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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The next election will be decided in Britain, not Venezuela
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The next election will be decided in Britain, not Venezuela
Unless Theresa May or her successor can overturn over a trend well over a century old, Labour will form the next government. Quite simply, once governments start losing seats from one election to the next, they continue losing seats until they’re in opposition. And not only did the Conservatives lost seats at the last election but the result was so tight that any further loss would make their position impossible.
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In other news:
Trump: Because you do not want to destroy your country. Look at what has happened in Germany. Look at what is happening in these countries. These people are crazy to let this happen. I spoke to Merkel today, and believe me, she wishes she did not do it. Germany is a mess because of what happened.
Turnbull: I agree with you, letting 1 million Syrians walk into their country. It was one of the big factors in the Brexit vote, frankly.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-08-04/donald-trump-malcolm-turnbull-refugee-phone-call-transcript/8773422
It's a ponzu scheme.
I'm doubtful about David Herdson's last line: in May 2022 Jeremy Corbyn will be 73. I expect he will have passed on the baton by then.
TOP JOB TILT Amber Rudd’s secret summit with Scots Tory boss Ruth Davidson restarts leadership speculation
Ms Rudd will also hold meetings with cabinet ministers Priti Patel and Damian Green later this month
I just do not believe that the British public will elect a Marxist.
The next GE will be between 2 parties with new leaders and we don't yet know who they will be. Labour are currently favourites for the reasons David sets out but we live in times which are incredibly febrile and uncertain.
https://twitter.com/spajw/status/893154607043674113
The Tories need to stop playing the man and start playing the ball when it comes to Corbyn. Amiable Marxists may be one thing, but what about Marxist policies?
Sadly, I agree with the title. The public should be more concerned about Corbyn's comments on the socialist paradise of Venezuela than they are, or will be. It shouldn't be totally ignored but it's a footnote, not a chapter.
I agree with Alistair incidentally - if the next election is later than next year, Labour will have a new leader. At the moment and under the current circumstances the favourite should be Macdonnell, which is one reason why bold claims about them making more gains should be treated with scepticism.
However much will also depend on who the new Conservative leader is, and at the moment there is no obvious candidate. If one emerges in the next year, May's days are numbered so don't expect her to promote anybody. It could be a former minister on the back benches who has sat out this fiasco. Would have been Mr Hissy Fit if he'd stayed, but he didn't and now he will never make it. Crabbe remains an outside chance, but the other one to watch might just be Mark Harper.
another election on boundaries 20 years out of date which would be a disgrace.
http://effiedeans.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/ireland-shows-why-scotland-will-never.html?m=1
If it were in Ireland or even Norway it might focus minds, but it seems most unlikely to do so given it's in South America.
The reason why Venezuela's situation is irrelevant is because people neither know nor care. Go into Tesco today and conduct a survey, ask 100 people what they think of the crisis in Venezuela. Expect 100 blank looks in return. Time and again anoraks on here assume the wider electorate is as obsessed with politics as they are.
As somebody else points out, the Conservatives need to make a case for free trade and capitalism and stop banging on about Hamas and Marxists.
Fortress Britain , with tariffs and government support to protect British jobs and industries has a lot of appeal to the average patriotic voter. Free traders always appear to be in the service of foreign powers and big business. Libertarianism only appeals to a small fraction of wealthy and healthy people without a social conscience.
They explicitly don't want - now or ever - share of representation to be proportional to vote share, so pointing at vote shares seems rather bizarre.
If you want a decoupled, deliberately chaotic (in the mathematical sense) and disproportionate system, you live and die by the product of it. The relevant statistic is 331 declining to 317. Going on about an increase in votes is like a football team's supporters saying that while they lost points this season, their goal difference was better, so they did better overall, right?
(A party preferring a system of national government where strength of national representation is proportional to strength of national popular support would have grounds to cite that stat, but a party hostile to the idea just comes across as whining)
Their problem is that people can see hospitals, prisons and schools in their locality failing as a result of years of cuts and outsourcing. They can also see that some have not been affected - we never were all in it together. And as a result I see more people beginning to sense that austerity has been used by the Tories to pull the wool over their eyes.
4/1 on JC next PM is value, imo. 2/1 would be fair.
I'm not invested, though, for bankroll reasons.
off topic - http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/08/new-messiahs-jesus-christ-second-coming-photos/
The problem in 2017 was not with the Tories' policies - it was with the inability to effectively communicate why Labour's policies were unjust and unrealistic, presented by a team largely unfit to lead a Parish council, let alone a National Govt.
i) Where it is believed to be true.
ii) Where it is believed to be relevant.
iii) Where it is believed to be significant.
iv) Where the implicit alternative is deemed acceptable.
Corbyn is undeniably of the left, but is not a Marxist in the international sense. His policies would have been unremarkable in any post war Labour party, apart from the New Labour period.
I'm afraid the current 'we're all dooooomed' message that some Tory activists who never really got over Dave's flounce after the Brexit result are propagating is more indicative of a failure relative to expectations, rather than any real failure.
A few myths that look like they're reaching expiration date:
- Mrs May can't last the day/week/month/conference.
- Corbyn is going to be PM
- A.N. Other is our saviour as leader
Toryism is popular; the trick for the next election is to manage that at the same time as reminding people that they don't actually like socialism, even if it is presented by a cuddly granddad stopped-clock figure with unchanging views. McDonnell taking over would make this much easier - he is more easily shown up as the cynical politician than Corbyn.
The Tory manifesto didn't mention Labour ONCE.
And every one of Corbyn's surrogates, especially the more gobby ones like Ashworth and Rayner, were constantly blasting Tories at every opportunity.
Assuming the next election is 2022 the Tories will have done 12 years in office, either on their own or as a coalition.
Whilst we saw in 1992 that it is theoretically possible to go on beyond 12-13 years, generally by this stage in a governments lifetime the public are thinking it's "time for a change".
It looks very, very likely that Labour will win the next election and there seems to be very little the Tories can do about it (their one last throw of the dice is a leadership change but there are very few popular candidates at the moment)
Hopefully the public will be sensible enough not to give Jezza a majority and he'll have to form some sort of coalition (preferably with the Lib-Dems) who will be able to moderate his more "radical" views.
I'm forty-four, and cannot recall living under anything other than Conservative or centre-left Labour governments. The horror stories of piles of rubbish bags lining the streets for months are just that: stories. (I don't live in Birmingham).
To many people feel like they are being left behind. Whether these feelings are justified or not, they feel like change is needed. And as the consensus has been to the centre or right for a few decades, why not try the left?
The same people who 'warned us' about rising wages if we voted Leave.
I always take seriously what he says.
I think it is worth thinking about why this might be so. Have the benefits of incumbency increased? The money the State/tax payer provides to sitting MPs has certainly increased enormously so that they can address their constituents' "needs". A permanent office and paid staff working to support the incumbent is a significant advantage, especially in a time when all parties are fairly pale shadows of what they were in terms of voluntary organisations.
When you look at the changes the sample has been small but it has needed a major screw up to overcome the advantages incumbency brings. It is entirely possible that Brexit will be such an opportunity but it is not certain.
When the heat came over the care proposals, they should have had every goddamn minister on the TV 24/7 for a week defending it, not the silence which allowed their opponents to define it followed by an attempt at a u-turn from the PM.
Likewise the failure to pick apart Labours manifesto as being uncosted and unaffordable nonsense - the media also deserve a fair amount of blame for that one, but where were Hammond and his team making their point?
Enjoy your holiday, I just got back from mine and want another one already!
Assuming the next GE is 2022, Corbyn will have been leader of the opposition for nearly 7 years, what is the longest time somebody has been leader of the opposition?
And even better a maximum wage for public sector organisations - including universities and the BBC.
Ashworth and Rayner certainly attacked the Tories, but like Jezza it was on policy not personality.
I am looking forward to a Labour government taking back control. The Tories are directionless, poorly led, and in need of a decade in opposition.
Kinnock was well over eight years.
Before that, Gaitskell for a little over seven.
I can't see anyone obviously over that.
My point is that it must be a draining job, he'll be in his 70s by then. Its dangerous to assume he'll lead Labour at the next GE.
On Venezuala - yes, it was good to see Chavez making an effort and it did help people for a while, but it's clearly gone very badly wrong and Maduro is behaving as a dictator. That's a common viewpoint which I expect most of the left share, but I'd be surprised if Corbyn went on about it, and even if he said exactly what people wanted to hear, I think the average voter would feel he should be focusing on Britain, not some place in South America.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4762790/ANDREW-PIERCE-man-pulling-Spreadsheet-Phil-s-strings.html
She and the Tories got what they deserved..
The economy grew steadily, Wilson was more popular than Heath, there were no foreign policy disasters and the reduction in voting age and blocking of boundary changes should have helped Labour.
Heath's government feels like a strange aberration in what should have been a 1964 to 1979 period of Labour dominance.
If the Tories want a fruitful line of attack on Jeremy Corbyn, rather than stressing the wickedness or strangeness of his past views, they should be focusing on the weaseliness of his current silence about those same subjects (with a side order of, yes, why is someone who is looking to be leader of Britain spending so much time thinking about far away places?).
Quote is not working, sorry.
Longest since the post was officially recognised and carried a salary in 1937 is Kinnock (9 years) but the longest overall is Charles James Fox (1783-1806).
A lot of us enjoy work, and while some desire to retire early, many of my colleagues and patients are keen to work on to at least their seventies. With the changing age structure of the population that is probably a necessity, but for many it is also a preference if health permits.
I intend to retire early then return to work as a locum, travel a bit, locum in the antipodes or africa to combine the two etc. I expect to work for a couple more decades, just not in my present job.
Heath had just borrowed somebody else's blue rosette.
We are currently seeing what happens when a clueless 70-something who has no prior experience and has spent his time telling everyone how fit he is tries to run a government and it isn't pretty.
I'm the same age as you, but I find politics irritating now. Something about going through the old arguments time and time again. And the youngsters do whine a lot. I suppose they always did, but this set have little to whine about, surely? .
In the fifties, my mother was over-joyed to find her council house had an inside toilet and windows that closed properly. Luxury, as Mr Dancer's friends would say. Mind you, she did say of we youngsters .... "You don't know you're born. the more you get, the more you want."
And his mother gasped and said, 'It's all beautiful Leonid, but I'm scared. What will happen to you if the Bolsheviks ever come back?'
Brezhnev was so clueless he was happy when he heard that one, as he thought it showed people loved him and worried about him.
The sixties and seventies were good years for the majority of Britons.
'Let me say, Mr Speaker, that of course people's standards of living fell last year. And they will fall this year and fall again next year.'
Which is probably why private polling by Labour suggested they would come second.
Moreover they had surrendered repeatedly on public sector pay and that was indeed the whole reason for the strikes in the first place.
If you lived through that period and hold that view you must have been a child, or else on drugs.
Unions' aim is to improve the lot of the workers they represent. They're more like defence lawyers rather than altruistic seekers after truth. The altruism is directed more at socialism abroad. I think they can do a good job, and I say that after 15 years as a union rep, but don't expect them to put the good of the country first. That's far too subjective.
https://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/how-has-inequality-changed
In the sixties and seventies prosperity was more generalised and places like Coventry thriving. Workers had rising prosperity year on year.
There were certainly problems (Ireland for example) but the reason so many older and working class Brits are nostalgic for the country of past decades is that they were generally good years, for them, if not for the elites.
It was with the oil price problems in ’73 that problems started.
Happier if everyone is poorer, the country is politically divided, and Labour are nominally 'in charge'.