time ago.
In the late 60s it joined with Schweppes.
If the shareholders decide to accept an offer from Kraft, that is their right to do so.
The government of the UK has nothing whatever to do with this.
They are not responsible for the takeover, nor is it their fault.
When you sell your house, you get the best offer you can, regardless of where it’s from. A company is no different. It has to get the best deal for its shareholders.
204 stjohn - Yes, and the effect on the morale of MPs is also important.
188 - Totally. I recon it is gonna be up there with the seats they need to rid Labour of their majority. Its going to be tense. However, I don’t mind Ed Balls. He is a bit of a mess, but he is extremely passionate and I do see him as someone to trust. Much more than any Tory Shadow Cabinet member. In fact, its mostly various Labour backbenchers I despise. The spineless ones who go blabbing to the press at any opportunity for a bit of a chance to be seen then suck up to Brown and the party in Parliament.
205 - Obama’s origins are not the issue. It’s what he wants to do that is out of touch with the American people.
203. I’m fully aware of my economics, and have criticised monetary union for precisely those reason in the past. But the topic being discussed was the fiscal consolidation element (something again I support): it just seems somewhat hypocritical for certain individuals to insist on a dramatic tightening in the UK while claiming it is a draconian and unfair policy for Greece.
204 And gives a boost to the participants themselves. DC looked seriously stressed yesterday when cameras showed him watching GO’s speech. Today should have cheered him up (and deflated Lardon Brown).
212. The Greeks should know all about draconian policies shouldn’t they, Socrates?
PMQs matters only if it reinforces. Political journalists are poor predictors and yet frightened of being wrong.
Dave was looking unexpectedly wobbly and Gordon was getting to his feet.
Now we have reverted to the expected form.
That which causes panic and spreads calm amongst the partisans has an similar effect on those jouros who know their own credibity will be tested at the ballot box.
They don’t report, they bleet.
212 Socrates
I don’t know if anyone is criticising Greece for fiscal consolidation or just stating that without monetary control the only way out of their mess is going to be very painful. I imagine with your name the fate of Greece is of interest to you!
In the Telegraph article I did think it was interesting that part of the EU’s power over Greece was granted by an article in the Lisbon Treaty - I wonder how many people were aware of that when it was signed up to.
211. Again, this is nothing but shallow GOP talking points. Pretty much every policy of Obama’s has been middle of the road. His healthcare policy is more free market than most of Republicans have advocated in the past. The various major elements of the stimulus all receive support when explained individually. Banking reform is something that people want.
His “agenda” has been made unpopular by the right-wing uniting in going nuclear with the lies and the fear mongering. The GOP aren’t winning more votes, you’re just revving up your base while frustrated liberals are staying home. That works in the short term but as a younger, less prejudiced generation comes through it will destroy the party’s long term prospecs. The next Republican President will be one that repudiates the current traits of the GOP.
158/206 I’ve had the same experience with YouGov. I’m a Tory voter who was regularly consulted until about six months ago. Now, I’m hardly ever consulted and then only about non-political matters.
Ah Kelvin and Vince Moss. A proper paper review.
215. Now Cameron is sure Brown is not being replaced, he stops letting him win PMQs. Brown supremacy was only a function of Snow.
201 - Richard, spot on about a change in the media today. Today started off with the Grayling interview on Radio 4, DC being attacked for wobbling and the expectation that Brown would get to pummel him in PMQs. 6 questions later and suddenly the mood changes. Brown is being scored as a draw by Maguire and the media don’t mention “Brown’s best PMQs for ever”. Cameron and the PCP got this right today.
Give Brown his due, the whole “It’s 12.08″ line was good, but the rest were shoved in whether they fitted or not and as they came from planted questions, they got ignored. I do hope CCHQ have learned the lessons from today…
158. The Narrative Rules.
[Sounds mad it's late and I have been on the cough meds...]Is it possible for YouGov to ‘run out’ of certain types and have too many of others.
Those left in the run down catergories may be ‘hard core’ and repeatedly polled.
Wouldn’t it be funny if internet polling panels were like chip fat. Every so often you have to tip it out and start again.
202. So you and Christina have met?
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
216: JonathanD @ 23:51
Indeed, according to the Telegraph the EU’s “annexation” of Greek fiscal policy is being undertaken under Article 121. If the social unrest does get too much I wonder if the EU will decde they need to help and invoke article 122, in which case the UK will be on the hook for funds to bail out Greece.
224. No
).
But I am sure I’d be suitably impressed if we did (which is of course what you were refering to
203. Tough. Greece was quite happy to benefit from avoiding a forced revaluation during the ‘boom’ years.
223
Chip fat? How very dare you.
Talking of chip fat, at least Greece will be saved from to all those ‘charming’ British tourists turning up because its cheap.
**** BETTING POST ****
William Hill have a market on when Brown will formally announce his resignation as Labour Leader.
After 4 weeks but by the end of 2010: 12/1.
I think “after 4 weeks” means “after 4 weeks after election day”, as the other options are expressed in terms of election day timing.
I’m on! (Maximum stake I got was £42 at 12/1.)
158: I’ve been in YouGov for years, but only had one political poll in the last couple of years - my credit is stuck at £30ish and I wonder if it will reach the £50 for a payout in my lifetime. I assume the panel is simply very big now.
Not much on the thread about the more or less final round of expenses that will hit the streets tomorrow - I think that’s going to blot out everything for a couple of days and probably give Others a shot in the arm in the polls. There’s STILL a bit more to come - in a couple of months they’ll publish the office allowance details, and they’re also doing a full audit on housing expenditure (i.e. not just checking that people claimed for appropriate things but that they can prove it - where’s the receipt for that microwave you bought in 2004, eh?). However, I think tomorrow will probably be the climax.
231 Nick Palmer MP
Do you think the new info about room bookings will hit one party more than the others?
177 - about 60 seats have confirmed they’re not counting on the night.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the final number won’t exceed 100 so we can have at least 550 seats on the night which should be enough for a pretty firm forecast. In 1992 when 500 seats were in, the projected Tory majority was between 3 and 23 seats.
If Nick is there, I notice Broxtowe is one of the seats which is undecided when to count. Do you have any strong views on this?
175.Ave it, that amused me no end.
179.Mike, the ultimate test of PB.com on GE night, would the site crash if we had an everyone wants to say they were here for the Balls moment?
Off topic, was bored tonight waiting for the veritable ground hog day tomorrow, Gordon yet again throws a boomerang into the distance only for it to come back and slap politics across the choppers right before a GE. Are the stocks and rotten fruit lined up again because they had such a great time last year and want to do it all over again retrospectively? So I decided to go and have a look at some of Paxman’s Newsnight moments on Youtube, as you do for totally no reason at all.
I have never seen this episode of HIGNFY, but this is Paxman at his best, doing the weather. Still laughing, enjoy!
Newsnight Weather Reports - Paxman resists
217 - Agreed, the GOP will make short-term gains in November, although not enough to take control of Congress, but ultimately they have done no serious reassessment of their defeat in 2008. They will nominate Romney in 2012 and go down to exactly the same result as they did 4 years earlier. Their only short-term hope is Huckabee, but many in the GOP base loathe him because of his record as a high spender and his relatively liberal economic positions.
As Anthony writes “Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another.”
But surely there is enough evidence to show we do? Off the top of my head I can recall Portillo, Fox and Lamont losing seats on swings way above the average what Lib Dems and Labour were getting. Equally relevant are seats Labour defended in 05 with virtually no swing against them. If voters want change a “shouldn’t be marginal” is definitely in play. This June’s election will show regional trends, and many big seat by seat swings or small swings. If it’s more a modern phenomena, then it may be due to the more ready access to information in this age.
236. Take a crash course in statisics before posting again…
237 Crash course in irony?
237 - RC - do you not include the Angus Reid polls in your poll database?
220. It really was quite amussing looking at the faces of the labour mps once the realisation had sunk in that cameron had indeed been running a safe gordo campaign over the past few months and that this campaign is now over.
If there is one thing you can rely on, its gordon f%^king up as has happend with AV(god only knows why he did that!) and the chilcot enquiry.
217- Actually, it’s your post that sounds like a press release straight from the DNC: Obama’s agenda is middle of the road and popular… people are only opposed because they’re fools who have been duped by liars… the GOP is only winning over right-wingers… Republicans are bigots… Republicans can only win again if they become Democrats.
I would reply to your assertions, but they are too bland and well-trodden to be worth the effort.
237 How rude.
241. “I would reply to your assertions, but they are too bland and well-trodden to be worth the effort.”
And, of course, largely true. That’s what usually makes responding seem too much of a chore.
A THEORY
Where there is just a diehard group of Labour supporters left in a strong Conservative seat it may be hard to get many more to switch from Labour to Conservative.
In a marginal seat there will be soft supporters on both sides that could swing either way on a local issue or topical issue at the time of the election (or poll survey in this case).
If the theory is correct then there could be a bigger swing to Conservative in a marginal seat.
Also, as demographics change and people move around we should expect a reversion to the national mean in strong Conservative or strong Labour seats. This can add to (or subtract from) a general swing.
224.Wow, and they say girls are bitchy, judging by today’s threads, I would say that some of our leftie boys on here have that crown sewn up.
232.”Do you think the new info about room bookings will hit one party more than the others?”
wibbler, have I missed something?
The Mirror has done a right hatchet job on Cameron here:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/02/03/the-real-david-cameron-115875-22014949/
245 ChristinaD
I think in addition to expenses info, we are going to get info about why MPs booked private rooms in the House of Commons for banquets and entertaining.
It could be embarassing if they have been using Commons facilities to entertain private companies who employ them (Tories), or union barons who fund them (Labour).
246 - Their complete obsession with one individual really is unhealthy! People get restraining order against them for less than these days!
245 - Christina
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5747328/the-next-parliamentary-scandal.thtml
246.Nick, is it just the usual, or a really vicious hatchet job even by their standards? I think that they are now sailing close to the wind with this personal vendetta.
247.Ah, thanks wibbler.
I am sure Kev’s mum will be proud, but it won’t help his circulation figures.
I would suggest a sudden spike in vitriol might be nerves following a fluent Cameron and a wretched Brown turning up at PMQs today.
249.Kristin, thanks.
251. If that’s really the reason, the Mirror should at least be commended on their extraordinary achievement in coming up with the idea, researching the story and conducting several interviews in the space of…what, ten hours?
LOL - wee tweety spat
BenBradshawMP
the guardian’s jonathan freedland is so right to say journalists, particularly broadcasters, are failing to scrutinise the tories
Kevin Maguire
Oh yeah? @BenBradshawMP He coud start with his own paper and you, Mr Cabinet Minister, should widen your reading
Chris, I’ll save you the trouble.
Kev thinks Dave is rich [Kev gets a higher salary], posh [Kev went to a posh school] and prone to putting on weight [Kev's not exactly an Adonis - in fact he's got a dough ball of a stomach and terrible posture].
But it’s a classic piece of laughable bitchiness that demonstrates clearly what a talentlessly sad vessel Kev is.
Mean Girls without the wit and the pompoms.
246 - Some what amusing that they include this quote at the end of the hatchet job,
“I am ringing to tell you that you are about to meet a truly remarkable young man.”
They some how managed to miss this famous quote though from his Oxford Professor….
“David was one of the nicest and ablest students I ever taught,” Vernon Bogdanor
255 - Don’t forget, Kev married to a Toff…
255 - It’s a bit sad. He only ever wanted to be Alistair Campbell and just didn’t have the talent.
251: ‘I would suggest a sudden spike in vitriol might be nerves following a fluent Cameron and a wretched Brown turning up at PMQs today.’
More likely it’s a retaliation-in-first before the publication of Rawnsley’s book - revelations about finding Gordon semi-naked and unhinged in a hotel room after Obama rejected him etc.
James.
Hardly. Kev has a vat of boiling crud about Dave which he just keeps stirring and re-serving.
The words ‘research’ ‘interview and ‘article’ should be replaced with ‘gossip’, ‘pub’ and ‘comic’.
Kevlin has given Kev some sage advice. But he hasn’t got the sense to follow it.
246.That is about the most nasty and spiteful hatchet job on Cameron I have ever had the misfortune to read yet in that rag. Yuck! Sorry, but I honestly believe this vendetta is getting out of control.
258. He was given the opportunity to do a Campbell-style role for Brown and turned it down, didn’t he? He’s a great communicator on TV and considerably more nuanced in his views.
262 - Not what I read. He got told “thanks, but no thanks” at the last minute by dithering Gordo.
260 That should be Kelvin…but I am sure you knew that.
259 Very possibly, but it’s a bit sad. Timing not great either, but then Dave’s kids do have a habit of interfering with Labour’s smearing timetable.
260. “Kevlin has given Kev some sage advice. But he hasn’t got the sense to follow it.”
I’m going to lose track of all these Kevs in a moment. Is that Kelvin MacKenzie? If so, I’ve got my own theories about what the word ’sage’ ought to be replaced with in that sentence.
I wonder what the reaction would be if the Currant Bun did a similar piece on Gordo? At the very least, I’m sure we would have the BBC running comments by Mandy about contracts between the Tories and Murdoch for a good 24hrs.
263 I thought Kev refused?????
Why give up a permanent job for a temporary one. I doubt Kev can run down his readership faster than Gordon can run down his MPs.
265 Kelvin’s a hoot.
263.Oracle, I thought he wanted the job, but didn’t ever get offered it?
Number of votes gained by Maguire’s piece = 0
Maybe somebody should give this a bit more of an airing by the “I went to a bog standard comp (cough Grammar school), just a working class lad (living with a Toff in multi-million pound Mayfair pad), was only attending the smear meeting in a personal capacity” Kev Toilets Muckguire….
http://order-order.com/2009/06/08/kevin-maguires-sick-maddy-cameron-jibe/
270. “Number of votes gained by Maguire’s piece = 0″
Cheers, Kristin. So easily rectified now you’ve pointed it out!
269 - I can’t remember where I read it, but the account I seem to remember was that he wanted the job, got the thumbs-up signals from #10, then they picked somebody else (I’m thinking it was the Lewis appointment).
But I might be mis-remembering all of this (no sleep for 3 days), but he has always wanted an Ali Campbell role that is for certain.
Gordon’s billy no mates. They probably all refused.
Watching the re run of PMQs, I was struck today by how Brown kept looking for reassurance from those around him [wee Dougie in particular] but they avoided eye contact. He’s alone.
232: I don’t know if there’s anything explosive in the dinner hostings. I think the essential ingredient in public outrage is that the MP made money out of it - if X hosted the Amalgamated Blogmakers Ltd., so what, but if they coincdentally gave him £50,000, then that might be different. I’d think the dominanty stories tomorrow will be the people paying back >£50,000 because their rentals from relatives, though agreed at the time, have been disallowed.
233: I’d rather get on with the count and have told the returning officer. Broxtowe is a frugal sort of authority (they have one small civic event per year) and tend to take an austere view, so the overtime pay may tilt it the other way.
Clearly from the Mirror’s story Cameron was given help to get to the top. As although not mentioned was the writer.
The story was so negative that it lacked any sense of credibility, nitpicking on minor matters rather than the big issues.
Life is not fair, and having connections has always been how decisions are made.
Gordon being PM was achieved through his connections and who he knew. Not wrong, it is the way life is.
Whilst cameron was born with a solid silver spoon he does not, at least to me, comeover as rude and arrogant. he also comes across as more honest which are characteristics I respect. Even if his party is full of troughing charlatans, the same as the other mob.
If he was a tad brusque when at Uni then join the club, I think we all were. And it is a time to expand one’s horizons.
Being boring can be an electoral laibility.
Here in Oz our boring PM admitted he was taken out by some U.S. pollies to a strip club and he enjoyed it, although he would not make a habit of it.
Result? His popularity soared as he was seen to be less aloof and one of the lads. Essentially boring, and proud of that persona, it showed he could SOMETIMES let his hair down. This is important in the Aussie psyche, and I imagine a little bit more important than assumed in the British psyche as well.
Think Cameron and his wife should go out to the local pub and have a few beers with the locals, a good photo op of course, or he goes on a pub crawl back to Ox, visit the Bear, Wheatsheaf, Turf and Kings Arms on a wee crawl for old times sake!
sensible one, that kicks the bullingdon image into the long grass.
Humanise himself; show that he is NORMAL. People like NORMAL, not people who it appears steel 50 grand and hit their secretary, although that is yet to be fully proven.
(Cynic that I am, I guess the story from the secretary will be illuminating 4 days before the election when she states in the Sun how she was bashed by Brown, but i digress.)
Cameron has occasionally showed his human side, as Brown has after they both had personal tragedies with their children.
And after the Iraq dead soldier dramas where Brown was taped we saw that Brown was reasonably genuine on occasions.
His personal vote spiked then because it showed him to be REAL.
People do not believe many politicians and their false promises and policies. So may vote based on other traits.
They will certainly vote for someone, anyone, if he comes across as more genuine when there are few other aspects to go on with them all sadly much of a muchness.
And if someone has troughed and been caught then that will hit them hard.
A poll correlating support for the local MP against his proven level of troughing might be statistically significant and explain why some people up for re-election are up for a rude awakening.
273. “But I might be mis-remembering all of this (no sleep for 3 days), but he has always wanted an Ali Campbell role that is for certain.”
Sounds like you know Kev’s mind better than he does himself. I certainly always understood he was sounded out for the role but wasn’t interested.
270. “Number of votes gained by Maguire’s piece = 0″
If pitched to you and I, Kristin, gains = 0. But this is pitched to those who may be Labours missing voters at the next GE, who may turn out after all if they start to loathe or fear Cameron.
It’s sad and unnecessary for any media source to do this to any politician – please stick to how their policies and convictions actually differ - though it has to be remembered the origins of newspapers isn’t as newspapers but political rags designed to achieve political hatchet jobs just like this one.
251.SallyC, just checked the Francis Elliott/James Hanning book on Cameron. Very interesting reading the whole story again.
277 - Why do you always have to come across as a prize chippy tw@t? If you think my account is wrong, just say so, thats fine with me, as I said myself I may have it wrong…No wonder you end up having massive personal disagreements with so many posters on here.
I’d be amazed if anyone who ever considered voting Tory still read The Mirror.
236. Take a crash course in statisics before posting again…
Thank you very much for the comment. I am more than happy for stats to prove wrong what I said.
Would you like to reel some of those stats out? It would tail off OGHs question that began this thread rather nicely.
280. Oracle, enough, OK? Enough. My post was fair comment based on the fact that you said something that clearly wasn’t based on any hard evidence, ie. you ‘know’ Kevin Maguire has always wanted a Campbell-style role. There was nothing chippy or abusive about it and your reaction is absurd.
And just in case you’re planning yet another three-hour marathon of dissecting the billion and one reasons why I am apparently such an objectionable poster, please stop just for a moment and ponder on whether someone who resorts to childish and unfunny namecalling in such a huge percentage of his own posts (ie. ‘Timmy Thicket’) really has the slightest credibility in doing so.
273.Oracle, I certainly had the impression from way back that Maguire wanting the job, but that he didn’t get it?
281. Oh but you’re wrong, David. Where else can we get a really good laugh these days? To see those Mirror boys struggling to find an angle day in, day out, is priceless. In addition to humour, it also offers horror to rival Hammer House. There was never a comic like it!
283 - The only one who has marathon session like that is you, I remember a Wednesday not that long ago where after 4hrs poster after poster was telling you to just shut up.
Anyway, I thought we basically agreed to disagree and stay out of each others way on matters, especially when having battles with other posters. I have done so, then you pop up with a needlessly chippy comment again. As I said, just say I think you are wrong, show me a link to the contrary and I will politely acknowledge it, simples.
As for the “name calling”, Timmy gets it yes, but some fairly obvious reasons. If you don’t like it, that isn’t my problem. Other posters, I try to be polite. You won’t find me calling any names of the for instance the likes of SO, Patrick (West Ham Fan), oldnat, even though rarely agree with their views…
278 If pitched to you and I, Kristin, gains = 0. But this is pitched to those who may be Labours missing voters at the next GE, who may turn out after all if they start to loathe or fear Cameron.
It’s sad and unnecessary for any media source to do this to any politician – please stick to how their policies and convictions actually differ - though it has to be remembered the origins of newspapers isn’t as newspapers but political rags designed to achieve political hatchet jobs just like this one.
by East Brimstone February 4th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Fair point EB though I tend to lean more towards David Roe’s view on this. I fully agree with you on the rest. I’m still waiting for positive reporting of Labour’s policies.
286. “As for the “name calling”, Timmy gets it yes, but some fairly obvious reasons. If you don’t like it, that isn’t my problem.”
No inverted commas required around name-calling - it’s name-calling all right. Stupid, childish, tedious name-calling in post after post after post. Does anyone tell you to “shut up after four hours”? Given that you’re almost entirely surrounded by ideological fellow travellers probably not, but they’re not doing you any favours.
Grow out of all the playground stuff you direct at Tim 24/7, and then I might be prepared to take seriously your (I’m sure) fascinating theories about my own character flaws.
As for our ‘agreement’, my recollection is that I offered you one and you mysteriously failed to respond. But it’s an academic point anyway, because I wouldn’t have broken any such agreement. You made an unsupportable comment and I merely pointed that out.
287.Kristin, will email you tomorrow, hoping to get things set up this weekend.
289 - sure thing Christina, night all.
Betfair Majority market swings back to the Conservatives:
Con maj - Back 1.49, Lay 1.5
Lab maj - last price matched 19.5 (all time highest ever was 20.0)
290.Me too, nite all. SallyC, hope you are feeling better soon, one of my brood has been suffering too.
273.Oracle, pretty sure your memory is not failing you on this. IIRC, Guido has blogged on it once or twice.
292 - Just found these two comments,
“Kevin Maguire was widely tipped to be Gordon Brown’s Alastair Campbell” - James Forsyth, 28th May 2008
“I suspect he knows that Gordon might have consulted me when some of Kevin’s friends were suggesting him for a job in Number 10 or the Labour Party, and I did what I always do - said what I thought.” - Alastair Campbell, 25th March 2009
Seems Ali Campbell (who doesn’t think Muckguire is worthy of wiping his arse from various comments he has made in the past about him) thinks he put an end to the “crazy” idea of have Kev in charge of the spin operation.
Hmm, doesn’t seem that I am the only one who thinks Kev wanted a bit of Ali Campbell action,
“Kevin Maguire fantasises that he will be the Alastair Campbell of the Brown regime. He has Campbell’s old job as political editor at the Mirror and certainly sucks up to Gordon enough to make himself a candidate to follow his predecessor’s footsteps.”
http://order-order.com/2007/03/05/mirrors-maguire-brown-noses/
294 - He was more likely to get a UB40.
Sorry, bad joke
293.Oracle, if you get the chance, read the Francis Elliott/James Hanning book on Cameron. After reading that Mirror article on Cameron up thread, I went and read the bit in the book about this story. Alastair Campbell gets a mention in this heated GE fueled Labour/Tory spat, and as the then Mirror Political editor. I had actually forgotten about it, but its an interesting story.
But reading again about Cameron’s time at CCHQ was very revealing in the present day context, both for who else was around in that department then, and because the topic was yet again the NHS. Shaun Woodward was the Communications Director!
296 - Thanks for the recommendation. Have some long-ish flights coming up soon, should pass some of the time
Right. Off home. I have a couple of days off. We’re venue hunting in Ireland over the weekend.
David, Hunting for venue? What is a venue, some kind of leprechaun?
Is Broxtowe a marginal on this definition? I would imagine so as NPMP has only a 2,296 majority in an electorate of over 70,000.
So…marginal swing this, marginal swing that – it’s bullshit.
The Tories used to get over 31,000 votes here. In 2001 and 2005 they got about 18,000. DNV used to get only 12,000 back in 1992 but 25,000 in 2001 and 22,000 in 2005.
Yes you can guess where I’m going with this can’t you!
Even if Nick loses no votes at all he’s still a goner if only 1 in 10 of 2005’s abstainers comes back and votes Tory. Or put it another way, the Tories’ vote dropped about 13,000 during the Blair years and, as per my article on turnout, this neatly matches the 12,000 gained by DNV.
Nick’s vote dropped 3,500 in 2001 and a further 3,400 in 2005. With Gordon leading the charge I can realistically see the total Labour vote dropping a similar amount this time around. The Tories would then need no new votes to win (and they increased their vote in 2005). The LibDems and Other have been gaining votes since 1997 as Labour lost them. Is those trends going to reverse in 2010? No way.
My prediction for the Broxtowe result is:
Lab 16,500 (down 4,000)
Con 21,500 (up 3,300)
LibDem 8,500 (up 700)
Other 2,500 (up 200)
This represents a 70% turnout (vs 69% in 2005). At higher turnout it gets worse for Nick.
Broxtowe is a typical of a hundred Labour seats weakly held across middle England.
I’m not sure there aren’t examples of similar different swings.
Compare the Lab to LD swings at the last election between the UK as a whole and the seats the LDs gained. Or do the same for the Con to LD seats in ‘97. Similar pattern.
(Not that I think it will turn out that way, but the pattern has been seen before.)
Having had the dubious pleasure (sic) of reading the 303 threads above, I am again amazed at the rubbish regular posters are writing. I however, actually live in a labour held marginal in the top 80 ish of required “wins”. Info on the doorstep (we have been canvassing for VI’s since July) clearly show a significant rise of support for the Conservatives way above the national average of polls. I truly believe the only Poll to trust is Angus Reid, together with this Iposo-Mori pretty well spot on.
Off to join the Question Time audience. As at least three of the panellists are completely loopy (Short, Galloway and Phillips) I feel a bit like an 18th century idler on my way to Bedlam for some bad taste entertainment.