politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Damian McBride says he doesn’t think his revelations will h
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Damian McBride says he doesn’t think his revelations will have any electoral impact. I think that he’s right
The biggest political impact of the McBride book and now TV interviews is that they will reduce media coverage of the current Labour conference. Some of the messages that EdM and his team were hoping to get across will be over-shadowed.
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So seeing the clips above were quite a revelation.
What a piece of work.
PS. But it is interesting seeing Paxman back to his best
Too often, the Labour leader sounds more like a think-tank analyst than a prime minister in waiting. In this sense he is the son of his real father, the Marxist historian. As Mr McBride writes in his book: “It’s hard to listen to any of Ed Miliband’s occasionally tortured, over-academic speeches without hearing his father’s voice.” You can detect it in his politics as well. When he was asked by a man in Brighton: “When will you bring back socialism?” he replied, without pausing for breath: “That’s what we are doing, sir.”
It is no coincidence that Ralph Miliband’s gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, which stands just a few yards from Karl Marx’s tomb, is engraved with the words: “Writer Teacher Socialist”. Indeed, according to a family friend, one reason Ed decided to stand against his brother David for the Labour leadership was because he thought he would protect his father’s political legacy more faithfully than his more Blairite sibling... http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/rachelsylvester/article3877224.ece
http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the-omen-damien-crosses.jpg
And I feel a degree of respect for him for putting party prospects above personal gain in not going for the offer to publish his memoirs in April 2015.
"And I feel a degree of respect for him for putting party prospects above personal gain in not going for the offer to publish his memoirs in April 2015."
Are you being ironic? I'm sure you must be but it's not always easy to tell on the internet
Not really.Do you think this sort of thing has never happened before Mcbride?This is what happens behind the scenes in national politics of most countries.
Lab Maj 6/4 (Hills)
Con Maj 3/1
Lab/LD coalition 4/1 (PP)
Lab Min 5/1
Con/LD coalition 7/1
Con Min 7/1
Any coalition involving UKIP 40/1
LD Maj 250/1
Is Lab/LD coalition the value bet? 4/1 seems a bit long.
Is Damien McBride Labour's version of Godfrey Bloom?
Does he serve the same purpose of deliberately-but-pretending-to-be-accidentally-clumsily distracting media attention away from a party conference which would otherwise have exposed political weaknesses?
Will he be replaced by Bo Xilai?
Is Ed Miliband a secret Maoist?
Is Harriet Harman the new Chiang Qing?
Is it a coincidence that Ralph Miliband died on the very same day that Tom Daley was born?
QTWTAIN or QTWTAIY, as the case may be. Boing!
It's seeming more and more likely that the widow of one of the 7/7 bombers could be involved in the Kenya attack. If true it's a pity the security forces didn't pick her up 8 years ago, (if they had any grounds to do so).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2200528/Samantha-Lewthwaite-Im-ready-suicide-bomber-Chilling-words-7-7-bombers-widow-worlds-wanted-list.html
I really doubt voters are going to care about this come 2015 - this is an issue affecting the Westminster Bubble, and a small minority of bubble-watchers, but a Newsnight special here or there isn't going to eat into the opinion polls. (Next time PB debates the fall and fall of newspaper circulation, viewing figures for higher-brow TV news and current affairs should get a look in.) In terms of compromising the effectiveness of the Labour party, I don't think any substantial damage will be done, though the confessions will make some flinch. It helps that the Blair/Brown axes are no longer grinding against each other at full pelt in Labour's political nerve centre - the Blairites are effectively vanquished, Ed Miliband isn't quite Heir to Brown - so any wounds that get opened up are likely to be ancient, festering and irrelevant.
Also agree with @Roger - this is a piece of work so nasty that even other practitioners of the dark arts have professed their surprise, and definitely not the normal behind-the-scenes functioning of a modern democracy. The work of most spin doctors is, from all I have gathered, pretty mundane. Anybody who thinks this stuff "happens all the time" either hasn't grasped the magnitude of some of the revelations, or harbours a cynicism about politics so profound that it's distorting.
The tragedy is that is true of every period of Labour Government and that we've become so inured to it that it cannot be long before we regard bribing of public officials as the norm - and justice as only available to those with the deepest of deep pockets.
So Mike is right - this will have minimal electoral impact - and that is the saddest thing that can be said about GE2015.
Now I've had an email from someone saying "Hi, stop sending me spam via my Linked-in account". Thre was an info bit on the email about how to reply to Linked-in, I clicked it and it referred me to what seemed to be a dodgy Canadian pharmaceutical company.
Then googled Linked-in and found this ......www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-09/23/linkedin-sued-by-users. Seems Linked-in has been hacked into.
The Brown/Blair years were an abhorrent low point in British politics, which I hope never to see again.
I might buy a copy after all!
So no political impact. Just a bit of fun.
The shift in taxation would cost bigger firms almost £800 million a year, all of which the Labour leader will promise to pass to small companies in the form of lower business rates.
Coalition ministers are drawing up plans for their own business rate cuts, which could be announced in the Treasury’s Autumn Statement later this year.
Labour aides were last night hoping that the tax announcement could distract attention from what colleagues described as a split between Mr Miliband and his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, over the High Speed 2 rail link, which Mr Balls yesterday threatened to scrap if the party were to enter government. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/10329486/Miliband-Labour-will-be-small-business-party.html
200k homes a year would merely see us standing still in terms of supply and demand, when what's required is a significant over-capacity, to allow for relocation, downsizing, up-sizing etc as one's life and circumstances change.
Of course, making marriage tax-efficient and divorce much harder would ensure more couples stayed together, thus lowering demand for homes.....
Sadly, every Labour Govt seems to INCREASE demand for new homes (immigration, easier divorce/separation) whilst restricting demand (no-one in the right minds would want to live on the latest developments of modern slums. if you've not looked around one, you've no concept of just how small, dark and crowded they are - and vastly over-priced too.)
If we build 300k houses/yr at
At some point, the penny will drop....
However, the current set-up means we pay vast sums in mortgage interest to banks, which make vast profits, which pay the largest part of the CT bill - it thus suits HMG to maintain the current absurdity of under-supply and consequently over-pricing of housing in the UK.
'What the State controls, the State rations' was never more true than of housing in the UK.
NIMBYS > BANANAS and Councils running scared and allowing absurd densities - the BBC yesterday stated 3,500 homes (+ offices, park and shops) will be built on 39 acres of Grade II Battersea Power Station- can that figure be right?
The bit that gets me is thinking Malcolm Tucker was based on Campbell because in the show Tucker was the PM's fluffer. I'm thinking now all the really devious stuff and the clever-nasty use of language may have been lifted from elsewhere and mixed and matched.
If you click on a link or accept a connection, and are then asked to sign in, stop and read -- chances are that you are really being asked about your address book.
What was YouGov's reasoning for shifting the weighting?
No wonder Hazel Blear described the Labour party at the time as "wicked and malicious"
The YG is encouraging but we need to wait for post-conference polls to judge the lasting impact. The sense from my postbag is that a bunch of people who thought all the parties were rubbish now think we're at least engaging with their worries, but they're not yet sold. What is also worth noting is the complete absence of either a negative Bloom effect or a positive UKIP conference effect. People who like UKIP still like it. People who don't, don't. Possibly this voter segment is quite hard to shift either way.
Aren't you even a little bit ashamed of being involved with a party where this was going on?
chortle.
Someone should tell Bland the Younger that all his "family friendly" proposals for extending maternity/paternity/granny leave etc etc will cripple the self same small businesses who struggle to recruit good staff now let alone people who can fill in gaps at short notice, especially if he keeps his reported promise to abolish zero hours contracts.
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/bundestagswahl/wahlanalyse-von-grossen-und-gernegrossen-12587181.html
A 1% change in Corp Tax - which is paid by every limited company doesn't strike me as particularly ground breaking. It's tinkering. I was my only employee and had to be Ltd to work for HMG for goodness sake.
Truly the Labour Party were scum. Probably they still are. Balls has a stink about him that lingers right from his days as Gordon's pet.
non policies, rumours of policies - labour still haven't got any tim. It's just all hot air.
Clearly the rates relief for small business idea has been borrowed from Scotland where many small businesses have been exempt from business rates for several years.
Michel Jansen @dawuss
Whipped up a map of Berlin with election results and the boundaries of the former Berlin Wall superimposed: pic.twitter.com/u8meaYRaCK
Sunder Katwala @sundersays
"You have to match the costs against the benefits: that's what a cost-benefit analysis is" explains Harriet Harman on @BBCr4today #lab13
Links do not work.
This is not a healthy lifestyle
My thanks to Avery for this:
Labour's great record on Local Authority Dwelling Completions
1997-98 1,520
1998-99 870
1999-00 320
2000-01 380
2001-02 230
2002-03 300
2003-04 210
2004-05 130
2005-06 320
2006-07 260
2007-08 250
2008-09 830
2009-10 780
Total 6,400
Anyone who believes that the Eds will increase housebuilding is putting faith before reality.
Labour will no more meet their promises on housebuiling under the Eds than they did under Blair and Brown.
'They are not entirely innocent themselves': Unrepentant McBride rounds on Labour critics and accuses party of wrecking its own conference with bungling response to his memoirs.
Gordon Brown’s former spin doctor said his accusers were ‘not entirely innocent themselves’ when it came to the party’s toxic culture of spin and smear.”
Well that’s OK then! - It would appear this culture of ‘don’t blame me for my actions’ is a widespread affliction amongst McBride and his former colleagues.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2430167/Unrepentant-McBride-rounds-Labour-critics-accuses-party-wrecking-conference.html
That said, it is a step in the right direction. Rates are one of the major causes of the huge number of empty shops. They are an unfair tax on the brick and mortar end of retail which gives internet companies a substantial unfair advantage. If we want to have shopping centres and High Streets employing the casualties of our schools in large number we need to change the model.
That does mean the tax needs to be found elsewhere. I am not sure that CT, which has become a major source of international competition, is the place. Businesses relocating to Ireland in the last decade, for example, have cost us a lot of tax. Some of those are drifting back and we don't want to discourage this.
By the time he was prime minister he was throwing government money at them to keep houses unaffordable.
So they drop rates. Will that pay for the hit on living wages, forced apprenticeships, paternity, childcare, rising interest rates and all the other "gifts" that await the business sector ? Mon cul.
More seriously, do those figures include Housing Association starts. For example, Essex Cricket Club is, in partnership with a developer, building several blocks of flats on land which it owns to finance major ground improvements, and most of one of the blocks has been pre-sold to a social housing organisation, allegedly from EastLondon.
"My main verdict is that Labour is the poorer for not having someone with McBride’s skills currently on board working behind the scenes."
Ah yes, someone who is a self admitted liar that created malicious stories about rivals within and outside his party with the aim of bolstering/protecting one person.
Labour really need someone like that again!
In his successful 1980 White House bid, Mr Reagan famously asked American voters: “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”
Mr Miliband pinched another historic right-wing figure’s words last year, using 19th century Tory PM Benjamin Disraeli’s “One Nation” catchphrase. But Mr Miliband — who admits he looks like Wallace from The Wrong Trousers — will boost his “Red Ed” credentials by unveiling plans to hit large firms with an extra £1.25billion in tax.
If Labour gets in, Mr Miliband will pull a plan to cut corporation tax from 21 per cent to 20 per cent. He will instead freeze rates rises for smaller businesses for two years.
The move — to please “the little men”, say aides — will save £450 a year for owners of commercial premises with a rent under £50,000. > http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/5157520/ed-miliband-adopts-ronald-reagan-slogan.html
450k net immigrants each year means 230k new homes each year, just to stand still.
We've not built that in decades, which is why house prices keep going up.
It's notable that the best (ie most popular) homes in Britain were almost ALL built when there were no planning laws - so builders put up what they could sell - which was what people wanted to live in.
There ARE exceptions, of course, as with any generalisation, but as the density of new homes was capped at a MAXIMUM of 3/acre until well into the 70's (if not later) and is now a MINIMUM of 16/acre, you can see why modern houses are cramped, dark - and dismal.
Today, a minimum requirement should be off-street parking for one car/bedroom, since that's the norm these days - even in very average income households (probably outside London and other big cities where work-place parking is a nightmare).
Modern developments have 0 or 1/home, to allow for the high densities demanded since Prescott. He allowed 3 storey and 4 storey 'town houses' to be built - which I applaud, as long as they are in town centres, and not on risible land footprints in suburbs.
Build 1-2 million modern new family-sized homes at 1930's densities (allowing for parks, shops etc, that's well under 2/acre) on tree-lined wide streets and you'll see happy families as well as the price of every house in the UK fall by 50% or so as the rubbish thrown up recently is seen as what it is - slums.
Note that I'm not for one minute suggesting scrapping Building Regs - just planning laws - specifically those requiring excessive density and forbidding Green Belt development (the inverse of what is required).
Even Building Regs need a closer look - more window area and open fires (stoves are very efficient and smoke-free) - would make the homes much better to live in, and there's no reason why solar water heating/heat pumps should not be incorporated as well. The less said about PV panels this far north, mind, the better!
Ed Miliband extract: "They used to say a rising tide lifts all the boats. Now the rising tide just seems to lift the yachts". ?????????
"Aren't you even a little bit ashamed of being involved with a party where this was going on?"
The first really nasty press briefer was Bernard Ingham who did Margaret Thatcher's dirty work-as I'm sure John Biffen will confirm.
Those who weren't dyed in the wool Thatcherite professed outrage at their behind the scenes shenanigans particularly as he was a civil servant.......
But eventually the Tories tired of her and her methods immediately followed by Ingham with the parting gift of a knighthood......
Then the dogs barked and the caravan moved on and Al Campbell arrived.............
Robin Brant @robindbrant
bbc nick r reveals that a book called 'one nation economy' will be given out to people in brighton hall after ed m speech. not red apparently
Frank Fisher @frank_fisher
In honour of t'Lefties' #dontreadthedailymail day, I shall be reading the Daily Mail. Don't read this, don't say that, don't think t'other..
Avery gave some tables on the previous thread.
I listed the number of coucil built because tim has particularly fervent faith that local authorities will lead the way in housebuiling under the Eds.
"are they all by implication pretty much saying they're weak and unprincipled?"
Yes.
If Ed makes it Downing street, will he remain a ditherer, or will he let slip the mask of modernity and reveal his true self? I suspect it will be the former, but we could be in for interesting times.
My old man’s a Marxist,
He wears a Marxist’s hat,
He wears old corduroy trousers,
And he lives in a £2 million flat.
(In Primrose Hill).
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2430140/RICHARD-LITTLEJOHN-If-Britain-falls-Eds-socialist-farce-really-tragedy.html
https://gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-house-building
Of these the vast proportion (80%) are private enterprises. The balance is housing association (20%) and a smidge local authority.
So Lab would want to double that rate with I presume the mix reversed between private and public. Fair enough.
As has been pointed out, though (ahem by me) - why should we believe that Lab will change their spots on housebuilding after 13 years of inaction when everyone seems to dismiss Dave's EU referendum pledge with the wave of a hand?
And on topic, I thought DMcB for all his previous apparent vileness, was the picture of reasonableness and a perfect repentant sinner with Paxo.
Miss Plato, Littlejohn's meter is off. It'd be better if he axed 'old' and changed '£2 million' to 'grand old'.
I'm not so sure the Mcbride book won't have some impact on the election.
Last week the narrative was all about the pressure building up on Ed's leadership and how he needed to make a big impact. The Mcbride revelations have overshadowed all of Ed's problems and given him a hospital pass so far this week and most of the heat is off.
Maybe the impact is Ed surviving.
He has sunk Gordon's reputation even lower.
Although such is his artistry that he employs levels of deception I can only guess at.
Taleah @TaleahPrince
while a gang of Islamic terrorists were killing in the name of Allah in Nairobi, another Islamic gang was bombing 75 Christians in Pakistan
On YouGov, its odd to see people getting excited by today's poll. It may signify something, or it may not, and we won't know for some time, but the idea that YouGov introduced a different (and erroneous) weighting policy last week, corrected it this week and today's figure is therefore somehow more valid is nonsense. The trend is worth noting: this is the first 8pt lead for Labour in 16 polls, and the first in September.There were three 8pt+ leads in August (top: 10), six in July (top: 11), twelve in June (top: 11), eighteen in May (top: 13), seventeen in April (top: 14), nineteen in March (top: 14), twenty in February (top: 15) and twenty in January (top: 13). YouGov occasionally kicks out outliers at the top and bottom of the range but the current trend is a lead of about 4pts, enough, on ther face of it, to see Labour comfortably into power. I am expecting Labour to get a boost from their conference which may persist for a while unless the Tories can find an effective response to the Labour strategy of trying to force them to side with the few against the many on issues such as taxing very high earners, corporation tax/business rates etc
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2428513/Gordon-Brown-unstable-ill-suited-PM-Robert-Walpole-1735-says-Anthony-Seldon.html
I didn't see it on the news last night.
Then there are other figures, such as Ed Miliband and Douglas Alexander, who boast of having privately called for McBride's dismissal.
Sadly Gordon Brown, the man who employed McBride, has yet to comment. It would be interesting to hear his excuse. ("I urged myself to sack Damian. But I just wouldn't listen. No matter how many times I pleaded with myself to take action, I ignored myself. It put my relationship with myself under tremendous strain. I've hardly spoken to myself since.")
Yesterday, as the Labour conference continued in Brighton, McBride was interviewed by Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight. In the afternoon, the programme's producers released a teaser clip. "I hope my book hasn't caused a distraction from the important discussions that are going on inside the conference hall," said McBride, heroically maintaining a straight face. I'd hate to play him at poker. > http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/michael-deacon/10329776/Sketch-Damian-McBride-says-sorry-for-the-spin...sort-of.html
Business rates are the responsibility of local authorities (this is a real issue, for instance in RBKC, where it is making retail a very challenging operation). Corporation tax is collected centrally...
Presumably mainly because Brown is no longer PM.
Not that the Brown Blair split has healed by any means but these revelations are about what McBride did while in the employ of a PM. You can be 100% certain if someone like McBride was employed by little Ed right now and all this was revealed the impact would not be merely of historical interest. Even though very, very few scandals directly bring down governments that certainly doesn't mean they are all harmless.
New Labour was, thank goodness, a unique aberration in the modern history of the UK. At least, I hope it was, but many of the figures still hold senior positions in Labour so we will have to see whether they really have reformed. Given that their entire political position appears to comprise personal attacks on the Prime Minister, the reform doesn't exactly look complete.