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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » After a general election choice that CON defined as being competence or chaos LAB is proving them right
I have long been off the view that the most important message a party needs to get over in an election is that it can offer competent government. That was how the Tories managed to succeed on May 7th and why they did, against all the odds, achieve a majority, far part better than was expected.
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Presumably past members of say the LibDems, such as our very own OGH will not face disqualification simply on the grounds that they were previously members of another political party?
Part of the problem they face is they have no idea of what the aims of the Labour Party are - and so it is impossible to judge if anyone can truly be said to support them!
Indeed OGH - The Labour leadership election has become the very definition of a party in chaos. A party riven by splits, incompetence and meanwhile, failing utterly in their role as HMG opposition. I doubt it will be forgotten quickly and it’s not even over yet.
UKIP has a momentous decision ahead of them. Do they choose:
(1) To be the voice calling for Britain's departure from the EU. A super pressure group with 10s of thousands (possibly 100s of thousands) of members, who threaten to stand against sufficiently sceptical MPs, and who shape Britain's future - but who do not, themselves, aim for the levers of government.
or
(2) To claim for themselves the space vacated by the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties? To be the voice of patriotism, and of social conservatism, and to point out that the traditional parties all bow to the same alter of multiculturalism.
The old UKIP - like Jimmy Goldsmith's Referendum Party - chose 1. New UKIP seems to be going down the path of 2. There is definitely a space for this. It could even be a 20% vote share space, which - in a four party world (five in Scotland) - could well earn them a seat at the top table.
But to succeed here, UKIP needs to build local organisation, and local executive experience. People need to say: that UKIP council, they've really done a great job. And this means UKIP needs to stop losing pretty much every council by-election they contest. I think part of the problem is that over concentration of powers with Nigel Farage, part is that UKIP needs to have some kind of institutional view on how local government should be run, and finally too much of the UKIP high command is not really a believer in (2); they are members because they wish the UK not to be a member of the EU, not because they want to build a new conservative political movement.
I just get a sense that some of the Corbynistas will want to set out on their new revolutionary path with an 'enthusiasm' that might just bubble over into something confrontational.
If they lose, things could very easily turn very ugly, very quickly.
I suspect the Police are monitoring the Facebook event that has been set up for the 12 September for the Corbyn Victory Celebrations in Trafalgar Square
If they had been sensible instead of being idiotic-as-usual, they would have restricted voting to party members with a cut-off date of before the general election.
If 20% of MPs nominate someone else, Corbyn could be challenged within days of winning.
If that happens it really will descend into total farce.
If this had just been an Andy/Liz/Yvette election the Trots would have stayed at home, and a lot of floating votes might have been encouraged to buy into the idea of voting Labour by endorsing on of the candidates. Granted if they could find someone with more charisma than a doorknob it would have worked better,
The most unbelievable part of this fiasco is that the "inclusive" leadership election is supposed to be about drawing in non-core voters and getting them to buy into your candidate, broadening your electoral base. Where as what Labour have managed to do it piss off a collection of people who might well have voted Labour at a GE (even if their real preferences are somewhere to the left of Labour) with their vetting idiocy, get a load of trots excited about a set of policies the public won't vote for, and end up with a probable leader that repels swing voters at 100yds.
http://goo.gl/pwHc2b
A New Age Has Dawned, Has It Not !! ....
1) JC wins. The losers and their supporters back him, and the party shuffles slightly / lurches hard to the left.
2) JC wins. The losers (the majority of MPs) cause all sorts of havoc for his leadership and the party is seen as more split than it was in 2006/7 under the Brownite coup.
3) JC wins. The losers organise a putsch and the party splits. This will leave whichever side of the party (nominally JC vs Blairites) which does not inherit the organisational structure with massive problems. If it is the Blairite wing, they will also face positional problems in the political spectrum. We end up with another SDP-style situation.
4) ABC wins. The leftists and JC supporters back ABC, and the party, with a slightly more leftist slant, might be stronger than before.
5) ABC wins. The JC wing start causing large problems for the party; and we end up with another Militant-style split.
I think a sixth option now needs adding:
6) The process is voided before any results are given due to legal processes, or for other reasons. JC's side of the process feel massively aggrieved, perhaps rightly. As the electoral process cannot be changed (can it?), it is re-run but with a much smaller selectorate. It is hard to foresee the result being anything other than absolute chaos within the Labour Party.
It's like they're already making excuses for why they will lose.
I'm probably going to vote out, but I'm becoming more convinced that the vote will be for in, if only because many vocal outers are acting like children. I can only hope that the sane outers, as highlighted in the media this weekend, can get their voices heard.
Remember folks, nobody in Scotland is talking about the price of oil...
https://twitter.com/scotnational/status/635542291155976193
Although Mrs JackW indicates I haven't reached full Corbynism just yet but she lives in hope if not a reasoned expectation.
Of course that clever Mr Osborne has been fixing the roof while the sun shines so there will be no impact here.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3095556/Dave-demand-earth-Europe-s-leaders-amazed-wants-LITTLE-says-Daniel-Hannan-Conservative-MEP.html#ixzz3b8mNFKyB Frankly that is what is usually called, taking the piss. Cameron told the public of all the stuff he wanted to ask for from the EU, and yet he isn't even asking for it at the negotiations.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100276242/david-cameron-has-dropped-the-idea-of-a-new-deal-the-referendum-will-be-on-the-existing-membership-terms/
There was an interesting piece in the ST at the weekend which hinted that the tipping point when north sea oil becomes a liability is approaching fast. According to the article the UK taxpayer has clean up liabilities of approximately £30bn and the future tax revenues look considerably more modest. At the moment 9 of the 120 companies in the north sea are thought to be profitable so the tax take has collapsed. According to one expert the total tax revenue between 2020 and 2040 might be £2bn.
The article also explained that there is an increasing problem with the maintenance of the infrastructure which is essential if new small fields are ever going to be developed. The Theddlethorpe gas terminal and its supporting pipelines was mentioned as being a structural threat to the southern north sea,
On the plus side (and it is pretty modest) there is no doubt that there is going to be a lot of quite technical decommissioning work in the North Sea for some years to come. It won't pay anything like the current work will but it will help and may well develop export capability.
But this is of course one reason why Corbyn is set to win. He is sticking rigidly to what he believes in, no matter what the circumstances, and the Labour party, after years of moral and intellectual vacuity under Blair, Brown and Miliband are lapping it up. Maybe it is an admirable trait, although it does land him in hot water a lot, cf all that business about being supportive of the Palestinians, so he will work with anyone else who supports them - but it's not a trait for a successful LOTO. If he and the voters disagree, as will happen on many issues, he will just say simply they are wrong, and then be puzzled when they don't vote for him.
Before anyone says that voters like 'politicians of principle', that is and isn't true. They like politicians with principles that are sensible, even if they disagree, or at least don't entirely agree with them. But when you get an oddball principle, like mass confiscation of shares because the state must own everything, that just becomes in their eyes a prejudice. Or to put it another way, if principles were all that mattered, the BNP would surely be the most powerful party in politics today, for they have never wavered from the white supremacy line. But to ordinary people, that just looks bonkers, so they don't vote for them. Corbyn's almost the exact opposite of the BNP, so people will not warm to his principles either.
This is utterly the wrong way to campaign if you want to win.
There is a vacuum in politics atm. The Lib Dems are invisible, and Labour are in utter disarray, leaving Cameron and his party the potential to do many things without proper oversight. The media will be wanting stories that are not the Labour leadership race. The way is open for the outers to give a positive, coherent vision for the UK outside the EU.
Instead, all we get are the equivalent of Labour's 2010 campaign with Cameron sitting on a car bonnet.
It didn't work for Labour then; it won't work for the outers now. It'll encourage the supporters, but you've already got their vote. It won't change anyone else's mind.
Be positive. Be upbeat. You already sound as if you know you've lost.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/international-business/european-business/norways-sovereign-wealth-fund/article25973060/
The suggestion is that Norway is currently struggling - but of course they have the wild card option of using their wealth fund to keep things going, in a genuinely Keynesian fashion. Scotland doesn't.
(Before anyone starts assigning blame for this, remember Norway was a relatively new state when oil was discovered, and had comparatively little debt and low public spending, at around 34% of GDP. Britain was not in that situation partly of the decisions of successive Labour and Conservative governments to fund an exceptionally generous welfare state.)
The real culprit for the mess is, as Mike rightly says, the ludicrous system Labour's adopted but that was already in place and couldn't be changed (and if Corbyn wins, probably won't be changed for next time either).
But this is of course one reason why Corbyn is set to win. He is sticking rigidly to what he believes in, no matter what the circumstances, and the Labour party, after years of moral and intellectual vacuity under Blair, Brown and Miliband are lapping it up. Maybe it is an admirable trait, although it does land him in hot water a lot, cf all that business about being supportive of the Palestinians, so he will work with anyone else who supports them - but it's not a trait for a successful LOTO. If he and the voters disagree, as will happen on many issues, he will just say simply they are wrong, and then be puzzled when they don't vote for him.
Before anyone says that voters like 'politicians of principle', that is and isn't true. They like politicians with principles that are sensible, even if they disagree, or at least don't entirely agree with them. But when you get an oddball principle, like mass confiscation of shares because the state must own everything, that just becomes in their eyes a prejudice. Or to put it another way, if principles were all that mattered, the BNP would surely be the most powerful party in politics today, for they have never wavered from the white supremacy line. But to ordinary people, that just looks bonkers, so they don't vote for them. Corbyn's almost the exact opposite of the BNP, so people will not warm to his principles either.
Brilliant post.
Miliband lost for many reasons, but a major one was that he had a campaign based on a series of policies that did not form a coherent whole. Corbyn has a set of policies that are both coherent and popular with many on the left.
With Miliband, it was sometimes hard to know what he would say about an issue that he had not yet spoken about: I often got the impression he was waiting to be told what to say, or at least to see what the party would let him say. With Corbyn, it will be much easier as he is very consistent within his world view.
Unfortunately for him, it will be very hard to make those policies popular with enough others to win him a GE, although it may still be possible. That is the danger.
And to have someone more inspiring than the three currently opposing Jeremy.
I just can't see either part of that outcome happening now. The Corbynistas would scream that they were being robbed. Rightly. And there might be enough in the May membership to still vote Corbyn as leader at a second go round - absent an Alan Johnson figure going for a three year term, with a new election and a leader announced at the September 2018 Conference.
EDIT - Iain Duncan Smith's election was also announced in September, of course - in fact, it was due to be announced on the 11th, but was put back for some reason.
The Zoomer line on here yesterday was that nobody in Scotland was talking about the price of oil.
Today the front page of the Daily Zoomer, sorry, the Nat onal, is dedicated to the price of oil.
Don't blame me when Zoomer central makes you and your pals look like chumps.
But you are right. Osborne has taken a gamble that he would have a longer period of growth over which he could deal with the deficit. If things in the world economy go tits up now we will be in a bad place and all those people in the Labour party who were saying not fast enough, not far enough on deficit reduction will have been vindicated. That's what they were saying, isn't it?
Quite, Mr. Smithson. If Labour appears incapable of running Labour, what hope have they with the country?
Two important F1 links:
Vettel, Alonso and Hamilton all concerned about the tyres: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34033979
My post-race ramble:
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/belgium-post-race-analysis.html
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100276242/david-cameron-has-dropped-the-idea-of-a-new-deal-the-referendum-will-be-on-the-existing-membership-terms/
Hannan isn't exactly the most reliable analyst of what Cameron is asking for.
This is Jeremy Corbyn’s first big event in his own backyard and the atmosphere was electric, as the genuine spectre of a Corbyn victory has transformed British politics for ever.
You can sense that people know history is being made all around them as young and old, from all walks of life, settled down on the wooden benches in the glorious Union Chapel in Islington for a night of politics, music and fun.
[…]
Jeremy shies away from nothing, no deception, no meaningless platitudes or promises that appear insincere. You can sense he really is the one the Tories fear and we can rest assured that, whatever happens, the struggle will continue.
http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-6096-Jeremy-Corbyn-passionate-and-warm,-yet-utterly-real#.Vdq8d_T6fIW
As for Labour, it's going to be fascinating to see how the left reacts to the impending crash and burn. The BBC, Murdoch et al will obviously be blamed, but so too will non-converted party members and MPs. They will be accused of disloyalty, expressing public doubts, of betrayal and all the rest of it, and there will be a Cultural revolution of sorts. And Labour will shrink further. I wonder how long Nick Palmer will survive.
Here's one very confident prediction: 600,000 people will not participate in the next Labour leadership election. Labour will lose members, less trade unionists will take part, the sanctimonious £3ers will have moved on to the next right-on project and the Entryists' job will be done.
http://www.thenational.scot/comment/the-national-view-honesty-needed-in-discussion-of-north-sea-oil-and-gas.6722
But this is of course one reason why Corbyn is set to win. He is sticking rigidly to what he believes in, no matter what the circumstances, and the Labour party, after years of moral and intellectual vacuity under Blair, Brown and Miliband are lapping it up. Maybe it is an admirable trait, although it does land him in hot water a lot, cf all that business about being supportive of the Palestinians, so he will work with anyone else who supports them - but it's not a trait for a successful LOTO. If he and the voters disagree, as will happen on many issues, he will just say simply they are wrong, and then be puzzled when they don't vote for him.
Before anyone says that voters like 'politicians of principle', that is and isn't true. They like politicians with principles that are sensible, even if they disagree, or at least don't entirely agree with them. But when you get an oddball principle, like mass confiscation of shares because the state must own everything, that just becomes in their eyes a prejudice. Or to put it another way, if principles were all that mattered, the BNP would surely be the most powerful party in politics today, for they have never wavered from the white supremacy line. But to ordinary people, that just looks bonkers, so they don't vote for them. Corbyn's almost the exact opposite of the BNP, so people will not warm to his principles either.
I think you make a good point, many people are principled while also being dead wrong. I like that Corbyn is committed and has clear ideas, but I dislike his inflexibility (unless he pulls a Syriza and does prove able to cave to reality at the last minute) - only the infallible can hold such consistent and automatic positions on everything, and that worries me.
Hannan isn't exactly the most reliable analyst of what Cameron is asking for.
Hannan is the Corbyn of the right.
" we need to be honest about oil and gas decline - it's the Toories !"
Sad
Mr. Foxinsox, why do you say that?
Very few have significant experience of managing anything efficiently and dealing with the extra problem of having generated enough money into the bank to pay your people at the end of every month, as well as all the associated taxes.
Being a councilor or spad and even a PPE does not give this vital and necessary experience.
He's also not aspiring to Westminster, let alone leadership.
They believe in motherhood.
And apple pie.
Hannan isn't exactly the most reliable analyst of what Cameron is asking for.
Who is he to say what 'what most Britons want and, indeed, what they believed they were voting for in the 1975 referendum'.?
Indeed – but what’s the rush? Let’s wait until his feet are firmly under the table...!
Most politicians teeter on the brink on this test from time to time. Some never look close to passing.
Compare that say to the Lib Dem election that got no one exited and most barely noticed. Moribund.
Look for example all the people Cameron has hired to work on the renegotiations, europhiles to a man, this is not a PM that is going to hold a renegotiation and then form a balanced view on what has been achieved and recommend it or not for a referendum, this is a man that has decided to push for IN come what may, even if it means selling a bit on tinsel with the whole of the Whitehall machine behind him (see no purdah rules etc)
The grammar police will be paying you a visit shortly.. expect a knock on the door!
I am fascinated by the idea that an effective cash flow is different to efficient management. I would've thought it was a key part of it. But, hey, what do I know - I don't even see taxation as theft
If you actually want to win it, that is.
Admittedly, not in a pedalo....
You may as well send Dr Palmer to renegotiate; he'd do his best but his heart wouldn't be in it.
It's not even true. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danielhannan/100288254/what-would-david-cameron-have-to-bring-back-from-brussels-to-satisfy-eurosceptics/
Plucky Brit Chris Norman and US fellow passengers Spencer Stone, Anthony Sadler and Alek Skarlato are to be awarded France’s highest honour – the Légion d’honneur – by president, Francois Hollande, today for their roles in stopping a suspected terrorist attack on a train.
The train crew will be awarded the ‘Ruban jaune avec grappe de plume blanche’
Labour smashed at the GE and destroyed in Scotland
An athlete won gold v a drug cheat
We won the Ashes..
just a few highpoints.
http://www.politico.eu/article/an-eu-for-full-members-only/
"Has it?"
Well I saw a mass suicide of ten year olds and I thought they must be Burnham supporters so I googled...........
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/one-direction-give-show-stopping-6308280
That was pure comedy.
He is clearly someone who, unlike you, can read polls. Most Briton's say they want a trade relationship and nothing else. The sort of relationship they were told they were getting in 1975 and the sort of relationship apparently being offered as 'associate membership'.
It is the dishonest Eurofanatics like yourself who persist in misrepresenting public opinion.
If I was wrong, it was in believing those assurances. Once bitten ... I think I'm entitled to be cynical.
Actually, one policy Ed got right was to scrap the role.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4YvR22delc
and falling off the stage
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11575631/Watch-Ed-Miliband-trips-off-the-stage-following-Question-Time-leaders-special.html
The man (and woman) in the street is supposed to vote for whichever side persuades them best. You're not even trying to persuade them.
There's loads you could do. Instead of arguing the advantages of leaving the EU, you're throwing a hissy fit that the game is tacked against you, before actually knowing that it is.
"We all know what the positive case looks like"
No, we don't, and neither do the public. If it is that clear, then you should be shouting it from the rooftops rather than this self-indulgent claptrap about the process. That will persuade no-one except the already persuaded.
One - is that labour are clearly shown to be incompetent and not fit to be let within light years of government. They are not really fit for opposition (Scottish centrist voters please take note).
Two - is that Labour are exposed as only happy to be far left. They are shown to be dominated by unions and pacifists. Their very incompetence has opened the floodgates to the far left.
But really Mr S... When a well know LibDem sends in his £3 note do you expect even the dumbest Labour apparatchick to say anything other than 'Him? He's avvin a laff!' and bin your application?
However good luck - I look forward to your legal challenge.
I am glad Ed lost but the idea that someone of even slight intelligence should have been swayed in their view of him by how he ate a sandwich is fatuous and idiotic... which is about the level of most political campaigns these days. :-(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/motorsport/34037413
From the various videos, it looks as though a piece of the nosecone crash structure hit him on the head. By the height the piece bounces into the air afterwards, it was quite an impact. Hope he's okay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1An0Cx8RTg