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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » After last night’s Survation poll with Ukip just 2pc behind the Tories today’s YouGov has the gap at 17pc
The first YouGov poll to be carried out after the “loongate” story blew up has a dramatically different picture than Survation last night.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6wzGpFKUQ
I cannot deny for a moment that these absurd episodes are doing real damage to the government in general and Cameron in particular. Once upon a time the tories had the self discipline and self control to simply ignore such nonsense but we live in a more febrile age.
Plebgate went on for weeks and it is all too likely this story too will run for a while yet. Those that want stable, real world, economically sane government really need to get a grip of themselves and reflect on who and what drives this. They are not your friends.
I don't think anyone can seriously doubt it to be fair. It's a question of who gets prompted and why. Like with the debates there are going to be serious questions for all pollsters to deal with if the kippers maintain a high polling, particularly if it is higher than the lib dems. That there are reasons around having MPs and being able to win seats will not stop those questions.
As for how this poll will play into the current farce around Cammie and the tories, I presume if reason and cool heads were the dominant force in the tory party right now then they would take both polls into consideration, weigh up the consequences and rationally decide on a course of action. Problem being panic is the now the default response of backbenchers and a weak an incompetent leadership show no sign of being able to stop them running around like headless chickens, banging on about Europe and lashing out against policies.
When Brown's administration was falling apart, and the rumours around his leadership and challengers were in full flow and all over the newpapers, the volume of petulant cries and whining about the meeja having it in for him from labour spinners were always a good indicator of just how badly things were going for them. "tittle tattle" was usually the default denial and refusal to acknowledge the shabolic nature of any given situation from the spinners. How things have changed... John Major never had to deal with an unsympathetic meeja either.;^ )
The real question is will the tories be dumb enough to keep banging on about the EU. They've already done it for months when it was blatantly obvious it would only help the kippers so it's far from certain they even know how to stop now. They have Diane James but Farage loves the limelight. It'll matter in 2015 but it sure isn't going to matter much now unless they are challenged on things other than their pet subjects like the EU, welfare or immigration. Not very likely as long as Crosby and Osbrowne are still intent on doing all the kippers work for them with yet more inept master strategising.
The kippers were working from a 2010 base of 3%. They triple that and it's a huge step forward for them but FPTP won't be kind unless it's a fair bit higher even than that.
Welcome newbie .... would you care for a stay at Auchentennach and meet a nice old gentleman and have a taste of some fine pies ??
I think the Tories problems are more prosaic. The skills required to be a Prime minister are different from those required to be a PR man and though in this age of tinsel and glitter Cameron's qualifications seem ideal I think he's discovering (as am I) that there's more to being PM than PR (and I say this as someone who generally believes that that presentation in politics is all)
Perhaps he's discovering the old lawyer's maxim that 'one who acts for himself has a fool for a client'
I'd like to know if we can expect breeding or fighting between GOS and Mick Pork.
I was listening to it last night and I couldn't get out of my head how appropriate it was
(and it's brilliant-a cross between Dylan and Lou Reed)
DC is or at least looks weak, which comes to the same thing. He’s weak because he never grasped the nettle from the start to be a strong PM rather than a good Coalition PM and this has affected every decision he’s made since and explains all the flip-flops.
Of course that said the reality remains that he didn’t win the election so his options were always limited and perhaps his current predicament is just how it is to be a Coalition PM.
That said, we have the Gay Marriage bill, he introduced it and it passed. In time, it will come to be seen as a defining detoxification issue which David Cameron pushed through (only geeks will remember the exact divisions). So he has and is pushing the “right” agenda. Which gives confidence (if you are a tory..) that he will emerge from his cocoon. But right now, he is cautious, if not fearful not only of his coalition partner but of his party also.
Rebels, loyalists and activists are waiting for him to take the gloves off. Tories will quickly be whipped into line with a strong leader. The concern of course (and it’s increasing) is that there is a blancmange fist under the velvet glove.
Are some keeping their powder dry or do they realize that the game is up ??
Also, the Conservative leadership appears to be convinced that immigration is the principal reason for the rise of UKIP. Can they win back UKIP voters by getting tough on immigration?
Not new Jack -just sleeping!
OT can I recommend Tio Pepe's En Rama http://tinyurl.com/mwewgxc - unfiltered short life sherry, to wash down your pies.
"Isn't it more the case that a lot of Tory MPs and members would actually feel more comfortable with UKIP?!
MPs? Nope. They can defect at any time. How many have? Even including the swivel eyed loons like Dorries and Co?
Members? Same applies but we know they are losing members and activists to the kippers so it's clearly a problem.
" It's not panic driving them, it's total contempt for Cameron and co. It's contempt coupled with cowardice - they do not have the courage of their convictions."
They certainly have no fondness for Cammie and few can seriously doubt their contempt is matched by his contempt for them. However, panic is driving them. They are on the receiving end of the wrath of their local constituency associations and we saw just how terrified so many of them are of that anger and a rising kipper vote last night.
Southam said
"Isn't it more the case that a lot of Tory MPs and members would actually feel more comfortable with UKIP? It's not panic driving them, it's total contempt for Cameron and co. It's contempt coupled with cowardice - they do not have the courage of their convictions".
I am not quite sure what you mean by that last sentence. I don't recall a third of the parliamentary party regularly rebelling in the Major years. Although the payroll vote is smaller now that is still a pretty damning figure. It may appear some are obsessing about UKIP but of course if you occupy a safe Tory seat, UKIP present the first real threat to your previously comfortable incumbency and are therefore are more likely to be on your radar than Labour or the Lib Dems.
Just like Thatcher is given so much credit for having legalised homosexuality in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
30% sounds reasonably robust! Take away those on the payroll and the Tory gays and you are probably talking 50%. Is there a word like 'fratricide' or 'matricide' when describing the killing of your leader?
" Ed Miliband is presiding over a slow-motion slump in Labour support." slowly but surely Ed's choking Labour.
Despite the vocal opposition of a sizable minority it's notable how quickly gay law reforms have passed into the publically accepted canon of social reform. The list is extensive :
1. Equalization of the age of consent.
2. Gay adoption
3. Gays in the military
4. Provision of goods and services
5. Civil Partnerships
And soon gay marriage which will surely join them in short measure as a relatively uncontroversial feature of daily life for a large majority of our citizens.
We are IMHO a much better country for it.
hope so.
And we're of course not going to mention in the same sentence the words/phrases "in power"..."13 years"..."did f*** all about it" are we...
"Not new Jack -just sleeping!"
From this mornings contribution it's more like snoring very loudly
30% on a free vote is low for Conservatives on such a measure. There was also a number of Labour MP's, I think about a dozen mostly RC members, who defied their whipped vote.
Individually some of these policies are good but they're lost in the noise and there's no coherence. As I said last night: more focus is needed.
I don't remember the 1980s being a time when the public were screaming out for gay rights, nor do I remember the Conservatives being at the vanguard of it, quite the reverse.
The result is that they won't let the party move to the centre, where it needs to go to win.
Oh yes, and the deficit is going to be reduced.
Firstly welcome - and you are exactly right in your thinking. To understand today's politics and the way the electorate are thinking and behaving - you have to "sit in their chair" and understand their viewpoint - whether you agree with it or not. It is no good sitting in a bunker and just quoting the polls 24/7.
However, we have seen that many voters are very loyal to their parties and to some. voting for another party (even though it may be the best option) is anathema to them and their ilk. So whilst I expect UKIP to do very well in 2014, I do see a creep back by many 2014 rebels to their traditional parties in 2015 - just because of some perverse loyalty and also a touch of "the devil,you know."
my (modest) point was that someone said that MT didn't get credit for decriminalising homosexuality I pointed out that as she was PM for the next 10 years it didn't do her any harm.
No comment on the love or not for her in NI or Scotland.
It would appear that the main beneficiary of the ID weightings is the LibDems - up by 26% - and the None/Don't Knows. The Cons and Labour are hardly affected by the weightings.
So are the LibDems really in a worse place than the polls show and could in fact reach a steady 5%. It might well be that Clegg's now near constant dissembling is not helping them.
1. Cameron's and Osborne's support for gay marriage predates Romney's run for the GOP nomination.
2. The "rich" are paying more in tax than for 12 years 9 months of the Labour governments 13 years in power.
Next ....
MPs with large majorities have a well-paid job for life and they're not going to risk them for here-today, gone-tomorrow governments. If their tantrum destabilises their own party, so what? The important thing is to keep their associations sweet.
What can Cameron really do to them? They have few ambitions anyway. They probably agree with their local associations.
The Labour rebels included Joe Benton. He 's 75 and MP for Bootle. What could EdM threaten him with?
DM is probably the most overrated politician of the last generation.
(*conservative including not replacing the indigenous population obv.)
yougov seem wrong to me, not so much because of the numbers as the lack of movement
I'd be interested to know at what point you reached the same conclusion.
"“Why are you a member of the party?” is a question asked of volunteers by our non-political friends and family. It’s also a question we tend to ask ourselves, because, in this transactional era where the ego is supreme, party membership is an anomaly. You don’t get to buy policies with your subscription fee; that’s the whole point, in fact, and it’s why single-issue movements can be dangerous.
It’s a question that CCHQ and the leadership should ask, as membership continues to decline. The anomalous nature of party affiliation in the “I pay so I get what I want” age is a much better hypothesis to explain the decline in party membership than the pet theory of any political commentator, by the way; no theory can be proven in this matter, but theories are better if they’re applicable to all parties, as mine is. I reject claims that Mr Cameron or any of his policies is the cause of any change in membership numbers. If that were true, membership would have boomed pre-Cameron – it didn’t, it’s been falling for decades. Also, the decline would affect only the Conservatives. Of course it does not.
To answer the “Why?” question: in truth (I suspect, though again can’t prove, of course) we join the party because we hate socialism, with a passion several notches higher than that of the average citizen. The Tory party is a machine with many purposes, but its principal objective is defined by its negative. Stop socialism..." http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/graemearcher/100217832/two-modest-proposals-from-a-swivel-eyed-loon/
In this way I think that those who say Gay Marriage affects only gays (true in the most immediate sense) are slightly wrong. It affects everyone because by removing another barrier, by making our country and its systems that little tiny bit more welcoming, we have improved the lot of everyone, not just those directly affected by the change.
Although you'd need to add "with a political class that have parachutes" to get the full effect so not really three words.
"not in the manifesto" =weak argument. If Govt's only did what was in their manifesto's Govt would be chaos. Govt's have to react to changing events.
Did Blair have the Iraq war in his manifesto?
Extra realism must surely be more accurate. The candidate names would help remind respondents of the local tactical considerations in their seat. And you as the opinion pollster would not have to choose whether to prompt for UKIP/Greens/BNP, as this would be governed by whether the poll respondent lived in a seat that these parties had stood a candidate in.
Opinium are still prompting for Veritas on their second "Another party" screen, and they didn't stand any candidates in the 2010 GE. Likewise about half of the people who are given the option of saying Green Party in an opinion poll weren't able to do so at the 2010 GE, and likely won't have a Green candidate in 2015.
Frankly "tim" I think your 24/7 presence on PB is dimming your wits.
If you really think the modern Conservative party looks to the GOP for inspiration on any social issue then you should seek immediate medical attention and them admit yourself to a secure facility where a decent rest will do you a power of good.
Come back refreshed but sadly in the sure knowledge that :
Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister.
WRT the lessons from the US, Harry Hayfield put it best. Obama's support for gay marriage enthused his supporters. Cameron's support demoralised his.
Police officers must declare if they are friends with journalists under draconian new guidelines published yesterday.
As a result, every officer in England and Wales must formally report any friendship outside his workplace with a journalist.
And if they fail to do so and are judged to have concealed the relationship, they could now face dismissal for gross misconduct.
This effectively means that people working in media organisations would be placed in the same bracket as criminals.
The decision will alarm Government ministers and censorship campaigners, who fear police forces are shutting their doors to scrutiny.
Frontline police representatives have already warned that ambitious police managers and their political masters are trying to shut down whistleblowers and voices of dissent.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2328088/Police-officers-forced-friends-work-media--face-sack.html#ixzz2TuXkEsUQ
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Just to raise another point, it's worth mentioning that in the polls Labour are varying from mid- to high-30s. That's not all that great. When Labour collapsed under Brown the Conservatives got silly polling numbers (high 40s, even one at 52).
If this approximate trend continues to the election we could see some very strange results.
It's shaping up to the an interesting GE in 2015 (if the coalition lasts).
The split Tories, the Two Ed-Gremlins for Labour (don't let them near the economy), the LD rebels without a cause, and the spectre of UKIP rubbishing all predictions.
- Community service. This is something I actually associate more with traditional Tories; when we were doing our "say something nice about opponents" day, it was the thing I singled out. A lot of people would like to do something for the local community - especially if they've done well and want to give something back - and through membership they get to be councillors, school governors, etc. Often they don't really care much which party they're in, and will switch if badly treated - I suspect the defecting Merton Tories are a bit like this.
- Changing the party. People with strong ideological beliefs realise it's very difficult to change our essentially pragmatic and centrist parties, but they feel they have a duty to try. More prominent in Labour than the others, but all parties have them.
- Personal ambition. You do get people who join at 18 because they want to be Prime Minister. That's where the Spads in their 20s come from!
While the social liberalism / enviromentalism / internationalism which was supposed to appeal, but didn't, to middle class leftists also made the Conservatives seem out of touch with working class concerns.
Yet for years we were told by the establishment media that George Osborne was a strategic genius. A typical insidethebubble feedback loop.
Well done Mr Cameron (and MOTM to Ed Miliband!).
I wouldn't be surprised to see:
(1) The LibDems get an order of magnitude more seats than UKIP despite half the votes
or
(2) A party with a majority in the HoC on less than 30% of the votes.
What odds on electoral reform of some description before 2020?
Ed Miliband's Labour, Clegg's Lib Dems, and David Cameron's Conservatives are all socially liberal parties. This - rather than simply the EU - is why now is a particularly fruitful time for UKIP, and why they have an opportunity (which may or may not be achieved) to carve out themselves a position as a credible party of government.
"Police officers must declare if they are friends with journalists under draconian new guidelines published yesterday."
This is probably an over-reaction to the huge amount of unofficial briefing of the press and the facility for the press to "buy" information from the police.
It has become quite apparent over recent years that there has been a too cosy relationship between the police and the press and matters that should have been kept confidential until a person has been charged have been too freely available to the press.
However, monitoring of the police by scrutiny is a different matter and the new guidelines should not inhibit that function. I agree that it would be easy to use the new guidelines to inhibit scrutiny.
Do you know if these guidelines are from the Home Office and what degrees of freedom are given?
http://politicalbetting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/monaco-early-discussion.html
If so, it makes the reported defection of many activists important. If your friends are switching, perhaps you should join them.
This is idiotic: 1. Tax certainly is moral. Which is why Starbucks, Google, Microsoft et al are on the run.
2. So much for sovereignty.
3. Business will jolly well do what the law passed by democratically elected government says they should do. They can make representation, but they are not the final arbiters of the level of tax charged by the government (ok, they are in feeble minded Osborne's case but he has less than 2 years to go in his current position before he is booted out).
This isn't entirely the fault of current MPs. When MPs had outside work as matter of routine, the media were quick to criticise X or Y for having two incomes. He was paid for being a full-time MP, yet had a separate job. It made him more rounded by his work and contacts in the normal world, and more able to see other points of view. And for most of them, it helped to development management skills. Those big benefits have been lost in a clamour for 'fairness'.
I used to think that Farage liked to make an unattractive boast when he said that he would have made much more money continuing as a city trader, rather than running UKIP. But an important implicit claim resonates. It is that he is doing what is right for Britain, rather than what is best for himself.
A lot of people are responding positively to that. It is just so different to our perception of most other top politicians
My support for gay law reform springs from my social liberalism but also strengthened from the case of a very dear friend.
He came out to me as "queer" (different world then) as a young man, when to be actively so was a crime and to be publically "shamed" would have been almost a death sentence for him.
He was a transparently decent, kind, charming and brave man. A man's man in almost every way and as far away from camp stereotypes of the day as could be so. I counted myself fortunate to be his good friend.
However he was also a desperately lonely man. He so wanted to share his life with a long term partner but was so terrified of exposure that he dared not do so, At times I saw what I can only describe as a sad longing in his eyes. He died after, I believe, letting an operable disease take its course.
I have often wondered if there was anything more that might have been done for him. Sadly I think not. The times were different, attitudes scarily different and he was a casualty of his nature and the horrible intolerances of the day.
If Intel Ireland sells Intel UK a chip for $100, which is then sold to a UK customer for $101, then Intel UK has only made $1 profit on the chip. Without understanding what work has gone on in each country, you simply cannot work out whether Intel is fairly adjudging costs across its business, or whether it is evading taxes.
(N.B., this is not about the EU, before anyone jumps down my throat. The same would be true if we were talking about Intel Israel or Intel Switzerland.)
Yes, UKIP MEPs are a paragon of virtue with regards to expenses....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226927/Former-British-MEP-jailed-fiddling-39-000-expenses-spent-fine-wine-new-car.htm
Luckily for it rightwing newspapers - thanks to foolsih eruophobia - largely ignore the EP. So they get away with it.
Because any cursory examination of their behaviour in the European Parliament would reveal Ukip to be the biggest, laziest troughers of them all.
Still more Labour politicians who went to jail for fraud than UKIP ones.
What he could have done was stick to having a referendum on either Lisbon or further sovereignty transfers. He then gets his GE majority, and the referendum - held quickly after - would have given him the result he wanted.
Farage would still now be saying "Dave fiddled the question, the referendum wasn't fair", but this is a feebler attack line that the one Cameron gifted him: "Dave welshed on his last referendum promise and he'll welsh on the next". So while UKIP would still be ticking up, they would I guess be at 7 or 8, rather than 17 or 22 or whatever.
This is not being wise after the event because I remember lurking here at the time and reading others making the same point and pointing up the risks of what Cameron was doing.
You do get the impression that Cameron has little idea of what his activists think. I don't think he knows and doesn't care; I think he doesn't know, and isn't interested because he expects, net, to gain from annoying them.
He loved her very dearly. She pre-deceased him by about a year and then he just let go. I still well up remembering what a fine, loving but tragic figure he was.
I have no idea what the Conservative Party is like, but if the mainstream of a local party were to feel closer to UKIP than to their own leadership, then a UKIP-inclined local party chairman and MP might be able to pull that off.