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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » To Clacton and beyond, but just how far is that?
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » To Clacton and beyond, but just how far is that?
Revolutions are best viewed through the wide-angled lens of history, not the microscope of journalism. Even in the most turbulent times, occurrences that would have seemed literally incredible just a few years earlier are taken almost for granted after the conditioning of intervening incremental events.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29556005
Tell you what. Have a look at the map that bloke from the UN is holding with the big thick red lines showing where the front lines are.
Thats halfway in the town whatever way you cut it.
Today IS seized the so called security district in the centre of the city, essentially the Kurdish forces previous command post. This was reported via Kurdish officials. If they weren't there what exactly were those airstrikes on that area today for?
One Kurdish official in the town today reported there was a high risk of the town falling. Three days ago they were saying once IS got into into the city they would give them a kicking.
Fourthly, who is there going to be left to subdue if IS seize the place?
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/10/moazzam-begg-islamic-bookseller-or-terrorist-trainer/
Where are all those Turkish Kurds exactly? I don't see them going there to fight. They riot in Turkey but I haven't seen the mass march over the border. Why is that?
Its irrelevant how many Kurds there are in the Middle East. The ones that matter here are the ones that do the fighting in the places that matter. Right now in Kobani are c2000 troops not all of them even Kurds doing the fighting. There appears to be no source of reinforcement as yet and the town which they controlled in totality two weeks ago appears, unless the UN guy is full of it, to be now barely half under its control.
Anyway, had enough of your defeatism, I really am amazed we managed to defeat the Nazis some times if we get so concerned over 20,000 jumped up gangsters. Goodnight!
I don't speak for the media, I speak for me.
Fact, the town is in danger of falling as it stands, even a Kurdish official said that today. It does not matter whether its today, tomorrow or next week, it is danger of being lost by the Kurdish and FSA fighters, thats all there is to it.
Wishing for special forces or Chinooks doesn't make it so.
A lot will have to change and quickly if the situation is to change. There is precisely no sign of those changes as of now.
We have special forces, probably less than 2000 of them if you include the support troops. We are not using them. That is the current fact.
Secondly, IS is a remarkably disciplined and flexible fighting force gangsters or not. Know your enemy.
Thirdly the Kurds start trying some cross border business or just plain much outside their areas of control and we'll see soon enough they are a minority in the region. They are only involved in a fraction of the territory IS is involved in. The Kurds therefore are not some mega fighting force or answer to anything against other than largely in their own population concentration regions and not much beyond it.
The answer to any group that embeds in a community, is the community itself.
What are the Kurds going to do, march on Anbar province?
The truth is that in any election all candidates start off with the precisely the same number of votes: zero. Those of us who understand that basic truth are, perhaps, less stunned by these latest by-elections than those who don't.
Goodness knows I'm no fan of UKIP - they're right at the very, very bottom of any list of what I'd consider voting for - but their achievements this week have to be acknowledged and respected for what they are but also kept in context.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/about/how-ofcom-is-run/ofcom-board/members/ed-richards/
Might the Electoral Commission suggest it?
Much as I am no fan of UKIP, maintaining the current position is absurd.
Despite protestations of public loyalty from senior Labour figures, behind the scenes even shadow cabinet members who still believe in Ed Miliband (and they are rapidly decreasing in number) are pressing for a change in style and direction.
They know Miliband neither looks nor sounds the part of the Leader of the Opposition, let alone Prime Minister-in-waiting.
With six months to the election, there is pressure from those shadow ministers for senior MPs and trade union leaders to see Miliband in private and persuade him to make way for a caretaker leader like Alan Johnson, former home secretary, because there is no mechanism to force a leadership ballot so close to an election.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2788827/how-labour-s-big-beats-want-red-ed-fall-sword-writes-andrew-pierce.html#ixzz3FoKHZI3g
The Daily Fail has spoken, it must be true.
With six months to go, Labour should ditch it's leader, and go into the election with a "caretaker" instead?
Does that sound like a smart idea, or a bit of nonsense cooked up by a reporter?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ed-miliband-pays-price-for-ukip-surge-as-labour-turns-on-its-leader-9788510.html
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband-urged-engage-core-4418186
So it is shadow ministers who are not yet "senior MPs" (else they could simply see Miliband themselves) and they want Alan Johnson as caretaker. Young cardinals, old popes.
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/graham-stringer-ed-milibands-team-7917461
For this reason the Labour HQ may actually be happier with a 600 majority than a 6,000 one: at the next by-election in a similar seat, whether in this Parliament or the next, they can say "look what happens when you're naughty little children"...
The debates do seem to be becoming less likely, since excluding UKIP would be daft and including them would seem unwelcome to the current beneficiaries of the system. But it's possible that it's in Conservatives' and Labour's interest. Farage hasn't really been tested by top-level debating challenge, apart from Clegg's attempt, and polls show he isn't all that popular - it's not a question of "let's not debate Bill Clinton as he always wins".
A debate format that had one debate which was Cameron vs Miliband as the potential PMs and one with Clegg and Farage would reflect reality in the way that would be seen to be fair. The big debate would give the old parties a shot at taking UKIP's inconsistencies apart. It might backfire - "they're all ganging up on him" - but on the whole if three people are pointing out idiocies and embarrassment (and all parties have them) it has a fair chance of an impact.
The two-party debate would be a crap shoot - maybe Cameron would "win" as the smoother performer, maybe Miliband would "win" by beating low expectations. The prize would be a greater chance of one of them getting a government with a workable majority, and they might both feel that it was worth taking the risk, rather than the poisoned chalice of "winning" without a debate and getting a minority government with a hostile Commons.
http://www.cityam.com/1412968613/both-miliband-and-cameron-must-bet-house-rochester-save-themselves-now
The thrust of your argument seems to be that 1. it's too early to say the change is marked but 2. changes happen incrementally and we're going through them.
I'm not sure those two points make easy bedfellows. It's entirely possible that you're right about 1. and wrong about 2. In other words, that UKIP may be making a lot of waves right now, but may yet fade away. I will be shot down by some of the rabid right for daring to suggest that, but my money is that after the General Election we will settle back to two party politics. UKIP will make a lot of noise, but I doubt they will poll 15% in the GE, and the LibDems will have a relatively poor election but retain 20+ seats.
Yesterday still feels like a protest to me. And people tend not to do protests at the real thing. Yesterday wasn't the real thing.
The parties have now set out their stalls. I think the Labour campaign will be underwhelming, though stronger in individual seats.
But I think audreyanne is wrong. People will protest particulary in what were considered safe seats.
Surely the biggest long time worry is for the Conservative Party.
In that they are losing voters, activists members,donors, to a party trying to supplant them, as the main right of centre organisation in a FPTP GE system .
As in 1981 for Labour , there is a real possibility in the next 2 years, some major players may leave the conservative party to join UKIP over leaving the EU.
For all those who say that UKIP is much as a problem for Labour, do you honestly think, they are trying to supplant them as the main left of centre party ?
They may attract Labour voters, and cause some electoral difficulties, however they are clearly and unequivocally a party of the right. They talk and walk like one which means they probably are one.
Therefore the Conservative party will now, I imagine stop the appeasement policy towards UKIP, and start to fight back, at the next by- election, which it need to do to attract the voters who will vote to stop UKIP.
This is going to be the most interesting election in my lifetime. The only thing I'm pretty sure of is that the LibDems are going to be destroyed, they will end up with far fewer MPs and I can't see anyone wanting them as coalition partners. Five years later and it will be 'who?'.
UKIP should be speaking to the Tories through back-channels with a view to getting Tories to vote UKIP in the North and as a quid pro quo UKIP making a deal on some Tory seats elsewhere.
The above does of course depend on whether Cameron can swallow some pride, which I doubt.
If northern Tory voters do decide to vote UKIP the vagaries of the electoral system could produce some pretty strange/startling results.
I'm guessing the current CEO, a former Senior Advisor to Tony Blair and advisor to Gordon Brown is not the chap?
We are moving from class politics to identity politics, and moving fast. It isn't a very nice place we're going to, either.
If Carswell had died, and UKIP had taken the seat, The Tories would be in greater trouble.
I see that that Top Gear Stunt is still making the news - is there a magazine to sell. It still looks like a deliberate choice - but the explanations still reek of pure organic bovine waste products. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29581183
So, what does "small c conservative" really mean? It means immigration, it means the uneasy fear amongst white people (whatever their level of education) that white = racist & more specifically the thought that Labour has ridden two horses at once and is now falling off at least one of them. Race is the most basic of all social cleavages, far more basic than class.
It is the elephant in the room of contemporary political debate.
We could see some very weird results in May, I think.
Anyway, there's a quote from a chap called Daniel Vavra (developer of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, one of only two games to make me want a PS4) about something GamerGate (it's a massive controversy which seems opaque and convoluted). However, it seems relevant, perhaps to the political and media situation which has given great room for UKIP to grow, so I thought I'd share it:
"Over the last decade, media were taken over by people who think that their ideals, opinions and way of life are superior to others and so they have the mission to tell others how to live, what to think and what to do."
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/gamergate-interviews/12400-Daniel-Vavra-GamerGate-Interview
The immigrant communities that have broadly common values with British values such as the Irish, Chinese, West Indians, Phillipinos, Poles, Italians and Portuguese integrate well over a generation or so. All these communities remain distinctive, but rub along well most of the time. The ones less culturally aligned much less so.
Lenny Henry is as British as I am. Anjem Choudhary is not. His loyalty is overseas.
That said, I think that even if Cameron and Miliband manage to exclude Farage from the debates, Farage will still be 'there'. That is, another channel (be it TV, radio, internet) will give him airtime at the same time that the debates go out. Perhaps like someone giving a running commentary on PMQs.
Besides, it's not only rude to talk about people behind their backs, it's wrong in law to not allow someone the right of reply, so the story about Farage being excluded would gain as much traction as the debates themselves. If they shut him out, they cast themselves as cowards and Farage as Robin Hood. They can't have it both ways.
Let's not forget that while UKIP undoubtedly did very well on Thursday in 2 Westminster by-elections, they lost 2 council by-elections out of 3 being defended, 1 in the very Westminster seat they captured.
Up until 1979 governments could change on 1-2% swings as only a handful of seats needed to change parties. The growth of the SDP then LibDems from 1983 meant that the swings needed grew to 3-5% or even more. I have no doubt that the UKIP effect next year will be to make very many Tory, Labour and LibDem held seats more difficult to predict. Equally we may see Douglas Carswell become emperor of a little purple empire to the east of London in the same way Caroline Lucas has become empress of a little green empire to the south-west of London.
I totally agree and praise to them both should be shouted from the rooftops. Where would PB.com be without them?
I am more ambivalent than I was about whether Farage should be included (although my solution of scrapping all debates would be a perfect solution), but he does still only lead a party with one MP. Will the Green leader get a seat in the debates?
Having one debate with every nationwide party represented at Westminster, another with the big three, and a final one just Cameron and Miliband might work. Doubt Clegg would be happy though.
Dylan's words "I pity the poor immigrant/Whose labours are all in vain" are salient: the immigrant labours in vain because immigrant defines him, but will never define his descendants. Do they isolate themselves into an eerie parody of self-imposed apartheid (Rastafarianism, perhaps), or allow themselves to be assimilated into the hegemonic culture. until all that's left of their "homeland" values are a few mementoes?
A sometime colleague of mine (A Muslim as it happens) paraphrased Dylan: "it is foolish to immigrate, it is wise to conquer". He was happy to be a fool himself but we can only criticise the likes of Choudhary from a position of fearful self-interest.
When I first went to work there were three TV channels and often the conversation around the tea trolley (what a relic of the past that now is) was of last nights TV programme which nearly everyone has watched.
Now there are hundreds of TV channels not three, and such conversations are rare. With TV channels going from three to hundreds, something reflected in other parts of life, is it any surprising that politics is splitting from three into many parties.
What is good about this is that with the breakup of the party system, the whips become weaker, parliament (as opposed to the government) becomes stronger and the local MP becomes more the local representative that he is than the party cypher.
Certainly, when we find ourselves in the situation where a coalition of three parties has a majority of 4, with no prospect of an early election resolving the matter, life will be interesting.
"they have the mission to tell others how to live, what to think and what to do."
I think that's the nub of the issue. Half a century ago, they might have got away with it but not now.
The policies being pursued at the moment of nationalistic identity are a re-incarnation in Britain of the Home Rule agenda in the early part of the last century, before it was crushed by two world wars, which apart from Ireland,kept the British state together.
Farage challenged Milliband to go with him to a Newcastle working men's club and see who got on best - we all know how that would work out! The New Labour hierarchy have about as much understanding of the WWC as they do of some remote tribes in Borneo.
So probably best to abolish OFCOM and let the media outlets decide for themselves, but that's a different story. We are where we are and OFCOM has to write an equation. In these circumstances, I think transparency is key: the preferred solution of all parties should be made public so that we can see who's willing to debate and who isn't.
... and yes, I am a Mister.
"One senior Labour source said: "the calls are pouring into the Chief Whip's office....colleagues, some shadow ministers, with 5,000 majoriites who are terrified Ukip will defeat them or...hand seats to the Tories"
Hmmmmmm........ How many of the other 147 are Labour held?
Mr. Cade, I think that's fairly accurate but would add a caveat that a wealthy fellow who has never been poor *can* appreciate the perspective of those who are. The problem is that the three leaders are perceived (rightly or wrongly) not to. Farage isn't exactly impoverished, but he seems far more normal and unashamed of saying "Britain matters more than being nice to foreign chaps".
The consensus over the stupid amount spent on aid is a good example of how the three leaders are out of touch with what most people want.
Mr. Pulpstar, I actually tried to find out what it was, but it's pretty damned opaque. That chap, Daniel Vavra, had a Twitter spat with the Guardian's Damien Walter over it, which definitely caused more heat than light. I think it started with something or other about bigotry, and then became about videogame journalism collusion/corruption... it's a mess.
Mr. 13, decades ago the leaders might have been more impressive and persuasive as well. Worth mentioning Blair (amongst other things...) massively eroded public trust in politicians, right to the very top.
to UKIP ,on top of Rochester,which could keep the by election saga running up to the GE.This would keep a very high profile for UKIP right through to the GE.Spare a thought for the Lib Dems.They had been hoping that the focus on UKIP would slip away giving them an opportunity to recover their profile and increase their standing in the polls.That task now looks even more difficult.
So onto the big picture.Realistically we are back to two party politics in terms of the main battle.However a hung parliament still looks the most likely result but with around 80 seats shared between,in likely order of seats, Lib Dems,SNP,Ulster,Plaid,Greens and UKIP.A coalition nightmare for either Dave or Ed.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10857198/Ukip-has-torn-up-the-map.html
Must say I'm absolutely loving this!
Labour will be hurt more by UKIP in places where its vote is wwc while the Conservative is middle class.
Likewise Conservative seats with the same pattern will be harder for Labour to gain.
Any tips for qualifying?
Well, if you can get silly odds on McLaren drivers being top 10, then I'd go for that, but the odds on Betfair are too short.
But to imply that Farage is not from the political and media establishment and privileged background , also demeans people sense of awareness about all politicians stunts.
Cameron`s husky trip.
Thatcher driving a tank
Blair riding a bike in Amsterdam.
They all say they understand the worry not having enough money, after working all month to pay the essential bills.
There are not many politicians of any colour left, who have ever had that experience, Farage sure is not one of them, whatever he would say in the pub.
http://youtu.be/ucnXwKAzAo0
Any tips gratefully received, am having a lazy weekend of sport.
Your geography is a little askew - Oxford Circus, in Central London, is actually to the west of Brighton in terms of its longitude.
On manpower, in H&M there were twitter reports that Labour was shocked by the the amount UKIP had. I wondered whether UKIP tried to mask the scale of their operation. But that's a one-off by election.
I wonder, for instance, what resources UKIP has in place in eg Rhondda - do they even have a local association there? In these circs, you can see why UKIP are going big on the grassroots strategy.
Edited extra bit: Mr. Bob, I'd be wary of doing that, contingent on what odds you can get.
We should be ready to prosecute what's illegal - clearly terrorism, FGM, rape, perhaps other things - and leave other cultural matters - dress, food, habits of prayer - to individuals to work out over time.
I believe the 'Revolution on the Right' authors say that there are more UKIPy groups in Labour held seats than Conservative held seats, but of course their chosen demographic groups are not the be-all and end all. UKIP is surfing its own little wave.
Any Con-UKIP pact will shed hundreds of thousands of votes where it matters. What is one or two Clacton's compared to that?
EdM though cannot bear to spend any more time in Doncaster than he has to, Clegg likewise in his extremely affluent constituency while the Matthew Parris article shows what establishment Conservatives currently think about those from non-privileged backgrounds.
In a world where wealth and power are increasingly concentrated among a tiny self-serving 'elite' they have chosen to side with the 'elite'.
The day before the by-election Election Data put up a post saying that Labour were going to cruise it. (he'd been volunteering for Labour in the seat.). The post has now been deleted.
http://election-data.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/heywood-middleton-ii.html
However, UKIP had no candidate last time ((although the English Democrats did). It is close to Rotherham, with all that brings to UKP. But are we really thinking that the LibDem WWC vote will shift to UKIP en masse, with enough peeling off from Labour to make this even vaguely close?
To my mind the brands party's have attached to them are not always fair or reasonable, often too extreme to be deserved or historical reputations living on longer than is fair, but UKIP are developing a good one, even if too many Tories only joining or being won could derail the 'fighting them all' brand at some point, as will the outsider approach, and Farage's has lasted longer than I would have expected.
In Doncaster, for example, BNP, English democrats and UKIP all have significant footprints. If the anti-labour vote could coalesce around one candidate then I guess anything is possible.
Comparing the English living in Switzerland to Pakistanis living in the UK is a joke.
I am sure there were.
I am also sure they did not want to abolish the Swiss legal system and replace it with the English system. I am also sure they did not march round the streets of Zurich with placards demanding those who insult the English be beheaded.
No wonder Labour are frightened - to mash up a cliche - they know the UKIP elephant is in the room but they don't know how big it is, and it's invisible.
The spectator had a nice little bar chart showing the declining level of the Labour vote share in Heywood and Middleton. I imagine its much the same across their (and the Conservatives) safe seats. Add in non-voters (who appear to be willing to vote for UKIP) and they all look very fragile.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/10/ukips-assault-is-hitting-labours-core-vote-all-bets-are-off-at-the-general-election/
All this though indicates that the qualifying criteria is based on performance and by its very nature creates a closed shop that in reality is very hard to break into. However surely from the voters perspective it is not how the parties are doing that is important but what are the choices for Government, ALL the choices.
Now as I understand it there will be 5 parties who will be standing candidates in pretty much every seat: the three establishment parties, UKIP and the Greens. Technically anyone of these parties' could form a government if enough of its candidates is elected (that in reality it might be only two of the parties is neither here nor there) by standing candidates in sufficient seats to have any sort of possibility of forming a government should be enough to qualify them for any and all debates.
After all, if we were selecting using prior performance criteria which candidates should appear in the Presidential Primary debates in 2007 would Obama have been given a spot? The debates should be about informing the voters about the serious candidates not about allowing the established parties to peddle their wares in some sanitised version of PMQ's.
The deleted Election Data post said those UKIP wards were low-turnout wards. He was expecting them to flop. Nicely put! :-)
My guess would be that the reaction to H&M will be "well, we dodged a bullet there" and then life will fairly quickly go back to normal because the bottom line was that they won. The galvanising effect would have been had they lost.
Am on the WI at 3.3 and you can still get 3.1 on Betfair.
WI are looking good, India weak.
Some labour constituencies are not like that. There is a relatively small lib dem vote, and a split but quite significant right wing/ protest vote.
Rosie Winterton's Doncaster central is a prime example.
So winning H&M is worse for Labour than losing? are you Dan Hodges?
What might be entertaining is the Con/Lab parties wasting their resources on an outdated map of marginals, as the UKIP surge changes the relative Lab:Con support in seats across the nation. Good.
At least somebody in Labour gets it. Perhaps they'll defect to UKIP....