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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » This morning’s MUST READ: the Guardian account of how it al
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » This morning’s MUST READ: the Guardian account of how it all went wrong for LAB/EdM
There’s an extraordinarily comprehensive account by Patrick Wintour in the Guardian this morning of how right up to the moment the exit poll was published at 10pm on May 7th that Ed and his team really believed he was about to become PM. The report opens:
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It appears that a journalist thought the rehearsals for HRH's death were real... yeah, I'd tweet that, not. Complete with typo.
“Queen Elizabrth has died” @BBCWorld
http://www.fbi.gov/wanted
Checking the division list I see DUP voted with the Government. Is that a sign of things to come?
Also from a quick glance it appears that NO LDs were present. Again, sign of things to come?
Could be important - either / both of the above would give Cameron much more breathing space.
I loved this one and this
The folk in Switzerland and the US are either in jail or out on bail (like Jack Warner) - the FBI Most Wanted is for folks not yet apprehended.
The moment of the exit poll, may have to click 'more comments' to see the rest
The moment of the exit poll, may have to click 'more comments' to see the rest
(The stone’s demolition, in the event of a Labour loss, had been agreed at the time it was commissioned. After the election, the party drew up two plans for its disposal: one was simply to smash the stone up and throw the rubble onto a scrap heap. The second was to break it up and sell chunks, like the Berlin Wall, to party members as a fundraising effort. The first attempts to destroy the stone had to be postponed when the media tracked its location to a south London warehouse. There are claims it has been destroyed, but even Miliband’s close advisers cannot confirm its fate.)
You didn't say which world...:-)
The exit poll was a duff though, Tories won 14 more than it predicted
Another one was brilliant Well I wasn't wrong :-) .....Seemed to remeber that comment was to do with the fact that BBC had Kellner on within minutes of the exit poll news and Kellner was not having any of it, claiming YouGov polling said neck and neck and was confident that he was right.
Kellner is German for 'waiter'.
I remember saying that!
Even more brilliant - I've only had four posts since then!
Even more brilliant - I've only had four posts since then!
The bad news for Labour is that Miliband is still there, along with many of his apologists. The prospective leaders are dealing with a fractious party, which yesterday began PMQs moaning about cuts as if nothing had happened in the meantime. All good news for Cameron
Caught up with story last night, an excellent read by Patrick Wintour I thought – also rather brave, if that’s the right word, by the Guardian. – I hope we soon get to see other 'fly on the wall' accounts from the major parties.
In fairness, the Labour team were not operating in some Romney like fantasy bubble during the election. What they thought was the general consensus in the media and in large part on here (including me).
What sets the Tory campaign apart is their vastly superior intelligence and, probably consequentially, their vastly superior allocation of resources which allowed then to overcome nearly all of the bias that had previously existed in the system for Labour. It is stunning that a party with the resources and the spend of Labour were as misled as the rest of us.
Even more brilliant - I've only had four posts since then!
I'd missed the fact that there was even a Yougov exit poll which was stunningly far out. Tories on 284 compared to 331.
Maybe there is an alternative career for them somewhere.
Not everyone (cough) was completely misled by the polls. I can say that I was convinced that there was something very wrong about the polls and posted about it on here. it just felt wrong, call it gut instinct if you like but I had spoken to quite a lot of people and what I had was purely anecdotal. On the night of the election however I was feeling pretty worried and was amazed at how wrong the polls had been.
The Tories private polling was very different to what was being reported in the media....
But the problem is that many of the people at the top of the party will be the same delusional folks miliband had. And that's the point: it wasn't just Miliband's fault; it was his team. They need a total clean-out.
Which candidate is most likely to do that? Someone who can tell Watson to STFU. Someone who can sack Burnham from health (or preferably any senior role). Someone who will not see private companies as evil. Someone who knows how hard the average joe works for every pound they earn.
I think only Kendall fits that bill.
An explanation is needed for why it was done in the context of an election campaign which the Labour leadership (if you trust the article) apparently thought was going well.
The moment of the exit poll, may have to click 'more comments' to see the rest
You mean this?
DaemonBarberDaemonBarber Posts: 895
May 7
Hahahahahahahaha
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DairDair Posts: 3,361
May 7
Woah exit poll 316 Tory, 239 Labour
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SpeedySpeedy Posts: 4,631
May 7 edited May 7
A tory majority!
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SeanTSeanT Posts: 7,903
May 7
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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TheScreamingEaglesTheScreamingEagles Posts: 25,079
May 7
FUCK ME
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AnorakAnorak Posts: 2,638
May 7 edited May 7
FUCK ME 316 WTF IS GOING ON
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Ave_itAve_it Posts: 673
May 7
LOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!
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SlackbladderSlackbladder Posts: 3,111
May 7
Wow oh wow oh wow
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PurseybearPurseybear Posts: 766
May 7
WOWW!!!!!!!!!!! YYEEEEEEESSSS
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rcs1000rcs1000 Posts: 5,455
May 7
Wow 316 Tory prediction
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ProdicusProdicus Posts: 271
May 7
King ell
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KentRisingKentRising Posts: 663
May 7
HOLY HELL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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tlg86tlg86 Posts: 540
May 7
OMG!
I take the view that the Tories always had a grid entry for "attack Miliband" for betrayal. Maybe the scale and tone changed, maybe the date changed, but I am not at all convinced this was dreamt up at the last minute to "move on" from non-doms. Nobody cares about non-doms. The election result proves that.
(As an aside, Southam Observer laughably called me a liar when I said I hadn't read Fallon's comments. Another Labourite who embarrassed himself multiple times over the campaign.)
Labour look out of the game in Scotland, but in England and Wales all is not lost. There is quite a big Green and UKIP vote to be sought.
Getting the leadership right is critical, not just as a sign of policy direction, but also Labour need someone capable of organising what proved to be a very ineffective team.
I did well on particular constituencies (against the LDs and UKIPin particular) and on Labout sub 250 band thanks to following the ARSE.
What I think it was intended to do, it did - to derail Labour's pet stupid *major announcement* and knock their confidence by making Miliband the issue.
When I read that the non-doms were supposed to be a Big Thing - I scratched my head. And what were the other policies Labour had? I honestly can't think of any and when I asked repeatedly on here for a list of them, no Labourites could summarise them.
No wonder the EdStone was so woolly.
Last time they had David Miliband, Ed Balls, Ed Miliband and Burnham. Frankly a much more substantial choice than what is on show at the moment.
I mean WTF? I honestly wonder if the Labour team were in a parallel universe of wishful thinking. The Tories Team2015 had 100 000 volunteers.
Comrades, the skirmish of the 2015 General Election has ended in what can only be described as a draw. Chairman Miliband bravely won the people's heart, piling up even more votes than his esteemed predecessor, Comrade Brown.
Due to the depraved perversity of the gerrymandered electoral system, even Chairman Miliband's universal popularity (who can forget the philosophical movement 'Milifandom'?) was insufficient to break the stranglehold of decadent capitalists upon Downing Street.
Comrade Miliband has selflessly resigned his august position as Supreme Leader of the People's Labour Party, but his spirit lives on. One day, comrades, a new Edstone will be engraved and it will be placed in Number Ten's garden. And on that day, comrades, the profiteering capitalists shall rightly tremble.
It might be worth revisiting that Uncut piece to see how wrong they were (or actually weren't)
Having said that, both the Conservatives and Labour need to be asking themselves what went both right and wrong: the Conservatives will be tempted to ignore the latter, and Labour the former.
But, at the end of the day, the Tories won and Labour's problems were worse, so we now gloss those over.
"Alastair Campbell – who was increasingly involved in the final weeks of the campaign, even attending meetings with Miliband’s inner circle – wrote a punchy “one nation” speech for Chatham House. “Taking Britain to the edge of Europe and firing the flames of Scottish Nationalism, as Cameron did the morning after the referendum, are desperate acts of survival,” the speech was to have said. “He is a man that cares more about a few more years in power than a few hundred years of a union that has served our country and served the world so well.”
Alexander thought it would work................
Another aide explained why the Campbell speech was axed: “The rival view was that our vulnerability on English nationalism was really very severe and anything that sounded like we were defending the Scots would be music to the Tories’ ears, and just make the problem worse. So the two arguments cancelled each other out.”
On 30 April, Miliband went even further in attempting to distance Labour from the SNP. On BBC Question Time that evening, he stated that if a deal with the SNP was what stood between him and Downing Street, “then so be it. I’m not going to give in to SNP demands – whether that is on Trident or on the deficit.” But by then it was surely too late."
Unquestionably Douglas Alexander was correct.
Given the high likelihood of the SNP remaining at Westminster with 50-59 MPs at the next 2020 election (if Scotland is not en route to a UK exit), the Labour Party had better grasp that they must attack the Conservatives along the lines used in the speech that was never given, rather than monstering the SNP for daring to seek to legitimately represent Scotland.
The investigation needs to be seen as anti-corruption rather than anti any particular country. There needs to be a demonstration of how Africans and Asians lost out on facilities because of graft to get these nations on board.
BTW, did any PBer suffer any serious losses with the bookies that night or were they able to minimise them?
Nicola stabbed him in the front. Not only did the SNP threat stop some Labour voters turning out, it revitalised some Tories and panicked a few the right-leaning Kippers into returning; the thought being - a referendum's better than the risk of Edstone Ed.
A double whammy from the tartan hordes.
Did anyone make money on them having 8 or less?
Ten meetings, about the 2.5m monument to vacuous platitudes, really?
And it wasn't like a pop-up tent. It must have taken several weeks to commission and hone.
Cruddas backs Lammy for London Mayor
Ed wasn’t unlucky. Ed was crap.
Contrast the Scottish position Ed started with (SNP minority Govt with just one more seat than Lab in Holyrood, 41/59 seats at Westminster) and the position he is passing on to the next leader (SNP majority Govt in Holyrood, 1/59 seats).
All the disasters in Scotland happened on Ed’s watch.
Of course, problems have been building for Labour in Scotland for longer, but a defter and more intelligent leader would have moved more quickly to start fixing the problems.
Despite being endlessly told Ed is very intelligent, I don’t really seen any sign of intelligence or even a more basic nous for survival.
Truth to tell, he was an appalling choice for leader, he was Labour’s IDS. Many of us said that repeatedly on pb.com, including many on the left such as Southam.
Whilst I have some sympathy for Ed at a personal level, it is minute. He seems to me to be talentless -- bad at politics, bad at oratory, bad at leadership, bad at survival. Whatever one thinks of Gordon Brown or Neil Kinnock or Tony Blair or John Smith, there were somethings they were good at. Ed was good at nothing.
Salmond is the SNP's Farage. Discuss.
"But Miliband knew the story of his “forgetting the deficit” would prove devastating. “He was really upset,” the speech writer recalled. “He pushes himself very hard – he was very, very angry with himself even before he knew it was going to be the main story out of the speech. We tried to cheer him up, but even then he was too upset. He did not come to the celebratory party, he just did not want to come out of his room.”"
and I had to go outside to get some air.
Ed was both.
Mr Sandpit, there's no need to purge anyone. Instead of sitting around thinking up gormless stunts, the Labour Spads and advisors should have been out on the streets talking to, and not at, the voters. At least then, the result may not have been such a shock.
But by then, it was probably too late - they'd stuck with the dud for too long.
I wonder where they were??!
"Ikonoclast
The 'great British public' weren't given a chance to judge him, or Labours superb and fully costed manifesto. The Tories never won, Lynton Crosby never won, the tiniest of majorities was secured by the BBC, Sky, ITV and Murdoch and Dacre."
When are they going to get over it?
I can't believe that Blatter walked out of the boardroom whenever a dodgy payment was discussed over 15 years, so someone must have something on him.
Many (myself included) couldn't understand the Tory priorities in sending Cameron around our LD allies territory when we were forecast to lose upto 50 Tory seats to Labour. Defending seats from Labour made sense as "one seat lost to Labour is like two won from the LDs" plus the LDs had a famous "cockroach like ability to survive" so it was pointless.
At the end of the day we didn't really net lose seats to Labour and taking the LD seats succeeded. The coasting argument isn't made now as it was in hindsight wrong. In a counter-factual scenario the argument would be made as it would in hindsight have been right.
Hindsight is 20-20.
If it wasn't so real, it'd be funny.
"Salmond is the SNP's Farage. Discuss."
Salmond is an MP-and already embarrassing the Tories about the farce of their apparent intention of having the Scottish Select Committee dominated by English Tories, while intending to establish EVEL.
Farage-a defeated candidate.