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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The constituencies where the LDs will be most vulnerable at GE2015 and those where they are likely to do best
There’s been some discussion over the weekend about the impact of incumbency and how it can help the parties achieve better outcomes in terms of seats won than the uniform swing might suggest.
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With an HR manager at a large firm in my family, too often this has been used spuriously and as a weapon to try and milk money out of the ex-employer where settling is cheaper than paying the legal fees/costs to defend it when of course the other side isn't having to pay anything. The current system encourages weak claims.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23482520
Well done George!
It must be a good move as Len is against it - what's Ed think?
"What we are seeing today is injustice writ large as this worker-bashing government takes a sledgehammer to workers' rights - this is a throwback to Victorian times," Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said.
Someone in employment should be able to raise this sum if they feel strongly enough that they have been unfairly treated.
"...And what really ought to worry Labour is that 43 per cent say that the economy would be worse now had Labour won the 2010 election, against 32 per cent who say it would be better. If Labour has not persuaded people by now that Osborne’s policy has failed – compared with what Labour would have done – then its economic credibility is a biscotte.
I suspect much of the Labour Party has lulled itself into a false sense of Swedenism* because some polls suggest that people think Osborne is an objectionable piece of work. and he is currently in government. What this poll does, however, is to compare his policies with those of the other lot, had they been in the despised position of being in government.
If Labour haven’t persuaded the voters that things would have been better under them by now (and I’m one of the 32 per cent in that last question, incidentally), they are unlikely to do so by the time of the election, now that the economy is picking up a little. And if Labour cannot do that, it cannot win.
My column for The Independent on Sunday is mainly about how serious Cameron is about curbing the “free movement of workers” throughout the EU, but this reflects the rigour of the Cameron-Osborne focus on the job prospects and living standards of the “hard-working people” on whom the election will turn.
Labour’s current lead in the headline opinion-poll figures is misleading: Cameron is set to win again.
*Swedenism, n: The attribution to the electorate of generous social-democratic qualities. http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2013/07/28/below-the-headlines-the-conservatives-are-winning/
Not Dan Hodges writing for yet another paper surely.....!!
I realise, of course, that it's not just students who would be affected if there had been a significant fall in student numbers, but there hasn't been!
*Swedenism, n: The attribution to the electorate of generous social-democratic qualities."
Very good, Mr Rentoul. It is a genuine phenomenon, and should be noted.
In Scotland I would be surprised if Sir Ming Campbell and Sir Malcolm Bruce fight again. In addition will Charles Kennedy, John Thurso and Sir Robert Smith decide to fight again? The former knows he has nothing to look forward to in Westminster and the latter two must know that on paper they could be knocked out.
On the Tribunal fees, as an HR director, I am delighted. In one company I have someone who has just decided to retire 3 months early and got his doctor to sign him off as sick. I wanted a 2nd opinion and he has basically told the company to fcuk off! In another company I have an ex employee suing because she didn't get enough work and we got rid of her because she was useless. In a 3rd company we had to buy off a thief because she claimed discrimination. In a 4th company we are struggling with several employees in a dispute over a packet of biscuits!
I am having to tip toe around them all (except the thief who got a pay-off in return for a Compromise Agreement) because each could take his/her employer to a Tribunal for no cost, represented by an "ambulance chaser lawyer" who knows it will cost the employer £5k+ to defend themselves.
Does anyone know if the number of students attending uni has actually risen or is it a fairly stable % of that age cohort?
It could be a significant factor or totally overstated - I suspect that its more about the LDs being untrustworthy when behind closed doors than really about the policy per se now.
Countdown - 1 hour 47 minutes.
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5039288/1m-Lady-T-funeral-bill-shames-lefties.html
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5039103/Sun-columnist-says-Labours-problem-is-that-socialism-passed-its-sell-by-date.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-23486466
Doubtful, but there is surely a major risk in China's indebtedness. Especially as some (much?) of the construction projects built as part of the boom have been distinctly low-quality, even on pride projects such as high-speed rail:
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/speculation-investment-scandals-fraud.html
What happens when people realise that their investments are not worth the value? Are we seeing the end of a massive bubble?
But of course we did have a vast amount of social house building .... er .... oh well, they did have only 13 years to chuck a few bricks and mortar together.
The figures are as follows from our latest monthly survey -
26 per cent believe that there will be a Conservative majority (up from 15 per cent).
23 per cent of those polled believe that there will be a minority Conservative Government (down slightly from 24 per cent).
And 16 per cent believe that there will be a second Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (up by more than double from seven per cent.
That adds up to 65 per cent of those polled expecting David Cameron to return to Downing Street as Prime Minister after the next general election. That total is up sharply from 46 per cent, and suggests that Party members have been impressed by a better run of news from the Government and a worse from Labour - whose fortunes we look at in a special series on LeftWatch this week, which opens with Christian Guy's excellent piece today...
Just over 1550 people responded to the survey, of whom over 700 were Conservative Party members. The figures above are taken from the latter's views.
"Talk to people in the toughest parts of the UK, and many feel as abandoned by the modern Labour party as they do by all the others. This is because for decades many on the Left have argued that this social breakdown comes down to low income, and that the welfare state offers the surest way out of deprivation. This has given rise to ever-increasing benefit cheques and narrow ‘poverty-line’ politics. But too little has changed in these postcodes.
Wearily, Labour MP David Lammy sums it up in his book Out of the Ashes. He recalls a conversation with Gordon Brown in No.10. When the MP for Tottenham raised concerns about knife crime, absent fathers, and parents not coping, the then Prime Minister simply said "don’t worry, they’ll get tax credits", patted him on the arm, and ended the conversation." http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2013/07/from-christianguy_-the-right-represents-change-the-left-the-status-quo-miliband-must-change-this-to-.html
The problem with house building is the lack of supply. The government is correct in freeing up planning law. More attention should also be paid to empty homes - many of them government owned and also brown field sites. Further encouragement should also be given for households to let out rooms.
Countdown - 1 hour
No but will get it. Also from the blog:
"Family breakdown: Some on the Left don’t believe family breakdown matters, and more consider family structures irrelevant. Worryingly, many also reject the idea that instability at home causes poverty or social problems. This has to change. Family breakdown is shockingly high and wreaks havoc on estates like the one in south London. Much evidence points to couple formation and marriage as stabilising factors, bulwarks against life’s inevitable shocks. So Labour needs to take a deep breath, have the debate, and develop a plan for family stability – not just family giveaways."
I think that he is too mild here - there are quite a few on the left who deny the value of the family altogether - in fact they appear to be happy to see its destruction. Of course the more that institutions are broken down, then it is easier to control the resultant shattered pieces - that is the way it is done in totalitarian states -old and new.
As you say. LoL
(Now for the adults. What IS likely to happen is a greater probability that the Planning Inspectorate will uphold more appeals against refusal by Councils for developments; the NPPF will carry a great deal of weight with Inspectors, particularly against those Councils (a lot of them) who still do not have adopted Core Strategies).
To paraphrase dear Liam - "There is no more land"
We might of course force northern farmers to sell off land, compulsorily purchase old barns and convert other agricultural buildings just to jog things along !!
But since most voters will still be worse off, Rentoul's conclusion is wrong.
I was astonished to discover that 12000 children are taken into care every year and the figure is rising.
" This is an important step [more transparency in Family Courts] towards letting the public see what is being done in their name and holding public servants accountable. It comes two years after The Times invited senior judges to start constructive private discussions with members of the press.
The current orthodoxy is that only a handful of children are wrongly taken into care and that the 12,000 who are removed from their families in England each year are far too few. It is true that the state has monstrously failed to protect some children from evil relatives. But this does not necessarily mean the pendulum always swings too far only in one direction: it actually seems to swing crazily around in a child protection system that is simply broken in some parts of the country.
It beggars belief to sit in a courtroom and watch the judge sigh as a local authority admits yet again that it has not filed the right papers. To hear some “experts” give verbose testimony on the stand about mothers they have never met, or only briefly. To see social workers who are supposed to support families having to turn prosecutor. It is hard to imagine that any criminal court would accept some of this. Family courts cannot try murderers, but they can split up families — which is another kind of life sentence..." http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/comment/columns/CamillaCavendish/article1292789.ece
Sadly since then a few things have made me sour my judgement slightly, although for the life of me I cannot remember what they were!
I've just ordered the book. It may be an interesting read.
http://liberator-magazine.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/has-clegg-had-enough-of-his-party.html
Every time this is discussed you utterly fail to understand that not all land is available for development. Housing has to be in the right place, and include well-planned (and sadly costly) support infrastructure. Building thousands of homes in the Cheviots or the Parph will hardly help the housing situation. Neither will building on floodplains.
You have to have housing where people want to live. And that alone reduces the amount of land available massively. And it has to be the right sort of housing.
Therefore you have a situation where some arable land can go for a million an acre or more (at housing density of 30 per acre, that adds £33,000 onto the price of a house), whilst other land is essentially worthless.
The real problem is that we have a home-owning culture. Good luck with changing that.
There's a shedload (as it were) of nonsense on housing and those Jacobites who claim that "many houses are Government-owned" shouldn't listen to the perceived nonsense of the Auchternach lunch club.
As far as local authorities are concerned, the problem with vacant sites and properties is not that they don't want to sell them but the current process mitigates against any kind of rapid action. At the same time, there is huge demand for space from two key local authority sectors - first, education. The crisis in the provision of school places is acute and not well understood. The two local schools in my immediate vicinity are both proposing increasing capacities - the Victorian primary is going from 450 now to 600 by Sept 2014. How they will do that when surrounded by housing and shops is going to be interesting.
The other huge area of demand is around residential accommodation for the elderly and mentally/physically challenged. The statutory requirements for space and design mean that a new residential home for say just 30 elderly people requires in excess of 2.5 acres of land to provide sufficient personal and access space plus amenities. Greenfield sites are as likely to be required for the requirements of an ageing population than the populist notion of starter homes for those trying to get on the property ladder.
The problem with provision of additional accommodation for an ageing population is that the accompanying infrastructure needs also to be provided. What about the medical facilities, the community centres, the shops, the transport ? It's all very well advocating huge estates of commuter-land but that's not the real requirement.
The other aspect to this is that when sites are freed up, there is a scrum down between the local authority, the "community" (aided and abetted usually by some stupid short-sighted local councillor) and prospective developers over its fate and that can drag down for months if not years. Unfortunately all too often local councillors are more interested in looking popular locally than seeing the bigger picture when it comes to requirements for land and the provision of services.
Countdown - 30 minutes
I'm not really sure what the ST columnist usefully adds. There are questions of legal process and procedure; of social work staffing and training (and any man wanting to work with children is certain to have his motives questioned, such is the zeitgeist). Then there is the quality of care itself, which often falls short of what we would wish for our own children. But social workers are damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Baby P would still be alive if taken into care but perhaps teenagers Q and R might not have been groomed and raped.
There's a shedload (as it were) of nonsense on housing and those Jacobites who claim that "many houses are Government-owned" shouldn't listen to the perceived nonsense of the Auchternach lunch club."
Auchternach ?!?!
I think you'll find the MoD and other government agencies have been looking to flog off surplus housing and land for some years.
Or we could look at where the growth in demand for extra housing comes from. There is a demographic element (more single person households) and a regional component (people move to where jobs are).
And then there is the effect of nett immigration. No nett immigration would go a distance towards solving the housing shortage.
Tim will tell me--correctly--that immigrants make a positive contribution to the economy.
Equally, they also represent a significant part of the pressure for more housing units. The vast majority of immigrants are not illegal. One party wants Britain to quit the EU, and regain control of our borders. All the other parties are keen to stay in the EU, and they are tying themselves in knots trying to over-develop some of our cities and some of our villages.
In a tolerant, ancient city like Cambridge, there is little anti-feeling towards either the EU, or nett immigration. But there is little enthusiasm for all the building work taking place, and cramming ever more people into their city. At the moment, few are making the connection.
The whole thing is exacerbated by GB's house price bubble which is general has not been pricked and in many cases house prices are double what they should be. Of course his answer would be to give out more benefits!
Read that again.
BTW, plato's view that some on the left are actually in favour of the destruction of families is misleading (except in the sense that there are always a few loonies who will endorse anything). It would be great if everyone was in a happy family and anyone who thinks otherwise is nuts. The main debate is between people who think that governments can reverse the trend to family breakdown (by exhortation, marriage tax allowances and so on) and people who think that governments have little influence on this and have to manage it (by not showing favouritism to married couples, giving child allowances, and so on). It's actually quite a difficult issue and deserves to be considered separately from the left vas right stuff. International comparisons would be interesting.
People tend to be more concerned about it being the right sort of housing, with excellent support infrastructure. And developers should be forced to build some of the infrastructure *before* the housing ...
But too often, young, successful entrepreneurs and MPs seem just not to know stuff. And policemen are getting younger.
1) Fixing the problems in the planning system will upset NIMBY voters, who make a lot of noise.
2) Like previous governments, Labour realized that the main thing that home-owning voters base their decision on is the price of their house.
The way deep-seated problems like this can get fixed is by the opposition making a lot of noise about the fact that it's going to fix the problem, then winning the election and having more to lose for breaking the promise than they'd lose by keeping it.
If you can borrow £15m at a very low rate, buy a tenanted office block in somewhere like Guildford or Woking (40,000 sq. feet at £27.50 per sq. ft.) and enjoy the rental income. The thing is only pension funds and local authorities can do that at the moment. There's also plenty of empty commercial property which could be converted into residential sites.
The point is the leading demand for land is for the provision of accommodation for the elderly (so the average 107-year old Jacobite can live in comfort into their dotage) and then for the provision of additional school capacity. The presumption that the only demand driver for housing is for start-up accommodation for young families and that all policy should be focussed to that end is just misleading especially in much of the south outside London.
And I never said it was 'impossible' to build in the right place, just that the right land is far more limited than you claim.
Don't invent what people say.
New housing is to be built on empty fields - I'll go to the foot of our stairs. It's a wonder that nobody else has ever thought of that one.
As a Master Strategy for housing goes it marks a new threshold for Labour thinking .... but wait how many Cambridgeshire fields did Labour concrete over to alleviate the housing problem in 13 years.
Answers on a postcard to a certain Cheshire farmer ....
Con 296 .. Lab 274 .. LibDem 42 .. SNP 11 .. PC 3 .. NI 18 .. Ukip 2 .. Respect 1 .. Green 1 .. Ind 1 .. Speaker 1
Hung Parliament - Conservatives 30 short of a majority.
The Tories had the same problem after 18yrs at it. Its inevitable. Bitching about why someone else hasn't fixed the mess you left has bugger all traction except with the core vote who'd pick you anyway.
Conference season will hopefully be the turning point - Ben Brogan reckons the Tories have more up their sleeves http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/benedictbrogan/100228431/tory-optimism-prompts-a-smart-change-in-strategy/
"With optimism, then, comes a bit of rethinking. I am struck by two new strands emerging from Team Dave. Until recently, for example, it was a commonplace to agree that the vast bulk of the Government's policy work was done. The legislative programme of the first two sessions of the Parliament were packed with the work of reform, education and welfare but also a host of other reforms to local government, the workings of the public sector, immigration and so on. At the half-way mark, those at the top began to feel that there was not much left to do, and talked of a dearth of new legislation for the final sessions.
The expectation was forming that the time between now and the election would be focused on delivery, not innovation. There was an acute feeling that the next Queen's Speech would not be up to much. Well, not any more. In recent conversations I have been struck by a renewed sense of energy. The recast No10 policy unit under Jo Johnson is thinking not just about the Tory manifesto, but what more could be done in the time left to this Parliament. Senior figures say that they want to demonstrate in deed their belief that the ideas and the intellectual energy are to be found on the right, not the left.
Optimism has made them ambitious. If things are going well, they believe, then they should press on and demonstrate that they can achieve more. Expect Tory conference to be used to talk up what more Tories in government hope to do before the election – and not just after it..."
To my mind the decisive driver of housing policy and reform is government will and determination. IMO Housing should be a Cabinet rank position and that minister should have as their marker the decisive action taken in the 10 years following WWII.
A wee bit flakey me thinks.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ukip/10208256/Farage-banned-from-Tory-conference.html
And it is commonplace for Oppositions not to say much about policy (and for what they do say to explore the limits of truth and honesty).
No, the problem for Labour is that there is no new talent on display. Stars emerge in Opposition but so far, none has. Where is the new Robin Cook, making his or her name by forensic dissection of HMG's case in Parliament, rather than by issuing press releases to friendly journalists a la Chuka?
The problem is the tension between the central "will" and the local "will". In an era where all parties aspire to decentralisation and localism, it becomes difficult to enforce a central directive in a way that wasn't the case in the 40s, 50s and 60s.
My title bets are looking a bit dodgy this year. Confident Red Bull will win (evens), but I'm red if Vettel does (or Alonso, but I'm thinking that's less likely now).
Got a potential bet in mind but there's a gap between back and lay for it. If the gap narrows pleasingly I'll make it.
I'm unsure about this Co-op move on 'lads' mags: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23486027
I can see their point of view... but by that logic children should never be taken to the beach in case they see a woman wearing a bikini. Unless they're on the beach in Saudi Arabia, obviously.
France continues to block sales of popular Mercedes, starting to get nasty.
http://www.lefigaro.fr/societes/2013/07/29/20005-20130729ARTFIG00197-la-colere-des-concessionnaires-mercedes-en-france.php
They're moaning down here in Kent about the forthcoming shortage of school spaces - but it was 'New' Labour running around like the good little Thatcherites they were shutting loads down in the last decade despite people endlessly pointing out the increasing birth rates!
Like so much the coalition are destroying right now (eg the NHS) Labour - particularly the vacuous and inept Blairite brand - got there first.
To estimate the likely changes in LD MPs, the 2nd most important factor after the voter poll level, is to know in how many seats are LD MPs retiring? AFAIK only 1 has announced, in Dorset. At the start of 2015, 21 LD MPs will be 60+. 12 will be 66+, 6 will be 70. At the start of 2019 12 will be 70+.
Expecting just 1 to retire seems to be well short of the reality. With health issues and facing a very difficult re-election, older sitting MPs may choose to step down and therefore the level of retirements could be higher than average, possibly 10.
"No, the problem for Labour is that there is no new talent on display. Stars emerge in Opposition but so far, none has. Where is the new Robin Cook, making his or her name by forensic dissection of HMG's case in Parliament, rather than by issuing press releases to friendly journalists a la Chuka?"
Are Labour MPs any different in quality now to what came before? I find that hard to believe - all MPs are much of a muchness - all parties have their own Jim Devine types who appear incapable of much thought or the Willetts Two-Brains intellectuals.
The Shadow Cabinet surely has talent in there - either they aren't being given their heads, haven't a clear idea what to say as there's no steer from EdM or are they the 'wrong sort' because they're Blairites *spit*?
The Tories were massacred in 1997 and had few big guns left - it didn't happen to Labour in 2010, but several chose to step down in advance or like DavidM have buggered off since.
The likes of Robin Cook don't come along very often - ditto the Nick Ridleys or Keith Josephs et al. That's why we remember them good or ill.
"Destroying the NHS", that's the sort of vacuous statement one would expect from you.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_Kingdom_Liberal_Democrat_MPs_(2010–)
As at now, four have reached 70 (including Vince), a further eight have reached 65. Some of those must be wondering whether they want another seven years from now.
And what about shirtless pictures of men? Will magazines aimed at women, or magazines about men's health/fitness be covered up?
A (hopefully constructive) question: how would you define the NHS? At its core, what is it? If you had to write a mission statement for it, what would it be?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/apr/04/ukcrime.ameliahill
2013
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/boys-quizzed-over-500-rapes-a-year-by-gangs-8335165.html
1000s and 1000s and 1000s of gang rapes committed by a gang culture the political class won't admit exists because their lobbyists don't want the PC narrative messed up.
Just like the grooming gangs.
Not sure what will happen when his daughter gets to that age; three years to go!
Until we know who's left standing - we've no idea how it will pan out.
Sex sells. It has done since the dawn of mankind.
The LibDem figure of 42 represents a net loss of 17. Scottish numbers would force the number lower but for the fact that very few potential high profile retirements have come through. This is also true of other non Scottish seats. Additionally the number of seats defended against Labour is much smaller than of the Conservatives - about 3-1. Not all Labour targets will fall and there will probably be an exchange of LibDem/Con seats at the margin.
Accordingly 42 seats is a very highly "plausible" projection and your "tim" induced mad criticism is utterly rejected.
The ARSE - never knowingly undersold.
- 111 a shambles
- A&E in meltdown
- waiting times rising fast
- Needless Privatisations of patches of the service (and we know where they lead...)
- Real terms funding cut
- Political use of scandal to close well-performing (as we speak) hospitals (like Stafford) and forcing people to travel many many more miles for health services.
Almost unrecognisable from 2010.
Labour of course started this mess with their desire to look all "efficient" (no need for efficiency in a health service). The bulk of the problems inside Stafford et al were due to desire to meet frankly arbitrary financial targets. Financialisation is now proven to be a curse when talking about public services. That curse will bite the Tories on the backside too (as it did in the 90s).
In other news - anyone else noticed the Guardian Newspaper's increasing hostility to Ed?
Cam only has 1 junior party to manage - imagine a "rainbow coalition" would need a lot of ego's massaged 24/7.
Rumours are circulating that the Co-op is thinking of banning the BBC's classical music magazine "Gramophone" after a rather too revealing front cover picture of a Steinway piano leg.
Disgusting !!