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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Scottish Independence Referendum: One Year To Go
In the past few days, to coincide with today being exactly one year away from the Scottish Independence referendum, there’s been a plethora of polling on the topic.
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As well as hoping No wins, I hope the result's conclusive. A very narrow victory for either side could be unpleasant, especially as allegations of fixing could arise.
@Roger
And I disagree entirely with that idea (that merely because it was so divorced from reality it was ridiculous), because conference speechs are all about presenting a narrative that puffs up the leader and the party - I have no quibble with people declaring the reality presented by Clegg as ridiculous, but that is notquite what people are suggesting when they say that (it is part of it, but not the whole); they are pretending that other parties do not do the exact same thing and that's just hypocrisy. But more than that, it's just lazy.
Was it an egregious case of narrative building? An argument could be made to that effect I have no doubt, but the lazy argument most often presented at such times is 'Hurr hurr, Clegg is so wrong about the state of politics and is so egotistical, ain't that effing absurd and ridiculous' - subtext: don't notice they all act like that, it is Clegg alone who is so bad.
Was his false narrative really so out of sync as to make it absurdly ridiculous? I just don't see how a stock speech can be classified as such.
One thing that did strike a chord with me in his speech (though I do not regard his party as a beacon of all that is right in politics) was the disappointment and almost disgust with the main two parties and their pattern of behaviour (not that the LDs are blameless in that regard, naturally), dismissiveness of anyone not in their tribe (not that he used the word), the arrogance they display in trying to paint people such as the LDs and others as somehow inherently worse when they do the same things.
The LDs are not as different as Clegg claimed, not at all, but in the short time I've been interested in politics (it's sub 10 years for me), the condescension of the bigger parties to try and paint standard political behavious as partisan faults of their opponents (eg, painting an unrealistic and - political jargon word of the moment - aspirational speech as out and out terrible when it is standard procedure) really vexes me. (smaller parties do it as well, but it's a power imbalance thing - the bigger ones do it to prevent others from being seen as realistic alternatives, the smaller do it to try and be seen as realistic alternatives, which is a slightly less selfish motivation, as it is closer to seeking a level playing field. UKIP try it often)
Now, if only I lived in a seat where it mattered who I voted for my fit or self righteous rage...
Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn 15m
We have a quite fascinating poll from @YouGov tonight. Details later.
"BOOOOREDOM!!!!!!"
Content aside, Clegg doesn't 'do with feeling' very convincingly. Too self-conscious. Miliband ditto. Cameron can at times, but gets blustery. I can't see any of them mustering the weary or the wary tbh.
I think that's fairly reasonable. Apart from one moment, I felt Clegg's 'rallying cry' moments were a little forced, too obvious (I suppose we the public are too used to the standard oratorical tricks?). Cameron has affected me on occasion, though I do recall Miliband had a better delivery on his speech during the humble address to her majesty for the Jubilee in Parliament.
Nor for that matter was AV a foregone conclusion when that was leading in the polls.
The complacency of SLAB and the PB tories is not only utterly unsurprising but entirely welcome. The campaign on the ground and GOTV is going to matter enormously yet the unionists and SLAB still don't seem to have realised it.
They will.
I do think the Yes vote will win narrowly, which as Morris Dance indicates could be troublesome, but while of course the Nats need to present a narrative of total confidence right now regardless of the facts, I think they have what it takes to pull off a win all the same. I wish they didn't, but there you go.
So far out, I just think when time is getting critical the SNP will be able to sway people to the optimistic side, the more passionate side - a view shared even by a minority and beset by enemies on all sides can easily come to dominate a society if the people pursuing it and proselytizing for it are the most certain, most driven, most unified. That sounds like the Yes side to me, even as I hope for the No side to raise their game (while trying to get involved myself naturally, just in case attempts to lovebomb the scots pushes them away)
As for 'passion' well, that's the trouble with the slick PR man act, some will be always impressed by it while others will never fall for it.
The point is that Clegg has spent most of the summer totally at odds with his base on things like civil liberties and Syria to name just a couple, yet that speech was just a rerun of the lib dem spin of 'look what we have achieved' while pretending that all the things Clegg signed off on that the lib dem base hates were either the fault of the tories or labour.
He even managed to blame labour for his miserable failure on AV. Really? Was it labour who bamboozled Clegg with a "gentleman's agreement" not to get involved in the AV debate personally or was that Cammie? Expecting labour or indeed any of the other parties who were favourable to AV, to take all the blame for Clegg's toxicity and strategic blundering is just a bit much. On Lords reform Clegg has a slightly better case for blaming labour yet nobody forced him to be gullible enough to believe Cammie's 'assurances' yet again.
It's also somewhat unfortunate that Clegg seems to have obliviously set out what his priorites are in the very first line.
"Three years ago – nearly three and a half – I walked into the Cabinet Office for my first day as Deputy Prime Minister."
That's it in a nutshell. I'm deputy PM and I'm still deputy PM. Don't you worry your little heads about the quad and the crucial decisions being taken in your name when you can cheer on a rote list of platitudes/achievements and try to ignore the base and membership being hammered year on year.
Inspiring stuff when everyone knows the real reason nobody wants to take his place just yet is they know full well how badly that would turn out for them to become coalition crap magnet this far out from the election. Clegg didn't bat an eyelid before stabbing Ming Campbell in the back with his own briefings against him so he's living in a world of make believe if the thinks any of his prospective replacements are keeping him there out of 'respect'.
It simply wasn't the speech of a leader who seems to be aware of just how critical and dire things are with his party.
If it is then it will be Oborne wot did it.
UKIP 6 short.
Interesting if true.
We certainly need another few days of full on PB Tory hysteria and Dan Hodges being hailed as a prophetic genius.
*chortle*
Sean Connery addresses the SNP faithful in October 2014 after commandeering a nuclear submarine from Faslane:
"Comrades! This is your captain! It is an honour to speak to you today! And I'm honoured to be sailing with you on the maiden voyage of our Motherland's most recent achievement. And once more, we play our dangerous game. A game of chess....against our old adversary...the English Navy! For 300 years, your fathers before you and your older brothers played this game...and played it well. But today, the game is different. WE have the advantage! It reminds me of the heady days of Bannockburn and Robert the Bruce, when the world trembled at the sound of our war drums. Now they will tremble again - at the sound of our silence. The order is: engage the silent drive! Comrades! Our own fleet doesn't know our full potential! They will do everything possible to test us, but they will only test their own embarrassment. We will leave our fleet behind! We will pass through the English patrols, past their sonar nets, and lay off their largest city, and listen to their rock and roll...while we conduct missile drills! And when we are finished, the only sound they will hear is our laughter, while we sail to Dublin, where the sun is warm, and so is the...comradeship. A great day, comrades! We sail into history!"
- What are your plans for negotiating an independent Scotland's membership of the EU?
- What currency would Scotland use?
- Won't your position on nuclear weapons be a tiny bit of a problemette if you want to stay in NATO?
- What is the outlook for Scotland's ability to borrow at low interest rates?
- What will the English/Scottish border controls be like?
- What will be the regulatory backstop for Scotland's financial services industry?
In every case, it seems to have come as a complete surprise to the SNP, indeed be regarded as a gross insult, that anyone might have the temerity to ask these basic questions.
Given that, I find it hard to see the SNP making up the lost ground. They've had 50 years or more to think up some convincing answers to such questions. And indeed there are perfectly reasonably answers to these questions, if only they'd give them, rather than get chippy because the questions have been asked.
Are they deliberately trying to lose the referendum?
I wonder whether this could revive Darling's career?
If Ed's mauling continues he might be the ideal eleventh hour candidate......
The good news for Ed is that he seems to be getting some better press (ref Oborne) which probably means his backroom team have finally got off their backsides and started doing their jobs
Evening all,
The Austria game is now out, and closes 27 Sep: http://www.electiongame.co.uk/austria13/, while the Germany game closes at 8pm on Saturday: http://www.electiongame.co.uk/germany13/.
Many thanks (Mike sorry to hear about your scrape),
DC
Project fear and rerunning SLAB's 2011 campaign will drive turnout down and if the unionists really are deluded to think that's something they can leave on the ground to SLAB's diminishing numbers and fractious infighting then they really don't have a clue what they are doing.
I think he knows things are dire, he just has a different tactic to try and reverse that than you. Which since I imagine many think the tactic they should take is, first off, get rid of him, leaves him fewer options.
I also think that where a party is in dire straits and the leader is unwilling to step aside to try and fix that (or the party is unwilling to make him do so), they need someone to speak with pure unadulterated confidence.
Unless Clegg goes they won't get back a lot of activists (and even if they do, it is hardly guaranteed they will come back), so he needs to inspire the ones who are left, and so I think casting the limited options they have in front of them as the right thing to do and by golly it will work was appropriate.
He may be the wrong leader for them in this siutation, I am not certain if his gamble will pay off (he's doubling down I guess), but personally I think he is aware of the difficulties his party faces and his speech was a reflection of that, in trying to get them to embrace the idea that they should cast themselves as permanent middlemen in constant coalitions (something which I do not mind, though I would prefer more than one party have enough seats to be a credible junior coalition partner - esepcially as SNP will not be available for many more years in Westminster), an approach unpalatable to many of the public, and therefore a bold proposition - one they have had unspoken for a while, but is quite bold to outright state.
What are the latest polls showing?
LOL
What I'm interested in is how much Ed M's will improve. Agree with Oborne or not, Ed M at least has some things he can present as strong and successful to rally the party faithful.
Thought not.
My take was it was a workmanlike speech he did not screw up, with standard political rallying and partisan interpretation of events and future predictions. Unless Miliband and Cameron decide to take risks (unlike both of them) and be bolder, theirs will probably be similar as they too will try to rally the faithful and are decent enough performers.
Therefore, Clegg's speech was not terrible - people just dislike him and the LDs more and so are interpreting a standard, competently delivered speech as terrible for reasons which apply as much to their own sides and leaders' speechs as the LDs but which they are pretending is something unique to Clegg and the LDs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10318079/And-still-Andrew-Mitchell-waits-for-justice.html
http://www.wahlrecht.de/umfragen/index.htm
- FDP appears to be edging to safety - all but one recent poll show them at 5-6.
- Markel's CDU marginally down on their peaks, but still miles ahead
- SDP and Greens both slightly above last time. That's a big drop for the Greens from polls a few months ago. They have been embarassed by a long-forgotten episode when some members proposed to legalise child porn and weren't stamped on by the leadership right away
- Left down a bit on the last election but up from the depths they'd plunged to during party in-fighting (crude summary: realist ex-Communists vs fundamentalist western Trots)
- Anti-Euro AfD and pirates both falling short.
Take a step back and the ONLY big change is a shift from junior coalition partners FDP to the senior partner CDU. There's a lesson there. And even if the FDP hangs on, a CDU-SDP coalition is probably the most likely outcome. Whether that's in the SPD interest, or what it will do to European finance policy, is a moot question, but the SPD is more pro-EU than the FDP so it will possibly marginally soften the German position on support for Greece.
Now a genuine question,can anyone enlighten me. The oil and gas was discovered,and exploited by the UK,it is currently an UK asset. For purely practical reasons it was brought to shore in Scotland,why is it assumed it is totally a Scottish asset. I may be naive,but shouldn't the asset be split ,by negotiation if we split up.
Genuine question,maybe I am naive on these matters.
They aren't guaranteed to come back (and they aren't so at least you seem to be aware of just how bad things now are) because Clegg's toxicity is going to taint the lib dem brand the longer he is there. As it already has done.
You seem to be suggesting that the only course of action is for Clegg to treat his lib dem activists like the voters and run a strategy of desperately trying to hold onto those he has left and basically writing off those he has lost. That's sustainable for a year or two but not this entire parliament. The lib dems more than any other westmisnter party relies hugely on that base and those activists to get MPs elected so that's going to have a multiplier effect if he can't at least start to turn things around.
Was Clegg blessed with a wealth of options? Nope but who's fault is that? Clegg made his choices and he has to live with them and clearly expects his base to as well.
What might have been expected was a far bigger focus on what the lib dems will stand for in the future and setting their priorities out for the election right now. That neatly skips the need to defend everything the coalition has done and praise it to the hilt, along with all the absurd posturing and differentiation on policies Clegg has signed off on.
The reason that can't be done effectively is that Clegg making promises to the electorate on what they might do in power is going to be a colossal headache for the lib dems at 2015.
It wouldn't be quite as problematic for some other lib dem if they take his place but lib dems must know that having Clegg in the debates setting out pledges and red lines will be a complete nightmare for them.
Most of the oil and gas is in Scottish territorial waters.
Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a referendum question. Choose a referendum date. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin' else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you've got the SNP?
I certainly don't think it will be as effective as he tried to claim so confidently it would be. I do however think that he delivered his chosen strategy reasonably well. That doesn't mean I think it will work, or that they could not have chosen a different strategy.
But I do not think, however, that because we may think the strategy was wrong, or won't work, or whatever we think about it, that means his speech was terrible. My opinion of his speech was based on what I perceived to be what it was intended to do (and I think we can agree it was not about trying to claw back support that has already been lost!) and whether on that basis it delivered - and I think that since he did not obviously cock up, and it was a confident rallying cry, it did that.
It might have been a huge mistake to try this approach, and the LDs more bear a responsibility for not forcing the leadership off this path if they have a better idea (because by this point they knew what he would do, and no-one is willing, at this stage, to stop him, so they assent to that approach), and so on those terms the speech may have been a political miscalculation, it may not, but given what Clegg set out to do today, I think he avoided a disaster.
Which for the LDs, is like a win at this point.
Also saying "not long to go" an hour ago.
What has been a very pleasant surprise so far is the rank incompetence of the independence campaign. There seems to almost no issue that they can't get themselves into a fankle over. As a result the SNP are endangering their reputation for competence after years of carefully doing as little as possible at Holyrood with the admirable and comendable objective of making as few mistakes and unpopular decisions as possible.
Still think it will get closer than the current polling though.
Best go back to reposting your 'hilarious' submarine 'parody' or reposting that pinnacle of satire on how Ed is a 'genius' for the 1000th time.
- Boring competence is good in rough times
- Being a junior partner is bad
Is there somewhere that one can bet against the AfD getting in? Reasonably confident about that - more so than the FDP hanging on: approaching an election which an apparent little safety margin is dangerous as think people may rally to the big two.
ScotlandTonight @ScotlandTonight 1m
Prof John Curtice - @WhatScotsThink - dissects some of the results of our poll here > http://blog.whatscotlandthinks.org/2013/09/ipsos-mori-poll-unchanging-but-different/ …
CDU/CSU + SPD:
Paddy Power: 1.8
Ladbrokes: 2.75
Unibet 2.8
Betway: 3.1
On Germany, there's only Paddy Power's make up of the next govt market
http://www.paddypower.com/bet/politics/other-politics/european-politics?ev_oc_grp_ids=1263861
Edit: I see Richard's on the ball, see his comment third one below this one
Step 1: A Yes Vote next year.
Step 2: A Conservative-led government (majority or minority) in 2015
Step 3: Boundary changes done properly.
Step 4: Goodbye SLAB, hello Tory plurality/majority that England has voted for consistently since 2005 General Election when Howard got more votes than Blair, or 2010 when Cameron got a majority.
Please Scots I'm begging you take Brown, Darling and all those guys away. Please. Pretty please.
Of course the question has never been "is Scotland too wee, too poor, too stupid', the question is would a separate Scotland be wee-er, pooer, stupider than it is in a union.
The answer to that question, according to the SNP, is yes, which also answers the second question in the affirmative.
The Snippers are dead keen on Scotland being part of a larger political union (the EU), just not the one they are currently in with the English.
The Snippers are dead keen on Scotland being part of a larger defence union (NATO), just not the one they are currently in with the English.
The SNP rhetoric is that Scotland would be too wee, too poor, too stupid to not be part of larger unions, except with the hated English.
Though there's a lot to be said for "NannyCam".
LOL
Now where is IOS and Red Rag?
Cue mad panic from timbots as they accuse PBtories of hysterical reaction to one poll.
…YouGov/Sun: Tories and Labour also level pegging on female vote – tied on 34% each. Cameron’s female problem going, or Ed's arriving?
Where's tim ;-)
The Tories are back up to their GE score.
Yet UKIP are plus 9% on their GE score
And Lab are up 7% on their GE Score.
So these 2010 Lib Dems are splitting evenlyish between Lab and UKIP?
COA 46%
LAB 36%
or if you prefer:
Tory/UKIP 48%
Lefties 46%
How were the interviews?
Actually I've got an early morning, otherwise it would be interesting to see all the measured reactions to this remarkable probable outlier.
Night all.
Even Clegg knew what it is. I fully expect Darling and Brown to refuse MPs £10,000 pay rise during austerity.
Only joking! of course they won't.
Twitter
Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn 5m
BREAKING: YouGov/Sun poll tonight - Tories and Labour neck and neck, tied on 36% each. UKIP 12%, LD 10%. Lab lost 14 point lead over a year.
Tom Newton Dunn @tnewtondunn 5m
…YouGov/Sun: Tories and Labour also level pegging on female vote – tied on 34% each. Cameron’s female problem going, or Ed's arriving?
LOL
Bring on the PB tory hysteria!
Just like yours over the ashcroft poll.