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Well they will presumably lose any seat where the sitting Lib Dem is retiring along with at least half their Scottish contingent and more generally where Labour is running second. Even so Simon Hughes will still be ok I imagine. Lynne Featherstone maybe not. The unknown is whether any Lib Dem/Tory marginals will fall where the LD incumbent is in place.
I suspect they will be ok in those circumstances. What I would like to see in 2015 are some really bizarre results, like a safe Tory seat with solid LD second place being, of all things, a LD gain because of a UKIP surge, or the Greens snatching some from Labour in similar circumstances. Could be some interesting results, but it'll probably be duller than we imagine.
Economic reality has to be felt first before full anger with the Establishment parties manifests itself.
A year ago fracking was poorly understood by 99% of the British population. It's poorly understood by 90% now. As the proposed drilling sites and licences proliferate over 66% of the country, there is a great awakening taking place. The only political avenue open to opponents of fracking/shale gas is The Green Party. Hence the surge which can only grow bigger.
http://the-tap.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/green-party-gets-huge-electoral-boost.html
5. I remain utterly unconvinced by predictions of the Fixed Terms Act being so disastrous. Half the things people claimed was terrible about it, in terms of political behaviours it would provoke, already happen, and a lot of the rest were things that, in time, politicians will learn to sort out or will be punished electorally for so there's no need to worry so much. If the country elects a precarious balance next time, implicitly accepting what comes after, then that will have to be dealt with and might well be hard and lead to some difficulties. But it isn't frightening.
All that shows is that the Libdems are still attracting votes in Urban Yeovil. About as surprising as Labour winning the Manchester Central byelection by a huge margin not so long ago.
"Between 2003 and 2007 the deficit rose, but at 3.2% of GDP a year it was manageable."
A 3.2% deficit at the peak of an unsustainable boom was "manageable". It would make you weep. Labour and their supporters have so much to learn.
14. Turkey will never be in the EU, surely? Has there been any progress on it in recent years, even if we were to assume the political stumbling blocks were overcome?
2014 local elections: "on average the drop in the Lib-Dem vote in wards located in the constituency of an incumbent Lib-Dem MP was, at 13 points, much the same as elsewhere."
http://www.ippr.org/juncture/messages-from-the-voters-the-2014-local-and-european-elections
Oh, you weren't asking me as a Liverpool fan were you?
It would be perfectly obvious that the cuts were down to a barmy green policy forcing closure of perfectly good coal stations like Didcot A and not building suitable coal fired replacements, while Germany build 30 new coal fired stations.
(not the 'Ebola is a conspiracy' story)
The details are a bit curious. Why was no alarm raised from the power station, but from a member of the public looking out of their home? I'm with you on coal, Paul. Germany and France have banned fracking/shale gas. Only Britain is being set up for destruction of our economy and our environment.
Tories have peddled the myth as cover for ideological cuts and shrinking the State.
It also means Gideon and Co have failed to address our real economic problems, like our rotten banks and private sector big business, as well as abject Tory failure on the deficit.
Not bad compared to the £20m we lost on Carroll or £14m we lost on Downing
The most staggering bit of LFC spending in recent years.
We were paying £100k a week in wages EACH for Joe Cole and Milan Jovanovic
Europe has much to offer, however if it's merely the clownish Barroso's then lets be rid of them.
The most important that are worth anything are No.13-16, and for pure trash entertainment No.18.
Goodnight.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2014/06/wholl-tell-the-anti-austerity-marchers-that-government-spending-is-at-a-record-high/
That said, I agree with you, I cringe when I see Labour people attacking the Tories for "not cutting the deficit quickly enough". Not only is it the morally wrong stance for any left-wing party to take, it's also stupid politicially because they are simply NEVER going to convince people that Labour can be more ruthless when it comes to spending cuts than the Tories, no matter how incompetent the latter are. A battle Labour COULD certainly win is on who could help people most, but they can't fight that battle while they're also fighting a "tough on spending" battle (since obviously helping people will cost money), and inexplicably they have this year decided to choose to fight the battle they'll never win.
Of course Gordon Brown was so sure of no more boom or bust he was happy to borrow money all the time...
Sometimes good economic growth can leave people feeling more comfortable about the size of the deficit because the national debt doesn't budge much as a share of GDP (as the economy grows, the denominator increases and the fraction decreases). And that share is the thing that really matters more than the deficit does, because that's what the repayments on, so that's what has to be kept manageable.
The problem comes when your economy tanks, and then you're left nursing an enlarged deficit (lower tax receipts, higher social spending, maybe higher departmental spending if you can afford to run a stimulus package) as well as a decreased denominator that makes your debt share look much larger than it used to. It's the "we'll find out who's swimming with no pants on when the tide goes out" moment.
A possible game-changer for our politics and economics, though possibly the realisation of it would be fairly far-flung into the future, is if historical rates of growth transpire to be over-optimistic for our long-run forecast. What the economists call "secular stagnation" would sink the idea that persistent deficits don't have much long-run effect on the share of the national debt. There are intelligent people looking at the current state of the bond market and whose reading into the situation is very far from optimistic.
I'll repeat: if a 3% deficit is such an unimaginable nightmare, why have we run one for most of the past 150 years without any disastrous consequences?
Gordon Brown was neither the first politician to think he could predict and control the economic cycle, nor sadly will he be the last, but the bloke I feel sorry for is King Canute who always gets dragged into these analogies despite refuting the idea he could master the tide...
2. EV4EL NOW!
3. Swingback Baby!
4. Lib-Dems = LOL!
5. Fixed term parliament act won't last the next Parliament, IMO.
6. Bookie's rock.
7. Labour lies about what the Tories are doing to the NHS to distract us from the disaster they are inflicting on Wales.
8. How long before the "mansion tax" covers most middle earning families?
9 . Britain doesn't "DO" social conflict. We save that nonsense for the French!
10. Agreed.
11. UKIP on the gravy train as much as anyone? Who knew!
12. ?
13. I don't mind The Pole's personally.
14. The Turks will have to improve the HR record.
15. The French have always done whatever the hell they want.
16. We need more "Deep Throat's" in prison not less.
17. David who?
18. ?
19, 20, 21. Where DO you get this stuff from?
If you want to create your own plots, then go here...
http://www.nojam.com/demo/ukpolls
1. Select the options you want (e.g. date range, poll org, etc) and press SEARCH.
2. Once the results are shown press CHART (on right-hand side).
3. Change the colours (they are generic so may not match political colours) and also un-tick any series you don't want to see on the chart and press UPDATE.
If you copy the address/url at the top of your browser it will give a link directly to that chart (with all the search options/colours).
I know the rough dates of when things happen.
Plus every proud Englishman like moi, knows the exact dates of when we give the Frogs a damn good hiding.
If you inherit a deficit of 10%+ of GDP, you'll borrow heavily, unless you impose absolutely horrendous public spending cuts.
(An interesting counterfactual: had Gordon Brown kept spending levels lower by about 2% of GDP, which would be far less painful than cutting them now, we'd probably have largely exited the zone of "austerity politics" by now. As it happens we've got years left to run...)
A life sentence of being paid for being opinionated?
I can think of worse punishments.
That's why the Tory failure on the deficit and economy / living standards is so serious.
Spending money on public services didn't cause our economic problems, the bankers who caused the global crisis, and politicians like Cameron and Osborne who failed to learn lessons from it, are the ones to blame.
I visited Clacton a couple of times during the campaign, and it's not even that bad.., unless he went to Jaywick, which is so appallingly bad that it would take a heart of stone to criticise the people there rather than feel immense sympathy for them
Actually, despite being UKIP's poster boy so to speak, I think Carswell needs to have a f*cking good look at the state of that place and ask why after 9 years as the MP there, nothing has been done.. makes Dagenham look like Knightsbridge
Basically, though the national debt has racked up, GDP has climbed too. They are out of sync in the short run (generally the GDP going down happens when the debt is going up most sharply!) but in the long run they've both been growing exponentially. So long as the national debt to GDP ratio has stayed within tolerable limits, we have been able to afford the necessary repayments. The reason economists (and generally, politicians of all stripes) are wary of persistently high deficits is that as that ratio gets out of control, the repayments become less and less affordable. There are quite a few economists who think that once the debt share becomes greater than a certain share of GDP then economic growth tends to slow down, which makes things even more difficult if you end up in that situation, though this claim seems to be controversial.
UK demographics don't suggest we are going to undergo the same kind of population surge (and accompanying economic boost) that helped grapple down the national debt share post-Napoleonic Wars and later, to a lesser extent, post-WWI. And there are some warning signs that even future economic growth per capita seems to be on a more depressed path than the historical norm, which is also going to be - to say the least - unhelpful. If we are going to undergo secular stagnation, then running a budget deficit anywhere near 3% is going to come to be seen as pretty much a cardinal sin.
Of course the big question is whether secular stagnation is real or not. You might want to have a good read of:
http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/07/imf-gloom-global-economy-growth-secular-stagnation
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/08/secular-stagnation
http://www.voxeu.org/sites/default/files/Vox_secular_stagnation.pdf
http://larrysummers.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/NABE-speech-Lawrence-H.-Summers1.pdf
Obviously Trafalgar was a UK Victory, further proof of the UK being Better Together.
I agree with Nigel Farage on 'virtually everything' admits Tory MP
Philip Davies MP for Shipley said that 'in an ideal world' Ukip and the Tories 'would not slit each other’s throats'
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11175261/I-agree-with-Nigel-Farage-on-virtually-everything-admits-Tory-MP.html
There's a book reviewed in this weeks Speccy that might appeal to you:
"Marsden is obsessed with pre-history and the beliefs and practices of the earliest inhabitants of Cornwall. "
http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/9341212/rising-ground-by-philip-marsden-review/
Ed Woodward calling one of his own players a 'f*cking waste of money'
https://vine.co/v/ObIvTEigOQH
@LordAshcroft "UKIP are right. but don't vote for them" is the Tory immigration slogan suggested by @alexmassie
The problem with all the people saying the deficit is 'manageable' and 'if its so bad why have we always had deficits' is that they ignore what life might be like if we were more productive and less spendthrift.
We ran huge deficits to pay for both WW1 and WW2 which took years, decades, to pay off. The notion that these deficits have been of no consequence to our lives is risible. (No doubt if you chopped a leg off you would still be able to 'manage') As is the idea that there is some mysterious 3% figure which makes it all OK. 3% of what? GDP? What has GDP got to do with it?
In 2010 our actual spending was 673 billion. I think Darling said the actual revenue was some 160 billion less than that. Look at that as much as you like that defict is a lot bigger than 3% of the revenue to pay for it. Who is in the least bit sanguine about continuing to run deficits like that?
The other point is that there are two sides to the deficit. A cyclical deficit can be 'managed' - because as the economic cycle varies then surpluses can replace deficits. The govt are not reducing the overall deficit as quickly as they wanted because they are allowing the cyclical regulators to do their job because of for instance the downturn in the Eurozone.
A structural deficit can never be overturned because the economy cannot ever meet the revenues required to meet its spending ambitions. The answer is to reduce spending. The problem the crisis left behined was that a significant part of the financial sector's revenues turned out to be cyclical not structural ie permanent. They have disappeard.
It is quite wrong to criticise Osborne. He has trod a difficult path better than we could expect and probably deserve.
http://www.economicsuk.com/blog/002037.html#more
''Over the course of the parliament the coalition will have tightened by 7% of GDP, slightly less than the 7.9% originally planned because of the tax changes described above, but only slightly.''
''55% of the planned tightening will have occurred, leaving 45% to the next parliament. It is important to be aware, however, that the goalposts have been moved.
They were moved in November 2011 when the OBR changed its view on the economy’s productive potential, so more of the deficit was deemed to be structural – and thus requiring tax hikes or spending cuts – and less of it cyclical, in other words disappearing with the recovery.''
''By 2018-19, according to the IFS, a deficit reduction programme equivalent to 11.5% of GDP will have been achieved. Apart from in the special conditions of moving from war to peace, I do not think that has ever been done before.''
Responding to the poll UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said: "This shows the massive difference between prompted and unprompted polling and it's about time that Peter Kellner of YouGov, who is regarded as the gold standard of pollsters, should move with the times."
http://www.ukip.org/latest_poll_shows_ukip_on_24_demonstrating_other_pollsters_should_move_with_the_times
EICIPM
Lab ave. lead this week 2.33% 3polls
Mr Rosindell, a staunch Eurosceptic who has been Romford’s MP since 2001, said: “My views and Ukip’s views are not actually that far apart.
“I do not really have any objections with their policies - it’s their delivery.
“Standing across the country can only result in a Labour victory and Ed Miliband in No 10.”
He added: “While I agree with Ukip on many things, I’m more Ukip than Ukip in some areas.
“I’ve been arguing that we should not be part of the EU since long before Ukip even existed.”
http://www.romfordrecorder.co.uk/news/politics/havering_ukip_s_best_chance_of_general_election_success_in_london_1_3809806
Blaming the bankers for the recession is deranged but probably somewhat socially useful (we've got to vent our frustrations somewhere). It's not like they were purposefully setting out to smash the economy - it was the economy that was keeping them rich, and when the crash came, the first mass lay-offs were among the financial workers. It's not even as if the subset of bankers doing the dodgiest things (LIBOR etc) were actually more to blame for recession than any others were - it was a systemic failure, not some grand moral reckoning laid out by the God Of Economics (who got the crap role once all the best godships, like the Sea, Volcanoes, Thunder and Sex had already been taken).
Blaming the now-apparent flaws in the financial system is a very reasonable thing to do. A lot of those flaws were to do with governance and regulation in a very technical way. Perhaps that's why we, as a society, have largely let the politicians - who hold ultimate responsibility for setting out the legal structures - get away lightly with this one. Easier to bash the bankers. When changes have been made, things like Basel III have come in largely very quietly and without great fanfare - or public scrutiny. There's been almost no holding to account for the systemic problems that led to the crash in the first place. There has been a bit more of a public debate about to what extent world governments in the run-up to the crash had done their waterproofing (and to be fair this was an electoral issue in the UK and several other countries) though this should arguably be secondary to the causative issues. But there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy, and rarely seems relevant to plausible policy approaches.
Free of headbangers and traitorous pig dogs
@brewer_lar: @jameswhartonmp @GreggatQuest im not happy with you lot by any means but this you might find helpful. http://t.co/TUziuHSek0
there has been endless commentariat wittering about "the bankers", which has often descended into the politics of envy
Lol.
Ohhh, those poor bankers.
They and they alone, not spending on public services, caused the world economy to crash.
Regulate and tax them until the pips squeek. Then it won't happen again.
Cameron's pathetic crawling to the bankers in the EU by vetoing a very mild measure like the Robin Hood tax shows where Tory allegiances lie. With bankers and big business, not ordinary people.
On polling day it was 7.3% (which the KF got spot on).
Ergo, a similar movement between now and May 2015 would put the Tories 4.4% ahead...
3 month YouGov chart
The only ones it's looking good for at the moment are UKIP.
Once it became clear that he hadn't, in 2008, then the deficit became a problem.
Which probably would have meant I'd have never watched a single episode of Star Trek