At the general election in London, relatively speaking, Labour did better, the Tories did worse than the rest of the country, which might indicate a slight resistance to Crosby’s methods. However given his past success in London with the current mayor, this should mitigate any worries.
Comments
Amongst London voters in a head to head the figures are:
Jowell 35%
Goldsmith 26%
Khan 29%
Goldsmith 29%
https://yougov.co.uk/news/categories/politics/
I think you're comparing apples and pears here.
Did it overstate Lab and underestimate the Tories?
How can Khan even be possibly considered for Mayor - when nobody calls him by his first name?
Ken, Boris, Zac?
And if you think Jowell should be favourite based on that YouGov polling, you know what to do! I agree she'd be shorter against Zac than Sadiq, but she has to beat Sadiq first in a contest with a very different electorate.
"The Wrath of Khan"
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/24/labour-split-plan-english-wing-john-cruddas
However, in 2012 yougov slightly overstated Boris' final lead on the Mayoral race, so that effectively cancels out your point anyway. Yougov had Boris winning 53%-47%, Boris won by only 51.53%-48.47%
https://yougov.co.uk/news/categories/politics/
If it were not for those things, I suspect he would be in the Lib Dems or even the Greens.
MH Yes, some voters may think the Aga Khan is running!
I don't know if Goldsmith ticks all three.
http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/2015/06/trump-on-the-rise-but-could-give-clinton-landslide.html
The American Berlusconi will pose an immense problem for other republicans.
" However, there is clear support among some English Labour MPs, including Graham Allen, who said he “fully supports Jon Cruddas’s call for distinct English, Scottish and Welsh Labour parties as part of a federal Labour party”.
The FLP, I think the Labour party has been infected with SLABitis. It does beg the question will Scottish Labour members be voting in both the Scottish and the "other" leadership election ?
UKIPper avant la lettre.
Labour last had an English majority in 2001 and it's currently 319-206 in the Tories' favour - that's a lot of seats to make up and will need very different ideas and policies compared to those that will win back seats in Scotland and Wales.
Goldsmith seems fairly soft and likable as far as Tories go (I'm not instinctively opposed to Tories myself, but he doesn't come across as a 'scary', divisive Tory, not sure if that's truly the case though), though not super well known yet?
https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10153008087295095
Christie due to announce next week
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/chris-christie-2016-bid-announcement-119354.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/vote2005/html/england.stm
http://labourlist.org/2015/06/jeremy-corbyn-right-to-buy-should-be-extended-to-private-tenants/
My confusion was that there were more votes for the Tories in 2005 but you're of course completely right that Lab still had the seat majority until 2010.
Mea Culpa.
It's an astonishing turnaround. And it would look even worse if compared to 1997 or 2001.
If we had had PR in 2005 we would have had a Labour-LD coalition anyway
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2015/06/no-the-snp-isnt-planning-a-republican-insurrection-heres-why/
At least it's not as bad as the day they printed BBC Scotlandshire's Mharai Black's spoof dairy and attributed it to BBC Scotland.
The Labour London mayoral candidate on why he is the "modern" figure the city needs, Tessa Jowell's "control freakery", and Islamist extremism."
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2015/06/sadiq-khan-interview-london-cant-have-somebody-stuck-1980s-or-1990s
Private tenants do - of course - already have a right to buy. Like all transactions in a free and fair society, this is based upon the principle of willing buyer, willing seller. You seem to think it works with only half the parties being willing participants. I could draw a crude analogy, but shall not.
Yours sincerely,
Someone with a Brain
Doesn't mean there won't be a swing against the Tories sufficient to put Labour back in office, of course.
Given the number of people who voted UKIP at the last election, and the large number of people who cite immigration as a problem for the country, I don't think "we" as a country are particularly tolerant about it.
Australia is not constrained by being in the EU.
Although after the last Eurovision contest, who knows what will happen in the future?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/11692974/Asbo-dwarf-jailed-after-impersonating-a-Dalek-and-threatening-woman-with-a-butterknife.html
Middle England became landlords when Brown and Co shagged the pension system senseless between 1997 and 2010, and interest rates collapsed. No-one's going to win back those votes by screwing over their retirement plans again.
Not that simple, the game is this. If it cant be determined what country you come from, they cant send you back.
Which is why aeroplane toilets often are blocked up with passports.
Murdoch bought the times 30 years ago, and has no control over its editorial decisions. Can you really reflect on how the newspaper was run pre 1981 and claim that there is a change?
It may be an unfair policy for some but at least its a policy... and you really shouldn't have one rule for those lucky enough to qualify for a housing association or council house and another for those who don't..
Wonder how he'll describe his disastrous Russia Campaign of 1812?
http://t.gu.com/OL0Pn
More seriously, Switzerland is a member of Schengen, and is massively richer than we are. We could probably learn something from them.
If he had sufficient gumption he would have just quit
Unemployment Benefits in Switzerland
http://geneva.angloinfo.com/information/working/unemployment/
I.e leave the EU and apply a benefits system that is not held-back by EU rules.
(makes it a less attractive place to go for vagrants)
I wonder what was actually going on and how close I was to being correct. At any rate, I think they might have salvaged a few more seats if he had gone.
There are disadvantages of living in a society with high proportion of owner occupation. Labour markets are more flexible when renting is the norm, so home ownership can lead to higher levels of structural unemployment.
But there are advantages of living in a "property-owning democracy" too, as any Conservative knows. Something that creates conditions for more people to own their homes is a particular bonus for the Tories, since one of their longer-term threats is the decline in home ownership. People who are have the security of owning their own residence, and are empowered by that, are more likely to take on a middle-class Tory-voting mindset. Besides, the economy as a whole would be better off if incentives could be put in plce to divert a decent chunk of BTL investment to more productive causes.
However, I'm merely ensuring that the utterly insane housing association proposals are extended to their (il)logical end point. Its actually funny watching the Tories having to implement plans they only created to be able to drop in coalition talks...
There is an interesting argument about whether interest payments should be disallowed as a business expense in general. It would change companies' financing decisions by removing the debt "tax shield". It'd be quite interesting to know what PB's more financially-minded commentators thought about that, as a separate issue (rcs or Charles' opinions would be most welcome) but it seems at best disingenuous to pluck out BTL as a particular business model that is getting special treatment.
(My understanding is that many BTL landlords stick to interest-only repayments precisely because this maximises their tax shield, so obviously the tax treatment of interest is of particular relevance here. But the idea that the taxpayer is involved in some £13 billion of "handouts" to landlords annually is patently absurd. If you really want to look at a "handout" to the private rental industry, it might be better to have a good hard look at housing benefits first...)
I think a bigger problem with the proposal is that it would discourage landlords from taking on long-term tenants for fear of RTB being invoked, which would damage security of tenure.
Should be "yours faithfully" as you started with actual name .. :-). ;-)
I'd be interested to know whether the BTL ("BTS") bubble makes us more vulnerable to a housing crash than before, or whether it shields us somewhat - it certainly creates a fairly large class of people who would be utterly ruined by falls in the value of housing, particularly when they need to remortgage parts of their portfolio. On the other hand, less people own houses as a result of it, so in some sense fewer people would be directly affected. My inclination is that anything that encourages speculation must have a built-in hazard of bringing us back to earth with a bump, but I would welcome a better-informed opinion.