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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » At last somebody’s talking about an area that could be decisive – the LAB-CON ground war capability gap in the battlegrounds
“”The basic scenario in this Parliament has been clear for a while and remains unchanged in 2015: UKIP up, dividing the right, Lib Dems down, uniting the left.
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This would seem to me to be the price you pay for "detoxification". All those retired colonels and blue-rinsed ladies that previously would be out pushing leaflets through door, or telling at the votes know when they aren't wanted. They hated gay marriage, the hated even more being patronised about it and being told they are dinosaurs, and they are going to vote with their sofas, by staying on them. That and his handling of the countryside http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9069211/rural-revolt/ and the likelihood that the Countryside Alliance wont campaign for him unless the foxhunting ban is in their 2015 manifesto, which it wont be.
Cameron made a political decision, possibly even a principled one, but he is going to reap the whirlwind in form of his older small 'c' socially conservative grass roots not bothering to turn out for him. The problem of course is that it didn't work, because the same people that like his socially liberal policies, also hate his austerity, correct as (in my view) that policy is for the country. Most of those people will take the view that they can get the same socially liberal policies from EdM without the austerity (they are wrong), or at least a nicer austerity (they are deluded), or at least austerity with tea and sympathy (more likely).
Conservatives will be able to pride themselves with being toxin-free, socially liberal, principled, caring members of her majesty's loyal opposition. Meanwhile EdM will continue to take any view that he thinks he can sell, and end up in Downing Street. Nice guys come last sadly.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904968/The-sinister-screeching-mob-want-kill-free-speech-no-DON-T-mean-Islamist-terrorists-midst.html Remember that bit Farage said about people who hold our passports and hate us ?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2905075/Hate-preacher-backs-massacres-says-Britain-enemy-Islam.html So let me get this right, we admit you to our country, care for your health, educate your children, protect your rights, defend your freedom to choose and practise your faith, and we hate you ?
If everything is so gloomy for the Tories then the betting markets must be completely wrong,
There's a fortune to be made!
Why don't you go all in on a red majority? Bet @rcs1000's inheritance on it - I'm sure he won't mind!
Sky news on why Ed and Labour cost you money even before they get to the treasury "sweet shop"
"The six firms which dominate the residential supply of energy - British Gas, which is owned by Centrica; EDF Energy; EON; Npower; Scottish Power; and SSE - argue privately that a pledge by Ed Miliband to freeze prices if Labour wins May's election has made it commercially risky to cut prices."
As much as I want my bills down if somone threatened me with a two year price freeze in 5 months time at whatever price I had set in my business then not a cat in hells chance I would lower any prices. It would actually make me increase them. Labour just don't have a clue.
Frankly I'd prefer to take my steer from the collective wisdom of Peter Kellner, Prof. Stephen Fisher and Ladbrokes' Shadsy, rather than from the comparatively little known Alex Deane.
On this video clip dated 3 January for Channel 4 News (not known for its right of centre reporting), all three believe the Tories will be pretty much level with or ahead of Labour come the General Election:
http://www.channel4.com/news/general-election-prediction-polls-modelling-tory-ukip-video
What's messed up the strategy is that David Cameron was designed for times before the Lehman Shock, the aftermath of which has boosted the populist right everywhere. He's ended up compromising the detox message without really succeeding in winning these people back, making it hard for _anyone_ to get enthusiastic about him. Maybe the Tories would have been better off putting him in the deep freeze and running with somebody a bit more hard-edged for a bit, then defrosting him in 2020 or so with his brand unsullied.
Well if Bedford is classified as a "super-marginal" despite the odds against a Tory win being almost quadruple those on Labour, then yes, I feel sure you're right!
Alex Deane was David Cameron's chief of staff in 2005, when he was shadow education spokesman.
He wasn't chief of staff to the PM, or even to the leader of the opposition. He's basically just another of those hangers on in politics, no one very significant
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/alexander-deane.html
BBC news
"Ed Miliband has called for a Living Standards Index to track how people's finances are affected by changes to wages, prices, taxes and benefits.
Labour sources say it would mean a complete change in how the success of economic policy was measured."
It seems then that having lost all the economic arguments, seeing everything they said would happen, not happen, including triple dips and millions unemployed they now have to resort moving goalposts to continue " talking Britain down" . Remember that little sound bite gem from Labour when anyone so much as dared to point out they were actually turning the country into a economic basket case.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-30766452
AFP: arson attack carried out on Hamburg office of German paper that printed #CharlieHebdo cartoons; police say nobody was hurt in attack
Classic consulting approach. Limited value added, has a few relationships, talks a good game and bigs up his contacts.
Nick Palmer corrected me the other day for inadvertently describing some Labour aide wonk as an aide to Milliband which was what the article purported. Apparently although an aide he was an outsider with no influence or knowledge etc etc. Sounds Familiar?? The guy was also wrong in his criticism of Miliband and Labour according to NPXMP .
So using the precise same measure i guess this guy is also wrong..... Unless and as normal, the left want to have it both ways.
Actually there was one major difference of course between the two. The scathing.criticism of Miliband and Labour did not warrant a full thread as this has done.
Amazing ....
.....................................................................................................
Meanwhile ..... I'm always a little cautious about reports of the wonders of the ground game. I recall in 92 being advised that the fallout from the Poll Tax had decimated the Conservative grassroots and Kinnock was a dead cert for Downing Street. In a similar vein in 97 the seemingly now revived Conservative ground game would mitigate against severe losses to the Labour party.
As Mike Smithson indicates the ground game varies vastly from seat to seat and probably only has an effect at the margin in most constituencies, albeit in a tight election that may be decisive.
Nevertheless on one issue PBers may be certain :
Ed Miliband Will Never Be Prime Minister.
(That said, I get paid reasonably well for my perspectives on a specific industry, so I'm not really one to talk!)
Amazing ...."
Indeed. Just as amazing in fact as the stamina exhibited by a 103 year old in writing about such matters on a political website in the early hours of a cold January Sunday morning.
I thought he was at least 107
'Classic consulting approach. Limited value added, has a few relationships, talks a good game and bigs up his contacts.'
Some people took Derek Draper seriously.
Reason 129 why the Tories can't win.
She tells me we have both just entered early middle age but I somewhat doubt either of us have the gusto of the mythical Bedford Behemoth as he holds court over the broccoli quiche eateries and the notorious beard and sandal nightclubs.
Oh and Charles,(@0653) I’ve never been aware of Jack W being guilty of a terminological inexactitude. Wrong, on occasion, perhaps, but honestly so!
'Alex Deane was David Cameron's chief of staff in 2005, when he was shadow education spokesman.'
According to his LinkedIn entry for 6 months.
Chief of Staff to David Cameron
Conservative Party
May 2005 – October 2005 (6 months)
Chief of staff to the Shadow Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Extensive campaigning and speechwriting work as a part of an active team, in addition to continuing responsibility for political analysis and research. Significant administrative and organisational responsibilities within a large shadow Parliamentary team.
It's as qualified as any other semi-involved person. Just not as significant as OGH is making out
Beckett. * snigger *
Won't somebody rid me of this turbulent pest?
The last 12 months...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/6wu2aveq6t6v355/YouGov polls 12 months to 11 January 2015.jpg#
Since the 2010 General Election...
http://www.mediafire.com/view/f139u90rvsl98p6/YouGov Polls since 2010 GE as of 11 January 2015.jpg#
Cartoon Debate
The case for mocking religion.
By Christopher Hitchens
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2006/02/cartoon_debate.html
http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/what-if-icharlie-hebdo-i-had-been-published-in-britain
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPtH4IDFNQ
Nice to see a one-man anecdotal "assessment" from a super-marginal, though. If only someone were conducting systematic, scientific polling in these important seats.
I'm interested to see that you think Labour are better organised than the Tories in Bedford. In Cannock, it's the polar opposite. I've had four contacts from the Conservatives to one from Labour (and the one from Labour was a generic 'insert name and achievements if any here and make the union wonk candidate nobody has ever heard of smile for airbrushed photo with Miliband'). Moreover, I live on a council estate, which is hardly what you would think of as 'promising territory' for them.
Let's run through the issues in Cannock:
1) The Conservatives have lost the lower-middle-class vote to Labour because of their economic policies, which have caused serious hardship to the local light industries and for the commuters working in Birmingham;
2) UKIP topped the polls here in the Euro elections;
3) The outgoing MP was very publicly sacked for the admittedly cretinous misjudgement of hiring a Nazi uniform for a stag do;
4) This seat has historically been Labour, with rare exceptions, and the Conservatives as far as I can judge are about to lose it to them again.
And yet, they are still undoubtedly making the effort. That may simply be because the candidate is a local man who has got his mates involved, but if the experience here is in any way typical I'd say that Wotzisface's analysis is far astray.
The state of the local party is a negative for the Conservatives. An area that Lord Feldman has failed in yet not been sacked. Good to be a mate of Dave's? If they had also tackled the problem of union subsidies, this problem would not have been so great. But they did not.
What next, hope that the polls start to have a Conservative lead over Labour, there may yet be a feasting on the corpse of EdMiliband's career.
** technical point - In my day we had to carve in tablets of stone you mere youngsters have it far to easy.
The points made are very valid, and Labour have good "machines" in seats such as Broxtowe and Bedford.
However what about the other side of the coin?
Labour membership has declined too and for the first time in decades, they face a fight in seats regarded as safe shoo ins (from UKIP and SNP). In these seats the organisation is by all accounts a shambles. How much will Labour be affected by having to redeploy decent campaigners from places like Bedford and Broxtowe to Gorbals West and Innercity East? On this, silence.
Day early or premature tweeting?
"As for freedom, here’s an interesting thing. The French Leftist newspaper Liberation reported on September 12, 1996, that three stalwarts of Charlie Hebdo (including Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier) had campaigned in their magazine to collect more than 170,000 signatures for a petition calling for a ban on the French National Front party. They did this in the name of the ‘Rights of Man’.
You, like me, may dislike the National Front greatly. But lovers of liberty simply do not seek to ban parties they do not like."
Not exactly campaigners for liberty were they? Looks to me that they were hard left anti religious secularists. Which is why of course the great and good are so outraged at their assassinations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904968/The-sinister-screeching-mob-want-kill-free-speech-no-DON-T-mean-Islamist-terrorists-midst.html
5 years on many of the Tory activists have ducked out leaving us at a disadvantage and Ed M's union links and the stupid Conservative decision to run on further restricting strike ballots will surely see unions filling Labour coffers.
In the by election, lets be honest, the Tories tried every trick in the book.. the primary was a way of providing extra publicity for their candidate while circumventing the rules on spending, Jim Messina was polling the constituency with leading questions smearing Reckless, and they threw the kitchen sink at it in terms of minister visits, activists etc
UKIP won by a margin wider than most expected at the start of the campaign
In May, when they have 649 other contests to resource, why should we expect them to regain the seat?
One poll?
Of course people will say, well UKIP have other seats to fight as well, and they do.. But you can bet your bottom dollar this will be one of the seats that UKIP are heavily invested in winning, and there are probably only 20 such seats in the country, if that
I'll go 4/5 the Tories here in Rochester.. any PBer confident in a Kelly win can have as much as they like. Best price anywhere in the world. Roll up!
"As for freedom, here’s an interesting thing. The French Leftist newspaper Liberation reported on September 12, 1996, that three stalwarts of Charlie Hebdo (including Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier) had campaigned in their magazine to collect more than 170,000 signatures for a petition calling for a ban on the French National Front party. They did this in the name of the ‘Rights of Man’.
You, like me, may dislike the National Front greatly. But lovers of liberty simply do not seek to ban parties they do not like."
Not exactly campaigners for liberty were they? Looks to me that they were hard left anti religious secularists. Which is why of course the great and good are so outraged at their assassinations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904968/The-sinister-screeching-mob-want-kill-free-speech-no-DON-T-mean-Islamist-terrorists-midst.html
They also sacked one of their own cartoonists, when a shit-storm arose that something was "anti-semitic."
They first asked him to apologize.
"I'd rather cut my balls off!"
So they sacked him...
He may be right: I don't have the figures so I'm only going by what I see and know.
Andrew Rawnsley seems certain the debates will not happen because of the conservatives
and their experience of last time.
I think the Conservatives are making the correct assessment.
"As for freedom, here’s an interesting thing. The French Leftist newspaper Liberation reported on September 12, 1996, that three stalwarts of Charlie Hebdo (including Stephane ‘Charb’ Charbonnier) had campaigned in their magazine to collect more than 170,000 signatures for a petition calling for a ban on the French National Front party. They did this in the name of the ‘Rights of Man’.
You, like me, may dislike the National Front greatly. But lovers of liberty simply do not seek to ban parties they do not like."
Not exactly campaigners for liberty were they? Looks to me that they were hard left anti religious secularists. Which is why of course the great and good are so outraged at their assassinations.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2904968/The-sinister-screeching-mob-want-kill-free-speech-no-DON-T-mean-Islamist-terrorists-midst.html
A new low in partisan silliness, surely? Anyone morally sane is outraged by assassinations of anyone by anyone. Are you suggesting that murdering god-botherers is in some way worse than murdering "hard left anti religious secularists"?
I don't think Margaret Thatcher herself would have won the Rochester by-election against that defection. Let's see how it goes on May 7th before rushing out a judgement.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4613736,00.html
At the start of any campaign, before any polling, 7.2% was a wider margin than UKIP were expected to win by.
Prove me wrong
Such a touching attachment to democracy, from someone who accepted an appointment to sit in the legislature for life.
If only 1 in 100,000 was turned into a radical sleeper, that would be 440 sleepers.
A chilling thought...
"France is now at war with radical Islam. We are all Charlie now....We are all Jews."
And what of the Muslims, who constituted at least one of the victims and one of the heroes of this event?
┌∩┐(◣_◢)┌∩┐ to the terrorists.
Or perhaps you might prefer to eliminate them entirely?
The reason it stupid is the same reason the French decided to scrap their equivalent law, not least of which was it was challenged in the ECJ and found to be contrary to Article 10, protecting freedom of expression, and specifically the electorate’s right to receive and communicate information. The French government did their own enquiry and decided that the media would just do their own polls anyway and use that to inform their commentary even if they didn't publish the results which would be even worse.
It is all about the numbers
To say that Muslims, on the whole are more violent and prone to extremism/terrorism than other religions is the height of ignorance. As a % I shouldn't think there is any significant difference.
Because muslims are the significant minority in Europe, they are going to be the insurgents if there are to be any. What e are talking about here is not the muslim identity, but the identity of any group that are the largest outside of the dominant power
There just aren't the amount of people who follow other religions in the Western World to be a noticeable threat if 0.05% of the following were sympathetic to terrorism, and 20% of that 0.05% became terrorists
UK Hindus are 1.5% of the population. That is the biggest proportion of Hindus, BY FAR, of any European nation, and the biggest proportion of any religion other than Christianity or Islam in Europe (except maybe Jews in Gibraltar)
Its like saying West Ham football fans are more violent than Dagenham supporters.. probably no difference, just more of them, and because there are more of them, they attract non West Ham fans who just want to get involved in trouble
@BBCNormanS: Ed Miliband not deny saying he wanted to "weaponise" the NHS as an issue #marrshow
@DavidGauke: Obvious to anyone watching #marr that Miliband has talked about 'weaponising' the NHS.
Paul Waugh @paulwaugh 12s12 seconds ago
Miliband defends Jim Murphy on mansion tax, says London bank tax will also help jobless in Newcastle, it’s "part of our unity as a country'
Mind you some of the canvasers were rather Dave Spart and could have put off the middle class voters that New Labour wanted!
Ed Miliband is wearing a purple tie on Andrew Marr-secret message that people should vote UKIP?
@paulwaugh: “I’m not about deals” Clearly EdM’s formulation. Marr rightly asks if ‘i’m not about it’ means won’t do one. Miliband says not focused on it
So what do you suggest?
MI5: "attack highly likely"
Hogan-Howe: "attack not likely"
http://damianpmcbride.tumblr.com/post/105263036589/salience-is-the-virtue-of-fools
I'm not a fan of either.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/12295/blairs-chief-of-staff-on-the-shakespearean-tragedy-of-gordon-brown/
And Powell's perspective was at least that of an informed insider.
And if Milliband's such a liability why isn't Cameron ahead -- indeed, far ahead -- in the polls? Why?
Oh, Milliband is just such a loser ... so why is Cameron bottling out of a TV debate with him? That should seal it, surely?
It's a betting site, money is involved, for that reason alone I think that this site is more even handed than others.
It's certainly true in our patch that the Tory ground game has been almost non-existent up to now, with their focus entirely on direct mail and phone canvassing. They are now canvassing once a week but it's still weak, which means that their information in a few months' time on voter intentions for people whose phone numbers they don't have will be very limited. That's an objective problem in GOTV on the day which cannot really be fixed in the short time remaining.
So the answer is to find a way to break down the separate communities that have developed. Education is a key part of the story, as is language. I'd also restrict the ability to import new wives from the home country (I believe this is particularly an issue with rural Pakistanis). You also need the ability to deport people who have made clear that they are not willing to live by the norms of our society.
British residence/citizenship is a privilege, not a right
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2782625/ISIS-plotting-Trojan-Horse-campaign-smuggling-militants-western-Europe-disguised-refugees.html
Although I don't trust Hogan-Howe to speak the truth unless it suits him.