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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The CON plan for a majority is said to be based on the LAB

The problem with this, of course, is twofold: the switch to UKIP discussed on the last thread and, of course, the massive switch of 2010 LDs to LAB which happened in the first year of the coalition.
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Table 5.1.2
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244580/qep_sep_13.pdf
Diesel Duty and VAT c. 84p (58% of price) of 139p
It had a familiar, comfortable and entirely balanced perspective I thought. Should ask the Guardian if they'd like a similar one too maybe?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/high-costs-and-errors-of-german-transition-to-renewable-energy-a-920288.html
'Brilliant, tim! You link to a New Statesman article, taking seriously a comment which in turn come from another article which clearly says it was a joke.'
It's just like the time you fell for the spoof Husky blog.
England 28.1 %
Wales 36.1%
Scotland 42.0%
I would be interested to know what Labour's % would have been excluding Scotland where Labour outperformed in 2010 as my vague memory serves me so there could be slippage in Scotland? Brown may be viewed more fondly than Miliband there perhaps?
There's also the incumbency 'cling to nurse fear' that some will have had after 13 yrs and the encomic concerns, some still believe Brown was ok at running the UK economy (unbelievably).
Public sector workers thought they'd lose their jobs and in some cases were right to. There'll be a lot more in private sector than public sector (as in 2010) by the next election and that might again mean the Labour 'floor' has altered?
Not my area but random 'straws' that I clutch to and which seems to pick at this strange assumption that 30% is locked in to start with - are any valid?
Farron leading the Lib Dems and Monkton leading UKIP should be good enough for a CON majority.
Woof Woof!
It's a tough gig, though, no doubt about it.
Can I in turn also look forward to the piece on the marginal 62% rate that Labour brought in regardless of number of children someone had and which continues to exist today.
What is this 70% you speak of by the way?
Labour History Group @LabourHistory
@rob_marchant @anthonypainter Three people who have sat as Labour MPs have won the Nobel Peace Prize, one a party leader (Arthur Henderson)
The 62% rate is a complete shocker. It was a disgrace that it was brought in in that way, and it's an even bigger disgrace that the cut to 45% wasn't used to sort it out. It would even have been good political cover for Osborne: cut the rate to 45%, move the threshold to £135k and get rid of the stupid "withdrawal of allowances" complexity. The only people affected would be those earning between £100-118k who would have been slightly better off at the expense of those earning £135*-150k, on a revenue-neutral basis. What's not to like?
*[I've not done the maths on this for a while, it's £135k give or take £5k IIRC]
Of course, if they believe that a Labour government will recreate those jobs, then that would be a powerful incentive to vote Labour in order to get back to what they wanted to be doing... so hard to call, I'd say.
The rest is just pure wishful thinking from the Tories and their media supporters.
Rinse, and repeat.
I could tell you the rate is 100%+ but you need to have 10+ children. Maybe that's the next line to take?
http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6527
Last I heard the national average wasn't for families to have 4 children.
But OGH's persistent '2010 LIbDems who've switched to Labour' is misleading at best - as Kellner pointed out, they were Lab identifiers who voted tactically for the Lib Dems - not Lib Dems who tore up their membership cards.
And as Gary Gibbon has reminded us today of Polly Toynbee's Miliband conundrum - IF Miliband promises an EU referendum, then UKIP VI might be smart to vote for him - as BREXIT is more likely under a 2015 Miliband premiership than a Cameron one.....
Companies should be much more savvy in detailing how much of the cost of an item is due to government taxation of one sort or another.
Airlines are catching on, and energy companies and anyone else who is a proxy tax collector should too.
With 18 months to go to the election, our labour-supporting friends are offering up a goodly number of hostages to fortune.
With the polls suggesting increased Lab support and fewer public sector jobs though I'm not sure how many of these people exist...
3 children now - is that the national average?
If we're averaging it once was 2.4 (but was shrinking I thought) and of course that rounds to 2 which is then marginal tax of 58% which is less than Labour's 60% (if we exclude NI on all them).
Anything over 40%+NI is too high in my book.
The real focus should be on a completely different group - Labour-leaning people who voted LibDem in Con/Lab battlegrounds. They must have been doing the opposite of tactical voting. How they will behave in 2015 is a key question.
Cameron is - with quite good reason - not trusted at all by UKIP. He has a solid 100% reliable and consistent record over Yerp.
- he welshed on a Lisbon referendum
- he has said on the record that he will never take Britain out of the EU
- he won't be around for his 2017 referendum
- nothing in it compels him to take note of the result anyway.
The only way to get UKIP voters back would be a simple In/Out referendum, ideally on the same day as the GE. If the vote is for Out, this would have to bind the incoming government to give immediate notice under Article Whatever-it-is of Lisbon to leave after 2 years.
Cameron not being leader at the time would probably also help because nobody would really believe any of the above if he were in charge.
Since none of this will happen, the likeliest outcome is a Labour defeat in vote share resulting in a minority Labour government.
Fare: 56.60
Passenger Service Charge 35.40
Fuel/Security Charge 36.00
UK Air passenger Duty 26.00
TOTAL 154.00
In other words around two thirds of what I paid was not the 'fare'.
(fx: Googles). Ah yes, they were nominated:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1801773.stm
They were nominated in 2004 as well. Someone must have been having a laugh...
http://www.rense.com/general48/vlai.htm
If Miliband promises a referendum, on the other hand, and wins the GE, a post-Cameron united Conservative party might easily campaign for BREXIT (Labour renegotiations not being their strong suit) increasing the chances of exit.
I think the analysis is sound - hence the warnings to Miliband not to promise a referendum.
Also in fairness to these voters last time it was quite hard even for well-informed people to tell how high the Cleggasm would go and how low Labour would sink, let alone non-political people who were being lied to from all sides.
But since we had the gerrymandering Labour in power for over a decade that isn't possible. Of course this is all the fault of Cameron being a chinless fop or something.
In the opinion polls we see a move of 2010 Lib Dems to Labour and 2010 Conservatives to UKIP, and that is pretty much it.
Compare Table 3 from the March 2013 ICM Guardian poll with that from March 2010
In 2010, 11% of Labour 2005 voters said they would vote Conservative and 10% Lib Dem, while 11% of Lib Dem 2005 voters said they would vote Conservative and 10% Labour [though this 10% is smaller than the 10% coming in the other direction, as it is a percentage of a smaller number of people who voted Lib Dem in 2005 than Labour]. All other changes are below 10%
Now, the 2013 changes are that 36% of 2010 Lib Dems now say they will vote Labour and 13% of 2010 Conservatives say they will vote UKIP. All other changes are below 10%.
I chose the months of these ICM polls at random, because this sort of difference in the patterns is well-established and stable from poll-to-poll [allowing for random fluctuations due to sampling and weighting issues].
I'm not saying that other changes of opinion are impossible, but they haven't happened yet, for all that the politicians have spent the years since 2010 trying to make them happen.
"He clearly didn’t much like the questioning from Tory MPs Tracey Crouch or Philip Davies either – at one point he even swore at one of the MPs. Well, not quite… but he answered Tracey Crouch with the phrase “with great respect” which is probably the nearest the president of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of Justice gets to using the “F” word in public."
http://blogs.channel4.com/gary-gibbon-on-politics/pinteresque-leveson-appearance/26754#sthash.4JQseRVE.dpuf
I take the point that Con campaigning for out would strengthen out, although I'm not convinced they'd go that far.
Also when some people are actually doing well for themselves it will encourage accusations of "greed" from those that aren't.
Now, I'm very happy to accept tim's point that, as things stand at the moment, such voters are saying they'll vote Labour next time. That isn't really the point, though - we already knew that the polls as at today point to a Labour majority. The question is: how will actual behaviour in 2015 compare with what the polls are currently saying?
Anyone who thinks it won't change much should bet the farm on the 6/4 (or better from Betfair) that they can get on Lab Maj. Good luck to any such punters.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-24476026
About as illuminating as Westminster.....
Owen Jones@OwenJones8442m
All this tosh about how much tax rich people contribute. Who creates most of their wealth? Is Tesco’s CEO stacking all the shelves?
Mildly worrying, as I'm in the middle of proof-reading something.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/10/gove-sets-early-policy-test-for-tristram-hunt/
It's clearly bollocks.
'Could' and 'If'.
"Canaccord said Royal Mail could be worth as much as £10bn by 2015 if the company was able to cut 3% of its 150,000 workforce and increase sales by 3%."
I'm chuckling at The Guardian hanging on the word of City analysts, who in the past would have marked out as Satan's little helpers.
So the question for Tory strategists is which of these three options is more fruitful to pursue.
1. Try to restrict the Labour vote to 31% or below.
2. Try to increase the Conservative vote to 40% or higher.
3. Give up completely on a Conservative majority government.
I think that Mike can make a fair stab at the argument that (3) is the more realistic option, but I would guess that the job of a Tory strategist is to try to change reality, rather than to merely accept it. Of the two remaining options it generally seems to be that it is easier to reduce your opponent's vote share by sowing doubts about them than it is to boost your own.
So it seems like they do have a decent grip on reality, even if what they are setting out to achieve looks difficult.
http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/10/china-accidentally-built-a-housing-complex-in-the-middle-of-a-highway/
Ooops. :-)
"Say this for the government, they are at least consistent. Their contemptible lobbying bill is now followed by their equally contemptible immigration bill. Sometimes you think that if it weren’t for Michael Gove and for the fact that David Cameron isn’t Ed Miliband there’d be few reasons to support this government at all."
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/10/theresa-mays-immigration-bill-is-another-contemptible-piece-of-legislation/
Reminds me a bit of a piece I saw on the new a year or two ago about a whole city the Chinese had built, which was practically a ghost town.
Dear Stephen,
Thank you for your response to my letter.
You suggested I should spend more time attending to the government’s education policies. Since the general election we have:
·Opened 81 free schools and approved 211 more, to provide 130,000 extra places once they are full.
·Increased the number of sponsored academies from 203 to 699.
·Allowed all schools to convert to Academy status – an option 2,225 schools have taken so far, so that a majority of secondary schools are now academies........
And on.....and on.....and on.....
Full text:
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/06/michael-gove-kindly-warns-stephen-twigg-people-think-youre-weak/
It would be interesting to see what the parents of pupils who attend free schools think of the education their children are getting, and how it compares to the education at the LEA run comprehensives you (presumably) favour.
After the numbers for young adult literacy and numeracy under labour, its amazing that anybody from labour has anything to say about education except 'sorry'
Peston misses out bit about Green Taxes taking more of voters' incomes.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24465979
Add on the selective amnesia from Brant on Miliband's Green Tax and the careful use of data post 2008...
James Chapman (Mail) tweets: Overheard: 'There'd have to be a fairly bad nuclear war before @AdamAfriyie became Prime Minister'
http://www.policymic.com/articles/50451/17-haunting-images-of-china-s-ghost-cities
I'm rather concerned about the Chinese property bubble. Not only are they building massively speculative developments, but the building quality is, allegedly, rather low.
A Forbes article of why my concerns may, or may not, be valid:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2013/09/24/what-investors-really-think-about-chinas-ghost-cities/
The fine state of the economy was one of the reasons for the 1997 Labour landslide.
Even as a tory I have to say it serves him bl88dy right for going along with labour policy.
It'll be interesting, in a horrendous way, to see what happens if/when China stops having 8% growth every year.
Miss Vance, that's a rather good quote about Afriye. He's on Question Time, tonight, incidentally, along with Jo Swinson, Diane Abbott, Matthew Parris and Sarah Churchwell.
Wouldn't surprise me if 2015 was a status quo result with relatively very few seats changing hands.
There is no 3 term deep urge for a sea change , the economy is house price bubbling up nicely* - and Ed is crap.
* juicy worm on a hook.
"They (politicians) can't expect to have power stations replaced with new technologies, the network to be upgraded and nationwide energy efficiency schemes all to be funded for free.''
Well quite.
Indeed. But here's the thing. How would the tories have done in 2010 if he hadn't followed labour into the long green grass? What would have happened if he said cheap energy comes before greenery?
And what would happen now if he broke with labour on greenery?
"He didn't just go along with Labour policy, he used green issues deliberately to detoxify himself and the Tory brand."
It's worse than that, tim, I think he actually believes it. I assume you haven't fallen for all Ed's green hogwash (he's another believer).
I believe in looking after the flora and the fauna - but let's concentrate on the edible variety.
If the tories are, they all are.
I wonder if Mr Farage has noticed.
Those circumstances don't apply so much today. If there is a recovery it is fragile and liable to knocks. In such a state of uncertainty the electorate is unlikely to give anyone a landslide.
FWIW, I concur.
c. 60% of pump price is excise duty and VAT. c.83.4p on top of price of c. 56p per litre. You pay 139 per litre in August.
Table 5 1 1
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/244580/qep_sep_13.pdf
No of seats that will change hands - bands of 10 say.
No charge - you can thank me later.
Only themselves.
Punters are certainly not fooled. Best price on CON MAJ is 3/1
Do you think that's the best someone looking to get on the tories will get between now and 2015? or will it widen further between now and then?
Of course it wasn't the only reason for their loss, the Tories were tired and there was the whole sleaze thing, but people were happy to give Labour a go with a decent economy which had low inflation, debt and unemployment and good solid growth since all the hard work had been done and it would take a complete and utter idiot to screw it up from there.
I'm certainly not predicting a Labour landslide, next time just that I don't think a booming economy would save the Tories.