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On Apr 8th 1997, 3 wks before Blair landslide, MORI had CON leading LAB by 45% to 23% on best "managing the economy"
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That seems a littel convoluted an explanation however, so I suspect the answer is just that people say the economy is the most important factor, but at the end of the day they vote with their gut for all sorts of reasons, and the reality is good economic competence won't save a party if people don't like the cut of their gib.
The tide was running so heavily against the Tories that they couldn't capitalise on their advantages - and 2 points isn't much anyway.
2015 is much more likely to be a "managerial" election - so perceived competence (and especially on the economy) will be front and centre.
In short, if voters think they're "all crap" on the economy, don't other issues become far more important?
Sounds like it was a more general event and Fry just buttonholed Cameron.
He often has 'general' pub events? It's possible to take chillaxing a touch too far charles.
Going by where it occurred and who organised it I think it's fairly safe to say it was no accident regardless of whether sources spin it as serious or friendly.
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COM RES POLL FOR SCOTLAND Lab 41% SNP 35% Con 15% Lib Dems 6% UKIP 2% Green 1%
The questions for voters in 2015 will be whether their new job is better than their old job, or whether they can see their way to clearing their student debts.
If it's not then the tories will be battling on kipper core issues (with all too predictable results) while labour will have to rely on positioning little Ed as a credible alternative PM.
Not ideal for either of them.
At the very least it's going to be the most salient policy issue among many while more likely it will frame every aspect of labour and tory electioneering and their campaigns.
If Clegg's still lib dem leader he would find it a very tough issue to differentiate on after supporting coalition economic policy all this time. Then again if Clegg is still leader he'll still be toxic and most voters won't actually care that much what his position is.
If a poll annoys a section of its readership then reflect badly on the readership.
Going by where it occurred and who organised it I think it's fairly safe to say it was no accident regardless of whether sources spin it as serious or friendly.
Missed the broking point - saw he owned the pub, but assumed it was coincidence. Suspect he was just doing a favour for Lebedev - presumably not in Downing Street because Putin would get grumpy?
But that might be optimistic.
If the economy in the abstract is okayish, and the sky hasn't fallen in, then things like living standards, public services, job security etc might be more important.
Broadly speaking, and most of the time, yes it's the economy stupid.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/When-Republicans-Were-Blue-and-Democrats-Were-Red-176776491.html
*YMMV
http://www.thepoke.co.uk/2013/04/21/the-beard-attractiveness-graph/
Missed the broking point - saw he owned the pub, but assumed it was coincidence. Suspect he was just doing a favour for Lebedev - presumably not in Downing Street because Putin would get grumpy?
Presumably also why it was stressed as friendly rather than serious. Fry is hardly the U.N. but as you imply Putin and the Russian diplomats tend to get very touchy about the subject and those involved.
Also support for Lab on the economy seems to dive once they make their matching spending plans pledge. But I doubt that pledge was really a disaster when it came to votes.
You say economic recovery like it's an achievement. It is what should be happening. It isn't an achievement.
I'd include living standards and job security within 'economy'. Frankly I think they are more important than national growth or whatever (unless you have rampant inflation or sky high interest rates or whatever - if the national economy is doing fine then people focus on the personal).
2015 may well not be, and probably will not be, directly comparable to 1997, but given the current news cycle has been all about EdM being crap, a reminder not to be complacent should be welcomed, not belittled. If Tories are as well placed as some think, or are well placed to argue how the information presented above is not applicable or is otherwise irrelevant, it should not be annoying to refute or ignore unless they are as touchy as political pundits pretend to be, only for real.
And boundary changes weren't in his control once the LDs added conditionality around HoL reform - no PM since the 1940s has been able to deliver on reform of the House of Lords.
* ref: principle private residences, not investors
Night all.
It seems that the 'Gold Standard' has been fools gold for a long time.
In 1997, the election wasn't about the economy. It was sorted, and in any case Labour spent the entire campaign talking about other things. All Blair needed to do is what he did do - promise to stick to Ken Clarke's plans and not do any of this Labour-style stuff to wreck it again. He and Brown even kept to the promise until around 2001.
The idea that 2015 is going to be a repeat of that playlist - that the two Eds, having spent the entire parliament arguing that Osborne wrecked the economy as a result of stubborn ideological obsessiveness, can somehow at the last moment argue that they didn't really mean it and that they fully accept Osborne was right all along - well, let's just say: bring it on.
The above shows whilst the managing the economy is an important factor, it is not the end of theworld. Remember, the same time as that poll shows, Labour were leading by close to 15 points.
Regarding who would be a good PM, could someone remind us what the Callaghan vs Thatcher numbers were just before election day, 1979 ?
DJL,
The same cat was the mummy cat in my kitten videos, all black - plus five kittens!
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/aug/18/default-line-extract-faisal-islam-housing
No, I got your point. I just thought it was whiny, even if it is true (I've not been around much the past few months).
The point I was attempting, or rather the example I was trying to make, was that if people are going to make such comments about 'Blog X is biased against/trolling Y' (and these things seem to come in cycles, as I'm sure oldcomers recall the great 'Ed is Crap' days of late 2010 arriving en mass. 'trolling' lefty readers no doubt?), it's fun to respond to the preposterous affront people proclaim as though their points are purely based on reason and not party affiliated/political spectrum based hysteria.
As an acknowledged baiter of left wing idiots, you surely know this to be true.
It's just a question of the relative importance of various matters, public opinion/campaigns and balancing that with diplomatic relations as well just plain old posturing at times.
I do however appreciate the fact that Cameron has had a somewhat bruising time of late with gay rights and the tory membership. So he'll hardly be very keen to get involved in the issue elsewhere with someone as 'churlish' as Putin who is even less amenable to reason than the tory grassroot 'swivel-eyed loons'.
SNP £81,000
Lab 36,000
UKIP 19,000
LD 14,291
Con 9,581
http://www.paddypower.com/bet/politics/other-politics/uk-politics?ev_oc_grp_ids=1291144
I dont think the Lib Dems lost any deposits in 2010 but they lost 25 in Scotland alone in 2011.
22% thought the Economy was an issue of salience in 1997.
It's now 51%.
http://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/2905/Issues-Index-2012-onwards.aspx?view=wide
If UKIP gets 6% at the next GE, it's Sayonara Tories !
It also means Dan Hodges runs down whitehall nude.
I don't dislike Ed, I think he seems a decent sort, but he's not PM material. And with the package of him and Balls (who I particularly dislike) as potential Chancellor, I think the economy will have to tank for them to get in.
I take it you're a 150+ man?
your local paper called Southwark News reports that Peter John isn't interested in succeeding Tessa. At least the headline says so. They want me to subscribe to read the rest.
I'll pick up a copy tomorrow and let you know if there is any juicy gossip in it.
Before Sir Roderick arrives, I shall steal some of the basic Lebo and Norporth arguments.
L&N argue that electoral fortune in the UK swings between the two main parties over a period of five elections with a mid-point of two and a half elections. As L&N state: "With a midpoint of roughly 2.5, a party can expect to win about two to three elections in a row before being driven from power by the voters."
It is not quite as simple as this as both the period (number of elections won) and amplitude (level of electoral support, votes) is irregular. Nonetheless, using very clever probability theories which only Sir Roderick can explain, it is possible to predict future outcomes using prior elections results. This applies despite the noise and variation of previous results.
L&N developed a long-term predictive model based on prior election results which calculates the cyclical movement of electoral politics and enables them to predict the next election outcome as soon as the results of the previous election are known.
The problem was that the prediction of their retrospective model, whilst accurate over a cycle of many elections, had too high a margin of error in predicting the impact of short term factors. Their solution was to choose "prime ministerial approval ratings" as an additional input to account for individual election-specific variability.
In a nutshell, this theory claims that voters re-elect a governing party when they are satisfied with its performance, and that they vote for the opposition when they are dissatisfied with the governing party in office.
In British general elections, an incumbent prime minister is always in the race, leading the governing party in a contest for another parliamentary term.
Economic variables, to be sure, are a favourite predictor of elections, but much of their effect on the vote must pass somehow through evaluations of incumbents, specifically the prime minister in Britain. Over time the ups and downs of prime ministerial approval have been shown to register the state of the economy along with foreign policy events. So the inclusion of economic variables should not be expected to improve the accuracy of a vote forecast derived from prime ministerial approval.
[to be continued ...]
is it a free newspaper?
Lebo & North's theory and predictive model can easily explain the 1997 conundrum of why the Tories were heavily defeated even though they had a wide popular lead in economic management.
1. This was an attempt by the Conservatives to win a fifth electoral term over double the mid-point of 2.5 terms when a government was likely to be replaced. The long term electoral cycle had been stretched to breaking point.
2. The PM approval rating of Major was at an all time low for an incumbent PM and Blair's was relatively high for a challenger. As L&N put it: In 1997, John Major’s poor rating, the all-time low in the chart for a prime minister standing for re-election, presaged the electoral fall of the Conservatives.
The problem for Ed Miliband is that the two decisive factors which saw Blair replace Major will not apply in 2015 when Cameron fights his second election against an adversary with relatively weak PM approval rating.
1997 is unlikely to repeat itself in 2015 for these reasons.
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
Looking good for Merkel's centre-right coalition...
So, remarkably, according to the latest YouGov, an astonishing 38% of people who say they'll vote say they'll vote Labour. If we take it at face value, that is a staggering figure, the triumph of hope over experience.
And yet, despite all that, fewer than half of those who claim they'll vote for Ed (and only one in 5 of all voters) think he's up to the job.
Now, there are two possibilities. Either they're spoofing, and, when push comes to shove, many of them won't vote for him; or they will vote for him despite their assessment of him, in which case he'll start his premiership in the weakest position of any PM in my lifetime, having done absolutely nothing whatsoever to prepare his party or the public for the difficult decisions which he will be forced into, and with senior colleagues already making hit clear they think he's rubbish.
That is why you should be terrified of winning.
It's very cheap. 40p or something? It's a genuinely independent local 'paper that covers local politics very well which must be quite a rarity these days. Though they'll never quite reach the highs of their local rival's front page headline of "Squirrels on crack" (with a photo of a squirrel).
I am very churlish. So I believe you should save 40p for your future in economic challenged time under the Coalition
I think the Peter John article was published on August 16th. They say Tessa has not made a decision yet. Or at least she hasn't informed them.
Actually, the PM receives only about 20k - 30k votes.
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/emnid.htm
It could be a Hollande like plunge in economy and popularity, or it could be that the party is forced by events to stick or even tighten austerity as in the Callaghan govt of 1977.
It could, of course be that Ed M will lead us through the sunny uplands to a land of milk and honey, but not even the labour voters on here seem to be of that view.
I expect that Ed Miliband will be PM. He may not be that bad as he has the advantage of very low expectations. Even a mediocre premiership would be considered a success.
I should support my local 'paper anyway! I used to be one of their most regular letter writers (in other people's names) back in the day. With 2014 looming on the horizon I have to be careful not to get sucked into all that again!
'One of the country’s biggest academy chains is busting the Government’s pay ceiling for public sector workers by offering all its teachers a 1.5 per cent pay rise.
United Learning, which runs 25 academies around England, will also pay all new recruits on the teaching starting salary five per cent more than they would receive under the current teachers’ salary scale.'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/academy-chain-to-break-government-pay-ceiling-in-bid-to-lure-best-teachers-8773443.html
Nicola: “And I’m relishing the opportunity to spell out to people how an independent Scotland, in which we always get the governments we vote for, will have a fairer welfare system that protects the most vulnerable in our society.”
So the assumption is that an independent Scotland will always have a fairer welfare system regardless of who will win elections there. Or that SNP will always win elections there.
There are a lot of difficult questions about pensions to answer - I'm glad Nicola is looking forward to it!
Cameron was at 32/67 in April (what's special about April, btw?), and the model suggested an election result of Labour just 22 seats ahead in a hung parliament. Cameron has improved his position significantly since then (Labour's 'winning' period lasted from about May 2012 to April 2013)
Major's 32 was on a 2P vote of about 80 (don't have the figure, but at any rate well less than half the 2P vote) and at the end of a fourth term. Either factor signified curtains for the Tories in 1997. Together they produced near-wipeout.
The assumption is that Sarwar is gong to flounder very badly indeed when he tries to spell out how an unpopular tory lib dem government imposing unpopular policies from westminster is preferable to the scottish public electing a scottish government to enact policies like welfare and pensions in the interests of the scottish people.
Happily since little Ed doesn't even intend to reverse most of the tory polices like the bedroom tax Sarwar will be all too keen to extoll their virtues. Won't he?
"Now, there are two possibilities. Either they're spoofing, and, when push comes to shove, they won't vote for him; or they will vote for him despite their assessment of him, in which case he'll start his premiership in the weakest position of any PM in my lifetime, having done absolutely nothing whatsoever to prepare his party or the public for the difficult decisions which he will be forced into."
In my lifetime I remember two opposition leaders who were not only thought not to be up to the job but actually laughable choices who most believed were unelectable. One was Ted Heath the other was Margaret Thatcher.
that's the political narrative. I was talking about the syntactical/semantic assumption of that sentence.
Because it excludes the possibility of the Scottish public electing a Scottish government that would enact welfare and pensions policies like unfair cuts.
Some would argue that the English public did it, more than once.
Picking up on the point made by Sir Roderick about Cameron's ratings, L&N use PM ratings as a proxy and composite for other factors which influence voting intention. So an improving economy over two years, when the economy has the highest salience amongst voters, is likely to - but not guaranteed to - result in Cameron's PM ratings improving too.
If the economy improves, and the incumbent PM ratings don't mirror the trend, then other factors are more dominant as was the case in 1997.
For the possibilities of a tory or lib dem government elected in scotland they are the ones who need to be asked yet they ran a mile from this debate for some strange reason. They also pointedly left Sarwar to defend what is not merely a theoretical possibility but the reality of an unpopular tory lib dem government enacting unpopular policies in scotland.
Somehow I strongly doubt they truly have Sarwar or SLAB's best interests at heart with an election not all that far away from the referendum, but that's 'better together' for you.