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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Lib Dem Conference: Once more unto the breach
Lib Dem Conferences have always been activist focussed, less so since entering government certainly but (possibly excepting a couple of larger set piece speeches) the primary audience is usually the one sitting in the room wearing garishly yellow lanyards.
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Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Nick! The UK and Saint Vince!'
Nice to see the Lib Dems enjoying government and conference.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/liberaldemocrats/10316083/Sketch-Danny-Alexander-robot-in-disguise.html
[LibDems might prefer not to follow the link]
Why not 5-16 yo?
Or 3-11 yo?
Or spend £430 pa on giving every pupil a good quality lap-top?
Or plenty of books?
Or returning the school day to its old-fashioned 9-4 (better, given that the parent will be working, 8.30 -5.30, with extra-curricular activities to keep pupils occupied and active)? Providing an extra 2-3hrs/day of usefully-occupied educational time might well be more useful than a hot meal at lunchtime.
But then, the LDs in the staff-room would then need to work longer hours, whilst now they'll get a free meal too, eh Cleggy/Laws?
Better yet, why not fund State boarding schools to deal with the increasingly prevalent educational underclass that neither teachers nor Soc Ser seem capable of protecting from their dysfunctional mother (and her current partner) as so many tragic cases have shown.
I still have a vestige of a soft spot for the Lib Dems though it's almost negligible. Perhaps if Danny Alexander David Laws and Nick Clegg lose their seat that'll suffice.
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans seats, sans ayes, sans dogshit, sans everything.
‘It’s why Lord Oakeshott is now a punch-line, and Nick is secure through 2015.’
So it would seem – but I doubt it will prevent Oakshotts from repeating his mantra next year. It’s the only time the media takes any notice of him,
"Sans seats, sans ayes, sans dogshit, sans everything."
To this delightful Scottish lament.....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PK-E1f-YKBA
There's no appetite to remove Clegg as Leader amongst Lib Dem activists and supporters.
If only Ladbrokes offered better odds than 2/7 on Clegg being the Lib Dem leader at the next election.
Your judgement of a little over 37.5+ seats for the LibDems marries closely with the latest ARSE projection of 40.
Presently I'd assess their figure at close to 45.
Clearly in the last few days the SPD has gained a couple of points at the expense of the CDU. The FDP vote is crucial. If the AfD does cross the 5% threshold, and the FDP don't [ even though they are poles apart on Europe ], Merkel for all her big CDU votes would need to sit in government with the SPD.
Better still, if they joined the Tories !
Would he have done so without the derision his drivel of yesturday received here?
And why is SeanT getting so excited about the value of his Camden Town flat ?
Unless he plans to leave London the value of it is irrelevant to him.
Although if he does drop dead as per the Thai soothsayer it would give a larger inheritance for his daughters.
Interesting statistics. Amongst the European countries with the least debt per capita are Spain, Greece, Portugal and Italy.
The Netherlands and Norway's per capita debt is slightly smaller than those of the UK.
Personally, I suspect that many would be AfD voters will vote FDP as they look more likely to cross the 5% barrier. In which case we could see the current coalition continue.
The European Car Manufacturers Association published its monthly report on new car registrations today. It showed that new car registrations in August had fallen by 5.0% in August after a promising 5.0% rise in July. This leaves July as the only month in 2013 not to have shown a decline on its equivalent month in 2012.
Part of the reason for the reversal of trend is that August this year had one less working day than in 2012, and July 2013 one working day more. But this factor alone can't disguise disappointment that the mid-summer recovery in the EU's car registration figures may not be sustained to year end.
The UK is the only EU country in which car registrations are up over the first eight months of 2013, and by a sizeable amount, +10.44%, with the growth rate in August increasing to +10.9%.
Compare this to the other major EU countries: German August registrations contracted by -5.5%, Italian by -6.6%, French by -10.5% and Spanish by -18.3%.
In August, the overall growth rate of -5.0% reverted to the eight month trend of -5.2%. Total registrations of 7,841,596 units to date this year represents the lowest January to August level ever recorded.
What makes this so disappointing is that the July figures indicated that the decline in registrations in continental Europe may have bottomed out.
In July, Italy was the only major market to shrink (-1.6%), while growth reached +0.9% in France, +2.1% in Germany and +14.9% in Spain with +12.7% in the UK Overall registrations were up 5.0% on July 2012.
Car registrations, second perhaps to house prices, are a major leading indicator of an economy's heath. Whereas, we can welcome the relative strength of registrations in UK, the news that the EU economy's revival may be faltering is not good news. A high differential in economic performance between the UK and its major trading parthers in Europe can persist for short periods, but sustainable recovery will almost certainly depend on the Eurozone block following our path out of recession.
A blip or a trend? We probably need to wait for the September figures and hope they show the same encouraging signs as those in July. In meantime we should all be cautious about our own as well as the EU's recovery.
I'm long a Eurozone recovery, and liking what I'm seeing
“Right idea, Jezza – wrong seat. I hope fervently that the great man can be persuaded to stand against Cleggers in Sheffield, where his majority (unlike Ed’s) is very frail indeed."
Doncaster North maj 10909
Sheffield Hallam maj 15284
Add on that Clarkson would be likely to reduce EdM's majority slightly while he would likely increase Clegg's majority and that demographic trends will do likewise.
Can anyone really make a case that Boris is a suitable leader of the Conservative party?
I am not suggesting you renounce this role, at least yet.
But these are perplexing figures which deserve airing. I suspect that working day number differences may account for much of the August decline, but pulse rates would benefit from figures which avoided the need for such gloss. Remember the snow in the early stages of the Osborne recovery? It only gave the doubters the means to throw missiles.
LOL
Clegg and his ostrich faction might be slightly more persuasive if it really was just a few opinion polls and not year after year after year of the lib dem base getting hammered in local elections on the ground and their membership hemorrhaging. Something that is painfully obvious by the somewhat sparse attendance at their conference.
Nor can the obvious reluctance of any prospective new leader to become the coalition shit magnet this far out from the election be spun as some kind of vote of confidence in Clegg by anyone other than the deluded and the gullible.
The plain fact of the matter is that Clegg is toxic and he's going to remain toxic. So if the lib dems really are suicidal enough to keep him as leader for 2015 then they will have nobody but themselves to blame for the result.
Nor will it be just a matter of slotting in Farron or Cable and magically rebuilding that base in the blink of an eye after 2015. It will take many, many years to do so because the voters trust is not easily regained just with a change of faces in opposition as labour is finding out. Something that might have been more bearable for those real lib dems who still know what they stand for had Clegg not been so incompetent and inept at gaining anything lasting and meaningful from the coalition. Something like voting reform or Lords reform instead of some nice ministerial cars for a few of his closest chums and MPs alongside the meaningless job title of deputy prime minister for calamity Clegg himself.
Germans drive big cars and wear jeans and an expensive Swiss watch.
Spaniards drive small cars and wear Prado and Swatches.
We need to do some more research into intra-bloc cultural differences before drawing any final conclusions on consumption.
So, I like Spain, Germany, Ireland and Estonia. I am modestly positive about the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, and Portugal.
And I worry a great deal about France and Italy - the two countries which believe the theory that the best way to deal with unemployment is to make it illegal to fire people.
Fact for the day: private sector employment in Spain, ex-construction, is now almost back at pre-crisis levels. (Spanish construction and related activities - at its peak - accounted for more than one-in-five of the workforce. Ireland, only modestly less insane, was at one-in-seven.)
But even so they would have been only Labour supporters talking on a niche blog rather than someone who aspired to be Conservative leader blurting out his drivel for the whole world to read.
As the Conservatives have already failed to win one election through having a leader who preferred his fantasy world to facts, it would not be a good idea for their next leader to have a similar flaw.
The latest poll for the Guardian by ICM has 32% of British voters backing Scottish independence, roughly the same level of support found in Scotland, with 52% of British voters in favour of keeping the UK intact.
Significantly, it finds the highest level of support for independence amongst Labour voters across Britain, with 35% believing that Scotland should split from the UK, and 52% against.
That rate is more than double the level of support for independence among Scottish Labour voters found by other polls and 10 percentage points higher than the 25% of pro-independence Labour supporters found in a Scotland-only poll by ICM published at the weekend.
That finding will alarm Ed Miliband, the party's UK leader, and Scottish Labour leaders as they struggle against internal opposition to agree a new blueprint for greater Scottish devolution that could include splitting up parts of the welfare state and giving the Holyrood parliament greater tax powers.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/sep/17/alex-salmond-aide-alex-bell-scottish
PM message to bunny ears culprit MT @David_Cameron: @Manutuilagi was great to welcome u...No need to apologise I know it was just bit of fun
http://stephentall.org/2013/09/17/bob-worcester-forecasts-lib-dems-to-be-reduced-to-24-seats-in-2015-ill-run-naked-down-whitehall-if-thats-the-result/?wt=2
Their real problem is that Lamont and SLAB were counting on outside aid and activists being bused in to help them on the ground. Not only was that an incredibly risky move in the first place but they will be very lucky to get a huge influx of volunteers to do so because of the internal split.
SLAB are going to have to face how they will cope with a huge ground campaign and GOTV operation. Since help from SCON and the scottish lib dems is not only the last thing they need but unlikely to be forthcoming anyway. SCON and the scottish lib dems have one eye on the scottish elections and wouldn't mind at all if SLAB exhaust all their resources on the referendum. Something that SLAB is becoming painfully aware of, which is going to cause the Brownite "united with labour" and the Blairite "better together" factions to get more than a trifle upset as the months go on.
Even PB's esteemed Scottish Nationalist Personage, Stuart Dickson, has indicated it will be the highlight of his year. What greater endorsement could there be ??
Countdown - 11 hours 38 minutes 50 seconds
Hardly.
http://www.ukip.org/newsroom/news/860-2013-conference-line-up
Mark LIttlewood is giving a speech: "An Economic Strategy for Britain".
Salmond's is " Boredom ! " .
only a rebuttal on Scot goes Plop could be greater praise.
Calm down dear. You always get upset when Cammie's Cast Iron referendum gets mentioned and you can't think of anything meaningful to say. Just like Cammie himself in fact.
The boredom threshold of the PB Hodges and rightwingers on PB is no more meaningful or informative than the scottish tory surge was. Their frustrated impotence is matched only by their ignorance on the subject.
The average PBer has a much better grasp of the issues than the average scottish voter.
Jim Davidson's favourite film is Derek Jarman's film "Blue"
'It's the arrers, innit.'
The ground campaign and GOTV matters and the lower the turnout the more critical it will be.
Ah, Liberal Democrat and before that Liberal Conferences (or Assemblies as they were called). An interesting experience where those for whom politics is a hobby meet those for whom it's a passion and those for whom it's a living.
It's easy to fall into the goldfish bowl and start making assumptions from inside.
That said, no LD member I know is under any illusion that 2015 will be anything other than a very hard fight - wagons will be pulled round 75 or so seats and the rest will not only be left, they will be stripped of any and every activist and financial resource.
Outside the 75, the results will be horrendous - vote shares will crash, deposits will be lost and there will be plenty of fourth, fifth and even sixth places.
Inside the 75, there will be setbacks and failures but other places will not only survive but even prosper. For me, the barometer is the 46 MPs won in 1997. If the Party stays above that, Nick may not be vindicated but he will have done enough irrespective of whether that number means in terms of participation in Government or not.
For what little it's worth, I suspect the Liberal Democrat MPs will be on the Opposition benches in the next Commons.
Those issues being how muslims and lefties are to blame for everything and how Dan Hodges is always right. Humbling indeed.
Judge rules against billionaire businessman but orders AEC to sort votes again at two booths where a mix-up occurred":
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/17/clive-palmer-vote-counting-fairfax?CMP=twt_gu
I'm off to bed, nytol as they used to say.
Some might forget now but Clegg was actually looking a little precarious immediately after the election and he himself conceded the result was disappointing since he won less seats than Kennedy did. He and the lib dems wanted and expected more. Whether that was realisitic or not it was certainly a more viable strategy to achieving it than not even bothering to campaign for as many gains as possible.
If you don't even campaign with a view to getting more than the seats you hold then don't be surprised that the result is an ever shrinking party.
I assume it will rise just as I assume the kipper vote will fall. The question is not just by how much but where and in what seats since I also assume it will not be uniform across the country but with quite significant differences in some areas.
It looks like a really nice venue!
http://www.c-h-w.com
Hope you enjoy the day. It looks like a good line up.
Devolution helped the SNP deliver this Indy Referendum, but it also makes their argument that the Scots are often governed by Governments that they didn't vote for at Westminster so much weaker as a result. The Scots do now in effect, get two bites at the cherry when it comes to who will Govern them in Edinburgh and at Westminster. The Banking crisis and deep recession we have just experienced makes it so much harder for the SNP to convince voters about taking a risk which could cause yet further economic uncertainty in the longer term.
After the Referendum kicks Independence into the long grass for another generation, our politicians would do well to give constitutional/vote system issues a very long rest while they concentrate on delivering the public services they do have overall control of up here.
The PB scottish tories are always amusing but certainly not the target audience for large numbers of don't knows or indeed large numbers at all. Cameron's incompetent coalition has saw SCON numbers tumble even further in scotland yet his obsequious cheerleaders fear to ever say a bad word against him.
Nor are any predictions and observations from a scottish tory surger and PB's leading anti-tipster anything other than irrelevant, though admittedly always very funny.
The scottish tories opposed devolution and we all know how well that turned out for them.