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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The LD battle is a lot tighter than the current betting sugges
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The LD battle is a lot tighter than the current betting suggests
If you want to base a predictions on the Betfair market then Jo Swinson, the 39 year old ex Lib Dem minister in the Coalition, is heading for a clear victory in the Lib Dem leadership contest. Her opponent, former cabinet minister Ed Davey, is currently at just a 17% chance on the betting exchange with Swinson on an 83% one.
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I don't know. As it happens a few hours before this thread I did cast my vote for Jo. Like Mike says, I have no firm views either way. Both Ed and Jo would make good leaders.
Going off topic I enjoyed this 'fact' check
https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1145747419264503808
As an aside, this seems to come from the 2017 Forbes rich list, which showed the top 400 Americans own more than Britain's GDP. (Apples and oranges? Perhaps.)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/11/09/the-3-richest-americans-hold-more-wealth-than-bottom-50-of-country-study-finds/
https://inequality.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/BILLIONAIRE-BONANZA-2017-Embargoed.pdf
I'm ill so you have to put up with my meaningless burblings at this ungodly hour.
The Jo and Ed show reminds me of the Futurama episode where the Presidential election was between John Jackson and Jack Johnson. They are so similar it's impossible to get too excited. Both agree on the vast majority of issues and neither would represent a wholly radical shift in the LD position.
It's a question of emphasis - Davey plays the environment card hard and he has a track record which resonates strongly within the Party and especially with the activists who can see what he accomplished in SW London winning K&S twice in unlikely circumstances.
Swinson is the more engaging and the more likely, it seems, to appeal beyond the LD confines. That said, it was gratifying to hear both candidates talk to life beyond Brexit. The great unasked question of course was whether either or both would accept a second referendum result which again showed a majority to LEAVE the EU.
The days of coalition are over - it's not so much equal distance as equal contempt but Parliamentary reality after the next GE may not allow such a stand-off view. No one will thank the Party for perpetuating paralysis via self indulgence. I could see the LDs voting against a McDonnell Budget - whether the beaten Conservatives would do the same I don't know, they have form for abstaining on these matters.
That said, there may well be Labour legislation the LDs can support and it may be a case-by-case or bill-by-bill process. There seems no desire to prop up a Johnson minority administration but I don't think Johnson himself would operate well in that confined situation.
I suspect, IF we come out of the EU on 31/10. the LDs will rapidly move to a rejoin position but I'd be cautious without knowing the full terms and conditions. As I said last night, it still seems plenty of people would rather eat dirt than use the Euro let alone come into Schengen and restore the SM. As for immigration, the Party is there with Boris on being broadly pro-immigration but it's another elephant in the room and as with the Euro there may not be that many votes in too liberal a line.
governments should provide an electronic identity system and other digital infrastructure to support both teams across government and organisations beyond the public sector. In the internet era, governments should see software and data as an essential, enabling platform for others’ activity, with new security technologies now addressing previous concerns over identity systems.
https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/transforming-government-21st-century
There's something for Jo and Ed to think about.
I'm green on both but maybe now is the time to take the money and run before one of them advocates monkey tennis.
Surely the Lib Dem hustings are a failure and Lib Dem members are ostriches if the answer to this question is unknown.
On the other hand Jo’s leaflet mailed out to all members was significantly the better one, and LibDem members do like a good leaflet...
I still think Jo will win, largely to break the duck on female leaders and pass that cap firmly over to Labour (which sadly is not a good reason for the choice). We need a charismatic and engaging leader - which unfortunately neither of them is (hence the growing pre-contest support for Layla) - and certainly someone who will get noticed. In the absence of such I sense a view that having a woman is seen as the next best thing, as the Tories return to choosing a man and Labour still appears some way off change.
At the least the old parties (dying parties?) will have to be more careful about their usual stance of alternately ignoring and patronising the LibDems, with a young woman in charge. And we can hope that Jo will find it easier to build support with younger and female people who make up much of the target demographic.
Every party will then have the decision on how to play the aftermath, and that ultimately depends on public opinion on how the process goes and the extent of any damage. It would be foolish for any party to tie itself firmly to a course now, when the actual process of leaving still has years to run. Of all the parties the LibDems would remain the most in favour of close relationships with our EU neighbours and doubtless the first to focus in on the big concerns about life outside the EU, as and when any emerge.
Maybe I've badly got the wrong end of this but surely then he would pick a higher percentage... if 50% own nothing then the bottom positive 20 or so would probably still not add up to those top 3...
The tweet itself is badly worded as he implies the whole 50% has no assets (net) but if you click the article it actually says some of those 50% have no assets.
The other dimension is that Jo is probably better if the LibDems stick at a smallish bunch of MPs on the edges of majoritarian politics and Ed if some of the wilder projections of electoral breakthrough really came to pass. With recent events I think members are starting to wonder.
In the Tory case I’d suggest they are about to elect the choice better suited to bringing the party back from heavy defeat when in opposition, while they are actually still in government (more or less).
(I was disappointed the electronic voting form didn’t have any space to write-in Layla...)
It is obvious to everyone that Mr Kerviel is far from what we think of as "one of the poorest people on earth".
As so often is the case, a simple metric does not measure the effect we want it to.
Mr. JohnL, ID cards might be a rare area of agreement between Corbyn and Blair. I wonder...
They're the reason I joined PB. In 2007 I thought Brown would call and win a snap election, and I'd be forced to either have an ID card or break the law. It was, and remains, a vile and wretched thing (the accompanying database being abhorrent).
I scoured the web for blogs and sites, and though I found a few, the only one I posted on and kept visiting was this one.
Lucky too. I don't have the stakes for big money (or even medium money) gambling but I've made a little bit, and gained the delightful bragging rights for a 250/1 winner (and a 70/1 winner with Button for the 2009 title).
Ivanka Trump, in The Trump Card.
Davey could appear on an election stage within four months, alongside Boris and Corbyn, and look most prime ministerial. I don't think Swinson could. That sort of thing must make some difference.
Davey is a white middle aged man and doesn't wear yellow outfits (not in public anyway ..
A female leader would be the better optic for the LibDems at a time when their national presence is much wider. On that situation my criticism of Swinson would reflect that at times she seems strident. In a man that often appears as bold and strong but in a woman some would find that characteristic as unappealing .... I like it ....
I know that both are saying no to coalition deals - I understand that. The membership largely hated the Tory coalition, so to win their vote you have to have a position they can support. When it comes down to it though we know that Boris and Farage will do a deal for leave. That means that if progressive parties want to stop that they need to combine their larger remain forces.
As for the Tory leadership contest, I am reminded of the Simpsons episode where Kang and Kodos take over the bodies of the two presidential election candidates only revealing themselves on polling day - "you have to vote for one of us, its a two party system!".
Hunt or Johnson as our next PM. We need a modern day Montgomery Brewster to win the day for "None of the above"
A passport, driving license and other cards are consumer driven that allows the holder to obtain a service or right. The individual must be allowed to go about their lawful business without the state requiring us to prove the citizens right to do so.
A formal national id is another step in the surveillance state - approx 6 million cameras and counting and routine public facial recognition on the way without any provision currently for safeguards. And yet try and take pictures of surveillance cameras whilst in public or street photography and note the often negative interaction of police, security or the burgeoning army of local authority jobsworths.
Corbyn voting against ID cards is one of the things I will applaud him for. ID cards were a wretched Blair measure.
But doesn't this show you how arbitrary and pointless this whole exercise is???
A somewhat less useless way of looking at it is that the top 3 people have (don't bet too much on my maths) basically $1000 per American, which is a sign of fairly humongous inequality, and also feels like something you could be taxing some more without doing too much damage to Jeff's incentive to get up and go into work tomorrow morning. They might also like to consider putting a windfall tax on exceedingly large divorce settlements...
Perhaps I should have written 'sense the hand'!
Meanwhile also on Twitter, some hilarious photoshopping under #unwantedIvanka
It's a relevant exercise IMO because survey evidence shows people still drastically underestimate how unequal society is, and this is an effective statistic for comms which cuts through more than say a GINI coefficient.
As a rule of thumb, $20 of wealth = $1 of income
I think by law all births in the UK must be registered? So if born in the UK, then we are all on a database somewhere?
https://youtu.be/8UIn5W5rQq0
Meanwhile, the Tories have handed control of their Brexit policy to Nigel Farage. Having done that, Hunt and Johnson have no choice but to hop on board the magic Unicorn tot he land of the Magic Money Tree. The denouement will be quite something. And Farage will still be there screaming betrayal. However, it's now pretty clear that before we can move on as a country the hard right English nationalism that the Tories have now decided to embrace has to be tested to destruction. It means a No Deal and facing up to the reality of what that means at home and internationally.
Especially when the Tories are actually voting the opposite way to him with Labour. Like Iraq which was over multiple votes.
Which is why they should not pretend there are any circumstances where they would accept it even though they disagree. Its possible to do that, as you say, but if you talk about leaving the EU like the LDs do, accepting it makes no sense.
How the Leavers may have ultimately signed the United Kingdom up for the single currency, the Schengen agreement, an EU Army, and a United States of Europe.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2016/10/18/the-brexiteers-junckers-fifth-columnists/
One undiscussed factor is that Swindon may be more under threat in her own seat, particularly in a Brexit election.
And I wasnt suggesting there needed to be coalition, just that at Westminster the sides dont want to work together unless it is one side doing what the other wants without reciprocity.
You're right it happens elsewhere but the lds at Westminster are no less unrealistic than the big two in, in effect, disavowing cooperation even though it may be necessary.
Dont believe me? If the lds said theyd work with anyone judging an issue on its merits case by case theyd be criticised, ultimately itd come down to who they propped up, coalition or no.
Last time half their support disappeared before there was even a chance to see if the wins outweighed the losses. Even less formal cooperation would see large amounts of support jump ship.
As the third party, LibDems would be on almost every news and current affairs programme for balance. Now they are not.
Nick Clegg's disastrous coalition agreement, where he prostituted the party's programme and principles for an AV referendum which he promptly lost, was one nail in the LibDems' coffin but the other is the rise of the SNP, who have five times as many MPs. That is the reality and worrying about yellow dresses and reaching out to other parties misses the point that until there is a recovery, they will remain irrelevant.
What they need is another Chat Show Charlie, and they ain't got one.
If Corbyn is in charge of Labour, you need go give up fairly impressive concessions to persuade Labour to change Corbyn. OTOH Corbyn really wants to be PM, and probably doesn't care that much either way about many of the LibDems' priorities, so the LibDems could get a *lot* of what they want out of a Lab-Lib government. And the corollary of that is that Corbyn would be constrained by what the LibDems thought was OK, so they wouldn't need to worry that he was going to nationalize Morrisons or remove the missiles from Trident and give them to the Palestinians or whatever.
I think Corbyn has actually voted with the Tories, ID cards might be a rare example but people confuse rebelling against Labour with voting with the Conservatives.