Scotland is (mostly) simple. The defining issue is independence. If you support independence you will vote SNP or Green as an alternative. If you don't, you vote one of the unionist parties.
Now imagine if England gets a bit like that. If you support independence (Brexit), you vote Conservative, UKIP or Labour. If you don't, you vote Lib Dem.
The Lib Dems have a huge structural advantage now.
Brexit is not the defining issue in England that Independence is in Scotland.
Maybe not, but it is more likely.
Yes, the respective referendums should have seen to that!
Scotland is (mostly) simple. The defining issue is independence. If you support independence you will vote SNP or Green as an alternative. If you don't, you vote one of the unionist parties.
Now imagine if England gets a bit like that. If you support independence (Brexit), you vote Conservative, UKIP or Labour. If you don't, you vote Lib Dem.
The Lib Dems have a huge structural advantage now.
Brexit is not the defining issue in England that Independence is in Scotland.
Can you honestly see a campaign in which every issue isn't talked about through the prism of Brexit? Even if this parliament goes full term, Brexit will still be a live issue - people are kidding themselves if they think it will be done and dusted by then.
I can easily see that. Certainly, Brexit *might* be very much the central issue but it's far from guaranteed. If the UK is out of the EU by 2020, then the issue largely returns to obsessives on both sides.
Scotland is (mostly) simple. The defining issue is independence. If you support independence you will vote SNP or Green as an alternative. If you don't, you vote one of the unionist parties.
Now imagine if England gets a bit like that. If you support independence (Brexit), you vote Conservative, UKIP or Labour. If you don't, you vote Lib Dem.
The Lib Dems have a huge structural advantage now.
Brexit is not the defining issue in England that Independence is in Scotland.
Can you honestly see a campaign in which every issue isn't talked about through the prism of Brexit? Even if this parliament goes full term, Brexit will still be a live issue - people are kidding themselves if they think it will be done and dusted by then.
I can easily see that. Certainly, Brexit *might* be very much the central issue but it's far from guaranteed. If the UK is out of the EU by 2020, then the issue largely returns to obsessives on both sides.
The chances of a definitive, clean Brexit by 2020 are vanishingly small.
Does anyone seriously still believe there could be a 2017 Election with these sorts of results ?
Politicians get scared very very easily, south West MPs will not be offering up their jobs after a year !
Anyone who has backed it at a short price is in for Brownian disappointment !
Agreed. The Tories would expect to come out on top through Labour losses and maybe not as many LDs gains as might be thought, but the better the LDs look like doing the more the Tories will not be keen to risk it. Unless parliament were to fail to vote to trigger A50, in which case they'd be very confident and happy to go ahead I imagine.
And please no one come back with that 'May said she doesn't want one so it won't happen' crap. Of course she said that, but if she thought she'd win big, she'd find a way to do it, having reassessed the situation.
I agree with that. There won't be a tactical election. There might be a Brexit-induced election if the LDs and Lab play silly over triggering A50, though even that seems a good deal less likely than it did a month or so ago.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
Electoral calculus question: If the LibDems are coming back who does that ultimately benefit the most?
The LDs themselves for sure - 10 more seats? 20? Who knows. Labour - Oh dear. The left is resplitting. Northern/central/suburban marginals looking even more dicey. Tories - Hmmm. SW losses but marginal gains from Labour. Overall quite positive I think due to left resplitting effect. UKIP - Can't see any real impact.
Rather short term thinking. What happens after 2020 (or before) if Corbyn ups sticks? The other downside of the lurch to the right and the consequent detox of the Lib Dems is that the spectre of tactical voting against the Tories rears its head again.
With the current ratings as they are, we might well see one-way tactical voting i.e. Lab-inclined will vote LD to stop the Tory, but LDs won't return the favour.
Yes absolutely as things stand. I do think the Tories are stting themselves up for an electoral drubbing in 2025 by which time presumably Labour will have sorted themselves out though.
That's quite a brave presumption. Nine years is a long time but at the equivalent point in the last cycle - 1988, if we're dating it from Labour's return to power - Labour was already reforming and modernising. At the moment, they're still heading out into the wilderness.
But frankly, so much could happen between now and 2025 that while it's certainly possible that the Tories could suffer another drubbing, there are a great many other possibilities.
I wouldn't say vanishingly, but a scenario where we dropped ignominiously to WTO would likely be one accompanied by a recession.
I'm not so sure it would now. The economy is proving much more resilient than I expected. Investment was up last quarter and from the feeling on the ground it should be up this quarter as well, both are definitely in a real "despite Brexit" column. It also looks like the labour market has finally run out of slack, wage growth was ahead of expectations but employment growth was weak, 4.8% unemployment feels like a floor.
I think a WTO exit would result in a J shaped recovery and overall make very little difference. Previously I thought it would be 5-7 years of low growth coupled with a fair amount of inflation from weak Sterling and higher import levies on EU goods.
At the moment if you want to try and remain in the EU or have soft Brexit you vote LD, if you want Brexit with a Canada type deal you vote Tory, if you want hard Brexit you vote UKIP and if you want socialism you vote for Corbyn Labour!
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
I wouldn't say vanishingly, but a scenario where we dropped ignominiously to WTO would likely be one accompanied by a recession.
I'm not so sure it would now. The economy is proving much more resilient than I expected.
Because the markets and business have seen the strength of the British state and the rule of law demonstrated very starkly. Even a majority vote in a referendum can be frustrated if it compromises the national interest, which wouldn't be the case in many countries.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
But, but liberal academics say it makes no difference, unlimited labour supply has no effect on labour prices! Supply and demand doesn't exist!
@MaxPB, I'm less confident than you, because I see the uk economy being excessively dependent on consumption. If our savings rate ticks up - as it must do eventually - it will likely be accompanied by a nasty recession. A hard Brexit probably has no impact on long term growth relative to a soft one. But it does increase the risk of a confidence crisis leading to a higher savings rate, leading to a recession.
The empirical evidence is rather more mixed. The countries with the highest proportion of foreign born people have the highest growth in disposable income over the last 20 years.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
@MaxPB, I'm less confident than you, because I see the uk economy being excessively dependent on consumption. If our savings rate ticks up - as it must do eventually - it will likely be accompanied by a nasty recession. A hard Brexit probably has no impact on long term growth relative to a soft one. But it does increase the risk of a confidence crisis leading to a higher savings rate, leading to a recession.
I think in a constant environment an increase in the savings rate would result in a pretty devastating recession, but it seems clear that the government intends to make the best of any WTO based exit with tax inducement and other sweeties which should help investment increase to make up for any loss of consumption.
I wouldn't say vanishingly, but a scenario where we dropped ignominiously to WTO would likely be one accompanied by a recession.
This should be the chance to create that confident, independent, global trading nation Fox and the other Brexiters are always talking about. Finally Britain can construct a trading arrangement which suits it, not the continent.
For instance, we can get rid of the special rule on oranges, which we don't grow but have to labour under because of the Mediterranean states in the EU which do. We can prioritise the sugar cane that Tate & Lyle uses in their sugar, rather than the sugar beet which is used in Europe. We can finally create a customised trading arrangement for this country, rather than one for a continent with which we sometimes share very few economic interests. This is exactly what Brexit was all about.
The empirical evidence is rather more mixed. The countries with the highest proportion of foreign born people have the highest growth in disposable income over the last 20 years.
In the case of Switzerland it is highly skilled migrants working for Novartis and Roche or UBS and Credit Suisse that have driven wages higher, low and unskilled migration to Switzerland is incredibly tough as they run a closed shop with endless qualifications required to do even the most basic retail jobs. If we had a similar system in the UK an Eastern European worker couldn't turn up and start working for Tesco within a week of arriving, they'd have to get the Mitarbeiter equivalent apprenticeship certificate which takes a minimum of 12 months in Switzerland. Wages kept rising for the bottom because it's a closed shop, and at the top because highly skilled migrants add to the economy both in terms of producer value and consumption.
I'm happy to turn the unskilled and low skilled labour market here into a closed shop, I'm not sure that will please the remainers though.
The empirical evidence is rather more mixed. The countries with the highest proportion of foreign born people have the highest growth in disposable income over the last 20 years.
I think that is because the empirical evidence is measuring 2 different things. Economies that are attracting a lot of immigrants tend to be more dynamic and this should result in higher wages overall. Of course that does not mean that those in the same jobs or who face additional competition benefit.
On the economy much depends on real wages. If they grow consumption does not need to drop. Very early days but so far the surprise is on the upside.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.
However, there is now a very large number of economically inactive people who are classed as something other than unemployed, who previously would have been on the unemployment register. Therefore, meaningful comparisons with previous figures, especially those before the mid-eighties (when the figures first started to be "fiddled"), are very difficult.
O/T "You don't need to look like Benjamin Disraeli if your opponent is the latter day Marquis of Granby. Just looking sane and normal would be enough"
I used to use a pub called the Marquis of Granby but I have never heard of a boozer named after Disraeli. So perhaps the former had something going for him.
On the subject of pubs named after politicians: in the fifties a new one was built in Battersea on the site of one that had been bombed during the war. It was given a new name - The Herbert Morrison. I have never heard of another public house that was named after a modern politician or a Labour politician or a politician who was still alive at the time.
On that happy note I am off for my morning walk.
The Lord Ted pub at Newark is named after our former Labour MP Ted Bishop (1964-79). He was extremely popular in the town with all sides of the political divide. He died a couple of years before the pub was opened.
Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.
However, there is now a very large number of economically inactive people who are classed as something other than unemployed, who previously would have been on the unemployment register. Therefore, meaningful comparisons with previous figures, especially those before the mid-eighties (when the figures first started to be "fiddled"), are very difficult.
I think that comparisons with previous eras are frankly meaningless. In addition to the "fiddles" we have a lot of pseudo employed who are either notionally self employed or working enough hours to claim very generous in work benefits. We are a very long way from exhausting our supply of labour. Skilled labour, unfortunately, is another matter entirely.
Nevertheless, the developed economy which has had the least unskilled immigration has had the worst progression in real median wages. (Now, you can say that Japan is a special case. But when you are explaining every data point away as a special case, you are in danger of allowing your existing preconceptions to overrule the evidence.)
Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.
However, there is now a very large number of economically inactive people who are classed as something other than unemployed, who previously would have been on the unemployment register. Therefore, meaningful comparisons with previous figures, especially those before the mid-eighties (when the figures first started to be "fiddled"), are very difficult.
I think that comparisons with previous eras are frankly meaningless. In addition to the "fiddles" we have a lot of pseudo employed who are either notionally self employed or working enough hours to claim very generous in work benefits. We are a very long way from exhausting our supply of labour. Skilled labour, unfortunately, is another matter entirely.
Very true. A friend of mine from university who has been struggling to find a job recently after being made redundant in March went to an interview where he was told the job would be on a self-employed basis and that they would give instructions on how to claim tax credits during the induction day. Needless to say he didn't accept the job.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
.
Bank of England
Staff Working Paper No. 574 The impact of immigration on occupational wages: evidence from Britain Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen
This paper asks whether immigration to Britain has had any impact on average wages. There seems to be a broad consensus among academics that the share of immigrants in the workforce has little or no effect on native wages. These studies typically have not refined their analysis by breaking it down into different occupational groups. Our contribution is to extend the existing literature on immigration to include occupations as well.
We find that the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on average British wages. This finding is important for monetary policy makers, who are interested in the impact that supply shocks, such as immigration, have on average wages and overall inflation.
Our results also reveal that the biggest impact of immigration on wages is within the semi/unskilled services occupational group. We also investigate if there is any differential impact between immigration from the EU and non-EU, and find that there is no additional impact on aggregate UK wages as a result of migrants arriving specifically from EU countries. These findings accord well with intuition and anecdotal evidence, but have not been recorded previously in the empirical literature.
"The Lord Ted pub at Newark is named after our former Labour MP Ted Bishop (1964-79). He was extremely popular in the town with all sides of the political divide. He died a couple of years before the pub was opened"
Thanks for that, Mr. Tyndall. I am heartened that a modern politician can still be so popular that people want to name a pub after him.
So we have Herbert Morrison and Ted Bishop, so far (both Labour). Anyone else know of a boozer named after a modern era politician?
On a side note does anyone know why so many modern pubs have damn silly names? I mean names like the "Goat and Goblet" or the "Slug and Lettuce"; they always seem to have the word "and" in them.
When also did the fashion for renaming existing pubs start and why? The main pub in my local high street is called "The New Inn" and has been so named as far back as a previous landlord could research. Yet parts of the building date back to the time of Elizabeth I, the cellars are even older (possibly 15th century) and the most modern part, the front facing onto the high street, is Georgian.
'And please no one come back with that 'May said she doesn't want one so it won't happen' crap. Of course she said that, but if she thought she'd win big, she'd find a way to do it, having reassessed the situation. '
But if May can change her mind about an election so can Corbyn.There are good reasons for Labour not to submit to her demand for an early election whilst the Tories remain over 10% ahead in the polls.
Closer examination reveals that the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
But, but liberal academics say it makes no difference, unlimited labour supply has no effect on labour prices! Supply and demand doesn't exist!
Or increasing the supply of people increases demand too.
It's remarkable that wealthy nations can exist with just hundreds of thousands of people and wealthy nations can exist with hundreds of millions of people. It's almost as if the supply of jobs is not static and can vary with increasing demand.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
.
Bank of England
Staff Working Paper No. 574 The impact of immigration on occupational wages: evidence from Britain Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen
This paper asks whether immigration to Britain has had any impact on average wages. There seems to be a broad consensus among academics that the share of immigrants in the workforce has little or no effect on native wages. These studies typically have not refined their analysis by breaking it down into different occupational groups. Our contribution is to extend the existing literature on immigration to include occupations as well.
We find that the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on average British wages. This finding is important for monetary policy makers, who are interested in the impact that supply shocks, such as immigration, have on average wages and overall inflation.
Our results also reveal that the biggest impact of immigration on wages is within the semi/unskilled services occupational group. We also investigate if there is any differential impact between immigration from the EU and non-EU, and find that there is no additional impact on aggregate UK wages as a result of migrants arriving specifically from EU countries. These findings accord well with intuition and anecdotal evidence, but have not been recorded previously in the empirical literature.
Nothing surprising in any of that. Only to those who read academic studies and deny the reality on the ground based on what some liberal "expert" says about a situation he or she has never experienced and probably has no way of even relating to.
The empirical evidence is rather more mixed. The countries with the highest proportion of foreign born people have the highest growth in disposable income over the last 20 years.
In the case of Switzerland it is highly skilled migrants working for Novartis and Roche or UBS and Credit Suisse that have driven wages higher, low and unskilled migration to Switzerland is incredibly tough as they run a closed shop with endless qualifications required to do even the most basic retail jobs. If we had a similar system in the UK an Eastern European worker couldn't turn up and start working for Tesco within a week of arriving, they'd have to get the Mitarbeiter equivalent apprenticeship certificate which takes a minimum of 12 months in Switzerland. Wages kept rising for the bottom because it's a closed shop, and at the top because highly skilled migrants add to the economy both in terms of producer value and consumption.
I'm happy to turn the unskilled and low skilled labour market here into a closed shop, I'm not sure that will please the remainers though.
Tesco certainly used the accession of the A8 countries as a way of slashing overtime availability. It may not have impacted wages, but it definitely impacted earnings. It went from there being as much overtime as you wanted to work to there being hardly any as there were shed loads of Agency workers appearing.
"The Lord Ted pub at Newark is named after our former Labour MP Ted Bishop (1964-79). He was extremely popular in the town with all sides of the political divide. He died a couple of years before the pub was opened"
Thanks for that, Mr. Tyndall. I am heartened that a modern politician can still be so popular that people want to name a pub after him.
So we have Herbert Morrison and Ted Bishop, so far (both Labour). Anyone else know of a boozer named after a modern era politician?
On a side note does anyone know why so many modern pubs have damn silly names? I mean names like the "Goat and Goblet" or the "Slug and Lettuce"; they always seem to have the word "and" in them.
When also did the fashion for renaming existing pubs start and why? The main pub in my local high street is called "The New Inn" and has been so named as far back as a previous landlord could research. Yet parts of the building date back to the time of Elizabeth I, the cellars are even older (possibly 15th century) and the most modern part, the front facing onto the high street, is Georgian.
There is The Lord Wilson in Huddersfield - complete with photographs of Harold with and without pipe and Gannex.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
But, but liberal academics say it makes no difference, unlimited labour supply has no effect on labour prices! Supply and demand doesn't exist!
Or increasing the supply of people increases demand too.
It's remarkable that wealthy nations can exist with just hundreds of thousands of people and wealthy nations can exist with hundreds of millions of people. It's almost as if the supply of jobs is not static and can vary with increasing demand.
If you increase supply at the unskilled end it will drag down average wages and productivity. That is evident in the UK where GDP per capita growth has been anaemic despite overall GDP growth being quite strong.
Switzerland has increased supply in the highly skilled part of the labour market and the effect has been positive all around. What I've said all along is that we need to filter migration by skills and pay, 200,000 highly skilled migrants added every year would be wonderful for the UK economy, 330,000 migrants of which 200,000 are unskilled or don't work is not desir.
'Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.'
I don't think Harold Wilson, Ted Heath or Harold Macmillan would have agreed with that. 2% unemployment was considered 'high' in the 1950s and 60s. Moreover, if all the adjustments to the figures that have occurred over the last 30 years were to be reversed we would still be looking at 2.5 million unemployed.
It's amazing that study after study says immigration hasn't impacted wages, yet we have the unions saying a reduction in immigration will help wages rise and on the other side we had the head of the Remain campaign telling businesses to campaign for Remain to keep wage costs down.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
“workers have always done best when the labour supply is controlled and communities are stable”.
But, but liberal academics say it makes no difference, unlimited labour supply has no effect on labour prices! Supply and demand doesn't exist!
Or increasing the supply of people increases demand too.
It's remarkable that wealthy nations can exist with just hundreds of thousands of people and wealthy nations can exist with hundreds of millions of people. It's almost as if the supply of jobs is not static and can vary with increasing demand.
If you increase supply at the unskilled end it will drag down average wages and productivity. That is evident in the UK where GDP per capita growth has been anaemic despite overall GDP growth being quite strong.
Switzerland has increased supply in the highly skilled part of the labour market and the effect has been positive all around. What I've said all along is that we need to filter migration by skills and pay, 200,000 highly skilled migrants added every year would be wonderful for the UK economy, 330,000 migrants of which 200,000 are unskilled or don't work is not desir.
Agreed completely but that doesn't mesh with an overarching "migration is bad" or "migration should be in "the tens of thousands" idea.
Australia has a higher ratio of migrants coming into their nation and do extremely well out of it because they prioritise encouraging skilled migration. Rather than constantly trying to belittle migration we should be seeking to get good migration and if that means migrant numbers going UP (but as skilled migrants) rather than down like Australia has done then great.
If we accept that immigration can't be stopped and that it would not be a good thing to do so (As Westminster does indeed seem to) then what we need is an extra bedroom per immigrant that comes in !
And politicians need to be willing to make the hard choices to make that happen.
'Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.'
I don't think Harold Wilson, Ted Heath or Harold Macmillan would have agreed with that. 2% unemployment was considered 'high' in the 1950s and 60s. Moreover, if all the adjustments to the figures that have occurred over the last 30 years were to be reversed we would still be looking at 2.5 million unemployed.
That's because in the 50s and 60s there was a lot more "jobs for life" and thus lower frictional unemployment.
"That's because in the 50s and 60s there was a lot more "jobs for life" and thus lower frictional unemployment."
Actually, and I admit my memory is not what it was (but there again it was once superb), the 5% unemployment equals full employment was used as the measure in the Attlee government of 1945. A period when the UK still had very large armed forces and a very large degree of government control of the economy.
On a tangent, I don't think many people today have any idea how much of a command economy the UK had during the post war period and into the fifties, and, incidentally, how damaging it was.
If we accept that immigration can't be stopped and that it would not be a good thing to do so (As Westminster does indeed seem to) then what we need is an extra bedroom per immigrant that comes in !
And politicians need to be willing to make the hard choices to make that happen.
Agreed completely but that doesn't mesh with an overarching "migration is bad" or "migration should be in "the tens of thousands" idea.
Australia has a higher ratio of migrants coming into their nation and do extremely well out of it because they prioritise encouraging skilled migration. Rather than constantly trying to belittle migration we should be seeking to get good migration and if that means migrant numbers going UP (but as skilled migrants) rather than down like Australia has done then great.
Anyone who makes that generalised idea is an idiot. Migration is both good and bad because if has so many effects on the economy. Unskilled migration is probably a net benefit for someone like me because it means the cost of my coffee and sushi I'm going to buy soon is much lower than it would be without unlimited unskilled migration. For British workers who compete with that it is definitely bad, as the BoE study showed, for anyone looking for somewhere to live is negative as increased immigration creates housing pressure, for anyone who owns rental property migration has been a licence to print money.
Anyone who wants to call all migration bad is as deluded as anyone who says we should have a completely open border and let anyone who wants to, come.
I wouldn't say vanishingly, but a scenario where we dropped ignominiously to WTO would likely be one accompanied by a recession.
This should be the chance to create that confident, independent, global trading nation Fox and the other Brexiters are always talking about. Finally Britain can construct a trading arrangement which suits it, not the continent.
For instance, we can get rid of the special rule on oranges, which we don't grow but have to labour under because of the Mediterranean states in the EU which do. We can prioritise the sugar cane that Tate & Lyle uses in their sugar, rather than the sugar beet which is used in Europe. We can finally create a customised trading arrangement for this country, rather than one for a continent with which we sometimes share very few economic interests. This is exactly what Brexit was all about.
What utter rubbish. Yes of course we're trying to extract ourselves seemlessly, that is the sensible thing to do. We don't currently have a schedule in place. Once that's done though we can then try and agree changes to our schedule in a time and manner that suits ourselves. In future negotiations we can make agreements that suit ourselves.
'How many seats in Cornwall/The South West did Harold Wilson gain/hold, was it better or worse than Dave? '
Just Falmouth & Camborne but I think Wilson was personally quite popular there. Labour also came close to winning Truro , Bath and Yeovil in 1966.
On that basis the Conservatives are doing cr*p in England at the moment . In all English council by elections so far in December their vote share is down from 37.7% to 32.6% That quote went wrong was supposed to be a reply to TSE
'And Exeter (Gwyneth is good for you) too. ' Yes indeed. I was really focussing on Cornwall initially. Gwynneth Dunwoody won Exeter in 1966 and was then wife of Dr John Dunwoody who held Falmouth & Camborne 1966 - 70. David Owen also won Plymouth Sutton in 1966.
Good piece on the electoral trap that is identity politics, not to mention its ruinous impact on the unifying national identity so required for a bipartisan approach to society's wicked problems:
The Blackburn result puts UKIP into some context. It is immensely patronising and very middle class to believe that having a hard-right, economically bone dry leader with a Scouse accent is going to see working class Labour voters flocking to back UKIP. The party has to put in a lot more work than that. Immigration could be a major calling card for UKIP, but it needs to be combined with other stuff as well. That fabled left turn actually has to happen. Nuttall is not on the left in any meaningful way, neither is UKIP's membership.
The SNP defeated Labour in Scotland by putting in the very hard yards: years and years of local campaigning and taking social democratic positions in a way that alienated and ultimately drove away the party's centre-right, nationalist stalwarts.
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Now that Farage has made his contempt for the UKIP rank and file abundantly clear, it's surely the case that he and Banks will try creating a new Trumpite political party in Britain next year. I suspect the latest pilgrimage to the Daddy was about securing some kind of endorsement and/or funding.
MS Check the voteshare in England in council by elections for the Tories under Hague from 1997 to 2001 and the voteshare for Blair's New Labour and compare that with the general election in 2001.
SD I can't see that happening, UKIP has the brand name and there is little appetite for Trumpism in the UK and Farage made clear he was happy with Nuttall. UKIP's future depends on Brexit, if as is likely it turns out to be softer than the no single market membership, no EU budget contributions and a points system for migrants hardcore Leavers want then UKIP will start to make a bit more progress.
MS Check the voteshare in England in council by elections for the Tories under Hague from 1997 to 2001 and the voteshare for Blair's New Labour and compare that with the general election in 2001.
Yes I have , Though the Conservatives were making gains Labour were well in the lead in vote share .
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Wanting a job, Farage is wanting to be a modern day Quisling.
That comment is beneath you. The Americans even under Trump are no Nazis and we are not occupied and Farage won't be leading a collaborators government.
The Blackburn result puts UKIP into some context. It is immensely patronising and very middle class to believe that having a hard-right, economically bone dry leader with a Scouse accent is going to see working class Labour voters flocking to back UKIP. The party has to put in a lot more work than that. Immigration could be a major calling card for UKIP, but it needs to be combined with other stuff as well. That fabled left turn actually has to happen. Nuttall is not on the left in any meaningful way, neither is UKIP's membership.
The SNP defeated Labour in Scotland by putting in the very hard yards: years and years of local campaigning and taking social democratic positions in a way that alienated and ultimately drove away the party's centre-right, nationalist stalwarts.
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Now that Farage has made his contempt for the UKIP rank and file abundantly clear, it's surely the case that he and Banks will try creating a new Trumpite political party in Britain next year. I suspect the latest pilgrimage to the Daddy was about securing some kind of endorsement and/or funding.
Banks was interviewed on PM a couple of nights ago, the slightly kid gloves 'Lunch with' thing. Apart from denying loads of his quotes from his Brexit book (the stuff printed in 'his' book, with 'his' name on the front), he said he & Nige would be looking to set up high profile independents to run in elections/by elections under the 'Drain the Swamp' mission statement. I slightly got the feeling that Nige may not have been fully consulted on this.
'And Exeter (Gwyneth is good for you) too. ' Yes indeed. I was really focussing on Cornwall initially. Gwynneth Dunwoody won Exeter in 1966 and was then wife of Dr John Dunwoody who held Falmouth & Camborne 1966 - 70. David Owen also won Plymouth Sutton in 1966.
Mentioning Gwyneth Dunwoody, Harriet Harman today overtakes Dunwoody's record for the female MP with longest continuous service.
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Wanting a job, Farage is wanting to be a modern day Quisling.
That comment is beneath you. The Americans even under Trump are no Nazis and we are not occupied and Farage won't be leading a collaborators government.
1) Your outrage would be more plausible if you could direct me to similar posts by you when SeanT calls Remainers traitors
2) I was assured by a Leaver on here that Quisling has no Nazi connotations, it is merely a reference for someone working for a foreign country for the benefit of their home country.
It seems paradoxical, but it is possible for unskilled immigration to depress average wages while still leaving everybody better off. As the unskilled immigrants take over the bottom-end jobs, the displaced natives tend to get better-paying jobs in the wider economy, which has grown as a result of the lower production costs.
The immigrants are earning more than they would have done at home, while the natives that they have displaced are now earning more money doing more skilled work. So everybody is earning more money, even though the average wage has fallen.
Given that the current odds indicate that there is about a 40% chance that Corbyn will not be leader at the next election and given the high toxicity levels that the man is credited with, what do people think is the likely effect on support levels for Labour if he were to leave, say, a year before the next election?
Obviously a lot will depend upon who replaces him, but given a more publicly acceptable leader with a lot less negative bagggage and the almost inevitable honeymoon bounce, where do people see Labour's support being in these circumstances?
How well the Tories do in the south-west depends on a number of factors. Leave vs Remain is one, but the south-west was always fairly anti European even when the Las held a large number of seats. Other key factors will include the generally poorer performance of Tory MPs and whether the second home owners are happy to register there again. Let's not forget PC Plod either. It's not just Thanet South.
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Wanting a job, Farage is wanting to be a modern day Quisling.
That comment is beneath you. The Americans even under Trump are no Nazis and we are not occupied and Farage won't be leading a collaborators government.
1) Your outrage would be more plausible if you could direct me to similar posts by you when SeanT calls Remainers traitors
2) I was assured by a Leaver on here that Quisling has no Nazi connotations, it is merely a reference for someone working for a foreign country for the benefit of their home country.
1) If there was a decent search function on this site I could do.
'Harriet Harman today overtakes Dunwoody's record for the female MP with longest continuous service. ' More than anybody else she is responsible for Corbyn becoming party leader in 2015.Shame on her!
'Harriet Harman today overtakes Dunwoody's record for the female MP with longest continuous service. ' More than anybody else she is responsible for Corbyn becoming party leader in 2015.Shame on her!
Well they wanted to widen the debate. And to be honest, I think they've achieved that goal, the debates are pretty wide right now.
Of course Quisling has Nazi connections.. He was the Nazi puppet who betrayed Norway so that his name is a synonym for traitor, which is why he was shot in Oslo after the war.
BudG There is almost no way Corbyn or McDonnell will not be leading Labour into the next general election given Corbyn's comfortable reelection by Labour party members
Anyone know why Farage was over to see Trump again yesterday?
Wanting a job, Farage is wanting to be a modern day Quisling.
That comment is beneath you. The Americans even under Trump are no Nazis and we are not occupied and Farage won't be leading a collaborators government.
1) Your outrage would be more plausible if you could direct me to similar posts by you when SeanT calls Remainers traitors
2) I was assured by a Leaver on here that Quisling has no Nazi connotations, it is merely a reference for someone working for a foreign country for the benefit of their home country.
1) If there was a decent search function on this site I could do.
Comments
What about Edi South & Edi West ?
And Edinburgh West for the LDs, assuming the holyrood results carry through
https://twitter.com/johnharris1969/status/809711879031586817
I wouldn't say vanishingly, but a scenario where we dropped ignominiously to WTO would likely be one accompanied by a recession.
Business and union leaders vs academics. I know who I believe, and it isn't the "experts" who have never done a real day's work in their lives.
But frankly, so much could happen between now and 2025 that while it's certainly possible that the Tories could suffer another drubbing, there are a great many other possibilities.
I think a WTO exit would result in a J shaped recovery and overall make very little difference. Previously I thought it would be 5-7 years of low growth coupled with a fair amount of inflation from weak Sterling and higher import levies on EU goods.
The empirical evidence is rather more mixed. The countries with the highest proportion of foreign born people have the highest growth in disposable income over the last 20 years.
Good to see. Puts McCluskey on yet another collision course with Corbyn, of course.
For instance, we can get rid of the special rule on oranges, which we don't grow but have to labour under because of the Mediterranean states in the EU which do. We can prioritise the sugar cane that Tate & Lyle uses in their sugar, rather than the sugar beet which is used in Europe. We can finally create a customised trading arrangement for this country, rather than one for a continent with which we sometimes share very few economic interests. This is exactly what Brexit was all about.
Except Fox isn't going to do any of that.
http://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2016/12/06/very-quietly-liam-fox-admits-the-brexit-lie
I'm happy to turn the unskilled and low skilled labour market here into a closed shop, I'm not sure that will please the remainers though.
On the economy much depends on real wages. If they grow consumption does not need to drop. Very early days but so far the surprise is on the upside.
"... 4.8% unemployment feels like a floor.. "
Traditionally, 5% unemployment was regarded as full employment as there is always going to be, and needs to be, a degree of churn in the labour force as people move in and out of jobs and companies open and close. So a floor of 4.8% is on the face of it pretty damn good.
However, there is now a very large number of economically inactive people who are classed as something other than unemployed, who previously would have been on the unemployment register. Therefore, meaningful comparisons with previous figures, especially those before the mid-eighties (when the figures first started to be "fiddled"), are very difficult.
I agree: successful economies attract migrants.
Nevertheless, the developed economy which has had the least unskilled immigration has had the worst progression in real median wages. (Now, you can say that Japan is a special case. But when you are explaining every data point away as a special case, you are in danger of allowing your existing preconceptions to overrule the evidence.)
Harold Wilson was well known for holidaying in the Scilly Isles.!
Staff Working Paper No. 574
The impact of immigration on occupational wages:
evidence from Britain
Stephen Nickell and Jumana Saleheen
This paper asks whether immigration to Britain has had any impact on average wages. There seems to be a broad consensus among academics that the share of immigrants in the workforce has little or no effect on native wages. These studies typically have not refined their analysis by breaking it down into
different occupational groups. Our contribution is to extend the existing literature on immigration to include occupations as well.
We find that the immigrant to native ratio has a small negative impact on
average British wages. This finding is important for monetary policy makers, who are interested in the impact that supply shocks, such as immigration, have on average wages and overall inflation.
Our results also reveal that the biggest impact of immigration on wages is within the semi/unskilled services occupational group. We also investigate if there is any differential impact between immigration from the EU and non-EU, and find that there is no additional impact on aggregate UK wages as a result of migrants arriving specifically from EU countries. These findings accord well with intuition and anecdotal evidence, but have not been recorded previously in the empirical literature.
"The Lord Ted pub at Newark is named after our former Labour MP Ted Bishop (1964-79). He was extremely popular in the town with all sides of the political divide. He died a couple of years before the pub was opened"
Thanks for that, Mr. Tyndall. I am heartened that a modern politician can still be so popular that people want to name a pub after him.
So we have Herbert Morrison and Ted Bishop, so far (both Labour). Anyone else know of a boozer named after a modern era politician?
On a side note does anyone know why so many modern pubs have damn silly names? I mean names like the "Goat and Goblet" or the "Slug and Lettuce"; they always seem to have the word "and" in them.
When also did the fashion for renaming existing pubs start and why? The main pub in my local high street is called "The New Inn" and has been so named as far back as a previous landlord could research. Yet parts of the building date back to the time of Elizabeth I, the cellars are even older (possibly 15th century) and the most modern part, the front facing onto the high street, is Georgian.
But if May can change her mind about an election so can Corbyn.There are good reasons for Labour not to submit to her demand for an early election whilst the Tories remain over 10% ahead in the polls.
Closer examination reveals that the biggest effect is in the semi/unskilled services sector, where a 10 percentage point rise in the proportion of immigrants is associated with a 2 percent reduction in pay.
It's remarkable that wealthy nations can exist with just hundreds of thousands of people and wealthy nations can exist with hundreds of millions of people. It's almost as if the supply of jobs is not static and can vary with increasing demand.
>> Broom service <<
Ken and George's unclean sweep
Q/ What do Ken Livingstone and
George Galloway have in common?
a/ Both are currently suspended
from the Labour party
b/ Both have been outspoken on
the topic of Hitler and Zionism
c/ Both have used the brush-off
line when trying to seduce a
lady: "Your loss, I'm like a
broomhandle in the morning"
d/ All of the above
Switzerland has increased supply in the highly skilled part of the labour market and the effect has been positive all around. What I've said all along is that we need to filter migration by skills and pay, 200,000 highly skilled migrants added every year would be wonderful for the UK economy, 330,000 migrants of which 200,000 are unskilled or don't work is not desir.
I don't think Harold Wilson, Ted Heath or Harold Macmillan would have agreed with that. 2% unemployment was considered 'high' in the 1950s and 60s. Moreover, if all the adjustments to the figures that have occurred over the last 30 years were to be reversed we would still be looking at 2.5 million unemployed.
Australia has a higher ratio of migrants coming into their nation and do extremely well out of it because they prioritise encouraging skilled migration. Rather than constantly trying to belittle migration we should be seeking to get good migration and if that means migrant numbers going UP (but as skilled migrants) rather than down like Australia has done then great.
And politicians need to be willing to make the hard choices to make that happen.
http://www.itv.com/news/2016-12-16/met-police-close-keith-vaz-investigation/
https://twitter.com/SiobhanFenton/status/809727581780119552
https://twitter.com/MichelleThomson/status/809726499028869120
Just Falmouth & Camborne but I think Wilson was personally quite popular there. Labour also came close to winning Truro , Bath and Yeovil in 1966.
Actually, and I admit my memory is not what it was (but there again it was once superb), the 5% unemployment equals full employment was used as the measure in the Attlee government of 1945. A period when the UK still had very large armed forces and a very large degree of government control of the economy.
On a tangent, I don't think many people today have any idea how much of a command economy the UK had during the post war period and into the fifties, and, incidentally, how damaging it was.
Anyone who wants to call all migration bad is as deluded as anyone who says we should have a completely open border and let anyone who wants to, come.
There's no need to do everything in one go.
That quote went wrong was supposed to be a reply to TSE
Yes indeed. I was really focussing on Cornwall initially. Gwynneth Dunwoody won Exeter in 1966 and was then wife of Dr John Dunwoody who held Falmouth & Camborne 1966 - 70. David Owen also won Plymouth Sutton in 1966.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/14/progressive-echo-chamber-in-one-roundtable/
Beware, Labour Party!
2) I was assured by a Leaver on here that Quisling has no Nazi connotations, it is merely a reference for someone working for a foreign country for the benefit of their home country.
http://news.sky.com/story/jeremy-corbyn-to-get-populist-rebrand-in-bid-to-catch-tories-10697818
We are going to see a lot more of jahadi jez on the tv in the new year. What could possibly go wrong.
The immigrants are earning more than they would have done at home, while the natives that they have displaced are now earning more money doing more skilled work. So everybody is earning more money, even though the average wage has fallen.
Obviously a lot will depend upon who replaces him, but given a more publicly acceptable leader with a lot less negative bagggage and the almost inevitable honeymoon bounce, where do people see Labour's support being in these circumstances?
2) And you believed them?
I don't think he wants to ban cars.
He just to make them useless for longer journeys.
So everyone has to take the train.
More than anybody else she is responsible for Corbyn becoming party leader in 2015.Shame on her!
Well they wanted to widen the debate. And to be honest, I think they've achieved that goal, the debates are pretty wide right now.
It was a joy to watch.