I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
Not sure I buy the 'late swing' hypothesis - what would have triggered it? IIRC Wilson blamed poor trade figures (caused by a BOAC Jumbo delivery or some such) for his loss to Heath, but there was no 'revelatory news' in the run up to this election to cause such a swing - just 'more of the same' - "Ed is crap" ("No! Never! Good gracious!) or "Tory Secret Plots".....
FPT:
Chris g - late of this parish is worth following on Twitter - a few tweets from the past couple of days:
'The death of Tory Scotland' (sic) Con vote in Scotland" 2001 360,658 2005 369,388 2010 412,905 2015 434,097
Con vote total: 2001 8.3 M 2005 8.7 M 2010 10.7 M 2015 11.3 M
Lab Vote Total: 2001 10.7 M 2005 9.5 M 2010 8.6 M 2015 9.3 M
I know, we're supposed to look at 'share'.......but almost all those Tory pensioners from 2001 must be at least 80 by now......
Small but resilient cockroach survives yet another nuclear event but still remains a small cockroach. You can be sure that if by some quirk of electoral fate the SCons had increased their vote share but lost votes, it would still be portrayed as evidence of their wonderfulness.
Of course for much of the 80s and 90s the SNP was a small but resilient cockroach. Just shows how these things can develop.
Hope springs eternal.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Let me be the first PBer to record a Tory surge in 2020.
I'm confident that the Tories will have more MPs in Scotland than Labour in 2020.
I'm absolutely stunned and shocked that the SNP have identified David Davis as the man to help them defeat the government on some bills.
You really need to calm down TSE, and stop attacking your own side. Otherwise you may foster the division you seek to avoid.
We are all Conservatives and need to give each other the benefit of the doubt. Personally, I think quite a few lessons have been learnt since the 1992GE. I might be wrong, but I'm sure as hell not going to help reinforce factionalism within the party and thus maximise the chances of me being so.
I'm hopeful, as I said, I was impressed by the likes of Bill Cash, Graham Brady and Owen Paterson on Sunday.
Even John Redwood praised the Prime Minister yesterday.
Retaining David Liddington as Europe Minister has gone down fine, one Eurosceptic said it was fine, as he's Pro-European, but he's honest.
I've been encouraged I think lessons have been learned.
My reading is that the party will see what Dave gets from his renegotiations.
Ok, great stuff. Cheers TSE. Pleased you think that.
Just please don't help create 'them and us' fault lines within the Tory party again. I suspect neither you or I want to go there again, and we now have a chance of locking the Left out of power for a generation.
Just seen that they current setup for the monthly Scottish questions session at Westminster is 6 questions from shadow Scottish Secretary and other parties getting 1.
Of the dozens of Ashcroft constituency polls in England (about which some of us cautioned about reliability because of the inherent difficulties of individual sears), how many were even close to the final result?
I think very few.
That surely is another important lesson from 2015.
I am going through every single Ashcroft constituency poll for a Sunday thread.
My conclusion
"Either Lord Ashcroft is right, they are a snapshot not a prediction or more likely they were very wrong, just look at the ComRes South West Marginals poll that showed the Lib Dems were getting the dockside hooker treatment in contrast to the Ashcroft polls which should the Lib Dems holding on"
The ComRes SW Marginal poll was the giant klaxon that many of us ignored.
Well, maybe, but I asked at the time and someone dug up a similar ComRes marginal poll from before the 2010 general election that was rubbish. After the event it's really easy to go back and find a handful of polls that were a good match to the result - some of the ICM phone polls weren't bad - but the problem is the systematic bias evident, not that a few random polls were right by chance.
Thats the problem, we have no way of proving that the polls were ever right at all.
we only have one provable reference point, the GE itself.
Just seen that they current setup for the monthly Scottish questions session at Westminster is 6 questions from shadow Scottish Secretary and other parties getting 1.
Lol
I think that's going to be a custom more honoured in the breach than the observance.
Small but resilient cockroach survives yet another nuclear event but still remains a small cockroach. You can be sure that if by some quirk of electoral fate the SCons had increased their vote share but lost votes, it would still be portrayed as evidence of their wonderfulness.
Of course for much of the 80s and 90s the SNP was a small but resilient cockroach. Just shows how these things can develop.
Hope springs eternal.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Well it will certainly be the other side of 2016.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
Not sure I buy the 'late swing' hypothesis - what would have triggered it? IIRC Wilson blamed poor trade figures (caused by a BOAC Jumbo delivery or some such) for his loss to Heath, but there was no 'revelatory news' in the run up to this election to cause such a swing - just 'more of the same' - "Ed is crap" ("No! Never! Good gracious!) or "Tory Secret Plots".....
FPT:
Chris g - late of this parish is worth following on Twitter - a few tweets from the past couple of days:
'The death of Tory Scotland' (sic) Con vote in Scotland" 2001 360,658 2005 369,388 2010 412,905 2015 434,097
Con vote total: 2001 8.3 M 2005 8.7 M 2010 10.7 M 2015 11.3 M
Lab Vote Total: 2001 10.7 M 2005 9.5 M 2010 8.6 M 2015 9.3 M
I know, we're supposed to look at 'share'.......but almost all those Tory pensioners from 2001 must be at least 80 by now......
Small but resilient cockroach survives yet another nuclear event but still remains a small cockroach. You can be sure that if by some quirk of electoral fate the SCons had increased their vote share but lost votes, it would still be portrayed as evidence of their wonderfulness.
Of course for much of the 80s and 90s the SNP was a small but resilient cockroach. Just shows how these things can develop.
Hope springs eternal.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Let me be the first PBer to record a Tory surge in 2020.
I'm confident that the Tories will have more MPs in Scotland than Labour in 2020.
I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
He's trying to address the male, pale and stale public school boy image of the Tories.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
He's trying to address the male, pale and stale public school boy image of the Tories.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
It seems that Labour's internal polling told them things got very bleak after the 2014 Conference.
YouGov picked up upon the post conference crossover that GQR refer to, but thereafter only saw noise, which wasn't helped by the methodology change at data point 231...
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
What happened to the other hippy dippy guy who set up the grass roots clubs that were going to build on the amazing Labour ground war ?
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
Didn't he only visit like three times over the whole campaign?
It seems that Labour's internal polling told them things got very bleak after the 2014 Conference. At that point they still had time to replace Ed Miliband. Or for Ed to step down.
I presume that Ed must have known the true state of play - and yet chose to stay on? Or did Lucy Powell sit on that polling as well?
No way did Harriet know the shellacking that was coming when the exit poll came out - she was holed beneath the water line.
Harriet is dim.
ed won't have known the true state of play because he is uniquely ill-placed to grasp the central point that ed is crap. (That is not a sneer, it is neither easy nor healthy to think you are crap even when you are). Of the others, thick Polly admitted that she let the opinion polls override her sense that ed was crap and Labour were losing whereas clever Prescott knew where things were going in August 2013, when Lab were anything from 6 to 8 ahead in the polls. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/18/miliband-leadership-attack-labour-figures
I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
He's trying to address the male, pale and stale public school boy image of the Tories.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
Yes I agree. We don't need to follow Harriet Harperson's strategy of looking at genitals before talent - but we do have some very talented individuals who are not your using white male clones so we should give them the opportunity.
We had the first female PM decades ago. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we have the second, or the first ethnic minority PM.
- assuming Bercow is not challenged...elections of Deputy Speakers....assuming Holy and Laing will be re-elected, there should be a new Labourite to replace Dawn Primarolo who retired at GE. As Laing is a woman, the gender quota is satisfied and a Labour man can get it
- allocation of selection committees chairs to party and then elections. Many current Chairs retired (Ottaway, Miller, Bruce, Beith, Davidson, Walley), were deselected (Yeo, McIntosh) , were defeated (Begg) or are in government (Witthingdale) now...therefore we should see some new faces.
- the composition of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee will be priceless given Con and Lab will have to put non Scottish MPs in it to fill all their places
- Tower Hamlets mayora elections coming up on June 11th
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
What happened to the other hippy dippy guy who set up the grass roots clubs that were going to build on the amazing Labour ground war ?
One lesson from polls that could be learned on here from OGH to the most humble of posters on here - is to look at polls , consider, digest and think, think, think before jumping to conclusions and posting a load of the proverbial. We're all guilty and have all done it and we all look pretty silly often within a matter of minutes. I do think the dominance of the daily YG did a great disservice to both pollin g and any sense of sober analysis - it and the plethora of other on-line polls gave them a prominence way beyond their merit. Oh and worst of all it gave the lie to the claim that the site is operating outside the Westminster bubble.
@PickardJE: Liberal Democrats could be renamed ‘the Liberals’ under plans being considered by Tim Farron.
What's wrong with "New Liberal Democrats?"
Since Farron is closer to the political beliefs held by old Labour, the Greens and Respect, he really is in the wrong party with the label "liberal". Such a pity that our education system fails in this way.
Will they be allowed to call themselves the Liberals? I thought there was already a Liberal Party -the remainder of those Liberals who refused to go into the amalgamation with the SDP? Strongest around Liverpool if I remember.
@PickardJE: Liberal Democrats could be renamed ‘the Liberals’ under plans being considered by Tim Farron.
What's wrong with "New Liberal Democrats?"
Since Farron is closer to the political beliefs held by old Labour, the Greens and Respect, he really is in the wrong party with the label "liberal". Such a pity that our education system fails in this way.
Will they be allowed to call themselves the Liberals? I thought there was already a Liberal Party -the remainder of those Liberals who refused to go into the amalgamation with the SDP? Strongest around Liverpool if I remember.
- assuming Bercow is not challenged...elections of Deputy Speakers....assuming Holy and Laing will be re-elected, there should be a new Labourite to replace Dawn Primarolo who retired at GE. As Laing is a woman, the gender quota is satisfied and a Labour man can get it
- allocation of selection committees chairs to party and then elections. Many current Chairs retired (Ottaway, Miller, Bruce, Beith, Davidson, Walley), were deselected (Yeo, McIntosh) , were defeated (Begg) or are in government (Witthingdale) now...therefore we should see some new faces.
- the composition of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee will be priceless given Con and Lab will have to put non Scottish MPs in it to fill all their places
- Tower Hamlets mayora elections coming up on June 11th
Any way to get rid of that vile self-serving tax dodging hypocrite Hodge?
BBC : Industrial output rose 0.5% in March, marking its fastest growth rate in six months, official data showed, boosted by a rise in oil and gas extraction and trumping analyst estimates of 0.1% growth. Manufacturing also grew faster than expected, rising by 0.4% but year-on-year it is just 1.1% higher, its weakest growth rate since the end of December 2013.
It's ironic that the PB Tories are targeting the SNP and UKIP. It's because of these two parties the Tories won the election - an election that was characterised on fear rather than hope.
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
It's ironic that the PB Tories are targeting the SNP and UKIP. It's because of these two parties the Tories won the election - an election that was characterised on fear rather than hope.
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
Last time I checked we had a Tory majority UKIP influence will be nil, and SNP influence will be small.
If 434k votes is a 'small but resilient cockroach' what is 491k votes?
A smaller share of the vote.
That was the SNP vote in 2010, you fell into the trap!
Anyhoo
on behalf of all the PBTories could I thank our little helpers in Scotland
Dave couldn't have done without you.
They will be rewarded with a new Viceroy, Rees-Mogg, to be appointed (anointed) in a few years time (it was TSE's idea.. honest!)
I'm rapidly revising my views on the SNP
1. They have possibly killed the entire Labour party - not just in Scotland 2. They are delivering RoC governments in tough times 3. They keep the UK exchequer full of oil revenues through delaying FFA and running 3 year campaigns.
These guys are are saints. We should put Salmond's statue in Trafalgar Square.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Well it will certainly be the other side of 2016.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
But your argument only works if Scotland is independent. We have a Right dominant in Westminster, so that fulfils your requirement.
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
What happened to the other hippy dippy guy who set up the grass roots clubs that were going to build on the amazing Labour ground war ?
"he is one of the most influential figures in the circle of Labour leader Ed Miliband. Graf is helping to reinvigorate the party's grassroots. And he can see something that many voters, even Labour supporters, cannot: Miliband as Prime Minister."
I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
He's trying to address the male, pale and stale public school boy image of the Tories.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
Yes I agree. We don't need to follow Harriet Harperson's strategy of looking at genitals before talent - but we do have some very talented individuals who are not your using white male clones so we should give them the opportunity.
We had the first female PM decades ago. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we have the second, or the first ethnic minority PM.
You've got me associating Harriet Harman and genitals now.
Mr. Eagles, not a cricketist, but I am baffled as to why Pietersen would've thought to text his adversaries.
Mr. C, perhaps. Polling indicated reducing child benefits to the first 2-3 kids was very popular.
Because Kevin Pietersen is an absolute [moderated] ****
Whereas Jade Dernbach probably helps little old ladies across the road and gives his mother flowers and that. Wrong metric.
I've no problem with people that weren't born in England playing for us, particularly if they moved here as a child like Nasser Hussain, or as a refugee like mo farrah, but something about pietersens Englishness stank from day one . He only decided he was English when he couldn't get in South Africa's team ( due to positive discrimination) and it was nothing more than a career move
With that in mind, texting the South African team about the England captain, walking off with them rather than his batting partner in debut etc seem much worse
This winter he was joking w Aussies on commentary that he wanted to play for their presidents xi against us!
Nothing could be better than him to score a career best and be told 'no thanks'
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
The Tory vote efficiency has improved significantly. This and the impending boundary changes mean we will all need a new rule of thumb for what poll lead gives what majority. Makes Labour's task in England notably harder.
Labour have five years to get their own Messina, and the boundary change master strategy still looks flawed: based on old data and assuming there will be no backlash in Wales as there was in Scotland.
Labour bought their own Messina. He just didn't have a work permit....
Axelrod had a different role. Of course, it may be Labour did not realise this and thought all American political consultants are interchangeable cogs.
Didn't he only visit like three times over the whole campaign?
We should never forget Arnie Graf either. The first American consultant that Labour hired with a fanfare, only to disappear from sight very rapidly. Where was he?
It's ironic that the PB Tories are targeting the SNP and UKIP. It's because of these two parties the Tories won the election - an election that was characterised on fear rather than hope.
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
This is just the kind of thinking Labour need as they look into why they lost. More power to your elbow
I note with interest that the Tories are briefing out Blue Collar Conservatives, and the backgrounds of many of their ministers. Fairly obvious that he's parking his centre-ground tanks all over this space from the get-go.
David Cameron has unveiled his “blue collar Cabinet” as he promoted the son of a milkman, the daughter of a garage-owner and the Tory Party’s “champion of the people” to senior Government roles.
In a bid to put making the Conservatives “the real party for working people” at the centre of the next five years of Government, Mr Cameron promoted Robert Halfon, Sajid Javid, Greg Clark and Priti Patel to senior ministerial roles.
It means that 43 per cent of Cabinet ministers were educated in comprehensive schools – a rise from 21 per cent in Mr Cameron’s first Coalition Cabinet in 2010.
He's trying to address the male, pale and stale public school boy image of the Tories.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
Yes I agree. We don't need to follow Harriet Harperson's strategy of looking at genitals before talent - but we do have some very talented individuals who are not your using white male clones so we should give them the opportunity.
We had the first female PM decades ago. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we have the second, or the first ethnic minority PM.
You've got me associating Harriet Harman and genitals now.
Mr. Eagles, not a cricketist, but I am baffled as to why Pietersen would've thought to text his adversaries.
Mr. C, perhaps. Polling indicated reducing child benefits to the first 2-3 kids was very popular.
Because Kevin Pietersen is an absolute [moderated] ****
Whereas Jade Dernbach probably helps little old ladies across the road and gives his mother flowers and that. Wrong metric.
I've no problem with people that weren't born in England playing for us, particularly if they moved here as a child like Nasser Hussain, or as a refugee like mo farrah, but something about pietersens Englishness stank from day one . He only decided he was English when he couldn't get in South Africa's team ( due to positive discrimination) and it was nothing more than a career move
With that in mind, texting the South African team about the England captain, walking off with them rather than his batting partner in debut etc seem much worse
This winter he was joking w Aussies on commentary that he wanted to play for their presidents xi against us!
Nothing could be better than him to score a career best and be told 'no thanks'
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
That's the interesting thing, which we're missing from all this talk about the opinion polls being wrong.
Labour reduced the Tory lead from 2010, and there was a Con to Lab swing.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
Martin Baxter has something interesting on this:
"We can check this by feeding the actual support levels into the Electoral Calculus model, using also the actual Scottish support levels of: Con 14.9%, Lab 24.3%, Lib 7.5%, UKIP 1.6%, Green 1.3% and SNP 50.0%. Then we get the following seat prediction (actual seats in brackets): Con 322 (331), Lab 240 (232), SNP 55 (56), Lib 10 (8), UKIP 1 (1), Green 1 (1). This gives the big two parties correct to within ten seats and all the smaller parties correct to within one or two seats."
Thus, Martin Baxter's model was pretty close to the Exit Poll, and the effect of Tory out-performance in the marginals appears to be 9 seats - and a majority.
We can see this from the Labour target list for 2015. The 1.1% swing in England should have delivered to Labour 13 gains from the Tories. In the end Labour made ten gains and lost five (not including Corby), for 5 net gains from the Tories - a deviation from UNS of 8 seats - almost the same as the deviation from Martin Baxter's model.
It's an important difference, but this deviation from UNS (in England) is relatively small, compared to the much larger error caused by getting the Tory lead over Labour wrong.
Note that there was a swing from Labour to the Tories in Wales, but the two Tory gains from Labour there were in excess of UNS.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Well it will certainly be the other side of 2016.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
But your argument only works if Scotland is independent. We have a Right dominant in Westminster, so that fulfils your requirement.
Just amazing.
You spend years blagging about how Scots think Westminster is irrelevant and Holyrood's the only thing that counts. Now suddenly Holyrood doesn't count and it's all about Westminster.
Firstly what is currently happening in Scotland is an aberration by all politcal standards, so at some point it will correct itself most likely when the Nats strat screwing things up - and that's a general point as all governments screw something up.
Secondly governments need oppositions to call them to account, and decent one's at that. if you don't think Scotland needs a functioning democracy so be it.
It seems that Labour's internal polling told them things got very bleak after the 2014 Conference. At that point they still had time to replace Ed Miliband. Or for Ed to step down.
I presume that Ed must have known the true state of play - and yet chose to stay on? Or did Lucy Powell sit on that polling as well?
If Ed did know, I can understand why he did not stand down. He would want to get some positive result front eh heartache he caused his family, and there was always a chance - however small - he might win. If he had resigned all that heartache would have been for nothing.
It's ironic that the PB Tories are targeting the SNP and UKIP. It's because of these two parties the Tories won the election - an election that was characterised on fear rather than hope.
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
Last time I checked we had a Tory majority UKIP influence will be nil, and SNP influence will be small.
I think there is a difference in terms of what the SNP and UKIP achieved regarding their long term aims.
As far as Scottish Independence goes although the SNP will have no real power at Westminster - or rather specifically because they will have no power - this will help their long term aims of independence. Voters in Scotland will get the impression that even an almost complete clean up of Parliamentary seats actually means nothing in terms of ability to influence what happens in Scotland.
UKIP on the other hand have suffered a huge setback in terms of their stated aim of leaving the EU. Getting half a dozen UKIP MPs would have really frightened the Tory backbenchers who would see their positions under threat. Before it was a theoretical threat - a Schrodinger's Cat of a threat if you like. Now the box has been opened and as far as the Tory MPs are concerned the cat is effectively dead. Whilst they may will continue to harass Cameron from a point of principle and belief they will no longer be doing it from a position of fear about losing their seats.
Of course UKIP will continue to talk about building a solid foundation for the 2020 elections and they may well be right. Achieving the huge jump in vote percentage (which so many on here claimed could not happen) and challenging Labour in the North will both put them in a good position for the next GE. But as far as the real aim of leaving the EU is concerned that is pointless since a failure to win in 2016/2017 will effectively end the drive to independence at least until the EU decides to ramp up its inevitable move to federalism.
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
That's the interesting thing, which we're missing from all this talk about the opinion polls being wrong.
Labour reduced the Tory lead from 2010, and there was a Con to Lab swing.
Ask anyone on here, or the experts, a 6% Tory lead shouldn't lead to a Tory majority.
Messina and Crosby really really earned their money with this performance.
Martin Baxter has something interesting on this:
"We can check this by feeding the actual support levels into the Electoral Calculus model, using also the actual Scottish support levels of: Con 14.9%, Lab 24.3%, Lib 7.5%, UKIP 1.6%, Green 1.3% and SNP 50.0%. Then we get the following seat prediction (actual seats in brackets): Con 322 (331), Lab 240 (232), SNP 55 (56), Lib 10 (8), UKIP 1 (1), Green 1 (1). This gives the big two parties correct to within ten seats and all the smaller parties correct to within one or two seats."
Thus, Martin Baxter's model was pretty close to the Exit Poll, and the effect of Tory out-performance in the marginals appears to be 9 seats - and a majority.
We can see this from the Labour target list for 2015. The 1.1% swing in England should have delivered to Labour 13 gains from the Tories. In the end Labour made ten gains and lost five (not including Corby), for 5 net gains from the Tories - a deviation from UNS of 8 seats - almost the same as the deviation from Martin Baxter's model.
It's an important difference, but this deviation from UNS (in England) is relatively small, compared to the much larger error caused by getting the Tory lead over Labour wrong.
Note that there was a swing from Labour to the Tories in Wales, but the two Tory gains from Labour there were in excess of UNS.
One issue is that many of the Labour target seats that they failed to get actually saw a swing TO the Tories rather than to Labour. Thus what should have been winnable seats this time, now actually are going to take a bigger swing for Labour to win.
As an example my seat had a majority of 2.8%. A 1.1% swing should have slashed that to just 0.6% for next time. Instead the majority increased to 4.6%
This pattern repeated in many marginals across the country.
In the South West and South East, the Tories won 93.48% of all contested seats.
This is why FPTP is such an out-dated system. Democratic deficit anyone?
Labour had the chance to change the system in 1997 but they fluffed it. You need to forget self-interest in these type of debates...
They didn't fluff it, they sensibly decided not to, hiding behind the Jenkins commission and kicking its conclusions in to the longest grass they could find
2005 results
Lab 36%: Con 33%:
Lab majority 59 (IIRC) and nearly double the seats of the tories
Labour would have been daft to change it based on that maths and logic. That's life.
One lesson from polls that could be learned on here from OGH to the most humble of posters on here - is to look at polls , consider, digest and think, think, think before jumping to conclusions and posting a load of the proverbial. We're all guilty and have all done it and we all look pretty silly often within a matter of minutes. I do think the dominance of the daily YG did a great disservice to both polling and any sense of sober analysis - it and the plethora of other on-line polls gave them a prominence way beyond their merit. Oh and worst of all it gave the lie to the claim that the site is operating outside the Westminster bubble.
Polling became easier and cheaper - I am guessing this since there were so many of them - because of technology. But the more there were and the 'easier' it was then also the easier it was to be rubbish at it. You are right about the daily poll - but as I have said before - the daily poll showed what rubbish the polls were since they jumped around so much - until it changed its methodology to make sure they did not.
If (IF) Labour knew the polls were in fact wrong (because of their own polls) and were bad for them - then why did they run the campaign that they did? Why not produce a manifesto that would be attractive? Why send activists to Sheffield? If there is one simple reason why no one should ever vote Labour again then its 'incompetence'.
"One issue is that many of the Labour target seats that they failed to get actually saw a swing TO the Tories rather than to Labour. Thus what should have been winnable seats this time, now actually are going to take a bigger swing for Labour to win."
Just a quick glance at the results at the weekend gave the strong impression that Labour piled on votes where they weren't needed (for example, across Birmingham, with Ladywood going from 20, 000 to almost 27, 000).
That said, it is one of two constituencies that has been fingered for problems with the election so I might yet get some satisfaction there ...
@stephentall: NEW BLOG: Last Thursday, "there was a larger Lib Dem vote movement to Conservatives than to Labour" http://t.co/lrkoqJKQOM
Firewall.
What skewed perceptions most were the LD-Con Ashcroft marginal polls. They gave the false impression of Lib Dem resilience when much derided UNS would have done a far far better job.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
But your argument only works if Scotland is independent. We have a Right dominant in Westminster, so that fulfils your requirement.
Just amazing.
You spend years blagging about how Scots think Westminster is irrelevant and Holyrood's the only thing that counts. Now suddenly Holyrood doesn't count and it's all about Westminster.
Firstly what is currently happening in Scotland is an aberration by all politcal standards, so at some point it will correct itself most likely when the Nats strat screwing things up - and that's a general point as all governments screw something up.
Secondly governments need oppositions to call them to account, and decent one's at that. if you don't think Scotland needs a functioning democracy so be it.
But I'm afraid you still don't make sense to me. At Holyrood the parliament is balanced with plenty of opposition - it doesn't need much to lose the SNP majority. That is not a one-party state (and is very unlikely to become one under that voting system).
And at Westminster the SNP are a minority opposition third party in a single parliament. And until indyref is back on the menu, whensoever and whysoever that is, the SNP have to work within the union. Of course there has bee a change - the referendum forced that.
It was bizarre during the campaign - Nicola Sturgeon's campaigning has been overwhelmingly on what the SNP would do at Westminster in the way of policies but Mr Murphy and the others kept on going about indyref (apparently a disastrous error according to the Oxofrd academics repoted a week or so ago).
Has anybody heard what the TPD is doing now? We know Ed's off clubbing, but I'd love to know how Reckless is licking his wounds.
Just so I can laugh.
I don't think it's very nice to take joy in other people's suffering. I can understand when it's someone like George Galloway, who stirred up racial tension to benefit from it, but what has Reckless done? As far as I can see he left our party, risking his seat, because he did not agree with the ideological direction we had taken. While I don't agree with that choice, I wish we had more principled people in politics.
@stephentall: NEW BLOG: Last Thursday, "there was a larger Lib Dem vote movement to Conservatives than to Labour" http://t.co/lrkoqJKQOM
Firewall.
What skewed perceptions most were the LD-Con Ashcroft marginal polls. They gave the false impression of Lib Dem resilience when much derided UNS would have done a far far better job.
I am very much looking forward to reading the good Lord's own post-mortem.
It seems that Labour's internal polling told them things got very bleak after the 2014 Conference. At that point they still had time to replace Ed Miliband. Or for Ed to step down.
I presume that Ed must have known the true state of play - and yet chose to stay on? Or did Lucy Powell sit on that polling as well?
If Ed did know, I can understand why he did not stand down. He would want to get some positive result front eh heartache he caused his family, and there was always a chance - however small - he might win. If he had resigned all that heartache would have been for nothing.
The Lib Dems should choose as leader whoever is prepared to accept immediately that the hard work of two generations has been destroyed, and that a whole new way is required to build a new party.
I think this is true. The thread has been broken in seats like Twickenham, Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and of the course the SW constituencies. A lot of these will now become safe Conservative seats. With the LibDem incumbents gone, and the party starting from such a low base in seat terms, there's no going back to the old LibDem way of campaigning.
'We should never forget Arnie Graf either. The first American consultant that Labour hired with a fanfare, only to disappear from sight very rapidly. Where was he?'
Didn't he have a problem working without a work permit?
Anyway he gave some incredible advice about canvassing, one gem was not to tread in dog crap.
I have been trawling my failing memory banks on the 1992 precedent. IIRC, Conservative private polling gave them a majority of 20 in the last week of the campaign, enabling John Major to make an astonishingly accurate public projection. I heard about this at the time because of a relative's private contacts within the Party. Does anybody else recall this? If so the parallel's with Labour's private polling this time around are striking.
If 434k votes is a 'small but resilient cockroach' what is 491k votes?
A smaller share of the vote.
That was the SNP vote in 2010, you fell into the trap!
Anyhoo
on behalf of all the PBTories could I thank our wee helpers in Scotland
Dave couldn't have done without you.
Our pleasure. Now having finished off SLAB and SLID in Scotland and pretty much got both parties in crisis nationally, I can reveal the SNP's secret plan. Help get the Tories in power and watch the party tear itself apart over the EU referendum !!
If I were Cameron I would go for an early EU referendum, might as well call it for the same day as Holyrood 2016. I'm looking forward to both the IN and OUT running Project Fear campaigns with the Tories and MSM split. I think the IN campaign will win but the bitterness stirred up within the Tory party would see the awkward squad in meltdown - Euroscepticism is the Tories achilles heel and has the power to fracture the party.
@stephentall: NEW BLOG: Last Thursday, "there was a larger Lib Dem vote movement to Conservatives than to Labour" http://t.co/lrkoqJKQOM
Firewall.
What skewed perceptions most were the LD-Con Ashcroft marginal polls. They gave the false impression of Lib Dem resilience when much derided UNS would have done a far far better job.
I am very much looking forward to reading the good Lord's own post-mortem.
Polls are a snapshot not a prediction. That's what he'll say
@stephentall: NEW BLOG: Last Thursday, "there was a larger Lib Dem vote movement to Conservatives than to Labour" http://t.co/lrkoqJKQOM
Firewall.
What skewed perceptions most were the LD-Con Ashcroft marginal polls. They gave the false impression of Lib Dem resilience when much derided UNS would have done a far far better job.
I am very much looking forward to reading the good Lord's own post-mortem.
Polls are a snapshot not a prediction. That's what he'll say
I'm think we should seriously consider banning opinion polling. It probably didn't make much difference but there's no getting away from the fact that the state of the GB polls was, theoretically, good for the Tories.
Would the tories have made so many rash promises such as legislating against tax rises, childcare freebies, rail price freeze etc if they had known they were 6% ahead?
They have painted themselves into something of a corner with some of their commitments.
Yes, they have a few circles to square coming out of this campaign
We'll be fine, we'll just take more of Scotland's oil revenues.
Pump it up as Elvis Costello might say.
I must admit it is extraordinarily generous of the SNP to put off FFA and all other devices that might mean Scotland getting greater access to oil wealth for as long as possible.
We've had a 3 year Indy campaign when they kept the oil wells running. Then a 2015 GE when they ensured 5 years of Conservative government. And since they've done such a smashing job of wrecking Labour it's highly likely they will keep the Cons in power until at least 2025.
I seem to remember 2025 is when NS oil starts to ramp down. Who said Scots are stingy ?
The only mistake the No side suffered from was in the referendum coming before the oil price crash. The Yes vote would have crumbled catastrophically. As it is every leg is pulled from under the SNPs plans anyway. The 2008 crash and the Eurozone crisis really scuppered any sane notion viable Scottish independence.
It's ironic that the PB Tories are targeting the SNP and UKIP. It's because of these two parties the Tories won the election - an election that was characterised on fear rather than hope.
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
Last time I checked we had a Tory majority UKIP influence will be nil, and SNP influence will be small.
I think there is a difference in terms of what the SNP and UKIP achieved regarding their long term aims.
As far as Scottish Independence goes although the SNP will have no real power at Westminster - or rather specifically because they will have no power - this will help their long term aims of independence. Voters in Scotland will get the impression that even an almost complete clean up of Parliamentary seats actually means nothing in terms of ability to influence what happens in Scotland.
UKIP on the other hand have suffered a huge setback in terms of their stated aim of leaving the EU. Getting half a dozen UKIP MPs would have really frightened the Tory backbenchers who would see their positions under threat. Before it was a theoretical threat - a Schrodinger's Cat of a threat if you like. Now the box has been opened and as far as the Tory MPs are concerned the cat is effectively dead. Whilst they may will continue to harass Cameron from a point of principle and belief they will no longer be doing it from a position of fear about losing their seats.
Of course UKIP will continue to talk about building a solid foundation for the 2020 elections and they may well be right. Achieving the huge jump in vote percentage (which so many on here claimed could not happen) and challenging Labour in the North will both put them in a good position for the next GE. But as far as the real aim of leaving the EU is concerned that is pointless since a failure to win in 2016/2017 will effectively end the drive to independence at least until the EU decides to ramp up its inevitable move to federalism.
That's a fascinating analysis.
I hadn't thought about it that way but that seems to match with the rather content mood amongst the historically restless Tory backbenchers. The general explanation so far is that they're happy to have a win and happy to have a referendum now assured ... but the idea they're happy to see the threat of losing their seats taken by UKIP is a useful extra component.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
But your argument only works if Scotland is independent. We have a Right dominant in Westminster, so that fulfils your requirement.
Just amazing.
You spend years blagging about how Scots think Westminster is irrelevant and Holyrood's the only thing that counts. Now suddenly Holyrood doesn't count and it's all about Westminster.
Firstly what is currently happening in Scotland is an aberration by all politcal standards, so at some point it will correct itself most likely when the Nats strat screwing things up - and that's a general point as all governments screw something up.
Secondly governments need oppositions to call them to account, and decent one's at that. if you don't think Scotland needs a functioning democracy so be it.
But I'm afraid you still don't make sense to me. At Holyrood the parliament is balanced with plenty of opposition - it doesn't need much to lose the SNP majority. That is not a one-party state (and is very unlikely to become one under that voting system).
And at Westminster the SNP are a minority opposition third party in a single parliament. And until indyref is back on the menu, whensoever and whysoever that is, the SNP have to work within the union. Of course there has bee a change - the referendum forced that.
It was bizarre during the campaign - Nicola Sturgeon's campaigning has been overwhelmingly on what the SNP would do at Westminster in the way of policies but Mr Murphy and the others kept on going about indyref (apparently a disastrous error according to the Oxofrd academics repoted a week or so ago).
If you're forecasting that the next Holyrood will be like the last I'm amazed. Maybe you should start to look at the law of unintended consequences as when Salmond's boast he'd be writing Labour's budget meant no Scot will be anywhere near a Westminster budget ( Danny RIP ) for the next 5 years. The tectonic plates have moved and something new will take it's place and as elsewhere in the world that will mean redrawn left\right politics.
The Lib Dems should choose as leader whoever is prepared to accept immediately that the hard work of two generations has been destroyed, and that a whole new way is required to build a new party.
I think this is true. The thread has been broken in seats like Twickenham, Eastbourne, Eastleigh, Berwick-upon-Tweed, and of the course the SW constituencies. A lot of these will now become safe Conservative seats. With the LibDem incumbents gone, and the party starting from such a low base in seat terms, there's no going back to the old LibDem way of campaigning.
Like labout and the SNP, there's no easy or quick way back to get those seats, if they even can.
Thing about Scotland, why would you vote labour now? There's no risk in voting SNP, as you know the SNP can always work with labour to kick the tories out if the maths allow.
Comments
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11598468/David-Cameron-unveils-blue-collar-Cabinet.html
Just please don't help create 'them and us' fault lines within the Tory party again. I suspect neither you or I want to go there again, and we now have a chance of locking the Left out of power for a generation.
If we get it right!
'Cause that was genius.
Lol
we only have one provable reference point, the GE itself.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/05/11/eds-dead-where-the-british-left-went-so-horribly-wrong/
What happened to Eric Pickles? Is he ill? He was invisible in the campaign.
In the great tradition of PB SCon surgism, when roughly are you predicting the wee beasty evolving beyond the order Blattaria?
Well it will certainly be the other side of 2016.
It would certainly be curmudgeonly of me to say the Nat dog shouldn't enjoy his day, they've had a ground shifting election. However that's just the point, the ground is shifting and that will apply to Nats as much as anyone else in Scotland.
Sturgeon has stolen Labour's clothes so at some poiint there will be a lot of SNP righties who start to take a second look at their party, especially since they are perhaps now a minority in the party they first joined given recent LoC joiners.
So things will change.
No country has a permanent Left versus Left political set up, it always comes back to Left versus Right and Scotland is no exception.
At one point there were more Morley and Outwood Labour activists campaigning in Sheffield Hallam than were campaigning in Morley and Outwood.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
I note The Sun aren't publishing the nightly tracker poll at the moment so hopefully Rupert's pulled the plug.
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
Labour had the chance to change the system in 1997 but they fluffed it. You need to forget self-interest in these type of debates...
Still, it shows what a surge really looks like.
ed won't have known the true state of play because he is uniquely ill-placed to grasp the central point that ed is crap. (That is not a sneer, it is neither easy nor healthy to think you are crap even when you are). Of the others, thick Polly admitted that she let the opinion polls override her sense that ed was crap and Labour were losing whereas clever Prescott knew where things were going in August 2013, when Lab were anything from 6 to 8 ahead in the polls.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/aug/18/miliband-leadership-attack-labour-figures
Whilst I think that can easily turn a bit facile and token, I'm satisfied that those that have been promoted have been so on the basis of talent.
Yes I agree. We don't need to follow Harriet Harperson's strategy of looking at genitals before talent - but we do have some very talented individuals who are not your using white male clones so we should give them the opportunity.
We had the first female PM decades ago. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we have the second, or the first ethnic minority PM.
on behalf of all the PBTories could I thank our wee helpers in Scotland
Dave couldn't have done without you.
- assuming Bercow is not challenged...elections of Deputy Speakers....assuming Holy and Laing will be re-elected, there should be a new Labourite to replace Dawn Primarolo who retired at GE. As Laing is a woman, the gender quota is satisfied and a Labour man can get it
- allocation of selection committees chairs to party and then elections. Many current Chairs retired (Ottaway, Miller, Bruce, Beith, Davidson, Walley), were deselected (Yeo, McIntosh) , were defeated (Begg) or are in government (Witthingdale) now...therefore we should see some new faces.
- the composition of the Scottish Affairs Select Committee will be priceless given Con and Lab will have to put non Scottish MPs in it to fill all their places
- Tower Hamlets mayora elections coming up on June 11th
The above may not go down well on a right-wing blog like this but it's the truth. We have a Tory/SNP/UKIP alliance by stealth - I fear for this country!
1. They have possibly killed the entire Labour party - not just in Scotland
2. They are delivering RoC governments in tough times
3. They keep the UK exchequer full of oil revenues through delaying FFA and running 3 year campaigns.
These guys are are saints. We should put Salmond's statue in Trafalgar Square.
Karl Marx
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/arnie-graf-the-sage-who-can-see-ed-miliband-at-no-10-8930921.html
"he is one of the most influential figures in the circle of Labour leader Ed Miliband. Graf is helping to reinvigorate the party's grassroots. And he can see something that many voters, even Labour supporters, cannot: Miliband as Prime Minister."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jan/10/arnie-graf-labour-grassroots-ground-game
"Labour neglected its grassroots. But the 'ground game' is back"
divvie whether I vote for them or not I get called one so might as well have the upside :-)
but once again thanks to all youse boys in Scotland !
We had the first female PM decades ago. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we have the second, or the first ethnic minority PM.
You've got me associating Harriet Harman and genitals now.
I really didn't need that. *mindbleach*
With that in mind, texting the South African team about the England captain, walking off with them rather than his batting partner in debut etc seem much worse
This winter he was joking w Aussies on commentary that he wanted to play for their presidents xi against us!
Nothing could be better than him to score a career best and be told 'no thanks'
Perfect
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100265477/has-labour-ditched-arnie-graf-the-obama-guru-who-was-supposed-to-win-them-the-election/
BTW, Hodges had a good election (UKIP notwithstanding). Many people owe him an apology.
I really didn't need that. *mindbleach*
Then remember this
Nsfw
http://order-order.com/2013/11/20/jack-dromeys-porn-favourites/#_@/Go5No1YbyGHlyg
"We can check this by feeding the actual support levels into the Electoral Calculus model, using also the actual Scottish support levels of: Con 14.9%, Lab 24.3%, Lib 7.5%, UKIP 1.6%, Green 1.3% and SNP 50.0%. Then we get the following seat prediction (actual seats in brackets): Con 322 (331), Lab 240 (232), SNP 55 (56), Lib 10 (8), UKIP 1 (1), Green 1 (1). This gives the big two parties correct to within ten seats and all the smaller parties correct to within one or two seats."
Thus, Martin Baxter's model was pretty close to the Exit Poll, and the effect of Tory out-performance in the marginals appears to be 9 seats - and a majority.
We can see this from the Labour target list for 2015. The 1.1% swing in England should have delivered to Labour 13 gains from the Tories. In the end Labour made ten gains and lost five (not including Corby), for 5 net gains from the Tories - a deviation from UNS of 8 seats - almost the same as the deviation from Martin Baxter's model.
It's an important difference, but this deviation from UNS (in England) is relatively small, compared to the much larger error caused by getting the Tory lead over Labour wrong.
Note that there was a swing from Labour to the Tories in Wales, but the two Tory gains from Labour there were in excess of UNS.
As far as Scottish Independence goes although the SNP will have no real power at Westminster - or rather specifically because they will have no power - this will help their long term aims of independence. Voters in Scotland will get the impression that even an almost complete clean up of Parliamentary seats actually means nothing in terms of ability to influence what happens in Scotland.
UKIP on the other hand have suffered a huge setback in terms of their stated aim of leaving the EU. Getting half a dozen UKIP MPs would have really frightened the Tory backbenchers who would see their positions under threat. Before it was a theoretical threat - a Schrodinger's Cat of a threat if you like. Now the box has been opened and as far as the Tory MPs are concerned the cat is effectively dead. Whilst they may will continue to harass Cameron from a point of principle and belief they will no longer be doing it from a position of fear about losing their seats.
Of course UKIP will continue to talk about building a solid foundation for the 2020 elections and they may well be right. Achieving the huge jump in vote percentage (which so many on here claimed could not happen) and challenging Labour in the North will both put them in a good position for the next GE. But as far as the real aim of leaving the EU is concerned that is pointless since a failure to win in 2016/2017 will effectively end the drive to independence at least until the EU decides to ramp up its inevitable move to federalism.
As an example my seat had a majority of 2.8%. A 1.1% swing should have slashed that to just 0.6% for next time. Instead the majority increased to 4.6%
This pattern repeated in many marginals across the country.
Guy who works with me has a sister living in the Clacton constituency.
She is queuing up to vote and for whatever reason tells someone she will be voting for UKIP.
Someone overhears, walks up and calls her a "f******ng racist"
Her answer was short and to the point :-)
Her Brother who lives in Southend was voting UKIP but changed to Tory in final week.
Ed scared him into voting Blue.
2005 results
Lab 36%:
Con 33%:
Lab majority 59 (IIRC) and nearly double the seats of the tories
Labour would have been daft to change it based on that maths and logic. That's life.
Just so I can laugh.
You are right about the daily poll - but as I have said before - the daily poll showed what rubbish the polls were since they jumped around so much - until it changed its methodology to make sure they did not.
If (IF) Labour knew the polls were in fact wrong (because of their own polls) and were bad for them - then why did they run the campaign that they did? Why not produce a manifesto that would be attractive? Why send activists to Sheffield? If there is one simple reason why no one should ever vote Labour again then its 'incompetence'.
Utterly amazing looking at these articles (mostly Guardian ones lol), and comapring them when they hit the hard buffer of reality.
Just a quick glance at the results at the weekend gave the strong impression that Labour piled on votes where they weren't needed (for example, across Birmingham, with Ladywood going from 20, 000 to almost 27, 000).
That said, it is one of two constituencies that has been fingered for problems with the election so I might yet get some satisfaction there ...
And at Westminster the SNP are a minority opposition third party in a single parliament. And until indyref is back on the menu, whensoever and whysoever that is, the SNP have to work within the union. Of course there has bee a change - the referendum forced that.
It was bizarre during the campaign - Nicola Sturgeon's campaigning has been overwhelmingly on what the SNP would do at Westminster in the way of policies but Mr Murphy and the others kept on going about indyref (apparently a disastrous error according to the Oxofrd academics repoted a week or so ago).
'We should never forget Arnie Graf either. The first American consultant that Labour hired with a fanfare, only to disappear from sight very rapidly. Where was he?'
Didn't he have a problem working without a work permit?
Anyway he gave some incredible advice about canvassing, one gem was not to tread in dog crap.
If I were Cameron I would go for an early EU referendum, might as well call it for the same day as Holyrood 2016. I'm looking forward to both the IN and OUT running Project Fear campaigns with the Tories and MSM split. I think the IN campaign will win but the bitterness stirred up within the Tory party would see the awkward squad in meltdown - Euroscepticism is the Tories achilles heel and has the power to fracture the party.
As it is every leg is pulled from under the SNPs plans anyway. The 2008 crash and the Eurozone crisis really scuppered any sane notion viable Scottish independence.
I hadn't thought about it that way but that seems to match with the rather content mood amongst the historically restless Tory backbenchers. The general explanation so far is that they're happy to have a win and happy to have a referendum now assured ... but the idea they're happy to see the threat of losing their seats taken by UKIP is a useful extra component.
Thing about Scotland, why would you vote labour now? There's no risk in voting SNP, as you know the SNP can always work with labour to kick the tories out if the maths allow.