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Theresa MayNick Timothy sticking the boot into Philip Hammond.In this Budget, Theresa May bent Hammond to her will - and for the better
The final paragraph:
If he truly is reconciled to increasing investment in infrastructure, a strategic role for the state in the economy, and the need for government to intervene where necessary, this Budget may even be a turning point. Let us hope it really is a Damascene conversion, and not a cynical act of self-preservation.
Maybe they’re not the only ones?
Those people have Corbyn now.
Add on some reluctant Remainers and that suggests the supporters were rather less keen on the EU than the leadership.
But I agree - it is surprising to me also they are not making headway.
They had 1000 councillors in 1979, 2000 in 1982, 3000 in 1986, 4000 in 1992, peaking at 5380 in 1995.
From then:
* 1995 5380
* 1996 5110
* 1997 4960
* 2004 4708
* 2006 4708
* 2007 4406
* 2010 3944
* 2011 3111
* 2012 2711
* 2013 2576
* 2014 2282
* 2015 1810
* 2016 1678
* 2017 1674
So between 1995 and 2010 they'd already lost 25% of their councillors, and since then they've lost 60% of the remainder.
They are down 70% from their 1995 peak, when they held for instance East Hampshire (now 100% Tory), Guildford, Ryedale, etc.
Now they hold only Watford, Cheltenham, Eastleigh, South Lakeland, Eastbourne, Oadby & Wigston, Sutton and Three Rivers.
Our captain was back in the pavilion at a quarter past eleven. Again.
On a percentage of all councillors, the LDs peaked in 2007.
I’ll still call him Captain Cook though, especially when he’s in Australia! But if he’s not captain, what’s he still doing in the team, his batting has been atrocious for the past year?
A further factor is that a Corbyn's Labour has re-cast his party's appeal, particularly for younger people (which was always the demographic in which the LDs polled best), reaching into areas of the country where in organisational terms the Labour Party was previously effectively dead. This has lost the LDs their traditional role of being the only opposition to the Tories in areas like the West Country.
Second their main thing right now is liking the EU, and the voters don't like the EU much, and even the pro-remain half are mostly not enthusiastic about it. There's a pro-EU hard core who care about the issue a lot, but it's not very big, and a lot of them are otherwise left-wing and will tend to prefer Labour despite Corbyn's various triangulations.
Now they are one of the "other" group it is harder for them to differentiate and to attract the attention of the voters.
Additionally, when you have some lingering angst amongst left wing voters that they supported the Tories in Coalition it makes it harder for them to gain ground in their natural target area, while if you really want to "stop Brexit" then surely the incentive is to vote for a party that (a) can win and (b) might - you believe - stop Brexit: i.e. Labour
If you hate Corbyn, you vote May as the person best placed to stop him.
If you hate May, you vote Corbyn as the person best placed to stop her.
That might change this year, it might not.
But in the general scheme of these things, a decade is actually not that long. Labour councillors (as a percentage) probably fell every year between 1997 and 2010, as did Conservative between 1984 and 1997.
Frankly... we were pretty lucky to survive the 2017 GE at all, let alone increase our seat tally, when both main parties increased vote share and we lost vote share. For a party losing votes overall we got very, very, lucky with where we gained our votes and where we lost them. Though part of me suspects we might be in better shape now if we'd won just 11 of the seats that we got rather than 12... if you take my meaning? Still, we are where we are and there's plenty of votes out there to fight for...
The replacement of Scottish anti-Tory tactical voting with anti-SNP tactical has helped the LDs recover some of the position in Scotland, largely explaining why the 2017 seat tally went up rather than down.
I was assuming my Cricinfo app had gone wrong.
An amalgam of not-Tory-but-not-Labour and generally-leftish-but-not-Labour voters was never going to survive contact with reality.
It was bad luck that it came about in the era of social media - which reinforced but didn't create the problem - and bad politics that it came with a totemic "betrayal" in tuition fees but neither of those was the fault line
Appreciate it's difficult in a world of FPTP, but wouldn't it be better to have a clear world view and voter proposition than a mushy muddle of Orange Bookers and Labour-lite?
But I doubt they will go anywhere, unless they can find a differentiated leader who people want to hear from.
Vince Cable is not that man.
Once it's over we'll all get along just fine (or no worse than usual)
Except that, if Brexit fails, for sure there will suddenly be a lot more Tories claiming to have always been diehard remainers.
He seems to have built a whole career out of one half-decent gag about 8 years ago.
I'm not sure what it's for.
The LDs are essentially waiting for events beyond their control to force a chunk of the electorate to give them a fresh look.
The Coalition gave the markets a chance to steady; for those who recall 2010 we were about to hit a very serious patch had we not had a stable government, but Clegg’s big, big, mistake was to stay in Coalition for the whole Parliament. That and taking the non-office of DPM instread of a Department, where he could have had his chance to face the Commons and the country, in his own right, rather than when that snake-oil salesman Cameron let him.
If the moderate Tories had been more pragmatic and far sighted in their approach to coalition, they could have had current politics sewn up, and consigned Brexit to the dustbin of history.
His mistake was - as you say - not picking a department but that's with the luxury of hindsight. At that stage, he thought DPM would allow him to advance major constitutional reform.
Although with hindsight a genuine brief might have helped, I think it was a logical and sensible decision to be DPM and not have a portfolio at the time. It just didn't work.
Discusss.
Clegg was a fool. Not much more that can be said.
A golden period of good government? In some ways perhaps.
An end to the daft reshuffles of Blair, creation of the OBR, an increased role for Cabinet with Cameron largely letting his Ministers get on with things.
Ultimately though the basic economic strategy taken was wrong in my view and led to the worst recovery from a recession in 50+ years.
https://www.welt.de/politik/article170867371/Habe-nicht-das-Gefuehl-dass-Frau-Merkel-so-viel-geleistet-hat.html
Two comments can be made in response to that:
1) There had already been three years where Labour pursuing a different strategy had failed to make noticeably more headway than the Coalition did at equally high cost;
2) It was the worst recession since at least 1931 and arguably (in this country at least) 1878 so it is not surprising the recovery was slow and uneven.
Both governments deserve some credit - Brown and Darling for keeping the banks alive and inflation low, the Coalition for managing to avoid mass unemployment while slowly reigning in our vast deficit. Brown's record is marred by the significant role his misguided regulatory reforms played in the crisis. The coalition's by setting over-ambitious targets and failing to meet them.
But sometimes you have to accept there are no easy answers and no quick fixes. Seven years of excess and corruption left us brutally exposed when the music stopped and even those who were not involved in it were always going to suffer. Whether the coalition or Labour could have done much more is a bit doubtful given the restraints they were under. At the same time, both governments were stable and commanded popular legitimacy. That in itself was worth something.
No risk of any other party leader doing the same.
However they have an opportunity to win back council seats in the Home Counties in particular and to appeal to residents living there who normally vote Tory at general elections by opposing developments of housing in the Green belt or local fields and countryside and certainly some local LDs are already starting to do that.
At the same time Corbyn's continued opposition to staying permanenently in the single market and leaving free movement in place gives the LDs the chance to appeal to strong Remainers who want a soft Brexit and voted for Corbyn in June as they thought that was the best way to achieve that but may now be looking for an alternative party committed to permanent single market and customs union membership like the LDs.
A proper dog. That actually does something.
Of course it is perfectly possible on current polls Corbyn has to rely on LD confidence and supply (probably along with the SNP) to get into and stay in government after the next general election, which would give the LDs great influence over the direction of a Labour government in a way it has not had since the Callaghan years.
On 2 - I think it is true that there is evidence which suggests banking crises take longer to recover, but generally a deeper recession = faster recovery.
Whether Labour would have held their nerve and carried on their strategy I don't know.
And you're right that Osborne reversed course partially in time for the election.
Credit where it's due. Vince showed excellent application, and I don't think anyone tipped him to outscore Cook and Root combined...
If the Tories had entered the Euro they would have destroyed themselves.
If Labour had introduced compulsory private medical insurance in the NHS they would have destroyed themselves.
The LibDems, positioned 2000-2010 as the party of the student, got in, raised tuition fees and destroyed themselves,
https://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/newscms/2016_10/1009471/legally-blonde-bruiser-elle-tease-today-160311_c255c4c18d4a2f916209d27ceefa3e9a.jpg
Hopeless to position themselves as a brake on the Tories after that. No amount of Sorry videos would make a difference.
Tragic. They are done.
For me the two decisive events leading to the catastrophy of Brexit both happened in 2010. First the election of Ed instead of David followed by -as you say- the Icarus like behaviour of Clegg.
They can't revive through oppositional politics. They can't say vote LD to keep the Tories out for obvious reasons.
They are too far behind to have an influence on govt. Their position on Brexit is irrelevant. If you are a Remainer you are better off voting Labour to modify that.
There isn't even a Corbyn waiting in the wings to whip up the faithful. Farron was it and he failed.
Time to start again. Failing that, their best bet is to actively target soft tory voters, presenting them as the Coalition continuity party. A small pool to fish in, but about the only hope they have.
In the main discussion Hammond is actually right that the electoral/business/media cycle pushes politicians to make short-term decisions and ignore longer-term planning.
Most revealing is that government is now clearly starting to realise some of the major changes (new IT and the like) that will be needed to make Brexit work. Whilst Hammond has stumped up some money, what they really need is more time.