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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » With with less than 11 month to go before the IndyRef SNP lose the Dunfermline Scottish Parliament by-election to LAB
LAB GAIN from SNP Dunfermline Scottish Parliament by-election
Lab10,275
SNP 7,402
LD 2,852
CON 2,009
UKIP 908
GRN593
Jacobite 161
0
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Not looking good for my expectation of a Yes vote in September 2014.
But more importantly: congratulations to Sunil. Hope you enjoy your new opportunity.
However, as well all know by now you can't forecast a general election (or in this case a scottish election) on a single by-election with huge local factors in play. There's a reason Westminster political pundits always put the caveat "just for a bit of fun" before any notional national projections after a by-election result. It's the same reason Curtice and Brian Taylor on BBC scotland rolled their eyes and dismissed attempts to make this local by-election a plausible forecast of the next scottish elections, never mind the referendum.
The one thing that was genuinely surprising about this by-election result that the scottish commentators were not slow to pick up on was just how badly the lib dems did.
So if we must project then that goes for all the parties.
Not exactly what you would call good news for wee Willie Rennie and calamity Clegg. Particularly considering the hammering they received from the voter at the 2011 scottish elections which saw the scottish lib dems rendered all but a political irrelevance.
Though of course you aren't going to hear that from Clegg's amusing spinners.
Surely a mis-use of 'never'? There are plenty of scenarios where the SNP may manage to get high vote shares in a future election. And even a working majority, despite the system being skewed against them in that regard.
Curtice and Taylor were in no doubt that this result was no massive sweeping sea change back to labour and though undoubtedly good for SLAB it would still see them battling scenarios like 2007 which saw a minority SNP administration.
That's before we even take into account the somewhat unique aspects of this by-election which SLAB were not slow to campaign on. For all that I welcome any change from having Walker sitting in the seat which was completely unacceptable, as all the parties and their their leaders made very clear.
Johann Lamont will be mightily relieved, but if Ed Miliband takes a close look at the result he might just ponder if the Unite scandal in Falkirk/Grangemouth might have knocked the shine off the result? They really ought to have managed a 4000+ majority (rather than the 2877 Maj they got), and would probably have done so without the Grangemouth dispute dominating the final few days of the campaign. Their panic in the final few days was on very public display as they published an extraordinary leaflet claiming the credit for a range of SNP policies. We recognise a back-handed compliment when we see one guys!
What can I say about the terrific SNP performance? I am mightily impressed by Shirley-Anne who is such a competent and likeable candidate. The Walker fiasco crippled our campaign throughout, and rightly so. What a total scumbag that man was. But Shirley-Anne has put a skip back into the step of her party, both locally and nationally. She made Dunfermline SNP smile again, and that alone would have been a job well done, but the outstanding vote she received bodes for a cracking contest with Labour at the next general election in May 2016.
So, to the Lib Dems? Best summed up by: oh dear! Their hapless candidate was her own worst enemy. Every single time I heard her on radio or tv or in the papers the only thing she ever said was that this was not a two-horse race, which only succeeded in conveying that this was... yepp, that's right... a two-horse race!! Alastair Carmichael was all over the telly in the final days, so inasmuch as there was a "Carmichael Effect" it was a kiss of death. Any Scottish Lib Dems who thought that 2011 was their low point needs to think again. You ain't seen nothin yet.
...
Creditable Tory performance by a good candidate. Why do they always put up good candidates in no-hope by-elections and total plonkers in winnable seats?? I see Reekie's good performance, while under tremendous squeeze pressure, as being yet more evidence of an uptick in SCon performance lately. The Lib Dems in Aberdeenshire West, Berwickshire et al, and even in Edinburgh West must be absolutely cacking it big time.
UKIP: crap, yet again.
Greens: really crap, but they won't care.
Jacobite: why do these folk bother? Some people clearly seek public humiliation.
In summary: this by-election was precisely what the SNP needed mid-term: a kick up the backside, and a difficult task competently negotiated. And precisely what SLab don't need: another huge injection of complaceny in a party already saturated with arrogance and complacency.
may have a further effect on pump prices and even maybe domestic heating oil.
At Grangemouth which needs INEOS whilst INEOS does not need Grangemouth, will Jim Ratcliffe having forced Unite to retreat totally, drive home his advantage by imposing more rigorous terms or even require wee Eck to cough up a major capital grant?
Whatever the extent of INEOS's bluffing/overstatement/tax dodging there is no doubt at all that this site has a major strategic problem as North sea oil feedstock diminished. Not a point Eck will want to emphasise either I suppose. If the harbour facilities are built giving them access to much cheaper US gas the plant has a real chance of being competitive again.
The importance for manufacturing in Scotland can hardly be overstated.
What does this tell us about the indie ref? No more than the polls - at the moment it's not high on voters priority list - but that could be very different in under 11 months.
Fingers crossed for good news on Grangemouth - and well done to the SNP & Coalition governments for handling this in a non-partisan manner. Some Labour MPs - take note.
All four of the Unionist parties drove the IndyRef issue hard in Dunfermline, with mixed results. The only party to really have benefitted from that focus was the Scottish Tories. Scottish Labour: take note! You are digging a bear-trap for yourselves.
I don't think it says much about the referendum other than the Lib Dems should steer clear!
There will be lots of:
Labour voters voting Yes
SNP voters voting No
Tory voters voting Yes
Lib Dem voters voting Yes
Green voters voting No
So, anybody that interprets the Dunfermline result as having any predictive value for the IndyRef result is a bit of a daftie really.
Welcome over to Betfair. I feel like fleecing a few dafties today!!
Yes 6
No 1.19
Bring on the gravy!
The point is that it would be foolish to extrapolate anything about the referendum from this result. What is interesting about Scottish politics is how there seems to be a tactically voting aware anti-Labour segment of the electorate similar to the anti-Tory tacticals in England. That's not helpful when looking at election results as indicators for the 2014 outcome.
The Labour lead has stabilised and in fact grown a bit from the nadir of 3-4%. It seems back in the 6-8% band which is rather more daunting for the tories looking forward. They need to get the story back on the economy and the Osborne success story and keep it there.
This will not be easy. The gap between peoples' experience and perceptions of the economy outside London and the south east and the official statistics remains large and as Southam Observer and others have correctly pointed out it is the latter that tends to swing votes rather than the former.
Miliband will be determined not to let this change of focus happen. I think Bobajob's suggestions on here that he go after the rail companies and their ridiculous pricing structures next is a good one and the government should be trying to pre-empt it.
Does not bode well for Scotland.
Huge celebrations are taking place here in Auchentennach following the result of the Dunfermline by-election where the Jacobite Party secured an impressive break through as their focus on a 5% cut in the price of homemade Scottish pies clearly struck a chord with an electorate tired of the same old political parties.
Speaking from the English HQ in Harpenden a distinguished elder statesman of the party said :
"Go back to your constituencies and prepare for the next series of the 'Great Jacobite Bake Off' .... and er .... government too !!"
It would appear that Unite and possibly the Scottish government have yet to fully appreciate (and so change their thinking) the fact that INEOS is a global business (it is irrelevant where it was founded) that has to change and react according to global economic movements and opportunities.
Thus like caring for a tree, a weak and dying branch must be removed for the health of the whole business, whilst the assets that had been consumed by that dying branch are put to better use to exploit another global opportunity and so the life of the tree (business) is refreshed and sends out new shoots instead of dying back.
At present I do not see many UK politicians who are alive to this realism and view the UK economy in that light. Without that vision the UK is on a path to continuing overall decline.
Things that have been assumed in the past - like inflation proof pensions - are no longer viable. but it will take some time - perhaps to long - for that realism to strike home. There are some bright lights in the private sector that are doing their best but they are mere pinpricks in the pervading gloom of organisations and governments that are squabbling about what happened and living in the past. When the lights go out they may wake up but by then the UK may have reverted to being a third-world country - lacking natural assets, entrepreneurial knowledge and neither the education systems nor finance to exploit any opportunity.
To have a chance of winning the referendum the SNP have been trying to position themselves to the left of SLAB. Reconciling that with the SNP supporters in the areas I have mentioned is getting more problematic. As an example in my area in Angus there is an efficient and effective SNP administration who are really quite good at watching the pennies and spending carefully. Apart from independence what they have in common with their colleagues in Dundee is hard to imagine.
This has always been a tension in the SNP and perfectly understandable for a party focussed on independence but I think the tensions are getting greater as they are having to be more specific about what their future vision of Scotland is. It is not one that looks particularly attractive in Forfar.
Still far too early to say though and I agree that those betfair odds look quite silly.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3ZOKDmorj0
*chortle*
Your lack of grace in defeat doesn't become you!
We've been borrowing from the future for a long time and now we're paying for it. This is a very, very difficult trend to reverse. We'll first need to get the macro right and only slowly over time as we become more competitive will this seep into improved living standards.
IMHO Redward will become PM in 2015. But the scale of failure and disappointment from the left that follows will be Hollandeish. He'll be a battered useless and very unhappy PM.
Chortle ....
What would you like to see?
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/4203/realising-the-potential-of-gb-rail-summary.pdf
Wages will start to rise again in real terms during next year but by amounts that economists notice rather than people in the High Street. And it will be a long time before the necessary corrective of the last 3 years is reversed. Productivity will need to bounce dramatically for that to happen and it is very flat at the moment.
:well-thats-my-theory:
Poor old Clegg, can he sink much lower? Maybe he can blame it all on David Laws instead of the hapless Jeremy Browne this time?
One party that very clearly is off the high tide mark is the Lib Dems, now reduced to also-rans in a seat they notionally held prior to the last Scottish elections, and where they'd won in one of the predecessor seats at both UK and Scottish parliament levels within the last ten years.
As far as the bigger pictures go - whether UK2015, Scotland2016 or Referendum2014 - I'm not sure we can draw too much from it beyond that point about the Lib Dems going backwards in seats where they're not seen as in contention (though where those votes go is very much up in the air).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/24/tony-blair-northern-ireland-peace-process
I am a socialist not because I love the poor but because I hate the poor.
How his legacy remains.
*After quite some google-fu I cannot find any reference to that quote by Marx at all anywhere but if he didn't say it, he was probably thinking it.
The cost of tickets should vary only as to whether they are in peak time, or not, in the same way that tickets on London's properly regulated public sector transport system work. I pay the same price as every other passenger for my journey in the mornings on the Overground. I pay the same on the bus. If I avoid peak times, I pay less on the tube, as I should as I am putting a bum on a seat when those seats are in lower demand.
With national rail it's different - not only is the structure ludicrously and presumably deliberately complex, which creates elephant traps and lots of stress for unwitting passengers, it's economically perverse. It incentivises people with lots of time on their hands - or the staff of the rail companies - to travel by rail (they can plan months in advance) while creating a massive disincentive for working people who cannot plan, many of whom drive instead to avoid the idiotic late-payers penalties.
There should be a dividend for those who book early insofar as they can book a seat, nothing more.
But the fury of SNP Twitter posts was remarkable - they collectively decided that the population of Dunfermline were idiots and the place was a rubbish dump. And both candidates refrained from the usual civilities to each other. Although I don't think the Independence referendum will carry, I wonder if the real message isn't that Scotland is now close to a two-party system, with real trench warfare between them, and everyone else - Tories, LibDems, UKIP - is currently not really getting a look-in.
The question is who that benefits, and what happens to the SNP vote if the referendum goes down.
LOL
Perhaps they should develop a more polished 'lobby fodder' attitude to spinning?
In the first instance, they did indeed go to the SNP. Some now seem to have completed a Red-Amber-Yellow-Red loop back to where they started. A small number may have drifted Blue (though Dunfermline is hardly natural Tory territory), and in other parts of the country - in parts of the East, the Borders and Edinburgh for example - the Blue/Amber contest will be more meaningful than a battle for third place.
Our problem is similar to weaning people off of champagne and continuing expectations of champagne to tap water.
The whole system of tax credits put in place by GB will create howls of anguish when so much of it has to be dismantled.
Liam Byrne was right when he said there is no money and there still is no money - but politicians love to believe in money trees or low lying fruit. The tree has to be shaken to remove all the fruit and that will cause a lot of pain and screams of anguish.
The UK cannot afford to pay over £45billion in debt interest a year and that will continue to rise as long as the UK annual budget is in deficit.
Comments not yet open - I can imagine the moderators' team talk...
As for high points, I suspect if the SNP win the referendum that'll be seen as rather better than 2011.
In other news, India's race is going ahead. Although not the best circuit (indeed, arguably the worst), I'm glad it's going ahead. P1 has already occurred, second practice commences at 9.30am.
A, perhaps wisely unnamed, McLaren team member on the prospect of staying in the Delhi Hilton again. The hotel is less than 100m from an open sewer October 24, 2013
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/quote/index.html
No wonder it isn't the teams' favourite race.
However, working against that recently have been three tidal sweeps in the last 20 years which have worked against those concentrating tendencies. The first was a significant drop in the Tory vote in the mid-90s. That was in part a continuation of a long-term trend but was also a step-change in that process. The second was the SNP surge that propelled Salmond to his overall majority. The third (and partly related), has been the collapse in the Lib Dem vote. These trends have boosted parties from third and fourth place to positions where they're serious contenders - and vice-versa. Even so, unless there are particularly divisive factors at play, then left to themselves, 3- or even 4-way marginals will eventually consolidate themselves to produce a clearer battle.
Indeed. But we are years away from a surplus and only one party is actively contemplating it. There's alot of money printing to go between now and then. Buying gold remains a good long term plan!
(and FWIW I think there will be a major market correction within the next few months - the disconnect between values and fundamentals is becoming outrageous. Bond yields will rise across the indebted world. The whole world is facing a grand 'correction' and the politicians are not doing anything much to prepare).
Thank you for your thoughts.
If this correction comes before March 2014, what do you think will happen in the EuroZone and its heavily indebted nations?
It would be evidence that they are very serious about winning power. In politicaltime, it would probably be an effective policy. The East Coast main line hasn't fallen apart under public ownership. It takes decades of public ownership, underinvestment, over-generous terms and conditions and staffing, and poor, politically-influenced management, to make the malign impact of public ownership fully felt.
You are right about some of the problems - I've never booked a train ticket more than a couple of weeks in advance, and mostly get them on the day. Then again, because I mostly travel by train to walk, I'm willing to pay for the flexibility. I can see how regular travellers may be annoyed.
The rail companies like advance booking for several reasons; they get the money early, even if someone does not travel (there are apparently a significant percentage of no-shows for advance tickets), and it requires less ticket offices or staff issuing tickets on trains.
It should be noted that there were cheaper fares such as advance and super-saver under BR. Therefore there might be good reasons for their existence. But that was at a time of controlled shrinkage of the rail network, rather than the current expansion.
I'd certainly back an investigation into what could be done.
Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk;
Ross, Skye and Lochaber;
North East Fife;
Orkney and Shetland
Won't go no matter how low the Lib Dems get.
Urban Scotland is certainly a 2 party game.
The bucket system (sell a cheap "bucket" of ticket, then sell a less cheap one, etc.) is common for airlines too, of course, and seen in other walks of life too (theatres, for instance). Businesses like to get what in another context we might like to call their baseload early and will sell it cheaply. If they're doing well then the price for the remaining tickets shoots up - e.g. on my recent trip to Shanghai, I noticed that the price for the main airlines more than tripled from £700 to £2300 in a few days, which is why I went Aeroflot, who don't seem to have caught on to that wheeze and seem otherwise just as good.
I don't think that one can expect private companies or indeed state-owned companies to stray from the model unless they are specifically ordered to do so by politicians in order to benefit commuters with uncertain timetables - and it's not obvious that would be a positive example of government intervention at the expense of bottom line. Many commuters travel at the same time every day and would lose out to commuters with varying timetables but also the people travelling on a whim.
Labour did well to win but frankly as this used to be one of its safest seats in Scotland and fiefdom of Gordon Brown, the Labour vote should be 50-60% of the total votes cast. I think Labour is starting to take Scotland for granted once more and in 2015 that could lead to a bloody nose.
I would love to say the result is a sign of the Indy Referendum being a done deal for No. I am far from that confident. There is a great deal of time for Westminster politicians and London journalists to infuriate the Scots enough that many of those who would vote no just say "fcuk you" and vote yes.
I do think our LibDem colleagues are in a place they have not known since 1987. That said and done Alistair Carmichael is one of Scotland's most able and likeable politicians and I wish he was a Tory MP. He always makes me think of the old fashioned Tory fishing/farming/ex-army type MP like Sir Albert MacQuarrie who was Eck's predecessor in Banff and Buchan.
As for James Reekie, there are 2 stories behind the Tory vote. Yes we ran a good campaign (in relative terms given the sort of territory Dunfermline is for Tories) with a good local candidate but more importantly for 2015, the Scottish Tories are energised. Throughout the campaign, groups travelled from Glasgow and Edinburgh and further afield to campaign for James and there was an enthusiasm among my Conservative Future colleagues I have not seen for decades. I just hope James is rewarded with a pop at North East Fife. As a Fife boy it would be appropriate to give him the chance to take back the seat which used to be a blue bastion until Sir Ming chipped away Barry Henderson's majority over 3 elections.
I would summarise by saying I think Scottish politics is showing signs of being regional once more. Labour and the SNP will slog it out in Industrial and urban Scotland with the odd seat having a potential for Tory or even LibDem success. However in rural Scotland the LibDems will be fighting to stop the return of the Tories and both will be hoping to avoid splitting the vote sufficiently to let the SNP through the middle. A council byelection in somewhere like rural Aberdeenshire would be fascinating as the Borders one was last week.
Of course David nothing could be as generous as the existing system, which receives four times the public subsidy it ever did under BR. Generous indeed.
[edit] - And a hearty congratulations to Sunil. well done Doc.
Well done Coalition.