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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If the Tories get a good turnout in the Rochester all postal primary it’ll be a pointer to the by-election itself
On Thursday we’ll get the results of the unique all postal primary that the Tories have carried out to choose their Candidate for the November 20th Rochester & Strood by-election. This is the first time that any party has chosen a by-election candidate in this manner and for me the key number will be how many of the 70k+ electors in the constituency have actually participated.
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So how have they ended up as the go-to default arbiter of so many internal elections? How have they got themselves into the (presumably lucrative) double position of campaigning busybodies and establishment insiders at the same time? Good marketing? Do they have respected rivals in this area? Am I stuck with them if I want to run a high profile internal vote and want to appear serious?
This is actually a genuine question although I'll concede it doesn't read like one in hindsight.
My professional body uses someone else (can’t recall who at the moment), but I’m not impressed with the way they do it, although they are rather hamstrung by the daft system that was foisted on us by some well meaning idiots from the DoH.
On topic, I’ve asked before why any party should run all-elector primaries. I don’t care very much who the Tory candidate is; I’m wildly unlikely to vote for him or her. Indeed, if I did bother to vote I’d probably vote for the least attractive candidate on the grounds that if they were the actual Parliamentary candidate it would give someone from the Left a better chance. If I were a Kipper in R&S I’d vote for the more liberal Tory on preceisely those grounds!
i) they're the oldest electoral reform society in the world, founded 1884.
ii) people trust them.
Most people are not committed to any individual party to the extent that you are.
To the extent they get engaged with the process, there will be a sense of "ownership" of the candidate which may, at the margin, encourage them to vote Tory in the main election
Moreover, if you have a problem whereby your activist base is not entirely intune with the general public and select candidate with a narrow appeal this may provide a route to address that issue. The only other approach to this problem is to drive all the activists away into a new party *innocent face*
What a stupid point GeoffM makes.
It may reflect all interests, but it's a disaster for anyone who actually wants to get anything done!
I agree with your last point; was talking to a member of the Management Committee of the local Labour Pary recently and she was concerned that some of the candidates they were seeing would not be in tune with local views, but had some central support!
The 36% today blaming "the last Labour government" is still near the top of the range from the second half of 2012, through 2013 and 2014.
No sign of this coming down recently.
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/2l7w8ggk0w/YG-Archives-Pol-Trackers-Government Cuts-061014.pdf
Another downside is that it has meant that the Tories have not had candidate in place for what will prove to be a significant part of the campaign. If the primary impacts on peoples' consciousness then it may prove to be worth it but the exercise strikes me as brave, in the Yes Minister sense, in the most important by election of the Parliament.
I guess it depends what you value most, 'fairness' or 'getting things done'. Of course if you're elected under an un'fair' system you may get the 'wrong' things done.
As I said it is interesting but choosing this election to do it is indeed "brave".
Date for your diaries.
Will it be a celebration or a wake?The next PB gathering at Dirty Dicks will be on November 21st at 1830 - the day after the Rochester by election
Whether it gives them a win we'll see, but something we shouldn't forget is that this will be a dry run for May 7th when I'd be very surprised if the Conservatives don't win. So whoever wins this ballot will almost certainly go on to be MP on May 8th even if not before.
That aside, this idea of primaries is interesting. Not many ideas successfully make the transatlantic crossing, but this might. Regardless what you think of the Tories, the idea of having a locally selected and therefore more accountable Member of Parliament has to be a major step forward in reform of Westminster.
Anyone who criticises it may have lost their electoral soul.
But in marketing terms it's still a good wheeze - in the absence of a strong local candidate, it gives whoever wins a good boost to profile and something of a personal vote. An Electoral Commission ruling on whether the cost of the selection counts towards spending limits would be a good idea - the Tories really need in fairness to know that before the election, or the winner could get disqualified.
BTW, although I support PR, I agree with GeoffM that the ERS does ride two horses, presenting themselves simultaneously as learned neutral experts and passionate campaigners. It's a clever trick but if I was anti-PR I'd be quite annoyed if they were used to count votes in anything I was involved in, since I believe the money goes to their campaigns.
But 1830 might be appropriate for Kippers!
I may be able to make the long journey south.
Personally I'm against these kind of open primaries. It undermines the benefits and purpose of being a party member, something we should be trying to encourage.
But, from the betting point of view, I'm sticking to the Tories, whoever comes out of this process. They really can't afford to lose this one.
Now if those darn clergy would just do what their congregations (and bishops) want...
"We will fund 200 all-postal primaries over this Parliament, targeted at seats which have not changed hands for many years. These funds will be allocated to all political parties with seats in Parliament that they take up, in proportion to their share of the total vote in the last general election."
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/78977/coalition_programme_for_government.pdf
Heard the first line of UKIP Calypso [edited for a typo] on Youtube just now. I refuse to subject myself to more.
That weekend is crammed full of stuff now.
By-election
Probable F1 title decider
Dragon Age: Inquisition
Gathering of the pbers
Was done especially for you.
Betting PostThree tennis tips.
Wozniacki to beat Sharapova in the BNP Paribas Finals at 3.15. They're 3:5 in Sharapova's favour, but 3:3 on hard courts. Whilst Sharapova had the best tournament running up to this one (winning the China Open), Wozniacki's reached two finals and a semi, including the final of the US Open.
Backed Isner to beat Robredo at 1.85, in the Valencia Open 500. He's got a 3:0 record, two of those wins coming this year.
Also backed Kvitova to beat Radwanska in straight sets, BNP Paribas Finals, at 1.89. Kvitova has a 5:1 winning record, and 4 wins out of those 6 matches were in straight sets. The one she dropped a set on was on grass (they're playing hard court) where she has a 4 out of 5 straight set record.
For those knew to pb.com, my tennis tips are very patchey, so it's entirely possible all of these could fail. Or come off.
Locally elected MPs, who listen to their constituents and who feed back to them (accountability) is the answer.
No single party has a monopoly on truth. The best MPs know that and speak and act accordingly. The very best realise that for most people party politics is deathly dull and has bog-all to do with most people in the real world. It's partly this mood which UKIP is so successfully tapping into.
Less than 1% of the UK electorate are party members and it's falling. You and your ideas are a relic of an era long since faded.
One trusts another learned pber corrected your historical failings?
The problem is the expansion of the Crown-In-Parliament so that it now dominates the legislature.
We need local MPs (@audreyanne) to represent their constituents and hold the government to account.
We need talented and thoughtful MPs with an ability and interest to become ministers (@another_dave)
The time has come to split the executive and legislature.
Have a think, AudreyAnne, about how & why Parties got created in the first place. Hint: the "rotten boroughs" of the pre-1832 system didn't really have party politics.
http://m.hrw.org/news/2014/10/20/ukraine-widespread-use-cluster-munitions
Still I guess talk of submarines in Stockholm distracts from the on going civilian deaths in Eastern Ukraine.
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4242712.ece
(I don't subscribe to The Times, so I don't know what it says!)
The vast majority of MPs (incl all of the Opposition) are not involved in governing. They're lobby fodder. So, yes, being a good representative of local views is needed.
But....a smaller number form the government. We need 100 or more people who can run the country. We then run the risk of having sympathetic dinner ladies at the home office or cheerful postmen as chancellor or wonky effwits as PM. We must somehow find a route into politics for people with the capacity to lead and to govern well. We're pretty much failing at this (Labour much more so than the Tories) but a 'local only' approach to candidates kind of guarantees that the country will be run by incompetents.
We no longer have rotten boroughs. We have rotten Westminster.
Transparency, electability and accountability are the only way the current system will be saved: MPs who represent all their constituents, who are prepared to fight for them in Parliament, who can be called to account, and sacked, by their constituents, who don't simply listen to the tub thumpers in their own party, but who fight for local concerns and causes, as well as feed back national ones.
If postal primaries are a small way of contributing to that, as I think may be the case, then I welcome them.
The best MPs have always been the ones who don't serve the party or their own egos but who genuinely fight for causes even when it costs them. There are very very few like that. Tam Dalyell comes to mind as one. Perhaps Frank Field another.
What I would do is to limit the number of Executive appointments that could be made, so that MPs with government jobs become a smaller proportion of the legislature.
My previous point was that Parties are a consequence of large electorates - before 1832 there was a Party system in the larger counties and the few borough seats with a wide electorate (household franchise) but only nominally in the smaller boroughs, some of which of course had only a few dozen electors (and Old Sarum famously none at all!).
I have no issue whatsoever with postal primaries, I assure you - what's interesting (to me at least) is that none of the Parties will make them compulsory!
so the bloke who told women IT workers not to push for pay rises, trousers $86million.
Well I suppose if force your wage bill down ........
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/microsoft/11176043/Microsoft-boss-who-said-women-shouldnt-ask-for-pay-rises-is-paid-86m.html
Would take the BND with a pinch of salt, but clearly saying the US and Kiev were lying, again. Of course the conversation between ATC and the pilots still not released. Best case scenario Kiev put the flight in harm's way and/or a military jet was using the plane as cover, BBC recorded eye witnesses saying they saw a military jet underneath.
So who are the great parliamentarians of the last 50 years would we say? And to ask a slightly different but interesting question:
Who would you have voted for as your MP even if they didn't represent the party of your choice? Is there anyone who would have ticked (or rather crossed!) that box?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29702449
"...we use information from Waves 1 and 2 of the British Election Study, which rely on fieldwork carried out as late as June of this year. (We can therefore rule out the possibility that Clacton’s Euroskepticism is a result of Carswell’s defection rather than a potential cause).
By examining responses to a question on vote intention in a future Brexit referendum, and combining this with information on respondents’ and constituencies’ demographics, we can produce estimates of the percentage of respondents in each constituency who would favour exiting the EU. "
http://constituencyopinion.org.uk/uncategorized/clacton-is-the-most-euroskeptic-constituency-in-the-uk/
http://constituencyopinion.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/euroscepticism.xls
!Oscar Time!
Judging by R5L in the car and what I'm reading on the BBC website a prison sentence seems inevitable.
09:30
'Suspended sentence not appropriate'
Masipa: The present case is so serious that a suspended sentence would not be appropriate in my view.
Err Are you sure Mr Dodd ?
The primary is also a good way to keep more local activists engaged rather than following Reckless.
Mr. Flashman (deceased), under the wise governance of the Morris Dancer Party our trebuchet-based justice system would give criminals a short, sharp shock which would strongly deter them from re-offending.
And if they did re-offend, the space cannon would ensure it did not happen again.
I wonder if some young black guy in Soweto would get just five years for offing Her Indoors?
Mr. F, vielleicht. I suspect Clarke's calculation is that the more sceptics shift to UKIP the better the chance for his brand of discredited EU-philia to make a comeback, or at least shift the balance of the party that way. Smacks of putting the EU ahead of his party or country to me.
Oscar Pistorius jailed for five years
The whole rigmarole is f***ng disgusting. If the bastard had been born with legs he would have got life, or hung.
What a scumbag Ken Clarke is, doing the whole "if you have an issue with immigration you are a bigot" nonsense. Presumably he met a fair few people who were foreign when he was trying to sell addictive health-damaging products to the world's poorest?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/tax/11162272/If-Britain-is-booming-why-is-the-deficit-growing.html
"From the Treasury’s perspective, the Coalition’s signature policy – raising the income tax threshold – has actually made things worse. Taking the low-paid out of income tax, and reducing it for millions of others, is a wholly admirable idea. But it does mean that you haven’t got that much of their income left to tax"
A decent guess at the turnout in the by election is needed I think... If we assume 50% then a 15-20% return of primaries woul almost make this a certain conservative win I think... May have mucked this up though...
If 15% of primaries are returned, and they are 75% of the Tory vote, turnout is 50%...
That would put the Tories on 40% of the vote wouldn't it? Which means they'll win
And that's a low end
I think if 15% are returned ukip should worry
I'm not saying he shouldn't...
However, I think this approach is happily starting to fail dramatically. This is partly why UKIP's rising, and why (a similar issue though not identical) the foul Eagles got turned on by the audience in Question Time. Using political correctness to frame debates and identify 'acceptable' opinions is starting to lose its power.