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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Norman Lamb says a coalition with Ed would ‘enormously damaging’ for the Liberal Democrats
The Liberal Democrats must not go into coalition with Labour even if they win more seats after the general election because the association with Ed Miliband would be so “damaging” for the party, a minister has warned.
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But reading the quotes they don't seem to match the Telegraph's summary. What he says is: I don't see how you square that direct quote ("it doesn't mean it shouldn't happen") with the Telegraph's claim in the same piece that "The Liberal Democrats must not go into coalition with Labour even if they win more seats after the general election". British papers generally aren't too bad at accurately publishing verbatim quotes, but they're generally utterly useless at summarizing them accurately, so I'd believe the quote and ignore the commentary.
I'd imagine their strategy would be to make a very earnest "it's all very difficult" face whatever happens but ultimately do a deal with whoever offers them the best deal.
Since they've also apparently ruled out supporting a minority government, isn't the obvious move to say, "the voting system has forced us into a position where we have to work with Labour for the good of the nation despite them not getting enough votes, but we'll need a referendum on PR to prevent this ridiculous situation from happening again"?
http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Lib-Dem-pact-Labour-unlikely-MP/story-23042441-detail/story.html
And Labour don't sound keen on building bridges:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/lib-dem-conference-labour-gets-personal-with-new-slogan-you-cant-trust-nick-clegg-9774987.html
I suspect the only viable coalition post GE is a continuation of the current one "rewarded for our success" - anything else "humiliated Lib Dems stay in government as Tories are chucked out" will just look too bad and we'll be in Minority government territory.
That isn't just referendum democracy. It's repeat referendum democracy EU style!
Vince Cable has launched an astonishing broadside against the party’s green agenda, saying that it imposes too high a cost on industry.
The Business Secretary said industries with high energy costs such as steel, are struggling against their international competitors because of soaring electricity costs.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2781433/Green-taxes-DO-harm-British-economy-let-countries-carry-polluting-Vince-Cable-admits.html#ixzz3FL72gXBQ
Raises a smile again
Nothing more than Tacitus's famous comment: 'they made a desert and they called it peace'
I'm fine with fighting and killing jihadists. I don't see any reason why we would allow people who have proactively picked a side this nasty back into the country, even if they are British citizens. Sorry: you're grown ups. Choices have consequences.
But sealing off the area and letting them despoil it for 50 years? Or dropping a nuke on it?
Nah.
No matter what the result next year the economy is undoubtedly in better shape, so a minority government is likely.
(2) I expect Ed Miliband to be subjected to a degree of harassment unprecedented for any British Party leader in a General Election campaign. There surely has to be a good chance that he will be caught crying on camera at some point. (This is not because he is a worse Labour leader than Foot or Kinnock, it's because we are a less civilised country these days.) However, for the moment I'm sticking to my 35:25:23 prediction because I am not sure how to take into account the fact that his being bullied may gain him sympathy with some women voters.
Presumably Lamb is indicating that the Orange Bookers would find Coalition with Ed and Ed every bit as unacceptable and fear or contemplate a similar loss to the right. What is then left?
Slightly to my disappointment it seems that UKIP is here to stay and there is a realignment going on on the right which will inevitably push the Tories towards the centre. This leaves the Lib Dems very few places to go as most of their seats are tory leaning seats where they have offered a nicer alternative. If the Tories lose the nasty party tag to UKIP what is the point of the Liberal Democrats?
This country desperately needs a centre left option which is credible and capable of governing the country without inflicting serious damage but history and the SDP show that such an option is best achieved by internal reform of the Labour party rather than a challenge from the outside. Personally I would like the Lib Dems to be that centre left party but I think it is vanishingly unlikely this will happen.
India has managed democratic politics inside a communitarian framework ever since independence. Perhaps we should send a working party there to find out how to do it.
The problem is nobody knows what the LibDems are for or what they believe. Least of all the LibDems themselves. Ask ten yellows what they think and you get 10 different answers.
The next election is going to present the electorate with a fairly stark choice: Spendy lefty PC bankruptcy vs sound money firm nasty Dave n Ozzy. Choose your sides and vote accordingly - but don't waste it on the incontinent yellow effluent.
We are in a situation where our government has very little room for manoeuvre. But they don't have no room for manoeuvre. There are choices to be made between additional cuts and additional taxes. There are priorities to be selected as to where the inevitable cuts will fall and which groups are to be protected. The country deserves a credible choice on this from the small state vision of Osborne. But we don't have one.
In my view the Orange Bookers could offer such an alternative. But who is going to vote for them in sufficient numbers?
BHOTIQ will shrink on a daily basis between now and the election.
As an aside, looking back over the past four years, I don’t think I witnessed a single moment after the rose garden interview when Clegg, or the majority of his MPs for that matter, appeared to enjoy being in Government. – Perhaps good governance and an overwhelming sense of earnest sanctimony are incompatible?
Basically when Labour had a 7% lead in the polls the weighting. YOUGOV used a weighting that the 632 Labour respondents were weighted down to 624,and Conservatives were weighted up from 516 to 523
But in the one in which the Conservatives were 2pts ahead the 625 Labour voters were weighted down to 588. Where as the Conservative numbers were increased from 561 respondents up to 627
Tories figure boosted by 10% Labour figure lowered by 5%in the 2nd poll where as the first poll they marginally moved.
Did this have a baring on the result of the poll?
They have always been a somewhat opportunist coalition whose raison d'être was that they weren't the other two, and arguably would attract and entrench greater support if there was only one protest party as opposed to two.
They're an anomaly now and they'll certainly be an anomaly after the next election. I wouldn't be surprised if the party ceases to exist in its current form over the next couple of parliaments.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27129817
And you probably need to take note of this too:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/11140111/There-is-still-the-chemistry-to-forge-a-second-Con-Lib-Coalition.html
The fact that coalition terms are being openly discussed now shows to me that that's the end game that's being aimed at.
I think the Libs will go for confidence and supply, if they do any agreement at all.
Work that out.
For those who think we have no choices there are some interesting stats in this typical piece of doom about the EZ from the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11140221/Hans-Werner-Sinn-eurozone-doomed-to-decade-of-crises.html
I found the second chart particularly interesting. Germany takes a significantly higher share of its GDP in taxes than we do and spends only slightly less (they don't have a deficit, hence the difference). There are choices to brutal cuts but only in a sane economic framework which acknowledges the realities that we face.
As many as 100 British jihadists are believed to be stranded in Turkey because they are too scared to return to the UK after leaving Islamic State militants.
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/disillusioned-british-jihadists-stuck-in-turkey-because-they-are-too-scared-to-come-back-to-uk-9775281.html
Propping up a Labour government reliant on Scots MPs to get through their English legislation would bring a whole new world of pain.....
From a marketing point of view this is labour's dream and the first bit of luck Ed's had for several months.
Either this is Stockholm syndrome or some Lib Dems are natural Tories who pretend to be Lib Dems.
Will the Lib Dems split after May 2015 ? Or will some Lib Dems defect to the Tories ?
Steve Webb will find it very difficult working with Labour, given that he has been so close to IDS in bringing in the welfare reforms. If Nick Clegg nominated Webb to be a minister under a Lab/Lib coalition, I don't think it would be at DWP. Some of the rules would make it very difficult for a Lib Dem minister to continue in the same role anyway with a different coalition partner. This is because there are rules which prevent access to some of the paperwork belonging to the previous government.
The area where it matters more is if there's a huge change in how people vote which means that they blot out what they did last time. The LibDem poll rating may even now be TOO HIGH because of this - if people who have recoiled from the LibDems are forgetting they voted for them, then only loyalists who do remember are being counted as 2010 LibDems, leading to the false conclusion that 2010 LibDems are more "loyal" than they really are. Conversely, the UKIP rating may be TOO LOW, because almost nobody voted UKIP last time, but people who have fallen for them may like to think they did (perhaps remembering the Euros) and get downrated as "the sample has found too many 2010 UKIP voters".
So is the UK wedded to two-party politics, or is there room for a third party, or could a form of the LDs arise and replace what is now Labour which is mainly redundant to 21st century thinking and requirements?
The fact that the Tories have been fretting about the ECHR from since well before UKIP was a threat an irrelevance.....
Not sure we should pay much attention to Norman Lamb's comments. People's mindsets may well be very different just after the election. Remember the pressure the parties were under to sort it on in May 2015: Gordon in Downing Street refusing (rightly) to move and banging the phones, secret meetings with LibDem/Tories, the markets opening on Monday morning etc etc. All the main players are exhausted after the election.
In my view Labour's lead was drifting up slightly from the 3-4% level towards 4-5% (don't forget the last poll had then at 7%, but I think that was top end).
And there have now been 2 polls showing the Tories with a small lead - so a putative switch of 6% based on Cameron's speech.
Now I accept all the caveats - conference season, need to see if it's sustained, replicated by other pollsters etc etc.
But the one thing it isn't is *small*
Antonia Cox
Oliver Dowden
Chris Hayward
Rishi Sunak
Dowden is Cameron's Deputy Chief of Staff. Hayward is the local Deputy county council leader.
The question now is whether UKIP establish themselves as a fourth party in British politics, or their rise coincides with a Lib Dem decline to the levels of obscurity enjoyed by the diehards in the Liberal party.
"Labour is far too authoritarian for the Lib Dems to merge with them......"
The attitude of Lamb and co might leave them no choice. If the heart of the Lib Dems side with labour and leave the few opportunist right wingers who appear to have nothing but a taste for ministerial cars which side to you think has the better selling proposition?
"The former Home Secretary privately accepts if he had successfully challenged Gordon Brown in the run up to the 2010 election Labour would currently be in power"
Blimey! Sense of entitlement, much? Do the voters get an input?
Do not listen to the decadent lies whispered in the shadows by enemies of the people! Our beloved leader, Chairman Miliband, has never enjoyed stronger support. Only a few days ago, Economic Commissar Ed Balls (whose devotion to the leader is so great he has chosen for himself the same first name, to better emulate the enlightened way of Chairman Miliband) heaped boundless praise upon the Chairman's spell-binding speech.
Who can forget the soaring oratory as Chairman Miliband recited his insightful encounter with Gareth, prophet of the proletariat, as both men enjoyed a walk in the park and contemplated the horrors of Conservative capitalism?
Christine Emmett (Rutland Cllr, Corby by-election candidate)
Nick Timothy (Chief of Staff of Theresa May)
Wendy Morton (2010 Tynemouth candidate, former chairman of Richmond Association)
Stephen Parkinson (SpAd to May, 2010 candidate in Newcastle North)
Rishi Sunak (businessman)
Julie Iles (2012 candidate for Surrey PCC)
Edward Legard (Ryedale Cllr, 2010 candidate in Darlington)
David Skelton (2010 candidate in Durham North)
Helen Harrison (from East Northamptonshire)
If only they had positioned themselves as the responsible party on the centre-left whose primary idealogy was sound money, they could have shown up Labour for the dangerous spendthrifts they are. But to do that, they would have had to show positive engagement with the Coalition. That they were PROUD of what it has achieved. Instead they prefer to look away, embarrassed.....
Locally they are the second party in a two party system. Being the third/fourth/fifth nationally doesn't change that.
If this conference fails to halt and even reverse this decline, can we expect any major improvement in the polls for the LDs before next May?
These are clearly interesting times.
After all, he made a tremendous success of the GP contract renegotiation.
and you are betraying the attitude, not uncommon in Labour, that Lib Dems are "mini-Labour who haven't seen the light"
You make a good point. But it isn't 'Labour' it's that there isn't space for more than two parties in our system. One governs the other opposes. The Lib Dems have proved this over the last four years and almost decimated themselves in the process. It's left or right. Lamb has chosen and now it's time for the rest to do the same
The sort of history books that (as non professional) I really like.
I've softened slightly towards Ed M; he may be a dud but he's a well-meaning dud.
He's the sixth form debater who thinks he knows it all, but is always willing to give you the benefit of his inexperience. Gareth, no doubt, went off a wiser man for his encounter with the sage of Islington.
Perhaps Ed's been thrust into grown-up politics ten years too soon?
A William Hague as he was in the 1980s? A younger Owen Jones? He'll have a little cry if those nasty big boys won't agree.
Ah, bless.
http://www.iaindale.com/posts/2014/02/05/why-the-libdem-seats-will-win-30-35-seats-in-2015
If we assume LibDem meltdown continues and only those he considers dead-certs are re-elected, here is the new team. I've put a star next to those who are in government (that I know of):
INVERNESS, NAIRN, BADENOCH & STRATHSPEY (Danny Alexander) *
GORDON (Sir Malcolm Bruce (retiring – Christine Jardine selected)
TWICKENHAM (Vince Cable) *
NORTH EAST FIFE (Sir Menzies Campbell (retiring))
ORKNEY & SHETLAND (Alistair Carmichael) *
SHEFFIELD HALLAM (Nick Clegg) *
KINGSTON & SURBITON (Edward Davey) *
WESTMORLAND & LONSDALE (Tim Farron)
BATH (Don Foster (retiring))
BERMONDSEY & OLD SOUTHWARK (Simon Hughes) *
ROSS, SKYE AND LOCHABER (Charles Kennedy)
NORTH NORFOLK (Norman Lamb) *
YEOVIL (David Laws) *
BERWICKSHIRE, ROXBURGH & SELKIRK (Michael Moore) *
LEEDS NORTH WEST (Greg Mulholland)
SOUTHPORT (John Pugh)
COLCHESTER (Sir Bob Russell)
CAITHNESS, SUTHERLAND & EASTER ROSS (John Thurso) *
THORNBURY & YATE (Steve Webb) *
BRECON & RADNORSHIRE (Roger Williams)
BRISTOL WEST (Stephen Williams)
If this happens, then this doesn't look like a team who are going to go and form a coalition with Ed M. Nor is it a group who will lightly give up the red boxes.
1) looking at UKIP's prospects as they stand now
2) looking at the Lib Dems' prospects as they stand now
3) updating my Labour and Conservative battlegrounds.
I'm probably going to do all three in due course, but any preferences which I should do first?
;-)
Last year, the conferences did produce a small lasting shift - Labour ended up on a trend 1-2 points higher. This year, we might see the reverse. But yes, I think it's quite small, certainly by comparison with the past conference bounces, and as I've said before I think that's because opinion is heavily entrenched and unlikely to change by May. I don't even expect that bounce to last.
Of course, if the coming week shows Tory leads of 4-5 I'll have been proved wrong and the "takes a week to work through" theorists will be right.
Most of us could reel of the names of the first five most likely UKIP wins, but it gets a bit hazy after that.
http://www.iaindale.com/
Why every Tory should wish the Liberal Democrats a successful conference
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/10/why-every-tory-should-wish-the-liberal-democrats-a-successful-conference/
"The Lib Dems attack: Tories are 'borderline immoral', Danny Alexander gets sweary and Nick Clegg accuses Cameron of being 'a poor man's Thatcher'"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/the-lib-dems-attack-tories-are-borderline-immoral-danny-alexander-gets-sweary-and-nick-clegg-accuses-cameron-of-being-a-poor-mans-thatcher-9775322.html
"Look at these bastards, like David Cameron. What a git. Or 'sir' as I call him, Monday-Friday."
Honest disagreement is fine, but casting aspersions on the morality of the people you've been working with makes the Lib Dems look dodgier than the Conservatives.