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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It wasn’t just young people voting that cost TMay her majority
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » It wasn’t just young people voting that cost TMay her majority but failing to retain the levels of OAP support
Thanks to David Cowling for producing the above table from Lord Ashcroft’s 13k sample on the survey. It provides an excellent resource which will be referred to time and time again.
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(a) SM membership, probably as a result of membership of the EEA?
(b) Non SM membership but assuming we get what we want and we have to have a deal as we don't really want to deal with reality so lets pretend we are negotiating with ourselves?
I respect people who say (a), although in my view this is never going to happen as the UK will never accept FOM.
I suspect the people who really say (b) are going to find their position increasingly untenable as the EU pile on utterly unreasonable demands.
Seems the only group that can remove freebies from the wrinklies with impunity is the IMF.
It's a puzzle ....
A manifesto that doesn't threaten homes/inheritance (remember Osborne's gamechanger of raising IHT threshold that did for Brown's early election?) and maybe settles social care mainly though the distributed risk of general taxation, plus some sort of answer to the pressure of student debt (perhaps a graduate tax instead) would see the Cons in with a good chance of a majority next time...provided (and it's a big if) they don't mess up Brexit. It'll need to address themes of austerity, homes and fairness too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-40245805
Some common opinions and behaviours among students do not deserve respect, however. I'm not going to pretend to have respect for people who wish to ban speakers, and suppress opinions which they deem offensive. I'm not going to pretend to have respect for people who argue that elderly voters should be disenfranchised or who sneer at Brexit voters as bigots, or describe their towns as "shitholes.". I'm not going to have respect for people who give Jewish students a hard time, because of their opposition to Israel. They may think that they're acting out of solidarity with the oppressed, but it doesn't make their behaviour any better.
https://twitter.com/LordAshcroft/status/874269509447806978
If The Times is right, they're going to be easing austerity to keep providing wealthy elderly voters with ever more state-funded jam.
The not-yet-retired ain't stupid. They realise the jam won't be around when they retire.
They're the ones paying for the final act of baby boomer self-indulgence.
Bring on the next election. The rationale for austerity has evaporated.
Advantage: Labour.
Oh god, I'm turning into Theresa ....
Representatives of Dave and George drew up a secret agreement with the DUP to support the Conservative Government after the narrow election victory in 2015:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/12/exclusive-conservatives-dup-drew-secret-co-operation-deal-2015/?WT.mc_id=tmg_share_tw
Surely last week the UK electorate very nearly did vote in another Labour government, and therefore your post is wishful thinking?
What was wrong was to go further than promising a range of options for social care based upon broad principles or a commission to examine the issue. The WFA changes would have been swallowed by rich pensioners in isolation, losing your house wasn't.
The second failure was not to prepare for the presentation of the policy.
To win he needs to keep the voters he has, switch 3% directly from Con, hope the LDs stay where they are and don't split the left vote, and hope that the older Con voters still stay at home - all under the heavy fire of a campaign focussing on economic competence. It's a big ask...
Bodes well for the agreement this week, much to the chagrin of the froth purveyors.
My reading of the polling during the campaign was somewhat different albeit related. It seemed that where the Tories lost critical support was not so much amongst the oldies but amongst those seeking to inherit, specifically the 35-44 year olds. They went Labour in an unexpectedly large way. I have a theory as to why.
I remember Maggie talking about a cascade of wealth flowing through the generations in her property owning democracy. It was an enticing vision even then but has become more so when house prices are so high, deposits are so large and saving is so difficult. The reality for millions of people now is that they will become property owners when they inherit either a house or at least a share of the money from the sale of mum and dad's house much later in life than used to be the norm.
The dementia tax threatens that aspiration or hope by removing that capital that they had hoped would solve their problems for them. It affects their chances to buy, it exposes them to the inadequacy of their pension provision and it threatens the prospect of a more comfortable retirement. The apprehension that this might happen to them affects a lot more than one in six and they really didn't like it.
Incidentally, over the past two years you and other Labour moderates saw Corbyn as at best a useful idiot fronting a ruthless hard left insurgency aimed at gaining permanent control of the party machine, purging dissenters and holding the idea of winning elections as being of only secondary importance. How is that outlook to be updated?
I was pleased yesterday to see John Stephenson say on Border TV that we would not be going into another GE with Theresa as leader.
Obviously as the nominal government we fear by-elections caused by those disloyal MPs who decide to die although curiously in the last parliament suicidal MPs were more of a problem for Labour.
I suppose we have to let social care funding drift. That will be expensive but affordable. Paying increased salaries to the public sector might need to be resisted more robustly at least until Diane Abbott designs some funding arrangement.
The Ashcroft poll shows that -- for all the alleged poison of the dementia tax -- most older voters stuck their cross next to the blue candidate.
Why? Why not vote Labour? There might be some technical reasons, I suppose, like early returns of postal votes before the campaign started in earnest, but Labour needs to get a grip on this.
And the Conservatives need to realise their dementia tax is more of a comfort blanket than an explanation of why they lost votes and seats. It does not really fit the facts, or at least insofar as Ashcroft's polls are facts. It is not clear -- nothing is! -- from the polls during the campaign but there seemed to be a dip in Tory support later in the campaign.
The party had been trying to raise campaign funds through its ref.scot website, which went online within minutes of the First Minister announcing another referendum in March.
Featuring a video appeal from Ms Sturgeon, ref.scot urged people to sign a pledge “to support Scotland’s referendum” and tried to popularise the social media tag #ScotRef.
The donations drive was still running last Thursday, and by 6pm had raised £482,000, with 10 days of its 100-day operation left to go.
However the appeal disappeared from the website after the election, when it was replaced with an error message stating: “The page you were looking for was not found.”
The SNP confirmed the donations section had been taken down, but suggested it had been raising money for the election, not a referendum.
A party spokesman said: “Our fundraising efforts were focused on the general election."
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15343496.SNP_abandons___1m_fundraising_appeal_for_second_referendum/
This will end very badly and the irrelevance of Brexit will be a convenient if dishonest excuse.
I think it is too easy to blame the manifesto.
https://yougov.co.uk/uk-general-election-2017/
So while there's no doubt the matter has to be looked at for all sorts of reasons ....... there was a story on BBC TV London yesterday regarding fire-risks associated with some medications often used by the elderly ....... doing so in an apparently half thought out manner during an election, and producing a half thought out policy were the worst possible things to do!
My eye is drawn to the middle aged groups, which are much more balanced between the two main parties than in-campaign polling suggested. I recall one survey which suggested the Lab/Tory crossover was at age 44 - yet here the age 45-54 cohort is almost evenly split. Other polling I have seen recently also suggested a big shift in middle aged people, which is logical as they are the only group with a direct financial stake in both tuition fees and the care charges,
The pensioners are still heavily weighted Tory. Given the age profile of UKIP voters is also heavily weighted to the older age groups, many of the switchers are likely to be the same people as the Lab-UKIP people who flirted with the Tories then went back home to Labour? If so, I don't believe many of these people were ever likely to vote Tory in the first place; the lazy assumption that the ukip vote would move en masse to the Tories was one of the biggest mistakes made by commentators.
What lost the majority was the astonishingly successful campaign by Labour who consolidated the opposition vote with UKIP disappearing and the Lib Dems going backwards in vote share. Corbyn is useless in the HoC but as he has shown in 2 leadership campaigns he is a good campaigner who can rouse a sympathetic crowd. He was not tested in the way that Ed Miliband was because no one thought he had a prayer of winning. Once again, as in 2015, polling distorted the campaign and national debate in a serious way. It is a problem.
Besides, Corbyn and others are saying 'the rich' will pay. And that's easy, as 'the rich' are always people who earn more than you.
Then suddenly the Tories go loopy and announce that their obsession with Brexit means the deficit is suddenly not centre stage.
Who can blame people for thinking WTF? If no-one is bothered about the deficit any more then we've been conned, and I'll go for Labour's extra spending instead....
http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2017/06/terry-barnes-may-would-have-seen-her-snap-election-fiasco-coming-if-only-shed-looked-abroad-to-australia.html
We have developed an entitlement culture where blaming govt for our own shortcomings is an epidemic. We need to start adopting the Singapore model, ours is broken.
PaulM: You asked about MPs who'd gone beyond the routine, and about pleasing CLPs. I didn't know that much about other MPs' work, but Ken Clarke is famously good at constituency work, all the more impressively since he's (a) often in the national news too so not just a constituency nerd (b) could do nothing and still win and (c) doesn't give the impression of being obsessed by politics, I was more in the nerd class - would stay up till 1 if necessary to answer every reply, pursued authorities, landlords etc. for constituents with messianic zeal, etc. I was able to help a lot of people and it made the 2010 result much closer than otherwise.
CLPs: sitting Labour MPs are largely as safe as houses - the deselection process is just too difficult.Look at Danczuk - an obviously controversial type who wrote a column for the Tory press repeatedly insulting every Labour leader, and they still struggled to get rid of him. Some CLPs did press their MPs hard on issues - mine didn't, and sleepily rejected a proposal from me that they should have a monthly meeting to challenge me and debate with me.
MBE - I met Gavin Grant once and he's very well known in the animal welfare movement. He reminded me of Alan Sugar - engaging, chatty, tells long anecdotes about himself, and likes a fight. A number of us in the animal movement felt he was on the right side of history but too prone to fight every man in the house instead of picking his fights and seeking allies.
Firstly, the policy has succeeded in reducing a completely unsustainable deficit by 2/3. Secondly, the idea that deficits don't matter is just plain wrong. It is theft from the next generation who will be spending their tax income on interest payments. Thirdly, the policy of "austerity" was applied with a very light touch with spending increasing in real terms every year, albeit at a much slower rate than we had been used to. Fourthly, most of the heavy lifting in terms of deficit reduction has been done by increased taxes on the higher earners whilst the tax burden on the lower paid has been reduced, the exact opposite of what was said thousands of times during the campaign and left unchallenged.
Some of this is because the campaign was fought so badly. The Chancellor needs to be front and central in such debates as his office gives him authority and he is on top of the numbers. For as yet unexplained reasons May hid Hammond away throughout the campaign. It is pretty difficult to make economic management the issue of the day when your Chancellor is in hiding.
The widely held perception now is that "austerity" is some sort of lifestyle choice as opposed to a grinding necessity. The Tories undermined their own messages on this by an unfunded Manifesto with no real attempt at pricing the cost of policies in it. This is catastrophic for the Tories, not just in this election but going forward. It puts them on the back foot when the next election comes.
Whilst there's an element of obviousness to the main point of the thread, it is illustrative to have the numbers to hand. It was a demented manifesto. Little to appeal to anyone [mental health policy is the only plus I can recall offhand] and a lot to deter what should've been a group of rock solid voters.
*sighs*
The sole saving grace is that the self-declared friend of Hamas isn't in Number Ten.
Yesterday's figures of a 96% drop in the number of EU nurses arriving (and also an increasing number going home) is probably matched by other sectors. We are not going to have either the taxes, or the workforce to provide social care, no matter how much "Dementia Tax" is paid.
The Tory manifesto was bleak and grey, not because of May, but because it was honest. People may be sick of austerity, but they ain't seen nothing yet. It is going to get worse.
"The Tory manifesto was bleak and grey, not because of May, but because it was honest."
I'm slowly moving from depression to something more serious, God forbid govt should be honest.
We have several choices to cover increased spending in the economy as a whole:
1) Borrow
2) Tax more
3) Cut (austerity)
4) Do things more efficiently
The first is dishonest at a large scale; the fourth can only generate so much income.
The real, honest choices are 2) and 3), or a combination thereof. If someone goes for number 2 in a large way, then the opposition (in this case the Conservatives) need to make it clear that everyone will end up paying, not just the rich.
It'd be great if every man, woman and child got a yearly summary of how much they'd paid to the state, and how much they'd received back. I think it'd be an eyeopener for many. But impossible to do in practice.
Their older and middle-aged voters who stayed at home or were enticed by jam in the absence of the economic counterpoint can be re-won.
There is truth in the adage that it's a Labour manifesto and a Conservative government people want. A responsible Tory proposition that offers to rebalance the impacts of austerity and that genuinely cares about those younger/less well off could do very well. It's where the Cameroons were making good progress, just not quite balanced enough on caring.
On the wider question about austerity, my instinct is that we will eventually end up bankrupt and as such will have to learn the hard way. At the moment we are simply borrowing money to improve living standards which is insane, but what voters seem to want.
https://twitter.com/patrickwintour/status/874520667613532160
The cost of Brexit is however a different thing altogether. Did nobody on the Government side ever say that desirable or not, we simply cannot afford it?
When did its advocates ever explain that if it were to be agreed, we would need to junk our entire approach to the economy this past six years?
She was poor in the campaign, she pissed off the Old Gits, and she allowed Jezza to offer goodies with no response. Where was the forensic scrutiny of the jam-for-all?
Also, the illusion that the rich and powerful will automatically pay more because the Labour party wanted them to was never challenged. It's a powerful point because it suggested that we're only suffering austerity because the rich and the powerful avoid paying tax in the first place. In strides this Robin Hood character to set things right. Hey presto, the problem is solved. A great rallying point for the young.
During a campaign, Strong and Stable means speaking with confidence, speaking with enthusiasm, and offering hope. Not saying as little as possible and hoping people vote for you anyway.
How can she front another campaign?
Still, it's the Blairites who will suffer most. Having to kow-tow to the Trots and rubbish their own history.
I also suspect that plenty of grandparents will of voted in favour of their grandchildren not being burdened with student debt.
Advantage IMF.
If there is a backtrack on FOM to the extent required to join the EEA, the Tory party will be destroyed for a generation. A large number of Tory voters would never vote for them again. They are going to have to press ahead with ending it; they question is what they concede to the EU in its place and whether this passes the public test of a stitch up or genuine change.
pfffft
the feckers take 40% in estates over 325know 500k after 2021. I don't call that a sliver, its highway robbery
If we reversed the salaries of nurses (who are not poorly paid) and City high flyers [even assuming the latter didn't all sod off to Singapore], the tax take would tumble and expenditure would soar. Borrow would balloon, the deficit, already more than Defence spending and about half annual NHS spending, would get even bigger.
Mr. Punter, alas, to think of it now when weeks have passed since the lunacy was first uttered. A nice line, but much too late.
All this work was effectively torn up just before the election by May and/or Timothy who introduced the floor instead.
So, a hasty and ill conceived decision which had disastrous electoral consequences. A bit like the decisions to call the election, and to base the campaign on May's personality.
Incidentally borrowing is not dishonest unless you think taking out a mortgage to buy a house is dishonest.
There were many constituencies that were very tight either way. If the Conservatives had had a little more 'luck' then May might even have increased her majority a little; a little luck the other way and we'd have a Labour minority government.
A few votes in a few key seats are what mattered. Someone posted some figures for this a few days back.
(And BTW, it's not wishful thinking for me as I didn't want a Labour government).
Against gay marriage. Against civil partnerships. Against a UN LGBT envoy. Against the equalisation of the age of consent. Against the repeal of section 28.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/06/12/theresa-may-appoints-anti-lgbt-justice-secretary-in-the-middle-of-dup-negotiations/
There are different reasons to borrow. Borrowing to pay for one-offs, e.g. in infrastructure - new school buildings, a new road, a new hospital - is generally reasonable.
Borrowing to pay for what will be ongoing expenses - and especially freebies to the public - is dishonest.