politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » How will the 2010 LDs who’ve switched to LAB react to the s
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » How will the 2010 LDs who’ve switched to LAB react to the speech? If they remain Ed becomes PM
At the 2010 general election 24% of those who turned out voted for the Lib Dems and, as we all know, a large number have since shifted or are now saying don’t know.
0
This discussion has been closed.
Comments
It still looks like a hung Parliament to me.
:norways-gain-is-a-loss-for-whom:
It would be a mighty close-run thing, and if the Conservatives managed to defy the national swing in a dozen marginals they would be less than 10 seats behind Labour, and Conservatives and Lib Dems could just about scrape a majority together between them. It would be Nick Clegg's call.
So I think there is still all to play for. Loss of Tory votes to UKIP is important. Labour 2010 voters who voted for the incumbent might be persuaded to vote for the current PM. Labour are losing some voters to UKIP. Some 2010 Lib Dems now say they will vote UKIP and Conservative.
So there is probably ample ground for Miliband to hoover up Left Leaning 2010 Lib Dems indeed.
Any repeat of a comment like that will lead to stronger action.
Redrag/Fluffy- Your conversation is now closed.
[And that is only one seat. Portsmouth, Pitsea, Plymouth, Teeside and The Wirral may awaken to the lunacy that is Militwunt. Scotland will be happy though....]
Apologies in advance for those still enjoying brunch…!
But it would appear that not only did Ed Balls know McBride,- he knew rather too well.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2431236/The-day-I-woke-bed-naked-Ed-Balls-How-shadow-chancellor-gave-Damian-McBride-rude-awakening.html
Whilst it is true that the Lib Dem/Labour switchers do represent a sizable number of voters - some 1.9 million voters - it is a number that is dwarfed by comparison with the number of eligible voters who did not vote - almost 16 million of them.
The real question for any party seems to me to be how to re-enthuse those voters and get them supporting our electoral system again. The party that can do that with any degree of success is the one that will win the next election, irrespective of what Lib Dem switchers (or UKIP) are doing.
TimesBusiness @TimesBusiness
HSBC hires 3,000 more compliance officers, bringing its total compliance staff to more than 5,000. By @CitySamuel thetim.es/1bahXEo
I make no judgement as to which side would benefit most from such local factors.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2431236/DAMIAN-MCBRIDE-The-day-I-woke-bed-naked-Ed-Balls.html
You're too fixated on getting the word "Hodges" into your posts to see it.
@Flockers_pb
''They also need to tear into Miliband's legacy at DECC. Every price rise on his watch - he now owns. Every defence of profitability - he now owns. Every comment he has ever made about the importance of investment into the UK is a weapon waiting to be used against him.'
As in:
'Last week it emerged energy bills have almost doubled since 2000, turning up the heat on Britain’s already hard-pressed families.
Households last year spent an average of £1,339 on gas and electricity – 85 per cent more than the £710 at the turn of the century, research shows.
The figures – adjusted to 2012 prices to take inflation into account – show that gas bills went up by 119 per cent and electricity bills by 47 per cent between 2000 and last year.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430497/Labour-conference-2013-Ed-Miliband-speech-claims-Britain-better.html#ixzz2ftVlkPFD
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook
Or that it is a massive risk / upheaval / adds uncertainty into the market to save the consumer £120..why not just raise my IC threshold and leave £120 in my pocket? It is about the same as Cameron's marriage tax nonsense...if you are going to do it, make it really substantial.
As I've posted before, but it's even clearer now, what Labour should fear is not losing the election under Miliband, but winning it under Miliband. Do you really not understand where he is taking you?
"Trumpington Village Hall on the outskirts of Cambridge will host a series of workshops including "spanking and impact play", "kink on a budget" and "flogging", in an event organised by the group Peer Rope Cambridge.
Tea and biscuits will also be provided, the cost of which will be covered by the £10 entrance fee. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own money-saving ideas to the workshop, which will cater to fetish fans affected by the economic downturn.
The day starts with “breakfast and introductions,” before proceeding on to sessions covering hypnosis, spanking and “communication and negotiation.” http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/10332650/Village-hall-hosts-bondage-workshop-with-tea-and-biscuits.html
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BU_549sCEAA5kca.jpg:large
Maybe it will work, in May 2015. (More likely, it will half-work, which would be even worse.)
But then what?
Why should the tax-payer take all the pain?Why not these utility companies which are accused of rigging the market so that if one company raises the price,they all follow suit effectively ending competition?
For Lib Dems though I think Ed's return to 1970's style demand management possibly presents us with an opportunity to stake out some healthy territory in the centre between the Tories having to move right to placate the EU hating wing of their party and needing to reclaim UKIP voters and Labour heading off in the other direction.
Business for Labour!
Errhhh...because your leader and shadow minister said so....new regulator...break up of big 6, separation of generation and supply...etc..don't know about you, but that sounds like a massive upheaval to me.
The keynote policies will appeal to 2010 Labour voters and the LD movers alike. If there are on-going and seemingly hysterical responses to them it'll only strengthen the effect. The one counterbalancing effect could, of course, be if it knocks the current UKIP supporters out of their schismatic frame of mind and back into the Tory fold.
So, the main question for those planning their personal circumstances post-2015 is: does Milliband mean it all (plan for higher tax/interest rates) or is it just eye-catching red meat to achieve a 35% vote that will be followed by another go at prudence. The goal of the Blair project was to prove that New Labour could win a second election, is Milliband similarly focussed or does he just want to show that a socialist manifesto can win one election?
Time after time people talk about appealing to people who did not vote - I remember reams of analysis from Patrick before the last election on why an increased turnout would produce a thumping Conservative victory - but it is never that simple.
I would also argue that there are structural reasons why turnout is lower now than in the past, to do with a greater number of people being registered to vote at more than one address, because of second homes, split families, university and moving around the country for work. As I've said before, I was registered to vote in three different constituencies for the 2001 general election, but I only voted once, so my personal turnout figure would have been recorded as 33.3%.
Since I support the integrity of our voting system, there was no way for any party to enthuse me to increase my turnout to 100%.
(As an aside, there's a thatched cottage on the Trumpington Road that used to have two blow-up dolls arranged in various positions in an upstairs window. They always made us chuckle when we went past on the top deck of the bus, and we'd try to guess how they were arranged. Sadly they vanished sometime whilst we were living down in Southampton).
Personally, I think he's going to poll as badly as Foot - even though Cameron's no Thatcher, Milliband's brand of neo-communism is anathema to most, if not yet all, British people.
In business people add up all the costs, not just a selected few and at the monent Ed's adding to costs not reducing them.
The Tories certainly raid their easy targets.
They magically find the money for their pet projects and tax cuts.
They quite like disruptive top-down reorganisations and intervening in markets.
They are hardly immune from producer interests.
As for pain, its primarily for other people.
This book was recently recommended by someone (sorry, forgotten by whom) on pb
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hedge-Hogs-Traders-Streets-Disaster/dp/1400068398/
Though its main focus is the demise of a hedge fund, it covers the huge costs to businesses of gas price spikes caused by speculators trading natural gas options.
Labour leader Ed Miliband admits that energy companies may now “collude” to raise energy prices ahead of the 2015 election as a way to get around his pledge to force them to freeze prices.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10332674/Ed-Miliband-admits-pledge-to-freeze-energy-prices-could-lead-to-higher-bills-before-next-election.html
More coin for the lawyers ahead...
Miliband effectively wiped £816,000,000 off the value of Centrica - imagine what he could do if he were Prime Minister...
Politicians do a bit of window dressing shock.
Overall energy taxes have gone up and will continue to do so. When the base of cost of energy continues to rise so do the taxes. And then there's the green levies that have been plonked on top.......
Businesses need security of supply. This measure may give them lower prices, but will also have the potential to make supplies more unreliable.
If the problem you are trying to solve is high energy prices, there are much better ways of tackling the problem.
It's amazing that none of this occurred to Ed whilst he was in charge of the department ...
Crime. Welfare. Europe. Debt/deficit. Education. Immigration. Any other big areas Miliband utterly failed to mention yesterday?
Of course whereas some see nefarious connections between, say, the big 6 paying for stands at the Tory conference there is nothing wrong whatsoever with them (or companies like Grid) bunging Labour lots of money.
Even if Labour set up the regulatory system that they now say has led to consumers being fleeced.
Edited extra bit: Miss Plato, that local story was quite amusing. I'm unsurprised that the sado-masochists are ready, willing and able to tighten their belts, even if it seems like a painful process.
Decades ago, when the CBI promised a bare-knuckle fight against government proposals, there wasn't a Labour government. It is a myth, probably even more true now, that Conservative governments somehow understand businesses.
The fact that the Centrica`s share prices stayed up yesterday was quoted as bad for Miliband and as it has gone down today,this is also portrayed as bad news for Miliband!
PB is becoming a parody of itself!
Learn how the markets work first. Labour clearly don't understand them as demonstrated.
Labour says that the price freeze, which would be implemented by primary legislation after the election, would save households an average of £120 and businesses £1,800 and cost the energy industry £4.5 billion. The industry says that the cost could be double that. Mr Miliband said that a Labour government would also create a new regulator to force through reforms of the energy market to force companies to separate their energy generation and retail divisions and introduce a simpler tariff structure...
Angela Knight, chief executive of Energy UK, said: “Freezing the bill may be superficially attractive, but it will freeze the money to build and renew power stations, freeze the jobs and livelihoods of 600,000-plus people dependent on the energy industry and make the prospect of energy shortages a reality, pushing up prices for everyone.” http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3878554.ece
Getting 'DNV/NOTA' out to vote is the key to winning - not just a (relative) handful of waverers and muddle-minded morons. The percentage of these has been growing rapidly in recent GEs (even more so in all other elections) and the reason seems clear enough - "All politicians are the same (in it for themselves/unprincipled/liars/smooth-talking b******s etc) and none them have a clue/will make any difference/can solve our problems (personal, company, national, global) - so what's the point in my voting?"
The answer is equally obvious too - inspire and lead.
Sadly, only three of the current generation of UK politicians can do that - Farage, Galloway and Salmond - and none of them will ever be PM.
Mr Miliband insisted that that his legal advice was that he would “absolutely” be able to freeze energy prices.
He also indicated that he could be prepared to intervene in other areas like the food and petrol industries if those markets are also deemed to have “failed”.
What EdM has latched onto is the fact that there can be left wing populism as well as right wing populism. And as he knows from experience that it is very hard to counter.
With the Tories painting Labour as the party of shirkers and the immigrant hordes; and Labour painting the Tories as the party of the big energy companies and property speculators it looks like we are going to be getting a thoroughly unedifying and vacuous GE campaign, with neither party speaking to the country as a whole.
Miliband appears to be targeting areas where government action (often due to the greenery to which he is devoted) has caused costs to rise, and then he attacks the companies involved for costs rising.
ASDA doesn`t raise it`s prices when TESCO does and they compete on quality and prices.
Whereas in the Energy industry,they all raise their prices together.
Also on the wider picture, if a freeze is about certainty for consumers, then "it can't be done" or "it'll distort the energy market" is a complete lack of certainty. I suspect this may be behind the CBI's objection as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1kJyLGUKxE
Eighties' Nights happen after 9:00pm.
The problem is not so much the 18 months of price-freeze, which the companies could survive, though with some financial damage that will affect investment down the line, it's about the fact that the government will have fundamentally changed the rules of the game. After all, if it can impose price constraints once, what's to stop it doing so again? That uncertainty will make the UK a seriously unatractive place to do business in the energy market, or in others where the participants feel the government might make similar populist interventions.
Sesin Seeing as they buy the energy from the same wholesale market that's hardly suprising.
Again, proving that you and Ed don't know how the energy market works.
I can't remember his exact words, but he admiited it is pointless us depressing wages in an attempt to produce goods as cheaply as the Chinese.
I agree we can't compete. And our lack of manufacturing competitiveness is fundamental to the economic future of the UK. We cannot manufacture goods as competitively as China can. That's a fact.
And Ed is right, and actually quite brave, to point it out. I wish he had elaborated on it, because I'd like to know what the answers are for a country like the UK.
Even as a capitalist and someone who believes in the free market, as most of us do, I defy anyone not to look at Detroit (okay, I know corruption had as much to do with that as manufacturing decline) or places like Winchester in America (as brilliantly outlined in Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus) and not be fearful for the future.
Bageant doesn't come up with any answers to American industrial decline, and is an unabashed socialist, but his account of blue collar Americans, working hard all their lives for a manufacturing giant before a) starting to see their living standards decline, b) doing more for less, c) discovering their benefits and insurances don't cover what they thought they'd cover, d) submitting to further pay decreases or else jobs be shipped out to Mexico, or China or somewhere cheaper and eventually e) ending up dirt poor, in homes they can't afford and with no state assistance, whilst the multinational company gets richer and richer, is a siren note for us here in the UK.
We are heading in that direction. Energy bills, tax bills, food prices, mortgage payments, the cost of living are all becoming unafforable to people who want to live the same standard of life their parents lived. Our government can't afford to sustain our living standards. They can't afford it now; just look at the £100bilion deficit. God help what it will be like in twenty years when we have millions more pensioners.
I don't think Ed Miliband has the answers. But he was brave to bring it up in his speech. Because these are the big issues facing us in the future. We can all retreat to our comfy capitalist soundbites and decry the uselessness of socialism, but the answers to our future need a lot of future home truths.
The LibDems came up with the best way and that was by continuing to lift the low paid out of tax altogether. To date none of the other parties have come up with a better or more directly effective idea.
I feel I need a shower.
If you read this book and Tom Bower's book, how the hell did Labour let Brown and his team become leader?
All the warning signs were there.
But why innovate when you are getting a 10% increase in prices year on year and development subsidised by the taxpayer.
I don't know whether his energy policy is feasible, or if it will unravel over the next few days, but I can understand that it will be popular, and welcomed by the average guy on the street. That sort of lefty policy, and the housebuilding idea,is something that might get him a majority....I still think he's not up to the task of PM, mind.
It is possible to argue that this is the fault of the parties and if only we had sensible policies attuned to non-voters, turnout would jump. UKIP is banking heavily on that, and they record high "certainty to vote" figures so they might be right, but I wonder.
I am not defending what Ed said. I am not sure what I think about it, though I doubt it will lead to the apocalypse predicted by some on here. I am commenting on the politics of it. It is left wing populism and it very effectively latches on to what I think is a widespread feeling in the country that big businesses, such as those we see in the energy sector, are screwing ordinary people. The Tories would do well to accept that people do feel this way, just as Labour has had to accept that the pendulum has swung on welfare and immigration.