With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
I can't imagine why, Mr. J.. One of Osborne's old mates who nobody had ever heard of and whose work (if any) was invisible to the average person and whose achievements are not visible to the naked eye has resigned. Wow! That is really going to be the top topic of conversation in homes and pubs this evening.
Jim is definitely someone the government want on their side. It's a shame to lose him so carelessly. I do now fear for the northern powerhouse strategy, something which was finally gaining ground.
Indeed. Just because it was Osborne's darling, doesn't make it a bad idea.
May's in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Worse, it makes her government look more south-focused.
The north needs some love.
Absolutely. I was hoping that being a backbench champion of the Northern Powerhouse idea, would be George Osborne's route to redemption within the Conservative party.
Seems strangely at odds with polls but i guess local circumstances at least partly responsible.
3 Lab gains, wonder when that last happened!!
JICIPM?
Ha, ha, ha. (Dies laughing).
I suppose it could happen, but we'd need to rewrite everything anybody knows about marginal seats and Tory-Labour switchers etc etc. Then again, I guess that is the Corbynista shtick - that everything has changed.
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
Maybe Osborne actually just believes that 'I told you so' will work, because he genuinely thinks it is going to be car crash. Radical I know.
Big gap for Trump there. Third poll in 2 days with Clinton with a 6+ national lead with LV's
Yes - all eyes on FL polling now. If that starts to trend back to Hillary, Trump is in real trouble.
Trump is presently polling better than any Republican candidate since George W Bush on average with RCP, he is not in trouble yet and of course the first debate is on Monday
Trump back (just) below 40% and Clinton just above 60% chnace of winning Presidency on 538. Florida: Trump 46.4%, Clinton 46.0%
On topic, I forgot to ask my parents how they voted in the Hadleigh by-election. It seems that the collapse in the UKIP vote was as relevant as the slide in the Conservative vote.
The Lib Dems for long had the county council seat in Hadleigh. So this is a reassertion of past local strength as much as a reflection on the Tories' transatlantic representation.
The interesting thing is that what some years ago was the common assumption - that UKIP would take anti-EU votes from the Tories - has turned out to be dramatically wrong.
For every retired Sussex Colonel who switched Tory to UKIP there have been plenty of WWC Labour-to-UKIP switchers as well as NOTO/protest LibDem to UKIP voters. So as UKIP unwinds the benefit isn't accruing to the Tories as once would have been thought, and the "Tory + UKIP votes = right-wing majority" line is misguided.
wwc UKIP voters are socially conservative if not economically conservative
The loss of Hadleigh also means the Tories lose control of Suffolk CC. I think the Conservatives can expect a pretty gloomy autumn. Meanwhile the Corbyn fiasco is driving the Labour party ever closer to the edge. Looks like the tide is indeed turning for the Lib Dems. Given the amazing volatility over the past few years, their recovery might be faster than anyone now thinks. Is the market on the Witney by-election up yet?
Blair and Cameron lost local government by elections, Hague and Miliband won them, they are largely useless in identifying any national trend. Far more significant is yougov today which has the Tories up two percent on the general election to 39% under May
But can we rely on opinion polls given their recent form?
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
I can't imagine why, Mr. J.. One of Osborne's old mates who nobody had ever heard of and whose work (if any) was invisible to the average person and whose achievements are not visible to the naked eye has resigned. Wow! That is really going to be the top topic of conversation in homes and pubs this evening.
Jim is definitely someone the government want on their side. It's a shame to lose him so carelessly. I do now fear for the northern powerhouse strategy, something which was finally gaining ground.
Indeed. Just because it was Osborne's darling, doesn't make it a bad idea.
May's in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Worse, it makes her government look more south-focused.
The north needs some love.
Absolutely. I was hoping that being a backbench champion of the Northern Powerhouse idea, would be George Osborne's route to redemption within the Conservative party.
He had to first do a mea culpa and admit all his mistakes. Whereas at present Osborne is stuck in a denial stage.
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
Maybe Osborne actually just believes that 'I told you so' will work, because he genuinely thinks it is going to be car crash. Radical I know.
Osborne has not even apologised for saying there would be an emergency budget and then announcing that he was not having one.
Blair and Cameron lost local government by elections, Hague and Miliband won them, they are largely useless in identifying any national trend. Far more significant is yougov today which has the Tories up two percent on the general election to 39% under May
But can we rely on opinion polls given their recent form?
They predicted the 2001 and 2015 elections better than local government by elections
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
I genuinely don't get the idea of TMay as a hard right politician. So far, most of what we've seen has been pretty centrist, she just comes across as "tougher" than her predecessor. There's really not as much open space in the centre ground as some seem to suggest.
Big gap for Trump there. Third poll in 2 days with Clinton with a 6+ national lead with LV's
Yes - all eyes on FL polling now. If that starts to trend back to Hillary, Trump is in real trouble.
Trump is presently polling better than any Republican candidate since George W Bush on average with RCP, he is not in trouble yet and of course the first debate is on Monday
Trump back (just) below 40% and Clinton just above 60% chnace of winning Presidency on 538. Florida: Trump 46.4%, Clinton 46.0%
So this election remains the closest in the EC since 2000
How is May going to cope with the loss of Lord O'Neill? Does she not realise how crucial the support of Goldman Sachs bankers is to winning swing voters in the Midlands?
It'll take rather more than a run of little local council by-election results to convince me that there's anything significant going on here. The final national voter intention polls for GE2015 were accurate for all parties, save for that critical 3% swing from Lab to Con - and the Lib Dems were sat on about 8% before that election, they won 8% of the vote on the day, and they're still stuck on 8% now.
When they are consistently outpolling Ukip again nationally, then it might be time to start thinking about the extent of any possible revival.
Seems strangely at odds with polls but i guess local circumstances at least partly responsible.
3 Lab gains, wonder when that last happened!!
JICIPM?
Ha, ha, ha. (Dies laughing).
I suppose it could happen, but we'd need to rewrite everything anybody knows about marginal seats and Tory-Labour switchers etc etc. Then again, I guess that is the Corbynista shtick - that everything has changed.
I agree, in the business as usual scenario. The caveat I have is that, if Brexit goes seriously pear shaped (which I concede looks less likely now than some envisaged, but still not completely improbable), then a Corbyn PM is actually a reasonably likely consequence. After all, the Tories' edge is always supposed to be economic competence (cf. the damage done to them by Black Wednesday), but the argument that everything the Tories have told us about economics - from Thatcher's free-market deregulation through privatisation, austerity, and then Brexit - has turned out to be wrong would, in that scenario, be there to be made.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
but the argument that everything the Tories have told us about economics - from Thatcher's free-market deregulation through privatisation, austerity, and then Brexit - has turned out to be untrue would, in that scenario, be there to be made.
Except that would be Osborne's argument.
"Everything I told you about privatisation, austerity and Brexit turned out to be true. Everything Boris told you turned out to be nonsense. Who do you want as leader now?"
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
I genuinely don't get the idea of TMay as a hard right politician. So far, most of what we've seen has been pretty centrist, she just comes across as "tougher" than her predecessor. There's really not as much open space in the centre ground as some seem to suggest.
Too early to say? It may be 'what she says' v 'what she does'.
May's Downing Street words were reassuringly moderate (but then so were Thatcher's). Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP) and the harder flavours that appear to be heading our way are the more right wing. Grammar schools is another policy popular mostly with righter-wing Tories. Gove's prison reforms were moderate and have been ditched. Despite the talk about helping ordinary people struggling with their bills and the housing market there have been no concrete proposals as yet.
Edit/ and anyway my point was that the political space to her right is already crowded, which is clearly true!
Yeah, that makes sense. The debates are important for both, but I can't see Trump ( without a teleprompter) not responding in a sexist/racist way, especially when his racist birther issues for the last 8 years comes up.
OT another mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in the great Donald Trump enigma: 1) Tactical genius 2) Guy mashing buttons at random 3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
On the Betfair Next Prez market, you can currently back Hillary at 1.59 and Trump at 3.15. That leaves over 5% of the probability space unaccounted for. OK, that's more sane than the 9% that was implicilty backing the tooth-fairy a couple of weeks ago, but it's still far too high. It requires you to believe that there's a 5% chance of:
- At least one of Hillary and Trump withdrawing from the contest in the next 6 weeks, and in practice much sooner - Some other credible candidate getting on ballot papers, from a standing start, in enough states to get serious traction in the electoral college - And (perhaps most implausible of all) that all this turmoil won't simply hand the contest straight over to whichever of the current two candidates is still standing.
So it may well be that both Hillary and Trump are value at the moment.
OT another mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in the great Donald Trump enigma: 1) Tactical genius 2) Guy mashing buttons at random 3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
I genuinely don't get the idea of TMay as a hard right politician. So far, most of what we've seen has been pretty centrist, she just comes across as "tougher" than her predecessor. There's really not as much open space in the centre ground as some seem to suggest.
Left/Right isn't a useful distinction nowadays. Unless you are talking about Corbyn, who is a dinosaur, frankly. Probably more useful are the two dimensional economic and moral axes. How much should the State intervene in our economic welfare, through industrial policy, redistributive taxation and welfare? Should government be concerned in a well ordered society (conservative)? Or should it encourage individuals to do whatever they want (liberal)?
Theresa May appears to be more of an economic interventionist than you might expect for a Tory while being morally somewhat conservative as is typical of a mainstream Tory. Cameron and Osborne are the other way round on those axes
Still on 8% with yougov today, council elections are not general elections
UKIP/LibDem crossover after Witney?
Witney voted Remain in EU ref so even if the LDs beat UKIP in the by election that does not mean crossover nationally
My question referred to the national polls, but are you conceding that UKIP will not do well in the by-election?
UKIP are still on the same voteshare as they got at the general election as are the LDs with yougov today, who knows what will happen in the by election but all I will say is Witney is not ideal UKIP territory
OT another mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in the great Donald Trump enigma: 1) Tactical genius 2) Guy mashing buttons at random 3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
So cynical...
Such a strong argument against my thesis
I'm sure a 20 minute coffee with him would disabuse you of much of it.
but the argument that everything the Tories have told us about economics - from Thatcher's free-market deregulation through privatisation, austerity, and then Brexit - has turned out to be untrue would, in that scenario, be there to be made.
Except that would be Osborne's argument.
"Everything I told you about privatisation, austerity and Brexit turned out to be true. Everything Boris told you turned out to be nonsense. Who do you want as leader now?"
I don't think so. Aside from austerity having been Osborne's baby, I suggest the Tory brand is indelibly stained with euro scepticism now. It would be no easier for the Tories to reinvent themselves as a pro-EU party as it would for Labour to rediscover its love (OK, well, support) for Blair.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
So cynical...
Such a strong argument against my thesis
There's a politer way of putting it, which he has spent years doing stuff for one master, with whom he developed a good working relationship, and he doesn't want to start all over with a new one.
It would be no easier for the Tories to reinvent themselves as a pro-EU party as it would for Labour to rediscover its love (OK, well, support) for Blair.
Except the first Tory PM to win outright in decades and his Chancellor were avowedly pro-EU. No reinvention required.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
I can't imagine why, Mr. J.. One of Osborne's old mates who nobody had ever heard of and whose work (if any) was invisible to the average person and whose achievements are not visible to the naked eye has resigned. Wow! That is really going to be the top topic of conversation in homes and pubs this evening.
Jim is definitely someone the government want on their side. It's a shame to lose him so carelessly. I do now fear for the northern powerhouse strategy, something which was finally gaining ground.
Indeed. Just because it was Osborne's darling, doesn't make it a bad idea.
May's in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Worse, it makes her government look more south-focused.
The north needs some love.
Especially if you believe, as I do, that it is regional inequality and the underperformance of the country outside London, that holds back the entire country.
Sadly May does not seem to interested in the rest of the country outside London and instead prefers to play political games rather than actually doing something constructive.
"Mrs May’s primary concerns regarding English devolution is that she’s nervous about giving senior Labour politicians a platform and giving them the opportunity to consolidate and reinforce their fragmenting heartlands."
I see also that part of O'Neill's reasons for resigning is May's grammar school faff. No doubt he will just be dismissed as a posh boy, who went to a private school and wants to keep the elites entrenched position.
He went to OGH's school! And that's definitely not a private one...
The loss of Lord O'Neill is a disappointing weakening of the government. When we are focussed on how we are going to make our way in the world post Brexit his help and experience really should have been invaluable. Just another disappointment I'm afraid.
@faisalislam: No City deal without FoM says Schulz: "I refuse to imagine a Europe where lorries/hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens cannot"
The loss of Lord O'Neill is a disappointing weakening of the government. When we are focussed on how we are going to make our way in the world post Brexit his help and experience really should have been invaluable. Just another disappointment I'm afraid.
You remind me of one of my favourite Jim O'Neill anecdotes. Goldman Sachs had a big conference, and JO'N was headlining, talking about China. He started:
"I've just spent a week in China, and I can tell you that there is no appetite for democracy there at this time." (Or words to that effect.)
Next up was Peter Sutherland who said:
"I'm so glad that Jim was able to divine from his meetings with members of the Chinese Politburo that the average Chinese person doesn't want democracy."
@faisalislam: No City deal without FoM says Schulz: "I refuse to imagine a Europe where lorries/hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens cannot"
I had forgotten that Obama said in 2008 Hillary was "likeable enough".
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
Charles,
Given you seem to find it necessary to mention all the great and good you meet, I'm not sure you should be the one throwing around accusations of ar*e licking.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
So cynical...
Such a strong argument against my thesis
There's a politer way of putting it, which he has spent years doing stuff for one master, with whom he developed a good working relationship, and he doesn't want to start all over with a new one.
Comes to the same thing, I guess.
I think he's only been at the Treasury for 3 years so hardly a lifetime loyalty.
As he said in July, unless May could convince him that she had a good strategy for the North and the UKs international trade relations he was going to be off in September. Ultimately, he will have looked at the mess government is in and decided there are better things to do with his life.
@faisalislam: No City deal without FoM says Schulz: "I refuse to imagine a Europe where lorries/hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens cannot"
Schulz really is an idiot.
Good ole Schulz, popping up and reminding people yet again why they voted leave
On topic, I forgot to ask my parents how they voted in the Hadleigh by-election. It seems that the collapse in the UKIP vote was as relevant as the slide in the Conservative vote.
The Lib Dems for long had the county council seat in Hadleigh. So this is a reassertion of past local strength as much as a reflection on the Tories' transatlantic representation.
The interesting thing is that what some years ago was the common assumption - that UKIP would take anti-EU votes from the Tories - has turned out to be dramatically wrong.
For every retired Sussex Colonel who switched Tory to UKIP there have been plenty of WWC Labour-to-UKIP switchers as well as NOTO/protest LibDem to UKIP voters. So as UKIP unwinds the benefit isn't accruing to the Tories as once would have been thought, and the "Tory + UKIP votes = right-wing majority" line is misguided.
People have always confused UKIP leadership and membership, with UKIP voters. the Tory + UKIP line may apply for MPs etc but certainly not amongst voters. If ever there was a UKIP-Tory coalition, UKIP would suffer a similar fate to the Lib Dems with their northern voters who are very much anti-Tory (without being lefties either).
There's no progressive majority but neither is there a right wing majority in this country. People are generally more economically 'left wing' and more socially 'right wing' than the media/politicians assume.
I think brexit has also shattered the "small c-conservative" idea about Brits as well (which I believed myself and was why I figured remain would win!)
I had forgotten that Obama said in 2008 Hillary was "likeable enough".
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
Have any leading Republicans said anything about Trump?
OT another mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in the great Donald Trump enigma: 1) Tactical genius 2) Guy mashing buttons at random 3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
It requires you to believe that there's a 5% chance of: ... - Some other credible candidate getting on ballot papers, from a standing start, in enough states to get serious traction in the electoral college
I don't think that's necessary. The Betfair rules refer to post-election "projected electoral votes" after the election; If Hillary falls over and the Dems substitute Kaine/Biden/Gillibrand it's hard to see them not projecting any electors in states with Hillary still on the ballot for the Dem nominee.
And (perhaps most implausible of all) that all this turmoil won't simply hand the contest straight over to whichever of the current two candidates is still standing.
In a normal election that might be true, but this one consists of two exceptionally unpopular candidates. Each of them is only a plausible winner because the other is so electorally unattractive. And if Hillary dropped out I don't think there would be a lot of turmoil: The DNC would pick someone and Hillary would agree, or vice versa, and that person would be strongly favoured against Trump.
The real problem with this scenario is just that it's very hard to imagine either of these candidates dropping out. But if Hillary is really, really sick, quite a lot of insiders must know about it. Secrets that a few dozen people know about are the kind of thing that prediction markets are very efficient at pricing in, which is an argument against betting on this unless you're in on them too...
The loss of Lord O'Neill is a disappointing weakening of the government. When we are focussed on how we are going to make our way in the world post Brexit his help and experience really should have been invaluable. Just another disappointment I'm afraid.
I doubt he's the only one who could help.
The more the merrier. This is a really big and complicated project. It needs our best brains and a lot of non government input. And at the moment we have Liam Fox and David Davis.
On topic, I forgot to ask my parents how they voted in the Hadleigh by-election. It seems that the collapse in the UKIP vote was as relevant as the slide in the Conservative vote.
The Lib Dems for long had the county council seat in Hadleigh. So this is a reassertion of past local strength as much as a reflection on the Tories' transatlantic representation.
The interesting thing is that what some years ago was the common assumption - that UKIP would take anti-EU votes from the Tories - has turned out to be dramatically wrong.
For every retired Sussex Colonel who switched Tory to UKIP there have been plenty of WWC Labour-to-UKIP switchers as well as NOTO/protest LibDem to UKIP voters. So as UKIP unwinds the benefit isn't accruing to the Tories as once would have been thought, and the "Tory + UKIP votes = right-wing majority" line is misguided.
People have always confused UKIP leadership and membership, with UKIP voters. the Tory + UKIP line may apply for MPs etc but certainly not amongst voters. If ever there was a UKIP-Tory coalition, UKIP would suffer a similar fate to the Lib Dems with their northern voters who are very much anti-Tory (without being lefties either).
There's no progressive majority but neither is there a right wing majority in this country. People are generally more economically 'left wing' and more socially 'right wing' than the media/politicians assume.
I think brexit has also shattered the "small c-conservative" idea about Brits as well (which I believed myself and was why I figured remain would win!)
Can I ask your age? Because I would have thought that small c conservativism would favour brexit, but that may be because I am so incredibly old that 1973 counts as recent to me.
It would be no easier for the Tories to reinvent themselves as a pro-EU party as it would for Labour to rediscover its love (OK, well, support) for Blair.
Except the first Tory PM to win outright in decades and his Chancellor were avowedly pro-EU. No reinvention required.
That bridge is burned, the PM is gone, and the Chancellor almost gone. Go talk to some Tory activists; they aren't crying.
@faisalislam: No City deal without FoM says Schulz: "I refuse to imagine a Europe where lorries/hedge funds are free to cross borders but citizens cannot"
Schulz really is an idiot.
Citizens will be able to move. The only question is can they take a job and / or collect benefits when they do so...
With the Northern Powerhouse looking less likely, and hard Brexit more likely, George Osborne does seem to be positioning himself as the "I told you so" candidate.
And winning praise from lefties in doing so.
Relatively high risk for Osborne - I thought it was Cameron who liked a political gamble....
Well I don't see any low risk options for Osbo, given his profile and popularity.
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
I genuinely don't get the idea of TMay as a hard right politician. So far, most of what we've seen has been pretty centrist, she just comes across as "tougher" than her predecessor. There's really not as much open space in the centre ground as some seem to suggest.
For the moment I agree, but it's early days, and she hasn't made the difficult choices yet. I think her policies will actually be relatively "centre ground" (if you take whatever happens with Brexit out of the equation), but she is going to end up trying to ape Thatcher in style (to be fair the only 2 relevant successful role models for PM are Thatcher and Blair, and she could never pull off Blair), which will affect opinion of her.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
So cynical...
Such a strong argument against my thesis
I'm sure a 20 minute coffee with him would disabuse you of much of it.
I had forgotten that Obama said in 2008 Hillary was "likeable enough".
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
Have any leading Republicans said anything about Trump?
As in, called him likeable? I very much doubt it. I don't see what your point is.
It would be no easier for the Tories to reinvent themselves as a pro-EU party as it would for Labour to rediscover its love (OK, well, support) for Blair.
Except the first Tory PM to win outright in decades and his Chancellor were avowedly pro-EU. No reinvention required.
That bridge is burned, the PM is gone, and the Chancellor almost gone. Go talk to some Tory activists; they aren't crying.
I would put it that 70%+ of Conservative activists are happy to see the back of Cameron and Osborne. The ConHome ratings of the pair were dreadful at the end.
You remind me of one of my favourite Jim O'Neill anecdotes. Goldman Sachs had a big conference, and JO'N was headlining, talking about China. He started:
"I've just spent a week in China, and I can tell you that there is no appetite for democracy there at this time." (Or words to that effect.)
Next up was Peter Sutherland who said:
"I'm so glad that Jim was able to divine from his meetings with members of the Chinese Politburo that the average Chinese person doesn't want democracy."
I remember that story. Peter could wield a stiletto to great effect when he wanted
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
Charles,
Given you seem to find it necessary to mention all the great and good you meet, I'm not sure you should be the one throwing around accusations of ar*e licking.
Oh, and how's the Garden Bridge going?
I've never met O'Neill, FWIW. I'm just being rude about him on principle.
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
So cynical...
Such a strong argument against my thesis
I'm sure a 20 minute coffee with him would disabuse you of much of it.
Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP)
Brexit was voted for by the majority and is by its very nature neither left wing or right wing, but populist...
Even within the Tory party it was always a right-wing obsession, and you see the same across Europe - it's generally the right wing parties (Le Pen et al) who are leading the anti-EU crusade.
Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP)
Brexit was voted for by the majority and is by its very nature neither left wing or right wing, but populist...
Even within the Tory party it was always a right-wing obsession, and you see the same across Europe - it's generally the right wing parties (Le Pen et al) who are leading the anti-EU crusade.
On the Betfair Next Prez market, you can currently back Hillary at 1.59 and Trump at 3.15. That leaves over 5% of the probability space unaccounted for. OK, that's more sane than the 9% that was implicilty backing the tooth-fairy a couple of weeks ago, but it's still far too high. It requires you to believe that there's a 5% chance of:
- At least one of Hillary and Trump withdrawing from the contest in the next 6 weeks, and in practice much sooner - Some other credible candidate getting on ballot papers, from a standing start, in enough states to get serious traction in the electoral college - And (perhaps most implausible of all) that all this turmoil won't simply hand the contest straight over to whichever of the current two candidates is still standing.
So it may well be that both Hillary and Trump are value at the moment.
We can draw the following conclusions from recent council by elections:
(1) The Tories are in government (2) The Lib Dems are back in opposition (2a) Lib Dem activists once more care about local by elections much more than activists of the main parties (2b) [possibly] The Lib Dems are starting to get back some of the "plague on all your houses" voters that they lost to UKIP at the 2015 general election in droves (3) Er... (4) That's it.
Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP)
Brexit was voted for by the majority and is by its very nature neither left wing or right wing, but populist...
Even within the Tory party it was always a right-wing obsession, and you see the same across Europe - it's generally the right wing parties (Le Pen et al) who are leading the anti-EU crusade.
Hmm. Not sure I'd call the Five Star movement or Syriza right wing.
Why? Hope is to LibDems as blood is to vampires. Or something like that, anyway.
They think they are on their way back after gaining 18 seats in 4 months. Ignoring the fact that they are still under 2,000 seats. At their peak they had 5,000. At 100 seat gains a year it will take them 30 years to get back to where they once were.
On topic, I forgot to ask my parents how they voted in the Hadleigh by-election. It seems that the collapse in the UKIP vote was as relevant as the slide in the Conservative vote.
The Lib Dems for long had the county council seat in Hadleigh. So this is a reassertion of past local strength as much as a reflection on the Tories' transatlantic representation.
The interesting thing is that what some years ago was the common assumption - that UKIP would take anti-EU votes from the Tories - has turned out to be dramatically wrong.
For every retired Sussex Colonel who switched Tory to UKIP there have been plenty of WWC Labour-to-UKIP switchers as well as NOTO/protest LibDem to UKIP voters. So as UKIP unwinds the benefit isn't accruing to the Tories as once would have been thought, and the "Tory + UKIP votes = right-wing majority" line is misguided.
People have always confused UKIP leadership and membership, with UKIP voters. the Tory + UKIP line may apply for MPs etc but certainly not amongst voters. If ever there was a UKIP-Tory coalition, UKIP would suffer a similar fate to the Lib Dems with their northern voters who are very much anti-Tory (without being lefties either).
There's no progressive majority but neither is there a right wing majority in this country. People are generally more economically 'left wing' and more socially 'right wing' than the media/politicians assume.
I think brexit has also shattered the "small c-conservative" idea about Brits as well (which I believed myself and was why I figured remain would win!)
Can I ask your age? Because I would have thought that small c conservativism would favour brexit, but that may be because I am so incredibly old that 1973 counts as recent to me.
26, so for me Brexit is definitely the more 'radical' option, I was 2 when John Major was dealing with his bastards over Maastricht
I'd have thought even for those who well remember life pre-EEC, the 'small c' option would have been to remain simply because we've been a member for so long. It would be like going back to pre-decimal currency, I'd say that's radical rather than small-c conservative.
On topic, I forgot to ask my parents how they voted in the Hadleigh by-election. It seems that the collapse in the UKIP vote was as relevant as the slide in the Conservative vote.
The Lib Dems for long had the county council seat in Hadleigh. So this is a reassertion of past local strength as much as a reflection on the Tories' transatlantic representation.
The interesting thing is that what some years ago was the common assumption - that UKIP would take anti-EU votes from the Tories - has turned out to be dramatically wrong.
For every retired Sussex Colonel who switched Tory to UKIP there have been plenty of WWC Labour-to-UKIP switchers as well as NOTO/protest LibDem to UKIP voters. So as UKIP unwinds the benefit isn't accruing to the Tories as once would have been thought, and the "Tory + UKIP votes = right-wing majority" line is misguided.
People have always confused UKIP leadership and membership, with UKIP voters. the Tory + UKIP line may apply for MPs etc but certainly not amongst voters. If ever there was a UKIP-Tory coalition, UKIP would suffer a similar fate to the Lib Dems with their northern voters who are very much anti-Tory (without being lefties either).
There's no progressive majority but neither is there a right wing majority in this country. People are generally more economically 'left wing' and more socially 'right wing' than the media/politicians assume.
I think brexit has also shattered the "small c-conservative" idea about Brits as well (which I believed myself and was why I figured remain would win!)
Can I ask your age? Because I would have thought that small c conservativism would favour brexit, but that may be because I am so incredibly old that 1973 counts as recent to me.
26, so for me Brexit is definitely the more 'radical' option, I was 2 when John Major was dealing with his bastards over Maastricht
I'd have thought even for those who well remember life pre-EEC, the 'small c' option would have been to remain simply because we've been a member for so long. It would be like going back to pre-decimal currency, I'd say that's radical rather than small-c conservative.
"for so long" - feels like a couple of months ago to me.
Actually I exaggerate, I was just too young to vote in 1975.
Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP)
Brexit was voted for by the majority and is by its very nature neither left wing or right wing, but populist...
Even within the Tory party it was always a right-wing obsession, and you see the same across Europe - it's generally the right wing parties (Le Pen et al) who are leading the anti-EU crusade.
I voted Labour at the GE2015.
and you'll have to live with that ghastly thought forever whirring around in your head...
@PickardJE: Lord O'Neill resigns as infrastructure minister. Annoyed by Hinkley review, Northern Powerhouse "wobble" and grammar school policy, am told.
This is much more a problem for May than one week's set of local election results.
Why?
An average Goldmans partner who was best known for coining the phrase "BRICs" 15 years ago realises that for all the time he spent kissing ar*e, he'd been kissing the wrong one and decides not to waste his time where there is no preferment on the horizon.
Charles, Given you seem to find it necessary to mention all the great and good you meet, I'm not sure you should be the one throwing around accusations of ar*e licking. Oh, and how's the Garden Bridge going?
I've never met O'Neill, FWIW. I'm just being rude about him on principle.
Ah BRICs. I wonder what O'Neill thinks about the growing build up of Chinese debt compared to the eventual impact that Japanese debt had on its economy.
I had forgotten that Obama said in 2008 Hillary was "likeable enough".
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
Have any leading Republicans said anything about Trump?
I had forgotten that Obama said in 2008 Hillary was "likeable enough".
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
Have any leading Republicans said anything about Trump?
Quite a few have said he is a crazy racist who shouldn't be allowed near nuclear weapons. Kaisach is the obvious one!
Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP)
Brexit was voted for by the majority and is by its very nature neither left wing or right wing, but populist...
Even within the Tory party it was always a right-wing obsession, and you see the same across Europe - it's generally the right wing parties (Le Pen et al) who are leading the anti-EU crusade.
Hmm. Not sure I'd call the Five Star movement or Syriza right wing.
Yes, fair challenge. I guess more recently a new left-leaning populism is emerging that doesn't accept the EU consensus, which arguably Corbyn is on the edge of. Nevertheless as a strand of political thought it has generally been true that nationalism is identified with the right and internationalism with the left, notwithstanding that there are plenty of left-voters who are nationalist and vice versa.
Why? Hope is to LibDems as blood is to vampires. Or something like that, anyway.
They think they are on their way back after gaining 18 seats in 4 months. Ignoring the fact that they are still under 2,000 seats. At their peak they had 5,000. At 100 seat gains a year it will take them 30 years to get back to where they once were.
That assumes the rate does not change - in either direction, of course. But if Labour continue to the left, and May takes the Conservatives to the right, there may be plenty of room for the LD's to gather up votes.
It would take a change in the voting system for them to win, but I certainly think there's good potential for a strong centrist, liberal voice to appeal to people.
But that assumes that the centre ground opens up for them, and that they get the media attention that has been rather lacking for them of late.
Twitter up 15% on bid rumours. Google and Salesforce said to be interested. Lets see if the board take the deal this time, or if the rumours are true. I hope not, Twitter should be consigned to the dustbin of history, it has had a corrosive effect on society by giving the loudest voices a stage to irritate and drown out moderate voices.
Why? Hope is to LibDems as blood is to vampires. Or something like that, anyway.
They think they are on their way back after gaining 18 seats in 4 months. Ignoring the fact that they are still under 2,000 seats. At their peak they had 5,000. At 100 seat gains a year it will take them 30 years to get back to where they once were.
That assumes the rate does not change - in either direction, of course. But if Labour continue to the left, and May takes the Conservatives to the right, there may be plenty of room for the LD's to gather up votes. It would take a change in the voting system for them to win, but I certainly think there's good potential for a strong centrist, liberal voice to appeal to people. But that assumes that the centre ground opens up for them, and that they get the media attention that has been rather lacking for them of late.
Yes, possible that they could gain from the abandoned centrist Lab voters. But this is about the rate of progress in large bites each year. Could they increase by more than 1,500 in 2017, 2018 and 2019 to go into 2020 GE with circa 3,500? I doubt it, but if they really want to be able to gain 30+ seats that is the sort of cllr base they would need to get to. Boasting about a few cllr by elections is just fluff.
The big danger for them could be if the Greens picked up those votes.
Brutal stuff. "As for his absurd and untrue claim that Brexit would make people £4,300 worse-off? Polls showed that just 7 per cent of the country believed him — fewer than believe that Elvis is still alive." "The word ‘fumble’ doesn’t begin to describe what Osborne did to the Remain campaign. As Will Straw and Nick Clegg now both admit, his £4,300-worse-off intervention inflicted more damage on his side than any attack line from Vote Leave. "
OT another mystery wrapped in a riddle wrapped in the great Donald Trump enigma: 1) Tactical genius 2) Guy mashing buttons at random 3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
That's the best argument I've yet heard for electing Trump: it will show that blanketing TV with ads doesn't work so hopefully in future everyone might stop doing it...
Twitter should be consigned to the dustbin of history, it has had a corrosive effect on society by giving the loudest voices a stage to irritate and drown out moderate voices.
Twitter up 15% on bid rumours. Google and Salesforce said to be interested. Lets see if the board take the deal this time, or if the rumours are true. I hope not, Twitter should be consigned to the dustbin of history, it has had a corrosive effect on society by giving the loudest voices a stage to irritate and drown out moderate voices.
Google and crappy social networks...that sounds about right...
Comments
From the Birmingham Mail, the headline of the month:
Heartless gnome beheading massacre at "tourist hotspot"
http://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/heartless-gnome-beheading-massacre-tourist-11918718
Anyhow, there isn't any space to the left of Corbyn, and the small amount of space to the right of May is already over-crowded. So politics awaits someone ambitious anywhere from ex Cameroons through LibDem to Blairite who can stake out and build support around any sort of 'moderate' position.
I suppose it could happen, but we'd need to rewrite everything anybody knows about marginal seats and Tory-Labour switchers etc etc. Then again, I guess that is the Corbynista shtick - that everything has changed.
Florida: Trump 46.4%, Clinton 46.0%
Why it is even this close, by Tom Bevan, worth a read:
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2016/09/23/dear_hillary_heres_why_you_arent_50_points_ahead_131866.html
When they are consistently outpolling Ukip again nationally, then it might be time to start thinking about the extent of any possible revival.
"Everything I told you about privatisation, austerity and Brexit turned out to be true. Everything Boris told you turned out to be nonsense. Who do you want as leader now?"
I heard Mohamad Gnome-mates is claiming responsibility.
Party will not be sufficiently united to stand a chance of winning in 2020 unfortunately
May's Downing Street words were reassuringly moderate (but then so were Thatcher's). Brexit is right-wing (on the basis that its principal champions have always been right-wing Tories and UKIP) and the harder flavours that appear to be heading our way are the more right wing. Grammar schools is another policy popular mostly with righter-wing Tories. Gove's prison reforms were moderate and have been ditched. Despite the talk about helping ordinary people struggling with their bills and the housing market there have been no concrete proposals as yet.
Edit/ and anyway my point was that the political space to her right is already crowded, which is clearly true!
1) Tactical genius
2) Guy mashing buttons at random
3) Mainly interested in selling steaks
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/donald-trump-ad-strategy-228505
- At least one of Hillary and Trump withdrawing from the contest in the next 6 weeks, and in practice much sooner
- Some other credible candidate getting on ballot papers, from a standing start, in enough states to get serious traction in the electoral college
- And (perhaps most implausible of all) that all this turmoil won't simply hand the contest straight over to whichever of the current two candidates is still standing.
So it may well be that both Hillary and Trump are value at the moment.
Could be much more effective (and cheaper) than expensive statewide TV adverts.
Theresa May appears to be more of an economic interventionist than you might expect for a Tory while being morally somewhat conservative as is typical of a mainstream Tory. Cameron and Osborne are the other way round on those axes
Maybe it's genuinely random, and they're doing A/B testing to find out if they actually work...
@faisalislam: Schulz really wants Article 50 triggered in time for the UK not to participate in European Parliament elections 2019
Comes to the same thing, I guess.
I doubt he's the only one who could help.
"I've just spent a week in China, and I can tell you that there is no appetite for democracy there at this time." (Or words to that effect.)
Next up was Peter Sutherland who said:
"I'm so glad that Jim was able to divine from his meetings with members of the Chinese Politburo that the average Chinese person doesn't want democracy."
Schulz really is an idiot.
He lied.
Edit to add: Trump threw away a winning card by accusing Clinton of inventing birtherism; all the rebuttals I have seen concede that the Clinton campaign enthusiastically took up birtherism and ran with it, but say that doesn't mean they invented it. It seems to me that that is worse - all the moral abhorrability of making the claim, without the good marks for ingenuity for having invented it.
Given you seem to find it necessary to mention all the great and good you meet, I'm not sure you should be the one throwing around accusations of ar*e licking.
Oh, and how's the Garden Bridge going?
As he said in July, unless May could convince him that she had a good strategy for the North and the UKs international trade relations he was going to be off in September. Ultimately, he will have looked at the mess government is in and decided there are better things to do with his life.
There's no progressive majority but neither is there a right wing majority in this country. People are generally more economically 'left wing' and more socially 'right wing' than the media/politicians assume.
I think brexit has also shattered the "small c-conservative" idea about Brits as well (which I believed myself and was why I figured remain would win!)
http://tinyurl.com/p968vus
The real problem with this scenario is just that it's very hard to imagine either of these candidates dropping out. But if Hillary is really, really sick, quite a lot of insiders must know about it. Secrets that a few dozen people know about are the kind of thing that prediction markets are very efficient at pricing in, which is an argument against betting on this unless you're in on them too...
Sigh.
*splutters*
Hillary Clinton 1.58 £662.39 £384.19
Donald Trump 3.1 £337.61 £708.98
4.43% yield in 2 months.
(1) The Tories are in government
(2) The Lib Dems are back in opposition
(2a) Lib Dem activists once more care about local by elections much more than activists of the main parties
(2b) [possibly] The Lib Dems are starting to get back some of the "plague on all your houses" voters that they lost to UKIP at the 2015 general election in droves
(3) Er...
(4) That's it.
I'd have thought even for those who well remember life pre-EEC, the 'small c' option would have been to remain simply because we've been a member for so long. It would be like going back to pre-decimal currency, I'd say that's radical rather than small-c conservative.
Actually I exaggerate, I was just too young to vote in 1975.
Voting for Miliband Jr.. Yikes!
It would take a change in the voting system for them to win, but I certainly think there's good potential for a strong centrist, liberal voice to appeal to people.
But that assumes that the centre ground opens up for them, and that they get the media attention that has been rather lacking for them of late.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/09/george-osborne-warns-wont-fumble-next-leadership-bid/
The big danger for them could be if the Greens picked up those votes.
CDU/CSU: 32%
SPD: 22%
AfD: 16%
Green: 12%
Left: 8%
FDP: 6%
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/
"As for his absurd and untrue claim that Brexit would make people £4,300 worse-off? Polls showed that just 7 per cent of the country believed him — fewer than believe that Elvis is still alive."
"The word ‘fumble’ doesn’t begin to describe what Osborne did to the Remain campaign. As Will Straw and Nick Clegg now both admit, his £4,300-worse-off intervention inflicted more damage on his side than any attack line from Vote Leave. "
Yorkshire 4/6
Middlesex 5/2
Somerset 4/1