Have all polls stopped together. The only one I have seen published since the elction is the weekend Survation which shows just about everyone believes Scotland is on the way to independence - why did that need a survey?
All else has gone quiet. Are they winding up instead of just winding the rest of us up?
There was a poll the weekend after the election showing the Tories with an 8 point lead (up 2 on the result), and the polling company said it was wildly different from their last pre-election poll because it was now weighted to the 2015 result, not the 2010 result
I'm not a great believer in undocumented local factors. If they exist, there will be some mention of that factor somewhere.
That is true, but the problem isn't too little information about local factors, it's too much. It's very easy to give too much weight to anecdotal stuff (such as Nick P's comments about Anna Soubry not turning up to hustings, or not doing much campaigning).
Now that I agree with completely. I tend to steer clear of betting on seats which are noisy for that reason.
We heard a lot about Ashfield, Maidstone & The Weald and the Isle of Wight in this campaign. All three behaved normally and in two out of three of these seats candidates who had been touted to win didn't even finish second.
I'm not a great believer in undocumented local factors. If they exist, there will be some mention of that factor somewhere.
That is true, but the problem isn't too little information about local factors, it's too much. It's very easy to give too much weight to anecdotal stuff (such as Nick P's comments about Anna Soubry not turning up to hustings, or not doing much campaigning).
I thought Labour might gain Broxtowe even on a poor night due to their apparent appeal amongst ABCs there. The blue collar UKIP anecdote regarding Sherwood from Richard Tyndall (I think) persuaded me to back the blues there. In the end it was Labour East Midlands weakness which did for them.
Yet here we are again, not 10 years later, and Butcher is apparently trying to do the same thing - to ensure the election is as stitched up as possible by hogging 100 nominations. Do these fools actually want to win again or not? Do they not realise they need to have an actual debate about where they went wrong and what they're for? WTF is the point of a two-horse runoff between Butcher and Mrs Balls?
Why shouldn't he hog nominations? Having the confidence of your MPs is crucial.
Under Ed, Unite upped their game in terms of MP selection - it's bearing fruit for them now.
I suppose the Unite strategy is "make sure we always have a properly left-wing leader because eventually the Tories will f*ck up." It's actually not that bad a strategy, though they're 0-for-1 so far.
Yet here we are again, not 10 years later, and Butcher is apparently trying to do the same thing - to ensure the election is as stitched up as possible by hogging 100 nominations. Do these fools actually want to win again or not? Do they not realise they need to have an actual debate about where they went wrong and what they're for? WTF is the point of a two-horse runoff between Butcher and Mrs Balls?
Why shouldn't he hog nominations? Having the confidence of your MPs is crucial.
Under Ed, Unite upped their game in terms of MP selection - it's bearing fruit for them now.
I suppose the Unite strategy is "make sure we always have a properly left-wing leader because eventually the Tories will f*ck up." It's actually not that bad a strategy, though they're 0-for-1 so far.
Perhaps Len aint as daft as he looks - he's sussed out that Labour trash the economy so it's better for his members to have a Con government powering growth.
Hattie Harman speaking this morning: Anyone can vote for the new Labour leader by paying 3 quid to become an independent affiliate!
The party must get the right leader. But the party must also take stock of much more than the captain on the bridge. This is also about the direction in which we steer. And that too must be a big part of the debate on which we have now embarked.
But there is one thought I want to insert firmly into the process right now. I want to insert it into the minds of candidates, but above all into the minds of MPs who will choose the field of candidates, and of members and supporters who will choose the leader from that field.
As we conduct this debate, as we elect our leader and deputy leader, we must have the public in the forefront of our minds. We must let the public in.
When I stood for the leadership it was a cosy contest in front of people who - like us - love politics and love Labour. Very different from the rest of the country!
We asked ourselves - who do we like? That was the wrong question. We should have asked - as we made our choice - who does the country like.
We will allow people who are not party members or who are not affiliated supporters through a trade union or Labour linked organisation like the Fabian society to have a vote. Anyone – providing they are on the electoral register – can become a registered supporter, pay £3 and have a vote to decide our next leader. This is the first time a political party in this country has opened up its leadership contest in this way and I think there will be a real appetite for it out there.
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
Yet here we are again, not 10 years later, and Butcher is apparently trying to do the same thing - to ensure the election is as stitched up as possible by hogging 100 nominations. Do these fools actually want to win again or not? Do they not realise they need to have an actual debate about where they went wrong and what they're for? WTF is the point of a two-horse runoff between Butcher and Mrs Balls?
Why shouldn't he hog nominations? Having the confidence of your MPs is crucial.
Under Ed, Unite upped their game in terms of MP selection - it's bearing fruit for them now.
I suppose the Unite strategy is "make sure we always have a properly left-wing leader because eventually the Tories will f*ck up." It's actually not that bad a strategy, though they're 0-for-1 so far.
Though that strategy is somewhat cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Each government can only realistically make changes from the status quo and doing too much in one Parliament is not plausible, it took a few Parliaments to implement all of Thatcher's reforms and even Thatcher never finished the job. Each Parliament that passes is not just a lost opportunity (from their perspective) but in fact the Tories will move in their own direction.
The last Tory government made some good, sensible pro-business reforms that were opposed by Unite. My favourite being introducing a fee to bring a dispute to an employment tribunal which dealt with the hassle of nuisance and frivolous "no win, no fee" style suits. A pro-Unite government will start from the position now of that being on the books, rather than any reforms they'd have made. Either they keep that or removing that (and going to the 2010 status quo ante) counts as a reform they'd have to make.
Now this government is going to make further reforms like introducing minimum turnouts for strike ballots. Again a proposal opposed by Unite. If Unite had chosen a less awful candidate then that might not be getting introduced.
I'm not a great believer in undocumented local factors. If they exist, there will be some mention of that factor somewhere.
That is true, but the problem isn't too little information about local factors, it's too much. It's very easy to give too much weight to anecdotal stuff (such as Nick P's comments about Anna Soubry not turning up to hustings, or not doing much campaigning).
I thought Labour might gain Broxtowe even on a poor night due to their apparent appeal amongst ABCs there. The blue collar UKIP anecdote regarding Sherwood from Richard Tyndall (I think) persuaded me to back the blues there. In the end it was Labour East Midlands weakness which did for them.
I think you've absolutely nailed it with this post. If labour are ever to win a majority, they need to win constituencies like Broxtowe, it's almost a bellwether. Labour had an established, well liked, well-known candidate and went backwards.
It's not only UKIP that was a decisive factor. It looks like the libdems seem to have moved towards Conservatives in many Lab-Con battlegrounds and it's decisive in areas where right-leaning libdems were around. Could do with some analysis about this actually, the libdem collapse and going Conservative in lab-con marginals was probably more important than UKIPpers coming home.
Yet here we are again, not 10 years later, and Butcher is apparently trying to do the same thing - to ensure the election is as stitched up as possible by hogging 100 nominations. Do these fools actually want to win again or not? Do they not realise they need to have an actual debate about where they went wrong and what they're for? WTF is the point of a two-horse runoff between Butcher and Mrs Balls?
Why shouldn't he hog nominations? Having the confidence of your MPs is crucial.
Under Ed, Unite upped their game in terms of MP selection - it's bearing fruit for them now.
I suppose the Unite strategy is "make sure we always have a properly left-wing leader because eventually the Tories will f*ck up." It's actually not that bad a strategy, though they're 0-for-1 so far.
Perhaps Len aint as daft as he looks - he's sussed out that Labour trash the economy so it's better for his members to have a Con government powering growth.
That's always been my view. Labour needs periods of Tory government, otherwise there'd be no wealth in the first place for them to expropriate and piss away. So when Labour loses, they can shrug and console themselves with the thought that at least the economy's now going to get better.
The Tories have no such corresponding need for periods of Labour government.
Have all polls stopped together. The only one I have seen published since the elction is the weekend Survation which shows just about everyone believes Scotland is on the way to independence - why did that need a survey?
All else has gone quiet. Are they winding up instead of just winding the rest of us up?
Hopefully the Daily Record will continue with the monthly Survation poll for Scotland, they usually publish it around now. It will be interesting to see what impact Labour/SLAB's meltdown will have, my gut feeling is SLAB will be heading below 20% with the SNP hitting 55%.
Hattie Harman speaking this morning: Anyone can vote for the new Labour leader by paying 3 quid to become an independent affiliate!
The party must get the right leader. But the party must also take stock of much more than the captain on the bridge. This is also about the direction in which we steer. And that too must be a big part of the debate on which we have now embarked.
But there is one thought I want to insert firmly into the process right now. I want to insert it into the minds of candidates, but above all into the minds of MPs who will choose the field of candidates, and of members and supporters who will choose the leader from that field.
As we conduct this debate, as we elect our leader and deputy leader, we must have the public in the forefront of our minds. We must let the public in.
When I stood for the leadership it was a cosy contest in front of people who - like us - love politics and love Labour. Very different from the rest of the country!
We asked ourselves - who do we like? That was the wrong question. We should have asked - as we made our choice - who does the country like.
We will allow people who are not party members or who are not affiliated supporters through a trade union or Labour linked organisation like the Fabian society to have a vote. Anyone – providing they are on the electoral register – can become a registered supporter, pay £3 and have a vote to decide our next leader. This is the first time a political party in this country has opened up its leadership contest in this way and I think there will be a real appetite for it out there.
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
That's like playing Russian Roulette with a loaded weapon. Sure it may not go off, but what if Butcher Burnham actually becomes PM? It's not worth thinking about.
I think you've absolutely nailed it with this post. If labour are ever to win a majority, they need to win constituencies like Broxtowe, it's almost a bellwether. Labour had an established, well liked, well-known candidate and went backwards.
It's not only UKIP that was a decisive factor. It looks like the libdems seem to have moved towards Conservatives in many Lab-Con battlegrounds and it's decisive in areas where right-leaning libdems were around. Could do with some analysis about this actually, the libdem collapse and going Conservative in lab-con marginals was probably more important than UKIPpers coming home.
It'd be interesting to see a comparison on seats where "established" former MPs like NPxxMP and others sought election versus fresh faces.
A lot of ex-incumbents were seeking an immediate return in order to neutralise any possible Tory first time incumbency but I'm not sure how smart that was. The public don't generally like to be told they've made a mistake. Yes incumbents have an advantage while in office, but I'm not sure whether that continues once they've lost it. People like Nick seeking an immediate return were in the position of going around their old constituency essentially saying "you got it wrong last time, put me back in" - not sure that's the right message. A fresh face loses that baggage.
At the end of the day Labour needed a 0.35% swing to regain Broxtowe but Nick Palmer got a -3.65% swing, far worse than the regional or national average. A fresh face may have done better rather than worse.
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
ToriesForBurnham™ don't want him to win just so they can claim he is a nodding dog; they want him to win because he is crap (in the same way that Ed was crap)
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
The value of Butcher as Labour leader is that he's toxic and compromised on his actual record.
You therefore need to take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion, which is to ask if this purported groundswell of popular support for him would detoxify an otherwise disastrous candidate.
Yes, I know it can't happen because of the MP nomination element etc , but how positive would it be for Labour if 100,000 Tories voted Neil Kinnock back in as leader? Or Gordon Brown? Or Ed Miliband?
The fact that 100,000 people had voted for them wouldn't make any of them electable.
I actually think Labour could do a lot worse than have Neil Kinnock lead them from the Lords for the next couple of years, then hand over to someone better when it's clearer who the likely Tory adversary will be in 2020.
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
That's like playing Russian Roulette with a loaded weapon. Sure it may not go off, but what if Butcher Burnham actually becomes PM? It's not worth thinking about.
Should a Tory supporter ever wish for a competent Labour leader? I suggest not. All s/he would then do is implement an objectionable agenda effectively in office.
You want the Labour leader to be an ineffectual lightweight so that s/he either never attains office to begin with, or cocks up so hideously and so rapidly that he loses expeditiously.
If you had the choice of Labour being led by Stalin or by Neil Kinnock, you'd pick Neil Kinnock.
There's no figure of Stalin-like effectiveness in sight, but Butcher is the nearest there is to a latter day Kinnock.
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
ToriesForBurnham™ don't want him to win just so they can claim he is a nodding dog; they want him to win because he is crap (in the same way that Ed was crap)
No-one is crap in the way that EdM was.
And EdM started off as someone who was clearly put in place by the unions. If Burnham receives hundreds of thousands of votes from the public, then the narrative begins in a very different way.
He's not my choice as leader, by a long chalk; but if he wins after a debate involving all parts of the Labour party and on the back of hundreds of thousands of individual votes he will carry an authority that EdM never had. Of course, he will then have five years of Stafford thrown at him. Presumably he knows that and believes he can live with it.
Fantastic article by the way. I've long considered this issue, and the problem with predictive forecasting is incorrectly measuring 'uncertainty' and 'randomness'. I critiqued the NS2015 model on twitter before the election and suggested they build in uncertainty around the poll data and run a MC simulation. Their response was "pls do". Which pretty much sums up the arrogance of election forecasters.
We all know that there is a huge level of uncertainty in elections and polling, and yet forecast modellers for politics are incorrectly assuming that taking account of the margin of error of a poll and a 95% CI on a weighted poll-of-polls is sufficient. It's not.
Now that's its established that there is a much larger error in polling that it's margin of error, and that this error is NOT normally distributed, they need to look how they are representing this uncertainty in their models.
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
That's like playing Russian Roulette with a loaded weapon. Sure it may not go off, but what if Butcher Burnham actually becomes PM? It's not worth thinking about.
Should a Tory supporter ever wish for a competent Labour leader? I suggest not. All s/he would then do is implement an objectionable agenda effectively in office.
You want the Labour leader to be an ineffectual lightweight so that s/he either never attains office to begin with, or cocks up so hideously and so rapidly that he loses expeditiously.
If you had the choice of Labour being led by Stalin or by Neil Kinnock, you'd pick Neil Kinnock.
There's no figure of Stalin-like effectiveness in sight, but Butcher is the nearest there is to a latter day Kinnock.
I suggest yes we should hope for a competent Labour leader. I want the country to do well which is why I'm a Tory, if we're to lose (and we will sometimes) then its best we lose to someone competent.
Besides if they're competent then when we come back we have less of a mess to clean up and can continue doing our things. If they're incompetent we just spend years constrained by cleaning their mess up rather than doing anything good.
If I had a choice of PM Blair or PM Brown I'd pick Blair. Preferably without Chancellor Brown though.
Pretty sure the fans will vote with their feet - at best they will attend on a day trip from Cyprus or even Dubai. Will be more sterile than a petri dish in Chernobyl.
In the real world not computer models the electorate was preparing 100% to vote for a tory majority. The pollsters were inept in their modelling at picking that up..
I thought only 37% of those who voted voted Tory.
Surprisingly enough know that But irrespective of what the polls were saying there was not some 'chance' (6% or otherwise) of a tory victory. The way the electorate were planning they were definitely going to give a tory victory. The polls did not pick that up. The tories did not win in the manner of some fluky happenchance of a lucky deflected goal just before half time (to use Nutbrown's football analogy). No, the electorate had a definite choice and they made their mind up and their intentions efficiently reinforced by the tories. All of which the polls were unable to detect.
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
I made that argument in Ed Miliband's favour when I noted he received a clear majority in votes, given the larger number of votes in the Union section of the electoral college used for his election.
The 2015 general election established the validity of such an argument beyond any doubt.
I suggest yes we should hope for a competent Labour leader. I want the country to do well which is why I'm a Tory, if we're to lose (and we will sometimes) then its best we lose to someone competent.
Besides if they're competent then when we come back we have less of a mess to clean up and can continue doing our things. If they're incompetent we just spend years constrained by cleaning their mess up rather than doing anything good.
If I had a choice of PM Blair or PM Brown I'd pick Blair. Preferably without Chancellor Brown though.
But this is to assume that a competent Labour leader is competent in the sense of being basically a Tory. Because he's competent you are tacitly assuming he'll do Tory things when actually in office: not wreck the economy, not rob people through the tax system, not lose the Union, and so on.
In fact what a competent Labour leader will do, if effective, is successfully implement a deranged agenda. So he'll destroy the public finances (Brown), or he'll get a war started for a place in history (Blair).
Given all that, what's needed in a Labour leader is that he be a latter-day Kinnock: a dislikeable and flawed lightweight who patently will never get anything done and will spend his time excusing union graft, trying to minimise scandal, and being generally intellectually incoherent.
Pretty sure the fans will vote with their feet - at best they will attend on a day trip from Cyprus or even Dubai. Will be more sterile than a petri dish in Chernobyl.
There's another behind the scenes row going on with sponsors like Budweiser not taking too kindly to being told that their product won't be on sale in the stadium except in the VIP hospitality. There also won't be enough hotels in Qatar for fans to stay for the whole tournament, what is being built is mostly 5* and will be several hundred dollars a night.
There's a load of work in Dubai right now for the World Expo in 2020, the talk is of leaving a load of 'temporary' structures up afterwards to cater for the World Cup. Cue a shuttle service of Emirates A380s from Doha to Dubai with the fans going into Qatar for the matches then straight back out again.
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
Well, that system is rather forced on them by Harman's decision to resign the deputy leadership at the same time. I would think that the new leader would probably be better off not having their defeated rival elected as their deputy, though.
I wonder whether formal, or informal, joint tickets between the two elections will emerge?
We would lose huge amounts of international credibility, making us one of the pariah states.
I can't stand this nonsensical comparison of us to only the rest of Europe - as if there isn't more of a planet outside of this one continent.
Our legal system is a Common Law one that doesn't exist on continental Europe. It exists in Ireland, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Besides Ireland, none of those nations are members of the ECtHR and none of them are considered pariah states (except by conspiracy theorists/extremists).
We're a founder member of the ECHR and ECtHR and should stay in if we can but there's no reason we can't leave if we want to. Lets not shut our eyes to the globe outside of Europe that we share far more in common with both culturally and legally.
I am not saying it is impossible. It clearly isn't. I am saying it is stupid. It clearly is.
And I'm asking why? I totally dispute your unsupported contention that it would make us a pariah state. You made this silly claim without backing it up or explaining why.
Is Canada a pariah state? Are all provinces bar Quebec pariahs? Is the USA a pariah state? Are all 49/50 states barring Louisiana pariahs? Is Australia a pariah state? Is New Zealand a pariah state?
These nations with our culture and legal system are the ones we should compare to and none of them are pariahs. To claim that we'd be a pariah if we made our legal system even more like theirs is total nonsense pure and simple.
The UK was not a pariah state, prior to the passing of the HRA in 1998.
That said, perhaps it is more trouble than it's worth. Parliament doesn't want to give prisoners the vote, and it looks as though there's no authority that can compel them to give prisoners the vote.
I would think that the new leader would probably be better off not having their defeated rival elected as their deputy, though.
No, I don't think that is necessarily right. It can be a unifying move - as in Willie Whitelaw becoming Maggie's deputy leader (and deputy PM). It does require the deputy to be totally loyal, of course.
@gabyhinsliff: So parl't opens with a row over who bagged the seats at the back of the school bus: SNPers sitting where Lab awkward squad traditionally did
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
If Burnham looks like the favourite, it will discourage men from standing for deputy. Should AB win, they'd be disqualified because they also possess a penis. Lot of time, effort and cash burnt for nothing.
No such worries for females contenders, of course.
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
If Burnham looks like the favourite, it will discourage men from standing for deputy. Should AB win, they'd be disqualified because they also possess a penis. Lot of time, effort and cash burnt for nothing.
No such worries for females contenders, of course.
Against that, if you are the only man standing for the deputy leadership (because others make the same calculation) and the Ice Pixie wins...
@gabyhinsliff: So parl't opens with a row over who bagged the seats at the back of the school bus: SNPers sitting where Lab awkward squad traditionally did
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
If Burnham looks like the favourite, it will discourage men from standing for deputy. Should AB win, they'd be disqualified because they also possess a penis. Lot of time, effort and cash burnt for nothing.
No such worries for females contenders, of course.
Against that, if you are the only man standing for the deputy leadership (because others make the same calculation) and the Ice Pixie wins...
Then .... nothing. No rule against having a female leader and female deputy.
The government needs to win the PR war on Human Rights, something that the Conservative Party can often be very slow on. It needs to make it not about 'abolishing' rights (unpopular) but enshrining and strengthening British rights and arbitration of them with our judges and laws passed by our parliament sovereign (popular)
So far, I don't detect much effort to do this - in fact, the Tories are talking it up by emphasising the manifesto pledge to abolish the HRA - and, if left too late, the critics branding will stick.
Labour's system of electing the deputy leader when they don't know who the leader will be, which amongst other problems bars unsuccessful leadership candidates from becoming deputy leader, is absolutely bonkers.
If Burnham looks like the favourite, it will discourage men from standing for deputy. Should AB win, they'd be disqualified because they also possess a penis. Lot of time, effort and cash burnt for nothing.
No such worries for females contenders, of course.
Against that, if you are the only man standing for the deputy leadership (because others make the same calculation) and the Ice Pixie wins...
Then .... nothing. No rule against having a female leader and female deputy.
Labour needing a greater swing to gain Motherwell than Bath really emphasises the complete beating they took in Scotland.
Yes, Labour's immediate problem is Scotland. They are in complete meltdown there, with the Holyrood election just a year away. Even now I'm not sure that the full scale of the disaster has sunk in, and there's precious little sign that anything is being done to mitigate the damage.
Labour needing a greater swing to gain Motherwell than Bath really emphasises the complete beating they took in Scotland.
Yes, Labour's immediate problem is Scotland. They are in complete meltdown there, with the Holyrood election just a year away. Even now I'm not sure that the full scale of the disaster has sunk in, and there's precious little sign that anything is being done to mitigate the damage.
The government needs to win the PR war on Human Rights, something that the Conservative Party can often be very slow on. It needs to make it not about 'abolishing' rights (unpopular) but enshrining and strengthening British rights and arbitration of them with our judges and laws passed by our parliament sovereign (popular)
So far, I don't detect much effort to do this - in fact, the Tories are talking it up by emphasising the manifesto pledge to abolish the HRA - and, if left too late, the critics branding will stick.
If they don't actually plan to leave the ECHR then it seems like a fairly impossible problem. They don't want to give people any new rights they didn't already have, but they can't stop them having the ones the Strasbourg court thinks they should have, and they want this stuff litigated in British courts rather than foreign ones. That makes the optimal solution... the current law. I suppose they can change the name.
The government needs to win the PR war on Human Rights, something that the Conservative Party can often be very slow on. It needs to make it not about 'abolishing' rights (unpopular) but enshrining and strengthening British rights and arbitration of them with our judges and laws passed by our parliament sovereign (popular)
So far, I don't detect much effort to do this - in fact, the Tories are talking it up by emphasising the manifesto pledge to abolish the HRA - and, if left too late, the critics branding will stick.
Indeed. That's why I tend to agree with the view that this is more trouble than its worth.
Yes, there is an element of randomness in everything except pure maths. Then why did the final polls agree with each other to within a percent or two?
Because all the pollsters made the SAME mistakes? Implausible. Because they effectively concluded there was safety in numbers? Much more plausible..
I expect the review - if carried out impartially and openly - may find a number of incomprehensible and seemingly arbitrary adjustments which only make sense if the latter reason is true.
I have zero evidence to back up that theory though.
I would think that the new leader would probably be better off not having their defeated rival elected as their deputy, though.
No, I don't think that is necessarily right. It can be a unifying move - as in Willie Whitelaw becoming Maggie's deputy leader (and deputy PM). It does require the deputy to be totally loyal, of course.
I think it is telling that you had to go back to Thatcher for an example.
David Davis didn't show much loyalty to Cameron. David Miliband had to sod off to New York because he wasn't willing to play such a role for his brother. Brown?
Sure, in principle, you are right. But it requires extremely egotistical people to put their egos aside for the good of a shared endeavour. It's not like you, as a Conservative, to be so idealistic! Where's your Tory pragmatism now?!?
The government needs to win the PR war on Human Rights, something that the Conservative Party can often be very slow on. It needs to make it not about 'abolishing' rights (unpopular) but enshrining and strengthening British rights and arbitration of them with our judges and laws passed by our parliament sovereign (popular)
So far, I don't detect much effort to do this - in fact, the Tories are talking it up by emphasising the manifesto pledge to abolish the HRA - and, if left too late, the critics branding will stick.
Indeed. That's why I tend to agree with the view that this is more trouble than its worth.
If it were easy or obvious, it would have been done already. Change is hard. Going against the consensus is hard. That doesn't mean it can't be done or shouldn't be done.
So far, the behaviour of some of the SNP MPs has been rather childish.
I know they want to create a buzz and stir up Westminster, but they need to be careful not to overplay their hand by acting petulantly.
It will be interesting to see how the Speaker handles their (inevitably disruptive) antics in the Chamber.
What incentive do they have not to be petulant, childish, and disruptive?
Because the Speaker will take notice and reprimand them? Oh...
Then they might all shout with one Braveheart voice to ask for the Speaker to face a re-election.... That would be fun. Especially as Cameron has said he doesn't want the distraction. Maximum mischief....
Mr. Me, Osborne's a very interesting figure precisely because he seems so loyal to Cameron. It might just be a very nice combination of personalities, with Cameron happy as a figurehead and Osborne happy to do more of the grunt work if it means having more power.
Miss Plato, Mr. Slackbladder, Mr. Mark, thank you. One does one's best.
Labour needing a greater swing to gain Motherwell than Bath really emphasises the complete beating they took in Scotland.
Yes, Labour's immediate problem is Scotland. They are in complete meltdown there, with the Holyrood election just a year away. Even now I'm not sure that the full scale of the disaster has sunk in, and there's precious little sign that anything is being done to mitigate the damage.
Holyrood is a clear opportunity, it stops wipeout being absolute (unlike the LDs in England) and gives them a loud voice and full time pols.
Making sure Labour remain the opposition in Holyrood is the the obvious base goal. Limiting the majority is the next goal. And so on.
So far, the behaviour of some of the SNP MPs has been rather childish.
I know they want to create a buzz and stir up Westminster, but they need to be careful not to overplay their hand by acting petulantly.
It will be interesting to see how the Speaker handles their (inevitably disruptive) antics in the Chamber.
What incentive do they have not to be petulant, childish, and disruptive?
I think there are sufficient sensible Scots who are 'soft SNP' who could be put off voting for them again if they don't box clever and, rather than standing up for Scotland, just embarass the country.
Mr. Jonathan, to invert the saying, an opportunity can also be a crisis.
If Labour go backwards again, that would be very serious indeed. As it happens, I think Labour will do alright. But then, Caledonian politics after the era of Septimius Severus is not my forte.
I think it is telling that you had to go back to Thatcher for an example.
I didn't have to go back that far, it was just an example. Blair & Prescott is another.
There might be a clue here, right? The two leaders in modern times who were particularly successful in maintaining their positions over several terms both had defeated rivals as their deputies.
Whether loyalty from such a deputy could be expected in the poisonous atmosphere of modern Labour politics is another matter, of course.
All those years at Eton Charles and I, a humble grammar school boy, did better than you. What a waste of a good education ;-)
They trained Etonians to rule the colonies...not to actually know where they were on a map!
Very good. We were never a match for your untamed wit ...
We played Eton at cricket once. It was 40 overs a side. They made something like 280; we held on for a draw at 98-9 at the end. It was a great game and we were very proud not to have lost. The Eton boys were all superb gents and very gracious. Moral of the story? Really good at cricket and very well brought up, but not so good at geography.
Comments
Pretty much everyone ignored it
We heard a lot about Ashfield, Maidstone & The Weald and the Isle of Wight in this campaign. All three behaved normally and in two out of three of these seats candidates who had been touted to win didn't even finish second.
For those who want a mind-stretcher this wet morning:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/11138072/The-worlds-hardest-geography-quiz.html
Under Ed, Unite upped their game in terms of MP selection - it's bearing fruit for them now.
I suppose the Unite strategy is "make sure we always have a properly left-wing leader because eventually the Tories will f*ck up." It's actually not that bad a strategy, though they're 0-for-1 so far.
Ed was crap - everyone knew it but most chose to ignore.
I'm very tempted to spend £3 signing up to vote for Butcher.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
The last Tory government made some good, sensible pro-business reforms that were opposed by Unite. My favourite being introducing a fee to bring a dispute to an employment tribunal which dealt with the hassle of nuisance and frivolous "no win, no fee" style suits. A pro-Unite government will start from the position now of that being on the books, rather than any reforms they'd have made. Either they keep that or removing that (and going to the 2010 status quo ante) counts as a reform they'd have to make.
Now this government is going to make further reforms like introducing minimum turnouts for strike ballots. Again a proposal opposed by Unite. If Unite had chosen a less awful candidate then that might not be getting introduced.
It's not only UKIP that was a decisive factor. It looks like the libdems seem to have moved towards Conservatives in many Lab-Con battlegrounds and it's decisive in areas where right-leaning libdems were around. Could do with some analysis about this actually, the libdem collapse and going Conservative in lab-con marginals was probably more important than UKIPpers coming home.
The Tories have no such corresponding need for periods of Labour government.
In effect it's a cash-efficient way of circumventing the 2015 campaign spending limits. Rather then spending cash in five years' time on campaigning, you spend it now on ensuring the worst candidate wins so you needn't spend as much on campaigning.
£300k is nothing in an election campaign but today it would buy you 100,000 votes for the biggest nodding-dog Labour leader since, well, the last Labour leader.
Assorted Guidoers may want to think this through a little first. The more members of the public vote for Burnham as leader the less he can be portrayed as anyone's nodding dog. He can just say: "Look, I was voted in by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people who paid £3 to take part."
Yes indeed, but not 140/1 outsiders which are Betfair's current odds against the UK winning this year:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eniaB0xchTY
Actually I think it's quite good, but then again what do I know?
A lot of ex-incumbents were seeking an immediate return in order to neutralise any possible Tory first time incumbency but I'm not sure how smart that was. The public don't generally like to be told they've made a mistake. Yes incumbents have an advantage while in office, but I'm not sure whether that continues once they've lost it. People like Nick seeking an immediate return were in the position of going around their old constituency essentially saying "you got it wrong last time, put me back in" - not sure that's the right message. A fresh face loses that baggage.
At the end of the day Labour needed a 0.35% swing to regain Broxtowe but Nick Palmer got a -3.65% swing, far worse than the regional or national average. A fresh face may have done better rather than worse.
You therefore need to take the thought experiment to its logical conclusion, which is to ask if this purported groundswell of popular support for him would detoxify an otherwise disastrous candidate.
Yes, I know it can't happen because of the MP nomination element etc , but how positive would it be for Labour if 100,000 Tories voted Neil Kinnock back in as leader? Or Gordon Brown? Or Ed Miliband?
The fact that 100,000 people had voted for them wouldn't make any of them electable.
I actually think Labour could do a lot worse than have Neil Kinnock lead them from the Lords for the next couple of years, then hand over to someone better when it's clearer who the likely Tory adversary will be in 2020.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-32775563
David Cameron's leader/best Pm ratings do not matter a jot, and there are 5 unpredictable years ahead for the economy.
I am sure all those UNITE mp's will do as they are told.
You want the Labour leader to be an ineffectual lightweight so that s/he either never attains office to begin with, or cocks up so hideously and so rapidly that he loses expeditiously.
If you had the choice of Labour being led by Stalin or by Neil Kinnock, you'd pick Neil Kinnock.
There's no figure of Stalin-like effectiveness in sight, but Butcher is the nearest there is to a latter day Kinnock.
And EdM started off as someone who was clearly put in place by the unions. If Burnham receives hundreds of thousands of votes from the public, then the narrative begins in a very different way.
He's not my choice as leader, by a long chalk; but if he wins after a debate involving all parts of the Labour party and on the back of hundreds of thousands of individual votes he will carry an authority that EdM never had. Of course, he will then have five years of Stafford thrown at him. Presumably he knows that and believes he can live with it.
We all know that there is a huge level of uncertainty in elections and polling, and yet forecast modellers for politics are incorrectly assuming that taking account of the margin of error of a poll and a 95% CI on a weighted poll-of-polls is sufficient. It's not.
Now that's its established that there is a much larger error in polling that it's margin of error, and that this error is NOT normally distributed, they need to look how they are representing this uncertainty in their models.
Besides if they're competent then when we come back we have less of a mess to clean up and can continue doing our things. If they're incompetent we just spend years constrained by cleaning their mess up rather than doing anything good.
If I had a choice of PM Blair or PM Brown I'd pick Blair. Preferably without Chancellor Brown though.
But irrespective of what the polls were saying there was not some 'chance' (6% or otherwise) of a tory victory. The way the electorate were planning they were definitely going to give a tory victory. The polls did not pick that up. The tories did not win in the manner of some fluky happenchance of a lucky deflected goal just before half time (to use Nutbrown's football analogy). No, the electorate had a definite choice and they made their mind up and their intentions efficiently reinforced by the tories. All of which the polls were unable to detect.
The 2015 general election established the validity of such an argument beyond any doubt.
In fact what a competent Labour leader will do, if effective, is successfully implement a deranged agenda. So he'll destroy the public finances (Brown), or he'll get a war started for a place in history (Blair).
Given all that, what's needed in a Labour leader is that he be a latter-day Kinnock: a dislikeable and flawed lightweight who patently will never get anything done and will spend his time excusing union graft, trying to minimise scandal, and being generally intellectually incoherent.
Step forward Butcher.
She hasn't read this then...
@PickardJE: Pat McFadden in The Times on "calls for unity" in Labour. http://t.co/4POcJkTLQ2
There's a load of work in Dubai right now for the World Expo in 2020, the talk is of leaving a load of 'temporary' structures up afterwards to cater for the World Cup. Cue a shuttle service of Emirates A380s from Doha to Dubai with the fans going into Qatar for the matches then straight back out again.
http://newstonoone.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/2020-labours-challenge.html
It'd taken an invasion of the Baltic tigers to shift the spotlight, I think.
Edited extra bit: not that Russia would be too fussed with criticism, now I come to think of it.
I wonder whether formal, or informal, joint tickets between the two elections will emerge?
That said, perhaps it is more trouble than it's worth. Parliament doesn't want to give prisoners the vote, and it looks as though there's no authority that can compel them to give prisoners the vote.
End Austerity End Australia End Austin Powers !
FOOOOD BANKS !
No such worries for females contenders, of course.
Again.
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2015/05/17/scottish-independence-poll_n_7300798.html?utm_hp_ref=uk&ir=UK&flv=1
So far, I don't detect much effort to do this - in fact, the Tories are talking it up by emphasising the manifesto pledge to abolish the HRA - and, if left too late, the critics branding will stick.
* wipes away a nostalgic tear... *
I know they want to create a buzz and stir up Westminster, but they need to be careful not to overplay their hand by acting petulantly.
It will be interesting to see how the Speaker handles their (inevitably disruptive) antics in the Chamber.
Also: twitter.com/AngrySalmond/status/599874793148669952
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/fraser-nelson/2015/05/andy-burnham-isnt-just-the-unions-candidate-hes-the-tory-candidate-too/
I remember a friend from near Rochdale who had this little nugget that Labour might heed:
"Arses save seats...."
Because they effectively concluded there was safety in numbers? Much more plausible..
I expect the review - if carried out impartially and openly - may find a number of incomprehensible and seemingly arbitrary adjustments which only make sense if the latter reason is true.
I have zero evidence to back up that theory though.
David Davis didn't show much loyalty to Cameron. David Miliband had to sod off to New York because he wasn't willing to play such a role for his brother. Brown?
Sure, in principle, you are right. But it requires extremely egotistical people to put their egos aside for the good of a shared endeavour. It's not like you, as a Conservative, to be so idealistic! Where's your Tory pragmatism now?!?
Miss Plato, Mr. Slackbladder, Mr. Mark, thank you. One does one's best.
Making sure Labour remain the opposition in Holyrood is the the obvious base goal. Limiting the majority is the next goal. And so on.
If Labour go backwards again, that would be very serious indeed. As it happens, I think Labour will do alright. But then, Caledonian politics after the era of Septimius Severus is not my forte.
There might be a clue here, right? The two leaders in modern times who were particularly successful in maintaining their positions over several terms both had defeated rivals as their deputies.
Whether loyalty from such a deputy could be expected in the poisonous atmosphere of modern Labour politics is another matter, of course.
We played Eton at cricket once. It was 40 overs a side. They made something like 280; we held on for a draw at 98-9 at the end. It was a great game and we were very proud not to have lost. The Eton boys were all superb gents and very gracious. Moral of the story? Really good at cricket and very well brought up, but not so good at geography.