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The centre ground of politics used to be very crowded. And with good reason. Roughly half the electorate sit in the middle stratum of electoral geology. In a YouGov poll taken just after the election, 13% described themselves as slightly left of centre, 19% described themselves as centre, 14% described themselves as slightly right of centre and a further 23% didn’t know where to place th…
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Why are people so desperate to get to Britain:
1. There is a vibrant job market in the UK, and as the immigrant is more likely to speak English than French or Finnish or Italian or German or Swedish or Norwegian or Danish or Dutch, they are more likely to get a job in the UK that in those other places.
2. We have a reputation for being more welcoming, in terms of benefits, housing, etc., than some other places in Europe.
3. We don't have ID cards, so if you're in the UK, it's easy to get a job, and relatively hard for someone to identify you as a non-British citizen.
(As an aside, one of the reason that Schengen works so well, is that everyone in Europe carries an ID card all the time. Therefore there may be no passport checks, but a policeman or employer,etc can see who you are and where you live without difficulty.)
Indeed - policy may inform the mood music, but does not set it completely, and it's that mood music that seems to get through to people, that is, X may be a bit right wing, but they're more competent.
I feel sorry for the LDs - sticking to the centre just doesn't work, but being Labour-lite will only limit their options in the future (although since that is dependent upon actually recovering, worth it for now).
I can imagine them saying ''come on, help Yvette crack through that glass ceiling, and be Labour's first female leader.''
In fairness Burnham-Watson is a god-awful duo. Even Cooper-Watson is better than that.
I have a Malaysian friend who can't make the salary needed to enter the country. Why the hell should some chancer in a lorry get to come and live here when he's obeying the rules and may try and go through the legal process ?
But the issue is that just because someone wants to come here doesn't mean that we should be obliged to let them in. We should only allow in those migrants that we want i.e. those who have something useful to contribute to this country, will integrate well and not be a nuisance or a burden. And, above all, we should allow in only those numbers and types that those of us who are here agree to i.e. any migration into the UK should be done openly and with our informed consent.
Personally, I don't want a lot of aggressive young men from God-awful war-torn hell-holes, no matter how much money they've paid or ingenuity shown in travelling here.
This view is very nicely explained in far greater detail by Nate Silver at 538 in a very interesting analysis. It is well worth a read for anyone planning to bet on the GOP nomination:
http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/donald-trump-is-the-nickelback-of-gop-candidates/?ex_cid=story-twitter
There aren't many plausible targets for the Lib Dems in 2020. But Colchester and Gower weren't plausible targets for the Conservatives in 2015. UNS doesn't S U across the N. In particular, Lib Dem marginals aren't like Conservative/Labour marginals full of car-commuter middle-class middle-income middle-aspiration towns. If you had to characterise them, they are well-off picturesque towns and far-away peripheral areas where people have to be clever and happen to be a bit bolshie. And I especially wouldn't be concerned about offering a constructive alternative government when the current government has 58 months of its mandate remaining.
Many of the respondents who used to support a more centrist Labour party are likely centre-right people, who'll never vote Labour but who would like Labour to be more like the Conservatives, for the same reason centre-left people would like Conservatives to be more like Labour. The converse is true, to a much smaller scale, for the tiny, devoted true left who'll never consider Labour. But the ratio of these two groups is like 25:1 toward committed Conservative voters.
All the parties just need to avoid, while voter definitions about this parliament are being formed, a disaster like Tuition Fees that characterises your party as weak and treacherous - Labour has already had an effing disaster on Welfare Cuts.
I don't understand why the LDs under the Orange-Brooker generation became so obsessed with the centre-ground. The likes of Richard Reeves, who pushed this agenda were stupid. The Conservatives and Labour can afford to bid for the centre-ground because they have a strong 25% - 30% base who will always vote for them. On top of that, they are bidding for floating voters in marginals in order to get an overall majority. The LDs at this time were fighting for very existence, let alone getting into government with a base signifcantly smaller than the big two. I thought the LDs had a 15% base, so their single digit 8% base is even smaller than I think many anticipated. The LDs had their most success when they tacked left (taking advantage of vacuum left by New Labour) and when there was no competition for the protest vote.
Now, there is far more competition - UKIP got 4 million votes in the 2015 GE, and the Greens got 1m. Really the LDs can't afford to tack too to the left if Corbyn gets in - they''ll have to pose as a moderate centre-left alternative. But the LDs biggest problem was that there bid to centre reinforced their identity problem. Many don't really know what the LDs are for, nor do they trust in their competence despite their stint in government.
Even people who claim to be liberal show Puritan tendencies.
They seek power so as to - as Mr Brind put it the other day - "control people's lives".
They are an almighty nuisance.
Contrariwise, the Lib Dems were contaminated by the toxicity of the Tories. And people are coming to see just how much control the Lib Dems had over the more outrageous Tory positions during the last government. Almost on a daily basis, we see comments in the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, all recognising the moderating influence the Lib Dems had in the last Government. The great pity is that they, and the general public too, were not disposed to recognise this until now, when of course it is too late.
Except that it is not too late - not for the next round. Even during the election campaign, there was a high level of goodwill on display towards the Lib Dems. On the day, people were pressurised by the perception that the result was going to be very close (Lord A and others did a good job for the Tories on that one!); and by the fear of a Milliband government controlled totally by Ms Sturgeon.
But now that the electoral temperature has gone down a bit, people realise what they have lost and the goodwill towards the Lib Dems is taking shape and form again, as can be seen in recent local government byelections. There is movement. And the quick, efficient and largely trouble-free internal election of the new Lib Dem leader comes in striking contrast to the prolonged fratricidal vituperation in the ranks of the Labour Party.
Lib Dems are on the up again, Mr Antifrank.
* my comment relates to the graph, not Antifrank's article
http://www.saintpetersblog.com/archives/236488
The LDs also don't appear to strike a hard-line on immigration and welfare that resonates with the electorate.
Now how to cap it off whilst doing admin?
I think you know where I'm off to on tinternet...
clue - there was a pleasant surprise for another lot of proud hearted patriots that day too....
The real estate mogul went on “The Palin Update” Monday — a radio show airing on Mama Grizzly Radio, a station that OFFERS 24-hour news about Palin and issues related to her — telling host Kevin Scholla that he would consider having the former Alaska governor in an official capacity in a Trump administration.
“I’d love that,” said Trump. “Because she really is somebody who knows what’s happening and she’s a special person.”
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/sarah-palin-donald-trump-administration/
If the Lib Dems do indeed plan on launching full on into a 'real opposition' strategy, they might just find themselves swamped by a Corbyn-led Labour and by the SNP north of the border. Now would be a good time to be sensible. Whether Farron can do sensible remains to be seen.
I actually feel a bit sorry for the Lib Dems. I too thought that Farron would be the right man for the job: someone to make a noise and lead an opportunist charge against the government; a contrast to a Labour robot like Burnham or Cooper. But with Labour seemingly wanting to occupy the shouty spot, Norman Lamb might have been the better bet after all.
As for Labour, they quite clearly don't want to occupy the centre ground (unless the centre ground happens to be Trafalgar Square). It's true that elections tend to be won in the centre but you have to want it otherwise the public will see through the façade. I'm convinced that one reason Labour lost was that Miliband kept trying to talk centre (One Nation and all that) but constantly undermined himself with his actions and with other pronouncements.
As antifrank notes, the Tories have made a grab for the centre, perhaps noting how empty it currently looks. It's not that bold a move given the lack of an alternative there. The question is whether it will stick if an opponent takes the field, or, if UKIP manage to gain traction on the right.
(As an aside, a Corbyn-led Labour would put a big dent in UKIP's pitch to the WWC, although they could still run on social policies).
But the crucial point is the one antifrank makes when he says "winning over these [centrist] voters is not as simple as just plonking yourself as closely as possible to them". In fact, it should be elaborated further because there's a big risk if you get it wrong. In the same way that the centre must be occupied, it can only be occupied by so many. If you are seen as weak or incapable, then pitching to the centre not only fails to gain any advantage (as the stronger party will still snaffle the votes) but you also risk losing your core who disapprove of the lack of red meat.
Looking and sounding centrist is more likely to get you a hearing but ultimately the public will still pick the party that appears the most capable potential government.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421480/donald-trump-jeremy-corbyn-clowns-neverland-tom-rogan
There is a party that combines the poor, trade unions, most social liberals, the public sector, young people and new citizens, who think if the government taxes other people it will make things better, and a party that combines the rich, farmers, most traditional conservatives, self-employed professionals, old people and pro-NATO/pro-Israel voters, who think if the government stops taxing them it will make things better. These days, you have to add an important role for the tendency rising across the wealthy northern European countries, the "no immigrants but more nurses please" faction.
If you had to explain Spanish politics to a Martian trained in English politics, you wouldn't just throw your hands up and deem it an ineffable national divide. You'd say the PSOE are like Labour and the PP are like the Conservatives.
https://iainmacwhirter.wordpress.com/2015/07/26/why-labour-members-are-saying-give-jez-a-chance/
Another interesting perspective from Ian Smart are Scottish Labour stalwart and ex party Chairman:
http://ianssmart.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/an-utterly-depressing-piece-after.html?m=1
http://www.libdems.org.uk/new-lib-dem-spokespeople-announced
I think many people ache for clear leadership and authenticity. A signpost not a weathercock.
Thatcher had it. Blair had it (the inauthenticity showed up later). Osborne has the leadership but not the authenticity (too clever by half). Cameron has the authenticity(?) but not the leadership (a manager not a leader).
Burnham, Cooper and Kendall have neither the leadership nor the authenticity. Corbyn has both. Many people will follow him even if his history and policy may seem bonkers to committed right wingers. Committed right wingers are not swing voters in marginal constituencies. Swing voters are not committed and and by definition are easily swung. The tide may be about to turn.
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I've just looked at the weather forecast and, annoyingly, it is for rain and even lightning over the next few days. But if I don't go now, I won't get another chance for at least a year.
I just hope my tent's still waterproof ...
Enjoy my absence!
I wasn't aware John Alderdice was a Lib Dem now.
Does this mean Burt and Featherstone to the Lords?
Italian politics cannot be explained in such a fashion nor can Irish politics - where the wounds of how it gained independence from Britain run much deeper than you might think. France does not have much tradition of liberalism, as we would understand it. The French revolution explains pretty much everything about French politics and the President is far more of a Sun King figure than Presidents in other countries. Those who want to preserve the public sector, particularly in its role as a provider of jobs to favoured groups/clients - the clientilismo seen in Italy, for instance, are deeply conservative and it is a mistake to see them as on the Left simply because they want a big generous state.
Party leaders take on advisers and strategists - and, certainly in the case of the Lib Dems, some of these like to give the impression that they have taken over the party. You categorise Mr Reeves as stupid, and I think most Lib Dems would agree with you. End of that line of argument.
Events this week have made it very clear where Lib Dems stand. The Tories are vindictive towards the weak and feeble. The Labour Party is so careful of its image, that it effectively supports the Tories. The Lib Dems stand up for the weak, indefensive and dispossessed.
beverting to type
France is almost comically similar to the UK. They have moved from a country where Communists and Christian Democrats were the most popular parties, to a country where a Corbyn Labour Party fights a Cornerstone Conservative Party. Italy deeply wants to be similar to the UK to the extent that a two-party system is an article of faith among electoral reformers, but their right is in disarray at the moment; still, Renzi's PD on the left is about as Blairite as you can get in the 2010s.
Even so, the point is that these are all left-right systems! In none of these countries do you get alliances of trade unions, traditional conservatives, young people and Atlanticist foreign policy supporters, or elderly progressive farmers. I'm sure it's for fundamental Marxist/sociological reasons around how people are socialised. You have to go to Ireland or Poland for oddities like that.
But I fear the Conservatives on here are being a little too careless in disregarding Corbyn. Ed was stymied by not having a firm ideology and in having (in his mind) to prepare for power. Corbyn has a firm ideology he can sell, and can promise anything unencumbered with thoughts of power - after all, if he does become PM, the ideology is good, and that is all that matters. It will work.
Corbyn *might* prove a tougher challenge for the Conservatives than Ed, and is he can only beat expectations. If he starts landing the blows that Ed missed, Labour will stick with him.
That said, it is often the case that the truly committed can bring others along with them, down paths they never thought they'd go down against opposition that seems overwhelming, because almost everybody is a little uncertain, they have doubts, and the truly committed can exploit that to great and terrible ends. I believe it was my words quoted in that bit about 'sticking to the centre'. I confess that as much as i deride the left-right spectrum, I fall back on its terminology too often - I am well aware of the LD idea of neither left or right, and so naturally my brain categorizes them as trying for the centre, rather than attempting to go down a different axis
Again, read the Silver piece. It may provide you some insight.
On Labour: the party is so divided right now I don't think we can even say where it stands. One half of the party as you say, simply wants to keep ceding ground to the Tories. The other wants a more radical, left-wing prospectus. That there is no moderate ground between those positions at this time in Labour is the big issue for the party. Are Labour simply to become some kind of imitation of the Conservatives, or some kind of radical social movement which doesn't really look like a credible government? That the debate in Labour has really come to this shows that the modernisers, who Labour needs now more than ever have no ideas.
On the LDs: The LDs problem as said by @calum is also remaining relevant. While the LDs opposition to the welfare bill is a start to being distinctive once again, they face a battle to imprint any kind of identity they may have upon the public.
If you look at the graph Labour were about as far from the left as the Tories were from the right and the Tories had UKIP to their right as much as Labour had the SNP to their left. The fact the Tories were in coalition with the centrist LDs also made the government and Cameron seem more centrist
The thing that Tories took pride on in the election was their record in government, not their ideology: pragmatism not doctrine. That's quite centrist.
Can I just ask why on earth are the GOP so right-wing. I guess it may be because I'm on the centre-left of British politics, but they come across as quite extreme.
EDIT: I'd also agree with @david_herdson. The Tories did not come off as right-wing during the GE - only their 12bn welfare cuts really bothered me. Now, on the other hand....
I agree up to a point, but it certainly wasn't the public perception that Labour's approach at the last election was remotely based on "left-wing" ideology or doctrine. The single most common complaint about Miliband I heard was "I've got no idea what he stands for" (often contrasted with "atleast the Conservatives know where they want to go, like it or not" or a comment of that nature).
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/07/trump-republican-establishment-120713.html?hp=t1_r#.Vbky_-u7KfQ
Cooper +663
Burnham +355
Kendall -110
David Miliband -636
Should I call international rescue yet ?
There are really two kinds of left-right. There's the substantive, policy details which make a particular manifesto right or left. But there is also an abstract aura of left or right, and this kind of subjective political positioning doesn't necessarily align with concrete pledges.
Kellner argued that Tony Blair had some very left-wing or progressive policies, such as minimum wage (there are apparently some young'uns on PB for whom the idea of life without the minimum wage is unthinkable, but for the bulk of the 20th century, when minimum wages have frequently been in political discussion particularly within left-wing circles, the idea of introducing one was long unthinkable: even radically-inclined Labour governments steered away from it) yet was able to position himself as centrist overall. He was able to create an image of a centrist, by careful media judgment, shying away from inflammatory rhetoric and adding some more right-leaning policies which counterbalanced his left-wing ones. Kellner's argument seemed to be that Blair could have been seen as a more seriously left-wing progressive leader had he chosen to, but that he had wisely set his sights on the centre-line.
On the other hand, Michael Howard produced a manifesto that, line by line, on matters like immigration, crime and Europe, the British public was broadly sympathetic to. On each particular policy he was not substantially far away from the typical British voter, if such a beast there be. Yet taken in aggregate with his historic image, it led people to the impression that he was a long way to the right of them.
Does anybody here regularly use Cortana or Siri? I think the embarrassment factor may be reduced by being able to type a query in, rather than talking at your hardware as if you were some kind of maniac (again, my Speccies only let me talk to them through the keyboard, and however unwieldy knowing all the symbol-shift combinations was, I thank them for allowing less awkward human-computer interaction than my "talk to me!" mobile phones do.)
With the rise of the Christian Coalition, the GOP started to move to the right, relatively, on social issues (in fact, the Dems moved more to the left than the GOP moved to the right, but society as a whole was moving with the Dems) such as abortion, gay rights, legalization of cannabis etc... The net result is that the GOP ended up further from the US centre than did the Dems.
However, simultaneously, the moderates in both parties have been massacred through the primary processes. Moderate GOPers have been hacked down by Tea Party insurgents at the nomination level, with the result that some TP candidates have been elected, and others have lost to their Dem opponents but in both cases the GOP moderates have lost (taking the Congressional GOP to the right both through the addition of TPers and the subtraction of moderates). The same has happened,mutatis mutandis, in the Democratic party. The Blue Dog Democrats were almost completely wiped out in 2014 to a mixture of losses to GOP challengers in the election, or more liberal Democrats in the nomination process.
Now that it is clearly seen that they are not, I sense that their support will fall away fast.
I also suspect that Miss Apocalyse is a Lib Dem at heart, although she does not yet realise this.
It's looking like in both the US and UK politics is increasingly drifting further right, and further left simultaneously....
Haven't tried Edge yet - sticking to Chrome.
The key combinations seem to be the same. All my stuff seems to work fine.
The only thing I noticed when doing my anti-virus scan is that there are 380k more files than there used to be. Presumably the 'old' windows is backed up.
It boots more quickly.
There's not really much difference that I can see other than menu re-arrangement. I never used the tiles in windows 8 anyway.
So far so good.
In fact American politicians (or campaigns at any rate) are generally excellent at adapting to the audience they have to win over. Presidential elections are often described as landslide victories when there were really just a couple of points in it: people know how to position themselves to get as close to the 51% or 52% mark (excluding third parties) they need to win. I am oversimplifying here. But when was the last time there was a complete and utter thrashing in a two-party presidential race?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern_presidential_campaign,_1972
McGovern, or his team, or the Dems who chose for him to run, stuffed up. They completely misread the mood. That I think, more than the brilliance of Nixon, was why they only mustered 37.5% of the vote. For comparison, a candidate around 45% would be described as very badly beaten. That so many US elections are, relatively, razor-edged shows that the parties are actually pretty good at reading and reflecting the mood of the nation.
Which brings me to my main point: if you think the Republicans seem extreme right on the British political spectrum, and yet they have not been getting McGovern style thrashings, they must in some way reflect the American electorate. The Dems are pretty right-wing too: plenty of British Tories would feel at home with them. The centre (or center) of political gravity is just in a different place in the USA, though there are states where it is closer to Britain's. As to why that is, that's a huge question and no single definitive answer. There are sociologists and political scientist who have carved entire careers out of it.
Are we talking here about skin colour, or about inherited culture?
Blue states (democratic) are losing population and hence, every ten years with the census, numbers of representatives in the House. This has no effect on the number of Senators in blue states, and a less dramatic affect on the electoral college in Presidential elections. But at some stage, this population flow can cause states to tip from Red to Blue, or at least Purple, as we have seen in Colorado and Virginia.
Meanwhile, two white voting populations have gone from solid Dem to GOP - white working class males and (to a lesser extent) the Catholic vote. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that the Jewish vote will fracture (over Israel policies) in the future, with a significant portion moving to the GOP from Dem.
So electoral theories based on demographic changes have to also take into account shifting political allegiances within those demographic groups. My own view is that, in the long term, the one will balance out the other and we'll still have two viable parties contesting elections and taking turns to be in power.
Con 31.6%
NDP 31.6%
Lib 26.1%
BQ 5.0%
Green 5.0%
http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/poll-tracker/2015/index.html