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This summer Nick Clegg said he wants his party to become a “fully-fledged party of government”. Despite that his party faces wipeout in 2014 and 2015 on top of the electoral hammer blows it’s received since it formed a Coalition with the Conservatives.
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I think they'll pick up a bit as the election approaches and they pick up some of the "Cameron and Miliband are both shit" vote.
They don't get their council base back until next time they're in opposition, at which point they'll obviously get a new leader.
Youth unemployment contract
Conceived by Nick Clegg, this scheme saw £1bn set aside for wage incentives to get employers to take on long-term unemployed young people. It was in effect imposed on the DWP by Clegg's staff, who briefed at the time of its announcement that persuading the Tories to back it had been like trying to "persuade vegetarians to eat kebabs"......
.....The aim had been over three years to find jobs for 160,000 18- to 24-year-olds unemployed for six months or more – about 53,000 a year. Employers had been offered a maximum of £2,275 for retaining someone for more than six months, yet after a year only 4,690 young people had benefited from the payment, and only 2,070 had received subsidy covering the full six months.......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jul/25/welfare-revolution-poor-results
- Taking people out of tax helping the poor.
- Expansion of renewable energy - I assume there's been some given the technological improvements in renewables.
- Keeping a grip on spending and getting the economy on track without letting the Tories bite too many tramps.
They should also come up with a new policy to differentiate themselves, like legalizing weed.
I think this will be more than enough for a campaign.
The higher tax threshold in particular is a major success, and the Lib Dems can certainly point to Osborne and say how much worse it could have been. In fact, although the Euros will probably be bad ( as usual) the Eastleigh by election shows that the party is pretty resilient in areas where it has resources. In fact, I think the clever money is not on whether the party faces wipe out, it clearly does not, but how much it can hold its own. In opposition their support mid term is often in the low teens, and then they usually climb to the low twenties. This time it will likely be lower, but 18% could still see the majority of held seats staying in the yellow column, and even has the possibility of gains. In the next 18 months much can improve for Clegg.
After All, Ed Miliband is hardly setting the heather alight is he?
Meanwhile, today's YouGov:
Among VI:
Led by people of real ability:
Con: 60
Lab: 42
Lib
Leaders prepared to take tough & unpopular decisions:
Con: 83
Lab: 31
Lib
It's about the raw numbers. The lib dem base has been getting hammered since 2010 and there's absolutely no sign of it stopping now. One electoral cycle after 2015 may not be enough to recover since trust and tactical voting messages like "vote lib dem to keep the tories out" have been shattered and will likely take just a bit more than a new leader to restore.
Everyone knows why the lib dems are in the position they are. They have very, very few options to possibly mitigate what awaits them in 2015. You can be certain that all those lib dem MPs who could lose their seats know exactly what those options are as 2015 gets closer and their jobs look ever more insecure.
Voters accepted the electoral arithmetic and genuinely wished him and the project well but he blew it big time.
Short of draping himself over Thatcher's coffin while singing Land of Hope and Glory it's difficult to think what more he could have done to repel his 2010 voters.
When talking about most pitiful records has he forgotten the reign of PM Brown ?
"It seems to chop and change all the time: you can never be quite sure what it stands for"
Here, both Con & Lib Dem think this applies to Labour (54 & 51 respectively) while UKIP think this applies to Con (40). Labour think this applies equally to Con (39) and Lib Dem (40).
There is a clear " winner" for "Its leaders are prepared to take tough and unpopular decisions" - Con
Among VI, of Con: (of own party)
Con: 83 (83)
Lab: 33 (31)
LibD: 45 (23)
UKIP: 33 (n/a)
Carry on squirreling.
"Led by people of real ability:
Con: 60
Lab: 42
Lib
Yet still they trail Labour by 6 points. The Tories are probably a better example than Ratners of the difficulty of recovery for a brand that's been trashed.
The idea that the Lib Dems have been some form of Tory-lite whilst in government is laughable.
The problem is that some Lib Dem supporters think that the Lib Dems should have all the power in government, despite being very much a junior partner. This shows a certain immaturity on the part of the supporters, who wanted Lib Dems to be in power (initially via coalition, thus the support for AV) for so long and yet throw a strop when they get that power with the 'wrong' party.
You have to make difficult decisions in government; the Lib Dem supporters are not used to that concept. It is about time some of them did. They have got their wish and don't like it.
We have just under two years to go to the GE - the first half of which Labour will be indulging itself in an internal fight - and all over a "non-story" too!
How about a thread on Philip of Spain and his influence on the Weybridge South by-election ?
"The ruling by Scottish Police was a setback to Ed Miliband, who referred the controversy over selecting Labour’s parliamentary candidate to them earlier this month. "
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-will-discipline-two-falkirk-union-voteriggers-despite-lack-of-evidence-as-unite-calls-for-reinstatement-8732601.html
You missed out the 23m who now pay no or less tax and the pupil premium for starters.
This piece reads like a laundry list of LD failures you used on the doorstep last week. Your insights into Labour and the unions right now would be a great deal more valuable than LD bashing - and God knows I'm not their biggest fan at times.
"Ed Miliband and his biggest trade union backer are being investigated by Britain’s privacy watchdog over claims of malpractice in a key Westminster selection.
The office of the Information Commissioner announced that it was looking into the scandal-hit Labour contest in the safe seat of Falkirk."
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3825708.ece?CMP=OTH-gnws-standard-2013_07_25
Housebuilding up.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/nick-clegg/10202530/Airy-fairy-Lib-Dems-must-face-life-outside-the-goldfish-bowl.html
They do have achievements though, but they are totally obscured by their political mistakes. They can't make progress with Clegg. Until they bite the bullet, they are a zombie party.
Sure the LibDems have lost some left leaning supporters to Labour. This indeed accounts for nearly all the rise in the Labour polling. There are it seems very few switchers from elsewhere despite one of the most difficult periods in modern economic history.
I expect to see a Miliband govt in 2015, and an equally abrupt departure of these supporters as they see the Labour govt continue much the same policies.
As spending on debt interest rises, doubling over the lifetime of the parliament, it will put a £35 billion pound permanent squeeze on spending. Money spent on debt intrrest is money that cannot be spent on the NHS or anything else.
The self restruction of the Labour party when they reach power and see how bare the cupboard is will make the LibDems loss of activists seem quite mild.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5034565/Cam-fly-away-PM-flies-easyJet-on-hols-but-No10-insists-hes-still-in-charge.html
Perhaps the biggest problem for the LibDems as a national party is simply that for a great many voters, they were always the easy option. Few people understood what they stood for. Even fewer cared. They were simply the party which wasn't Tory in the shires or Labour in the cities. People could vote for them knowing it wouldn't mean much (unless of course they were Liberal diehards who had always supported the party).
In Government the party has had to "grow up" and take the difficult decisions. As a Tory, I have to say I have admired the way the LibDems in government have got on with doing the right, but for them, correct thing. Obviously in Tory-LibDem battlegrounds I hope in 2015 that most of the yellow seats will return to the blue camp where they tended to reside safely until 1987. There are however a number of LibDem ministers I would really like to see survive at the GE because they have impressed me in government. If a way could be found for them to stand as Tory Coalition candidates then that would be brilliant. Sadly I cant see it happening.
I don't know where the LibDems will sit in the polls in early 2015. I suspect they will stage some level of recovery but not enough to hold on to many of their seats. If it means the Tories regain formerly safe seats, especially in outer London, the south-west of England and rural Scotland I will be delighted. If it means that the LibDems lose enough votes to Labour to cost the Tories marginal seats in the Midlands and North of England, I will be disappointed. I do wonder if beyond the activist range, disenchanted 2010 LibDem voters will either vote Green or simply not bother to vote, the way many 1992 Tories stayed at home in 1997.
The findings are made in a report on Cardiff's University Hospital of Wales by the Royal College of Surgeons (RCS).
Hospital chiefs say they accept pressures earlier in the year were "unacceptable" and are being addressed.
An action plan has been agreed with the health board and will be reviewed by surgeons in the autumn.
The report by the RCS followed a visit to surgical departments by its Public Affairs Board for Wales (PAB) in April this year.
The report said there was "universal consensus" amongst the clinicians that services at the hospital were "dangerous" and of "poor quality".
It said "urgent attention" by Cardiff and Vale University Health Board (CVUHB) was needed to address the issues.
The visit highlighted several examples of what the report called "serious service problems" which represented a "severe risk to patients".
Surgeons said concerns included:
Cardiac patients "regularly dying on waiting lists" with "other patients' hearts ... deteriorating while waiting" making subsequent treatment more difficult
Children regularly being fitted with hearing aids because of a lack of surgical time and resources to insert grommets to treat ear infections
Patients "suffering complications" because of delays in treating kidney stones
A&E and intensive care units being "frequently grid-locked" with patients "often stacked up in corridors and ambulances"
The single most common complaint from the hospital's surgeons was the inability to admit patients for scheduled, or elective, surgery.
They reported that more than 2,000 operations were either not scheduled due to a lack of beds or cancelled in the first three months of this year.
"I think our colleagues were telling us that they believed there was significant risk as a consequence of their inability to get patients in to have their operations in a timely way," said Colin Ferguson, director of Public Affairs for the RCS in Wales.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-23454922
We have a weekly round-up of results but its hard to get a feel of the overall picture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23253092
which labour didn't manage in all their time in power- it might be a good argument for winning back left leaning 2010 lib dems (assuming they're win-backable)
"If you take Henry's last paragraph and replace the word Lib Dem with Labour and Nick Clegg with Gordon Brown it makes much more sense ."
Surely you can't be happy with the way things are going for the Lib Dems? It's quite obvious that the only voters who'd give them the time of day are Tories and they've already got a party so what's the point of them and don't you agree with Henry that Clegg has been completely inept?
Their USP which was priceless was that they weren't Tories and now they are.
When Clegg said he and the lib dems were "back in the saddle", after yet another dire set of locals in May, was it some kind of euphemism?
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/story/36244/
Labour paid no corporation tax in 2012
Labour paid no corporation tax at all last year despite receiving £33m in income, accounts released yesterday reveal.
The party reduced its potential tax liability of £561,000 by offsetting expenses and tax losses carried over from 2011, according to the Times.
I would summarise it as: sound finances for the country, a tax and benefits structure that reduces inequalities and encourages the working poor, environmental awareness and a positive attitude to our neighbours in europe. This is all clear from their time in govt, which a significant part of the parliamentary party has enjoyed after a ninety year gap. It is far more clear and coherent than Milibands blank sheet of paper and Ed Balls borrow and spend policies.
If there is another hung parliament with the LDs in the Kingmaker role then I would want to see some of these ministers carry on under Milliband, particularly Danny Alexander with the finances.
A point of note of the 1918 coupon election was that both Liberal parties racked up seats with a small % of the vote. 707 HoC seats including all Ireland :
Party .. Stood .. Seats .. % Vote
Coalition Conservative .. 362 .. 332 .. 47%
Coalition Liberals .. 145 .. 127 .. 8.1%
Coalition Labour .. 5 .. 4 .. 0.1%
Liberal .. 276 .. 36 .. 5.1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Kingdom_general_election,_1918
I may call it the Bedroom tax.
How should one first greet the Archbishop of Canterbury? Pope Francis did it rather bluntly when Justin Welby came to Rome last month, telling him: “I’m senior to you.” The AB of C, having expected a benediction rather than a boast, could only stammer: “Yes, I know, Your Holiness.” But it was a joke. “Ha!” replied the Pope, who had been elected in the same week. “By two days!” I hope he clapped his hands and said “boom-tish”.
People say “Ha!” a lot to Welby, it turns out. He tells Total Politics that Lambeth Palace has “an element of Hogwarts about it” and not just because Rowan Williams resembled Dumbledore. “Every corridor is lined with portraits of dead archbishops,” Welby says. “You hear them muttering: ‘Ha! Don’t think much of this one’.”
You have written from a producer's viewpoint and not the consumer's viewpoint and that is usually what the LDs and Labour do. It is no good giving the marketplace nails if what they want is screws!
Most private sector businesses would be bankrupt very quickly if they took that approach, but we know from events in the public sector, e.g in the fields of education and health, the producer approach has gained dominance (to the degradation of those services).
The LDs were naive in not expecting the protest vote to leave them when they joined the coalition - so at the moment that is parked with Labour, Greens and UKIP.
However, LDs have failed to take the opportunity to show that they are a party fit for government as they prioritised the LD's political reforms instead of focusing on what the public wanted: improved economy, jobs, education, good health service and economic energy. The one good policy that has been carried through is raising the personal tax allowance to £10k.
However, they have become publicly sulky and petulant after the electorate rejected AV and have lost direction. They persist in supporting the EU (which to the public is the same as the ECHR) and keeping 'green' energy taxes just to meet a EU target- not very clever when world energy prices have increased so much.
Now they want to resist fracking when the world sees US energy costs dropping due to fracking. The LDs have become the NIMBY party as they do not present coherent arguments to the electorate. I doubt whether their autumn conference will improve matters.
I happen to think this government will be seen as a success and will probably be viewed by history as quite remarkable. A coalition between a centre right and centre left party during times of extreme economic difficulty, and one which has seen less bitterness and infighting at the top than we saw within the Labour party when it governed on its own.
It would be interesting to assess (I'm sure someone more politically astute than me can do it) what this government has achieved in one term in comparison to what the Blair government achived during it's first term (1997-2001). It's possible the Lib Dems have put together more policies that have helped the working poor than that government did.
I'll throw in Frank Field ...
Jason Groves @JasonGroves1
Archbishop Justin Welby: 'Just for the record, I am not in favour of sin.' Glad we cleared that up
Your system doesnt only have marginal rates of 10%, it has marginal rates of 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% and 50%.
The USP that we are not Tories still remains , read any thread on Conservativehome or most posts from pbtories and you will see that your view is from a biased perspective .
NHS being run brilliantly in Wales!
To be fair - and I'm not making a political point here - Wales needs another mega-hospital and we haven't got the money for it. There are going to be some tragic stories in the coming years. It's a mess.
If we can get some of it from under our feet then we are reducing in the short term our energy supply vulnerability and improving our balance of payments. The world is unlikely to reduce emissions of CO2 in the near future as the BRIC countries continue their growth.
We have to put as much effort into increasing energy use efficiency as developing economic renewable energy. The objective has to be being self-sufficient in energy at a globally competitive cost.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10202992/Technology-sounds-that-are-dying-out.html
F1: 10 place grid penalty if your tyres are loose after a pit stop:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/23454803
Bit sleepy so maybe I'm misremembering, but I don't recall Red Bull getting that penalty for Webber's dangerous pit stop.
What fun..
fracking is only ever going to be short term though, isn't it?
(Is china fracking too?)
The NHS has another problem in parts of Wales - recruiting staff especially surgeons and consultants. My Local GP wants an extra doctor and cannot get one.
It is the same reason I get from UK recruitment consultants - nobody wants to come to work in Wales - it has gained a bad reputation internationally that is getting worse.
But in the longer term it's much less clear. Conventional oil will eventually become cost uncompetitive. Gas and shale oils may last alot longer - but not forever. We'll hit peak coal at some point too (earlier in China than elsewhere).
The end state (I'm talking a century or more) for mankind will be nuclear. Possibly Thorium based fission. Possibly deuterium based fusion. Once either of these is cracked at a commercial scale then we're good to go for centuries. Renewables will make some contribution but will never predominate as they are just too diffuse - you'd have to cover the planet in windfarms and solar panels.
Governments with an eye to future stability and independence should commit proper R&D funding to new nuclear.
Though it is a new reg that has been introduced in light so many pit lane near misses recently. Also haven't they reduced pit lane speed?
If you haven't seen it - there's a good article from John McTernan re Lynton Crosby - John was right in the thick of it in Australia with Gillard. And was Tony's political secretary...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/10202559/Lynton-Crosby-is-a-master-strategist-with-the-common-touch.html
" So, Labour’s attacks on Crosby are not about his ethics, his politics or his client list. They are about his effectiveness. Consider the thread that connects the revival in Tory fortunes. It’s not better policy, or a stronger economy. It’s sharper messaging, a strong narrative and message discipline. Why is Labour on the back foot on welfare? Not because Universal Credit is a masterful reform, or because the benefits cap is a success. No, it’s because when Mick Philpott killed six of his 17 children in a house fire, George Osborne condemned a lifestyle that had been sustained by welfare. Labour was exasperated at the Tories exploiting a tragedy, but the Chancellor knew he was channelling the outrage of mainstream Middle England. Classic Crosby, a values wedge: Labour defending the feckless, the Government standing for decency.
This is Crosby’s genius. Picking a tender spot that forces Labour to defend the indefensible because embracing the middle ground would be too painful. That’s the point of the benefits cap. And the trashing of the NHS brand, too. The pre-positioning of the Keogh report on hospital deaths bore all the hallmarks of Crosby. A potentially devastating attack on the current management of the NHS was pivoted into an assault on Labour’s stewardship. In politics, great strategists don’t go round a problem, they go through it. The Government forced Labour to defend failure.
Again and again, the pattern is the same: Government weakness turned to strength; language crafted with precision; Labour forced to choose between purity and popularity..."
Does Clegg understand the economy? He shows little sign of it and has had little of relevance to say. No wonder the voters have lost patience with him.
Whether its right or wrong is another matter, but you can't blame a politican for thinking about what's popular or not.
"So a broadly Keynesian party has decided to embrace neliberalism in the wake of the worst private sector collapse in a lifetime?"
Pardon? There are over 1m extra jobs in the economy in the last 3yrs. Or were you talking about the 7.3% drop in GDP we experienced thanks to Gordon?
P1 underway.
The recruitment people tell me that Wales is a no-no. Reasons given are: bad education system (including poor in foreign languages), bad health system, no jobs for partners (esp outside of Cardiff), and inward thinking culture. Also it is too far from London and continental connections.
OTOH, Bristol is fine.
As for his approach, it makes me despair. It's just not cricket. Of course the Australians are sometimes known to play by a different set of values.