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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » David Herdson says that there’s never a good election to lo
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » David Herdson says that there’s never a good election to lose
One pre-election tradition that has been little honoured so far is hearing the assertion it will be a ‘good one to lose’. Invariably, those who put that argument forward fall into one or both of two overlapping groups:
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2006 was probably in hindsight the last good one to lose.
OT The Court of Appeal (Gross LJ, Simon & Burnett JJ) will tomorrow hand down its judgment in Regina v AB & CD. The appellants impugn directions of Mr Justice Nicol, purportedly issued under the inherent jurisdiction of the Central Criminal Court, which will exclude the public from the entirety of the trial of AB and CD. It should be noted that tomorrow's decision of the Court of Appeal is final, and no appeal lies therefrom to the Supreme Court.
Yes 5.4
No 1.22
Getting back into silly territory. The fat lady has not sung yet.
On topic, I'd agree in general, save that I think that 1992 was without doubt an election the Conservatives would have been better to lose. It led to the catastrophe of 1997, from which the Conservatives have never really recovered.
FPT, I'm not at all convinced that the defeat of a machine politican like Eric Cantor, by someone who ran his campaign on a shoestring, is necessarily a bad thing for the Republicans.
Nor am I convinced that they're doomed to eternal defeat. They hold the House, most State Governorships and Legislatures, and will probably hold the Senate after November's election.
Bugger ....
...............................................................
Broadly agree with Herders, my only recent caveat was that 1992 was a decent one for Labour to lose.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-27793967
The only real example I can think of is 1992, where Major 'won' but was so weakened anyway that the government stumbled on losing credibility.
But we're getting into the realms of fantasy alternative realities aren't we. What would have happened under PM Kinnock? Would we have had John Smith, and then New Labour/Blair? Maybe not, but who knows.
Would the tories have got back into power before 2010 if they had lost in 1992? Maybe, maybe not, who knows? We could and could easily see us being fully in Europe, and part of the Euro for example.
The trouble is that, even if you get the first bit right, and the bad stuff does come as expected, things rarely work out thereafter in the way you'd anticipated. There are just too many uncertainties.
Bloody trains from London .... it was meant to be the Orient Express !!
And by the way, ISIS has captured the Turkish consulate in Iraq holding the staff and the consul hostage and are in the process of encircling Baghdad. Not long for a major war in the middle east to break out now.
Charity involved in JK Rowling tweet now says its Twitter account was "hacked" and is not responsible: http://www.thedignityproject.org.uk
Oops.
'DISCLAIMER
The Dignity Project
Has had it's Twitter account hacked
We are not responsible for any tweets that have been sent.
As a charity we do not take any political stance and our opinion is people are free to donate to whoever they choose.
To the people who hacked our account if helping African children to thrive and survive including single mums is bad thing that is their problem.'
Must have been Nasty Nats pretending to be Better Together agents provocateurs pretending to be Nasty Nats.
Or something like that.
If things haven't changed yet, what will change it. The only hope the YES camp have is that either something 'unexpected' happens, or they can just pull it off on the day by people voting YES being more motivated to vote.
Obama won't want to touch Iraq again with a barge pole unless he has to somehow.
Then again, if Kinnock had won in 1992, he would not have privatised British Rail, or British Coal, or British Energy, etc. The impetus for New Labour would not have been created by the crushing emotional blow of losing the 1992 general election, etc.
Although Black Wednesday would have occurred on Labour's watch there are so many things that would have been different that it's hard to know how things would have turned out.
The only things we can know for certain is that Labour morale would have been boosted by victory in 1992, and much of the legislation brought in by Major in 1992-1997 would not have reached the statute book. After that it's all guesswork.
The same is, I think, true for Labour in 2005. Sure, you could argue that defeat then would have lanced the boil of Blair and Iraq, and would have avoided Labour being in charge when the Credit Crunch hit. However, I'm guessing that the internecine warfare between Brownites and Blairites following a 2005 GE election defeat would have been intense. It may have lead to Brown as leader of the Opposition contesting the 2010 general election, and there would have been five years of Michael Howard as PM and possibly Oliver Letwin of all people as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
If the Conservatives have failed to recover from their defeat in 1997 that is less to do with the fact that they were in Government for the years 1992-1997 and more due to the fact that they made mistakes in the years that followed.
On the Tories winning in 1992, I doubt the Conservative Party would have been much better off even if it had lost and gone into opposition. I could see it being ripped apart by the same wet/dry Eurosceptic/Europhile divisions that overcame it in government. All the rawness of ousting Thatcher 18 months earlier would have been there to rub salt into the wound, and the attempt to position on Maastrict would have exacerbated that.
We assume that Labour would have suffered their own Black Wednesday and crashed out of the ERM, and been blamed for it, but that's not necessarily true. They could have blamed the Tories for locking them in at 'the wrong rate'. They could have dropped out of ERM earlier, rather than trying to prop it up with interest rates. They might also have signed us up to Schengen and the Euro. Reforms of the NHS and Education may have been popular. Labour might easily have won again on the back of an improving economy in 1997 etc.
I think the only two things you can say with any certainty is that: (1) 1992 made New Labour inevitable (for better or worse) and (2) Not unrelated to (1) set the chain of events in motion that (a) led to a growing Lib Dem performance in several historically safe Tory seats and (b) led to the near Tory wipeout in 1997.
2005 was probably a good one for the Conservatives to lose because at least it meant Brown had to face up to his own "no more boom and bust" hubris.
2015 WON'T be a good to lose though. The economy is on the up and all the hard work should start paying dividends in the next Parliament.
The major exceptions tend to be "tired" governments that have run out of decent ministers through attrition - 1992 is the obvious case and 2010 is the potential one, without a full verdict in place yet. Certainly for the left of the Labour Party / the Trade Unions it's been a good one to lose so far, but they need to get their man in next year otherwise it will all crumble away. 1983 may yet be an instructive comparison.
Don't think Nige will like that
Sometimes I think the world would be better off if a few nukes just levelled most of the middle east (not that I'm really saying that would a good thing of course!).
We have the 700th anniversary of the Battle of Bannockburn, we have the Commonwealth Games (where Scotland will be competing as a separate nation, in Glasgow) and we have the late swing effect that Salmond has already pulled off once before. I also think YES are more motivated to vote and have (by all accounts) a better organised GOTV operation.
All it takes is a couple of narrow polls and the odds could move out. If they do, I'll jump in. If not, I won't be putting any more money on at these prices. There's better value in the turnout and YES vote band markets.
But as others have said 1992 was a very bad election for the Tories to win. Not much sympathy for them though given that Major was responsible for the idiocy that laid the groundwork for White Wednesday.
Since I asked for a new thread and got one I feel obliged to comment (tl;dr, aside)
There was a Hunter S Thompson novel that was very much concerned with this theory -
I can't remember if it was Better Than Sex or another or both.
Anyway - there's my comment.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/06/salmond-cybernats-and-a-row-that-could-be-one-of-the-key-moments-of-the-independence-referendum-campaign/
Oops - sorry if that was rude.
For uninitiated the joke is-
Did you hear about the man who went to the bar and asked the barmaid for an innuendo? And she gave him one.
Thank you, David, for the piece. Thought-provoking as always.
I would contend that defeat is part of evolution - no Party can stay in power forever however much its supporters might desire such an outcome. How parties deal with defeat is as important (if not more so) than how they deal with history.
It took repeated election defeats for Labour and then the Conservatives to begin to understand what had happened and to move forward with new leaders completely unassociated with the policies and the Governments that had been so decisively rejected.
John Smith, before his untimely death, had continued the reform process begun by Kinnock and completed by Blair which transformed the Labour Party of 1997 into a non-socialist party of the centre or centre-left for which millions of former Conservative supporters could now vote.
Likewise, it took three defeats before the Conservatives chose David Cameron, an event which destroyed the Liberal Democrats in Opposition and later Government since Cameron persuaded many former Lib Dem and Labour supporters that the Conservative Party was a non-ideological party of the centre or centre-right.
They are hacked off with Obama, not focused on Mosul (more concerned about Syria, but think that this is entirely down to Obama's failure to enforce his red lines) and highly amused by Eric Cantor.
Any of the above may or may not be reflective of the fact that they are closely associated with the Clinton 2016 campaign....
And it's no accident that Rowlings donation was announced today.
There's no guarantee that a party will make the best use of that power over their political destiny, which is what I think the 1992-97 Major Government demonstrates, rather than the 1992 election being a bad election to win.
It's always better to be in charge, even if sometimes when you are in charge you mess it up. The problem was not that you were in charge at a bad time, but that you messed it up.
Damn - I never said I didn't need an editor.
I used to get told off for my tense's and only got a 3 (GCSE = C ish) - Please don't ban me.
Thanks for your concern.
Hugo Rifkind @hugorifkind · 3h
Re Rowling, would note I've written many "no" #indyref pieces and bulk of feedback has been entirely restrained. Ukip on the other hand...
Anyone else think Italy are generously priced at 9/5 (Bet365, Bet Victor, etc.) to defeat England on Saturday? Those odds appear to me to have around a 20% patriotic bias.
I'll get me coat.
Good luck everyone!!!
If there are people offended by la Rowling they are Half the World Away from me. Am I getting the hang of it yet???
On Iraq, I really cannot see any democratic country being willing too send troops there again any time soon. However, I feel enormously sorry for the ordinary Iraqi in the street.
If there is an after-life, I hate to think what tortures Dubya will undergo there as a consequence of his ill-thought-out actions.
Edit - I edited the above - I cannot explain how I make those kind of errors
On JK Rowling, the more important contribution she has made to the campaign is to stir the disgust at those who have used such foul abuse against her. They do their side no credit. For the record I am not aware of similar abuse by unionists but if it exists I condemn that too.
One of the many worries about this campaign is that it has divided Scotland more fiercely than any political issue I can recall. Scotland will not be the same when this is over whatever the result.
Quite enjoyed the Wings reaction to the smirking, patronising, English-born, title-seeking, war-criminal-supporting JK Rowling's privileged, ill-informed, dangerous attack on single mums, from the comfort of her leylandii-surrounded cathedral-standard stone mansion. I particularly liked the insinuation that the donation was illegal because she isn't registered with the Electoral Commission, and besides, the million pounds wasn't hers anyway - it actually belonged to other people, who decided it would make more publicity sense to use her name to front it.
I'm not too keen on this nationalism lark in general ("civic" or otherwise, and regardless of national flavour), but on balance if I were living in Scotland I would probably be a Yes voter. Very wealthy donors ploughing money into a cause is the kind of thing that puts me right off, especially if there's a lingering suspicion that they are supporting something that they would calculate makes them better off. But for all that, should the indy polls prove accurate on the big day, I am going to get some bemused enjoyment from the ensuing meltdown and accompanying cognitive dissonance.
Conservatives win, having up to then been committed to Labour's spending plans and having called for even further deregulation of the financial markets. Brown leaves with reputation for financial competence more or less intact, pointing to continual growth since 1997. Osborne proceeds to cut inheritance tax etc.
World financial catastrophe ensues in 2008. Conservatives either react much as Brown did or alternatively go for austerity and fail to support the banking sector.
Labour gets back in 2012, pledged to clear up the "Tory mess".
79% of all funding at the time of this report: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/may/11/euromillions-lottery-winners-colin-chris-weir-donate-bulk-yes-scotland-pro-independence-campaign
And I understand that they have given more since.
On topic, I agree with David of course. But then, nobody tries to lose an election (except NI21?). Perhaps some people might choose to conserve their energy - or more likely, in the case of donors, to conserve their resources rather than chase a lost cause.
For me 2010 remains a mystery, since there were theoretically greater benefits attached to losing that election than many in recent memory. Yet few of those benefits seem to have come to fruition. A definitive judgment can't be made on that til 2015, but I wonder if failure to take advantage reflects a weakness in Labour strategy, the unanticipated event of the UKIP Storm, or many of those supposed benefits simply having been a mirage in the first place. In this case, losing the election didn't necessarily mean ceding control of the narrative, since the narrative was bound to be austerity and in principle that should have played into Labour's hands.
But if by "Tory mythology" you mean the idea that a timeline involving a 1997 Tory win post-PM Kinnock would somehow have given us a vastly different, more-1950s country today - well, I'd have to agree that that's unlikely.
Thatcher went bonkers after her third victory and had to be dragged out by the men in white coats. Major's unexpected victory in 1992 merely ensured that the pendulum, when it finally swung, would lop off the heads of about twice as many Tory MPs as normal, presaging a long, arduous road to recovery, an extended period in Opposition, and the painful search for a viable leader...
The 1997 meltdown also meant the spoils of the bloated Opposition victory were shared by the LibDems for the first time, more than doubling their representation, and significantly altering the way the electoral system would work in future. When the goddess of victory finally smiled again on the Tories in 2010, the prize came with a fairly hefty catch - the only route to an extended period in government would be via coalition...
But I'm not the type of chap to let that stop me commenting!!
People Who Want To Lose Deserve To Get What They Ask For
Herdson's trying to give us all a team talk before the world cup!!!
Yeah!!!!
http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/exclusive-ukip-surge-is-costing-labour-as-many-votes-as-tories-research-suggests-9523847.html
Quote: "Its research found that Labour’s lead in nine parliamentary seats would be lost if the results of last month’s council elections were repeated next year....The Fabians fear this “Ukip effect” could deny Labour victory in dozens of the crucial Lab-Con marginals that will decide the election."
As I said before and got accused of writing "drivel" the UKIP surge (in the southwest especially) is coming from former Liberal voters more than ex tory voters, the tory vote is holding up quite well, and this will cost the Liberal party dear.
Even Yeovil, majority 13,000, is not safe based on the Euro elections and could go three ways. Even if Laws holds on they will need to spend valuable on the ground manpower defending him, which will mean less resources for defending the other seats in the SW which are more vulnerable.
Further, I would argue that a lot of the bad things that happened to Major's government during that term were not inevitable consequences that followed from winning the 1992 general election, but were the result of bad judgements made by numerous Conservative politicians.
This is reminding me of the self-help mantra about seeing failure as a necessary precondition for success. Being too scared of failure to try anything new makes success impossible. Being too scared of doing the wrong things in government to prefer to be in opposition similarly makes political success impossible. It's indicative of a lack of nerve.
The Weirs, on the same basis, can do what what they like with the money they won. Whether they, or anyone else, should have been able to win that sort of money is a different argument.
Yes quite aware, though I would have found that far less troubling. Lottery winners are almost the very definition of "ordinary people who chanced upon lots of money". Had their means been more limited, they would have made a smaller donation; I doubt they made their larger one out of self-interest. I have much more unease about the intersecting circles of cultural, economic and political movers-and-shakers. Being merely one of the moved and shaken, there is a chasm between me and the great and connected. I don't like the sensation of issues being played out above me, particularly when the players themselves have deeply vested interests in the game. It's one reason for my distaste at the entire political class: they who speak for the people, but are not of them.
The good thing about elections, and perhaps even more so a referendum, is that the people get a chance to speak for themselves for once. And many of us do not like the feeling that our voices are being bought. More so when those trying to requisition our support are disconnected from us, and have a personal as well as partisan interest in persuading us.
Erm it's being raised in line with the Low Pay Commission recommendation. So are Labour saying they'd abolish the LPC or simply make it an irrelevance. Also this campaign doesn't seem to have an idea by how much they want it raised, a 1p increase would presumably satisfy the demands of the campaign.
I don't see the problems of the next government the same way you do. I think that there will be pretty much record housebuilding over the next 5 years with fairly minimal government involvement.
The problem will be dealing with the issues that Osborne has not managed to deal with in this Parliament. We have a tremendous deficit and no great ideas how to close it. It is now self evident that record employment and rapid growth alone are not going to be nearly enough.
The fiscal plans of this government include a lot of deeply unpleasant choices in the next Parliament but I suspect that politicians of all parties will be somewhat reluctant to talk about the extent of these problems until the election is safely over.
1997 New UK Prime Minister Ken Clarke and Chancellor Portillo commit the UK to Euro entry. right wing splits to form new party UKIP.
2001 After GE, opposition leader Gordon Brown commits "New Labour" to Euro exit citing Maude's economic madness
2003 Tory party splits (again) following Clarke opposition to Iraq war.
2005 Split Tory party 'wins' election as largest party, governs in coalition with Lib Dems.
2008 Following economic crisis, coalition breaks down, snap GE. Labour landslide.
2018 Chancellor Blair becomes PM after record breaking Brown steps down
As today's truly stunning employment figures show all too clearly we have no problem at all in creating employment at the moment; we have a major problem with low pay and the cost of in work benefits.
Guardian: David Cameron's spokesman said on Wednesday it was up to consumers whether they choose to eat prawns that had been produced through the work of slaves.
What the spokesman actually said (as reported in the very same Guardian article!):
Asked whether supermarkets should stop stocking seafood produced with the help of forced labour, Cameron's spokesman said: "Consumer standards and retail standards and social responsibility is often driven by consumers and rightly so."
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2014/jun/11/slavery-prawns-thailand-supermarkets-labour
It didn't quite turn out that way.
I am far from convinced that either party will be able to see through the spending cuts or tax increases that would be necessary to eliminate the deficit after the next general election.
I agree with you about the challenges the next government will face with you in respect of the deficit. Like you I wonder if the scale of cuts contemplated is simply politically possible. I suspect we will see more tax rises.
Well you could use it to collate information on which to base the decision. But you're probably right, it should be abolished.
Europe's pool of labour is like fitting a giant turbo to UK growth. We could have a huge boom without significant wage inflation, in contrast to the booms of the past (such as the Lawson boom).
Would wages pick up even if growth got to chinese or Indian levels? I'm no expert, but I guess its conceivable they might not.
I will give Briskin points to anyone, other than Smarmy, willing to admit to the same.