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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Do the size of ministers’ majorities matter?
One of the charms of the Westminster system is that Cabinet ministers still have contact with the electorate through their surgeries and case work. It’s a reality check. In other electoral systems Ministers are not constituency MPs. However the make-up the voters that have the ear of Cabinet and Shadow ministers matters and they’re not always representative.
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It's Lib Dem Ministers who are most likely to lose their seats. I dont think they're performing any the better for it.
Not many places do national lists without constituencies, do they? I guess there's the US model where the executive isn't made up of MPs at all.
The government front-bench will tend to have bigger majorities than the opposition front-bench, for obvious reasons.
According to the local paper this week, the big news is that there's oodles more shale gas under Lancashire/Cheshire/Merseyside and North Wales than expected. It's a bonanza.
The coal mines may have gone. but this new resource is waiting to be exploited.
They did have a quote from Natalie Bennett along the lines of "we'll all die" but she would say that, wouldn't she?
Scotland can only look on in envy.
Also Lib Dems in the seat, would they vote tactically - if a Lib-Lab coalition comes up better to have Balls out, after all he was one of the chief wreckers of the 2010 votes, plus more leverage for Cable.
Lib Dems love to vote Labour if theres a danger from the 'Tories'.
CON voters will still vote CON.
Agreed. How about a UKIP endorsed tory sceptic and no UKIP candidate?
Nah I reckon ballsie would still scrape home...
In 2010 UKIP was a tactically awful vote for an Anti-Balls vote. In 2015 it is the best option.
I mean, we all know how crap Dave and in particular George are, but thanks to Ed Balls, they still manage to outpoll the two Eds on the economic front.
tim is at the obnoxious heart of New Labour, along with people like Derek Draper and Damian McBride.
I have
#1 David Cameron being usurped so of course GO goes with him
#2 George Osborne getting shuffled (V unlikely if DC is still in charge)
#3 Labour not getting a majority and LDs insisting VC is chancellor to do a deal
#4 Balls being reshuffled by Labour.
Balls losing his seat against national swing is a very very distant 5th contingency to my mind anyway.
" we ran a surplus, we ran a surplus, we ran a surplus - ok it was a 5.2% deficit"
You can tell how bad he is by how good he makes Osborne look.
I answered your question re gay marriage & Inter racial marriage on the last thread, would you like to answer mine on civil partnerships? Are they equal for all people? Are you angry at the lack of equality?
And if you want to bet on this seat make me a price on UKIP winning it in 2015...putting your money where your mouth is always helps to see how confident people are in their opinions
If Labour win the next election then it is very likely that all the MPs you mention will have much larger majorities. All the Labour MPs in marginals will most likely have only just won their seats from Conservative opponents, and aren't likely to go straight into Cabinet.
Second point, I've not analysed this seat fully to price it up, yet.
http://oldco.coplandroad.org/444641#!
The irony of it is, Labour tried to spin Black Wednesday as all being Dave's fault when he was Norman Lamont's bag carrier.
But Labour don't like it when you point out Balls was Gordon's Advisor in the treasury for nearly a decade, and Ed Miliband was appointed Chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers as a replacement for Ed Balls, with specific responsibility for directing the UK's long-term economic planning.
To be spotted at the Grove Hotel, Watford during the Bilderberg conference
http://sportsbeta.ladbrokes.com/Politics/Bilderberg-Specials-N-1z141lkZ1z0t4iw/
The reverse is also true. Few, if any (?), of Labour's 1997 cabinet will have had a small majority as they'd have all received a huge boost from their 1992 scores, however after seeing reverses in 2005 and 2010, it's not surprising that several of the shadow cabinet are now nursing closely-fought seats.
Does it matter? Not of itself, providing that those at the top keep their ear to the ground, one way or another. After all, nearly all PMs will have had safe seats otherwise they'd probably have lost at some time on the way up. If anything, the problem with the gay marriage issue was that it went down badly with core Tory voters rather than centrist swing ones, so those with large numbers of Conservative voters should have been all the more aware of the likely response.
Inverted Snobbery: Anyone understand the point of this article: An awkward brush with the Dubai expat vodka set. Other than to make the [sneering, twattish] writer feel superior, I mean.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22811466
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4958872/Armed-robbery-at-Selfridges.html
I wonder if UKIP missed a trick by not targeting/picketing Bilderberg. It storms into their narrative of us being ruled by a remote and self perpetuating elite class who are 'all the same'.
may Nige is hoping for an invite...
Also I don't plan on dieing any time soon, looks expensive.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4958641/Burial-and-cremation-fees-hit-5000-in-London.html
Amidst all the class warriors manning the barricades in support of the workers, we have a winsome piece on 'how to buy your perfect coffee machine'
It really is grim up North London.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/economic-decline-in-france-the-failed-leadership-of-hollande-a-903732.html
Siemens machines have always been temperamental for me. Given their price, I don't think they're worth the money.
Gaggia are the option if money is no object. Their bean-to-cup machines are second-to-none.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22798876
Broxtowe selection now open - it'll be on August 3, probably one of the last before the holiday. We should have all the marginals wrapped up by the end of September.
And Djoko has broken !
Edit: How did these two end up in the same side of the draw btw ? Surely they are the two big pre tourney favourites - Some voodoo with the rankings due to Nadal's lack of play ?
"If you are working here illegally -- no matter how -- then please go back to where you came from!"
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-interior-minister-expell-eastern-european-poverty-immigrants-a-904415.html
You wait until the deficit spending splurge ends and the French state is obliged to live within its means. The rioting will make the Battle of Stalingrad look like a Morris dancing festival.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2f213f78-ce9f-11e2-8e16-00144feab7de.html#axzz2VS7NhTSq
I don't know if anyone mentioned this but other than Vernon Coaker's (Gedling does seem to be an inherently marginal seat) all the other seats of these Shadow Ministers had a 10,000 Labour majority at some point since 1997. All of those candidates have lost significant majorities which in itself suggests that they have hardly performed well in their constituency. Even new boy Owen Smith saw the formely safe seat of Pontypridd (Kim Howells - 13,000 majority) turn into a marginal under his candidacy. So do these politicians have their finger on the pulse of local concerns? It hardly seems so. Clearly it has made little or no difference previously as they lost enormous majorities.
Rather than provide an advantage, I think this article just demonstrates the ebb & flow of politics more generally. In which case the only advice to Tory ministers is "Brace Yourself"!
Maybe Dave is more cunning than we think....
What I find really interesting is the change in trade between the EU and the rest of the world. The Coalition's policy does seem to be bearing fruit there and the rate of change is remarkable. They quote the office of National Statistics which says:
"The positions are now reversed. The volume of exports to the EU has gone down since 2011 by around 5pc, while they have risen to the rest of the world [by] 7pc. Conversely, imports from the EU have risen slightly over this period while they have been flatter from the rest of the world.”
These are really rapid changes in the world of trade. It will be of interest and political importance how far our share of trade going to the EU has fallen by the end of the year, let alone 2017.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/07/uk-gathering-secret-intelligence-nsa-prism
"The UK’s largest 100 law firms by revenue nudged up their fee income by an average of only 2.6 per cent in the 2012-13 fiscal year, less than half the median rate of 6.6 per cent seen in the preceding 12 months, according to new research by Deloitte."
Partners will feel some of the pain, though they have the most upholstering. There will be a continuing reduction in partner headcounts, increased use of paralegals and technology and much more brutal career development paths for all lawyers.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/spending-review/10106288/Britain-faces-decade-of-austerity-influential-think-tanks-warn.html
Only if you define austerity as less public spending I guess - if so it is austerity for ever. We wont return to the Brown levels of public sector workers for 20-50 years.
No title number 8 at RG for Nadal methinks.
Cameron on the other hand has placed himself a little between a rock and a hard place; not doing enough to really fix the problem but doing enough for real pain to be felt. That said, not doing enough may well have enabled growth to surge ahead in time for the election. How he's going to balance that against more retrenchment is an interesting question, but then given that Labour's nominally signed up to austerity now, perhaps that doesn't matter as much.
The driving force is a chronic lack of deals involving the buying or selling of UK companies. The market has been moribund for so long the wish to hold onto good staff is no longer enough.
The lack of commercial activity is hurting the bar too. People are just not entering enough contracts to generate the disputes. Insolvency is starting to feature a lot more which is a late recession scenario.
There will be a long tail to this recession even when this is over.
Also interest payments are a hefty £44Bn + per annum - not easy to cut those down without a surplus.
Disclaimer: I do have a commercial interest in this process.
We're running a 6% deficit. And even a super growth number will be a fair bit lower than that. This is not sustainable.
Maybe I'm being harsh and Ozzy is pushing a Goldilocks zone where spending falls at a rate just slow enough not to kill confidence. In which case the increase in debt will not level off for many years. Years to be followed by an extended surplus or 'growth exceeds deficit' zone. Either way public sector largesse is dead for a long long time.
My own view is we could push spending cuts quite a bit harder and offer some tax breaks for small business too. The relative pain of adjustment is not yet falling enough in the public sector and growth stimulus not enough in the private sector.
How about a fiscally neutral sharp cut in total benefits (the 'cap' - which is very popular) and a sharp cut in employers' NIC (also popular, esp for the jobless)?
370K off the public wage bill but a 2% rise in the wage bill in the same timescale equivalent to an average increase in earnings for those in the public sector of 9% in 2 years when wages for the majority in the private sector were not rising at all (April 2010 to April 2012).
A major reason for "austerity" not cutting the deficit or public spending is how difficult it has proven in practice to restrict public sector wage increases. The contractual entitlements built into their employment under the last government have proven extremely difficult to resist.
I'll tell you a minister who could do with another 10,000 majority to his seat - Danny Alexander - current majority 8765. At a guess I'd say he would be likely to lose it next GE though. Probably Evens to hold, 5/6 to lose it.
The cumulative effect is remarkable and demonstrates vividly how out of control things got under new Labour. Has anyone noticed any of our public services falling apart with over 400,000 fewer workers? What on earth did they all do?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At91c3wX1Wu5dFkzTjFrRmJRN3F6ODBTTEs4NGFhcUE#gid=0
You also won't necessarily notice the drop in armed forces numbers until you wish to use them in a war somewhere.
You also have to be wary of living in the filter bubble. Just because you haven't noticed public services falling apart, doesn't mean that it isn't happening. It depends how reliant you are on those services, as to whether you would notice, and whether you discount stories about problems in the public service as whining from producer interests, etc.
There are some bits of the public sector that have had sod all pay rises since Brown introduced his 2% pay cap, back when he was still Chancellor. It's all down to how strong your union is, and what sort of pay system you have. It's a long way from being as homogeneous as people make out is the public sector. I reckon Plato would agree - she used to take the Government's shilling, if I recall correctly.
Another example is on the planning side - many councils have terribly understaffed planning departments; a case I've dealt with lately took 3 months longer for a response than was expected and cost me about £500 more in architects' fees than it should have done/would have done 5 years ago.
There's a legitimate argument that these costs should fall on the service user, but in these (and I imagine many other) cases, it's hard to see how one could argue that staffing cuts have been consequence-free.
Good grief, it's bad enough that most people on here have to run off and quote someone else because they're incapable of forming an argument themselves but then to completely misunderstand the information you're using to support your own argument.
I mean, mouth meet foot - please get better acquainted.
Sorr, on-topic, and almost the only response worth reading as most of the early discussion descended into a rant about Ed Balls came, as might be expected, from David Herdson. I recall one of the problems Conservatives after 1997 and Labour after 1979 had was the sense among the survivors that they were untouchable.
If all that you represent is the heartland that's the voice you'll be listening to. I would argue the limited improvement in Conservative fortunes in 2005 and the election of 30-35 new MPs allowed Cameron and all he stood for to gain the upper hand. In the same way, I think Blair gained from the influx of Labour MPs elected in 1992.
The mauling of 1997 carried away experience - what was left were the backwoodspeople often without any prospect of Ministerial advancement who suddenly found themselves having to shadow Ministers for which they were almost completely unprepared.
I suspect that short of a landslide in 2015, the Conservative Opposition frontbench will be a much stronger outfit than recent Governments have faced and once having coalesced around a new leader and seen off UKIP (love-bombing anyone?), they will be a formidable force.
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
Saw the end of the Nadal-Djokovic match. It was rather good. One suspects Wimbledon could be very good, especially if the top 4 reach the semis.
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/109939.html
Good news. The last thing we need is another city centre street circuit, like Singapore.
More brutal career development = less tolerance of plodders, more average lawyers losing their jobs.
There will be fewer jobs for lawyers all round, which means that many lawyers will have no jobs, very well compensated or otherwise.
Thanks for that link. Although I was aware of it I have never really followed Speigel's coverge of Franco-German relations. Half an hour's train reading was really illuminating (and prejudice-confirming). How will la belle France get out of the mire? I do hope they do, and become a more positive influence on World events.
Benedict Brogan @benedictbrogan 1h
France's political and economic crisis latest: military talk of a coup (h/t @timothy_stanley) http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article3783614.ece …
"Charles Bremner Paris
Published at 12:01AM, June 6 2013
Sections of the French military have called for a coup to save the country, it emerged yesterday.
The Defence Ministry was taking seriously appeals from royalist, ultra-traditionalist Catholic groups on the internet and in a magazine for a “coup de force” as criticism of François Hollande grows.
The plotters claim that France is threatened by decadence, symbolised by the legalisation last month of gay marriage."
:awaits-low-viz-punishment:
Two influential think tanks have warned that austerity measures in the UK could still be in place when the 2020 election takes place.
No kidding! And I was so convinced that it would end in 2017 after being pushed back 2 years, and then that it would end in 2018 after being pushed back another year.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22819843
:awaits-low-viz-punishment:
A great defence: my client is really stupid!
Mind you under Labours workfare scheme these plotters would be in the workfare scheme. perhaps as class room assistants or as helpers in old folks homes, rather than creating economic growth and employment in the criminal justice sector of the economy.