Categories
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If the last LAB government continues to be blamed then how
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If the last LAB government continues to be blamed then how come they are so far ahead on voting intention?
Above is an exchange I had on Twitter pointing up one of the main characteristics of current polling – the gap between what people are saying when asked how they will vote and their responses to specific points like the Brown still being blamed one.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
...and in fact my own No 1 beef with the EU is that it is not a democracy. Any true democracy offers the chance to kick the buggers out - and change not only the team but the direction. Alternate visions can get voted in in a democracy.
The EU is governed by unelected Commissioners. They are not accountable to anyone. There is no mechanism for getting rid. Likewise the 'ever closer' religion. There is just no means whatever to change course. There is nothing any European voter can do via a ballot box to alter the unidirectional, socialist, statist, big government EU monster's advance.
I can live with getting outvoted by our lefty scum here in the UK, as I believe they should have equal votes as the enlightened sensible small staters. But those who make laws and govern me from Brussels - I am not even permitted to compete with them with my vote. Those who think they are untouchable in politics usually find out the hard way that it isn't so.
And it is this democratic deficit which will ultimately kill the EU. If the EZ becomes a superstate it's going to have to find itself a means for its citizens to elect AND DESELECT those with the real power. The option of dropping the Euro, returning powers, reforming the state, listening to the people will have to be there. Or it will go the way of all dicatatorships - which start with good intentions...
The EU is utterly illiberal and undemocratic (which is, of course, why the Yellow Peril loves it so much).
Neither party looks united at the moment; there was great anguish from the Labour side about last week's announcements, not helped by them looking like they were making it up as they went along (e.g. pensions in welfare cap.)
The Tories haven't looked like they badly want to win for a long time, ever since Lords reform they have been plagued by indiscipline.
Labour's 13 year long deliberate assault on educational standards is reaping dividends.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/10109602/Japan-GDP-grows-at-faster-than-expected-4.1pc.html
eg;
Q) Who do you plan to vote for? A) The Conservatives.
Q) Who do you blame for the current state of the economy? A) The Conservatives.
Q) WTF???
I posted this last week, but this research suggests that voters will treat subsidiary questions as more like tribal identifiers, rather than telling you their actual considered opinion. They proved this taking actual factual claims like the unemployment rate under different presidents and comparing what happened if you just asked people a question to what happened if you asked them the question and offered to pay them money if they got the answer right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/06/03/if-you-pay-them-money-partisans-will-tell-you-the-truth/
If I'm right about how subsidiaries work, we'd expect the number blaming Labour or both to be quite close to the number saying they won't vote Labour, which is more or less what we're seeing.
Italy GDP down 2.4% year on year:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/italys-gdp-contracts-sharply-in-first-quarter-2013-06-10
Austria GDP down 0.75% year on year:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/austria-gdp-flat-in-quarter-down-07-on-year-2013-06-10
I think a lot depends on how committed to UKIP the deserters from the big two are.
I've been looking at some of the local election results in more detail with regard to marginal constituencies:
Amber Valley constituency aggregates, (using all Amber Valley divisions apart from Alport & Derwent, Belper, Duffield & Belper South):
Lab: 10,279 (43.8%)
Con: 6,606 (28.1%)
UKIP: 4,703 (20.0%)
LD: 663 (2.8%)
Ind: 415 (1.8%)
Green: 145 (0.6%)
Others: 659 (2.8%)
Changes since 2010 GE:
Lab: +6.4%
Con: -10.5%
UKIP: +18.0%
LD: +11.6%
Swing, Con to Lab: 8.4%
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0At91c3wX1Wu5dGxDVWFzUnk2c2JUZEZaMXZnRGx4NGc#gid=0
They are only 5% ahead according to May's ICM, which is only as a result of Lib Dem switchers who may or may not stick with Labour in 2015.
Even a majority of Labour voters blamed Brown for our poor economy, but they (like all non-Tory voters) also blame Cameron and Osborne - presumably for not doing enough to get us out of the mess.
Labour seem infected by the Gordon Brown syndrome - an iron determination to achieve power but no idea what to do with it once they get there.
The opposite to 'tory backbencher syndrome' an iron determination to know what they want to do with power, but no idea how to achieve it....
Warbling about the Commission is a typical eurosceptic red herring in discussions about democracy in the EU.
If 40% say they intend to vote Labour and 40% mainly blame Labour for the economy's problems, the overlap is likely to be small. The group that Labour need to worry about are the ones who blame Labour a fair amount. Some of those probably are currently intending to vote Labour, but are presumably open to other offers.
The Eurosceptics have opposed all such moves in favour of keeping the EU as an intergovernmental club, which means decisions are made as a series of horse trades on the EU Council of Ministers in a much less democratically accountable manner.
And then they criticise the EU for this! Fantastic.
Because PB is a pretty politically polarised community there's a tendency to start from "blame Brown" and finish at "it's a necessary truth that any other Labour politician will do exactly the same as Brown" - meaning that a judgement on the actions of a previous PM or Chancellor is taken to predicate future voting behaviour relating to another individual entirely. I don't think it would be a remotely safe assumption to assume that anyone who blames Brown for the current situation would transfer their blame to Balls if only the three present incumbents were available; or that blaming Brown would necessarily stop them voting for a Labour government with Brown safely away from power.
Less integration (sadly impossible, I fear) would mean that the lack of democratic accountability would matter less or not at all because we'd have our own sovereignty instead of accepting commands from Brussels.
And even if the EU had a properly elected government, the British people have never been asked if they wanted to surrender such a swathe of sovereignty to foreigners.
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/110779.html
Interesting to hear Di Resta argue against changing the tyres. I agree with him entirely. Save for safety concerns, tyres should be left unchanged during a season. If Red Bull haven't made their car kind enough to its tyres that their problem, not Pirelli's.
Is there any set of possible democratic reforms that, if the EU did them, would then make you say it was democratic?
Astonishingly a committed Tory voting work colleague of mine admitted the same intention to me this morning.
Whatever happens the state of the NHS will bring no end of trouble for the Tories in the next 2 year's.
I wouldn't like it, still, but if the British people gave their assent to such a system it would be democratic.
[Small edit for clarity]
What in particular is going wrong in the NHS at the moment? Having used my local NHS services more in the last few months than in the rest of my lifetime, I can't really see any great disaster or difference.
Of course, both the Tories and the Lib Dems are doing badly in the polls, and this is a relative game. The two key questions are (1) how much scope for improvement do the various parties have and (2) how likely is it that they'll achieve that improvement? I'm not sure I can see many routes upwards for Labour from here; I can see some for both government parties based on an improving economy ("see, we were right and Labour was wrong"). Mike's right that division doesn't help but that works two ways and there's time for the Tories to unite as the election approaches.
That would be fun.
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/06/10/george-galloway-im-looking-into-running-for-london-mayor/
I’m not convinced the EU can ever be properly democratic – as a matter of logic. A directly elected legislature and executive would give that appearance. But...
1. You wouldn’t be able to kick MEPs out. This is the one feature I like above all others in the UK system. EU voting is all off party lists. The MEP is accountable to his party not to his voters. Any viable system would have to be off EU wide alliance lists – so basically the ‘kick the buggers out’ option would not be there.
2. I’m not convinced there is a small state, small government, low tax movement in Europe. The choice lefty or leftier (or nazi).
3. The majority would dominate (duh!) – so the populous countries would decide everything.
4. Points 2 and 3 combine to mean that the UK would participate in a system which every time returned a lefty Eurotrash spendy socialist anti-competition nightmare.
And whose interest would this ‘democratic’ EU government serve? I believe that nation states must be sovereign. The monster would not serve any one of them. It would serve itself. Certainly if the UK were stupid enough to vote to join this beast we would be governed by a body that did not have the interests of the British people as its driver. (You could plausibly argue that about Westminster – but we can at least vote them out).
So I agree there is no European demos – but a bunch of competing and contradictory demoses. (Demi?).
Treaties signed between sovereign states work. A giant pot of Eurosoup does not. It never can, and the 'ever closer' religion is bound to end in tears. Europe has a sorry history trying to force commonality and union where none is felt.
Outlining a vaguely intelligent strategy for economic growth and job creation would be a gamechanger for either main party, but they seem to be locked into a mutual silence pact on that final option.
The big thing is that a significant proportion of LD 2010 voters are sticking with LAB. That's almost all that matters.
You are letting Socrates down. How will he be able to claim that Eurosceptics know more about the EU if you make such elementary mistakes?
re the Demos thing - I think this is one area where we are radically different from some of our brethren across the channel. If you are a resident of Strasbourg, you will have friends who are just across the border, and your economic concerns will match the locality, and not obey state lines. I think this makes the continentals very much more willing to contemplate handing over sovereignty to a pan-European body than we are.
I also think that all of us are clearly - in certain areas - willing to pool sovereignty. When we joined NATO, the IMF or EFTA or signed up to GATT or Bretton Woods, then we were giving up sovereignty. That is - our ability to act outside the treaties we had entered into was proscribed.
It's worth noting that countries are man-, not God-, made, and there is nothing unique about them. Just like empires and supranational entities, they come and go over time. I have no doubt that the concept of Britain will outlive the EU; but I also suspect that if you were to come to earth in 5,000 years time, then the British or English nationalists might fall into the same category of Mebyon Kernow.
I wonder if the EU was an American-led organisation, and was devoutly right wing and capitalistic in ethos, whether the same people would oppose it? I suspect that many who like the EU do so because it matches their 'soft left' views, and many who oppose it do so because it does not match their politics. Just as many Conservatives may soon change their mind on voting reform, we tend to be much more partisan in our outlooks than we like to think.
(By the way, I'm in Latvia, and goodness me, things are cheap. The 20 minute taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was something like six pounds.)
The only thing we're missing is to persuade the member states to give up the right to appoint the rest of the commission and agree to nominate the team suggested by the elected president, and that will probably come over time even without any institutional reforms.
Then the only remaining issue is for the British to vote to stay in or vote to leave - one way or the other I suppose one or the other will happen eventually.
Certainly, it's not what's happened in the UK, either. We've been run by Scots (less than 10% of the UK population) for way more than 10% of the time. And it's not like Yorkshire has had a disproportionate voice. (Although you could argue, wrongly I think, that London has dominated things.)
Its interesting that a bunch of polish doctors can set up a private GP practice in London charging 70 quid per appointment and get away with it.
Mind you, you do get half an hour per appointment. And you can go on Sunday.
Indeed. There most certainly is a strong small government MOVEMENT. That the Tories under Dave walked away from it and UKIP have not yet articulated it doesn't matter.
We seem in the last week to have seen a shift in British politics. Both main parties are now talking explicitly about what bits of the unaffordable wefare state should get cut. Labour's moves are as yet incoherent - but remarkable nonetheless for their very existence. Osborne clearly wants to cut more but is frit. Anyway the argument is now about what to do with an unaffordable welfare state. That's progress. Compare with the debate in France.
It's well worth asking *why* we're suddenly in a four party system.
"EU voting is all off party lists"
If he had said something like:
"I don't like it that MPs in Westminster chose that we would elect British MEPs with a party list system."
Then he would have been accurate, but he didn't. He was blaming the EU for something that was decided in Westminster.
It's that sort of behaviour that has allowed Westminster politicians to escape responsibility for their decisions time and time again, because people are willing to blame Brussels instead. It's pathetic.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-22846712
But would you oppose the EU even if it democratised further? My guess is yes.
The EU dictates that the only systems that can be used for EU elections are Party Lists or STV.
Whilst it is true that Westminster chose the Party List system, the other rule was that whatever system was chosen must be proportional across the country - something that could not be assured with STV across the UK.
So the choice of system was effectively prescribed by the EU anyway. All other countries of a similar size to Britain use Party lists or country wide PR systems.
It is also the case that, as Patrick was referring to, the plans for EU wide parties are predicated on the use of Party List systems not STV.
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/issues
'Vote Labour and get Osborne's policies' doesn't seem, on the face of it, a slogan to energise those voters.
It's as if he's learnt nothing from the expenses scandal. Just because something is technically legal doesn't mean it's right.
(Am prepared to be corrected)
Rand Paul 18%
Jeb Bush 16%
Chris Christie 15%
Paul Ryan 12%
Marco Rubio 11%
Ted Cruz 7%
Rick Santorum 6%
Bobby Jindal at 4%
Susana Martinez < 1%.
Paul's lead comes from young and "very conservative" voters.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2013/06/michigan-miscellany.html
Of course he might just be grandstanding.
But the leanings of the individual states dictate the composition of the European Commission, which is dominated by conservatives and liberals.
What a ludicrous question. If you read the article it says the clinic has three times the number of patients as a GP pratice. So the answer must be every f8cking body.
A half hour appointment is certainly far better than no appointment at all. You will see in that article that. ludicrously, people are waiting up to three weeks to see their GP for seven minutes if they are lucky.
But that's just a PB tory anecdote reported from a gutter press newspaper and so it can't be true.
Personally, I would welcome such a service in my area. At least it would siphon off some of the most wealthy people from the NHS. And it would give people a choice. If you desperately wanted to see a GP and were being blocked for whatever reason, you could decide whether 70 quid for an appointment was worth it.
But in PB labour world, NHS GP appointments are freely available every day at whatever time you want and however many times you want.
-The system must be a PR system.
-Although the electoral area is the country concerned that can be sub-divided as we do in the UK as long as that sub-division does not change the overall proportionality of the results
-The electoral threshold must not be higher than 5%.
(I am not sure we have an electoral threshold in the UK so don't know if that last one would apply anyway)
That would give *some* people a choice. But I take it those are the only people who really matter?
-The system must be a PR system.
-Although the electoral area is the country concerned that can be sub-divided as we do in the UK as long as that sub-division does not change the overall proportionality of the results
-The electoral threshold must not be higher than 5%.
(I am not sure we have an electoral threshold in the UK so don't know if that last one would apply anyway)"
I'm struggling to see the problem with those rules. When the UK had a non-proportional system it had a horribly distorting effect on the overall result, especially in 1979 and 1994.
I can certainly see the appeal - say you had issues emotionally and needed time to talk a little re your treatment/progress, or a complex set of health issues or needed regular blood tests etc that would be better suited to a 30 mins appt to get it all done in one go than say a GP appt and a nurse appt.
It'd also allow for much better scheduling as almost every GP appt I've had ran at least 15-45 late, and I felt obliged to be in and out almost without sitting down.
The euro elections effectively have a higher threshold because the biggest constituency only has 10 seats meaning 7.5% or so is likely to be the minimum level that would win a seat (and the effective threshold in smaller regions will be even higher).
And under STV you can vote out representatives for a party you dislike - I recall that in the last Irish general election some FG TDs lost their seats precisely because of this advantage of that system.
http://www.economist.com/news/britain/21579018-health-clinics-immigrant-poles-reveal-nhss-shortcomings-another-kind-health-tourism
I'm sure we all have horror stories, but nobody ever seems to do anything about GPs. I've known plenty of people ring their GP and be asked if their problem is 'urgent' before being given an appointment. How do I know, I'm not a doctor!!
Tim is desperate for this not to spread in case it undermines the incredibly cushy life of GPs.
I can't be the only person who felt they could *manage* on their own until they couldn't. If I could've gone in the evening or on a Sat I'd have been to my GP in a flash as I didn't want to be in pain.
I suspect there is good reason why only Ireland and Malta use STV and most countries use a national party list system rather than the regional system we use in the UK.
The OECD published their Composite Leading Indicators for the world's major economies today. On balance, the CLIs confirm an improving outlook for growth, with Japan, the US, and the UK all experiencing current growth rates above or around trend.
With Germany returning to trend and Italy marginally improving, the Eurozone's prospects were less bleak than last year. Only France of the EU's major economies showed no momentum change in growth rates.
The BRICS countries are experiencing below trend growth rates, with Russia and India slowing and the others performing below but close to trend.
The UK's performance is unusually good, with only Japan (on stimuli) and the US enjoying a higher momentum of postive growth.
Only a couple of days ago on PB, there was a comment that the growth in the UK economy was still anaemic and below trend. The OECD figures show this not to be the case and that the UK's current growth rate is now "around trend". A remarkable turnaround, given the disproportionate fiscal problems inherited by the Coalition government some three years ago.
Consult the tables and celebrate a second St George's Day!
I think there will be a bigger "stickier" element of LD support. But as you say, that is where the game is. It doesn't need much reversion for Lab to win.
A further unknown (known unknown) is where the economy will be in 2015. Will LD voters be open enough to recognise that there has been an improvement, if there has been, or will it be forever "Lab would have done better"?
Lower down the thread: it's a good point about the stupid list system and PR, actually. One thing I really like about FPTP is that if Balls were replaced as Labour candidate by a really good Labour candidate (none spring to mind, but the late Gwyneth Dunwoody would be a good example) I could vote for that specific candidate. Under a list system you give the party your vote and the political class decides how to use it.
What is true is that it takes a long time to change direction, just because there are so many veto points when you want to change something. So you could elect a majority of individual governments that wanted to - say - abolish agricultural subsidies, and they probably still wouldn't get it done until they had a super-majority, although a simple majority would probably manage to chisel away at them over time.
Ultimately it's an injury that just causes pain and doesn't really affect my day to day life, it just means I can't play certain sports. I'm sure I'll get an appointment for it at some point, but it's a frustration. I also have a few other lingering minor health issues that I'd ultimately like to talk to a doctor about, but I'm not allowed to speak about any more than one issue at any appointment, and I'm not allowed to book multiple appointments in a row. Frankly, just because it's loosely manageable doesn't mean we should accept such a crappy system. I think you're demonstrating the British tolerance of mediocrity, which I think really holds this country back.
I was simply pointing out that the idea that we could have any system we like for the EU elections is false. In effect the only system that a country the size of the UK could have and still comply with the rules was a list system.
In that situation I would blame myself for making the wrong decision about whether to go to the doctors rather than blame the doctors for not being open when I finish work
Thanks for the economist article. It's very good.
But clearly all those people are prepared to pay through the nose to see a selection of barely trained nurses, colonic irrigation studies undergraduate interns and crystal therapy shamens at 11 o'clock at night....