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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Sturgeon’s game-plan? Replace LAB with CON by replacing CON with LAB
It’s been said that the creation of New Labour was indirectly Margaret Thatcher’s greatest achievement; that her government remodelled the whole political landscape so much that many of her policies were continued and developed not just by her own Conservative successor as PM but by the Labour one following him too.
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?Labour hedge funds good....Tory hedge funds bad..
Hypocrisy rules ok.
Of course, all they want is personal advancement.
Sturgeon, building on their period in office has rejected that. She wants the SNP to be a left leaning social Democratic Party that essentially replaces the Labour Party in Scotland.
Will this ultimately produce a revival of the Tories and the recovery of seats like Angus, North Perthshire and Gordon? Maybe and if so I think it is a price that she is willing to pay to dominate the Central belt and hence Scottish politics.
To take full advantage of this opportunity I think the Tories need to rebrand themselves in a way that also allows them to pick up the detritus of Scottish Liberalism. Maybe they should be calling themselves the Unionist party. Just a thought.
Though I think the polls will remain much the same until the election.
They are I think perceived as taking lots of short positions which is regarded (wrongly) as the financial equivalent of baby eating. Their main problem is actually underperforming and overcharging.
"While there is no suggestion the Labour Party has broken any rules, it faces charges that it is failing to live up to its professed commitment to transparency after refusing for days to confirm Mr Taylor’s identity.
It is highly embarrassing for Mr Miliband has repeatedly attacked the Conservative Party’s dependence on donations from wealthy City figures.
Mr Taylor has met Mr Miliband privately at least once, it is understood."
" Indeed, it was a central charge of Mr Miliband’s response to George Osborne’s Budget. He told the Commons that the “stinking rich” Tories had refused to “act on hedge funds” because “they bankroll the Tory Party.”
Hypocricy Hypocricy Hypocricy!
"Unite, one of Britain's biggest unions, has said that it is prepared to carry out illegal strikes if the Conservatives win the General Election."
Over to you EdM.......
But there's no groundswell to "kick the bums out" either. Labour are not making that case. The decent economic news does mean there is something at risk if people elect a Labour Govt. - their jobs, their hard-won rise in living standards. There is nothing on the other side of the scales in Labour's favour to make that risk worth taking.
I suspect a lot of people chewing it over will, on the walk to the polling stations, decide it is not Buggins' turn in 2015. And it could be as late as that. Labour to get caned in Scotland. LibDems to have a woeful time everywhere. Otherwise, not much change in England and Wales as between Labour and the Tories. Cameron comfortably stays in Number 10.
The Scottish Tories seem to be holding up rather better, with a vote share unchanged. The Scottish Conservatives also had the best Indy ref campaign, being united in a position and emphatically winning.
Ruth Davidson seems a very capable and distinctive leader. I wonder if the near total loss of Westminster representation for Scottish Tories has meant that the more able and ambitious Scottish Conservatives are at Holyrood too?
Are there any other rising stars in the Scottish Conservatives?
I appreciate that Scotland has changed a lot since the fifties when most MPs were Conservative, but I would have thought that there must be an electoral place for a party of traditional values of thrift, industry, work ethic and self-improvement.
120 minutes 120 seconds
It would put Labour on a maximum of about 275, not enough to form a stable government, though with the Tories on much the same, little stability there either.
The recovery is palpable in the midlands. There is none of the mass unemployment of the eighties. Shops, bars and eateries are all busy. Decent housing is some of the most affordable in the country. I just do not see the groundswell to "kick the buggers out" that is needed in order for Miliband to win the 90ish seats needed to form a solo government.
Plus of course its Fatcha innit, even though half of the current Scotland wasn't born when she was in power.
If the SNP all but wipes out SLAB in 47 days time and the SCons stage a mini-recovery by winning the odd seat on split votes and recovering former Tory voters who have gone LibDem or SNP, then next year we could see SNP with a comfortable majority at Holyrood and the Tories threatening Labour for 2nd place. As the LibDems already only hold 5 seats, they can be ignored in this context. The SCons would need to start winning back natural Tory territory like Edinburgh Pentlands, Eastwood, West Aberdeenshire and of course Dumfries, the only missing piece across the South of Scotland.
While we do have a lot of SME's these have evolved since the days of Councillor Roberts in Grantham. The SMEs are often run by ethnic minorities and the middle class professionals often work for what Gove called "the blob". Neither are the natural Tories they once were, though neither are inevitably hostile either.
I saw my first election poster this week. It was a Tory one for Leicester city council for the wards of North and South Evington. All six candidates were Hindus. Times are changing.
No wonder Right wing Scots don't trust Tories. The Tories don't trust them.
Looking at Sturgeon's Land Reform Bill I don't think she is going to be shy about shifting the SNP leftwards.
And like it or not, Salmond's political achievements in putting the SNP where they are today already make him a colossus of Thatcher-like proportions, and we haven't really started yet. Memo to PBTories: yebbut the oil price is no answer to this point.
If Goldie couldn't do it, Davidson can't. There will be no revival of the Tories till they drop the Tory brand, it is toxic.
The reason that I think NZ are going to win this however is that they not only bat like gods, they take wickets. When the runs are on the board and the pressure is on that is the difference.
Until the Loyalists get an argument which isn't based on economic illiteracy then they will not get any of them back.
Or better still, reject Unionism as part of the right and support Independence as the Progressive Party.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31996184
I firmly believe that the next government will be a minority Labour government or a minority Conservative government, and much more likely the former.
They started out as a hedge fund (originally called Thames River). They then pivoted towards emerging markets and made out like bandits during the boom. As a result, they returned all outside capital and are now basically just Martin's family office...
They are called Conservatives for a reason.
It is worth noting that even in 1992, that is after a decade of Thatcher, there were still a dozen Scottish Conservative MPs. Either Thatcher was not as toxic as she is popularly supposed to be, or there is a lag of more than a decade for the effects to show. If so then there may well be a similar lag before any resurgence.
The 2011 Holyrood elections will be interesting. Will SLAB repair itself? Will the SLDs? Will Sturgeon fall back under a tide of PR and dislike of a centralist and socialist agenda?
Osborne should've cut income tax. I don't think people care v much about the national debt. We're all used to living in debt and most people don't want 5 more years austerity. That's my prediction anyway.
They are all being rumbled, especially as they get into government, the Red LDs left for Labour and the Greens, and the social conservative vote left for the kippers. The Old Labour vote mostly left for the kippers, and the NOTA vote decided that the LDs were in fact OOTA and fragmented who knows where.
But I'll admit I've misjudged Cameron and Osborne for two years so they may have played a blinder & I'll be wrong. I just can't see it at the moment.
That;s not changed under Sturgeon and isn't going to change any time soon. As long as the SNP can offer Social Democracy as a goal of independence while delivering Economic Liberalism they will draw support from both sides.
As for SLAB in 2016, not a hope in hell of any recovery.
But the other 10 months....
The Shadow Chancellor a little over a month away from the General Election has conceeded that coalition economic policy is right. The two Eds are not on good terms, but that must have gone down like a cup of cold sick with the activists.
The place for Osborne to show a bit of tax cutting leg is in the manifesto. The message will be "vote Conservative if you want tax cuts, Labour tax bombshell mark 2"
Morally, he said exactly what should be said in every pre-election budget. He refused to offer bribes (at least to offer out loud - he obviously had some small bribes in there).
But the outcome - it's clearly failed. At the end of the day the English electorate don't care about long term economic plans or confident economic management. They just want free stuff paid for, as always, by Scotland.
A short, eclipse-themed story, by me is up here:
http://www.kraxon.com/darkness-falls/
Tons of rugby today, though I agree with those who say it's not especially fair to have it timed for TV.
On the other hand, you could argue life isn't fair.
Just about finished Marc Morris' A Great and Terrible King [Edward I bio]. I'd recommend it for those interested in that sort of thing, even if you don't know much about the period.
And yes, Miliband is an utter arse. The Conservatives should be clear in attacking his hypocrisy.
That's the thing, the great beauty of the SNP. Their fundamental ethos FORCES good government on Scotland.
They want free stuff from where ever, Scotland if it is convenient, but the Magic Money Tree, or from taxes on people that earn more money than they do, or have more rooms in their hour, or more letters in their name, really they don't care, they just want, it's depressing.
The pervading message in our culture for a generation is that you dont have to do anything to be successful, or at least to be paid. In school is "prizes for all" even if you can't be bothered, or don't try. When you leave school you get money for sitting at home playing on your xbox. Families of kids have now grown up where both their parents and grandparents living on the dole, and have no role model for productive work and a sense of entitlement for being paid to sit on their arse. We have a whole generation of people that don't understand that in the real world you sometimes don't get prizes unless you work hard, and some times not even then.
Likely to go well as long as the recovery continues, as a rising tide floats all boats, but when the economic cycle fades then the stresses will be manifest.
What would be interesting, in a dramatic sort of way, would be if there is independence following a 'proper vote' [ie not some unilateral declaration], and the Scottish economy is hit catastrophically hard due to lack of currency union, financial services fleeing south, and bilateral trade falling off a cliff (NB I know you don't think that would happen should independence occur).
Would Scots blame the SNP? My guess is they might blame the English, and the SNP might, electorally, be alright.
To summarise Con and Lab have lost their way in significant areas of the UK and it is possible that we may not see an overall majority for one party again.
Besides, the Greens anywhere near power would create massive internal tensions between uber-socialists, ecowarriers, NOTA-ers and the rest
Before we say too much about the state of the green vote I think we should see how they perform at a general election. Its very easy to say "green" on a phone poll, or click "green" on an internet poll, and its a convenient "none of the above" place holder for people with a range of political inclinations. The acid test is how much does that vote fade at an election.
There are 14 others as Reported by Labour List in 2013:
Bethnal Green and Bow
Poplar and Limehouse
Brentford & Isleworth
Ealing Southall
Falkirk West
Feltham & Heston
Oldham East and Saddleworth
Oldham West and Royton
Birmingham Hall Green
Birmingham Hodge Hill
Birmingham Ladywood
Birmingham Perry Barr
Warley
Slough
http://labourlist.org/2013/07/the-kafkaesque-farce-of-the-labour-party-special-measures-revisited/
Both exactly information that they are very open about.
It's possible. I'd suggest it depends whether we alter the electoral system. If FPTP remains then we will see an overall majority, and it's just a question of time and political realignment.
Mr. Dair, on the final pages now.
His treatment of certain groups was reprehensible, and he did act like a dick towards the Scots. On the other hand, he also won rather a lot of victories and, after his father (and before his son) was a strong king who helped improve England's lot.
Besides, how many of those we venerate have been cruel? What did Alexander do to the Bactrians? Caesar committed (and I use the word chosen by TA Dodge decades before WWII) a holocaust against Germanian tribesmen [from memory, around half a million are reckoned to have been slaughtered]. And yet that scarcely registers in anyone's assessment of the man.
Other than the ARSE in half an hour and Opinium and YouGov, do we know of any other polls due today?
As for "after independence", honestly, I don't give a f*ck. I'll be voting Tory**.
** or Green and if you think that's a contradiction, you've not been paying attention.
In any case I think that you are wrong. Commodities generally fall in economic downturns and go up in periods of worldwide growth.
another in Dair's list of magical economic laws.
When demand drops supply rises along with the prices.
I suppose that's why all those Australian miners are reporting boom profits on the back of China's slowdown. Or not.