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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Osborne could have a branding problem that would make him an electoral liability
pic.twitter.com/Wv1pnN50y8 — PolPics (@PolPics) December 7, 2013 Voters turn against when told that a plan has his backing Yesterday’s Ipsos-MORI poll on the Autumn Statement raises an issue that could be troublesome for the Tories as they head into the general election – a branding problem when George Osborne is involved.
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I know you don't think the economy is the key, whereas lots of other commentators do and I think the continuing economic recovery is generating an unstoppable momentum.
It's also worth bearing in mind that opposite Osborne is Ed Balls. A great liability for Labour it would be hard now to conceive.
Osborne accuses Labour of having unfunded schemes while he has a £12 billion blackhole in his own plans.
I blame George Osborne for sticking to Plan A when it was abundantly clear from Ed Balls that England required a new plan involving :
1. Not playing Australia away for a decade.
2. Redefining Oz fast bowler Mitchell Johnson as an illegal boat asylum seeker.
3. Freezing Oz innings at 100 runs for all winter test matches.
Vote Ed Balls for a brighter red faced cricketing future.
The limitation is that it is hard to split party identification from George Osborne/ Ed Balls identification.
I think there's good polling evidence that neither individual is particularly popular.
It would be nice to run hypotheticals with "The Conservative Chancellor argues" vs "The Labour Shadow Chancellor argues..." or something similar.
I'm far from sure that's right.
"What counts is everyday experience."
What you mean is that the two Eds have utterly lost the argument on the economy, and are therefore going on a much looser, subjective meme that they can con people on.
MaxPB, Another-Richard and Nigel4England are no longer Tories. Decent family men who are interested in putting the pound in working people's pockets. The Tory Party abandoned those guys long ago.
I have never voted Tory and never will.
However I have to admit that Osborne has done a miraculous job so far.
Rises and falls in standards of living are not measurable by a simple comparison of the rates at which inflation and incomes are rising/falling.
Other factors such as tax rates, benefits, housing costs (rental and mortgage interest rates etc) all have a material impact on living standards.
Although a single UK aggregrate/average measure won't tell the right story for all sections of the public, the ONS's Real Households' Disposable Income index is the best objective and independent measure we have available to judge changes in living standards.
Taking both ONS outturns and OBR forecasts it is clear that Real Households' Disposable Income has grown and is forecast to continue to grow throughout the 2010-2015 term of the Coalition government and beyond.
Household sector
The increasing clamour from the usual suspects reinforces how scared they are of the miraculous job Osborne is doing.
*the electorate think not but let's not be negative.
And yet when prompted ordinary people here in broke land identity with him in a way that makes them reverse their views on policy. Given dry statistics and statements they identify with the Osborne position. Given names they identify with the Balls position. How can this be?
Because the Osborne position isn't connected with the reality they experience daily. There is no recovery, no improvement, no hope in the real world and the more Osborne sneers army them with the second most punchable face in politics, the more they side with the man that PB Tories hate.
I know this must be perplexing for many of you. Unless you get it, you lose. Badly. Want to try and get it? Or are you just going to sneer?
By the way,whatever happened to your statement that the BOE is providing 4 billion a month to the treasury and that`s going to bring down the borrowing figures considerably.It doesn`t seem to have figured in the OBR forecast at all and no major change to the borrowing from last year.
A funny chancellor who makes paying down the deficit his main raison d`etre and then fails badly on it.
Arbury on Nuneaton and Bedworth (Lab Defence)
Result: Con 395 (40% +7%), Lab 369 (37% -20%), UKIP 109 (11%), Green 56 (6% -4%), BNP 35 (4%), TUSC 8 (1%), Eng Dems 6 (1%)
Conservative GAIN from Labour on a swing of 14% from Labour to Conservatives
Scrabbling around looking for spurious bad data..
It`s too late to change economic course to suit the new priority and the Tories are slowly realising they have just been had.
Core economic metrics such as GDP growth, inflation, incomes growth, RHDI etc. are all independent, widely accepted and broadly accurate methods of measuring changes in an economy.
There will always be a time lag between a dry academic measurement of a changing metric and the widespread public "experience" of its impact. Metrics are objective and quantitative: experiences are subjective and qualitative.
But the correlation between the two is also measurable. Probably the most accessible easy measure of how public experiences of economic change follow objective measurement of actual change is Markit's monthly Household Finance Index (UK).
The latest Markit release (covering November 2013) showed a fall in confidence from peak rises in September, but the overall trend is clear: as GDP, employment and incomes rise so too does public confidence in their own household finances.
You only need to project this trend forward against forecast growth and other economic metrics to be reasonably sure that confidence in household finances will move from its current levels in or around the low 40s (50 being neutral) to consistent over 50 ratings next year. Already the leading indicators within the index have passed 50.
A short extract from the November release tells the story:
For the first time in two years, construction workers were the most positive about their job security, with this index reaching a survey-record high of 52.8 in November. Manufacturing employees were also positive about their job security (50.9), with the latest index reading one of the highest since the survey began almost five years ago.
...
People working in IT/Telecoms (54.0) and construction (51.9) were the main exceptions to the overall trend of squeezed pay in November.
However reluctant those opposed to Osborne and the Coalition Government may be to accept the reality, it does appear that not only has George got the economic recovery under control but the unpopular Chancellor has also timed its likely impact on public confidence to "near perfection".
My advice is just to sit back and applaud rather than attempt to resist the tide.
Just ask the Greeks.
What a fatuous comment, very few people analyse ‘economic data’ - but they do notice the headline figures, both good and bad.
As for any ‘voter’ that runs a small high street business or any business at all for that matter, ‘good economic data’ will certainly play a big part in business decisions, from increased investment and taking on more staff, to starting up a business period.
The man tim loves to hate; Osbo.
Unemployed= 2.5 million. Employed=30 million
When the living standards of the 30 million are going down,why focus on the 2.5 million?
It may relate back to our discussion a couple of threads back about class. Osborne epitomises the Conservative image of wealthy people pleased with themselves and close to bankers. Unlike Cameron, he makes no effort to seem anything else (which perhaps he ought to get some credit for). Balls has less public image of any kind - I think you'd find that 50% didn't recognise a photograph - and is less obviously "one of them".
That said, I'd expect tonight's polls to cheer Tories up a bit - if favourable media coverage does anything, they had plenty on Thursday which won't have been included in friday morning's YG. I also don't think it will last, but enjoy it while it does!
GO must be careful setting too many traps, it is possible that he may be the fellow who has to deal with them.
OT
It would be interesting to see how the polling went with the statements reversed and GOs policy attributed to Ed B. I suspect that would have the biggest poll lead. It was the core of what New Labour was proposing in their 97 landslide.
http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Players/1121/1121763/1121763.html
Let`s assume that your figures are correct.It is funny that the chancellor couldn`t make this argument in the autumn statement when there`s a cost of living debate going on.
By the way,whatever happened to your statement that the BOE is providing 4 billion a month to the treasury and that`s going to bring down the borrowing figures considerably.It doesn`t seem to have figured in the OBR forecast at all and no major change to the borrowing from last year.
A funny chancellor who makes paying down the deficit his main raison d`etre and then fails badly on it.
SMukesh
The increases in Real Households' Disposable Income across the current parliamentary term were mentioned by Osborne in the Autumn Statement and more prominently by David Cameron in interviews this week.
On the subject of the Bank of England's Asset Purchase Facility and the funds flow between the Treasury and BoE this is covered at length in the OBR EFO including a "blue box" explanation all to itself.
See:
4.30 In November 2012 the Government announced that the excess cash held in the Bank of England’s Asset Purchase Facility (APF) would be transferred to the Exchequer on an ongoing basis. At the time of our December forecast, the Office for National Statistics had not decided how to classify the resulting financial flows and we had to judge for ourselves how this was likely to be done. The ONS have now announced their decision and the impact is as follows:
• as we expected the ONS has decided that all transactions will affect the net cash requirement and therefore net debt;
• transfers from the APF to the Treasury up to the level of the previous year’s income will be treated as dividends and so will affect public sector net borrowing. Any amount over this threshold will be classified as a financial transaction and hence not affect public sector net borrowing. We had assumed this distinction would be based on the current year’s income. The ONS’s income calculation will also only take account of interest flows and not capital gains or losses following the redemption of gilts;
• payments from the Treasury to the APF will be classified as capital grants (and therefore capital expenditure), increasing net borrowing but not the current budget deficit. This is line with our original assumption; transfers will materialise a few days after the quarter they relate to. We had assumed they would be accrued back to the previous quarter;
• and the ONS will treat the APF as an arm of the Bank, rather than a separate body. The calculations will therefore take into account the Bank’s wider activities and payments to the Treasury
Table 4.4 of the EFO states and forecasts both the gross and net flows resulting from the APF programme and the treatment of these flows on the core headline metrics. To summarise, in 2013/4, Public Sector Net Borrowing will be reduced by -£12.2 billion whereas the Net Cash Requirement will be reduced by -£32.2 bn and Public Sector Net Debt by -£44.0 bn. These figures are entirely consistent with my post to you the other day.
Its been a while since we spoke.
Have you been visiting Cousing Seth ?
You might be interested to know I sold my RMG shares this week at 596p.
Nearly £600 for doing nothing, I guess this is how a quangocrat feels every day.
hasn;t he sort of turned worldbeaters into rabbits overnight?
So public sector borrowing is reduced by 12 billion because 12 billion is the amount the APF transferred to the Treasury last year.Is that correct?
Gordon Brown - as was explicitly commented at the time - put it in as a trap for the Tories.
The problem was - as demonstrated by the latest data - that 50% is a sub-optimal rate in terms of maximising the tax take. (IIRC it's about 42%?)
So the Tories were faced with a choice: do what is right for the country but politically terrible, or do what is right for their party.
Thankfully they chose the right thing for the country, but are now suffering for it.
Brown imposed the 50 pence rise in exactly the same way as Osborne imposed the cut.
You are an unprincipled speculator and therefore a true Tory.
Just plan to stag the remaining Lloyds Bank share sales, buy a few student loans and take a roll on Eurostar and you will be able to move to a pretty pastel coloured Notting Hill residence and forsake your (near) Northern roots.
"I've upped my income. Up yours."
" AnotherRichard The Tories should have called for some of the failing UK banks to go under like Lehmans did and like US Republican Congressmen did when they voted down the bailout in 2008 when small businesses don't get one "
Indeed.
The Wall Street / Main Street split within the US Right has an equivalent in the UK Right.
But its UKIP which is picking up a large amount of the UK Main Street or rather UK High Street provincial rightwingers.
Of course in the USA there is the fundamental difference in that the financial centre is based in a different city over 200 miles away from the political centre.
Whereas in this country the financial centre is less than 2 miles from the political centre and thus has much greater influence.
Now that might not matter if politicians have a solid grounding in 'provincial life' but that clearly doesn't apply to Osborne.
Real wages may be going down - which is not a good thing - but living standards are not. Just one example: real wages do not take into account the significant reduction in taxes for the low paid. Someone earning £20,000 per year, for instance would previously have got around £17,300 post tax*. in 2014/15 they will benefit from a £10,000 personal allowance with the result that their take home pay is £18,000.
It's not a huge rise, but it is a rise. Add in council tax freezes and other measures and it all helps.
* Rounded for simplicity: £20,000 gross income, £6,500 personal allowance, £13,500 taxable income, 20% tax rate, implies £2,700 tax and £17,300 net income
That means the previous years` income of the APF right?
At least not yet. Can the economy and finances turn quickly enough allow him to give ordinary voters something ahead of 2015?
Looks doubtful. But I reckon 2014 will be a stellar year for growth. That might help
(I sold mine at 570p earlier this week...)
1) that is tiny.
2)Is that after adjusting for inflation running at 2.5%?
They should have brought it back to 40%, done so immediately and introduced a mansion tax at the same time as a replacement.
And they should have introduced a maximum earnings level in the public sector (including the BBC), which would have been popular and impaled Labour on a political hook.
Secondly the economic effect is not insignificant. The percentage of income tax paid by the top 1% has increased significantly.
The narrative has now changed, and even the most cynical hacks are beginning reluctantly to admit that Osborne has been vindicated. That will filter through to public consciousness over the next few months.
By the looks of things growth in house prices, growth in household debt, growth in retail sales and growth in the trade deficit look likely.
Government debt will of course grow by another £100bn as well.
B-but look at Ed Balls! He went Red!
/PBTory mantra
The construction/services AND manufacturing PMIs are all around 60....
Growth in everything....
Ed Balls, and yourself, have been spectacularly wrong in your predictions on the economy. You oft quoted mentor David Blanchflower preposterously wrong.
The difference is that you have had the very good grace to admit it.
http://tinyurl.com/embwkt
Not sure about his politics...
That's why Tories like you are scrabbling around to claim credit for unbalanced and not very spectacular growth 3.5 years after you assumed office.
That's why the public doesn't believe these premature Tory boasts. You ought to have kept schtum until proper recovery returned - which it might because 3 qtrs growth may induce investment needed. Our argument all along.
But you couldn't keep your counsel because you're Tories and you believe you own propaganda. Irritating more voters than you're impressing.
Martin Wolf picks apart all the Tory claims in the FT.
If growth is 2% plus in 2014 I'll eat my hat.
In its report published this week, Tackling Extremism in the UK, the Government insists it remains committed to "the fundamental British value [of] freedom of speech". It protests too much, for everything it subsequently proposes suggests it has thoroughly abandoned its commitment to that great democratic ideal. Indeed, its starting point is that it has become "too easy for extremist preachers and groups to spread extremist views", and therefore we need new measures to make such activity harder. In a nutshell, we must make it more difficult to "spread extremist views", to spread ideas, thoughts and beliefs that the Government (and most other people) do not like. This is unquestionably a censorious project, designed to suppress the expression of thought.
But I do remember a very large number of posts about Cameron's "crimson tide".
I'll bet you £10 at evens that UK GDP growth is >2% in 2014
The OBR text is a bit ambiguous (not unusual!).
Without researching the ONS re-classification documents, my guess is that the reference is to the cap on receipts from a Central Bank which the EU (and other international accounting standards bodies) will allow a country to use to reduce its headline borrowing rate.
Here Chote seems to be saying that he had assumed that last years total transfers from the BoE to the Treasury would be the sole measure used to set this year's cap and the rules on how to treat the flows in the National Accounts
In the event the ONS (and Treasury no doubt with OBR input too) has decided to, in addition, treat transfers in excess of the cap as dividend income and to exclude transfers that arise out of capital gains or losses on redemption or sale of the assets. Chote's comment is not really significant in the wider scale of things and his purpose is mainly to explain differences between the treatment of the APF flows set out in the March and December EFOs.
If you'd told a deficit hawk five years ago that we would be borrowing so much I expect they would have said it couldn't be done. I don't advocate borrowing forever, but you can forgive people for not being overly concerned about it at this stage, particularly given that the political narrative has so transparently and comprehensively moved on to doling out gifts.
I did say this was going to happen. I did point out that Osborne was undermining his own austerity message with his giveaways on income tax and fuel duty.
The OBR now forecasts that we will borrow £96bn in the final year of this Parliament, which compares with the 2010 emergency budget forecast of £37bn. It is a massive failure of the government's stated policy of deficit reduction, and if Ed Balls wasn't such an idiot when it comes to borrowing he would have forced the government to be accountable for such a failure.
To think of all the unpopular decisions that the Tories have made over the last few years and they have precious little to show for it in terms of deficit reduction. One begins to wonder whether they have deliberately maintained the deficit at a high level - by making so many giveaways - so that they can continue to use the high deficit to justify continuing cuts.
The opposition's aim is not to frighten the horses and play on this natural tendency to complain. Tony understood this and made Labour cuddly. Ed is just weird but Ed Balls doesn't matter - I suspect a lot of voters aren't sure which party he's in anyway.
If people feel confident about the future, the Government will win. If they don't, Labour can win by saying bugger all as often as possible.
There you are, and I can't even spell PPE.
Whilst Osborne is an electoral liability so is Balls. It's also worth pointing out that it's easier to dislike the Government than the Opposition.
One wonders, but hopes not to discover, what would happen in terms of public opinion should Labour win the next election and re-enact the epic economic incompetence of Brown.
'I find it amusing that the Left leaning posters on PB think that Balls will somehow wave a magic wand and wages will rise, the cost of living will fall and all without any adverse situation taking place...naive or stupid..or both'
When unemployment goes below 7% we can all look forward to Balls freezing mortgage interest rates.
Consider what a new Chancellor coupled with the retention of their position as top of the MEPs would do for Cameron? But my money is still on a UKIP win at the EC elections.
You're right that they aren't as good as they used to be, but blaming them for the bad bowling and fielding that allowed the Aussies to get 570 is pure madness
http://enormo-haddock.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/2013-season-review-betting.html
Strange how left leaners on here constantly point out statistics and data to prove how immigration is great, and dismisses anyone who says their life is being made worse because of it as dealing in meaningless racist anecdotes, but are basing their whole economic argument on the stats being meaningless and it all being aboiut how people are feeling personally..
Flexible attitude I must say!
With "opposition" as fierce as that, it's no wonder that punters saw such incompetence as competence. Perhaps Shadow Chancellor Javid will do the same?
You are being unfair on Osborne and the Coalition Government. The following extract from the latest OBR EFO demonstrates just how ambitious Osborne and Alexander's deficit reduction plans really are:
The 11.1 per cent of GDP reduction in underlying PSNB forecast between 2009-10 and 2018-19 would represent one of the largest deficit reductions among advanced economies in the post-war period.
As Charts 4.2 and 4.3 show, the contributions to this would be:
• 8.8 per cent of GDP, or around 80 per cent of the deficit reduction, from lower expenditure, with Total Managed Expenditure falling from 47.1 per cent of GDP in 2009-10 to 38.2 per cent of GDP by 2018-19. Within this total:
• PSCE in RDEL, a proxy for day-to-day spending on public services and administration, falls by 7.8 per cent of GDP to 14.2 per cent in 2018-19.20 This is mirrored in our GDP forecast, where government consumption of goods and services falls from 23.2 per cent of nominal GDP in 2009 to 16.1 per cent by the end of the forecast period, the lowest on record in data going back to 1948;
• PSGI in CDEL, a measure of public sector investment, falls by 1.6 per cent of GDP to 1.9 per cent in 2018-19. In 2007-08, PSGI in CDEL was 2.6 pecent of GDP; and
• social security spending falls by 1.0 per cent of GDP to 10.0 per cent in 2018-19, still higher than its pre-crisis level.
• 2.3 per cent of GDP, or around 20 per cent of the deficit reduction, from higher receipts, with the majority of the increase having taken place by 2012, largely as a result of the increases in the standard rate of VAT. This is followed by further increases towards the end of our forecast due to the resumption of fiscal drag, as above-inflation earnings growth pushes more income into higher tax brackets.
Osborne has done well to keep the deficit falling as growth fell off in response to the Eurozone crisis. Actual borrowing (i.e. gilt issuance by the DMO driven by the Central Government's Net Cash Requirement) has fallen far more than the headline £100 bn a year PSNB figures. This is due to all the money found by the government "down the back of the sofa" and not included in the headline figures.
Osborne should really be considered as the Nelson Mandela of economic emancipation.
Indeed, Osborne (and many others) made the mistake of thinking Brown was other than an utterly inept fellow. You'd have to be stone cold crazy to think the answer to our economic problems is more spending and joining the euro (if Miliband is PM for long enough).
You heard it here first!
Pleased to report my bets on David E to finish top 3 (8-1) and laying Joey big-style when he was 1.55 on Betfair have come in - that's handy for Xmas.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/epic/vod/7907375/Vodafone-in-1.25bn-tax-settlement-with-HMRC.html
Swiss bank accounts?
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/30/uk-usa-tax-switzerland-idUKBRE97T06F20130830
Labour would say "He's done such a good job he's been fired!" and the Conservatives would attack Labour for having three shadow chancellors: "How many will it take before they find someone with credibility?"