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They do things different in Battersea. The local Labour party invited along the Shadow Foreign Secretary Hilary Benn for a fundraising fish and chip supper to launch the formal start of the London election campaign. Then they promptly turned the lights out.
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All this angst and destruction is to put off what is going to happen anyway, for a few years.
That people like Hilary Benn would prefer to win the EU referendum rather that win the next GE, it's absurd.
Over to you Mr Cameron......tho you haven't been dealt the smartest of hands by your Chancellor, unfortunate symmetry to "£1.9 billion saved from the disabled to pay for income and CGT cuts for the better off'........"
No its not. I believe there are politicians in both Labour & Con who see 'getting the EU referendum right' as more important than winning GE20 - I suspect Benn would rather 5 years of Tories post 2020 than a Labour government outside the EU picking the bones out of the resultant mess.
If MPs and members could find a leader to coalesce around it might already be game over for the Tories in 2020. What IDS said was devastating: the chancellor is only interested in looking after Tory voters and that is plainly unjust. For a credible opposition that would be a gift of long-lasting and epic proportions.
Don't all parties look after their voters and supporters? That is exactly what Labour did and would do again were it in power.
This isn't something which is peculiar to the Tories.
This time last week the story was how the budget would confirm GO as frontrunner. Now he's burnt toast.
I, for one, think so. For me, the contrast with most of the current mob is stark.
As a side issue, it’s quite noteworthy that, so faer as I know, none of the defeated LibDem MP’s are proposing to fightb again.
Anyoe know if that actually is the case?
I don't think that Labour need to worry that a big Remain win would stop months or years of Conservative strife. The Eurosceptics have gone quite mad and there is absolutely no chance of locking them away in the attic once the referendum is over.
Well it's backfired all over him. Only a few weeks ago, I would've held my nose and voted for him in a forced choice - not now.
Let's see where he finds those Red Book billions - line 73 IIRC
The next election will be primarily decided upon who is the new Tory leader vs who is the Labour leader at that time. If it's still Corbyn then who the new Tory leader is may seem moot today but will be a massive fact.
My observation is that the public mood is for OUT and that the two campaigns are doing very little to sway that. If the Labour high command want to secure IN (do they...?) then two things are required.
1. A positive vision for reform. Selling "what has the EU done for us" isn't working - it's reputation is badly tarnished. Hard to sell people a status quo they dislike. So say what we want to turn the EU into, and the power of the socialist block of MEPs can do something that Cameron's lot refusing to sit with the centre right can't
2. Project Terror. Forget fear, people need a shock to the system. Our car manufacturers export, the EU is a massive market, if we go they go. Get people thinking that departure would finish what's left of industry leaving us at the mercy if city spivs and Starbucks.
Final observation. The "moderates" wanting to cease attacks on Osborne? They'd rather Oik stay in place - they are the "moderates" who abstained on his post-election benefit cuts after all.
Such a result would be heavily resented by Brexit supporters, who constitute 40% of the MPs and over half of the voluntary party, who'd never forgive the timing of the referendum, or the manner in which it was fought.
The referendum may well achieve nothing more than giving a shot in the arm to British europhilia (which was otherwise pretty much a dead duck) and simmering tensions in the Conservative Party that last for years.
What a legacy.
Greater or less than a Labour split?
Greater or less than both splitting? With the Corbyn problem to the left, the EU problem to the right there is a void in the middle for the right of Labour and the left of the Tory party to fill. Is it easier for both (parliamentary) parties to split than one?
Two graves.
Hard to claim the car manufacturers will leave when they have almost all said explicitly that they will not leave (and the only ones not to confirm they'll stay either way claimed they would leave if we left the Euro)
There is a section of the Tory party who have been unleadable since the early 90s and regrettably they are still there. Tories have been pretty ruthless with their leaders but their tolerance of the likes of David Davis, Bill Cash and even IDS has come back to bite them. There is the risk that the next generation of leader will not have it any better with the Moggster and Phillip Hollobone as well as a defeated Zac being semi detached parts of the party at best.
That normally leads to a bit of a counterargument by me, but "better the devil you know", job fears, trade worries, those who wish to live in the EU (e.g. Spain or France) and the lack of clarity on the non-EU alternative are the usual lines cited.
Project Fear's attack lines have penetrated through very, very well indeed.
That will be absolutely totally toxic to Conservative politics for the next 10-15 years, and put Cameron right up there with Heath.
I say again: this referendum is a mistake.
David Trimble was bang-on the money when I heard him speak seven years ago at a Tory party fringe event: "the worst thing we could do as a party is to hold an in/out EU referendum, and then lose it.."
It had a profound effect on me, and I've agreed with him ever since.
His prophecy is about to come to pass.
Realistically there is going to be a Tory leadership election this Parliament which will determine the next Prime Minister so it makes little sense for anyone to split before that vote at the earliest.
But as was mentioned to a lesser extent with Ed, Jezza is pure poison when other topics are mentioned. They can miss him off their leaflets, they can pretend he doesn't exist, but they can't keep him quiet forever. Then that fair chunk will rebel.
The sword of Damocles hangs over the Labour party. The Tories are just split and acting like ferrets in a sack - a mere flesh wound.
Khan is fighting an excellent campaign. But him losing would be very good news for Labour's long term health.
This debate has backfired on the Remain side IMO. It has moved the Overton Window so that Leaving the EU is not just the opinion of obsessives and a few fruitcakes, nuts and loons but instead upto about half the country. It has led to a lot of people to whom previously 'of course we should remain in the EU' to ask themselves "but why" and struggle to answer that question.
A remain victory without any positive vision or basis will be a Pyrrhic victory.
No, we NEED Bill Cash and Farage and Corbyn and Caroline Lucas - people who represent the actual opinions of actual people. It would be better all round if Cameron Clegg and Umunna all merge together into an Establishment Party so they can stop pretending to be any different. Then we can have a proper Tory Party, proper Labour Party, Liberals who actually represent Liberalism etc etc. All these "extremes" are "unelectable" but offer people choice and people tend to take it.
Incidentally the front pages today say that Cameron is going to defend his record, in any walk of life as soon as you have to justify yourself you're finished.
I understand that some former MPs are very much interested in making a return.
@PaulBrandITV: .@jeremycorbyn tells @GMB Labour's whole purpose is to 'defend those in receipt of PIP', and @scrabbmp will take money from elsewhere.
The Radicals: broadly the lefties and greens
The Statists: blairites/lib dems/cameroons
The Nationalists: traditional tories, sensible kippers
The members of those groups are more or less indistinguishable even now. Obviously there will be far left nutters (SWP, CPGB etc) and far right nutters (BNP, crazy kippers) but they wouldn't have a potvote to piss in anyway. Probably none will hold enough voters to form a majority, and none will be interested in a coalition. Minority governments and case-by-case support deals forever more
Leave is weakened, possibly fatally so, by the eccentric wing. There is, as you say, a strong body of mainstream Conservatives who want to Leave but they get drowned out by these characters who are more newsworthy and who are useful to those parts of the media who want to paint Leave in a certain light.
Of course I would accept that voices in the wilderness are sometimes precursors to that switch in mainstream opinion and Bill Cash might claim such a role but Leave need some more coherent and credible leadership before it is too late
Speaks volumes...
Largely the "independent thinkers" represent sizable elements of the actually political party their parachuted in leader claims to represent. You have to tolerate them because without them the party isn't there. I think Cash is bonkers, you probably think Livingstone is bonkers. But they represent swathes of members and activists regardless of who is leader or what policies are being touted.
The PIP reforms savings are reflected in the 2016 budget welfare cap. So removing PIP reform without increasing the cap to reflect that means those savings now need to be found from elsewhere in the welfare capped benefits..
The 2015 budget had a welfare cap for 2017-18 of £124.8bn. The 2016 budget has a welfare cap for 2017-18 of £114.6bn. If £1.2bn of that cut is due to the PIP changes and those changes have now been scrapped without the target figure being increased by £1.2bn I think whoever is in charge of DWP has a impossible mission to found that saving...
... you mean terminal decline...
I think the whole idea that party leaders can try an silence inconvenient voices on their back benches contemptible and undemocratic, those voices are there because the voters put them there.
May change one the selection procedure is sorted out of course.
He's greatly irked by poor treatment by Osborne. I think you're being a trifle unfair here - and Leave represents about half the Tory party in members, and MPs.
Wäre es da
Nicht doch einfacher, die Regierung
Löste das Volk auf und
Wählte ein anderes
More fun and games...
The fact of the matter is Camborne was doing something they knew would be controversial with the voters, and were hoping no one would notice. Osborne in his arrogance overplayed his hand and the whole lot got blown over the front page. Sorry, no sympathy at all, if George and Dave had played a straight bat none of this would have happened.
I don't say Leave couldn't run it close without them, but I don't think they can win without them.
So much depends on the margin of the Remain victory. I actually think a narrow Remain vote would be better for the future of the Conservative Party, now, than a heavy Remain vote.
I guess if the rumoured DWP papers are released we may find out.
Penny in the pound still left for Trump in Missouri
(Just scooped all the 1.02/1.03)
I knew just one person among many friends and acquaintances who planned to vote Labour in 2001 (and he supported them in 1983). Beware personal circles as an indicator of anything much.