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Like many a football team 2-1 up in a cup tie with ten minutes to go, a cautious defensiveness seems to have settled over the Labour Party, judging by their conference just gone. The contrast with last year’s headline-grabbing energy price freeze policy was stark. The big announcements were to increase the minimum wage by about 4p a year more than the average RPI rate for the current par…
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"My son," said the Norman Baron, "I am dying, and you will be heir
To all the broad acres in England that William gave me for share
When he conquered the Saxon at Hastings, and a nice little handful it is.
But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–
"The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.
"You can horsewhip your Gascony archers, or torture your Picardy spears;
But don't try that game on the Saxon; you'll have the whole brood round your ears.
From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,
They'll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.
"But first you must master their language, their dialect, proverbs and songs.
Don't trust any clerk to interpret when they come with the tale of their wrongs.
Let them know that you know what they're saying; let them feel that you know what to say.
Yes, even when you want to go hunting, hear 'em out if it takes you all day.
They'll drink every hour of the daylight and poach every hour of the dark.
It's the sport not the rabbits they're after (we've plenty of game in the park).
Don't hang them or cut off their fingers. That's wasteful as well as unkind,
For a hard-bitten, South-country poacher makes the best man- at-arms you can find.
"Appear with your wife and the children at their weddings and funerals and feasts.
Be polite but not friendly to Bishops; be good to all poor parish priests.
Say 'we,' 'us' and 'ours' when you're talking, instead of 'you fellows' and 'I.'
Don't ride over seeds; keep your temper; and never you tell 'em a lie!"
Tory 'Normans' take note!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-29387872
Remember the bonkers women from the UN over the bedroom tax, it seems there are even more of similar nutters representing nations at the UN...
Argentina keep defaulting on their debt and wanting to pay peanuts on the dollar and it the nasty hedge funds take Argentina to court because they keep breaking the contracts. How dare the hedge funds ask for the money they are legally owed.
As far as what happens once elected goes, I think David Herdson has it backwards. Policies that would be popular if announced now will generally be ineffective when applied in government; If they were both popular and effective, they'd already have been done by either this government or the last. In which case the less of these they promise now the less the disillusion when the policies either don't get delivered or turn out to be harmful.
Incidentally, I always pronounce "QTWTAIN" in my mind as "quain". Does everybody else?
Incredible as it may seem, the great British Public seems ready and prepared to forgive Labour for delivering the greatest car crash of an economy ever seen in peace time. What this proves beyond doubt is that Labour is now firmly entrenched as the natural party of Government in this country and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. God help us all.
Mr Urquhart, up-thread, castigates the UN for attacking the hedge funds which are pursuing Argentina; an alternative view is that thse hedge (or vulture) funds bought up the debts from the unfortunate original lenders, at tenpence in the pound, and are now, Shylock-wise, demanding their pound, no matter what the cost to the Argentine in the street.
It’s similar here. Cameron and Osborne insisted at the start of their period in office that “we’re all in it together”, but to many, many people it doesn’t seem like that. Public service wages are held down, workers in many other industries are in a similar position but standards of living at the top and particularly in financial circles don’t seem to be affected and indeed seem to be rising. OK, it’s getting a little better now, but feelgood factors take a while to work through.
A side irony is that it was the money markets where Farage made the money which enables him to talk about being a “man of the people!”.
Keeping any populist policies up their sleeve reduces opportunity for scrutiny, whilst hiding unpopular policies avoids scaring the horses. Pretend everything will be lovely, and power awaits.
Labour candidates leaving him off election literature
Or we can sit fiddling at the margins......
First, the polls are in uncharted territory, viz:- a fixed-term Parliament. I suspect there are still a lot of floating voters out there, who may say this to a pollster or they may say that, but are a long way from feeling strongly about it.
Second, the historical record is that the Tories always campaign far better than Labour does (I think this was even true in 1997) and go up about 3 points in the polls, which Labour go down.
Third, it is hard not to see Cameron trashing Miliband in the TV debates (although also not hard to see Farage trashing the pair of them).
For this reason I predict a popular vote result (%ages) about: Con 35, Lab 25, UKIP 23, others the rest, with the SNP, standing only in Scotland of course, outpolling the Lib Dems standing throughout Britain.
That ought to produce a Tory landslide, but Electoral Calculus says it won't. I'm not sure how much faith to put in their model these days, but if it's right, then Tory activists will compare 2010 with 1983 and demand serious change in the system. And I'm not talking PR, either. Constituency boundaries based on residential property values, perhaps?
To answer my own question, yes, he can breeze though but only if the other parties don't subject him and his party's policies to much greater scrutiny. I don't think there is any big announcement waiting to be made. Sure, there'll be more detail and more padding come next year but you run with your big announcements well in advance to build that dream that people can buy into. You can't fatten a pig on market day.
According to one possible outcome for the economy, you could borrow money for infrastructure at negative rates.
( depending how much you trust economists)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-29377075
The current position is of course different in many ways and no 1997-like landslide is in the offing, but the basic approach of a reformist party not offering heaven on a plate remains sensible.
And what would those consequences be? A (relatively) high quality service under Labour, but complicated means-testing and so more bureaucracy and waste.
Under the Tories, a more rational payment system - I assume they'll go for everyone pays for their health insurance up to a certain age (35? 40? 45?) after which the State picks up the balance of the tab - easy to move the cut-off age upwards as time goes by. A crumbling edge of quality as the healthcare corporations withdraw services piece by piece - chiropody this year, counselling next and so forth.
Will either of them explain this during the election campaign? What do you think?
Tories will look for quick fixes like charging for mixed appointments and criminalising neglect
Just returning to something I spotted from last night: Plato et. al. I think it's isolationism. That was a strong strand in the Republican right across the pond. That answers the question of coherence. Putting it less charitably than 'Isolationism' you could describe it as Little Englander or ostrich mentality.
I am convinced the Conservatives will win the General Election outright.
At the moment, all three look good for Labour but the weakest for them is the second one. It's not just Lab to UKIP but to Green and SNP too. If Labour do lose the election, that's where it's currently most likely to happen. But as I said earlier, at the moment, it's more likely than not that Miliband will form a government after the election.
Burnham presided over Stafford. Enough said about his credentials for being health secretary.
The housing market (and many others) has been broken for a long time now, unfortunately it is profitably broken for a minority.
We have now reached the state where our economy relies on smoke and mirrors to keep it afloat.
Anything that brings housing costs down to a sensible level breaks one of the mirrors.
Being 'not the evil Tories' works when people feel they have nowhere else to turn.
The Lib Dems are weak, but there are alternatives. The SNP in Scotland, UKIP in northern England. In the south and Wales being an evil Tory is less of a problem because, respectively, in the south they're just not seen as evil and in Wales the Labour-run administration is universally adored.
Labour's problem (aside from negative campaigning) is that Miliband just isn't inspiring, even in a small way.
Its success or failure will come down to money, at the moment the councils are hoping to plunder NHS budgets to cover their own shortfalls.
It is already underway to an extent. Despite all the rhetoric about NHS privatisation by the evil coalition, this is already underway via the benignly named Better Care Fund:
http://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/part-rel/transformation-fund/
This is how the Five Year Plan looks in Leicester:
http://www.leicestershospitals.nhs.uk/aboutus/our-purpose-strategy-and-values/our-strategy/
We are planning to close one of the 3 Leicester Hospitals with a loss of 461 beds. Many of us are very sceptical that it can be delivered, without far more investment in transformation funds.
This is very nice for people who exercised the RTB in the 1980s and can now live in Crete or the Algarve or wherever by renting out their ex-Council flat bit it's hard to think of any other winners.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Burnham
No he didn't.
He arrived years after the problem had started and launched two inquiries, one less than two months after his appointment.
A while back, Henry G Manson said in one of his many insightful posts that he expected Labour to win the election and then to become very, very unpopular.
I think that is right.
The surprising thing about the Scottish referendum was the ease with which the core Labour vote was fractured in the Central Belt.
There must be a real possibility that Labour will break up, if they win.
Because that is what happened in Central Belt. The more radical or deprived part of the Labour vote detached itself and aligned with the SNP.
As always the theory isn't the same as in practise.
I am thinking hard about this subject right now, do the numbers stack up?
I am increasingly of the view that opinion polls will continue to mean very little or nothing until February / March. The polls to watch are the ones indicating how people are feeling on issues and on the leaders. (Because these are the true litmus tests when no-one is considering the General Election.) And on these counts The Conservatives win.
The Tories will rip Labour to shreds over economic competence and whatever Mike might like to think, you cannot win a General Election in Britain without trust on the economy.
Roughly half of Scotland's Labour MPs will presumably be targeted and while their enormous majorities might suggest most are safe, after the referendum vote, surely all bets must be off. It will be interesting to hear how many more SLAB MPs decide to retire in May, starting with G Brown and A Darling.
Housing is no longer seen as a necessity, it has become a banked currency in Britain.
Building an insufficient amount of housing is socially bad, but it keeps the ROI for those that can afford to buy into the market high.
However, in a marriage it is the first infidelity that does the damage.
Clue: the drivers of house prices in London haven't had UK passports...
1) There has not been a coalition fighting a peacetime election as separate parties in the age of universal suffrage (since Lloyd George's defenestration in 1922, to be exact);
2) There have never been fixed-term parliaments with known election dates before;
3) The current state of Scotland means guesses about what seats are likely to go where are just that - guesses - and that cannot be good for Labour but at the same time is scarcely positive for the Conservatives;
4) It is also conceivable, contra to @Morris_Dancer, that anger against the Labour government in Wales will cause some major upsets there - in particular, keep an eye on Cardiff South and Penarth;
5) Labour are going to have to deal with a certain amount of tactical unwind, which means they may start winning votes in seats where they don't have a chance of winning;
6) No first time government has increased its share of the vote since 1955;
7) At the same time, no opposition party has ever got into power while being behind on both leadership and economic competence, indicators where Labour are currently third (after the Conservatives and daylight).
So what conclusions can we draw? None! It is very easy to say Labour should be doing better (and they should be, because bluntly under the circumstances they should have a 15 point lead in the polls) but at the same time it's hard to see the Conservatives getting more than 34% unless something dramatic happens. Speculation is great fun, but in the absence of sufficient data we can't speculate with certainty.
So the betting implications are - save your money for the 3.30 at Doncaster.
The problems also vary from area to area; from second- and third- home owners in scenic areas pricing out locals, to buy-to-let'ters living off large portfolios, to NIMBYs arguing against every single development because their area is special, to the way the majority of people want a garden and garage (or at least a parking space).
The solutions are also massively complex and red-hot potatoes for any government to tackle.
I think that it was in a large part due to the RTB, which while being popular, had unforeseen consequences. Foreign buyers are mainly jumping onto the bandwagon, and often for different reasons.
The reasons are unimportant except for a bit of finger pointing, it needs fixed no matter the original cause.
I rate Cameron far more highly than most on these threads but even if I were wrong about that he is indisputably a different and better class of campaigner than Ed. When I looked at the Labour Conference I did not see wise caution, I saw a party paralysed under a leader that makes Gordon Brown look decisive, who is terrified of sharing the limelight with his team (700 words for the shadow cabinet ) and who cannot decide on anything other than the wonders of the NHS and how much he hates the Tories.
It is not enough and it has given the Tories a chance to once again set the agenda and the nature of the discussion over the next few months.
My mistake.
There is virtually no chance the Conservatives will poll as low as 34% with the economic recovery under way. Another way to consider this is how the Conservatives have steadily rebuilt their support following 1992 Black Wednesday (because economic trust is crucial):
1997 30%
2001 31%
2005 33%
2010 36%
I reckon 2015 will continue the trend: 39-40%
There was a decade of warnings about Staffordshire hospitals; with most of the scandalous events taking place in the late noughties:
http://witchdoctor.wordpress.com/2013/02/15/mid-staffordshire-a-decade-of-warnings/
Andy Burnham became minister of Health in June 2009, and instigated the investigations. It is a classic case of shooting the messenger to blame him.
The rot started under Milburn, worsened under Reid, became dire under the disastrous Hewitt, but it was Alan Johnson who granted Foundation Trust status in 2008.
Mid Staffordshire was a New Labour Scandal, but not Burnhams.
The only top-down measure will be the repeal of the Act
London is the stupidest imaginable place for a capital or indeed a major city. It's built on a swamp, so its foundations are shaky. It's in the driest area of England, so its water supplies are always under pressure. It's out on a limb from the rest of the country, so it's not easy to get to, and when you do get there, it's not actually that easy to get around (it takes far too long to get from say, Hammersmith to Greenwich, although why anyone would want to make such a journey I don't know). Because it is also home to a lot of industry, but has limited space for major infrastructure, its power supply is also under constant pressure. Yet this is where the housing market causes the most extensive problems - it's where houses are needed and cannot be built, while existing houses are sold for absurd prices, and because it's where politicians and bankers live, they have a tendency to extrapolate its problems on to the rest of the country, meaning the whole thing is skewed out of proportion (and of course, where they have second homes they skew that market too and still don't get the reality). Where I live, in Cannock, I looked at buying a rather nice three-bedroom house with garden and separate dining room for £90k (although I didn't buy it in the end). In London, I hate to think what it would cost - yet it's the London prices that get mentioned in the papers despite the fact that over half the country will be closer to Cannock's situation.
(continued)
The realistic solution, grandiose though it is, is to move the capital out of London and to the North of England, where water supplies are plentiful, space is much easier to find and there is ample scope to adapt and improve existing power and transport networks. That would take a lot of the pressure off the south east and at the same time help the north. It would also rebalance house prices to a great extent. It could give a boost to the construction industry. It might even oblige our élite politicians to reconnect with the country outside the M25.
And of course, it will never happen because no politician will have the guts to upset 6 million voters in London, however much it would benefit them and everyone else in the medium term.
My friends were smart enough to know that "We're not the Tories!" doesn't amount to anything much, when by necessity of having no money, Prime Minister Ed Miliband will just be Evil Baby-Eating Tory-Lite. Ed's Big Conference Theme of "Togetherism" was supposed to be his rebranding of Socialism for the Twenty-First Century. But it fails miserably as a slogan because it just reminds us all of the past five years - Osborne's "We're all in this TOGETHER...."
And that merely reinforces that there is nothing very different between the parties, will be nothing very different between the parties. With the exception of one leadership that has delivered the best performing economy in the G8, versus a guy who can't eat a bacon sandwich or kiss his wife or remember THE BIG TWO THINGS VOTERS WANT TO HEAR ABOUT. "We're not the Tories!" gets top-trumped by "We're not very good..."
If there was a palatable alternative, my Labour chums would vote for it. I suspect a couple will peel off to the Greens, a couple will stay loyal, but a few more might well defect to the Can't Be Arsed Party. As I suspect I would have done, confronted with voting for IDS....
"With the exception of one leadership that has delivered the best performing economy in the G8"
Best performing on what measures? Productivity, exports, innovation.....?
I'm still thinking 34-35% would be a good result for them.
You nailed it.
Labour are planning some major changes to Everyone's NHS. I expect suitable protest.
Repealing the Bill allows more democratic control, and permits use of private providers but takes them out of the driving seat.
Labours NHS plans show quite a lot of continuity with coalition plans and are well thought through (though I think the cost and speed of transformation is underestimated).
It is one reason Miliband feels threatened by Burnham, he does not like to be overshadowed by someone competent.
I do have some grasp of the detail here.
That's interesting, Marquee.
My equivalent quandry was back in the days I campaigned for Michael Foot. Young and naive though I was, even I could see a Labour win would have been a disaster. I told myself I would not vote for them if it appeared there was any chance of them getting in. In the event, there wasn't a problem because it was obvious they were going to get hammered and I carried on voting and working for them on the basis that the Party needed to avoid meltdown in order to be able to reform and reconstitute itself, which of course it eventually did,
I should add that the problem was the Party, rather than Foot, who was an intelligent and honorable man. The parallel with IDS and his Party is too obvious to need labouring.
Labour is by no means home and dry.
Re nhs England. If Labour don't get an England majority what right have they got to change it?
Whatever people might try to tell you a General Election is a leadership pageant. We elect local MPs, but we also vote on the personality of our Prime Minister. Do I think the British will elect Ed Miliband to be their Prime Minister? You're 'aving a larf.
The plans are highly democratic (we shall see whether councillors are up to the job...)
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3455/EconomistIpsos-MORI-September-2014-Issues-Index.aspx
http://www.comres.co.uk/polls/ITV_News_Index_24th_September_2014.pdf
It's probably more accurate to say we are in "extra time"? (Parliaments are usually shorter)
Lab 29%
Con 26%
LDem 22%
UKIP 13%
Green 4%
Others 6%
and for all council by elections held in the 3 months July-Sept ( circa 64,500 votes ) were
Con 30%
Lab 24.5%
LDem 17%
UKIP 14.5%
Green 5%
Others 9%
Is my impression that there is a more collaborative approach to commissioning over the last few years also your impression? Mine is based on Leics of course.
An award of ten internetz for the best reply?
"With the exception of one leadership that has delivered the best performing economy in the G8"
Best performing on what measures? Productivity, exports, innovation.....?
No-one is watching the game except a handful of ground staff wearing pb.com and party anoraks.
He may need to have his back against the wall to deliver, but frankly that's a flaw I'll happily accept. Rather that than someone who flinches when the chips are down.
They're behind in Scotland, making no progress in Wales, have very little left to gain in the NE and have now supported another war in Muslim lands which certainly hurt them last time around. Watch Tower Hamlets, Bradford, Luton, Birmingham.
It's only the impact of UKIP on the Tories that is sustaining Labour's lead.
Labour has also dipped badly in the budget/election cycle in 2013 and 2014, whilst their lead over the Tories was overstated by 2.5-5.5 in all polls at the Euros.
Where are Ed's extra 68 seats (plus Scottish losses) coming from?
A minority government with who providing coalition support?
Increased local control of how the money is spent is the essence of devolution.
I'm concerned that more political involvement at the local level might have the same effects as at the national - short term decisions, lack of direction, and pandering to the loud geographical areas! Perhaps the ideal is to have a councillor or two on governing bodies so that commissioning can be clinical, but with democratic input.
Otherwise we will have councillors vetoing changes purely because a rival politician was involved...
Just accept that the economic upturn is owned by the Tories (the LibDems seem to not want to be associated with even being in Government....)
Well, there's about £75bn left to chop off. I assume that the Milky Way is next.
How many people voted for the Conservatives' plans in the first place?
I prefer the "battle analogy"
The commanders are still shuffling the troops and artillery, and only the scouts and skirmishers are engaged.
So my tip would be - don't bet on it. This used to be a very safe Labour seat for Alun Michael, terrible minister though he was, but the new MP hasn't had long to bed in and might well be vulnerable to a surge from any party.
A more realistic betting position, if you can find one, would be for Labour to win fewer than 25 seats in Wales. That would rely on them not winning back many seats - but as their two realistic targets are Cardiff Central on a student rebellion and Cardiff North with a retiring MP, that's hardly a problem (I don't think they'll retake South Pembs). At the same time, I could see them losing the few remaining seats they have in rural Wales (Ynys Môn could well be vulnerable depending on the Plaid candidate) and possibly also Llanelli and Cardiff South. That would take them below 25, which would certainly be an embarrassing result for Labour whatever the national outcome.
It might also have interesting implications for the Assembly elections, which are held the following year and by which time Labour will have been in power, rather ineffectually, for 17 years - but we can hopefully talk about them nearer the time!
On point 2, that's not what happened in Cameron's only previous election as leader, in 2010. On the contrary, a hefty Tory lead was blown away in the final months.
On point 3, the test is how the leaders do in comparison with expectations. Cameron was expected to thrash Brown and Clegg in 2010, but the multi-party debate format doesn't lend itself to thrashings: we ended up with something like a score draw.
Are you offering a bet on your prediction of a 10-point Tory lead?
"Despite the 10-point Labour lead in voting intention the majority of voters in these seats said either that they were satisfied with David Cameron’s performance as Prime Minister (29%) or that they were dissatisfied but would rather he were PM than Ed Miliband (29%). Only 31% – including, as in the Labour-held seats, just two thirds of Labour voters – said they would rather see Miliband in Number 10. Nine out of ten Conservative switchers to UKIP, and 94% of those switching from the Lib Dems to the Tories, said they preferred Cameron to the alternative."
So, voters in those marginal seats prefer Cameron as PM (58%) to Miliband (31%) - a 27% lead.
I find it very hard to believe a major chunk of those won't vote that way, once they wake up to the fact there's an election on to choose the PM and the Government.
Bring on the campaign and the debates.
The Tories normally have a two state solution, complacency, and panic.