Cameron hit most as all the leader ratings drop
March 8th, 2010
“Is Brown/Cameron/Clegg doing well-badly as PM/CON leader/LD leader ..”
| “Well” | “Badly“ | +/- | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown | 36% (36) | 60% (58) | -2% |
| Cameron | 48% (50) | 44% (39) | -7% |
| Clegg | 43% (42) | 31% (28) | -2% |
Are the Tories right to make Brown the issue?
This is the second of my planned weekly threads on what many pundits believe are the best guide to forecasting general elections - the leader approval ratings. The comparisons above are the net change as compared with last week.
These are the responses to questions that are asked in a consistent standard form and the latest are to be found in the detail from the YouGov poll for the Sunday Times.
As can be seen all three saw a rise in their “badly” total but Cameron, perhaps because of Ashcroft, has taken the biggest hit. His numbers are at their lowest level since October 2007 just after Brown’s general election U-turn.
But Brown continues to trail a long way behind and if the theory about approval ratings is correct it’s hard to see him saving the day unless there is a sharp narrowing of the gap.
This is reinforced by another question in the poll in which 51% said they would be “dismayed” when asked “How would you feel about Gordon Brown remaining Prime Minister after the election?”. This compares with just 11% saying they would be “delighted” and 29% said they “wouldn’t mind”.
This question was introduced by YouGov with the phrase “David Cameron spoke recently of “the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown” which, to my mind at least, probably made the outcome worse for the PM.
As someone who has apparently been identified as a possible swing voter by both the Tories and Labour in the key marginal of Bedford I’m getting special solicitations from the two main parties. The Labour spiel was to ask me to “unite behind” the incumbent MP to “stop the Tories“.
The latest Tory move, a personal letter from Dave, makes the point that this is “one of the seats we have to win is the one you live in” and that unless the Conservatives succeed locally “we will not be able to change the government at Westminster - and that means five more years of Gordon Brown…”
So fear of the Tories is being set against fear of Brown. It’s negative on both sides and no doubt that will be magnified as we get closer to the date.
Mike Smithson
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Einmal
Leader ratings, like politics, are relative. Cameron is miles ahead of Brown. That’s what counts. Being in positive territory is good too, given the state of regard for politicians.
The survey dates of 4th to 5th might not reflect all of the reaction to Chilcot and none of the his trip to Afghanistan. Brown has further to fall imo.
I am still not convinced by usefulness of the forced question, because at the end of the day nobody is forced to vote either Labour or Conservative.
As one lady said to me on the doorstep this week: “I can´t stand David Cameron and I detest Brown”, which seems very reasonable to me.
I wonder how long it will be before the Conservative realise that making Cameron their leader is going to prove to be a loser for them.
I don’t think you should talk about the “doing well as leader” questions as approval ratings - for example, I’d say Nick Griffin was doing well as leader of the BNP (winning their first European Parliament seat, for example) but that doesn’t mean I approve of the scumbag. Likewise, I quite like Gordon Brown, but on current evidence he’s the worst thing to happen to the Labour Party since the SDP.
On the other hand I liked this question:
Thinking of Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, which of them would you prefer to have round for Sunday lunch?
Leader All Con Lab LibDem
David Cameron 24 59 5 6
Gordon Brown 19 2 54 8
Nick Clegg 17 6 11 58
None of them 37 31 29 27
Don’t know 3 1 2 2
Quite impressive that nearly one third of people who say they plan to vote Conservative nevertheless wouldn’t want their leader round for lunch. (Though admittedly the questions leading up to that were quite negative about everybody.)
re 5. “I wonder how long it will be before the Conservative realise that making Cameron their leader is going to prove to be a loser for them.”
Probably towards the end of his third term
I get the impression the Cameron team is attemping a high risk - but probably successful strategy - of holding themselves back until the campaign starts. This absence is causing their overall ratings and Cameron’s personal approvals to slide but the Tories calculate that, in a month-long campaign, their man can only benefit in comparison with Brown. It will reinforce the sense of newness and time for change. It is Labour’s presence in the media that’s helping its polling - a portion of the electorate has no idea about anything and opts for whoever it’s heard of.
If the leader approval ratings are a guide to how the GE will pan out, shouldn’t the LDs be in a comfortable second place in the polls?
Given that we are now very close to the election, I am still puzzled as to why more is not being made of the large numbers of people who will not say how they are going to vote or claim not to know. It was 25% in the last ICM poll. Are there any figures on this from YouGov?
OT - Most news outlets reporting today that the IoD and CBI calling for quicker cuts in spending.
Alistair Darling clashes with City over ‘leisurely approach’ to Budget
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7053253.ece
Business tells Government: spending cuts needed now.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7393212/Business-tells-Government-spending-cuts-needed-now.html
CBI calls for public finances to be balanced sooner.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8554353.stm
This from the Times article..
The Budget will not include detailed allocations for Whitehall departments for the years ahead, though Mr Darling said that the Government wanted to protect health and education.
So, we won’t be told where the cuts will fall, yet the Conservatives are being pushed time and time again to say exactly where they would cut without a detailed look at the books.
Once the election campaign starts proper this will be an open goal.
Edmund makes a good point that question conflates success with approval, and even in its own terms it iscomparing ‘doing well as PM’ with Doing well as party leader’.
IIRC the delight/dismay question doesn’t work out too well for for Cameron either. The Tories think the gap in esteem is much larger than it is and they are getting diminshing returns from this line.
7 - “Probably towards the end of his third term”
looooooooooool, nicely done sir.
11 NPMP. Yes but your party is fronted up by Gordon Brown. Not sure what you can possibly say to overcome that handicap.
10 - Haven’t the Tories said there will not be big cuts in year one? Don’t their major advisers make that point in the Cameron documentary to be shown this evening?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-economist-criticises-partys-plan-for-cuts-1917785.html
Southam. the whole lot are hated by a significant percentage of the population.
If people vote for them, it will be like me, I will vote Tory with a peg to my nose despite hating Cameron. I just hate the others I have the option to vote for more.
Not voting at all and getting Brown back is one thing I want to at least contribute to try to avoid, hence I will vote.
Are the Tories right to make Brown the issue?
Of course they are, and they have little choice. All domestic policy was decided by Brown between 97 and 2007, the budget was kept secret from even the PM until it was read in the Commons (or selectively leaked). After 2007, Brown micromanaged every department, selecting his placemen for the big jobs in domestic policy and manipulating or browbeating all ministers into following his line.
He accepted no dissent and almost no discussion of policy.
If the Conservatives don’t attack Brown, what do they attack?
7. “probably towards the end of his (Cameron’s) third term”
HAHA!
You’ve a lot of emotion invested in a Cameron victory haven’t you Mike? recent polls must be very traumatic for you!
14 - they will make a start, which is exactly what IoD and CBI are asking for.
11 That’s why I like the best PM question, although that only seems to be asked intermittently by the pollsters, now that Yougov have ended their monthly series for the Telegraph.
Cameron’s lead on that question is still substantial, although down from 6 months ago.
10 - and over the weekend we heard the news that Darling had not seen off Brown and the spendfest may continue.
LOL Hattie discussing women’s day.
Having sorted a seat for her hubby, she’ll probably be imposing a few more AWS
Gotta love a hypocrite.
15 - I agree with that - I would say that most of the Labour/LD vote is anti-Tory rather than pro either of those parties and that this is why the Labour vote is so often over-represented in polls and the LD one under-represented: when a lot of people tell pollsters they are Labour what they actually mean is not Tory, so that when it comes to the election and they feel the LDs are best placed to win they vote LD instead. I’ll do that I think. Which means -interestingly enough - both SeanT and I could be voting for the same party this year
What interests me, though, is that 25% of that ICM poll sample won’t say how they are going to vote at this stage. If that is an accurate reflection of how the electorate is feeling then everything is to play for. I am surprised that more is not being made of this as it looks like a very big elephant in the room to me. Though it could just be that I am missing a nuance of the way polls are done which makes that 25% irrelevant.
17 - And so will Labour. The two parties are basically in agreement on this, but have to draw what are pretty artificial lines in order to make themselves seem different.
Harman ramping her inequality bill on Sky.
Now moves swiftly onto bash the rich, forgetting the increase in NI.
Still, this performance only mediocre which is a huge imrovement on her last 2 public outings.
Anyone remember “education, education, education”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/7392103/Children-being-taught-in-classes-of-40.html
“At least 210 state school teachers were regularly leading lessons of at least 41 children last year, it was disclosed.
In addition, around one-in-eight children in England are in classes of more than 30, despite fears pupils struggle for attention in huge lessons.”
Only 1 in 8?
This gap between Cameron and Brown has been falling at a dizzy rate since last summer when it was around 60 points.
Remember Brown does not have to lead on this, if the gap closes to around 15 that is perfectly manageable.
Mike,
ARPO did some polling ont this published last week which showed the level of Brown and Darlings negatives improving by 8% in one month which is a figure much larger than the trend over the last nine months.
OT. OSCARS. 13 winners out of 18. I have to admit to being mighty relieved as I found this year to be much more difficult than last with only 3 nailed on winners.
Maybe my best tip was advising listening to ‘EdP’ who suggested two that I got wrong.
21 - Not really the elephant in the room. They are in the main probably part of the 30-40% of the electorate who won’t vote.
26 - Good effort. My losses on Avatar were made up by your other wins
25 But then, Cameron doesn’t need a lead of 60%, either.
@26 Well done Roger, a good result.
Somewhat pleased that Avatar didn’t win in some ways. Although I’m a fan of Sci-Fi, I never even felt a desire to really see it.
Mike Smithson wonders if the question on Brown being re-elected might have been skewed by the preceding words: ‘David Cameron spoke recently of “the incredible dark depression of another five years of Gordon Brown”‘…
Er, yes, I think you can safely call that a leading question.
I guarantee that I could find 80% support for Labour and Gordon Brown right now using the same samples with judiciously, and indeed juicily, phrased questions. Really, some of these polls and poll questions are arrant nonsense.
5. Curious “I wonder how long it will be before the Conservative realise that making Cameron their leader is going to prove to be a loser for them.”
7. Mike Smithson “Probably towards the end of his third term.”
Too true. If only the Conservatives had this “loser” at thetop back in 2004..
Thatcher won in 1979 whilst being well behind Callaghan. Cameron is doing better than Thatcher and Brown is far worse than Calaghan.
31, Slack, I fell asleep two thirds of the way through. Good effects, predictable story.
7. Mike Smithson
“7.re 5. “I wonder how long it will be before the Conservative realise that making Cameron their leader is going to prove to be a loser for them.”
Probably towards the end of his third term”
I am not one for complimenting on the quality of quotes Mike, but yours is a stunner, one to write home about.
On the Ashcroft factor. Many of the Tory posters on here have misunderstood it’s impact.
Instead of the detail of what happened ten years ago, what is important is the number of people believing it shows Cameron as weak and lacking judgement.
32 It’s a question that Yougov often ask. It would be useful though if it were asked of both party leaders/parties at the same time.
To be honest, I find it hard to see anyone winning if more than 50% of people would be “dismayed” by their victory.
20 David Roe “LOL Hattie discussing women’s day.”
Is that “Do as my husband says, not as I do”?
Or “One rule for the higher born and another rule for the working class women?
He doesn’t but it’s unlikely he’ll win a majority if the decline in the net ratings gap continues at this rate.
37 - Well there’s you, Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson.
Not really a cross-section of society.
“what is important is the number of people believing it shows Cameron as weak and lacking judgement.”
Yeah, I know him. He’s called tim.
37: But it only impacts on people which already have that opinion of Cameron..the more fuss the Guardian make of it (and their front page today is particularly weak, seemingly consisting of propaganda from Mandleson), the more it blunts the impact and people will just do…’oh I really don’t care anymore’.
It’s like the attack on Boris prior to the London Election, at a point people just turn off from it.
More to the point tim, is anyone suprised there is some negative things about politicans. No one goes through life without some bad points as well as positive.
Probably the only politicans which have a free pass to power have been Blair and Obama. It’s naive to think that the media view on Cameron was not going to be negative from the likes of the Guardian and the Mirro.
33 I never see the point of questions like “who would you rather have round to lunch?” I wouldn’t want any of them.
Is there a Populus due in the Times, last one was Feb 8th? I’m sure Mike mentioned it the other day.
OGH “Cameron, perhaps because of Ashcroft, has taken the biggest hit ”
No, no no!
FPT - l’affaire Ashcroft is all Tony Blair’s fault - nothing to do with William Hague or David Cameron.
You haven’t been paying attention!
I do hope the voters have…..
I’d quite like to have Nick and Miriam round for lunch, partularly if Nick got called away by an important text after the starter.
I have a feeling that if DC accepted an invitation to go round for lunch from someone on this site, that person would suddenly become a staunch Tory.
27, well done, Roger. Alas, because many odds were tight I only followed your Mulligan suggestion (you did state that Bullock was favourite but Mulligan’s odds were over-long) and Mr. Magnon’s Inglorious Basterds[sp]. Ah well.
Full market not yet up for Bahrain, but seen one which may develop into a betting opportunity.
Tim its after 8am and you havent mentioned your little willy yet.
Has anybody counted how many winners Roger predicted?
I don’t like the leader questions. They’re not a fair comparison - being Prime Minister is a considerably different job from being leader of the Conservative Party.
Do I think David Cameron is doing well as leader of the Conservative Party? Yes. Do I think he’d do well as Prime Minister? No.
Do I think Gordon Brown is doing well as Prime Minister? Yes. Do I think he’s doing well as leader of the Labour Party? No.
Let’s look a little deeper at the question being asked here. It actually reads as:
1. Is Brown doing well / badly as Prime Minister?
2. Is Cameron / Clegg doing well as, erm, Party Leader?
There is a msssive difference in the perception of the question being asked here. The fact that Cameron slips to just +4 net rating in what is easily the doss-ier of the two jobs, is disastrous for him and the Tories.
And the fact that Cam has got mired in his - much larger - “Bernie Ecclestone” type affair with this Ashcroft business (copyright Andrew Rawnsley) months before he even makes it PM is a calamity!
49: The 7/2 on Redbull to win doesn’t look bad.
@51 Mike , yes Roger did at post 27.
48 fr, I wonder if NPMP will be prepared to test that theory for you?
53 That’s why you need to look at the “Best PM” question, in which your man trails Cameron badly.
Richard - Free Willie!
Interesting the effect of the Ashcroft affair….it’s certainly being noticed by my Guardianista friends. The resentment seems directed at Ashcroft himself and seems to have little to do with who said what to whom.
That someone should want to affect the politics in this country by his position in the Conservative party and his seat in the lords yet shouldn’t want to pay tax here hits all the wrong buttons.
54, jein. I think it’s too early to say. We have no practice times (and they’ll be of limited use as some will be with damned heavy fuel loads) so we don’t know how fast the cars will be at the circuit.
We also need to wait and see if the Mercedes diffuser makes a difference. If it works well from the moment it’s attached it could be a real boost. If it doesn’t, it may even make the car slower.
Ferrari and McLaren are also competitive. So with 3-4 big teams who should be in with a shot, I think 7/2 is a little tight [so early on, if the Red Bull is shit hot in practice, obviously I'll change my mind].
59 - Roger, so they they will continue to vote Labour, no change there then. BTW did they show the same indignation for Labour non-doms or did they regard that as a private matter same as Harriet?
telegraph
Army faces Afghan gag for election
The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign.
WT….
Roger
That someone should want to affect the politics in this country by his position on the Privy Council and his seat in the lords yet shouldn’t want to pay tax here also hits all the wrong buttons.
@62 trisha, same story in the Mail
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256096/MoD-accused-burying-bad-news-banning-media-Afghan-election-campaign.html
44 Sean Fear said, 33 I never see the point of questions like “who would you rather have round to lunch?” I wouldn’t want any of them.
Perhaps it should be asked as “Who would you rather invite you to lunch”? - In which case my answer would change, to Brown and sit anywhere but where he had planned, just to see the loon lose it ala the Watt book statement…
61. kristin. I’m sure labour have as many non doms as the Conservatives and I’m sure there are many more dangerous 27 year olds than Jon Venables but no one’s talking about them at the moment.
44. I never see the point of questions like “who would you rather have round to lunch?” I wouldn’t want any of them.
Quite so. Given an open choice question, I might well nominate Stephen Fry as someone I’d most want to have round for lunch but it doesn’t mean I’d want to make him PM.
64, just checked the BBC politics page. Number 1 story is the CBI, number 2 is the strike, 3 is: “MoD denies Afghan vehicles claim”, no mention of a gagging order.
Roger
I take it your guardianista friends feel equally agrieved by all the Labour donors who have influenced government policy?
What we need is a cap on donations which at least is what the Conservatives are proposing but which Labour oppose.
@68 MD - it comes into effect once an election has been called.
ARRSE unimpressed with Brown’s plans:
http://www.arrse.co.uk/Forums/viewtopic/t=145470.html
66 - funny that, because it has been widely reported in recent days that Labour non-doms have given more to the Labour party than the Conservatives have received. Lord Paul, also has dodgy expense claims.
Five deaths in Afghanistan already in March.
Absolutely shameful that the political establishment still support this but are still planning on cutting the defence budget.
We need to fight to win or to get out now, instead we’re fighting to lose.
69 I think that left-wing parties are prone to the belief that if one’s motives are pure, then types of behaviour that are reprehensible in others, are acceptable in oneself.
72. I think if you were to count column inches it’s probably running 10/1 Ashcroft against all other donors to all other parties. Ask anyone in the street and they’ll have heard of Ashcroft. Lord Paul? Jeans shop on Carnaby Street?
75, 50 articles in the Guardian in a single week will no doubt help towards that total. Still it won’t change any votes.
O/T http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/yasmin-alibhai-brown/yasmin-alibhaibrown-british-muslims-are-running-out-of-friends-1917816.html
What a bizarre article. I can think of few countries where the civil rights of Muslims are more secure than they are in the UK.
On topic. Rather than the balance, isn’t the key figure that of those saying the respective leader is doing “well”?
It doesn’t hugely matter if (for example) Roger’s Guardianista friends are ambivalent towards Cameron or hate his guts - they’re still not going to vote Tory. The ‘doing well’ score puts a fairly loose upper limit on the pool in which the leaders are fishing for votes for their parties. On that score, Brown’s 36% is a much bigger problem than Cameron’s 48%.
There will be some cross-voting - people who vote Tory despite Cameron and Labour despite Brown - but these people are flaky and prone to abstaining or protest voting for a minor party (counting the Lib Dems as minor in this context). Their impact will also be mitigated by their opposite numbers: people who *don’t* vote for a party despite liking that party’s leader.
With only a 36% share for “doing well”, Brown can afford a much smaller net leakage than Cameron. How much the rest dislike the one or the other becomes a much lesser issue.
The big variable on this score is still to come and is the debates, especially the first one. I expect a huge viewing figure for that - in excess of 15 million. It will help to make up the minds of many people who are not that political, don’t watch PMQs, QT or other such shows and pay little attention to political coverage in general. They’ll watch in the hope of it meaning they can then ignore the rest of the campaign.
For that reason, I wouldn’t put too much store on the current figures.
Sean Fear
What are your opinions on the theory which SeanT and myself thought of last week, separately but simultaneously, that Cameron being a Conservative is just an accident of birth ie he wanted to be a politician and he’s posh so he became a Conservative and if he’s been just a bit less posh or a bit more urban he would have been nuLabour like Blair or Purnell.
Do you think that Cameron has any deeply thought Conservative beliefs or deep rooted opposition to Labour?
77, bizarre comentator, Mr. Fear.
76. I agree it probably wont change many votes. As I said originally this hits Ashcroft personally. Anyone with half a brain knows that if political parties banned every dodgy donor they’d go bust. .
Kristin
Bizarrely I think it will harden Conservative support as all tribal conflicts tend to do so while also leading Conservative supporters to be increasingly annoyed by the incompetance of the party leadership.
If Cameron does become PM he will be doing so with very little goodwill left in the tank.
It is not ‘5 years of Brown’. It would be 25 years of Brown, as he has already set in motion a change the electoral system.
81. Not if they cut their spending accordingly. Becoming less reliant on a few big donors might encourage them to go out and recruit new members and supporters and raise money that way, something the web makes much easier, as Obama proved.
Nick Clegg will amplify the negative Conservative campaigning later today.
Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is due to accuse David Cameron of resorting to “a crude form of blackmail” in stoking up fear of “economic meltdown” if the Conservatives fail to win the upcoming general election outright.
Mr Clegg will compare the threat to a “protection racket” and accuse David Cameron of trying to win the election by fear.
As the value of the pound fell last week, Tories blamed market concerns about the possibility of a hung Parliament and uncertainty about the direction of Britain’s economy. Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke warned voters not to “elect themselves into a financial crisis”.
Mr Clarke warned that a fourth Labour term would leave Britain “at the mercy of the bond markets and international finance”, causing interest rates to soar and the pound to be “sent on a downward spiral”.
Speaking to Liberal Democrat workers today, Mr Clegg will say: “The Conservatives are so desperate that they have resorted to a crude form of blackmail.
“David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the Government’s ability to borrow.
“It’s like a protection racket: vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”
And he will say that scaremongering about the economy is part of a wider Conservative strategy of negative campaigning.
“There is nothing positive in the Conservatives’ election strategy,” Mr Clegg will say. “It’s built entirely on the hatred of Gordon Brown, stoking up fears of a broken society and now threatening economic meltdown.
“It’s a strategy that is completely negative and without hope, and it’s becoming increasingly obvious that people aren’t going to fall for it.”
77. A most bizarre article made almost unreadable by the hysterical style.
85, Clegg’s blaming the Tories for economic weakness?
What a frequent twitterer. He couldn’t be much more blatant if he had “Gordo is my sugar daddy” tattooed on his forehead.
10
On the otherhand.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-economist-criticises-partys-plan-for-cuts-1917785.html
I do hope we won’t have a procession of Tory posters complaining about the Dispatches programme, well not the same ones who cheered Rawnsley’s book on BullyBrown anyway.
Leaders’ ratings, how important are they? IIRC Wilson’s were higher than Heath’s, In ‘79 Callaghan’s higher than Thatcher, didn’t seem to help that much.
@82 - yes harden but not change, you are more than likely right there. Apart from the loopy right wingers the majority of Conservatives have waited a long time to see another Conservative government and I firmly believe they will turn out and vote even if they don’t get all they would wish for.
If Cameron becomes PM he will have a huge amount of goodwill in the tank.
Clegg about to send hundreds more votes back to the Conservatives.
Labour candidates rejoice in Chesterfield, Burnley, Newcastle N, Islington S etc.
By the way, when the election is happening (I mean literally the hours immediately after polling on the day itself) how will pb2 be used? Could be handy to have it highlight certain areas (Buckingham, for example, or a running tally of the swing in key areas such as Wales and the Midlands).
fr
No he wont and that is the big mistake the Cameron fan club are making.
People want rid of Brown but there’s very little enthusiasm for Cameron.
93, little enthusiasm for Thatcher, wasn’t there?
93, Total tosh.
All this Tory currency hysteria lasted 24 hours.
If Osborne intends to look like SeanT then so be it.
Labour’s scramble to launch £11bn spree
Labour was accused yesterday of rushing through huge contracts before the election to safeguard party’s ‘pet projects’.
Labour was accused yesterday of rushing through £11bn of spending before the general election in a “scorched earth” policy to prevent its pet projects being scrapped by an incoming Conservative government.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labours-scramble-to-launch-16311bn-spree-1917781.html
That and enshrining all their policies in law.. admitting defeat ?
Sky playing some of Straw’s interview on Today programme, is he rowing back on Venables ? And why?
There’s was great support for Thatcher together with great hatred.
But the Cameron fan club will continue to live in their dreamworld.
Exposure = disappointment.
Look at Obama’s numbers.
Cameron was at his peak last summer - but been around too long for voters now. Perhaps Labour should wait a year so that the new leader isn’t on the turn for the 2015 GE.
Thanks to Philipe for his “Hurt Locker” best film tips - very rewarding
tim - if you think currency concerns are limited to seanT then I think you should watch Bloomberg for 10 mins.
Thanks to Philipe for his “Hurt Locker” best film tips - very rewarding
tim - if you think currency concerns are limited to seanT then I think you should watch Bloomberg for 10 mins.
Apologies if already posted - how the other half live..
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1256036/How-Sarah-Brown-charmed-Labour-Ashcroft.html
“Now the secret role played by Sarah Brown in wooing Lord Paul in the months before her husband became Prime Minister can be revealed for the first time.
Carole and David Barkes, who were employed as butler and housekeeper by the Indian-born magnate at his 250-acre country estate, have described how Mrs Brown would pay frequent visits, bearing flowers and even taking a dip with her two sons in his pool.”
Momentun, Media, Events and Fear
Momentum:
It was always going to be difficult for DC to keep up the momentum for a period of three years. However, once momentum has been lost, then it requires a supreme effort to regain it. Perhaps if DC can seize the momentum now, some two months before the GE, then that will be about as long as possible it can be maintained.
Media:
There is no doubt that PM and AC have been exercising their dark arts on the media - visual, oral amd written - they know where the bodies are buried. DC’s team needs a supreme effort to make their stories stick - these have to be a mixture of Labour’s errors and their financial cost and also positive stories for the future.
Events:
It is nigh impossible for the opposition to influence events - as long as they do not make events that can rebound on them. It seems apparent that DC’s team do not spend enough time being the devil’s advocate, or mentally sitting in the chairs of PM, AC and GB.
The government naturally gets the headlines as they have to react to events even if they did not create them. Even an average response to current events will help to nullify Labour’s own goals.
Fear:
After some two years of recession, most of the private sector is ruuning along the economic bottom but not getting much worse. As there has been little public sector blood on the carpet, then peoples’ economic circumstances have stabilised and they are finding that they can live with the present economic climate. Thus GB may get some kudos for this stability.
Very few people can visualise what the effect of higher taxes, interest rates at 5%+ and a worsening exchange rate would be on their personal budget.
When an election is 2-3 years away, expressing one’s anger at HMG does not cost anything, even for its advocates. However, Labour has built up a clientelle which is beholden to the status quo remeining after the GE - this being the enlarged public sector, members of quangos and those on incapacity benefit. The newly unemployed (school-leavers and graduates) do not have that same loyalty.
Thus, as the election beomes more imminent, Labour’s clientelle (including the Mirror and Guardian) will seeks the comfort of nurse in the (false) belief that all the threats will go away. Thus only if nurse has to administer the nasty tasting medecine will they rebel. Thus no budget, or budget cuts put off for the next three years, will allow their dream (and false sense of security to continue).
Today, public sector workers are striking because redundancy terms are being reduced to a maximum of two year’s salary for those earning more than £30k. Two year’s salary - what dreamworld are they living in? This reveals their fear of being awoken from their dreamworld of unreality.
Cutting article by Bruce Anderson..
Bruce Anderson: Nothing incriminates Mr Brown like his contempt for the Army.
As a result of his malfeasance, men have died who ought to have lived.
War means heart-rending sacrifices. It is the duty of prime ministers to minimise those sacrifices: few duties more solemn. This one has treated that duty with contempt. “You’ve ruined my life” he once yelled at Tony Blair. What nonsense, what pathetic nonsense. But lives have been lost, because Mr Brown would not do his duty and Tony Blair would not make him.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/bruce-anderson/bruce-anderson-nothing-incriminates-mr-brown-like-his-contempt-for-the-army-1917815.html
88.
I do hope we won’t have a procession of Tory posters complaining about the Dispatches programme
You know as well as I that there will be a cacophony of Tory whinging about bias and a relentless wallowing in persecuted rightwing victimhood.
96. Talking of which has ‘Weathercock’ been seen since his ‘tip’ of three weeks ago that he’d ‘heard’ the FT was going to crash that week?
Is it coincidence that it’s risen 5% since to it’s highest level for 18 months?
GE COUNTDOWN
April 8th 31 days
May 6th 59 days
June 3rd 87 days
IIRC an April 8th GE must be called by the end of the week. Tonight’s Populus poll could be crucial, if it is in line with ICM then an April poll is probably out, if it’s in line with Yougov then Labour should go for it as it may be their last best chance. If Brown isn’t going to the palace then they have to announce a budget date this week.
In short, they’re running out of road!
Essential blog post for tim and Clegg.
http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/2010/03/great-lie.html
“Apparently, countries like the UK are ‘lucky’ that they have the freedom to devalue their currencies. I would suggest that the politicians are lucky that they have the freedom to devalue, as it is a method of cutting wages and paying for their past profligacy without actually having to admit that the fault is theirs. They do not have to face their people and tell them the truth, which is the (partly) case in the Euro countries.
I say ‘partly’, as even when confronted with reality, they instead blame ’speculators’ and the evil money men in the markets. ‘Yes’, there are some who profit from the plight of countries like Greece, but that is not to say that the problem is their fault. It is only because the politicians spent like drunks that the speculators are in a position to profit. These ‘evil’ investors need the foolishness of governments, or their speculation will come to nothing. “
106 - does it clash with the panorama programme tonight ?
A Panorama investigation finds that 60% of hospitals inspected gave inaccurate information to the government in assessing their own performance.
Panorama: Trust Us, We’re an NHS Hospital, BBC One, Monday, 8 March at 2030GMT.
105
Ah! Bruce Anderson, how I still treasure his statement on TV 48 hours before the polls opened in ‘97, ‘Why is it that apart from John Major I’m the only person who thinks the Tories will win this election, not by much, but they will win it.’ Pissed again Bruce?
And now something for our readers who live North of the Border.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/7396040/David-Cameron-will-have-to-finally-address-English-resentment-over-devolution.html
Team Cameron just don’t get the point! No opposition party has ever won an election with a campaign solely based on the unpopularity of the leader of the government. Alongside the very helpful odium felt for the incumbent they really need a “vision” of what the country will be like with them in power. Compare the “vision” of both the Thatcher and Blair campaigns to Kinnock’s anti-Tory campaign. Even Hitler, after the disaster of the Weimar Republic needed a strong image of a “bright” Nazi future (on top of intimidation, etc) in order to be credible. Without that “vision” the opposition challengers risk losing out to a tendency to votes based on “better the devil you know”
On the bright side (for Tory aficionados) the left has an irresistible tendency to shoot itself in the foot just when they appear to be ahead or gaining ground. This morning’s news is full of details of how the Government are attacking the only group with a vested interest in keeping Labour in power - public servants! Whether this will lead to this category risking a vote for the opposition remains to be seen. However, a change in the rules allowing any future government to make civil servants redundant on the cheap could be quite an incentive.
79. Another richard - I think that theory is way off the mark.
I welcome the Dispatches programme in the long run it will show Budd was an short termist pl0nker - like the chumps that have been running Greece and the Uk into penury.
Ipsos MORI - Scottish Public Opinion Monitor February 2010
Leader Satisfied Dissatisfied D/K Net (+/- change from Nov 2009)
Gordon Brown 47% 43% 10% NET=+4 (+12)
Alex Salmond 46% 45% 9% NET=+1 (-3)
David Cameron 39% 44% 18% NET=-5 (+6)
Nick Clegg 38% 27% 35% NET=N/A (N/A)
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/Assets/Docs/Scotland/scotland-public-attitudes-monitor-february-2010-topline.pdf
I find it rather astounding that 18% of respondents do not have an opinion yet about David Cameron, this close to Polling Day. It just shows that an awful lot of people pay zero attention to politics.
And 35% don’t have a clue who Nick Clegg is! Mind you, Clifton Terrace probably ought to be pretty thankful about that.
I don’t think some of the posters around here are getting the significance of the Ashcroft story.
Like the Marriage Tax allowance one it is about trust.
Cameron created doubts about why people should trust him when he looked cornered and defensive about his marriage tax allowance plans. It looked like he was doing a u-turn on an earlier pledge.
It wasn’t about marriage as some people around here were saying but trust. Hence why Labour kept going at the Tories about it because they were all over the place on the policy and it would make those married people who were attracted to the Tories over it loe trust in them.
Likewise Ashcroft. The issue isn’t non-dom donor but about donors who kept their non-dom status hidden for 10 years. Again a matter of trust and openness.
What’s hurting Cameron is the trust factor. Can he be trusted to keep his word? Can his party be trusted to be honest about donors and big money?
114. I weep for my nation of birth that they give Brown a positive rating and up 12% !? Salmonds rating seems to be going down under faster than Steven Purcell
I see the monomaniacs are still about this morning following the lead of the Hypocrisy Daily, previously known as the Guardian.
Pay tax on your capital gain Mr Rusbridger?
Certainly not, but we will make up stories about how much others should.
Budd on one side….
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/2010/03/the-cbi-and-iod-back-the-conservatives-on-early-spending-cuts.html
118
‘yer a bit on the slow side this am ‘arry see 10.
Morning all and as I am off on business for the week some of you will be glad that any postings I do will be few and far between until the weekend.
On thread, it is not perhaps surprising given the media narrative over most of the past fortnight has been relentless nasty Tories, Dave is weak for not sacking Ashcroft etc. However Ashcroft is now chip paper news and unless there is some great revelation which can come out, both Labour and the LibDems have played this particular joker to little effect it seems.
Arguably although Nick Clegg has the most to gain now with increased publicity he also has much to lose. He comes across as a “Cameron lite” to many people. Indeed that is probably part of his appeal. The “I’m nice and friendly but not as nasty as him” approach. We will have to start hearing about the Mansion Tax and Vince Cable’s other neo-Old Labour policies harking back to his Glasgow Corporation days.
Poor Gordon Brown frankly has only a losing game ahead unless David Cameron literally does eat babies on screen and Gordon can turn sh1te into gold.
I would expect both Cameron and Clegg’s approval ratings to go up and down over the next 9 weeks but both ending a little better than now. For Gordon Brown I cannot see anything other than a further fall, especially if later this month and next month we see further bad numbers on the economy.
Today’s intervention by the CBI will not be welcomed in Downing Street. Basically now the main business organisations, the ones whose members create the wealth the government spends are supporting the Tory line of cuts and only a bunch of leftie academic economists and the trade Unions are supporting the Labour and neo-Old Labour Cable argument of keep spending until some miracle happens and we turn the corner, if the world hasn’t turned its back on UKplc first.
118.
The CBI and the IOD support the Tories’ plans on spending cuts?!!
LOL!!
Given their prescience on economic policy these last thirty years, anyone wishing to be successful in that sphere ought to do the exact opposite of what these two groups say.
So, finance ministers the world over, you’ve now heard the pontifications of the CBI and the IOD!
That means spend! spend! spend!
121. Am now convinced you are a 100% spoof Ben.
120 I do love the way you create all of these scenarios, which invariably end up in the Tories favour: Ah! if only life were like that.
Any response to the link on 111?
Most of the negative polling for the Tories seems to originate from YouGov. Could it be that their sampling assumptions really are at fault and that they are heading for major embarrassment when the real poll is held?
108
Is there any particular reason for Labour to announce a budget this week?
I know that it would be the responsible thing to do but this Labour government and responsibility are hardly on speaking terms.
I would expect Brown to break with convention if it is to his advantage
122 i think Ben is playing truant.
123. It looks like re 114 that half of Scotland will be voting X-factor style for the fat lad from Kirkaldy on PM eviction night on May 6th “he may be a numpty but at least he’s no English”.
There is a massive split at the heart of this Govt.
It is the Budget.
That has yet to play out in front of the voters.
124: If they don’t annouce it this week, they’re leaving a very short periof until the last reasonable date it can be (24th MArch)
85. Clegg has really lost the plot. That speech reads like one of the Dave Spart columns - what a clown.
Nick Clegg is simply pointing out that basing a campaign on fear, which is what the Conservatives are doing, is not the sort of politics which this country needs. If the Conservatives really think that that what we need is nasty accusations and counter accusations then they haven’t been listening to the people, only to Carol Vorderman.
121. Interesting point. Can you give us a couple of examples?
131. Imagine a doctor tells you you need to stop smoking or you will die - is he not nusing “fear” is that “not the sort of healthcare this country needs” ?
Just asking - see Greece for example of 40 a day man who repeatedly didn’t have a doctor who used “fear”.
85 - I cannot possibly vote Lib Dem if they are going to pander to such cheap anti-capitalism. You can take me out of the probable Lib Dem category and into the undecideds again.
134: Clegg is an economic numpty. No suprise there.
Epic fail in grasping the point that its because of the actions of Labour overspending that we are in this mess.
telegraph
MoD websites will also be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war, according to a memo leaked to The Daily Telegraph
InVinoVeritas - Arrse wrote
Pity we couldnt cleanse the labour party manifesto of any non factual statements… would fit on a postage stamp.
hear hear, and it made me laugh
Yougove tables are up for Sunday’s poll
http://www.yougov.co.uk/extranets/ygarchives/content/pdf/ST-results_05-March2010.pdf
134. Clegg appears to have joined the Labour campaign several weeks ago.
I think just showing the net change in the table, without the net approval, is a little confusing.
On a barely-related note, I’ve always wondered quite what people have in mind when they answer this question: after all, the job of PM is different from that of the leader of the Opposition, and different again from the leader of a third party. On the other hand, I think it proves a better predictor than that might suggest, simply because people don’t necessarily give it that sustained level of thought when responding!
117 - Its all been cleared up.
Lord Ashcroft is Tony Blair’s fault, so that makes Lord Paul, John Major’s…..simple, really….now what happened to that Conservative Education message….I’m sure I saw it somewhere….
137: Yet another big change in the weighting increasing labour and decreasing tories..
Where are all those shy labourites?
137. Plenty of meat for the “weighting conspiracy theorists”
137. Conservatives 15% ahead in London !!
The spin watcher @124: “Most of the negative polling for the Tories seems to originate from YouGov.”
True to the extent that most of the polling in the last month has been by YouGov. But MORI and ComRes both got 5% leads, which is in line with what YouGov are getting. If YouGov are doing something wrong, so are MORI and ComRes.
More Stasi-like tactics from the Great Leader:
Army faces Afghan gag for election
The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/7393809/Army-faces-Afghan-gag-for-election.html
wow interesting figure about the BBC there:
Less cuts 18%
Cuts right 32%
More cuts 44%
What was it about about everybody loving the BBC?
Labour the nasty party make preparations to bury bad news in case it affects them getting elected.
Army faces Afghan gag for election
The Ministry of Defence has been accused of ordering a “truth blackout” over the war in Afghanistan amid warnings it is attempting to “bury bad news” during the election campaign.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/7393809/Army-faces-Afghan-gag-for-election.html
138, now now. I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why Clegg wears a silver anklet with “Property of Gordon” engraved on it.
137, unweighted, Labour Loyal are 327, Tories 440. Weighted they’re almost exactly equal, 405/406. There’s a shock.
Its perfectly reasonable for the Tories to spell out in terms normal people can understand, what they believe the effect of a hung parliament would be.
Interesting Editorial in today’s Grauniad:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/08/gordon-brown-david-cameron-questions-leadership
I wander if lack of publicity actually works in Nick Clegg’s favor how can someone not like someone they know little about. If you also try and look at how each leader votes.Nick Clegg is the only one who will not allow you to see.
re The OS yes Friday is dissolution day for 8th April, and if that doesn’t happen it’s obviously 6th May or June so Brown might as well announce now.
Nick P - if you’re in - wilk we be getting the budget on Wednesday, or is that a state secret?
151. Yes - the more invisible Clegg is the better for the Lib Dems, who can then concentrate on strong defensive local campaigns.
Getting stamped with the Clegg brand is the last thing they want, now he has morphed into a moronic Labour cheerleader/student politico.
149 Of course the Tories fear a hung parliament, but it is not the country’s interests that concerns them.
OK, I was totally and utterly and comprehensively WRONG about Avatar winning Best Film; I genuflect to wiser minds who got it right, or right-er: like Philipe Magnan.
I hope I am just as wrong in my prediction of Labour Most Seats.
Fingers x’d.
Ahh but yougov is run by the hubby of Baroness Aston but make of that what you will?
She lives in St Albans with her husband, Peter Kellner, (whom she married in 1988 in Westminster, London), the President of online polling organisation, YouGov.[33]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_Ashton
Morning all
I think the most interesting political development of the last couple of weeks is the very marked change in the tone and content of what the LibDems say. Prior to that, they were joining enthusiastically in Labour’s puerile attacks on the Tories, but not actively supporting Labour. That has changed recently. Some examples:
- Clegg praising Brown’s visit to Afghanistan
- Clegg’s speech quoted above at 85
- U-turn on tax credits (I know, I know, LibDem U-turns are hardly news, but even so..) Mr Clegg said. “There are some benefits – and child benefit is one of them – I think it is quite important that everyone feels they have a stake in.”
- Letting it be known that they might back Labour in a hung parliament after all, and possibly even enter a formal coalition But in an apparent change of tack, Vince Cable, the deputy leader, said that he would even be willing to serve as a cabinet minister in an alliance government.
Now, far be it for me to attribute cynical motives to the LibDems, but it is rather noticeable that this change in their principles coincides with better polling figures for Labour.
But is it good politics?
I think not. They are getting on the wrong side of the ‘time for change’ argument, siding with ‘more of the same’. They would have been much better advised to go for a strategy of ‘change is needed, and we will help ensure it happens whilst pushing for fairness in the implementation of that change’. That way, they could have attracted waverers and doubters from both sides.
My view is that Cameron is going to win this argument on change, but even if he doesn’t, the beneficiaries will be Labour. The LibDems will be side-lined, and it is their own fault.
151. “If you also try and look at how each leader votes. Nick Clegg is the only one who will not allow you to see.”
Paul B - what do you mean?
154: According to YouGov 55% of people are worried about the finanical implications of a Hung Parliment…
154. They genuinely fear an economic melt-down if theres a HP with Labour left running the show. As a leftie you should to. It could put your party out of power for a generation, maybe even for ever.
It’s absolutely clear the loony tune Blue team on PB are in awe of Clegg - difficult to explain why they are devoting so much time to him !!
Remember too the Tory slogan for the election :
Vote Blue Get Osborne !! Yahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
157. Yes Richard, quite right - the Lib Dems are now clearly campaigning on what is effectively a joint ticket with Labour.
This was always on the cards of course, given that the two parties are essentially part of the same cultural movement - but I am surprised at how open they are being about it.
157 Richard Nabavi
So far as I can see, the best long-term hopes for the LDs are
a) to be the official opposition in an English Parliament
b) to be the offical opposition in the British Parliament (if the EU lets us have one) for Cameron’s second term (while labour continue to meltdown).
If that is where they are headed and can survive the immediate consequences of siding with Labour, then it is their best strategy. The immediate price may be too high, of course.
157. Richard - that’s a very selective reading of recent Lib Dem campaigning:
- Clegg has attacked Labour strongly over the past couple of weeks (including at the last PMQs and in an Independent op-ed the following day) for failing to tackle inequality in Britain.
- On Friday and Saturday Clegg strongly attacked Brown’s appearance at Chilcot and suggested that the evidence presented at the inquiry suggested the Iraq war was indeed illegal.
- Oborne’s (completely unsubstantiated) story about Lib-Lab talks was followed by a Sunday Times story claiming that Clegg had privately declared himself totally unwilling to work with Gordon Brown after the latter’s conduct over attempts to reform expenses.
I understand that Tories want to seize on any evidence they can find to blacken the Lib Dems with the misdeeds of this incompetent government, and to persuade Lib Dems to turn all their fire on Labour. But please, make an effort to be objective.
By the way, I think you’re wrong on tax credits. Child benefit and tax credits are two separate types of benefit; the Lib Dem policy is to retain universal child benefit but withdraw tax credits from higher earners. If the Tories want to cut child benefit then I’d like to hear them come out and say so!
I’m sorry but the Lib Dems will only matter to Labour insofar as the damage they can do to the Conservatives.
I expect Brown to go long. He has not fought to hang on the doorknob of No.10 only to be bounced out by Cleggy; a hung Parliament is no good to him (I tried to think of a mechanism whereby Brown would stay on at No.10 with a Lib/Dem/Lab government behind him. Most methods would involve a split in Lib/Dem ranks or defenestration of Clegg - there is more than likely to be other ways, but they seem to be unknowable at this time and that means they cannot be factored into Brown’s thinking).
Waiting for as long as possible - even into June - means that Labour are connected to the public purse for the maximum length of time - or more properly are thrown onto their own limited resources for as short a period as possible. They can carry out an undeclared campaign from their positions of power - and use a biased broadcast media to do so.
Is it possible to declare that they will do a two-part budget?
Plead special circumstances saying that ‘the economy is at a cusp and its real position is not yet clear’. Introduce minor measures - ‘cuts with a caring face’ - that are ‘prudent and in the long-term interest, but will not place the fragile recovery at risk’.
Then say as the state of the economy becomes apparent, there will be extra measures introduced in a follow-up budget.
Conservative Loony Tunes Mad March Hares In Full Luv In With Clegg !!
POTY Robert Nabbers Close To Loony Tune Status Shock !!
164. But ruling out working with Brown is not the same thing as ruling out working with Labour - that’s a pure smokescreen.
As for the other stuff - inequality, Iraq (zzz) so what? You could hear similar criticisms from within Labour’s own ranks every day.
Which is the point of course - Clegg is suggesting a Lib/Lab pact could be a ‘change-lite’ government that would appeal to muesli eaters.
128 We have three chancellors with strong opinions: Brown, Balls and Darling. The last time we had a similar triumvirate in the late 1980s - Thatcher, Lawson and Professor Walters - there were fireworks.
164 Jack - The message I’m getting is that the LibDems are anti-Brown, pro-Labour. But it’s Brown who is on offer to the public if you vote Labour. Voting Labour or LibDem on the off-chance that the Labour plotters will finally find their cullions is too high-risk to encourage any sane person to put their X anywhere than in the Conservative box, if they want to be rid of this government.
164 Jack P. Don’t spoil the PB Mad March Tory narrative with some facts !!
Bloody hell …. you’ll be telling us next that the Lib Dems are constitutionally not allowed to critisize the Tories !!
Heck there can’t be an election looming, can there ??
157 Clegg has been pretty effective and has forced more concessions from the govt than the Tories. You should not be so dismissive.
Your utter loathing of Brown and Labour is getting in the way of your electability. The tone struck by Clegg is much more attractive than the total war offered by the Tories. Cameron once knew this, but has lost it of late. Clegg appears much more reasoned and positive than the same old Tories.
168 Fernando.
Four chancellors; the lord Peter of everywhere will not be without opinions.
So now its obvious Brown and Clegg will gang up on Cameron in the TV debates, whats should Cam do to counter this?
71. You cannot reason with New Labour.
170 - I expect the Lib Dems to criticise the Tories and with gusto. But the tone of current criticisms (both of Labour and the Tories) leads me to agree with runnymede and Richard Nabavi that Nick Clegg is aiming for a change-lite Lib/Lab pact - Labour without Gordon Brown appears to be their objective. I want no part of that and unless I get a different message that I believe before the election, I shall not be voting Lib Dem.
As it happens, I would rather like a Tory/Lib Dem pact. Neither side would be comfortable with it, but the country would be better off with that combination than with either a Tory absolute majority or Labour involved in government in any way.
173. Let them get on with it; it’s a disastrous strategy for the left, which needs to maintain the fiction that the Lib Dems are a distinct party.
169 Nabbers. I’m sorry to say so but it’s just lazy analysis. You appear to think that because the yellow peril aren’t Conservative fellow travellers then by default they are Labour stooges.
See Jack P’s 164 for a more disinterested take.
173, Lib Dems siding with Brown who led the country into failure, and he should press Clegg hard on ruling out a Labour-Lib Dem coalition. Clegg won’t answer and will look evasive and a prop of Brown.
171 Come off it, Jonathan. The LibDems ludicrous and hypocritical attacks on Ashcroft are hardly ‘reasoned and positive’. Nor is this from 85:
“David Cameron and George Osborne are stoking up fears in the markets, actively trying to destabilise the pound and reduce the Government’s ability to borrow.
“It’s like a protection racket: vote for us or our friends in the City will lay waste to your economy, your savings and your job.”
Hysterical is the word that comes to mind. Does Clegg really think that the foreign exchange and gilts markets are run by a cabal of friends of Cameron?
In support of my take on this, I respectfully cite the views of the ever-sane and definitely non-Tory antifrank.
166 I have no interest in what Clegg does or doesn’t say.
79 I think it’s the case that historically, many members of the upper and upper middle classes have been Conservative politicians, without having really strong political convictions. It tends to be the lower-middle, and working, class Conservatives who are more strongly committed.
178 Jack - But do you agree with my central point that there has been a change in tone, and perhaps in content, over recent weeks?
180 You clearly don’t get it. As far as I am concerned that’s fine.
Re 97. That article is interesting. While reading it though I was struck by what a huge number that £12.7billion for NHS computers is. If that represents value for money I’ll eat my hat. (Which no doubt would prove to be a medical condition beyond it’s compass.)
Interesting Kobayashi interview: http://www.formula1.com/news/interviews/2010/3/10491.html
He definitely sounds very up for the fight, and has said P8 and P9 wouldn’t be good enough. Them’s fighting words.
183 Jonathan - QED
177. It depends what the driving force is for this election, ultimately.
If its “Stick with the devil you know” then the Lib-Dems will be on the winning side of the election.
If its “Time for a change” the Lib-Dems are about to blow it big time.
A middle ground position of stick with Labour but get change from not having Brown around won’t work because the public won’t believe Brown would ever stand down. If Labour and the Lib-Dems wanted to play that trick they should have got rid of Brown before the election and installed Postie as Labour leader.
182. Richard - except for Clegg’s comment on Brown’s Afghan visit (which surprised me) I don’t think there has been a change of tone.
Do you concede that there has been no Lib Dem U-turn on child benefit?
I will vote in the way best guaranteed to get Labour out of government. Everything the Lib-Dems are saying suggests to me that there is an appreciable risk that they will support Labour (whether with or without Brown) in the event of a hung Parliament.
Not a risk I want to run so no vote for the Lib-Dems from me.
BTW I’m in Hampstead/Kilburn: Glenda’s the MP and it’s a race as to whether the Lib-Dems or the Cons will oust her, tho’ she might well scrape back in if the anti-Labour vote gets split.
159. There is a website which shows you how each MP voted in parliament. You can see how Gordon Brown voted on issues (When he voted also because quite often he was not in parliament to vote). You can also see how David Cameron voted. But you can’t see how Nick Clegg voted because he is not on the list of MP’s who let you see how they voted.
If you follow the link then look at voting record you will see Gordon Brown’s voting record.
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/gordon_brown/kirkcaldy_and_cowdenbeath
187. ‘If Labour and the Lib-Dems wanted to play that trick they should have got rid of Brown before the election and installed Postie as Labour leader.’
Maybe - but that might have made the attempted stitch-up a bit too obvious, as it would have required the Lib Dems to explicitly campaign jointly with Labour and the ‘change theme’ would have been lost. This way there is still a vestige of ‘vote for us and get change’, even if it is a complete fraud.
187. This election can be summarised as “ostriches” vs “boil lancers”.
LD are in the head in the sand camp - £10k tax limits and cancelling student fees.
166 Feels like there will be some budgetary trick to get around the inconvienient facts, and or the inconvenient lack of remaining term for Labour. Your two part budget sounds plausible. I suspect we’ll get some money printing somehow too.
LibDems can’t afford to look too much like Labour-lite in the deabtes. Appearing undistinctive is probably the biggest trap for them.
185. Sauber certainly have shown flashes of good form in testing.
188 Jack P - You were right, I should have written child benefit, not tax credit, but previously Cable has (very sensibly) said they should be considered together:
LIBERAL Democrat leader Nick Clegg yesterday performed a U-turn on his party’s plans to scrap universal child benefits.
His comments appeared to contradict a paper put out by the party’s Treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, which suggested child benefits should be targeted for reform.
“We will not question the universality of child benefit,” Mr Clegg said. “There are some benefits – and child benefit is one of them – I think it is quite important that everyone feels they have a stake in.”
The paper produced by Mr Cable in September stated: “The simplest reform could be to taper the family element in tax credit, which the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates could raise £1.35 billion. This should occur. A more radical reform would be to target child benefit by assimilating it into tax credit.”
http://news.scotsman.com/uk/Lib-Dems-accused-of-split.6131004.jp
174. “So now its obvious Brown and Clegg will gang up on Cameron in the TV debates, whats should Cam do to counter this?”
Let them get on with it. I’m one Lib Dem voter who will not back them when they suck up to Labour.
182 Nabbers. Only in as much as the timing of the election dictates.
On PB I understand that we’re near the point where partisans of all parties are getting close to knicker entanglement status but those of us with an extensive financial stake can’t afford to be taken in with all the foolish party political guff that will dominate from now to polling day.
The slightest political error will be seen as the end of the world as we know it, a minor poll change within the MOE will be interpreted as a harbinger of landslide proportion !!
Calmer and cooler heads are required and most certainly not the froth and nonsense of the PB herd.
157 - YouGov’s Group CEO is actually the Tory candidate for Stratford upon Avon at the next election. Peter Kellner does not sit on the YouGov board. I know it is very tempting to make such accusations, but they really are ver easy to check by just visiting the YouGov website.
Actually ignore my last post Nicholas Clegg is now on the site which says how he voted. I was looking for Nick Clegg which the site did not recognise.
Gordon Brown
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/gordon_brown/kirkcaldy_and_cowdenbeath#votingrecord
David Cameron
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/david_cameron/witney
Nicholas Clegg
http://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/nicholas_clegg/sheffield%2C_hallam
195 I do think a potential problem for the Lib Dems is that while in 2005, their voters would have preferred a deal with Labour by a clear margin, in the event of a hung Parliament, now they’re much more divided.
194. Thanks Richard. I think Cable was free-lancing a bit then - certainly any reduction in the scope or scale of child benefit is not Lib Dem policy and is never likely to be. Hopefully Cable has since been suitably muzzled for the general election!
If anyone’s near Colchester next Tuesday 16th you can get to a seminar by Professor Matthew Lebo, author of “The PM and the Pendulum”, which posits that PM approval is the determinant of the election.
His seminar is entitled “The Pendulum Swings Back”
and as far as I can see from the data, he should be forecasting a narrow win for Labour and Brown.
http://www.essex.ac.uk/government/research/seminars~conferences.shtm
Mike S. Please release my reply to Nabbers 182 post. Thanks.
198. I think the calculation they are making is that losing half a dozen SW seats is a small price to pay for keeping the broad left in office.
196 Southam - Yes, the attacks on YouGov as being a partisan organisation are completely absurd.
Certainly there were some oddities in their recent samples, but Anthony Wells has explained how they arose, and they shouldn’t affect the headline figures (although might increase margin of error a tiny amount).
What is very interesting is the fact that CCHQ have signed up YouGov for ‘instant reaction’ polling during the campaign, and especially the leaders’ debates. Because of the size of their panel, they are probably the only pollsters capable of running such polling, so that should give the Conservatives a little bit of an edge in tuning their message.
Morning all.
85. HPS.
The Lib Dems are bound and determined that the Tories campaign under “Vote Yellow, Get Brown”, aren’t they?
As a staunch Conservative,ex coal miner,now impoverished pensioner(thanks Gordon)I think this country deserves another five years of New Labour. When you get a bug infestation in the garden shed its always best to burn it down.
196. There’s an old quote from a 19th Cent politician which deals with this sort of situation, along the lines of the government gets the statistics and based on them proposes all sorts of wonderful conclusions. In fact, the figures are compiled by the village post-master and he puts down whatever he fancies.
Kellner is in the position of the post-master.
202. runnymede.
Well, it’s the Senior mantra: better 30 LD MPs and a Labour government than 80 LD MPs and a Tory government.
Hmm. 270,000 civil servants striking doesn’t even make the BBC’s top 3 politics stories. Clegg attacking the Tories (who secretly run not only the Polish community of Jews, but also the world’s exchange rates) does.
207: Well the Lib Dems are still lanquishing sub-20s..so it might just turn out that way.
“But Brown continues to trail a long way behind and if the theory about approval ratings is correct it’s hard to see him saving the day unless there is a sharp narrowing of the gap.”
Not what Lebo and Others are saying, Mike.
Lebo reckons that if the PM positive approval is more than half the two-party vote, the PM should win.
so 36/(32+38) [Lab + Con taking roughly 70%] = 51% ish
The similar Nadeau study, which does include Opposition leader positive approval, says the same.
In terms of seats it’s precicting
Lab 299
Con 276
O/T, but …
Cameron’s line about being able to get most for less is a very good one for the Tories in my view. They should be pursuing it strongly as it recognises the importance of state provision, but also chimes with our straitened times. It will also be very hard for Labour to counter.
210: In which case, he’s talking a load of cobblers.
Hmmm Brogan getting a little worried.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100028963/if-the-tories-want-to-win-theyve-got-to-fight/
Strange! I seem to remember the DT said Dave’s spring conference speech had won them the GE, obviously a tad overstated.
The line the Tories should take on Clegg’s ‘Gnomes of Zurich’ attack is this:
1) We don’t like foreign banks influencing our democracy, but
2) That’s what happens when our country is heavily in debt, therefore
3) We will seek to reduce the debt as soon as possible.
Everyone knows, rich and poor alike, that when you are in debt you are not independent.
Not surprised by Clegg’s positioning; its normal Lib Dem tactics/strategy.
Clegg is pushing two main policies, fair taxation and cleaning up politics under over-riding message that only real change is from Lib Dems. So he needs to push message that the Conservatives haven’t changed, otherwise where’s the dividng line?
208. “270,000 civil servants striking doesn’t even make the BBC’s top 3 politics stories.”
That isn’t the BBC bias. It is because nobody notices when civil servants don’t turn up to work.
85: Incoherent drivel from Clegg. What on earth is he talking about?
Maybe we should all just stick our heads in the sand and pretend it’s all fine, that would be the responsbile way to govern would it?
Luckily for Mr Clegg and the UK, he will not be governing anything anytime soon.
Vote Yellow, get Brown.
LondonStatto @204: “The Lib Dems are bound and determined that the Tories campaign under “Vote Yellow, Get Brown”, aren’t they?”
Yup. It’s a self-fulfilling campaign slogan. If the Tories tell the voters that voting LibDem will result in a Lib/Lab pact, and the voters vote LibDem, that gives them the perfect excuse to go ahead with a Lib/Lab pact, even though Lab will have got fewer votes than Con.
re 211. I have been in contact with Lebo over the weekend and I’m hoping he’ll be able to do a guest slot and answer questions.
215: History Boy - yes, that’s exactly the line to take. Indeed, the Tories could go further: Labour treat voters in the same way. They try and make us all dependent on the state so that the state can boss us around just as the bankers will boss us around because of the amount of money we owe them. If you want to get the state and creditors off your back vote Tory.
220. Excellent, Mike!
195 That makes two of us who won’t be voting LD if Brown and Clegg support each other.
One of the main attractions to me of voting LD when Kennedy led the party was that he was very careful to remain equidistant from the two main parties. And it appears to be strategy that worked, judged by the steady increase in LD MPs.
197 SO
He stepped down from YouGov when selected…
Of course Brown has another advantage.
He is already branded as a bully and this seems to have been factored into the public’s opinion of him. Therefore if Labour go for an almost wholly negative campaign, the negativity may largely be discounted by the voter - worse, the electorate may be expecting such a campaign: there could be no ’small voice’ whispering into the ear of ‘motorway man’ that such behaviour is unacceptable in politics, because, de facto, he has already accepted such behaviour…
216 “Clegg is pushing two main policies, fair taxation and cleaning up politics under over-riding message that only real change is from Lib Dems. So he needs to push message that the Conservatives haven’t changed, otherwise where’s the dividng line?”
Ted - exactly. This is a change election. The Conservatives are trying to puch the default position that the only change is them; surprise surprise the competition (ie the LDs) are saying “If you want a change, there’s more than one option.” Of course the hurd will try and spin it as VYGB. That they are trying to just reinforces the fact that the tactic is working.
213.
Aah, one casts one’s mind back a few weeks to Brogan’s fawning portrait in the DT of Ashcroft and his Marginals strategy!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/benedict-brogan/7086643/How-the-charity-of-a-peers-wife-will-propel-Cameron-to-power.html
How ill-conceived that now looks!
WAYNE’S POLLING UPDATE:
From the YouGov tables the “weighted” Tory Lead excluding Scotland is 8%. Unweighted its 11% excluding Scotland - more than enough for a comfortable majority if you consider what is happening in the marginals!!!
I believe ICM have it about right for the Tory 40% figure, Labour as per tradition are probably overstaed by 2-3% so I would guess the real figure out their at the moment is something like:
Con 40% Lab 28/29% Lib 20%
Once we have had the “Alistair in Wonderland Budget” I expect to see Con 41/42% Lab 27/28% Lib 21%
As the GE is called and the campaign gets going, I believe we will see a final GE result of Con 42.5 Lab 27/28% Lib 20%, Others 10%
Adding into the mix the stronger marginal swing to the Torys
A majority of 60/80!.
Ps. I am not commenting on the methodology of ANY polling organisation. It’s pointless until you get the final GE result.
I bid you all good day !
It’s too late! Sky news has revealed Jon Venables’s new identity
http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a223/optare/Screenshot2010-03-07at213450.png
216 Ted Clegg is pushing two main policies, fair taxation and cleaning up politics under over-riding message that only real change is from Lib Dems. So he needs to push message that the Conservatives haven’t changed, otherwise where’s the dividng line?
To my mind the answer is so blindingly obvious that I hesitate to mention it on a public forum before the election, since they don’t seem to have noticed it. I’ll be happy to be more specific once Cammo’s safely in No 10!
O/T, a bit (but ties in to the vote yellow get Brown theme)
On Con Home there is a piece by the Tory PPC for Westmorland and Lonsdale outlining his week campaigning.
He is saying, as you would expect him to, that he is picking up a lot of Lib Dem switchers who are voting Tory this time because they are desperate to get rid of Brown nationally.
I’ve read on here numerous times people saying W&L will be like North Norfolk last time and go from Lib Dem marginal to very safe Lib Dem.
Does anyone on the ground know the true position? Have the Tories got any real chance?
231 - check out the posts of Rik Willis in 2005
230. Go on Richard, do enlighten us…
Think we should remember something, that’s to be careful that you don’t fail to see the wood for the trees.
Individual columns, policy announcements etc have little effect. You’re ultimately trying to change the course of a stream by throwing pebbles in it.
Vote Yellow, Get Brown was going to be a Tory campaign whatever happened.
229: So wrong…but so funny.
223 - “And it appears to be strategy that worked, judged by the steady increase in LD MPs.”
Or that could have just been the result of the ‘two against one’ strategy the Lib Dems and Labour hatched.
212. SO, you are precisely right. The Conservatives should be pressing their “value for money” credentials with much more vigour than they have. There is real scope for advantage here and they can point to specific examples of it in councils across the country. They need to tag Labour as “wasters” and themselves as providing better services for lower cost.
226 Tabman the tactic is working.
Not, so far, according to the opinion polls.
231 Given what’s happened in local elections, I’d have thought not, unless we have an election that’s very clearly polarised between Conservatives and Labour.
231 Given what’s happened in local elections, I’d have thought not, unless we have an election that’s very clearly polarised between Conservatives and Labour.
174. So now its obvious Brown and Clegg will gang up on Cameron in the TV debates, whats should Cam do to counter this?
============
I doubt it.
219 Edmund, the problem is that the LDs have the least loyal potential voters and the figures last night showed quite an even split between those wanting a Conservative majority/most seats and Labour Majority/most seats:
16% outright Conservative + 23% largest party = 39%
9% outright Labour + 32% largest party = 41%
leaning to much towards Labour puts at risk the former, towards Conservatives the latter.
219. EiT: Yup. It’s a self-fulfilling campaign slogan. If the Tories tell the voters that voting LibDem will result in a Lib/Lab pact, and the voters vote LibDem, that gives them the perfect excuse to go ahead with a Lib/Lab pact, even though Lab will have got fewer votes than Con.
What if it loses them both votes and seats, though?
229 JohnLoony
243: Which does tend to ask the question…whats the point of the Lib-Dems. If all they can do is prop up one or other of the main parties.
I still can not find a Tory voter that has switched to Labour?, but plenty of old labour voters that are fed up with Brown.
I expect most of these will just not vote in this election, and make up most of that 25% who will not say how they will vote.
238 - ah yes, the opinion polls that show the LD vote being squeezed out of existence because this election is only about choosing between Tory and Labour.
232. I seem to recall both Rik Willis and Marcus Wood being ridiculed by Lib Dem posters for suggesting there would be a swing to them at the 2005 GE. But there was such a swing, in both cases (albeit insufficient).
248 - I don’t want to trawl through the posts, but I think the LD posters at the time were rather trying to prick the balloon of over-confidence that eminated from the Willis camp, not suggesting that there wouldn’t be a swing. I don’t recall Marcus’s posts of the time.
247: Whats the current opinion polls for the Lib-Dems? 16/17%?
When you have a unpopular government, and an uncertain opposition, don’t you think you should be doing better?
247 Tabman - The LibDem share is flat-lining. They are making no progress at all, despite the unpopularity of the government and the open goals Labour keep presenting, combined with the doubts people seem to have (irrationally in my view, but there you go) about Cameron.
Now, I might be wrong, and it might be that Clegg’s brilliant strategy will come good on the day. But so far, there’s no evidence of it in the polls.
F1 videos, some interesting chats from the BBC F1 team:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/motorsport/formula_one/8549772.stm
251. And more worrying still, not much evidence of it in ‘real votes in real elections’, either - in contrast to the run up to the 2005 GE.
243
They are looking to the election after this.
A Labour victory at the polls sows the seeds of Labour’s destruction
Four terms of criminally incompetent Labour will seem them out of power for at least as many terms. Labour will be forced to bring in measures that will either alienate their core vote or largely destroy the wealth creating capacity of the country for two generations (with New Labour; probably both).
At the same time, the Conservatives will have been out of power for what will seem like aeons, and there will be dangerous repercussions inside the party.
Who will come steaming through the middle like a cruiser through the lifeboats of an annihilated enemy?
Why Jolly Nick Clegg and his merry band of pirates…
Yep. And I don’t believe it either…
253: When was the last ‘good’ election result for the Lib-Dems, post 2005? Dunfermline and West Fife? 2006?
Feminism, New Statesman and Labourlist style
http://order-order.com/2010/03/08/absolutely-brilliant-feminists/
200
‘Hopefully Cable has since been suitably muzzled for the general election!’
Are the ’savage cuts’ Nick Clegg talked about at the Lib Dem conference last October,on or off the agenda now?
More vote yellow get brown drivel from the usual suspects
vote blue - get osborne = economic disaster for the country
250. UKPollingreport has the Lib Dem share at 18%. Electoral Calculus has it at 19.2%.
256 It’s probably just a reminder to the “Forces of Hell” that he has other “interesting” E-Mails just waiting to be revealed.
257. I wonder how many different Lib Dem tax policies we will have in the run up to the election? We must be on at least the seventh or eighth set since 2005…
258. Mark Senior: More vote yellow get brown drivel from the usual suspects
Yup: Cable and Clegg.
262 LondonStatto - That’s just Mark Senior confirming that he’s equally happy for the LibDems to work with either main party.
Afternoon All,
No comment on the thread - it is about a yougov finding. Yougov are no longer credible IMO. Anyway onto more interesting polls. Here is the ICM data.
http://www.icmresearch.co.uk/pdfs/2010_march_notw_poll.pdf
Interesting to see Libdems only retaining 58% (to Labour’s 69%) of their past vote. That doesn’t sound good….
261 Will we have any Conservative tax policies at all in the run up to the election apart from IHT cuts for Cameron and his mates and the garbled benefits for marriwd people ?
In Exeter, I’ve been entered into the Tory central as a Lib Dem, and have consequently received several mailshots from that nice Mr Cameron, on the NHS and Crime as far as I can recall. I didn’t think the Crime mailshot was particularly well tailored for a Lib Dem audience, though!
Clearly they are putting some effort into squeezing the sizeable Lib Dem vote here. Whereas I have also had some communication from the local Labour party, I have heard not a squeak from the Lib Dem mouse.
I suppose the local Lib Dem party is being asked to help out in the rural areas against the Tories?
Surely it is clear that if Brown loses he will be replaced. So that leaves 1) a hung Parliament - when he is also likely to be replaced as a condition of Lib Dem support, or 2) a narrow Labour win, when he will be replaced as soon as possible after the IMF are called on so he can be tarred with the blame, or 3) a more substantial Labour win - in which case the long knives will feel comfortable about stabbing him fatally anyway.
In short, it is unlikely that there will be five more years of Brown - and therefore it is the wrong attack to make. The attack should be on Labour, and pointing out the unsavoury characters lurking behind the arras such as Mandelson, Harman and Balls, and that if Brown is the best that Labour have to offer, then expect the replacements to be even worse.
251 - we have been told many times that as an “irrelevance” we would be squeezed out of existence, as this election was going to be all about the “real” choice between Brown and Cameron.
Well, that hasn’t happened (yet).
FPTP being the wonderful thing that it is, in 1983 we got 25% of the vote but only a third of the number of seats that we now hold, so anything could happen on election night. My own long-held view is that the spreads are about right at 50-55 seats.
153 Chris A
Small point - Thursday 11 March is dissolution day for 8th April - it’s because 17th March is a Northern Ireland Bank Holiday (St Patrick’s Day), so you need an extra day in the schedule.
268: If the election though is a election of ‘change’ it doesn’t seem as if the voters like the Lib-Dem version much as you’re still well below your 2005 levels.
You’re not progressing, you’re retreating.
264 - Its the trend across all pollsters.
Here’s Andy Morris of ARPO
In descending order, Britons express moderate or complete trust in the following political leaders to do what is right to help the economy: Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England (45%, +4), David Cameron, leader of the Opposition (41%, +1), Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats (39%, +4), Vince Cable, Liberal Democrat Shadow Chancellor (36%, +1), Gordon Brown, Prime Minister (34%, +4), George Osbourne, Conservative Shadow Chancellor (29%, =), and Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer (28%, +5).
The highest level of distrust on this file goes to Darling (54%) and Brown (53%) However, both Labour politicians have shed the proportion of negative mentions by eight points since January.
Britons trust the Conservative Party more than the Labour Party to rein in the national debt (44% to 24%), and control inflation (39% to 28%). When it comes to ending the recession, the Tories are barely ahead of Labour (34% to 31%). On the topic of job creation—particularly important as the General Election campaign looms—the two parties are even (33% to 33%).
268 Tabman - I agree with your estimate on the seats. I’m using 53 as my central forecast for betting purposes. (Jack W thinks differently… we shall see!)
But I do think you could be doing a lot better, if the strategy had been more coherent.
190. Paul - I’m not sure what you mean. Nick Clegg’s record is available at the site you mention and it’s also at: http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/mp.php?id=uk.org.publicwhip/member/1812&showall=yes#divisions
265
Mark, its time to go back to your constituency and prepare……………………………………………………for those parish council by-elections.
267. “So that leaves 1) a hung Parliament - when he is also likely to be replaced as a condition of Lib Dem support, or 2) a narrow Labour win, when he will be replaced as soon as possible after the IMF are called on so he can be tarred with the blame, or 3) a more substantial Labour win - in which case the long knives will feel comfortable about stabbing him fatally anyway.”
If Brown wins or gets the most seats it will be damn near impossible to shift him. He’ll rightly claim it to have been an unexpected comeback. People are kidding themselves if they think anything other than a outright defeat will cause Brown to give up without a fight.
271 tim - Actually the results in that last paragraph are very sensible. In the short term, the Tories won’t end the recession more quickly or generate jobs more quickly. They are not claiming that they will; they are claiming we have to get the fundamentals right in order to get back to real, sustainable growth.
McNulty describing Osborne as ‘little boy George’ on the Daily Politics.
276 - As you know Richard its the big shedding of the negatives in for Brown and Darling in the pollsters who always find the fewest Labour voters that is the important finding in that poll.
272 Nabbers. What are your net Lib Dem gains and losses that take you to 53 ?
270 - SB, under FPTP our vote could go up 5 points and we could still lose seats.
Fundamentally Clegg’s challenge is holding what he has given that 2/3 of those have the Conservatives as the main challenger and the Conservative position has improved.
The mathematics make large gains from Labour unlikely this time round; the real challenge in Labour seats will be in 2015. The main problem was the lack of progress in these seats in 2005; that is the strategic issue Clegg has had to deal with.
278 - Bit garbled but you know what I mean.
Cables figures are high partly because he scores so low on negatives I’d guess.
258. Economic disaster for the country ? We’re there already and then some.
280. How do deal with that problem by cosying up to Labour? That seems a strange approach.
283 - if 2/3 of your seats could fall to the Conservatives, you’re likely to want to point out why that might be a bad idea. That is not the same as “cosying up to Labour”.
280. Tabman: The main problem was the lack of progress in these seats in 2005; that is the strategic issue Clegg has had to deal with.
Oh, indeed.
And why was there that failure? Because the Seniorites enforced the decapitation strategy!
When is the last day the budget can be before a GE??
258 TGoHF. “Economic disaster for the country ? We’re there already and then some.”
Send for Osborne !! Oopppps
When was the last time a Shadow Chancellor commanded so weak a public position ??
Send for “Our Ken” !! …. Hush puppies and a cigar save the world !!
278 tim - I agree. However, will that survive the budget, and the market reaction to the budget?
We now know for certain that Darling will be going for a messy fudge, so as not to puncture the delusion of Labour’s core vote:
Alistair Darling is at loggerheads with business leaders because of his perceived “leisurely” approach to the final Budget before the election.
The Treasury has pledged to halve Britain’s £178 billion deficit by 2014, but the CBI said that the Chancellor had failed to provide sufficient detail about a credible repayment schedule.
Mr Darling insisted yesterday that he would not be pushed into accelerating the rate and scale of his plans when he delivers the Budget, expected on March 24.
The Institute of Directors also called for immediate spending cuts to reduce the deficit, but the Chancellor said that to “go further and faster” threatened to damage the social fabric and the economy.
The Budget will not include detailed allocations for Whitehall departments for the years ahead, though Mr Darling said that the Government wanted to protect health and education.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7053253.ece
So it is confirmed that they will be running the mendacious line that Labour can’t do a comprehensive spending review because of uncertainty, but the Tories should be pressed to be very specific.
Clearly, given the extreme media bias we have seen in the last few weeks, they are calculating that they can get away with this hypocritical and cynical approach. They might be right, in which case the country is heading for disaster.
Of course, if the markets get spooked by this, the narrative could turn quite quickly. If the media persist in helping Labour hide the truth, Cameron and Osborne will try to get their message across directly.
If that fails, then so be it. Britain will have to live with the choice it makes.
258: More vote yellow get brown drivel from the usual suspects
vote blue - get osborne = economic disaster for the country
Why?
275: If Brown wins most seats or better, it will be Mandelson pulling the strings that will have the real claim to success, and it will be he who decides who takes over and when. The Labour Party knows it, the country knows it.
Bruce Anderson in the Independent on Browns contempt for the Armed Forces.
258: Mark Senior
Wjy should anyone listen to any economic commentary from the man who in July 2008 thought there would not be a recession at all. You are clueless and can safely be ignored
It’s a Labour win which would be a disaster…
287 When was the last time a Shadow Chancellor commanded so weak a public position ??
Who was shadow before Osborne?
9.”Given that we are now very close to the election, I am still puzzled as to why more is not being made of the large numbers of people who will not say how they are going to vote or claim not to know. It was 25% in the last ICM poll. Are there any figures on this from YouGov?”
Its a change GE, and the vote is going to polarise between both the main parties more than it has in recent years, and that is why I suspect we have this situation right now as the GE draws near. Some people are totally settled in how they will vote for a variety of reasons, others won’t make their mind up until they walk into that ballot box. And that is a worry for the smaller parties.
287.”When was the last time a Shadow Chancellor commanded so weak a public position ??”
The last time the economy was in such a weak state with a lot of tough and unpopular decisions to be taken after the GE?
281: Thats for two many reasons:
1) Cable can say what he wants without the knowledge of having to back it up in practice.
2) People can project what they want onto him. Tough cuts and public investment at the same time…
287.”When was the last time a Shadow Chancellor commanded so weak a public position ??”
Oliver Letwin..makes Dennis Healey look like a superstar.
(Letwin = letlose)
Sorry if this has been asked ealier but, it seems ages since the last AR poll, is there one due any minute?
293 Jonathan. Ollie Letwin.
288.Richard, Darling is now in a precarious position, he keeps talking about a budget with as yet no date even decided with a GE campaign imminent. I think that the stakes are now being ratcheted up significantly this week, he is in effect being told to get on and give that budget asap as well as being advised to start tackling the deficit in a meaningful way in 2010.
279 Jack W - I see very few LibDems gains from Labour, other than (probably) Watford. Islington S and H & K are looking rather unlikely now. I don’t really see any gains from the Tories, given that we are starting from a 2005 Iraq-boosted position and there has been a net LD to Tory swing - a swing which I think is likely to be higher in the kinds of seat where the LibDems are in contention.
In Scotland, they can only at best hold their own, but more likely will lose seats.
That leaves the number of current LD seats that will fall to the Tories. Other than Eastleigh and Westmoreland & Lonsdale, I think most of the LibDem-held Tory targets up (but not including) Leeds NW are at risk. Not sure about Richmond; a hard one to read because it is such an unusual seat and such an unusual Tory candidate.
Now tell me what the REAL result will be!
287. I’ve fixed that for you - twice.
“When was the last time a Chancellor commanded so weak a public position ??”
“When was the last time a Prime Minister commanded so weak a public position ??”
Retail sales for January down 1.8% biggest decrease since June 2008.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?ID=256
In February house prices fell, service industry increased production. So the economy is still giving mixed messages it is extremely fragile and need decisive action to mend the massive wholes in our economy especially the deficit and balance of payments.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/instantfigures.asp
293. Oliver Letwin?
301 - Lamont and Major respectively I would think.
298 Osborne looks effective compared to Letwin, Franci$ Maude et al. What a motley crew. His ultra political style appeals to some I hear.
300 Nabbers. Thanks for that. I’m working on 5 net losses to the Tories and around 10 net gains from Labour.
I seem to recall Roy Hattersley being an utter laughing stock as Shadow Chancellor
Hehe, had to share this comment from the HYS on civil servants striking:
“4. At 09:47am on 08 Mar 2010, BBThee wrote:
Hello people.
Before there is a torrent of abuse aimed at us civil servants let me just put our case.
Some of us have been in our jobs for anything up to 43 years and whilst we are all going to benefit hugely by our very fair pensions when we retire we have a lot to contend with.
Only three years ago I put in a requisition for a new stapler and it took four days to arrive! In the meantime I was forced to borrow from colleagues which as you can imagine put a strain on an otherwise professional relationship.
I am perfectly well aware that times are hard now for people in the private sector but Mary used to bring a choice of biscuits at both 10:50 AND 3:20. Now we only get a choice in the morning. In the afternoon we are no longer offered Rich Tea.
So now, not to be offered a 10% pay rise this year is going to hit us when we already feel that morale is very low.”
301/304
300: Theres a good 5-10 Lib Dem seats in the South West which are looking very dodgy for them at the moment.
288, 293 The point is, though, that people know what they will get from Labour - more of the same. That may be cr*p, but at least it’s known cr*p. The Tories, of course, represent change - but what kind of change? The Tories do not yet seem to have a complete answer to this question.
When even their own advisers (Sir A Budd) seem to be saying that the “more for less” plan is not achievable it is clear that the Tory economic strategy is not yet fully formed.
Surely we need a vacuous lightweight with no policies for PM. Preferably someone with no scruples about accepting wads of cash rightfully owed to the taxpayer. Someone, to quote Simon Heffer in the Daily Torygraph, of “abominable judgement”. Someone, to quote Martin Ivens in the Sunday ToryTimes, lacking “basic competence” and “putting on a Laurel and Hardy show” with one of his “trusted” lieutenants. Someone, to quote Matthew D’Ancona in the Sunday Torygraph, who should have “insisted on full disclosure years ago” and looks like the leader of “a gang of people who want to govern so they can do what the hell they like.”
Any suggestions as to who that could be?
Has anyone sat through a Letwin presentation or speech?
It’s as much fun as going to the dentist. For about five minutes you’re impressed with his obvious intellect. Then it’s about an hour later and you realise you have a little bit of drool from where you fell asleep with your gob hanging open in boredom.
307. I’m shocked anybody in their right mind ever made Hattersley shadow chancellor.
The low expectations for Osborne and the Tories more generally is a double edged sword. It makes it harder for them to win this election, but should they win the election and if they are then percieved to do rather better in office than most people think they will, it could make it easier for them to win any subsequant election.
307 Gordon Brown of course went on to show how brilliant he was as Chancellor after being Shadow Chancellor. Just look how well Britain is doing these days after his reign.
306 Jack W - I forgot Liverpool Wavertree; that is looking good for the LibDems given local events.
Cheer up all…we could still have Ed Balls as CoE
:D 
312. bribrad: Any suggestions as to who that could be?
You?
We have one. Not for long thankfully.
310 Slack. “Dodgy” ?? …. based on …. surely not local election results ??…. Have you become a “Seniorite” ??
From a practical point of view do you really think it wise for the LD’S to go into government with the Labour party.
Could they really trust them. There is no way that Gordon Brown would stand down.
Would Gordon Brown be open with them, a man who would not tell Tony Blair what was in a budget.
One other thing to think about is this in Ireland we have not had a single party government in over a generation but no matter who is in power the smallest party in government has always faired worst at the next general election.
If the Ld’s go into government with Labour they will get dumped on and they may never recover from it.
312 We have one. Not for long thankfully.
312.Reading Chris Mullin’s diaries right now, and in one chapter alone Gordon Brown ticked all the boxes you listed there, although he referred to Brown’s “trusted” lieutenants in more robust terms! Oh the irony!
313 Boring political speeches are one of the worst crimes to be perpetrated on an intelligent mind. You should have told him he was dire. Once they get to the top, they think they’re god.
I regret once not telling a leading pol Labour how dire their speech was. There is no excuse in my opinion. They should be told to shut up. People are far too polite/deferential.
Paul @ 286 - “When is the last day the budget can be before a GE”
That depends on when the GE is. For a June 3 election, the Budget need not be presented until after Easter.
LD’s will aim for a hung parliament with labour. Like the soon to be jilted bride Clegg has succumbed to the promise of a better life.
If Labour get a majority , goodbye Nick.
If the Conservatives get in power, goodbye Nick and thanks for trying.
If Labour remain in power on the back of LD’s then there will be a brief marriage of convenience until Electoral reform, then goodbye Nick. Nick will whine at the divorce that ‘what he was promised was not what he got’.
Oh dear. Nick thought he could change them.
320:
Jack, you have to admit the following all have a realistic chance of falling:
Cheltenham
North Cornwall
North Devon
Somerton and Frome
Taunton
Torbay
plus one or two others on an outside chance.
324 Jonathan - Come on, spill the beans. Who was it? And how did he or she react? I can’t imagine it happens very often.
312. Dr Barbi - You perhaps?
324: I’ve yet to hear a speech by Brown which hasn’t led me to wanting to puncture my own ear drums just out of sheer boredom.
I see Sarah Brown is editing Labour’s propaganda pamphlet (Yes I do mean The Mirror). Was Gordon Brown just telling a very unfunny joke when he said he did not like to use his family members as props in the campaign. Why the Mirror don’t just name themselves “The New Labour” I don’t know.
‘Darling halts Budget spending review for Whitehall’
http://tinyurl.com/ykyzhhp
Well, Liam Byrne has been utterly humiliated after all that boasting about £10 billion of cuts last week. Gordon - and I suspect the mighty Ed - have brought Darling to heel! It was always on the cards. The Brownites were never going to tolerate Darling’s insubordination.
Just watching the news leading on James Bulgers mother speaking out. Anybody think Labour might take a bit of a polling hit over this in the next week or so?
327 Slack. Why do I have to admit it ??
I look at evidence NOT a Team Blue wish list.
332, oh dear. Darling crumbles, yet again.
Daily Torygraph, Sunday Torygraph, Sunday ToryTimes: welcome to The Infinitely Expanding List of Those Determined to Do Down Dave (featuring Sky, the BBC, Channel 4, the Living Channel, Bravo, CNN, Hello Magazine, the Sporting Life, Gardeners’ Weekly and many,many more.) All part of the global anti-Cameron conspiracy.
334. What evidence is that, then?
333. Is it just me - I find this story to be completely uninteresting and sucking up enormous portions of the news cycle ?
Pound crashing against Oz dollar last 30 minutes, can only mean markets think Dave is not guaranteed to win based on what caused the run last time.
338 - It’s definitely not just you.
Straw’s answering an urgent question in the Commons this afternoon regarding Venables.
Question on budget timing. Suppose we get to late March without a budget having been announced, and parliament is about to rise for Easter Recess. Is any action required in order to allow income tax to be collected after 5th April ?
302. when they say services are picking up, they fail to mention that these services are paid for by taxes, and are effectively government spending, coping with the recession/depression.
When the bullying, the lying and the cheating finally stop, whether that be through defeat in an election, or through other means of removing Brown from office, the finances will be the worst ever outside of wartime.
It’s as if we’ve fought a war - the amount of money that’s been spent. Except the only people who were refused adequate finance were actual troops fighting real wars. They were never going to vote Labour and so are expendable.
Brown’s tried to build an economy based on loyalty to largesse, as a way to build an impregnable political position. It’s failing. So now he’s paying his heavies to rig the election.
Next stop with Brown’s descent to dictatorship is to set up his Lubjanka. I am sure the Police are ready to move as soon as he gives the word. The media will have nothing to say.
338. No, your not alone.
337 runnymede. Evidence that the challenging party is making meaningfull progress in the seat against any evidence relating to the seat holder.
342. I wouldn’t have thought there was a problem, considering last Year the budget was not until April 22nd.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23812971-mayors-pound-375000-for-new-rape-centre.do
Good on him. Nice timing on the announcement too, though the Standard haven’t picked that up.
340 Neil - I think the Venables story is one of those where the government is not actually to blame, but where it may well get blamed.
I suppose this is fair, since they don’t get the blame for lots of things where they should.
327. I live in Cheltenham and with boundary changes the Lib dem’s only have about a 500 vote majority. Although the current Lib Dem MP Martin Horwood is reasonably popular I think Mark Coote (Con) will also be popular. I would think that Cheltenham will go Conservative, the last election saw a swing to the Conservatives and a simular swing this time would ensure a reasonable Conservative majority.
75.”72. I think if you were to count column inches it’s probably running 10/1 Ashcroft against all other donors to all other parties. Ask anyone in the street and they’ll have heard of Ashcroft. Lord Paul? Jeans shop on Carnaby Street?”
Roger, the Guardian is obsessed with Ashcroft as their daily front page Ashcroft headline and more than 50 articles in a week prove. I think you are being lulled into believing that its a big story because the Guardian want it to be a big story. On a street vox pop, and I would certainly place money on Mandelson being more recognised than Lord Ashcroft, and that is Labour’s biggest problem.
348. FWIW I agree, but it should be noted in any event it was that it was under the previous Tory administration the conditions of his sentence were set (not that the judiciary is in truck to the govt anyway).
On balance however, I actually don’t expect the story to shift the polls, although it might I suppose.
350. Agreed, the Ashcroft story will not shift a single vote, despite the Guardians massive push. The public see the issue as being very vague and the other parties being just as bad whatever.
345. Well thanks for clearing that up, Jack (!)
Could you be more specific?
Taking into account the small samples does anyone else find it depressing that only 30% of the under 34s are ceratin to vote compared to 70% of the more senior (ICM poll). Younger people have more to gain or lose in the long term.
I often find when canvassing that when folks have children especially school age they start to have a stake in the community, However most of those fighting and dying in Afghanistan are very young.
The Guardian has the biggest story on the planet in Ashcroft since their string of revelations regarding the NOTW hacking enriched the public and changed the face of media forever (tumbleweed…)…
re 324. “People are far too polite/deferential.”
Except it seems on PB - after 10pm
314. Good analysis. Isn’t it a general truth that its much easier for rightwing govts to meet public expectations as few people have very high expectations of them in the first place?
Rightwingers are usually elected on the back of fear, whereas leftwing administrations are elected on the back of hope.
As the hopes of the electorate almost always massively exceed what is realistic (i.e. world-class public services with minimal taxation) leftwing govts always tend to disappoint.
Even Atlee’s postwar govt got kicked out fairly rapidly after its landslide win, despite building the welfare state, and launching the NHS, a national religion.
356.Mike, make that before the 10pm watershed on a Friday night.
356, that’s because I’m not usually here then, to discipline people. They keep in line when I’m putting a bit of enormo-haddock about
Any Angus Reid polls coming our way soon?
Having told us he saved the world’s financial systems, Brown’s Govt is now going to save the world’s women from violence.
http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22721
360 But does Glenys have any role in saving the 10 Downing street Garden room ladies from flying Nokias and being shoved off chairs?
357. Alternatively that could be viewed as the left promising to deliver on unachievable and often somewhat fanciful promises whereas the right do not makes such promises and tend to be more realistic.
348 - The first minister to answer a question on the subject saying “you have no right to know everything about this case and I am not going to pander to the media hysteria being whipped up about it” gets extra brownie points in my book. Of course they’ll probably get the sack or something but I’m sure they’ll consider it a price worth paying for my admiration
O/T Worst logo EVER ? (Worse than 2012 ?)
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/editor-s-picks-ignore/image-will-sell-games-around-the-world-1.1011868
345.”337 runnymede. Evidence that the challenging party is making meaningfull progress in the seat against any evidence relating to the seat holder.”
JackW, this point ties in nicely with the interesting article that Mike put up on Saturday about campaign activity by the parties in constituencies. But I think that you also have to add a % of the vote share in individual seats based on the national campaign by all the parties. And in a change GE, that can amount to a more significant share and voter churn in individual seats than some elections in recent years. Its something that should be factored into all seats, and in particular, those held currently by Libdems who benefited from the electoral tide going against the Conservatives since 92′.
Glasgow East update - lucky for Labour they lost ?
http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/news/editor-s-picks-ignore/labour-must-come-clean-over-purcell-says-snp-1.1011900
” And there was confirmation that officers from the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency met the Glasgow City Council leader last May, and warned him he could become a blackmail target.
Reports claimed these problems lay behind the decision the previous year not to field Mr Purcell as Labour candidate in the Glasgow East by-election, prompting the SNP’s winning candidate, John Mason, to raise “serious questions”.
Mr Mason said: “It is now being suggested that people in the Labour Party knew of the problems that Mr Purcell had in his personal life, and that concerns these issues could have surfaced stopped him from becoming the party’s candidate in the Glasgow East by-election in 2008.”
356.
Just about time the C2H5OH kicks in
362 Neil - To be fair, that was pretty much what Jack Straw was saying on the Today programme this morning, although he didn’t put it quite so clearly! The trouble is that he always sounds, to me at least, hesitant and unconvincing, even when I actually agree with him.
356. You could have left off the ‘after 10 pm’ and still been right.
327. I think your list is probably off target a bit. I would hazard a guess that the most vulnerable Cornish seats would be the two with MPs standing down - although I would think they will still be in the yellow corner come May.
I also think that, whilst on paper you may be right about North Devon and Torbay, the Tories have probably not chosen wisely on their candidates to go up against relatively popular LD MPs - in both cases the Tories, whilst ‘characters’, both have a knack of rubbing people up the wrong way (puts helmet on and awaits flak from Marcus Wood fans everywhere on pb.c - well at least Marcus himself).
363, not worse than 2012. It’s dull, but far better than 2012. For a start, I bet it hasn’t induced epilepsy or motion sickness/vomiting in anyone. Secondly, it doesn’t look like a well-known cartoon character performing a carnal act. Thirdly, it isn’t all stupid and jagged and trying to be trendy. A few simple lines, and that’s it.
365. Oo-er - a minor version of the (Charles) Kennedy cover-up, it seems.
Re Oscars
Well — I’ve made about $1,5k on the Oscars, thanks for going nuclear on Bigelow for Best Director. I would have made much much more had I stick with my initial prediction: Hurt Locker to win Best Pix, and had I not lose a bunch by buying Cameron for Best Director at $3 and selling him at $1,5!!!
But I won’t complaint! — for I made twice as much as last year.
369. I wonder if the story regarding a love nest with a married male MP will ever surface ?
In the South west Labour are more unpopular than elsewhere with the Lib Dem on 28.8%, Conservatives on 43.6% and Labour on 16%. The question is will there be Lib Dem voters in the South West voting Conservative for fear of another 5 years of Brown.
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/
327 Knowing Cheltenham well it will be very close.
Pro Con - national swing. Good Tory candidate, favourable boundary changes.
Pro Lib Dem. MP was new in 2005 now well known and popular. May be no Green candidate. Well organised team behind him. Well liked Tory councillor recently defetced to Lib Dems.
I have bet on the Lib Dem mainly because of the odds.
* * * BETTING POST * * *
If you have any outstanding bets, this is a rather good idea
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Oxfam-Could-Win-330000-After-A-Man-Left-The-Charity-4420-In-Betting-Slips-In-His-Will/Article/201003215569494
Though don’t pick Oxfam, they are rabid Labourites.
There are 2 issues about the Venables case which have been conflated.
(1) Should he retain his anonymity? IMO yes because to reveal the name he goes under now would be likely to prejudice his chances of a fair trial, especially on the sorts of serious allegations which he seems to be facing.
(2) Should the public know what those serious allegations are? Yes. This is relevant to whether the whole rehabilitation process for very young offenders works. The whole basis for releasing the 2 boys after 10 years is that they would have had sufficient care/rehabilitation/what-have-you that it would be safe to release them. If that hasn’t worked in one case then we should know because we need to know what went wrong i.e. did the authorities not fulfil their side of the bargain? Are we living in la-la land in speaking of rehabilitation in these circumstances (e.g. the 2 Doncaster boys)? Should we lock up for longer etc? There cannot be any sensible debate if we do not know what happened in this case. Also, there is a concern that the authorities may use the “anonymity” excuse to shield their own failures.
Plus this feeds into the whole meme that too many serious criminals are let out early and that the concerns of victims and society at large are ignored by the authorities.
People feel outraged not just because it was a particularly harrowing crime but because they feel that the sentences were too lenient, especially if it turns out that the state did not do what it should have done to ensure they turned into young men who had properly repented of their crime and would lead useful lives in the future. Ideally, you should have both justice and rehabilitation. If you get neither, that’s a pretty poor bargain.
327 - I have relatives (not Lib Dem inclined) who live in Taunton and they tell me that Jeremy Browne is extremely active in the constituency and has built up a very positive reputation locally.
I suspect Dan Rogerson knows what he is doing in North Cornwall too.
327. Jack according to electoral calculus which looks at regional swings there is evidence to suggest that . Cheltenham, Somerton & Frome, Taunton and Torbay will go Conservative. However, there may need to be a slight shift in the polls for the conservatives to gain North Cornwall and North Devon.
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/
Startling Find in Notting Hill!
A man identified only as “Posh Dave” has made the incredible discovery of what locals are describing only as a “policy commitment”. Details of the find are sketchy at the moment as “Dave” prefers to keep things hidden from the public as long as possible following the recent furore over his unearthing of a substantial amount of cash in a sack marked “Unpaid Tax” under the hedge surrounding the grounds of his property. Having cleared that matter up with full, frank and open transparency in a satisfactorily brisk manner he was keen to brush, sorry..”move on” and believes the new “policy” will help in that regard. Further information will follow if he decides to keep the “policy” for the foreseeable future.
stop press: local rumours speculate that the “policy” may have something to do with cutting inheritance tax for the hard-pressed wealthy of the area.
363 - It’s fine. 2012 was far worse (albeit funny) as is the Office of Government Commerce one.
377. SE Cornwall is a more likely Tory gain than North Cornwall, I suspect.
378, best to put a smiley face in there bribrad, hard to tell it’s humour just from the text
101 — I’m glad you sticked with it, Ghost.
@363, @379
2012 is much, much worse, it is true. But this one looks like the logo of some intergalactic space dictatorship.
381 Ouch!
377 - As a Lib Dem, I’d agree there are vulnerable seats in the SW, but you probably won’t get the most accurate list from a simple look at the calculators.
As Runnymede says, North Cornwall will probably be okay (bit like Yeovil in 2001 briefly looking marginal on handover but being secured in 2005). SE Cornwall is much easier on paper but probably harder in practice (though on balance I think it will be held). Similarly, I’m reasonably confident on Taunton, less so on the apparently much safer Newton Abbott.
Sorry if posted before but its Ed Balls and its a classic, particularly question 6. I thought blinky was meant to be clever !!!.
http://order-order.com/2010/03/08/balls-up/
386. Yes - there will be a few (apparently) strange results I suspect.
I doubt we will get much useful info on this, though - last time around the blizzard of bullsh*t and hubris surrounding these seats on the web was pretty much impenetrable. I think even local party insiders were taken by surprise by some of the outcomes.
The Tories are right to try to make the election a referendum on another five years of Gordon Brown. While another five years of Brown may be unlikely even if Labour wins, Labour candidates can’t very well go around saying that they’re planning to dump Gordon to escape the insinuation. Still, the nature of the UK’s electoral system by no means precludes Brown and Labour winning the election in spite of the fact that over half the population would be “dismayed” by a Brown/Labour victory.
guidofawkes
Balls Up: It is election time so 18 year-olds get birthday greetings from politicians. Here is Ed’s slightly sca… http://bit.ly/917PJk
@387 snap.
373. Are you suggesting that there are Lib Dem voters in the SW that would switch to the Tories in seats where a Lib Dem victory is a possibility to reduce the chances of a hung parliament?
Looking at figures (Lib Dem on 28.8%, Conservatives on 43.6% and Labour on 16%), I would have thought there is a good chance the Labour Vote will collapse in seats where they are a clear third and transfer to the Lib Dems. Every seat the Tories are denied would be a positive result for the Labour Party.
390- So the guy wants to know if they voted Labour when they were pre-teens… not out of the question, is it?
Someone posted this earlier.
http://order-order.com/2010/03/08/absolutely-brilliant-feminists/
While embarrassing, the real point which nobody seems to have cottoned onto, is the fact that Guido has kept back emails from the original Drapergate.
There is no doubt whatsoever that if he does (and it appears he does) have more he will publish them in the run up to the GE.
There could well be a few twitchy bottoms out there waiting for the shoe to drop.
394
what shoe?
bribrad, congratulations, you have proved without doubt that you are a moron. Thanks for that.
Unfortunately the British public would prefer Chancellor Balls over Chancellor Osborne. The election is going to be all about the economy, so our weak link may well trump Labour’s weakest link Gordon Brown.
And it’s too late for Cameron to lock Osborne up in the cupboard now. The public has heard enough gleeful promises from Osborne to form a strong opinion about the man. Osborne’s commitment to make life as miserable as possible for millions of voters will not be forgotten in a month.
HCR in the US
“Sebelius Predicts Bill Will Pass”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/
But jay Cost — who’s counting the probable votes in the House — writes “Still, I think it is far to hasty to say that this reform is inevitable.”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/
The contract *ObamaCare* is oscillating between 51 and 53 — after a 15 point drop 36 hours ago.
71 - a comment from your link
” Re: Gov’t is planning news blackout on Afghanistan
Posted: Mon Mar 08, 2010 12:14 am
Pity we couldnt cleanse the labour party manifesto of any non factual statements… would fit on a postage stamp. ”
392 The problem is Labour are utterly loathed down here in the SW,and I believe Clegg is making a huge mistake not hammering Labour every chance he gets. In 2005 they got the benefit from standing up to Blair over Iraq,but that advantage is now gone. Another factor is that UKIP seems to paradoxically eat into the LD vote down here,as can be seen from the CC electionsin Devon last year.
Is there anybody taking bets on there not being an election this year due to us all having died of boredom or exploded with frustration by June?
Nothing I have seen recently has persuaded me that we are anywhere except within MOE of 40/30/20/10
396 don
Ta for your best wishes. Watch out for falling shoes, plummeting plimsolls and tumbling trainers.
394.Don, I saw that Guido blog earlier, and immediately thought that it was the opening salvo in the held back emails from the McBride scandal.
398- Sibelius is an interested party, to say the least. Imagine the opposite: “Sibelius predicts bill will fail.”
Both Jay Cost and Nate Silver have said it is impossible to predict either way.
Another interesting twist:
Democratic congressman Eric Massa, a Blue Dog who voted against the original House version of Obamacare, now says he was railroaded out of Congress by Pelosi/Hoyer/Emanuel in a bid to get rid of his anti-Obamacare vote. He is accused of sexual harrassment, but he claims he wouldn’t have resigned if his own party’s leadership hadn’t shoved him aside to improve their chances of passing the healthcare bill:
http://hotlineoncall.nationaljournal.com/archives/2010/03/massa_implicate.php
With more scandals and cynical shenanigans emerging almost every day, there is a real poison eating at the heart of the Democratic Party in Washington that has nothing to do with Republicans.
403
“scandals” or “sandals”?
400: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/nick-clegg-brown-has-failed-not-on-character-but-on-credibility-1909600.html
Thought I’d delurk to make a small observation on the Ashcroft affair.
An MP’s postbag normally gives a pretty good indication of the issues that are interesting- or worrying- people in the constituency. We had thousands of letters about expenses for example, a great surge of correspondence after the Baby P affair, and so on.
After a week of saturation press coverage about Ashcroft, what have we recieved? Two emails, one from a Lib Dem activist which is clearly a copy of a standard letter distributed by Cowley St, and one from a bewildered constituent wondering what the fuss is all about.
As we’ve had more letters calling for an end to the illegal trade in dog meat in the Phillippines than letters on Ashcroft, I think it’s fair to say that this is not an issue that has gained much traction in this particular marginal.
406
Belize North-West?
Afternoon all
I think there will be plenty of “odd” results this time with local swings or non-swings quite divergent from the national totals. I also think the Conservatives will pick up seats from Labour they don’t expect to and miss a few they thought they would win.
My only seat prediction is that East Ham will be a Labour hold with the Conservatives second.
Random musings - out over the weekend I thought the shopping centres looked busy and the JLoMos (Jobs, Low Mortgages) are still doing very well out of low interest rates. The day of reckoning may be at hand as some on here assert but it ain’t here yet.
I thought Nick Clegg’s comments this morning were slightly off the target. There’s little doubt there has been a strong undertone against a hung parliament from the City with claims of a run on sterling etc and the fear of that is being used as a weapon by the Tories but I don’t see an actual orchestration by CCHQ.
As OGH opined yesterday, the prospect of a Hung Parliament remains in the background. I believe a report recently criticised the lack of preparation for such an eventuality in the senior echelons of the Civil Service but the politicians are equally ill-prepared in my view.
@408 Peter Dunn March 8th, 2010 at 2:48 pm
Thanks for that Peter, it good to hear from someone in the know rather than the usual hsyteria.