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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » On this day before Osborne’s 2012 Budget ICM had the Tories 3 points ahead, the last time any poll had a CON lead
If it should be that the Conservatives are not in government after the next general election then a lot of the blame will be attributed to the March 2012 budget and the way the government reacted in the weeks and months that followed.
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Correct. It is not so much that voters like competent politicians (they assume basic competence as an essential criterion for the job), it is that they dislike blatant incompetence. It is that characteristic of George Osborne that was on such public display in March 2012, and again in his fly-in/fly-out trip to Aberdeen on 11 February 2014, when he even refused to talk with journalists.
It was blatant incompetence that crippled the Scottish Labour Party under Jack McConnell, Wendy Alexander, Iain Gray and Johan Lamont. I remember the days when SLab regularly polled in the 50% ballpark. The ComRes Euro poll at the weekend had them on just 19%. That catastrophic and relatively sharp decline can be largely explained with one word: incompetence.
However, there is a silver lining for Tories: by themselves polling so badly in the last two years they have hindered the rise of the Yes vote in the IndyRef. If the small hints of a Lab -> Con swing that we have seen recently continue then it will be fascinating to see the effect on the IndyRef polling.
Now that politics is run by public school, PPE SpAds, I'm not sure any of the parties really understands the people who vote for them.
Instead it will whine about how rUK told lies, and ensured that the playing field wasn't level, and allowed/disallowed* postal voting, this disenfranchising Scots.
* delete at appropriate
So the Budget is tomorrow, but this budget's changes will only hit in April next year ( a month before the election? )
Are we thinking the marriage tax allowance is in this one?
Latest ICM (vs 2012)
Con: 35 (-4)
Lab: 38 (+2)
Lib Dem: 12 (-3)
UKIP: 9 (+8)
So the Tories have lost 10% of their support and the Lib Dems 20%.......(and let's not forget, 12 is a strong recent showing, the poll before would have shown a 33% drop....)
Surely this suggests dissatisfaction with the government in general, rather than reaction to any one specific event? Compared to voters, we rather tend to over analyse these things, attributing significance to events which suit our own workd view, but which may largely pass voters by.....
More people have left the Tories than Lib Dems.
The abandonment of the 50p tax rate destroyed this, and regardless of the economics of it ( and those who insist the higher rate cost money willfully ignore the manipulation of bonuses before it) it was proof of the top end paying for the damage they had created. Since it was ditched everything the government has done has been reframed - welfare cuts, attacks by bishops, mass fraud by DWP statements and on their jobs website, banker bonuses, 5 families having the same wealth as the bottom 20%, the growing realisation by millions that they can't afford food fuel and housing and the change in their shopping and spending habits accordingly - this all reflects badly on a government which seems disinterested in the majority in favour of the tiny majority. That the tiny majority happen to be the people who own and operate the Conservative Party is of course the same kind of fabulous coincidence as Blair exempting Formula One from fag advertising rules after Bernie made a donation to party coffers.
So the budget. I expect a giveaway tax cut - one was explicitly built into the 2010 budget - which I expect will target people like me who have been hit by the increasing amount of earnings taxed at 40% and the child benefit charge farce. That people like me are not struggling for survival as so many people are is of course the point - we *might* be persuaded to ignore the poor sick and needy if we have a few quid more as we did under Thatcha.
Funnily enough a minor regulation equalising the treatment of hot food was not mentioned, nor was the "charity tax" (the details of which I can't even remember, something to do with some loophole I think).
The major features were of course the cut in the top rate of tax, the elimination of the additional personal allowance for pensioners (pretty much the only time that the Coalition has been brave enough to take that lot on), the reductions in corporation tax and the means testing of CB. In short all of the main measures remain in force until this day and the perception of a budget that collapsed with numerous U turns is in reality completely inaccurate.
But perceptions count and the incredible feeding frenzy that erupted certainly marked the end of the Coalition's honeymoon period where they had had a very easy ride. The cutting the top rate of tax was by far the largest problem politically and remains so until this day despite the numerous ways that Osborne has clawed back that cut and then some.
The row over Andrew Marr's comments to the First Minister over Scottish independence highlights the danger of kowtowing to the SNP.
The mask finally slipped in the SNP’s determination to control what the broadcasters say about the independence referendum yesterday when Alex Salmond and his troops mounted a ferocious attack on Andrew Marr, effectively accusing him of bias against their plan to break up Britain.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/alancochrane/10701835/Its-time-the-BBC-stood-up-to-Alex-Salmond.html
There will be a lot of talk about the macro economic situation and how Britain is doing better than any western nation, there will be targetted micro measures aimed at unemployment "because we want to do more", there will be an emphasis on facilitating investment (which is already growing quite strongly) probably by increasing capital allowances for a defined period, there will be an improvement in credit arrangements for exports (because we want to do more again), there will probably be a gesture on fuel and whisky and in macro terms there will some deck chair reshuffling to keep Avery happy. There may be something about a higher Council tax band for very high value properties for the lib dems and there just might be a surprise on the minimum wage.
Any movement to reverse the substantial increase in those paying the 40% rate will be modest because it is too expensive and he needs the money. It is risky even to try because it will simply lead to lots of discussion about how this reverses only x% of those caught by the higher rate since 2010.
It will be a didn't he do well and steady as he goes budget. He may reannounce some equalisation of IT and NI again just to give people something to talk about but I don't believe this will be an exciting budget.
More interesting is what happens to the SNP should independence be achieved. My guess is that it would become defunct within 10 years; winning an overwhelming majority in the first Scottish GE, forming a coalition in the second and being wiped out in the third.
He ducked the issue and so had little left to do as chancellor but shuffle the petty cash, the 2012 budget was the result.
What is interesting about that ICM is how little the Labour score has changed over the two year period. This remains the Tories' biggest challenge. And it's worth noting that the LDs were on 15% too, which may indicate a drift back to them not necessarily hurting Labour too much (though, of course, a certain amount of drift back at the expense of Labour in the south outside London would be hugely welcome to Labour).
1. The Coalition 45% higher tax rate is 5 points higher than for all bar one month of the 13 years of the Labour government.
2. Overall the rich are paying more in tax than at any point of the Labour government.
3. The Coalition inherited not bright sunlit economic uplands but a stonking deficit that requires attending.
4. Despite woeful economic predictions from the Eds the British economy is growing apace and unemployment is tumbling.
5. The Coalition has targeted tax cuts at the working poor and will meet its pledge of raising the threshold to £10K.
.......................................................
Overall the record of the Coalition is a bloody sight better than most economists predicted and certainly Labour hoped for and frankly Labour supporters and their fellow travellers might have more credibility if they accepted some responsibility for handing over a "no money left" basket case to the present government and acknowledge that the Coalition Plan A is working.
If Osborne doesn't put some gimmes in the budget he's an idiot. This is his last chance to put money in voters pockets before the election and give them time to appreciate it.
Righties might not like it but a sizeable chunk of the electorate enjoy a bung. Osborne can play fast and loose this budget if it allows him to be reposnisble from 2015 onwards. If he doesn't get in, Balls is just going to spend what he saved up.
Being a politcal beast with his career dead if he doesn't win 2015 my guess is we'll have some populist freebies.
It'd be more interesting reading than the specs I need to read and understand today (grumbles to himself).
If Farage wants to fight a three-way marginal, I suggest he picks the one from your list which contains the fewest graduates. I am not being snotty - simply realistic. I don't suppose any Kipper who is also a Peebie will wish to argue that their Party is as attractive to graduates as the others.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/john-robertson/bbc-bias-and-scots-referendum-new-report
And his reply to the BBC response:
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/8679-uws-academic-responds-to-bbc-scotland-criticism-of-indy-news-study
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/mar/16/bbc-justify-andrew-marr-remarks-scotland-right-join-eu
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scottish-independence/10701331/Andrew-Marr-accused-of-bias-over-Scottish-independence.html
Mr Marr told Mr Salmond: “I think it would be quite hard to get back in, I have to say.”
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/alex-salmond-accuses-andrew-marr-of-personal-bias-1-3342579
This rather begs the question - Just how bad was the Kremlin vote rigging operation as those reported numbers broadly indicate not only a 100% ethnic Russian Yes but also a vast majority of ethnic Ukrainian and Tartars voted for annexation.
William Hague tells @BBCRadio4 on Ukraine crisis: "We’re not looking at military options here, this is not about a Crimean war."
That's, that then. For all the foreign ministers talk of dire consequences on the Russians. And the reason is that after all the cuts maiming the UK armed forces, sending them to the Crimea would really be like a new Charge of the Light Brigade.
I fully support the Scots in whatever decision they take. Should they chose divorce, I will still love them, and wish them the best for the future.
Should they chose to stay, I will be equally pleased.
This is a decision the Scottish people must take for themselves.
The child benefit farce may not be over. Looks like mass non-payment of the new Child Tax could be an issue...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/tax/10591211/Over-100000-parents-face-child-benefits-tax-fine.html
It is applicable to US, China, UN, EU and any other nation or organisation you care to name, even the mighty Scotland.
Some of us can actually think for ourselves - and my worry is that Scots are being sold independence on a false prospectus. Hence the hysterical reaction when Saint Eck is challenged by an apostate.....
I never denigrate Scotland.
The SNP is not Scotland.
As the government has in any event already lost the ground on the deficit, which it has barely shaved since coming to power, and is rattling up debt at an astonishing rate, he may calculate that he may as well go for the giveaway.
Some sort of childcare bung? Or - and this would be a shock but is an idea - restoring CB to universal status. The latter would have the ancillary effect of calming the gathering storm on non-payment, which I cite downthread.
http://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/john-robertson-oliver-huitson/interview-bbc-bias-bullying-and-scottish-referendum
The child benefit fiasco was touched upon briefly yesterday on the Marr show. Balls said they weren't in a position to restore it/rationalise it as yet, but would like to. More pressingly, the government may have a problem with mass non-payment of its Child Tax. This is probably down to a) ignorance and b) difficulties it setting up the tax oneself - as I discovered it is not automatic, you have to go through a large amount of government admin just so you can pay the government a relatively small amount in Child Tax.
JR: I see this as a clear case of bullying by a powerful corporation through direct threats to me, reporting me to senior staff in my university, and by shutting down almost all mainstream press through, presumably, calling in favours from newspaper editors.
I can see it now -BBC Scotland phones up the editors of the nationals and Scottish press asking them to suppress a report. They agree. Rather than printing a story that lets them go for the BBC with a vengeance.....
It seems that the pilots are getting blamed for the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370.
This is as expected as it is sad. Whilst all parties undoubtedly want the plane found, they will not necessarily want the blame.
So what do all sides want?
For Boeing, weather, a hijacking or crew error would be their 'best' outcome. They will not want the crash to have been caused - or even initiated or compounded by - a technical failure. It looks as though the 'weather' cause can more or less be rejected, CAT aside.
For Rolls Royce, they will not want a technical failure in their engines or associated systems. To be fair to them, that seems the one thing we can currently discount.
Malaysian Airlines will not want a technical failure caused by bad maintenance, or poor crew training.
The Malaysian government will not want it to be anything that reflects badly on them, for instance terrorists being able to board the plane due to lax security.
The one cause that would least dissatisfy all parties is the lone crazy pilot idea. It's not a technical failure on the plane or engines; it is not a security breach, and not a training error. People can just shrug and ask how they can screen out one man who might go crazy?
Accidents are rarely, if ever, caused by one factor alone. Even in acts of terrorism, there will be failures that allowed or even unwittingly aided the terrorists in their acts. People involved will always try to downgrade the minor causative factors that were their responsibility, and concentrate on the big headline 'cause'. For instance the Air France 447 crash is now seen as pilot error, and rightly so. But the failed pitot tubes that initiated the chain of events are slowly being forgotten.
The 'lone crazy pilot' theory allows everyone to escape with the most face saved.
In the absence of information, the organisations will veer towards blaming the pilots. This has happened in the past, only for a technical failure to be uncovered after other crashes and fatalities. For instance, the Boeing 737 rudder issues (1).
Remember this when you read about the story, and ask if this story is going the way the various organisations want it to go.
(For clarity, I do not reject any one hyposthesis - aside from the alien kidnapping one! But my money is on a cockpit electrical fire that slowly knocked out various systems and made the plane increasingly unflyable. But even this does not seem to fit all the 'facts' that appear to have become known).
(1): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_rudder_issues
Very few, even on the fringes of the neo-con universe, have actively proposed a military response. No one seriously believes we are going to risk a military confrontation with Russia for the sake of the Crimea which seems pretty keen about being part of Russia anyway. The analogy is less Munich than the Anschluss.
Perhaps there's a view that had we done something serious and military in the Black Sea that Putin would have run away tail between his legs. Possible but is it worth the risk that he wouldn't and we'd have faced dangerous escalation ?
As for the Budget, I've said on here before that Chancellors fall into one or two groups - they are either "political" Chancellors who see the execution of macro-economic policy either as a vehicle for their own political advancement or as a mechanism for the continuation of their administration and on the other hand "economic" Chancellors who care little for the politics but use economic policy to forward their own ideology or theory as to how said economy should best progress for the benefit of either a) the many or b) the few.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-independence-alex-salmond-accuses-3251150
1 day 1 minute 1 second
I hope he's learnt his lesson on leaks.
Possibly more damaging is all this debate over the 40p tax threshold which the Daily Mail (I think) described as a "storm" - one of its own making, I think. But poisonous nevertheless.
PS. Regardless of how this one turns out, there's a genuine security problem here we can call the Cockpit Door Principle: Measures to reduce threats from outsiders tend to increase threats from insiders. See also surveillance etc etc.
The coincidence of the plane dropping off radar, the transponder shutdown and the pilot communication just at handover between Malaysian Air Traffic and Vietnam Air Traffic suggests strongly that there was a hostile takeover of the plane rather than a mechanical problem. I am surprise however that the focus is purely on the pilot(s) rather than any of the passengers.
The political difficulty is in calibrating the extent to which he says we're on the mend and it's time to start rewarding people. Just a little bit of generosity too much and people will get a "problem solved" message and the "vote Tory to cut the deficit" message will become harder. Crimea invited any election observers who wanted to come (though not the OSCE, who aren't election observers). There were a couple of dozen, but mostly eccentric and/or nationalist MPs from various countries (e.g. someone from the far-right Jobbik in Hungary).
I'm sure there was a bit of fiddling (e.g. some Russian nationals getting to vote) but they didn't really need to bother - nobody doubts the view of the majority in Crimea, and the West is in no way pressing for a rerun of the vote. The issue is thoroughly confusing the usual party lines - Crimea finds sympathisers from the far left (Russia vs NATO, say no more), the far right (ethnic nationalism yeah, man) and moderates who put self-determination above territorial integrity. The critics include cold warriors (we must cut back Putin and move NATO eastwards), and moderates who like the style of the more moderate Ukranians and put territorial integrity first.
Whether Osborne had given such coded messages I don't know but what I do know is that he couldn't deliver because, I suspect, Clegg and Alexander (not surprisingly) but even David Cameron thought it was the wrong message at a time of recession.
I have no evidence for this but I suspect relations between Osborne and Cameron have never recovered from that for all their public bonhomie (Blair and Brown could do that too). This year, the push is on the 40p tax threshold - it will be fascinating to see if that gets any traction in the Budget statement.
He says, "telling the viewer that the debate over living standards, employment and taxation was the only debate anyone cared about. No evidence for this view was given."
This is showing extreme naivety in that, are not living standards, employment and taxation the primary and most important interests to the electorate. Nowadays in a global economy most people want those facts and long term trends spelt out in detail.
Surely this academic must be living in such a closeted society which is so well protected from the normal economic winds of change that he is unqualified to do such a study. Let him walk out into the street to find the evidence he needs for this view - or would that be a too foreign experience for him.
This offends my libertarian principles. *However*, if it means that I can just carry one charger for all my Apple and Android kit, I will be a happy bunny.
http://www.newsnetscotland.com/index.php/scottish-opinion/8894-zeppelin-stories-double-standards-and-andrew-marr
Obviously from a pro-indy site but it will at least make a change from the DT!
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/16/passive-tolerance-beacon-hope-diverse-communities
http://tinyurl.com/indyrefflyer
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26543755
Confidence was in the dumps, the eurozone crisis was in full swing and the economy was teetering on the edge.
While reform may have been a desireable objective, there was huge execution risk and substantial downside should a dramatic package of reforms (eg breaking up the banks) have been announced.
The downside was very very substantial - whereas the reforms will be carried out, but over a longer time period than ideal (assuming the Tories are reelected)
ISTR that many flights go for long periods outside of ATC, with no radar contact and only occasional message sent. Things are different over international waters than over land, where you can expect semi-decent radar coverage. It's why AF447 (and indeed this flight) were not missed until well after they should have reached land.
I still just about favour cascading electrical failures taking out various systems including the radios. An electrical fire in the cockpit (as has happened on a 777 in the past) would cause all sorts of chaos. It's unlikely, but no more unlikely than any of the other solutions.
'It won’t be presented by Andrew Marr, a fine journalist like James Naughtie who sought fame in London and found it. The problem here it seems is one of assimilation because after 25 or 30 years absorbing London culture and learning about it, embedding themselves there and bringing up families, they lose some aspect of what makes them Scots.
Is it not the same principe that applies to immigrants to Scotland? They adjust and acclimatise and are no longer the same people who left another country through time. It is a natural process but we make the mistake if assuming London or England is the same country when it is not. But like all diaspora they develop a confused impression of their identity and blame the rest of us for not sharing their view. Presenters are notoriously egotistical and are allowed to puff up their egos until they become bullies and Big shots. They think they are bigger than the people they interview. Marr blew his Barroso interview and he now knows it. The lack if a follow up to find out what legal process would follow a Yes vote was inexcusable and laughable. Yesterday he was trying to cover that failing up but made a worse mess by giving us the Marr Declaration on the EU and was embarrassed by Salmond. It is the triumph of vanity over talent. And it is noticeable that the London Scots treat Salmnod with contempt, with a different tone from the one applied to Cameron.'
http://tinyurl.com/qb2gb7j
Still, what does he know?
Why not just make everyone use the same charger? It's for convenience more than anything - so you don't get stranded when away from home.
Scotland is not a member of the EU - the UK is.
If Scotland votes to leave the UK, it votes to leave the EU......
Somehow pointing this out upsets St Eck and his believers......