Heh, I've been banging on about it all night - I called it a reverse lottery in the previous thread. And I've seen a couple of other posters say the same thing.
This strikes against the heart of what most Conservatives value, which is the home. Having a one in five chance of having then thing you've worked hard all your life to pay for and hope to pass on to your children affects all of us, even if it only *potentially* affects 1 in 5 of us.
That's why it's so utterly toxic in a way, say, the bedroom tax never was. The bedroom "tax" you knew affected you because you could look over your shoulder and see you lived in a council house with a spare bedroom. A small number of people and an even smaller number of Conservative voters. The dementia tax potentially affects all of us. And it really feels like a kick in the balls on top of a dementia diagnosis, which is scary and horrible enough as it is.
My mistake, I've not been keeping up with this evening's comments - I was referring to debate earlier in the day. But anyway we are on the same page. It is grossly unfair. If you get cancer and need ridiculously expensive drugs the NHS will pay (or for most of them - but that's another debate), but if you get dementia: tough tits.
Exactly.
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
I think for a start there should be a cap Cameron proposed £72,000, maybe the cap could be bigger or smaller depending on your totoal assests but not having a cap except the last £100,00....no I don't agree with. We had a commission which is being ignored.
Nunu,
The £72k cap is deceptive. It does not mean that you only pay up to £72k and then no more. I learned all this when I was researching care home funding for my father. I'm too tired to explain it now but if you have a look at Saga's website they have a very good guide to funding and what the £72k cap actually means.
As someone who been through all this my view is that the Tory manifesto proposal is a considerably better than the current situation. I'm sure Labour would love to spend £3bn or whatever on care funding but I doubt they have any idea where it would come from.
Good night.
At least there is a cap.
There is no cap at all at the moment, nor was one likely to be introduced. As this row shows, no painless solutions are on offer. But some kind of urgent action is need, as the endless funding crisis in social care demonstrates.
There is a definite commitment in the 2015 manifesto to a cap - the date was moved to 2019/20 iirc, but there was still going to be a cap. So, yes, no cap at the moment, but for people looking ahead there was going to be one.
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
My condolences to you. I am sorry you had this horrible experience. It is a vile and cruel disease.
Yes, it was the most difficult time of my life. Thank you for your posts today.
But there was going to be a cap. That has been taken away. It doesn't help people who have just been through this stuff, and I feel for you as I face the exact same scenario - but at least there was a position in the future we could plan for.
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
Survation tonight has a 12% Tory lead and most voters approving, including over 60% of Tories, of the WFA means test
I think for a start there should be a cap Cameron proposed £72,000, maybe the cap could be bigger or smaller depending on your totoal assests but not having a cap except the last £100,00....no I don't agree with. We had a commission which is being ignored.
Nunu,
The £72k cap is deceptive. It does not mean that you only pay up to £72k and then no more. I learned all this when I was researching care home funding for my father. I'm too tired to explain it now but if you have a look at Saga's website they have a very good guide to funding and what the £72k cap actually means.
As someone who been through all this my view is that the Tory manifesto proposal is a considerably better than the current situation. I'm sure Labour would love to spend £3bn or whatever on care funding but I doubt they have any idea where it would come from.
I hope you and your family are never put in this position. I wouldn't wish dementia (and there are many forms of it) on anyone. Trying to arrange care and organise finances when you are witnessing the mental and physical deterioration of a loved one adds to the distress. The whole process could be made much more family-friendly. I was in the process of writing to my MP about this (amongst other issues, including my experience of the inquest process) when the election was called. She is likely to get re-elected so I will write to her then. Social and nursing care for the elderly and how it is funded is an issue I feel very strongly about.
I feel for you. Is Clown Car HQ a reference, by chance, to a certain well-known Labour leader and his entourage or just coincidence ?
Actually no. It is a reference to Dave'n'George's handling of the referendum. Heresy to some on this site I realise, but there it is. I kept getting a mental image of Laurel and Hardy driving along in their concertinered car with bits dropping off.
Interesting that the YouGov poll, on the basis of electoralcalculus.co.uk, is only a two percent swing away from a hung parliament.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
I suspect Operation Hit Corbyn and McD with their past will be launched on Monday to kill this clusterf****.
Maybe late though - aren't postal ballots on their way and being returned this weekend?
I think for a start there should be a cap Cameron proposed £72,000, maybe the cap could be bigger or smaller depending on your totoal assests but not having a cap except the last £100,00....no I don't agree with. We had a commission which is being ignored.
Nunu,
The £72k cap is deceptive. It does not mean that you only pay up to £72k and then no more. I learned all this when I was researching care home funding for my father. I'm too tired to explain it now but if you have a look at Saga's website they have a very good guide to funding and what the £72k cap actually means.
As someone who been through all this my view is that the Tory manifesto proposal is a considerably better than the current situation. I'm sure Labour would love to spend £3bn or whatever on care funding but I doubt they have any idea where it would come from.
I hope you and your family are never put in this position. I wouldn't wish dementia (and there are many forms of it) on anyone. Trying to arrange care and organise finances when you are witnessing the mental and physical deterioration of a loved one adds to the distress. The whole process could be made much more family-friendly. I was in the process of writing to my MP about this (amongst other issues, including my experience of the inquest process) when the election was called. She is likely to get re-elected so I will write to her then. Social and nursing care for the elderly and how it is funded is an issue I feel very strongly about.
I feel for you. Is Clown Car HQ a reference, by chance, to a certain well-known Labour leader and his entourage or just coincidence ?
Actually no. It is a reference to Dave'n'George's handling of the referendum. Heresy to some on this site I realise, but there it is. I kept getting a mental image of Laurel and Hardy driving along in their concertinered car with bits dropping off.
Heh, I've been banging on about it all night - I called it a reverse lottery in the previous thread. And I've seen a couple of other posters say the same thing.
This strikes against the heart of what most Conservatives value, which is the home. Having a one in five chance of having then thing you've worked hard all your life to pay for and hope to pass on to your children affects all of us, even if it only *potentially* affects 1 in 5 of us.
That's why it's so utterly toxic in a way, say, the bedroom tax never was. The bedroom "tax" you knew affected you because you could look over your shoulder and see you lived in a council house with a spare bedroom. A small number of people and an even smaller number of Conservative voters. The dementia tax potentially affects all of us. And it really feels like a kick in the balls on top of a dementia diagnosis, which is scary and horrible enough as it is.
My mistake, I've not been keeping up with this evening's comments - I was referring to debate earlier in the day. But anyway we are on the same page. It is grossly unfair. If you get cancer and need ridiculously expensive drugs the NHS will pay (or for most of them - but that's another debate), but if you get dementia: tough tits.
Exactly.
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
Yes well we already have Survation out tonight entirely post manifesto and no need to hypothesise the figures are already there, the policy has clearly produced a slight swing from the Tories to Labour in the South from 2015 where the average house price is about £300k+ BUT in the North and Midlands where the average house price is about £150k+ there is still a big swing from Labour to the Tories since 2015 and the latter are where most of the marginal are
I think for a start there should be a cap Cameron proposed £72,000, maybe the cap could be bigger or smaller depending on your totoal assests but not having a cap except the last £100,00....no I don't agree with. We had a commission which is being ignored.
Nunu,
The £72k cap is deceptive. It does not mean that you only pay up to £72k and then no more. I learned all this when I was researching care home funding for my father. I'm too tired to explain it now but if you have a look at Saga's website they have a very good guide to funding and what the £72k cap actually means.
As someone who been through all this my view is that the Tory manifesto proposal is a considerably better than the current situation. I'm sure Labour would love to spend £3bn or whatever on care funding but I doubt they have any idea where it would come from.
I hope you and your family are never put in this position. I wouldn't wish dementia (and there are many forms of it) on anyone. Trying to arrange care and organise finances when you are witnessing the mental and physical deterioration of a loved one adds to the distress. The whole process could be made much more family-friendly. I was in the process of writing to my MP about this (amongst other issues, including my experience of the inquest process) when the election was called. She is likely to get re-elected so I will write to her then. Social and nursing care for the elderly and how it is funded is an issue I feel very strongly about.
I feel for you. Is Clown Car HQ a reference, by chance, to a certain well-known Labour leader and his entourage or just coincidence ?
Actually no. It is a reference to Dave'n'George's handling of the referendum. Heresy to some on this site I realise, but there it is. I kept getting a mental image of Laurel and Hardy driving along in their concertinered car with bits dropping off.
"Labour is facing a parliamentary wipeout on June 8th. The defeat will be greater than 1983 with the leading figures such as Tom Watson, Dennis Skinner and Caroline Flint facing defeat while many others, including Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner, are teetering on the brink. Currently Labour is set to lose just over 90 seats but a relatively small deterioration of the party’s position on the ground could see dozens more fall. These are the findings of new analysis by Uncut based on the views of dozens of Labour candidates, party officials and activists following the past three weeks of intensive canvassing."
It's in the interests of these bloggers to exaggerate the extent of Labour's troubles so that it gets the doorknockers out. The Tories need to be wary of such reports and of thinking the job is done.
Interesting that the YouGov poll, on the basis of electoralcalculus.co.uk, is only a two percent swing away from a hung parliament.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
No, as UNS is of little use when the main swing to Labour is in the South while there is a big swing to the Tories in the North
Interesting that the YouGov poll, on the basis of electoralcalculus.co.uk, is only a two percent swing away from a hung parliament.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
This is probably peak Labour and the lowest ebb for the Tories - short of direct Con > Lab switchers Labour are probably at their ceiling right now. Meanwhile although the Tories are down, their vote seems to be holding up in the marginals where it matters the most. The dementia tax may change that narrative, but I'm inclined to think the more possiblie Corbyn looks as a future PM, the more people will turn away from Labour.
Theresa May has definitely blown her chances of the 150+ majority we were all talking about last week though. 50-100 would be a good result for her now.
Interesting that the YouGov poll, on the basis of electoralcalculus.co.uk, is only a two percent swing away from a hung parliament.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
Talking to people I know and family and work and in the local pubs - Labour are doomed - utterly sunk. But I may be in an echo chamber. And I am beginning to wonder whether this is 1970 again and a surprise result (and as a side note the Liberals lost half their seats)
My condolences to you. I am sorry you had this horrible experience. It is a vile and cruel disease.
Yes, it was the most difficult time of my life. Thank you for your posts today.
But there was going to be a cap. That has been taken away. It doesn't help people who have just been through this stuff, and I feel for you as I face the exact same scenario - but at least there was a position in the future we could plan for.
There was a cap promised by Osborne and Cameron. As the Saga article makes clear, it was not a 72k cap.
If you have made plans based on a politician's promise, then ... I wish you plenty of luck.
There is no cap at the moment, and while I agree with you that cancer and dementia should be treated the same, this is not the case now, and nor has it ever been.
There are 300,000 elderly people in residential care at the moment, Fees are 30k a year, so the existing bill just for residential care is 9 billion per annum (a substantial part of this is paid by individuals at the moment. Only if you have assets less than 25k do you become eligible for state help)
There are a much larger number of elderly receiving care in their homes. Although this is cheaper to deliver, there are many more people who need it.
The bill is enormous. It is a huge problem for politicians to be honest about this. If we want free social care for everyone, then there is a significant amount of extra money that will need to be raised by taxes.
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
Yes well we already have Survation out tonight entirely post manifesto and no need to hypothesise the figures are already there, the policy has clearly produced a slight swing from the Tories to Labour in the South from 2015 where the average house price is about £300k+ BUT in the North and Midlands where the average house price is about £150k+ there is still a big swing from Labour to the Tories since 2015 and the latter are where most of the marginal are
I want to see how this plays out over the next few days. The implications of the Dementia Tax will take a couple of days to sink in, then you will get people discussing it in the pubs or over a sunday roast with their families this weekend, or reading the sunday papers. Saying "the policy was announced on Thursday and this poll was done on Friday so everything's all OK" doesn't ring true for me.
I think for a start there should be a cap Cameron proposed £72,000, maybe the cap could be bigger or smaller depending on your totoal assests but not having a cap except the last £100,00....no I don't agree with. We had a commission which is being ignored.
Nunu,
The £72k cap is deceptive. It does not mean that you only pay up to £72k and then no more. I learned all this when I was researching care home funding for my father. I'm too tired to explain it now but if you have a look at Saga's website they have a very good guide to funding and what the £72k cap actually means.
As someone who been through all this my view is that the Tory manifesto proposal is a considerably better than the current situation. I'm sure Labour would love to spend £3bn or whatever on care funding but I doubt they have any idea where it would come from.
Good night.
At least there is a cap.
There is no cap at all at the moment, nor was one likely to be introduced. As this row shows, no painless solutions are on offer. But some kind of urgent action is need, as the endless funding crisis in social care demonstrates.
There is a definite commitment in the 2015 manifesto to a cap - the date was moved to 2019/20 iirc, but there was still going to be a cap. So, yes, no cap at the moment, but for people looking ahead there was going to be one.
For my own family situation I had relied on that.
I had looked into this because of my own family situation, and - as others have indicated - the definition of care costs is so narrow that, in actuarial terms, the proposed cap would be of no benefit to most people.
Not that that means that the total costs associated with care would be less than £72,000 for most people - far from it!
The problem with this care proposal is that it is being perceived as inheritance tax.
SNIP
SNIP
SNIP
SNIP
Why should my parents be subsidised by people on average incomes?
why should people from humbler backgrounds, whose only asset is likely to be their home, see it whittled away to nothing while their more feckless peers get given care for free?
Firstly because it's not whittled away to nothing, there's a £100k threshold, and secondly if they are that humble, the excess value of their home over that threshold is not likely to be that great.
You are a working class woman in a marginal northern constituency. You were born on a council estate, but were the first person in your family to go to uni. You bought your first house - a little two up two down - in 1983 which, incidentally, was the first time you voted Tory. You worked hard in the 80s and 90s and moved up the property ladder.
You are now approaching retirement and apart from your pension pot, your main asset is your home, which you love and cherish and you raised your two children in it. You hope to pass it on to them. It is worth 450,000. Your sister in law's uncle was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago so you have personal experience of how horrific dementia is.
How does the Dementia Tax play out for you?
You do realise that now we have tuition fees in parts of the UK and parents also bearing the brunt of students living costs via either accomadation etc, these same parents are now seeing their monthly outgoings in wages or savings going towards investing their childrens futures far earlier than before. We are also now seeing children staying at home far longer than used to and these same children now taking longer to get on the property ladder, and often only with the help of parents in financial position to do this.
There is already a perception building among parents that they are actually having to bring forward this supposed 'inheritance' investment in their children's future much sooner. As a result of this, I suspect that many parents are now already planning for a finacial retirement that has seen them passing on far more of their savings in a more targeted way to their children when it was needed before they might require long term care or they pass away.
I will be vox popping my two lifelong Tory parents when I speak to them tomorrow, they are generally pretty good bellweathers on normal (non PB) Tory attitudes to the latest stories.
Labour need to hammer home on this for the rest of the campaign, Corbyn has had a decent campaign so far so I think they actually will stick on message - no barnacles. Not that I think the end result will be anything other than a Tory landslide despite this wobble.
The other benefit for Labour is that we are no longer talking about Brexit (it's also been one of the few days in a long time with no Brexit discussions on the PB comments, a nice change!)
Interesting that the YouGov poll, on the basis of electoralcalculus.co.uk, is only a two percent swing away from a hung parliament.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
Talking to people I know and family and work and in the local pubs - Labour are doomed - utterly sunk. But I may be in an echo chamber. And I am beginning to wonder whether this is 1970 again and a surprise result (and as a side note the Liberals lost half their seats)
No, as Heath won big in the marginal rich Midlands (helped ironically by Powell) where May still has a large lead, the main Labour gains are in the South which does little for Corbyn in terms of seats
This strikes against the heart of what most Conservatives value, which is the home.
Excuse the snip;
The problem here is that conservatives value the home so much that they implemented a pile of policies that sometimes accidentally, but often deliberately inflated the value of peoples homes. Blair/Brown pandered to this to win marginal votes, of course.
House prices - and the cost of living - has ballooned.
What has been created is monumental unfairness that - now they're in power and without a viable opposition -the tories are having to grapple with.
Can a homecarer be a conservative? Can they, too, own their own home - earning £9/hour, working on-demand shifts, paying for their own transport?
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
Yes well we already have Survation out tonight entirely post manifesto and no need to hypothesise the figures are already there, the policy has clearly produced a slight swing from the Tories to Labour in the South from 2015 where the average house price is about £300k+ BUT in the North and Midlands where the average house price is about £150k+ there is still a big swing from Labour to the Tories since 2015 and the latter are where most of the marginal are
I want to see how this plays out over the next few days. The implications of the Dementia Tax will take a couple of days to sink in, then you will get people discussing it in the pubs or over a sunday roast with their families this weekend, or reading the sunday papers. Saying "the policy was announced on Thursday and this poll was done on Friday so everything's all OK" doesn't ring true for me.
The results are entirely in line with what I predicted (albeit I thought it would benefit the LDs in the South more than Labour), if your house is worth £150k and you get to keep £100k of that ie 2/3 when you need care as is the situation in most areas north of Watford May's policy will barely bother you at all, if however you live in the South and your house is worth £300k and you have to lose 2/3 of its value to pay for social care May's policy certainly will bother you, hence there is a small Tory to Labour swing BUT it stops at Watford and then goes dramatically into reverse!
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
I suspect Operation Hit Corbyn and McD with their past will be launched on Monday to kill this clusterf****.
Maybe late though - aren't postal ballots on their way and being returned this weekend?
Most postals are out on Monday/Tuesday, arriving the next day I believe. Although a few have already been received and the keenest have already voted.....
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
I suspect Operation Hit Corbyn and McD with their past will be launched on Monday to kill this clusterf****.
Maybe late though - aren't postal ballots on their way and being returned this weekend?
Some will be on the way and some are returned quickly.
I suspect that those which get returned immediately are by those who always vote the same way.
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
Yes well we already have Survation out tonight entirely post manifesto and no need to hypothesise the figures are already there, the policy has clearly produced a slight swing from the Tories to Labour in the South from 2015 where the average house price is about £300k+ BUT in the North and Midlands where the average house price is about £150k+ there is still a big swing from Labour to the Tories since 2015 and the latter are where most of the marginal are
I want to see how this plays out over the next few days. The implications of the Dementia Tax will take a couple of days to sink in, then you will get people discussing it in the pubs or over a sunday roast with their families this weekend, or reading the sunday papers. Saying "the policy was announced on Thursday and this poll was done on Friday so everything's all OK" doesn't ring true for me.
The results are entirely in line with what I predicted (albeit I thought it would benefit the LDs in the South more than Labour), if your house is worth £150k and you get to keep £100k of that ie 2/3 when you need care as is the situation in most areas north of Watford May's policy will barely bother you at all, if however you live in the South and your house is worth £300k and you have to lose 2/3 of its value to pay for social care May's policy certainly will bother you, hence there is a Tory to Labour swing BUT it stops at Watford and then goes dramatically into reverse!
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
Survation tonight has a 12% Tory lead and most voters approving, including over 60% of Tories, of the WFA means test
Go and argue with David Herdson - he's talking to people in the real world in marginal constituencies yet because he doesn't report the same as your bleats you don't want to know.
Those who wont listen to constructive criticism from the well meaning usually suffer disaster.
Funny reading some of the comments tonight. Have a lot of you been drinking? (Well, duh.) Maybe some of you have been indulging in something stronger, and that's what's fueled this paranoia.
Corbyn isn't going to win. Are you crazy? The Tories have been on 40%+ since May became leader and they're currently averaging 45%+. They were nailed-on when she called the election and they're nailed on today. Some people in Corbyn's Labour are quite clever; they've turned the tables on the Tory love-in with the pensioners, and there's also certainly a mood at large of "If Brexit then why not Water nationalisation" and some of those on the Paradoxical Right who supported Brexit for frankly daft reasons should have been more aware of what they were stirring up when they were happy to go along with the Daily-Mail myth that everything was better in the 1960s.
The great thing about the last few days is that it's brought a lot of Tories down to earth with a bump. Most of them have been in a state of self-delusion for months, believing their own hype and coming under the spell of Old Mother May, imagining somehow that she's different from that mediocre politician with the same name who was home secretary under Cameron.
The truth is that May will win on June 8th and the next five years will be poor.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
Re the expected post-manifest launch polls, I'd be anticipating a substantial drop in the Tory lead, possibly into single figures.
I've been canvassing this afternoon and the Winter Fuel Allowance policy announcement has gone down like a bucket of cold sick. This is not because people disagree with the policy; it is because people disagree with what they think is the policy (i.e. that it's going to be scrapped).
That, combined with a failure to hit Labour over its own policy launch and, hence, people thinking more about Labour's policies (which are quite popular individually) rather than whether they're credible as a package or whether Corbyn and co could implement them - or whether they're capable of leading the country - has significantly reduced the negatives towards Labour.
CCHQ needs to up its game.
Survation tonight has a 12% Tory lead and most voters approving, including over 60% of Tories, of the WFA means test
Go and argue with David Herdson - he's talking to people in the real world in marginal constituencies yet because he doesn't report the same as your bleats you don't want to know.
Those who wont listen to constructive criticism from the well meaning usually suffer disaster.
In the South on tonight's polls there is an anti Tory swing unlike the very pro Tory swing in the North and Midlands and Wales and Scotland which is also showing in the polls, you cannot just look at UNS and I do plenty of phoning in marginals myself across the country
The problem with this care proposal is that it is being perceived as inheritance tax.
SNIP
SNIP
SNIP
SNIP
Why should my parents be subsidised by people on average incomes?
why should people from humbler backgrounds, whose only asset is likely to be their home, see it whittled away to nothing while their more feckless peers get given care for free?
Firstly because it's not whittled away to nothing, there's a £100k threshold, and secondly if they are that humble, the excess value of their home over that threshold is not likely to be that great.
You are a working class woman in a marginal northern constituency. You were born on a council estate, but were the first person in your family to go to uni. You bought your first house - a little two up two down - in 1983 which, incidentally, was the first time you voted Tory. You worked hard in the 80s and 90s and moved up the property ladder.
You are now approaching retirement and apart from your pension pot, your main asset is your home, which you love and cherish and you raised your two children in it. You hope to pass it on to them. It is worth 450,000. Your sister in law's uncle was diagnosed with dementia a few years ago so you have personal experience of how horrific dementia is.
How does the Dementia Tax play out for you?
You do realise that now we have tuition fees in parts of the UK and parents also bearing the brunt of students living costs via either accomadation etc, these same parents are now seeing their monthly outgoings in wages or savings going towards investing their childrens futures far earlier than before. We are also now seeing children staying at home far longer than used to and these same children now taking longer to get on the property ladder, and often only with the help of parents in financial position to do this.
There is already a perception building among parents that they are actually having to bring forward this supposed 'inheritance' investment in their children's future much sooner. As a result of this, I suspect that many parents are now already planning for a finacial retirement that has seen them passing on far more of their savings in a more targeted way to their children when it was needed before they might require long term care or they pass away.
Having kids is now a very expensive business indeed. I'd rather go without, tbh.
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
Yes well we already have Survation out tonight entirely post manifesto and no need to hypothesise the figures are already there, the policy has clearly produced a slight swing from the Tories to Labour in the South from 2015 where the average house price is about £300k+ BUT in the North and Midlands where the average house price is about £150k+ there is still a big swing from Labour to the Tories since 2015 and the latter are where most of the marginal are
I want to see how this plays out over the next few days. The implications of the Dementia Tax will take a couple of days to sink in, then you will get people discussing it in the pubs or over a sunday roast with their families this weekend, or reading the sunday papers. Saying "the policy was announced on Thursday and this poll was done on Friday so everything's all OK" doesn't ring true for me.
The results are entirely in line with what I predicted (albeit I thought it would benefit the LDs in the !
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Bleat your Corbynista rhetoric as much as you want BUT the evidence is there, the only area it is really making headway is Southern England because house prices there are well above average
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Bleat your Corbynista rhetoric as much as you want BUT the evidence is there, the only area it is really making headway is Southern England because house prices there are well above average
Lol, not a corbynista. A Conservative who's very worried May is blowing her chance to wipe the hard left off the face of British politics for a generation and quite scared that if Corbyn gets 35% not only does he have a mandate to stay on, but either he or his anointed successor could win in 2022.
I see this week as being full of unforced errors from the Conservatives and that doesn't bode well either for June 8th or the next 5 years.
I will be a happy man if next week's polling shows this to have been nothing more than a momentary wobble.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
On tonight's Survation there is a 7% swing to the Tories in the Midlands, there is a 10% swing to the Tories in the North East in today's ORB and there is a swing to the Tories in Scotland, there is a 1-2% swing to Labour in the South though which means Corbyn is doing a bit better in the national polls but in terms of marginal seats it means very little, even on a 5% swing from Tory to Labour in the South Labour would only pick up 12 Tory seats across the South East, South West and East, on a 5% swing from Labour to the Tories in the Midlands, the North and Wales by contrast the Tories would pick up 30 Labour seats http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative
I should add that the fact that Corbyn is sh*t is already priced-in: by and large, people know that he's a loony lefty, so increased ad hom attacks won't have much effect. I'm campaigning for him *even though* I sympathise with those here in Birmingham who won't touch him because of the IRA connection. I think there is a general feeling, one that extends even to the Mail, that May is going to win but she'd not really that good so she shouldn't be given a huge majority. That's why the Tory press is still only in 2nd/3rd gear. If it really did look like there was any prospect of a hung parliament, only then would the big guns come out.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
According to the polls Labour have gone from a low of 23% at the start of the campaign to 35% now. Seems a bit unlikely, especially when you take that LabourUncut article into account.
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Bleat your Corbynista rhetoric as much as you want BUT the evidence is there, the only area it is really making headway is Southern England because house prices there are well above average
Lol, not a corbynista. A Conservative who's very worried May is blowing her chance to wipe the hard left off the face of British politics for a generation and quite scared that if Corbyn gets 35% not only does he have a mandate to stay on, but either he or his anointed successor could win in 2022.
I see this week as being full of unforced errors from the Conservatives and that doesn't bode well either for June 8th or the next 5 years.
I will be a happy man if next week's polling shows this to have been nothing more than a momentary wobble.
May's mission is not to wipe the hard left from the face of the earth, that will never happen (look at Melenchon and Sanders and Tsipras to see that post crash there is a significant level of support for populist leftism), it is to increase her majority for the tough decisions she will have to take over the next 5 years and that is what she is doing. Who leads Labour is not May's problem!
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
According to the polls Labour have gone from a low of 23% at the start of the campaign to 35% now. Seems a bit unlikely, especially when you take that LabourUncut article into account.
Looking at how the minor parties have been squeezed, I think it’s quite possible Labour are at 35%. - Whether they remain there or fall back a tad, remains to be seen.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
According to the polls Labour have gone from a low of 23% at the start of the campaign to 35% now. Seems a bit unlikely, especially when you take that LabourUncut article into account.
Looking at how the minor parties have been squeezed, I think it’s quite possible Labour are at 35%. - Whether they remain there or fall back a tad, remains to be seen.
May called a general election on 18th April, Yougov on 13th April had it Tory 44%, Labour 23%, LD 12%, UKIP 10% so the Tory voteshare is unchanged just Corbyn has picked up from other parties.
Survation on 22nd April had it Tory 40% Labour 29% LD 11% and UKIP 11% so the Tories are up 6% and Labour up 5% from then, again by squeezing the LDs and UKIP http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-2
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Bleat your Corbynista rhetoric as much as you want BUT the evidence is there, the only area it is really making headway is Southern England because house prices there are well above average
Lol, not a corbynista. A Conservative who's very worried May is blowing her chance to wipe the hard left off the face of British politics for a generation and quite scared that if Corbyn gets 35% not only does he have a mandate to stay on, but either he or his anointed successor could win in 2022.
I see this week as being full of unforced errors from the Conservatives and that doesn't bode well either for June 8th or the next 5 years.
I will be a happy man if next week's polling shows this to have been nothing more than a momentary wobble.
May's mission is not to wipe the hard left from the face of the earth, that will never happen (look at Melenchon and Sanders and Tsipras to see that post crash there is a significant level of support for populist leftism), it is to increase her majority for the tough decisions she will have to take over the next 5 years and that is what she is doing. Who leads Labour is not May's problem!
I disagree.
History won't remember this election as the one where a Conservative party leader went to the polls to get a bigger working majority to push through Brexit. History will remember this as either the election where the hard left was stomped out of power for a generation or more, or the election where the hard left was finally allowed a seat at the big table and became a real contender, enabling it to build a platform for a possible run at 2022 with the same manifesto but a more popular leader. And by 2027 Britain is Venezuela. That is what is at stake here. Nothing less.
May's job is not just to win this election, it is to thoroughly refute Corbyn's brand of socialism, to stomp on it the way you stomp on a cockroach, instinctively and absolutely - because the alternative is too much to bear.
You're not going to win many votes by claiming that if Labour wins it'll turn Britain into Venezuela. If you have such extreme opinions you should realise that you're a bit of a nutter and keep it to yourself.
I seriously don't believe the people answering the poll questions went through your rationale before answering. This is the problem with the policy - the fine print may make sense and many people may be better off than they were before, but it is much easier for the opposition to shout dementia tax for the next three weeks to eat away at the vast majority of the public who don't pay close attention to policy detail.
Bleat your Corbynista rhetoric as much as you want BUT the evidence is there, the only area it is really making headway is Southern England because house prices there are well above average
Lol, not a corbynista. A Conservative who's very worried May is blowing her chance to wipe the hard left off the face of British politics for a generation and quite scared that if Corbyn gets 35% not only does he have a mandate to stay on, but either he or his anointed successor could win in 2022.
I see this week as being full of unforced errors from the Conservatives and that doesn't bode well either for June 8th or the next 5 years.
I will be a happy man if next week's polling shows this to have been nothing more than a momentary wobble.
May's !
I disagree.
History won't remember this election as the one where a Conservative party leader went to the polls to get a bigger working majority to push through Brexit. History will remember this as either the election where the hard left was stomped out of power for a generation or more, or the election where the hard left was finally allowed a seat at the big table and became a real contender, enabling it to build a platform for a possible run at 2022 with the same manifesto but a more popular leader. And by 2027 Britain is Venezuela. That is what is at stake here. Nothing less.
May's job is not just to win this election, it is to thoroughly refute Corbyn's brand of socialism, to stomp on it the way you stomp on a cockroach, instinctively and absolutely - because the alternative is too much to bear.
No, not even Thatcher could destroy socialism completely and May is certainly not going to be able to. Corbyn is the symptom of a global phenomenon where about a quarter to a third of voters are willing to consider the populist leftism of Sanders or Melenchon or Corbyn or Syriza or Podemos after the crash, there is nothing May can do about it, all she needs to focus on is just ensuring that she still gets a clear majority to back her
History won't remember this election as the one where a Conservative party leader went to the polls to get a bigger working majority to push through Brexit. History will remember this as either the election where the hard left was stomped out of power for a generation or more, or the election where the hard left was finally allowed a seat at the big table and became a real contender, enabling it to build a platform for a possible run at 2022 with the same manifesto but a more popular leader. And by 2027 Britain is Venezuela. That is what is at stake here. Nothing less.
May's job is not just to win this election, it is to thoroughly refute Corbyn's brand of socialism, to stomp on it the way you stomp on a cockroach, instinctively and absolutely - because the alternative is too much to bear.
Rubbish, not even Thatcher could destroy socialism completely and May is certainly not going to be able to. Corbyn is the symptom of a global phenomenon where about a quarter to a third of voters are willing to consider the populist leftism of Sanders or Melenchon or Corbyn or Syriza or Podemos after the crash, there is nothing May can do about it, all she needs to focus on is just ensuring that she still gets a clear majority to back her
I didn't say forever, I said for a generation. 1983 cleaned house from then until now, that's pretty good going. I would prefer the next time the main opposition party advocates basket case socialism to be some time around 2050 rather than 2022. Sadly Theresa May's lacklustre performance thus far makes the latter more likely.
Don't forget that Thatcher claimed her greatest achievement was New Labour.
History won't remember this election as the one where a Conservative party leader went to the polls to get a bigger working majority to push through Brexit. History will remember this as either the election where the hard left was stomped out of power for a generation or more, or the election where the hard left was finally allowed a seat at the big table and became a real contender, enabling it to build a platform for a possible run at 2022 with the same manifesto but a more popular leader. And by 2027 Britain is Venezuela. That is what is at stake here. Nothing less.
May's job is not just to win this election, it is to thoroughly refute Corbyn's brand of socialism, to stomp on it the way you stomp on a cockroach, instinctively and absolutely - because the alternative is too much to bear.
Rubbish, not even Thatcher could destroy socialism completely and May is certainly not going to be able to. Corbyn is the symptom of a global phenomenon where about a quarter to a third of voters are willing to consider the populist leftism of Sanders or Melenchon or Corbyn or Syriza or Podemos after the crash, there is nothing May can do about it, all she needs to focus on is just ensuring that she still gets a clear majority to back her
I didn't say forever, I said for a generation. 1983 cleaned house from then until now, that's pretty good going. I would prefer the next time the main opposition party advocates basket case socialism to be some time around 2050 rather than 2022. Sadly Theresa May's lacklustre performance thus far makes the latter more likely.
Don't forget that Thatcher claimed her greatest achievement was New Labour.
On that note, good night all.
In 1983 the SDP polled 25%, were the LDs stronger then Corbyn would be polling about the same as Foot, again it is not May's fault they are so weak, she is polling over the 42% Thatcher got in 1983 in both tonight's Survation and Yougov polls
Scotland 23 22 47 North East 33 35 North West 46 42 Y&H 41 40 West Mids 51 34 East Mids 47 37 Wales 37 43 Eastern 52 27 London 39 42 South East 57 23 South West 54 25
At least, these are more believable.
The north-east could be a disaster for Labour if these figures are anything like accurate. Labour were 21.57% ahead there in 2015. Now 2%. Blyth Valley and Sedgefield could be in play.
Why does the north east figure only sum to 68 when the rest are around 80+?
Scotland 23 22 47 North East 33 35 North West 46 42 Y&H 41 40 West Mids 51 34 East Mids 47 37 Wales 37 43 Eastern 52 27 London 39 42 South East 57 23 South West 54 25
At least, these are more believable.
The north-east could be a disaster for Labour if these figures are anything like accurate. Labour were 21.57% ahead there in 2015. Now 2%. Blyth Valley and Sedgefield could be in play.
Why does the north east figure only sum to 68 when the rest are around 80+?
It's not like Labour have fought back and impressed, lot of this is down to the Conservatives letting Labour get back into this with some shocking unpopular policies and rhetoric here. I mean they have deliberately gone after traditional Tory voters here with some of those policies.
I've not at all been impressed with May since she has taken over and the Tory campaign hasn't impressed either. Is she Lucky she is going against Corbyn and a hard left Labour? A Labour party close to the center with a decent leader would have been interesting to see...
I think the majority will be closer to 50 than to 100. If it's less than 50 I expect some within the party wondering why and looking at May.
By the way, the theory that the Lib Dems do well when Labour do well is looking in tatters at the moment.
I've never heard that theory. The sum of Labour share plus LibDem share is remarkably static, as is the sum of Tory plus UKIP share.
I think Dr Fox of this parish subscribes to it. I think it applies more to seats than share of the vote to be fair. But I don't fancy the chances of the Lib Dems right now.
Yez, I have postulated that theory. It requires tactical voting.
I am getting more bullish on the LDs though. All this stuff is good for Lamb. Brexit is off the menu. No one cares. We are an Island and interested ininsular affairs.
I've bitten the bullet and bought some "Theresa really has buggered this up" insurance.
As far as Wales is concerned the Labour Uncut figures is flawed. It appears to be using the Electoral Calculus approach of simply using 2015 figures for Plaid...no attempt made to model Plaid vote.
One of Jeremy Corbyn’s closest aides has told Labour candidates that they should not discuss the leader with voters, admitting that his unpopularity is a “sensitive subject”.
In a conference call conducted on Wednesday, a tape of which has been passed to this newspaper, Steve Howell — Corbyn’s deputy director of communications — was quizzed about how to deal with voters who “openly criticise” the leader and Diane Abbott, the gaffe-prone shadow home secretary.
A question submitted by Danny Hackett, Labour’s candidate in Old Bexley and Sidcup, gave warning that “lifelong Labour voters cannot support us with the leadership team we have”.
Howell responded by urging candidates to concentrate on Labour’s manifesto rather than entering into conversation about Corbyn.
He said: “This is obviously within the party a sensitive subject . . . I think the focus of the response to that should be on the manifesto and on the policies rather than individuals.”
Imagine that's fairly standard practice for topics you are weak on... Does make me wonder though - keep the manifesto, ditch Corbyn for some young, good looking leader with no back story - where would Labour be polling now?
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
Lots of detailed regional and seat by seat analysis, supposedly from inside Labour
What Miliband the assassin of the Labour Party! If only he'd lost his seat in 2010 most people wouldn't have heard of Theresa May and no one would have heard of Jeremy Corbyn.
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
When are they towing the UK into the South Atlantic?
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
People seem to be very down on TM at the moment. Personally I think she is setting herself up well to be PM for a long time.
Given her lead she was always going to win. But instead she took this election as an opportunity to reform the conservatives substantially. She's building a new coalition of voters that will let her hold onto power for a long time.
When the dust settles - she will have swapped a small majority and some very challenging tax and spend promises for a much larger majority and freedom to manoeuvre on domestic policy.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
People seem to be very down on TM at the moment. Personally I think she is setting herself up well to be PM for a long time.
Tories only ever panic in a crisis.
This will pass. The nervous nellies will calm down and we'll have a government that finally confronts an issue its predecessors of all stripes had wished would go away but has progressively got worse. Is the proposed solution perfect? Far from it, but at least its substantial and on the table. The onus is on the decriers of the 'dementia tax' to suggest workable alternatives.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
When are they towing the UK into the South Atlantic?
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
There's a noticeable difference being a member of Wimbledon and queuing all night for a perch on Henman Hill.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
All wrong unfortunately. I think Hague had it right when he said the results at the end of the campaign are seldom different from those at the start. So expect the Tories around 46% and Labour around 28%
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
When are they towing the UK into the South Atlantic?
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
There's a noticeable difference being a member of Wimbledon and queuing all night for a perch on Henman Hill.
You won't find it hard to visit Amsterdam in future.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
lol.
It's looking quite possible TM is a tory tony blair.
OK, she doesn't have the charisma, but from what I can tell, she genuinely doesn't buy into a lot of what has become conservative orthodoxy since Thatcher.
It's - potentially - electoral dynamite. Winning voters where she needs them and losing them where she doesn't.
The negative Con home comments are *great* for TM.
The biggest danger is that she backtracks in the next couple of weeks, or doesn't follow through post-election.
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
When are they towing the UK into the South Atlantic?
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
There's a noticeable difference being a member of Wimbledon and queuing all night for a perch on Henman Hill.
Given the respective immigration flows, the UK is Wimbledon....
OT. Well done Chris of Paris getting Edouard Phillipe (French PM right).
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
When are they towing the UK into the South Atlantic?
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
There's a noticeable difference being a member of Wimbledon and queuing all night for a perch on Henman Hill.
You won't find it hard to visit Amsterdam in future.
Of course not but it's such a cosmopolitan city with plenty of English people living working and just hanging out here. Our outgoing culture will change
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now We have blown it. There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
The fact is they have nowhere else to go.
On the contrary. We are talking about moderate, compassionate people who were tempted by the Conservative Party under David Cameron`s leadership. The fact that, under Mrs May, the Conservatives have morphed into Neo-UKIP, means that those voters can feel perfectly comfortable with the Liberal Democrats. After all, they were in coalition with David Cameron, if not with the hard-line Tory MPs, who were usually uncontrollable in the coalition years
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now We have blown it. There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
The fact is they have nowhere else to go.
the Conservatives have morphed into Neo-UKIP, means that those voters can feel perfectly comfortable with the Liberal Democrats.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
lol.
It's looking quite possible TM is a tory tony blair.
OK, she doesn't have the charisma, but from what I can tell, she genuinely doesn't buy into a lot of what has become conservative orthodoxy since Thatcher.
It's - potentially - electoral dynamite. Winning voters where she needs them and losing them where she doesn't.
The negative Con home comments are *great* for TM.
The biggest danger is that she backtracks in the next couple of weeks, or doesn't follow through post-election.
Hammond to launch full on attack on Corbyn's inheritance changes that are going to lose home owners tens of thousands in tax without exception
The other side of the coin that will hurt all owners over £425,000 at 40%
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
The fact is they have nowhere else to go.
Yes. Amusingly, she's engineered this situation herself - putting off releasing the Con manifesto until after the candidate registration deadline. I speculated this might mean she wanted UKIP out of the way in as many seats as possible to force her own side to campaign & vote for an undesirable manifesto.
That was her gameplan after all.
I'm impressed.
She now needs to win - and win big in the midlands/north, hopefully having a pile of MP's who owe everything to her.
These new MP's will not be liked by the traditional/thatcherite/cameroon wings of the tory party.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
People seem to be very down on TM at the moment. Personally I think she is setting herself up well to be PM for a long time.
Tories only ever panic in a crisis.
This will pass. The nervous nellies will calm down and we'll have a government that finally confronts an issue its predecessors of all stripes had wished would go away but has progressively got worse. Is the proposed solution perfect? Far from it, but at least its substantial and on the table. The onus is on the decriers of the 'dementia tax' to suggest workable alternatives.
I agree. This'll be forgotten when she has her new big majority.
There are plenty of workable alternatives to fund social care - the issue is politicians running scared of big decisions. TM has stepped up - credit to her - but on the other hand she has picked a rather poor solution...
My hope is that once politicians start making big changes - there will be a chance to amend proposals/more space to discuss alternative policies. I would like to see us move to a system where risk of massive social care costs is shared and pooled. TM has done us a favour by getting the ball rolling.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
People seem to be very down on TM at the moment. Personally I think she is setting herself up well to be PM for a long time.
Tories only ever panic in a crisis.
This will pass. The nervous nellies will calm down and we'll have a government that finally confronts an issue its predecessors of all stripes had wished would go away but has progressively got worse. Is the proposed solution perfect? Far from it, but at least its substantial and on the table. The onus is on the decriers of the 'dementia tax' to suggest workable alternatives.
I agree. This'll be forgotten when she has her new big majority.
There are plenty of workable alternatives to fund social care - the issue is politicians running scared of big decisions. TM has done that - credit to her - but on the other hand she has picked a rather poor solution...
My hope is that once politicians start making big changes - there will be a chance to amend proposals/more space to discuss alternative policies. I would like to see us move to a system where risk of massive social care costs is shared and pooled. TM has done us a favour by getting the ball rolling.
And Hammond is opening the door today for Theresa May's attacks on Corbyn's inheritance proposals over this next week with, I expect, a huge ramping up on Brexit, immigration and walking away
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
lol.
It's looking quite possible TM is a tory tony blair.
OK, she doesn't have the charisma, but from what I can tell, she genuinely doesn't buy into a lot of what has become conservative orthodoxy since Thatcher.
It's - potentially - electoral dynamite. Winning voters where she needs them and losing them where she doesn't.
The negative Con home comments are *great* for TM.
The biggest danger is that she backtracks in the next couple of weeks, or doesn't follow through post-election.
They can start a new elitist libertarian party with some of the PB tory posters on here. Wont be short of money!
I haven't looked at the entire thread. But I was beyond astonished at this comment from @kyf_100 (I paraphrase):
'You bought your own semi detached council house, now worth £450,000, that you hope to pass on to your children'.
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works are extrapolating themselves onto northern voters and not realising that actually it's the south that's the exception. In the south, those people with assets often have liquid assets as well, so the house has to be sold later. In the north, even though houses are worth less, often that's the only asset and has to be taken from the off to pay care bills.
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
lol.
It's looking quite possible TM is a tory tony blair.
OK, she doesn't have the charisma, but from what I can tell, she genuinely doesn't buy into a lot of what has become conservative orthodoxy since Thatcher.
It's - potentially - electoral dynamite. Winning voters where she needs them and losing them where she doesn't.
The negative Con home comments are *great* for TM.
The biggest danger is that she backtracks in the next couple of weeks, or doesn't follow through post-election.
They can start a new elitist libertarian party with some of the PB tory posters on here. Wont be short of money!
HEROES SLAM JEZ Falklands veterans blast Jeremy Corbyn over plans to share islands with Argentina on 35th anniversary of the sinking of HMS Ardent, killing 22
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
Well you can put me into the ignorant Southerner bracket... Just had a house price Google and stunned at the price difference between parts of the country. Even more than I thought it would be and I thought it would be big.
We will see about whether this turns out to be popular. I can imagine that it could be more popular than the current system if well explained. But if the link were established between a death tax/property tax of some kind and funding for social care - I think that might be the most popular solution.
For one thing - it would mean people in expensive properties down south subsidising those in the North.
Nothing has changed. The Tories will win the election very comfortably. It may well be a landslide. May is a mediocre leader. Corbyn is a catastrophe. The world turns.
I haven't looked at the entire thread. But I was beyond astonished at this comment from @kyf_100 (I paraphrase):
'You bought your own semi detached council house, now worth £450,000, that you hope to pass on to your children'.
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works are extrapolating themselves onto northern voters and not realising that actually it's the south that's the exception. In the south, those people with assets often have liquid assets as well, so the house has to be sold later. In the north, even though houses are worth less, often that's the only asset and has to be taken from the off to pay care bills.
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
That's unfair on people in the south who first of all have to pay considerably more for our houses and then pay an awful lot more dementia tax. We don't all live in mansions and drive sports cars here. Talk about taking the pee out of your core vote
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
Well you can put me into the ignorant Southerner bracket... Just had a house price Google and stunned at the price difference between parts of the country. Even more than I thought it would be and I thought it would be big.
We will see about whether this turns out to be popular. I can imagine that it could be more popular than the current system if well explained. But if the link were established between a death tax/property tax of some kind and funding for social care - I think that might be the most popular solution.
For one thing - it would mean people in expensive properties down south subsidising those in the North.
That will happen anyway (the old fiscal transfer system).
You can colour me in the ignorant North Midlander bracket as well, if it helps - it never occurred to me people wouldn't recognise the scale of the difference!
Nothing has changed. The Tories will win the election very comfortably. It may well be a landslide. May is a mediocre leader. Corbyn is a catastrophe. The world turns.
If Corbyn polls 35% in the end - then that will be very significant when the leadership challenges come in.
I still think Corbyn will go - but it should show the next leadership that they needn't be so scared to stand on a left wing platform.
After yesterday's PB Tory wobble the comments in similar vein going up on Con Home make for entertaining reading:
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
The fact is they have nowhere else to go.
Yes. Amusingly, she's engineered this situation herself - putting off releasing the Con manifesto until after the candidate registration deadline. I speculated this might mean she wanted UKIP out of the way in as many seats as possible to force her own side to campaign & vote for an undesirable manifesto.
That was her gameplan after all.
I'm impressed.
She now needs to win - and win big in the midlands/north, hopefully having a pile of MP's who owe everything to her.
These new MP's will not be liked by the traditional/thatcherite/cameroon wings of the tory party.
Do you foresee an impending split in the Conservative Party, Mr Pong?
I haven't looked at the entire thread. But I was beyond astonished at this comment from @kyf_100 (I paraphrase):
'You bought your own semi detached council house, now worth £450,000, that you hope to pass on to your children'.
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works are extrapolating themselves onto northern voters and not realising that actually it's the south that's the exception. In the south, those people with assets often have liquid assets as well, so the house has to be sold later. In the north, even though houses are worth less, often that's the only asset and has to be taken from the off to pay care bills.
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
That's unfair on people in the south who first of all have to pay considerably more for our houses and then pay an awful lot more dementia tax. We don't all live in mansions and drive sports cars here. Talk about taking the pee out of your core vote
But the core vote doesn't matter in the new big tent conservatism.
You're irrelevant. Your interests have been cast aside.
It's the minimum wage JAM, single mother on a council estate in a juicy west midlands marginal who matters.
"Labour is facing a parliamentary wipeout on June 8th. The defeat will be greater than 1983 with the leading figures such as Tom Watson, Dennis Skinner and Caroline Flint facing defeat while many others, including Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner, are teetering on the brink. Currently Labour is set to lose just over 90 seats but a relatively small deterioration of the party’s position on the ground could see dozens more fall. These are the findings of new analysis by Uncut based on the views of dozens of Labour candidates, party officials and activists following the past three weeks of intensive canvassing."
Taken before May attempt to blow up her own campaign by abandoning the lifetime care ceiling on social care presumably.
You are being deliberately obtuse. There is no lifetime care ceiling.
I know because I lived through it with my mother.
Ditto with my mother and then my father - my mother dying after a tough year was too much for my father - he died 18 mths later. There are no easy answers. The state intervening on social care actually made it more difficult for us. We finished up with ignoring state provision which we couldn't afford, and wouldn't come to our home for the services of a private care worker who was at least partly known to my family.
I think Theresa has listened to an awful lot of people like me. When mother was taken ill our first call was not to social services or the NHS but our family solicitors. We had to sort out what the law was and settle our affairs before we responded to social services. I'd rather not go into why on this or any other site but I guess a majority are in the same boat. From my personal experience I have since had to advise others.
Some seem to think the proceeds of an estate are free money. For some they might be, but for those of us in a family business, such as farming the situation is more complex. The policy proposed by Mrs May will need tweeking but there was an awful lot of unfairness and Theresa acknowledges this unlike the more vile of her critics.
Nothing has changed. The Tories will win the election very comfortably. It may well be a landslide. May is a mediocre leader. Corbyn is a catastrophe. The world turns.
If Corbyn polls 35% in the end - then that will be very significant when the leadership challenges come in.
I still think Corbyn will go - but it should show the next leadership that they needn't be so scared to stand on a left wing platform.
Labour will have a lot more freedom to develop policy in the future now that the political consensus is that the an interventionist, redistributionist state is a force for good. The debate is all in areas where a well-led Labour party should feel very comfortable. See social care for the elderly, for example.
Incidentally on the subject of house prices, remember there are large areas of the south where this will apply too. My sister and her husband have just bought a house very similar to mine in Gloucestershire (Dursley). Three bed semi, garage, garden, AONB literally on the other side of the road, close to the M5 and with half-hourly rail services to Bristol and Birmingham. £190,000. In Newent on the other side of the Severn, knock off another £25,000 because the road links to Gloucester are so poor. (Ross, which has also been mentioned, is exceptional because it's a very popular town to retire to.)
So outside the Home Counties I think this could play very differently from the way the media portray it.
I haven't looked at the entire thread. But I was beyond astonished at this comment from @kyf_100 (I paraphrase):
'You bought your own semi detached council house, now worth £450,000, that you hope to pass on to your children'.
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
I don't think this was focus grouped at all. One of many reasons that Theresa May's snap election was a bad idea is that all manifestos have been produced on the hoof.
The reason that TM appears to be doing well in Midlands and North has nothing to do with Social Care. Moving the topic to welfare provision from jingoistic nationalism is not going to do her any favours.
Poorer pensioners and their middle aged children will be more bothered by loss of WFA and the triple lock than the redistributive aspects of the Dementia Tax.
What will piss off pensioners in the north and midlands is that the Tories are changing the rules winter fuel allowance, but keeping things the same in Scotland.
Comments
Which is why I have a feeling this will go down worst of all with older lower middle class voters whose only real asset is their home - they grew up being told that their taxes would pay for cradle to grave provision, now they see the 250k-ish nest egg they hoped to pass on being snatched away from them if they're unlucky enough to contract dementia. As you say cancer and so on you're covered, dementia, tough tits.
It's a policy that seems fundamentally unfair and doubly so when you've worked hard all your life to leave something to your kids. Parents with a million or more have probably already given their kids fifty or a hundred thousand or so to get on the property ladder, etc, it's very different when your 250k house is your only asset.
For my own family situation I had relied on that.
I have been wondering all along why the post-2015 scepticism about the accuracy of the polls had evaporated so completely, but the general feeling seemed to be that the Tory lead was large enough to dwarf any inaccuracy.
Now that the gap have tightened considerably, do people still think that?
Maybe late though - aren't postal ballots on their way and being returned this weekend?
Theresa May has definitely blown her chances of the 150+ majority we were all talking about last week though. 50-100 would be a good result for her now.
If you have made plans based on a politician's promise, then ... I wish you plenty of luck.
There is no cap at the moment, and while I agree with you that cancer and dementia should be treated the same, this is not the case now, and nor has it ever been.
There are 300,000 elderly people in residential care at the moment, Fees are 30k a year, so the existing bill just for residential care is 9 billion per annum (a substantial part of this is paid by individuals at the moment. Only if you have assets less than 25k do you become eligible for state help)
There are a much larger number of elderly receiving care in their homes. Although this is cheaper to deliver, there are many more people who need it.
The bill is enormous. It is a huge problem for politicians to be honest about this. If we want free social care for everyone, then there is a significant amount of extra money that will need to be raised by taxes.
Not that that means that the total costs associated with care would be less than £72,000 for most people - far from it!
Labour need to hammer home on this for the rest of the campaign, Corbyn has had a decent campaign so far so I think they actually will stick on message - no barnacles. Not that I think the end result will be anything other than a Tory landslide despite this wobble.
The other benefit for Labour is that we are no longer talking about Brexit (it's also been one of the few days in a long time with no Brexit discussions on the PB comments, a nice change!)
The problem here is that conservatives value the home so much that they implemented a pile of policies that sometimes accidentally, but often deliberately inflated the value of peoples homes. Blair/Brown pandered to this to win marginal votes, of course.
House prices - and the cost of living - has ballooned.
What has been created is monumental unfairness that - now they're in power and without a viable opposition -the tories are having to grapple with.
Can a homecarer be a conservative? Can they, too, own their own home - earning £9/hour, working on-demand shifts, paying for their own transport?
The carers are the JAMS & TM wants their votes.
I suspect that those which get returned immediately are by those who always vote the same way.
Those who wont listen to constructive criticism from the well meaning usually suffer disaster.
Corbyn isn't going to win. Are you crazy? The Tories have been on 40%+ since May became leader and they're currently averaging 45%+. They were nailed-on when she called the election and they're nailed on today. Some people in Corbyn's Labour are quite clever; they've turned the tables on the Tory love-in with the pensioners, and there's also certainly a mood at large of "If Brexit then why not Water nationalisation" and some of those on the Paradoxical Right who supported Brexit for frankly daft reasons should have been more aware of what they were stirring up when they were happy to go along with the Daily-Mail myth that everything was better in the 1960s.
The great thing about the last few days is that it's brought a lot of Tories down to earth with a bump. Most of them have been in a state of self-delusion for months, believing their own hype and coming under the spell of Old Mother May, imagining somehow that she's different from that mediocre politician with the same name who was home secretary under Cameron.
The truth is that May will win on June 8th and the next five years will be poor.
Still, it must be a sobering thought for the Tories that according to YouGov their lead has dropped by no less than 15 points in the four and a half weeks since the election was announced. And that their lead now stands at just 9 points, with nearly three weeks still to go. And that owing to the premature dissolution, Labour retains its traditional electoral advantage, at least in England and Wales.
One can only wonder whether Mrs May would have called the election if she could have foreseen where things stand now.
I see this week as being full of unforced errors from the Conservatives and that doesn't bode well either for June 8th or the next 5 years.
I will be a happy man if next week's polling shows this to have been nothing more than a momentary wobble.
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/labour
http://www.electionpolling.co.uk/battleground/targets/conservative
Survation on 22nd April had it Tory 40% Labour 29% LD 11% and UKIP 11% so the Tories are up 6% and Labour up 5% from then, again by squeezing the LDs and UKIP
http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/voting-intention-2
History won't remember this election as the one where a Conservative party leader went to the polls to get a bigger working majority to push through Brexit. History will remember this as either the election where the hard left was stomped out of power for a generation or more, or the election where the hard left was finally allowed a seat at the big table and became a real contender, enabling it to build a platform for a possible run at 2022 with the same manifesto but a more popular leader. And by 2027 Britain is Venezuela. That is what is at stake here. Nothing less.
May's job is not just to win this election, it is to thoroughly refute Corbyn's brand of socialism, to stomp on it the way you stomp on a cockroach, instinctively and absolutely - because the alternative is too much to bear.
"Theresa May takes on the older voter. That’s gutsy, but is social care any fairer?"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/20/theresa-may-takes-on-older-voters-gutsy-is-social-care-any-fairer
Headline voting: Con 46, Lab 34
18 to 34s: Con 26, Lab 57
35 to 54s: Con 43, Lab 37
Over 55s: Con 61, Lab 19
Unless 18 to 34s turnout suddenly rises way above what it's been in the past, that looks pretty good for Con to me.
Don't forget that Thatcher claimed her greatest achievement was New Labour.
On that note, good night all.
Sunday Times:
"Abbott declared support for IRA defeat of Britain"
Sunday Telegraph:
"Corbyn's 10 year association with group which denies the Holocaust"
Sun on Sunday:
Story re Corbyn wanting to share Falklands with Argentina - describing Falklands War as "flag-waving nonsense"
It doesn't look as though that's going to happen.
The Scotsman - Brian Wilson: If parties work well together to serve communities, get on with it
The Telegraph - Ruth Davidson: Scottish Labour supporters should vote Tory to stop Nicola Sturgeon
Evening Express - Ruth Davidson: Labour party hanging Aberdeen voters out to dry
I've not at all been impressed with May since she has taken over and the Tory campaign hasn't impressed either. Is she Lucky she is going against Corbyn and a hard left Labour? A Labour party close to the center with a decent leader would have been interesting to see...
I think the majority will be closer to 50 than to 100. If it's less than 50 I expect some within the party wondering why and looking at May.
Laid the Tories in North Norfolk @ 1/2 for £830.
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/politics/market/1.131323942
I still think Norman is, more-likely-than-not, toast, but he's in a great position to capitalize on the dementia tax stuff.
We'll see.
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2017/05/20/new-poll-analysis-watson-skinner-and-flint-facing-defeat-cooper-miliband-reeves-and-rayner-on-the-edge/#more-21610
Lots of detailed regional and seat by seat analysis, supposedly from inside Labour
Does make me wonder though - keep the manifesto, ditch Corbyn for some young, good looking leader with no back story - where would Labour be polling now?
Really OT! I'm in the great old hippy city of Amsterdam and the more you see of our soon to be ex partners the more you realise how suicidal our decision was. I hope it turns out OK but the life and culture we were once a part of and are no more is a tragedy and a stupidity of monumental proportions.
It's come two elections too late.
Amsterdam will still be under an hour's flight from London - we're not 'leaving Europe' - we're 'leaving the EU' - a political project which has had mixed success (ask the Greeks) and which we may have held back. We may well end up better neighbours than we have been tenants - and at least we wish the EU well and for them to have a happy and prosperous future - unlike the public pronouncements of some EU functionaries.......
Personally I think she is setting herself up well to be PM for a long time.
Given her lead she was always going to win. But instead she took this election as an opportunity to reform the conservatives substantially. She's building a new coalition of voters that will let her hold onto power for a long time.
When the dust settles - she will have swapped a small majority and some very challenging tax and spend promises for a much larger majority and freedom to manoeuvre on domestic policy.
This will pass. The nervous nellies will calm down and we'll have a government that finally confronts an issue its predecessors of all stripes had wished would go away but has progressively got worse. Is the proposed solution perfect? Far from it, but at least its substantial and on the table. The onus is on the decriers of the 'dementia tax' to suggest workable alternatives.
we're stuck with a dull manifesto which is alienating our core vote and has no new big ideas to appeal to new voters
We're doomed
It's going to take a great deal of explaining in the next few weeks to convince voters to come back to the Tories. This manifesto has lost the possibility of a landslide. In fact the fight is now on for a majority.
Now we have an open goal for Corbyn and Farron to hit
The best we can do now is to ... frighten the voters into doing the right thing.
People are very upset about school dinners, foxhunting and a veiled "death tax" Last week people were prepared to vote Conservative for the first time...Then came the manifesto and they are not thinking it now
We have blown it.
There won't be a landslide. The platform on which the Tories have chosen to campaign and the manner in which the campaign has been conducted will ensure that. The manifesto was very disappointing on the economy and the campaign is very uninspiring. Other than Brexit and the inadequacies of the alternatives, I don't see many reasons to vote Tory myself.
It's looking quite possible TM is a tory tony blair.
OK, she doesn't have the charisma, but from what I can tell, she genuinely doesn't buy into a lot of what has become conservative orthodoxy since Thatcher.
It's - potentially - electoral dynamite. Winning voters where she needs them and losing them where she doesn't.
The negative Con home comments are *great* for TM.
The biggest danger is that she backtracks in the next couple of weeks, or doesn't follow through post-election.
It's everything Hartlepool doesn't want to be
The other side of the coin that will hurt all owners over £425,000 at 40%
That was her gameplan after all.
I'm impressed.
She now needs to win - and win big in the midlands/north, hopefully having a pile of MP's who owe everything to her.
These new MP's will not be liked by the traditional/thatcherite/cameroon wings of the tory party.
There are plenty of workable alternatives to fund social care - the issue is politicians running scared of big decisions. TM has stepped up - credit to her - but on the other hand she has picked a rather poor solution...
My hope is that once politicians start making big changes - there will be a chance to amend proposals/more space to discuss alternative policies. I would like to see us move to a system where risk of massive social care costs is shared and pooled. TM has done us a favour by getting the ball rolling.
'You bought your own semi detached council house, now worth £450,000, that you hope to pass on to your children'.
Please name one constituency north of Birmingham where an ex-council house is worth that much. Even £200,000 would be a very high price. Mine, which does fit that description, is worth £140,000.
I think one problem is southern voters who are genuinely ignorant of the north and the way it works are extrapolating themselves onto northern voters and not realising that actually it's the south that's the exception. In the south, those people with assets often have liquid assets as well, so the house has to be sold later. In the north, even though houses are worth less, often that's the only asset and has to be taken from the off to pay care bills.
I am not surprised this focus grouped well in Birmingham. Or Bury. Or Bolton. Which is where May has set her sights.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3610695/falklands-veterans-blast-jeremy-corbyn-over-plans-to-share-islands-with-argies-on-35th-anniversary-of-the-sinking-of-hms-ardent-killing-22/
https://twitter.com/JoeBowly1/status/865989366187012096
While TM seems a bit rattled:
https://twitter.com/theresa_may/status/865855578454806529
We will see about whether this turns out to be popular. I can imagine that it could be more popular than the current system if well explained. But if the link were established between a death tax/property tax of some kind and funding for social care - I think that might be the most popular solution.
For one thing - it would mean people in expensive properties down south subsidising those in the North.
Talk about taking the pee out of your core vote
You can colour me in the ignorant North Midlander bracket as well, if it helps - it never occurred to me people wouldn't recognise the scale of the difference!
I still think Corbyn will go - but it should show the next leadership that they needn't be so scared to stand on a left wing platform.
She was a complete failure at the Home Office. Could not control the NON-EU immigration numbers over 6 years. Why would she do better now ?
Just because she is wooden and lacks charisma ?
You're irrelevant. Your interests have been cast aside.
It's the minimum wage JAM, single mother on a council estate in a juicy west midlands marginal who matters.
Keep up.
I think Theresa has listened to an awful lot of people like me. When mother was taken ill our first call was not to social services or the NHS but our family solicitors. We had to sort out what the law was and settle our affairs before we responded to social services. I'd rather not go into why on this or any other site but I guess a majority are in the same boat. From my personal experience I have since had to advise others.
Some seem to think the proceeds of an estate are free money. For some they might be, but for those of us in a family business, such as farming the situation is more complex. The policy proposed by Mrs May will need tweeking but there was an awful lot of unfairness and Theresa acknowledges this unlike the more vile of her critics.
So outside the Home Counties I think this could play very differently from the way the media portray it.
The reason that TM appears to be doing well in Midlands and North has nothing to do with Social Care. Moving the topic to welfare provision from jingoistic nationalism is not going to do her any favours.
Poorer pensioners and their middle aged children will be more bothered by loss of WFA and the triple lock than the redistributive aspects of the Dementia Tax.