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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » LAB heavyweight Jim Murphy becomes the 2-5 favourite to be next Scottish LAB leader
The key fact to remember when discussing the impact of Scotland on UK politics is that there are 59 seats north of the border of which LAB hold 41. So anything that could weaken the party in the eyes of Scottish voters could have a big impact on GE15.
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Although some of those seats look tough to crack the damage caused by Johann Lamont's very public spat could be considerable. She has laid into Miliband's London Labour in such a way that it's difficult to see Scottish Labour recovering their vote in time for GE2015.
What we now need to see, of course, are some Scottish polls.
http://www.mediafire.com/view/ax4pduo4nd3239u/12-month YouGov 26 October 2014.jpg#
Moving average YouGov polls since the General Election...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/m590guli98shz4t/YouGov since 2010 GE 26 October 2014.jpg#
12% of Scots believe EdM is doing well as leader of Labour, whilst 82% think he is doing badly.
67% of UKIP VI would trust Nigel Farage most to get the best deal for Britain from the EU
The Westminster subsamples (for what they are worth) have much bigger swings.
Labour's devolutionary offer appears to be the skimpiest one of the lot, both sub-LibDem and sub-Tory, so I can't see any argument for Yes voters to return to the Labour fold. Supporting Labour to a majority would equal the weakest devolution.
It is perhaps in their best interests to give the SNP the strongest hand that it can muster with a probable hung parliament.
It is possible that the dam walling in the Labour UK vote might completely burst if they fall behind on a more consistent basis. It's been leaking for a year and a half now.
But Lamont and her allies believe Curran - who is Ed Miliband's shadow Scotland secretary - knifed Lamont in the back when the Glasgow Pollok MSP needed help.
Labour down, Tories down, LibDems (who dat?) UKIP (and Greens if I keep pushing the meme) on the up.
Ooooops! They've now altered it. LOL
Rochester By-Election: @Conservatives Candidate @KellyTolhurst is Anti-Israel Activist @UKIPRochester @UKIP http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/rochester-by-election-camerons-candidate-kelly-tolhurst-anti-israel-activist-1471647 …
Well, well! Will this fact play for her in this particular area or not?
I suggested on yesterday's thread that he would be better deployed going for a Glasgow seat in order to help the SNP maximise their efforts to capitalise on the Yes vote, but JPJ2 gave three cogent reasons why not.
Even with a blue/red crossover the purple/yellow crossover may be enough to turf Cameron out of number 10.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bygi8eZw-4q1VGVsZ3Zsa2lqck0/view?usp=sharing
This shows all the seats in Scotland ranked in order of the bookies' odds on the SNP taking each seat. This took rather longer than I'd expected because the odds have moved more in the last fortnight than I'd expected.
For those that want to compare movements, I last looked at this here:
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/scottish-post-referendum-special.html
The punters are not being put off by the Herculean swings required. For myself, the 6/4 on the SNP in Dundee West still looks an outstanding bargain. The 4/1 on the SNP in Ross Skye & Lochaber does not.
My hunch is that a former Royal Naval Dockyard town it may not go down to well with some older voters, who might take a rather small c conservative line on defence and middle eastern matters.
"A liberal elite wants to brush Ukip aside
Trampling over non-conforming minorities is not democracy, it is mob rule"
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/11185908/A-liberal-elite-wants-to-brush-Ukip-aside.html
So we have 1/3 of the electorate in the blue camp, 1/3 in the red camp and 1/3 in neither camp - apparently plenty of voters still to decide and six months to go.
A better definition of "all to play for" would be hard to find.
I'm bemused by the fact that CCHQ didn't spot Kelly Tolhurst's past utterings on Gaza and other matters Middle Eastern as the vetting (or neutering if you prefer) process for Conservative candidates is rigorous. It will be interesting if or how Labour and UKIP use this information but the one thing a candidate struggling to make ground doesn't need is a potential stick or several (I also note there's a planning issue related to Hoo) with which they can be beaten.
I was on the paddle steamer SS Waverley with Mrs Stodge a fortnight ago and we ambled round the mouth of the Medway so I probably saw R&S from the water. One fact of which I was unaware was the importation of Liquid natural Gas (LNG) to a terminal on the Isle of Grain from North Africa - a sign of the demise of the North Sea oil/gas bonanza.
Whatever did we do with that windfall - create a Sovereign Fund or build an infrastructure for future generations ? No, we wasted it on a tax cut. Whatever happened to the billions from the privatisations in the 80s ? Oh yes, thrown away on tax cuts.
We didn't need to be in this financial mess - both the Conservative and Labour parties have a lot to answer for - they both had long periods in office to prepare for the demographic time bomb and the end of North Sea oil yet did nothing.
"Michael Connarty, Labour MP for Linlithgow and East Falkirk, has backed former prime minister Gordon Brown to replace Lamont as “a towering figure” who was “speaking the language of the people of Scotland”. He told BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme: “We should be talking about Gordon and Gordon alone. I’ll be seeking him out, and so will other people.”"
Personally I think he is the only one who could rescue the electoral 2015 situation in Scotland.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/26/labour-civil-war-scottish-leader-johann-lamont-quits
On topic, Murphy would help stem the losses in 2015 but his effect will be less pronounced in 2016 unless he commits to move to the Holyrood parliament either then or before.
The whole structure's bodged and the cause of the current problem. Having two leaders in one party with overlapping authority is a recipe for friction and trouble. The Scottish leader having supposed authority over Westminster MPs from north of the border was never going to end well as those MPs inevitably look to their leader in Westminster first. The 'Scottish' leader should be the head of their Holyrood parliamentary delegation and no more (or, if outside the parliament, as Murphy is, their designated First Minister nominee for after the next election).
Would he want it though?
Too many Gordons in Scotland!
"Mr Miliband used his trip to Rochester to unveil a tough new stance on immigration, saying: ‘If I become Prime Minister I will bring in clear, credible and concrete measures to count all
people going in and out of the UK.’ He would stop child benefit and tax credits being paid for children who live abroad, curb immigrants’ benefits, ban bosses using immigrant labour to undercut British workers and make sure more public sector workers can speak English.’
But he did not mention immigration when he addressed the Black and Ethnic Minority Forum meeting in Croydon which included many Labour supporters.
He said if he became PM, one of his first acts would be to introduce new laws to promote racial equality.‘I’m committing today, in front of you as my witnesses, to saying that if a Labour government is elected to power we will deliver a race equality strategy across every government department within a year.
'We would tackle police stop and search, which is disproportionately used on black people... and tackle the under-representation of black people in the judiciary and in public sector board rooms.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2808001/
Of all the issues voters at Rochester and Strood lose sleep over there won't be a single one that places Israeli activity in Gaza as one of them.
MikeK and Paul in bed, I know you're keen on UKIP to win but straw clutching like this smacks of desperation.
"We didn't need to be in this financial mess - both the Conservative and Labour parties have a lot to answer for - they both had long periods in office to prepare for the demographic time bomb and the end of North Sea oil yet did nothing."
A parliament lasts five years at most. Short-termism is the nature of politics. But you know that, don't you.
What does seem unfair is that the person doing the defenestration seems to have under performed at least as substantially as Johann.
The problem for Jin Murphy is he is a lot more credible as Labour leader than Ed.
Why settle for just Scotland? Murphy will surely want to be in on the kill the night of the 7th May 2015.
Scottish Labour chose Iain Gray then Johann Lamont. It'd be a surprise if the next occupant of the job is as terrible as those two, but Scottish Labour do have a real habit of surprising us.
So, once we have identified someone worse than Lamont, there's our candidate. Who conceivably could be worse than Lamont?
Wouldn't having an MP (rather than MSP) simply reinforce Lamont's comments about Labour and Miliband?
http://news.sky.com/story/1360547/brown-not-running-for-scottish-labour-leader
If you were an electrician working on site for a big firm, you earned well above the minimum wage but are now being undercut by economic migrants who will accept virtually minimum wage ... So nothing illegal
The point is that th boss of this big construction firm doesn't pass on the difference to the customer, hence the rich getting richer and the poor poorer and the difference between the credo ever widening
Salmond talked about winning 20 Westminster seats prior to 2010. It may be that he was one election out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TTE6cTBrGcA
But the major game in town in Scotland is no longer Westminster and it will be even less so when devomax is applied. If this is combined with EVEL then those 41 MPs are going to be increasingly useless in determining the government of this country.
Until now Labour has, with very limited exceptions, looked at Holyrood as some sort of local government, a training ground for the B team. They paid a massive price for that in 2011 and Scotland nearly did too in the referendum.
Scottish Labour needs to focus on Holyrood building policies and personalities that have something useful to say about the impending crisis in the Scottish NHS, our catastrophic education system and the increasing centralisation of power away from local government.
Any Scottish leader either needs to be in Holyrood or at least committed to being there very soon and needs to spend all their time focussed on devolved matters. Jim Murphy has been extremely reluctant to make that commitment. Brown even more so. As Henry McLeish put it yesterday: “I think Johann is absolutely right to make the comments she has made. For a decade now the party have been in decline and the SNP have been in the ascendancy. There has been a failure to rise to the devolution challenge." That is what this is about.
We may well get to the point when the Labour cohort at Westminster is as relevant to Scottish political life as those MEPs that we elected and will not hear from again for several years.
Just re-run the clip of Brown casting the woman in Rochdale as a bigot when she dared to mention immigration and more WWC votes lost. Doesn't matter if he is leader in Scotland only the Westminster Labour party are closely associated with him.
You mean - this sort of towering colossus?!
http://wingsoverscotland.com/gordzilla-returns-to-the-back-benches/
[edit: cartoon for weekend morning]
To the Conservative faithful, it's all red-meat right-wingery but to the more sceptical it's the sweet sugary taste of "liberal conservatism".
For the domestic audience, it's all about standing up to the EU and trying to out-UKIP UKIP in his distaste for all things European while in Brussels, I suspect, it's much more conciliatory and asking that nice Mrs Merkel if it's all right for him to get a little cross for domestic consumption but don't worry we'll pay the money on time as good members of the club.
"@Roger are you Adrian Harpur in disguise?"
It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he made the most notable ground moving speech of the last decade. Few politicians can make a difference without being in office. Gordon possibly single handedly did it with just one passionate speech. A speech which might have saved the union. There aren't many in the UK who can outperform Alex Salmond from a standing start but Brown did.
Underestimate him at your peril. The futures bright.The futures Brown
Ivanovic to be carded is 15/8 with Fred and only 10/11 with Paddy, he is a walking yellow in these big games.
Similarly Rafael up against Hazard looks another likely card, Fred go a really generous 5/2 whereas Paddy are 11/10.
The other player who likes to give his personal details to the ref in these big games is Ramires, he is 15/8 with Victor but only 5/6 with Paddy.
Be a bit careful as Ivanovic is the only certain starter, Rafael will probably play but Ramires is doubtful.
I've also had a few quid each way on Fleur East to win X-Factor at 12/1, 1/5 the odds for top three. My wife has a policy that she only watches programmes where you can vote someone off, so I decided long ago I might as well try to make some money from it.
The fav is Andrea Faustini, a likeable Italian chap who can actually sing, with Lauren Platt and Ben something ahead of my pick in the betting. Both of those can sing as well but my pick has something about her look that I think people will go for, not sure that she will win but 12/1 each way will keep me interested in the hyped up, convoluted dross.
Miliband's ratings now -51 which is lowest since January 2012 and the tie between Labour and Tories is only second time Labour not been ahead in the Sunday Times poll since early 2012.
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/tg001pwhwn/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-241014.pdf
His dipping into the Bank of England joint account would have made the EU's additional tax demands look like small change.
Or you could actually come up with some facts before posting the usual fatuous nonsense. Read that as a condemnation of Conservative and Labour economic policies from 1979 onwards.
"Successive Governments have beggared the future to fund today's indulgences" - and if you want to know why I'm no fan of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair, it's all in that sentence. Every tax cut we got back then has come back to bite us now.
Maybe it's the mighty colossus that throws phones in temper tantrums, or the one that has delusions of grandeur that he saved the world.
I hope Labour do elect him leader and I hope the Scots vote for him as FM. They deserve him.
Very droll.
And every spending increase.
Very typical.
That must be why the MPs dumped Thatcher in 1990 and the electorate dumped the Conservative seven years later.
I did not blame any particular party in my post.
I have often castigated Osborne on here for his inability to control spending.
One: past experience shows us Brown isn't a good leader.
Two: it is easy to make speeches and have influence without the responsibility of government.
Some of the sites of our former refineries are now being used as storage for LNG which is imported from Qatar and its neighbours, who are often part owners of these LNG tank farms and only sell gas to the grid when the price is right.
However a lot of auxiliary LNG powered electrical generation is being installed for times when the wind is too weak or too strong to generate electricity.
Perhaps we should return to local gas works or even start fracking!
This is a rhetorical question: I am not expecting you to answer (we all know the answer anyway).
The privatisations were not about money: they were about transferring assets into the private sector where they have been run - for the most part - more efficiently. Certainly, NP, Rolls Royce, BAe, BA, etc, are all far better for not being in state ownership.
And the income from North Sea Oil contributed towards the massive restructuring that we needed to do to the economy in the 1980s. The Butskellite consensus of propping up failing industries with transfer payments had reached the end of the road
Johanna Churchill (Lincolnshire Cllr, shortlisted in South Cambridgeshire)
James Cleverly (London Assembly Member)
Helen Whately (shortlisted in Wealden, South Cambridgeshire, NE Hampshire, longlisted in SE Cambridgeshire) http://www.helenwhately.co.uk/
Zehra Zaidi (2009 Euro candidate in South West)
Selection on November 4th
Can anyone enlighten us on the system for electing Scottish Lab leader? Murphy isnt even in the parliament - does that matter?
http://www.scotsman.com/news/uk/london-called-shots-during-johann-lamont-tenure-1-3584124
And the photo at the head of that article is superb - zombie embraces zombie!!
When in fact the plebians were around 99% of the Roman citizens including at the end of the Republic Cicero, Cato, Crassus, Pompey, Brutus, Cassius, Antony and Octavian.
And I can assure everyone that in South Yorkshire an Establishment Tory lawyer who's father is a doctor, who went to boarding school and who lives in Dore is the epitome of posh.
No matter what accent he puts on.
Cllr Harry Harpham
Cllr Leigh Bramall
Cllr Jackie Drayton
Mike Buckley frrom Movement for Change
With government borrowing over £100bn at the top of the economic cycle and a balance of payments deficit of over £90bn the end of that road is signaled.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/oct/25/johann-lamont-quits-scottish-labour
LOL that ed had written a "saviour of the Union" role for himself and had to be tactfully told that ‘you’re not well known here’.
But the Cameroons seemed unaware of that and bought into Brown's 'economic miracle' when a few hours looking through the ONS stats on borrowing, home ownership, trade deficits, industrial production and productivity would have shown that things were far from well with the economy even before Northern Rock became famous.
Major had already crashed the economy seven years before, he just got a few years to repair a bit of the damage.
David, didn't you know it was taboo on PB to suggest or point out that voters aren't just motivated by economic factors?
The Scottish referendum and low Tory poll ratings prove that the economy isn't the be all and end all of politics.
We are therefore very likely to see further declines in bank lending at a time when the economy is losing momentum already, basically a repeat of 2010-11. The assumption that everything in the economic garden is going to look rosy (apart from the deficit which far too few people seem to care about) in May of next year looks increasingly misplaced to me.
The UK has neither the scale of natural resource of a country like Norway, nor anywhere near as small a population to keep. This makes comparisons to it virtually meaningless and ill-considered.
"In 1976 Britain faced financial crisis. The Labour government was forced to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of nearly $4 billion. IMF negotiators insisted on deep cuts in public expenditure, greatly affecting economic and social policy."
As you can see, and as any one who has debt problems knows, the luxury of saving is often off the table.
We've passed the peak of the economic cycle.
But people now expect spending increases and tax cuts.
Inevitable after been told that we've had years of 'austerity' and that the economy is now bigger than before the last recession.
Cameron's repeated lies about "paying down Britain's debts" have also encouraged that false complacency.
Secondly Lewis and Short give as a secondary meaning:
Transf., in gen.
The great mass, the multitude: in Hyrcaniā, plebs publicos alit canes, optimates domesticos, Cic. Tusc. 1, 45, 108: plebem et infimam multitudinem delinire, id. Mil. 35, 95.—
With accessory notion of contempt, the populace, the lower class or order, the mass (poet. and in post-Aug. prose) (my emphasis)
Thirdly an insult can be an insult regardless of its being true of 99% of everybody. Consider the word "w_nker".
Fourthly would-be pedants should not write "who's" for "whose".
Scottish leader's job is not even up to being rated as a puppet.
Here's an interesting article on the subject. Note especially the last paragraph.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/in-your-area/rutherglen-snp-welcome-sturgeons-coronation-4474289