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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » David Herdson says don’t underestimate Ed Miliband
The forty-third president of the United States said some silly things in his time, to the extent that ‘Bushism’ has become defined not his political philosophy but the kind of verbal misspeak that occurs when the brain and mouth take different directions during the same sentence, or alternatively, when a high-powered politician goes in for ill-advised flippancy. On which note, his speech to the 2001…
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:morning-IoS:
As you join us here at the beginning of the Parliamentary recess, Mrs Thatcher, as leader of her party, is still trying to keep the ship of state on the road without going off the rails, as Michael Heseltine, back in the forefront once more, threw a spanner in the ointment with a predictability few could have foreseen. With some Conservatives unanimously divided, it's high time the party met together behind closed doors and thrashed it out in the open; though the Prime Minister may well find at the end of the day the game's not worth the candle it's written on.
For Labour, it was a new kettle of ballgames having turned full circle, and the mouth's on the other foot. As Mr Kinnock told the House, the party's fortunes had turned the corner, gone full circle and there could be no turning back without going ahead and reversing the previous advances, winding down the window and being sick in a layby. Leaving side issues on the backburner, Labour must look long and hard over their shoulder at the problems facing them, and come up with not just viable alternatives, but ones that might work.
For the SLD, the road ahead is distinctly choppy, as they decide whether to jump in, grasp the nettle by the horns with both feet and milk it till the penny drops, or run it up the maypole with all flags blazing. For as sure as lemmings come home to roost, they must avoid the temptations of putting all their chickens in one basket - and only then will they know if they can reach the pot of gold at the end of the tunnel.
In the final rinse, it all adds down to money, and neither party can risk the expense of a free election at this stage. As any politician will tell you, it's never that simple. This is John Cole, for the Nine O'Clock News At Ten.
"I got the feeling last night that the Anna Soubry approach was a new strategy from the Tories to deal with what is a big threat."
They decided a few weeks ago at that private country conflab they had - you could tell on here with stuff like the N. Farage thing which i imagine they see as a very jolly jape. It did seem to sputter out a bit but i imagine Soubry is ultra-vulnerable to UKIP switchers?
Anyway UKIP speakers should be more wary of PC based attacks coming from the Tories- especially on the BBC cos of their ability to select hostile audiences if they want to. For obvious reasons Tories making PC based attacks will hurt them more as long as the Kipper people ride with it and don't get taken by surprise.
London exam results have seen a dramatic improvement over the last ten years or so (as has been mentioned on here a few times) e.g.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-19151471
Knowing what those schools are really like i assumed the educational establishment was just fiddling the stats to cover up what they'd done but the simpler explanation was that over the same time there was a massive increase in the use of private tutors
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/education/40-of-pupils-in-capital-have-private-tutors-8799404.html
The funny thing is those two facts together prove just how bad the state schools in inner London actually are.
There's the obvious bit that people are getting tutors to make up for the bad schools but that doesn't fully indicate the scale. However when you think about it if a few hours a week with a private tutor can cause such a *huge* jump in the exam results of the 40%+ who have a private tutor that pretty much proves how terrible the state schools have become.
Obviously everyone in London already knows this including the BBC and the political class hence how they - especially Labour MPs - are so desperate to make sure their own kids don't go to the stabby rape-sheds New Labour created but they don't want the majority of the public outside the inner cities to know.
If the Tories had more sane folk like David Herdson and fewer neep heids like ...... ...... (fill in the gap with your favourite PB Tory, there are hundreds to choose from) then they would be a competent political party. Fortunately, people like David are exceedingly, and surprisingly, rare in the Tory party.
Back in the real world, normal people (ie. nobody who posts on PB) have completely, totally and utterly forgotten about "The Syria Vote" already. If they even knew about "The Syria Vote" in the first place. Which most of them didn't.
PBers live in a goldfish bowl, and PB Tories live in a very tiny goldfish bowl. Normal people only pay attention to politics quite close to election day, or when something truly huge happens. Votes in the HoC are almost never truly huge.
(Incidentally, remember the fuss about Megrahi when he was given compassionate release? PB Tories went on and on and on and on and on and on about it for months. That was in August 2009, and we were confidently told on here that MacAskill had just signed the SNP's death warrant. Remember what subsequently happened in May 2011?)
Foot .. Kinnock .. Hague .. Howard .. Brown - All At The First Opportunity Comprehensively Rejected At General Elections.
Ed Miliband Will Never Be Prime Minister.
Against that it's a good bit of the cycle for the opposition, when they get to showcase their crowd-pleasers but before the government has played the cards it's saving for the election. Cameron looked good at this point in the cycle, too. It's most likely downhill from here.
"what exactly does the word "misunderestimate" mean?"
If that's a serious question which I'm sure it's not-its Bush's most famous spoonerism or Bushism. So a joke
http://www.languagemonitor.com/bushisms-2/top-ten-all-time-bushisms-misunderestimate-mission-accomplished-top-list/
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-3-2002/moment-of-zen---misunderestimate
Then he was supercrap.
Everyone a cracker!
“Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we”
My ARSE against your bald assertions - Let the gladiators of PB do battle - Should be on Sky Sports 1
By the way David, be careful about this comment: 'What's true for America is true here.' Not so and many politicians, advisors and commentators have come unstuck over it.
Quite why you are always so certain that No is going to emerge victorious has always been a bit of a mystery to me. Even if you are privately convinced about such a result it strikes me as profoundly unwise to go around parading your superiority over mere mortals in public. The modest doubt expressed by fellow No supporters DavidL and Eaterross for example chimes better with the voters' mood.
But, by all means continue. The more arrogant and complacent the No side becomes the happier I become.
Just for the sake of balance Mike, I'm sure you'd like to proffer the odd duff prediction that's emanated from Smithson Towers ?!?
And to help things along I'll do penance for Speaker Margaret Beckett visiting LibDem held Watford ....
Come along Mike .... confession is good for the soul ....
As Strauss/Bush said, you can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you need to concentrate on. Should be Mike's motto.
We do what it says on the tin - make political predictions, hopefully earn the odd coin and keep the other half shod in over priced clogs !!
Losers can be winners. Carmichael may never be the next LibDem leader but if he is overpriced then a trading bet may be established to take advantage and trade out later at a profit.
Another strategy is backing/laying options at (what you perceive to be) value prices, and trading out at a profit when the prices move.
Hence, I've been backing Yes at prices over 6.2 and laying No at prices under 1.19. Not because I think that Yes is going to win, but simply because the current Betfair prices represent absolutely terrific value.
So, even if you think No is going to win, you'd be daft laying Yes at the current 6.2.
I refer my honourable countryman to my previous post and give way to the honourable member for Bedford for clarification of his own duff predictions ....
I could not possibly comment. I am not aquainted with any cynics.
And at the risk of this thread becoming the JackW/Stuart Dickson Breakfast Show, I'm off for mine ....
"Former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artists, the ATOS Trio mark the scheme's tenth anniversary with two delightful works for piano trio: Haydn's charmingly inventive Trio in E flat major, and Dvorak's expressive Trio in F minor."
Bringing Bush into things also seems an odd choice too since Bush will always be thought of by the public as joined at the hip to Blair. Particularly when you raise the question of Syria since that was a military attack narrowly avoided. As we all know Blair certainly didn't want to avoid that attack any more than Cameron did. Nor was Miliband primarily the one responsible for avoiding it. That was mainly down to Cameron's backbenchers and Cameron being out of touch with how they were thinking and were going to vote on the issue.
As to why living standards are trouble for the government, well I'm afraid that's what happens when the political narrative moves on and the one most responsible for that isn't little Ed but Osborne.
Lest we forget Osbrowne was under quite a bit of pressure after the tories May local election performance when his master strategies were less than than effective at killing the kipper vote. So whenever there was economic news that looked good after that he jumped on it and ran with it for all it was worth trying to reinforcing his position while reinforcing the narrative that the economy was looking just peachy. The good news for Osbrowne was that it did indeed move the narrative on from debt and deficits to a better economy and in doing so may have helped push the kipper vote down after the May local elections. The bad news was it still hasn't pushed the kipper vote down to anywhere near where Cameron needs the kippers to be. The change in focus to better economic news also meant when the narrative moved on from debt and deficits little Ed jumped on the public's dissatisfaction with living standards and big business with his price freeze pledge.
As for Ed, yes, I think he'd be a dreadful PM. His behaviour over the last few months has reinforced that impression on me. On the other hand, it has made it more likely that he will become PM in the first place.
Inflation erodes the value of limited changes in wages, reinforcing a theme of falling living standards, one which Ed M has been happy to seize. It does beg the question about how he and Labour propose to raise them? Trying to freeze prices is akin to sitting on the beach at Bosham telling the tide to stop coming in. What is the answer, cutting taxes, dropping money out of the back of a helicopter?
I pointed out that Ed could do a Bush in 2015.
Lose the popular vote but still become PM thanks to the quirks of the electoral system just like Bush in 2000.
Hopefully without need of the courts.
Because I don't think the Tory party could cope if the European Court of Human Rights declared Ed the winner.
I agree with you that one should be extremely wary of applying a comment like 'what's true for America is true here' on a general basis. American politics has some similarities with the UK but many differences too (in fact, we're probably closer to most European political systems than the US', though those too have significant differences, particularly PR as a rule).
I hadn't meant it as a general statement and apologies if it came across like that; it was the Bush/Strauss quote as a campaigning rule of thumb it applied to, and I think that does carry across the Atlantic (and indeed to any democracy where there is a large section who are only marginally engaged with the system).
For one thing Osbrowne can't help himself. In the budget statements before the next election he's going to be politicking on them because that's the type of Chancellor he is. There's also no way Cameron is going to ignore the marginals so they will quite obviously have some pledges and promises of their own in mind. As we shall see soon enough.
The most effective attack on Miliband's energy promises clearly wasn't hysterical twaddle about communism and marxism but what the hell was little Ed doing raging at the energy companies and energy market since HE was the one who personally oversaw it's implementation as energy minister. That and just how effective a very temporary freeze would be since the energy companies would merely jack the prices up again even more afterwards to compensate
Perhaps the biggest turnaround in fortunes in the last year is that Ed Miliband is now rated far better among those who say they’d vote Labour were there an election now.
Do you think Ed Miliband is doing well or badly as leader of the Labour party? (Labour VI net)
Nov 2 2012: +45
Nov 1 2013: +44
Miliband has recovered in the past 6 months - in early May he was on +34 with Labour VI - but he has not made progress vs year ago, in either image terms, or polling, where Labour have fallen back.
He also played on bringing some morals back to the whitehouse, after the Clinton shenanigans.
I would hardly call Ed Milliband folksy, more of a Wilson, hoping to catch the mood of the day,and scrape to a 1964 type win, against a fox hunting, grouse shooting, modern day equivalent, percieved out of touch elite.
If EdM were to consign Balls to history also, then I would be impressed that he was also serious about breaking with the Brownite money tree economic policy.
I quite like Ed M and do not misunderestimate him. Getting the Labour core vote out to vote may be critical in the difference between majority and minority govt.
"Actually it's still a big issue among middle-class LibDem 2010 voters, with whom it reinforced the switch to Labour...."
I think you are spot on. I was so irritated with what I saw as Lib Dem hypocrisy (the Syria vote was a much bigger betrayal than university fees in my opinion) that I wrote to my Lib Dem MP to clarify his position. He sent me back a two page rambling email blaming it all on Ed Milliband's treachery. I suspect he wont be an MP next time
However the angry red man was always just under the the radar.
In government he shows very little charm and humour, and the anger is nearly always ever present in his dealing with any opposition.
I do not think a 2015 Labour govt would be the disaster that a 2010 would have been. I would be happier were Balls to be booted out, both for his economic legacy and also for his attempts at undermining Miliband.
Miliband as Wilson revisited is more credible than Red Ed.
Ref the piece, for those who haven't got it yet, it's meant to be a joke where I speculate whether Bush has been advising Miliband. I do think they're quite different politicians really and not natural bedfellows. Yes, really. That doesn't undermine the central point about fooling some of the people all of the time.
Ed Miliband has had a good autumn but as Carlotta points out this is relative in that he had a terrible spring and summer. There were many points when many wondered if he was going to be an IDS and insults don't get much harsher than that.
The price of those poor efforts was that he did not really capitalise on the hard times the government went through. He kept his lead but made almost no impact on tory support, relying on UKIP to do it for him. Now he has lifted his game but he has done so in what should be a more beneign environment for the government. Will that be enough to keep his lead and win? So far so good for Ed but there is still a longish way to go.
My guess is that the populist stuff about energy and living wages will ultimately blow up in his face and he will not be deemed a credible PM but this guess is undoubtedly stongly influenced by my own prejudices and wishful thinking. The election is not his to lose but he can certainly win it.
Surely not?
http://www.tufts.edu/alumni/magazine/fall2013/features/up-in-arms.html
I think that works if your focus is the next YouGov poll, I don't think it translates to votes at a general election. At that time, firstly the government will put their response (for energy this will be the tories promising a cut rather than a freeze, via the green tax issue and this will be franked by the energy companies) secondly, people won't actually vote for something they don't believe in though they may support it in a mid term poll to send a message.
Many peple think Osborne's mid term Inheritance Tax policy was the game changer last time, it wasn't, the bottled election was, it galvanised the tories, ensured a united conference and undermined Brown's credibility from that point to the election.
DH: have a good day, and I hope some of your common sense rubs off.
"George Osborne’s dominatrix friend lets rip"
I have to say I really dislike kiss and tell stories and apart from one or two prurient oddballs I'm sure the public couldn't care less either. it's unfortunate for wives and partners but publishers and newspapers don't care about that. What makes this story slightly interesting is this: (and like everything to do with our security services who would certainly have been behind it-it stinks.)
"Two days after Mandrake disclosed in September that Rowe was in advanced negotiations with publishers about her memoirs, her home in Chelsea was raided by the police.
Up to 12 Drugs Squad officers armed with a battering ram burst into her flat in a dawn swoop, claiming that they were acting on a tip-off from a member of the public.
However, no drugs were found in the two-hour search, during which, Rowe claims, she was threatened with being handcuffed, and had questions asked about her book."
On Brown bottling the election: I think the mistake was the explicit admission there wouldn't be one, as well as the Yes, Your Excellency approach of the tete-a-tete with Marr.
At that point the Conservatives knew they'd 'won', and Cameron had one of the best PMQ lines in recent history "First PM to flunk an election because he thought he was going to win it."
Simply letting the matter drift would probably have been better, because the blues would've been uncertain whether or not it could still happen for weeks or months to come. Then again, we don't have the counter-factual for comparison.
I agree that there's a sadly realistic prospect of the opportunistic little shit getting in. It probably won't be quite the catastrophe that Brown II would've been, but with Ed 'I cry when green deals aren't made' Miliband at the helm and Balls as Chancellor, coupled with a still enormous deficit and a eurozone just taking a breath between crises, I imagine it'll still be bloody terrible.
Which raises an interesting question: would a Lab-Lib Coalition be better? (If those were the only two options).
That said, it's worth remembering that Ed is still not an overall positive. However, in the battle of toxicities (Brand Ed v Brand Tory) the events of the last few months - Syria, the conference season, the Tory swing to the right etc - have given Ed an edge he may not have had before.
I suspect that confidence and supply would be more likely than a formal coalition.
Which begs the question whether opposition leaders are always opportunistic little shits since we all remember Cammie was posturing away on "the Big Society", hugging husklies and "vote blue go green" at the last election, yet curiously doesn't seem too keen to talk about that very much now.
Promises and pledges all boil down to trust (even cast iron ones) so it will be interesting to see whether it is better at an election to be an opportunistic little shit or an out of touch shit.
More worrying to me are things like the energy price freeze. It's clear that the energy companies collective take the piss, and that there is a lack of competition. It's clear that there is the need for reform - and I would be quite happy with shifting the cost of green programmes to central tax because, fundamentally, it is a political choice of the government to spend money on these items and they should try to hide the cost. But to try and break the price transmission mechanism - the only effective way we have to really understand supply and demand - seems to either demonstrate a complete lack of understanding on how a market economy works or to be utterly opportunistic.
It's clear that EdM is a good politician in the backrooms and has recently shown that he can be an effective politician in setting the debate. I am more and more worried that he will be a uniquely terrible prime minister though.
Do you actually think it's come as a surprise to the government that the public aren't happy with their energy bill going up? Of course it hasn't.
They've been blindsided by Miliband's populist claptrap and the response has been poor but that is not the same as being "out of touch"
Maybe it's my failing memory but I don't remember anything like this sort of coverage when gas prices went up 32% in 2008. Maybe it's because the smaller problems get greater attention when the bigger problems such as the economy/unemployment are in hand.
" but he'll stick your petrol up 14 p a litre, stick your council tax up and cause the mortgage rate to rise"
That's that dealt with among the people who will ultimately decide the election.
Green taxes now in the firing line. What's he going to do? Argue to keep taxes up? Increase taxes on fuel bills if he wins?
He lost the war ages ago.
Compared to "we're all in this together", "vote blue go green", "Alarm Clock Britain" or "No more broken promises"?
*chortle*
There's fairly regular polling on "out of touch" for politicians since it is a useful metric on trust but by no means the only one. As has already been stated little Ed's policy is pretty popular but there's also polling that shows he isn't believed enough on it for it to be anything like an election winner. That points to the public wanting action on the subject but also that the public certainly aren't all convinced little Ed's solution is necessarily the correct one. Hence the policy pledges to come on the subject from Cameron and no doubt Clegg as well eventually.
As I have said before on here, our two major parties are talking to two very different sets of voters and have no real interest in talking to the country as a whole.
When banks create a credit boom they gradually soak up all the available discretionary spending (higher velocity) and turn it into debt repayments (lower velocity). As they approach debt saturation although on the surface the nominal money supply is still expanding underneath the real money supply (velocity of money times the nominal money supply) starts to contract and you get a hidden deflationary spiral.
This, together with Labour increasing income tax rates on the low paid, was behind the big swing to the Conservatives among working class voters at that time.
But I doubt the Cameroons have ever understood that.
" I am more and more worried that he will be a uniquely terrible prime minister though. "
How high is the bar set?
I thought the consensus was that we had just got rid of one of the worst ever.
But if you don't like the conversation, you don't have to participate. That's the advantage of living in a free country.
If kippers think this is the price worth paying to bring down Cameron, then fair enough.
But I don't recall him trying to undermine the market economy.
"Politicians, learn this: people cannot live by bread alone
Russell Brand, Grayson Perry and co are our new priests, plugging a gap the church no longer fills and that our leaders fear to address'
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/08/politicians-russell-brand-grayson-perry-priests?CMP=twt_gu
I'm inclined to the opposite view on his role as Chancellor. I thought he was pretty good, until he got political towards the end. When he eventually became PM, he subordinated economics to his 'politics', with bad results.
I do agree he was completely unsuited to the position of PM, as many in the Labour Party (notably Blair) knew well. He wasn't all bad though and I suspect history may be kinder on him than we are now, though that may not be saying much.
Not sure about Ed. I thought he was a dreadful choice, but he has exceeded my low expectations and may surprise further.
After all there were few objections to Brown's economic mismangement from the Cameroons.
And what are plebibition and government energy policy but attempts to undermine the market economy ?
.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/06/ed-miliband-labour-cost-of-living-crisis-2015-election
In response to another richard
"Actually both food price inflation and housing/water/fuel inflation were much higher in 2008, at about 8-9%, than they are now, about 4%.
This, together with Labour increasing income tax rates on the low paid, was behind the big swing to the Conservatives among working class voters at that time.
But I doubt the Cameroons have ever understood that. "
Why was inflation on the above higher in 2008 than now ? Think this needs a bit of analysis.
In relation to food, I seem to remember years (2006/07) when there were bad harvests and therefore there was less supply, increasing costs.
In regard to the other items, I suspect that if you research these, you will find factors which are behind the increases, which have nothing to do with government action/inaction.
There is a danger that people start quoting general issues which have nothing to do with government policies. Labour have said that they will freeze energy prices by passing legislation that enables this. They say that they will be reviewing the way that energy markets work for consumers. This may be dishonest politics, as nearer to the time of such a freeze, there may be issues which make this difficult to apply. However, Labour have picked up that people are fed up with their essential services run by private companies going up in price every year by more than inflation. According to polling, there is now a majority of people wanting some of the utilities to be renationalised.
The question people should be asking in regard to politics, is whether austerity/globalisation issues will make the majority of people look to left of centre parties ? I think this is quite possible, as people look to government to provide protection from a changing world. The Tories are less keen on government interfering in markets and they will therefore not pick up votes from people who look to the government for help. Labour on the other hand, are the party best placed to pick up votes from people who want government to take an active role in the markets, by applying better regulation and policies which arguably lead to cheaper prices for consumers. The Tories will struggle to argue against this and will need the help of the utility companies up to May 2015.
High earners paying more tax
Low earners paying less tax
Inequality falling
Impact of recession falling more on the wealthy than the poor
1m more jobs/below cost of living pay rises as opposed to 1m fewer jobs and above cost of living price rises - surely this would be what all socialists want, apparantly not.
Perhaps he could also add "you've never had it so good" to his many spin lines as I'm sure that will be believed by the voter too.
Alternatively he could rant hysterically about socialists and marxists since we know that's bound to work and doesn't sound desperate in the slightest.
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2013/nov/08/uk-blocks-attempt-council-europe-inquiry-online-spying
If the liberals and democrats got together maybe we could make a small party with a blocking minority, which it could use to get into government and stop authoritarians and people who don't understand internet security from doing shit like this.
- Stealth taxes: effectively lying to the public*
- PFI: expensive and used inappropriately to try and hide spending levels*
- Believing his own bullshit and building in an unsustainable level of current spending on the assumption that the income from the financial sector was more than a bubble
- Screwing up the regulatory system for the financial sector
- Introducing massive complexity into the tax system
- Final destruction of the private pension system
Basically he was a classic spend to destruction Labour politician but he was clever to do so in a way that hide the true cost of his plans. The Enron of British politics.
* Yes, I know those were used by the Tories first, but there was a difference in scale and also in application (particularly the misuse of PFI)
On corporatism I take your point, and that is my biggest concern about the current government (although I fear it wouldn't be different under a conservative government). Big business is important, but it is not the only representative of business and multinationals as a group have their own interests that are not synonymous with either the business sector as a whole or the UK
Not sure what "plebibition" refers to but if minimum alcohol prices, I agree, but think it has been dropped (?). On the tax policies, increasing energy prices isn't undermining the market economy but is working with it to achieve a political end through using prices to change consumer behaviour
And Clegg was having a go at Paxman for being mean about politicians!
They really don't want us to like them, do they?
In regard to the other items, I suspect that if you research these, you will find factors which are behind the increases, which have nothing to do with government action/inaction.
A key driver of food prices is government policy - bioethanol subsidies diverted grain from the feedstuff market, increasing input prices for the agricultural sector and driving up food prices as a result