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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It’s two years to the day before GE2015 and the latest Martin Baxter computation puts the probability of a CON majority at just 1 percent
It’s May 7th which means that it is exactly two years before the before the date laid down in the legislation introduced in October 2010 as the day of the next general election. There are provisions for this to be earlier but as long as the polling suggests that both coalition partners would get a drubbing it’s hard to envisage the circumstances in which this might happen.
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He gives Labour a 73.6% chance of regaining this seat from the Greens at the next GE, whereas those nice people at Paddy Power are currently offering odds of 6/5 against Labour, implying that they have only a 45.5% chance of winning. PP make the Greens an 8/13 odds-on favourite, rating them as having a 61.9% chance of winning.
A very considerable difference of opinion therefore between these two.
As it stands at the moment, the chances of Labour winning a majority is 81% with the Conservatives on 1%. What the majority would be, if any, is disputable.
In 2 years time things may be different. Cameron could have won a war in the Falklands.
I am frankly amazed that there is a 1% chance of the tories winning an election while about 8-9% behind in the polls. I would say that is completely impossible. Labour could win a majority whilst being behind in the popular vote (although not that much behind) but not the tories.
So the tories need to improve their polling to win. The things you learn on PB!
Lord Lawson calls for UK to exit EU
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22429790
"As Bob Monkhouse said - "They said I'd never be a comedian - they're not laughing now!"
"When I said I was going to be a comedian people laughed. They're not laughing now"
Part of this may be a drive to improve Cameron's hand in negotiations and also a strong determination to make it clear that we mean it when we say that interventions such as the FTT and proposed EU regulations are unacceptable. The government has already gone to the ECJ about this in exactly the way Osborne said we would if the euro block overreached themselves. That in itself is likely to put the matter beyond 2015 although not beyond 2017.
There is no question that our membership of the EU is a lot more finely balanced than it used to be. It really is not a simple question of whether we are in or out anymore but what sort of institution are we voting to stay "in". The way the EU has developed over the last 20 years is not to our advantage or tastes. I think it either reaches some accommodations on this or we go.
Ironically, it is the future of the euro that is the best chance of getting an EU we might like. If it were to break up the EU that emerged would be far more attractive. The latest German reservations about this are interesting in that context.
My daughter was married last Thursday in St Ives,it was glorious, my wife's family have a long association with Cornwall.
If we have no changes in the leadership of any party we will have a choice between several lackluster parties, and a UKIP manifesto that will fall under much more scrutiny.
You mentioned your lunching lefty friends were clueless about economics.
Do you have details ? I like to start the day off with some amusemement.
I would stay well clear for some time to come. If Spain were to leave the euro on the other hand...
The current UKIP vote is a vote for change. They have seem the impact of austerity, have seen how it is hurting them and then looked at Labour only see more of near enough the same (in a possibly less presentable package).
The idea that people are voting UKIP for an EU referendum is not accurate. If you look at the UKIP vote as the equivalent of a none of the above vote that will explain what the problem is.
How the parties go around and fix it I don't know but if all they offer is a referendum and a few other similar items its not going to help them get the missing votes back.
People are sick to death of the EU and no other party is seriously interested in opposing it.
I've got to agree with those who say these percentages are a little silly. 1% for a blue majority? I think it's unlikely, but not Jenson Button winning the world title unlikely.
In the last plugging news, Journey to Altmortis is now up on Amazon for the criminally generous £1.98 ($2.99): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Journey-to-Altmortis-ebook/dp/B00COAEOS8/
Of course, if you're poorer than a church mouse who has just had an enormous tax bill on the day his wife ran off with another mouse, taking all the cheese, you can use the code XK87G and buy it on Smashwords for just $1.02: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/313503
F1: I'm going to put up the early discussion thread later today.
What a depressing thought to wake up to.
There's a pretty polemic article in the DT from Brendan O'Neill re the Lefts attitude to disability and how its changed since WW2.
"If we are to believe Left-wing observers, the worst thing the government can say to a disabled person is: “You are fit for work.” Over the past two years of government trimming of welfare benefits, nothing has infuriated the pro-welfare, Tory-hating lobby more than cuts to disability and incapacity benefits, and the accompanying idea that it's better for disabled people to work for a living rather than live on state charity. Which is weird because, in the postwar period at least, the Left was at the forefront of arguing that disabled people should work rather than being viewed as “incapable” simply because of a physical or mental impairment. The Left’s recent reversion to an older, Dickensian view of disabled people as vulnerable and weak is a shocking about-face.
The language used by Leftists to describe disabled people is increasingly demeaning, like something out of one of those sensationalist Victorian “newspapers” that salaciously pored over the depravity of poor people’s lives. Concerned commentators tell us disabled people will be propelled into “destitution” by the government’s overhaul of disability benefits. They claim disabled people will commit suicide in droves if their benefits are changed or removed. They refer to disabled people as “the vulnerable”, as “this country’s most vulnerable people”..." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100215053/left-wing-activists-treatment-of-disabled-people-as-objects-of-pity-is-far-more-disgusting-than-anything-the-government-has-done/
And wasn't much of the recent Spanish property built without proper planning permission / not paying proper taxes / bribing local officials ?
Might be an excuse to levy some hefty fines if that property is now owned by nasty, vampiric foreigners ;-)
Tamerlane's not ancient, but being lame in one leg and one arm is still pretty difficult for a warlord.
The great problem is that for some disabled people working is impossible or very difficult indeed, whereas for others it's the very best thing they could do.
@BBCNormanS: Nick Clegg opposes EU referendum @bbcr4today cos not "address concerns most people want us to address" ie economy/squeeze
@DanHannanMEP: 'I think what people want is...' says Cliché Cleggie. Actually, 82% of voters want the In/Out referendum which he used to promise.
Ed, you're supposed to smile.
https://www.facebook.com/CountyDurhamLabourParty
Thanks to Andrea_Parma who spotted it first.
Nothing controls him now:
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/107179.html
Being serious, it really does seem like he's in a very good psychological state, and Mercedes is a different kettle of fish to McLaren.
Poor Clegg , his seemingly inevitable job on the EU Commission gravy train would cease to exist.
Spain Is Beyond Doomed: The 2 Scariest Unemployment Charts Ever
This is what a permanent underclass looks like.
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/04/spain-is-beyond-doomed-the-2-scariest-unemployment-charts-ever/275324/
Edited extra bit: to clarify, I mean that I think it can be withheld if an ex-EU employee doesn't basically do everything they possibly can to promote the EU. If we, say, had a referendum in this Parliament would that be an issue for Clegg (in pension terms)?
if they need "permission" to think then they're a bunch of dimwits who can't work things out for themselves.
Some up to date polling on several items in the UKIP manifesto would be interesting, and perhaps illuminate the discussion on whether their vote will hold up in a GE.
Re disability: since WW2 so many manual jobs that required full physical ability have disappeared and a lot have been replaced by seated, electronic employment - so the same "qualifications" for disability are no longer relevant. Our IT guru has ME, is a registered disabled, but does about three half days a week with us.
Of course there is an increase in people who say they are suffering from stress, but it can be nowhere near the same order of stress suffered by WW2 civilians who did not know from one day to the next whether they would be bombed out of their home or how many of their family would be left alive the next day - yet they worked more than a 40 hour week.
Plus think of what long-term 35% unemployment does to a place. That's what it was in the old mining towns in the North of England after Thatcherism. Except it's not just individual towns here, it's the whole damn region, with the rest of the country at 26% and growing.
Our voters will not be bothered that some expert is able to show that UKIP's numbers don't add up.
There were other reasons for voting UKIP, but none is easy for one of the established party leaders to counter.
"A cloud of uncertainty hangs over the whole question of whether Britain loses or gains economically by its continued membership of the EU.
Some of the world’s top economists disagree about the numbers, and it’s impossible to say what the ultimate political costs of pulling out could be.
On paper, Britain ought still to be able to trade freely with Europe, but would there be a backlash from Brussels designed to damage Britain’s interests if we turned our back on the single market?
What is fairly clear though, is that while Clegg’s right about the number of jobs dependent on trade with Europe, he should be very wary about suggesting that those jobs are automatically at risk if Britain’s relationship with the EU changes.
According to the people who did the research, talk of mass redundancies if Mr Cameron goes for a European exit strategy is just scaremongering."
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-what-happens-to-the-economy-if-we-pull-out-of-the-eu/8376
We on the Left welcome the Right's epiphany.
1. immigration
2. EU
3. unhappy with major parties
http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/05/03/immigration-and-europe-give-ukip-appeal/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-eu-official-british-mps-know-nothing-about-europe-and-pulling-out-of-the-eu-would-be-a-clear-disaster-for-britain-8605212.html
Some choice bits:
Mr Gucht, 59, said that talk of rejecting the greater clout offered by membership of the biggest trading bloc in the world was “a little bit cheap,” asking: “Why would you do it alone when you can do it together and get better results?
Right. Better results. Must be why Canada and Iceland have access to bigger free trade blocs than the EU does.
Next:
“You have a central bank that has the kind of absolute authority and powers to do whatever is needed to get out of an economic crisis and nevertheless they do not manage to do so,”
I laughed out loud at this. Because the ECB has been famously activist in this crisis. You know they cut their interest rates to 0.5% last week, just FOUR YEARS after the Bank of England did the same. What we'd give for that sort of system!
Eurocrats really do think anything connected to the EU is good, don't they? They are completely immune to the facts.
"A divide has opened in British politics. It is not between north and south, or left and right, but between hedgehogs and foxes.
Isaiah Berlin first popularized the idea (taken from a fragment of the Greek poet Archilochus) that "the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing." He used the notion to categorize the difference between various thinkers. But since last week's local-election upset for the U.K.'s major political parties, it is a way to understand our changing politics.
For some years, in Britain and the rest of Europe, politics has been dominated by foxes who knew (or at least pretended to know) many things. They were of varying quality: some sleek and impressive, others akin to those mangy specimens you find in cities. But whatever their attributes, the foxes also presided over a still-ongoing, continent-wide car crash. So today, in a time of apparently endless and insoluble crises, the attraction of those who know one big thing is very considerable. And if that one big thing happens to be the big thing of your day? Well then perhaps it is right that we've arrived at the age of the hedgehog.
Certainly there could be no better exemplar of a political hedgehog than U.K. Independence Party (UKIP) leader Nigel Farage. A plain-speaking, pint-drinking fellow, it is fair to say that he is not your typical bureaucrat. Yet In Thursday's local-council elections in England, UKIP won almost a quarter of the vote, becoming the third-largest political party in the country. By projected national share of the vote, that puts UKIP only two points behind the Conservatives and nearly 10 points ahead of the Liberal Democrats. What had been recently dismissed as a protest vote turns out to have been an attempt by a large portion of the British public to say something loud and clear.
UKIP's appeal and success have grown in recent years thanks to Mr. Farage's high-profile, full-frontal savagings of the foxes in Brussels. His plucky and bristling assaults on Herman von Rompuy, Catherine Ashton and the rest from his seat in the European Parliament have been mocked by his mainstream political counterparts. But they've also reflected a growing public intuition. For as Brussels and its foxes throughout Europe kept crashing the continent into walls, they also kept pretending that their way of ordering things—an undemocratic, increasingly expensive United States of Europe—was the only reasonable option. When critics began pointing out growing flaws that ought to have been impossible to ignore, the foxes (David Cameron for instance) chose to insult the dissenters and their own electorates instead of engaging with their concerns.... " http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323372504578464704081223308.html
However UKIP did lay a firm base in the area for further advancement. Those wishing away UKIPs May 2nd achievements have many, many, more disappointments to come.
I didn't realise that, not only does it assume we wouldn't sign FTAs elsewhere, but it also is based on the belief that we wouldn't have ANY EXPORTS AT ALL to the EU if we left! Clearly a ridiculous proposition. The author of the report has criticised interpreting in terms of job losses.
Nick Clegg is just outright lying about this, and must know it. People say the eurosceptics are dishonest regarding the odd leaflet's claims. But here we have possibly the most senior europhile in the country completely lying about a number to scaremonger as central to the case for staying in the EU. Is there any journalist worth his salt that will confront him about this in an interview?
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/67403000/jpg/_67403985_ukip_map_624.jpg
Vote share would be better.
EDIT
The England Expects blog produced a UKIP vote share map of the 2010 election.
http://englandexpects.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/vote-map-ukip-percentages.html
http://politicalbetting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/spain-early-discussion.html
Should be many upgrades, so the running order may shift slightly. That said, I don't expect (possibly excepting an unlikely McLaren resurrection) the battle at the sharp end to involve any other teams than Red Bull, Ferrari, Lotus and Mercedes.
"The BBC have a nice map showing density of elected councillors. There is a clear pattern to it."
Not too sure we require a map for thicky councillors. Just follow the trail of fruitcake wrappers !!
On Betfair, Raikkonen shouldn't be 8.2. Backed him with a little at about 7.4 or so a week or two ago. If I hadn't, I'd be very inclined to put a little on him at those odds.
IIRC Bob Monkhouse loathed Jimmy Tarbuck - I never ever liked him on any level. Bob's autobiog is a compelling read if a trifle too much at times. The list of those arrested is eye-popping. The revelations about Mr Hall stunned me - its Savile stuff re use of BBC premises.
Cliché Cleggie: "If we were to leave the EU we would jeopardise up to 3m jobs in this country..." Why not 6m? Or 12? The sillier the better.
Roger Helmer @RogerHelmerMEP
Nick Clegg is still claiming that leaving the EU "puts 3 million jobs at risk". He must know that this is quite simply untrue. It's a lie.
Clegg the liar will become a familiar refrain.
oh wait...
Now the EU is a total basketcase - we all have eyes, and can make up our own minds about it.
24% ~ 5-40 seats
28% ~ 79-188 seats
32% ~ 222-241 seats
36% ~ 256-405 seats
http://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/Analysis_UKIP.html
EDIT
"The calculations assume that UKIP support is fairly evenly distributed, or at least it is evenly created from defecting Conservative and Liberal Democrat voters. The calculations have not used local election results to estimate possible locations of heavy UKIP support. If UKIP support is concentrated, rather than being evenly spread, then they will get more MPs despite lower levels of popular support."
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh
No10 strategist, cited by @Rachelsylveste1:"In Eastleigh we tested to destruction the idea that we can win by trying to outbid Nigel Farage"
".....any changes achieved by David Cameron's attempts to renegotiate the terms of the UK's relations with the EU would be "inconsequential".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22429790
He likens any likely outcome to that which Harold Wilson achieved in 1975 which were so trivial no one today remembers what they were....
No surprise the nasty party's most inept spinner is going after the disabled.
No surprise a "serial labour voting" "floating voter" is glossing over the fact that they boasted about voting for Cammie in the locals and pretending to be kipper friendly now.
No surprise PBtories have learned nothing and are banging on about Europe and how upset they are over scare tactics.
Bit of a surprise they don't realise why that is so hilarious. ;^ )
"Labour votes to leave the EEC
A one-day conference held by the Labour Party to debate Britain's membership of Europe has voted by almost 2-1 to leave the European Economic Community.
The result underlines the deep splits within the party over the issue, which goes to a national referendum on 5 June."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/26/newsid_2503000/2503155.stm
But that's all gone away, hasn't it.....?
Won't they?
I can see worth in Darling saying something - but vanishingly so. Frankly, I don't give a fig what Lawson or any of the pre-97 lot have to say.