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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » UKIP drop 6 pts in latest ICM phone poll
The June telephone poll from ICM, one of the three remaining regular surveys that carry out their fieldwork in this way, is out and sees a sharp decline for UKIP after reaching 18% last month.
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UKIP have still come a long way and I doubt they are finished yet.
Up three points in two months is good progress
Like Crystal Palace being 4th in the Prem at Christmas and finishing 10th
Good grief!
zzzzzzzzzzzzz
(Again)
Are the sub-tables out yet?
Something George has always targetted and is now achieving.
Something beyond even the farthest reaches of Gordon's wild economic imagination.
Real growth is growth. Deficit funded growth is a dangerous phantom that leads to bankruptcy.
It doesn't work like that. If you believe the Guardian report, the 10% for others is comprised of -
8% for SNP and Plaid Cymru
2% for the Greens
(speaking as a Spurs fan... I'm not bitter...)
Enough said.
So if you say others when asked, they ask "which other?"
Cheers
Well no shame in 12% from ICM.
Hung Parliament again, methinks.
But it isn't more organic or anything. It's just growth.
For what its worth I think borrowing may well come in lower than the official forecast. Especially if growth in the calendar year tops 1pc.
When, when, when
Will you lay me a Clegg for my tea?
If the OECD is correct and the UK economy is now back growing at trend then the deficit reduction this year may be higher than £30 bn.
The deficit would be further reduced by proceeds from sale of shares in the intervened banks.
It is falling from a fiscal year opening level of £86 bn (PSND ex).
The only record Gordon achieved in his term of office was record borrowing both in real terms and as a percentage of GDP.
Tory/UKIP 41%
Labour 36%
Public sector spending can stimulate growth but the net benefit (economic value added less cost of achieving it) is lower (but may still be positive). There comes a point, though, wehre you get diminishing returns from more public sector spending (crowding out) - who knows exactly where that is, although in my view there are parts of the UK where that is definitely the case [I'd rather look at the regional stats than the national ones for something like this].
A more honest appraisal of the government's record on deficit reduction: http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/deficit-falling#.UbcmtefVCSo
If we could keep that up for the next 10 years or so we may well get somewhere.
I saw yesterday that Osborne is thinking of reducing the London transport budget. That will massively cut into capital investment. It's madness.
The DWP have laid a vicious benefit trap which will mean severely sick and disabled people will have no legal entitlement to benefit at all if they choose to appeal an assessment by the notorious IT company Atos.
Atos carry out the Work Capability Assessment (WCA), the test for the sickness and disability benefit Employment Support Allowance. This crude computer based test has been use to strip benefits from hundreds of thousands of people by declaring them ‘fit for work’.
From October this year claimants will not be able to appeal against a ‘fit for work’ decision until they have first requested a ‘mandatory reconsideration’ by a DWP decision maker. Only if the claimant disagrees with this decision will they be able to take an appeal to a benefit tribunal. This process is likely to take months.
A recent response to an FOI request (PDF) confirms that claimants will not be able to claim ESA whilst waiting for this process to be completed. The DWP say that claimants will instead have the: “option of applying for alternative benefits, such as Jobseekers Allowance, however they must meet the conditions of entitlement”.
One of the key conditions of entitlement for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) – the benefit for those unemployed not unwell – is that the claimants is able to work.
http://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/disagree-with-an-atos-decision-then-starve-say-dwp/
But they have been declared fit for work, so surely they'll meet that condition?
The point he's making is that if they're appealing the decision, they're declaring that they're not fit for work, in which case claiming JSA on the basis that they are fit for work would be potentially fraudulent. Apart from anything else, a condition of JSA is that you actively seek work.
"Public investment" is an obsolete term for "further government borrowing". Not used as a term in modern political discourse since the reign of King Gordon of the Scots.
The economy is growing without the assistance of increased government borrowing.
The Primary Fiscal Mandate and the supplementary target are being maintained by the government. Forecast dates for achieving both improved very marginally in the March OBR EFO. They are both likely to improve substantially in the next OBR EFO due in July.
The deficit is being reduced, as stated in my previous post, at a rate of £30 bn per year based on Q1 actual growth rates. Further improvements are more likely than not,
It all rather makes the NIESR statement look rather irrelevant, outdated and wrong.
Keep up with the times Ben.
Start thinking tax cuts rather than deficits and you will be on the right course.
Fun fact: Osborne isn't responsible for any of the deficit reduction we've seen.
LoL!
Yes but they themselves don't think they are fit for work. There is an appeals process, but when they are going through that they won't get anything.
It seems only fair that anybody that wins their appeal should at least be back paid ESA from the time it stopped.
It wouldn't surprise me if there was a court case to that effect, at some juncture.
Time to give up and celebrate the house building led Osborne recovery, methinks.
It's a bit sobering to realise that this is with a very slightly smaller lead than the Conservatives had in 2010 - that failed to give them an overall majority. I'm pretty sure that STV with County/Large City-wide multi-member constituencies would give us less perverse results, and pooling higher turnout rural areas with lower turnout urban areas would mean Tory voters were not penalised for voting conscientiously in safe seats. They'd also have a chance at having an MP to represent Glasgow...
All that money wasted on expensive routemasters no one wanted....
"The deficit is being reduced, as stated in my previous post, at a rate of £30 bn per year based on Q1 actual growth rates."
I really find it very hard to believe that 1.2% growth will reduce the deficit by £30bn. On that basis if we had 4.8% growth we would have a balanced budget?
I really don't think so. If the deficit this year, on a like for like basis, is under £100bn that will be progress of a sort and hopefully give a much lower base for next year when growth should be stronger still unless those silly Europeans muck things up again.
£100,000,000,000. It's still a mind boggling sum. I remember in the early 90s when a deficit of 40 odd billion was thought to be catastrophic. Brown pushed us so far into the sea of debt that it is hard to see the shore.
We've yet to see if the return to private sector growth is feeding through into better government receipts. The jury is still out on that one.
If the deficit is coming down, its not a moment too soon. US treasury bond yields are starting to ratchet upwards as the fed tiptoes away from QE.
That will probably drive up borrowing costs everywhere
I will be delighted in Avery proves me wrong but I fear the impact of better growth on the deficit is going to be more modest than he hopes.
No, Gordon Brown spent money on government consumption and called it investment. That doesn't mean actual capital investment is a bad idea.
How can they win their appeals if they "actively seek work" in compliance with the conditions of JSA?
At a time when you think we should be borrowing more for 'investment' LOL wonder what the yields would be then
ATOS really is not fit for purpose.
UKIP/Others %s are Outliers.
How many Mrs Jones in the valleys did ICM call ?
UKIP to Plaid Cymru switchers. LOL. No.
Something very strange going on there, with the BNP on 39% of the vote [and a plurality] in the Welsh subsample and 12% in the Midlands subsample [Table 3], and 1 GE2010 BNP voter in the unweighted base somehow becoming 18 in the weighted base [Table 11].
I think that with the smaller parties, if you have a couple of people who "forget" that they voted for that smaller party in the last election it can play havoc with the weightings for past vote. Is possible something similar may have happened with SNP/PC this time.
I would say growth currently is weak and the benefits have yet to really feed through to the electorate. Yes, some have argued that people have gone out and spent on the back of reduced taxes thanks to increased personal allowances (score one for the LDs, there) and better weather and there may be some truth in that.
I had to replace a fridge/freezer at the weekend and the like-for-like product is 25% cheaper than it was seven years ago. Yet my travel costs to work have risen by about that same 25% so relief in some areas is balanced by pain in others.
I accept people will be happy we are no longer looking over the economic abyss but I'm yet to be convinced that by May 2015 many will be able to say they are better off than they were in 2010 and talk of tax cuts (perhaps) from one side or the other won't cut much ice with a sceptical electorate.
I did like the question in the HoC about whether it was true that Atos had passed Richard III as fit for work but I am absolutely certain I would find it a lot less funny if I was in need of such benefits.
Disability has been used as such a dumping ground for governments of all persuasions that it is inevitably going to be difficult and painful in sorting out the wheat from the chaff. A situation where benefits are withdrawn without an adequate replacement is immoral and quite possibly illegal under the National Assistance Acts. IDS has to move with greater care and sensitivity here than he has to date.
I'm all in favour of having successful companies here but if they don't pay any tax, what's the point? It does sometimes feel as if I and people like me are the only ones paying any bloody tax in this country.
Grumpy rant over.....
ATOS does not even have disabled parking outside their assessment centres, and a fair few actually have no disabled access.
Not fit for purpose.
If I'm looking at the right numbers, the cumulative budget deficit (excluding financial interventions) for the four financial years 2009-2013 has been about £400bn. So it looks as though HMG has only borrowed a net £25bn from the financial markets over that period, with the rest being printed by the Bank of England.
I can't understand how we've managed to get away with it. We're bankrupt. We're printing money to pay the bills.
I expect UKIP ~ 15-16 in the next (ICM) poll, and others ~ 8.
Osborne's self-imposed mandate is that the CACB is forecast to be eliminated within a five year rolling period. He is currently meeting this target and the forecast date for achievement moved forward, albeit slowly, in the March OBR EFO. It is likely to move further forward, by a more substantial amount, in the July EFO.
While eliminating the CACB deficit is important it is not necessarily urgent. In the short term it is better to reduce annual borrowing measured either on a cash basis or accrual basis. This can be done by a combination of reducing both recurring and non-recurring expenditure and/or by increasing both types of revenue. PSNB ex, the ONS measure of net borrowing, was around £86 billion at last year end. The two ONS metrics (on a cash and accrual basis) determine the amount of new borrowing the government needs to undertake and therefore the increase/(decrease) in overall debt servicing costs (on a volume basis).
Almost all turnarounds involve cutting capex and selling non-core assets in the initial stages. This is exactly what Osborne has been doing by reducing central government investment in infrastructure and will be doing by privatising Royal Mail. Capturing cash balances for the Treasury account (PO pension assets etc.) is also a means to reduce central government borrowing. So this is the real "deficit" in the sense that it measures the gap between government receipts and spending. It is Osborne's proper short term priority.
As Ben quite rightly points out, Osborne has partly reduced the 'borrowing deficit' by deferring or cancelling planned government investment in infrastructure. This is at a cost to short term growth but allows the 'borrowing deficit' to be reduced faster than would otherwise be the case.
You will note that Osborne has restored government capex when funds have become available within the overall plan to meet the fiscal mandate: £5 bn in this year's budget for example. He is also scheduling further infrastructure spending into medium term forecasts (post 2015) and no doubt some of the proceeds of bank share sales will be used to finance further investment.
So it is quite possible for Osborne to reduce the "borrowing deficit" this year by £30 bn with a growth rate of, say, 1.2%. The reductions would come from both recurring and non-recurring transactions and would reflect the continuance of his recovery plan rather than a fiscal plan for an economy in a 'normal' state.
The underlying deficit, or the CACB, can continue to exist even when the PSNB account is recording a surplus and this will almost certainly be the case in 2015-17. This is because the CACB is "cyclically adjusted" to trend levels of growth and to exclude other distortions introduced as recovery measures. It is tuned, if you like, to the pulse rate of a healthy person rather than a patient in intensive care or convalescence.
The deficit measure beloved by Ben is a wholly artificial metric constructed in the pluperfect subjective. It is what the "borrowing deficit" would have been, had certain non-recurring revenue streams and costs not occurred. It is fast becoming otiose and redundant as a metric and will in all likelihood be dropped as a published measure within the next year.
Still if it is keeping Ben and tim occupied and amused it is serving the public interest while it lasts.
Erdogan gets tough.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22859959
I hope everyone keeps safe over there.
A new report has underlined the affordability of an independent Scotland’s welfare system – and says the infrastructure to deliver benefits and pensions already exists.
The independent report of the Expert Working Group on Welfare has concluded the Scottish Government’s forecast on the cost of a welfare system in an independent Scotland is a “reasonable estimate”.
In assessing the Scottish Government’s forecasts of the costs of welfare in an independent Scotland, the group also concluded:
Spending on social protection (including welfare) as a share of GDP is estimated to have been lower in Scotland than in the rest of the UK in each of the past five years
There has been a relative decline in welfare expenditure in Scotland as a proportion of that spent in Great Britain from a peak of 9.7% in 2002/03 to 8.9% in 2011/12
'Scotland delivers almost all parts of the current UK benefits system to people living in Scotland from locations within Scotland' and 'Scotland provides a wide range of services to England. Some of these services are significant...and involve a claimant count measured in millions rather than thousands’.
All options for the delivery of welfare at the point of independence - including a stand-alone Scottish system of administration - are possible but recommends a transitional period of shared administration
http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2013/jun/infrastructure-exists-scottish-welfare-system
I am no fan of QE but I cannot deny it has kept the show on the road. I seem to remember some failed politician claiming that we were the best placed to deal with the downturn. He was truly mad and not a little evil.
Short of One World Government (hello Bilderberg, where do we sign up?), this needs a coordinated international push - the G20 being the obvious place to start.
However, it is all about confidence, which can be lost very quickly. Clearly there is political risk for 2015 onwards (which personally I think the markets are underestimating).
However defined - please can we get it down
We're also getting away with it because plenty of others are at it. That's why the Federal Reserve long march away from QE is significant, in my view.
Investors mayl be less willing to tolerate it.
What is Cameron's pre-referendum intention---are we going to be dazzled with 'opt-outs' and 'red lines'?
The EU is a 1950s solution to to a 1930s problem. There may be a legitimate case for defending it, but if there is, we haven't heard it yet.
If we weren't members, would we choose to join now?
When something is damaged beyond repair, the simplest thing to do is to move on. This is the UKIP approach. Announce Britain's intention to quit the EU, and during the notice period, we can have sensible and mature discussions with our European friends, customers and suppliers to come up with something that does work. This is not extreme, 'swivel-eyed' or whatever. Just normal and reasonable.