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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » If LAB in its key targets can hang onto most the 2010 LDs who have switched then Ed Miliband becomes PM
The next general election is actually very simple. It all comes down to whether LAB can hang on to the GE2010 LD voters who for two and a half years have been telling pollsters that they’ve switched.
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It almost looks like a defensive strategy, like Labour 2010 when they knew the election was lost. Shore up the core vote, claw back some UKIP votes, avoid a total wipeout in 2015.
The "vetogasm" is the only time this parliament where the Conservatives got significant Lab>Con switchers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election#Graphical_summary
In any case the key element as I am arguing is what it does to the LD>LAB switchers. It's what drives them that matter.
The Grauniad has a YouGov Multi country poll on attitude to the role of the state in people's lives - the UK is much closer to Europe than the US:
Britons favour state responsibilities over individualism, finds survey
YouGov-Cambridge poll finds people in UK more likely to sympathise with poor than Americans, French and Germans
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/14/britons-sympathetic-unemployed-france-germany
Fertile ground for rEd....
A more probable issue would be if E. Miliband became PM having promised leftyness and then realised it would lead to a Hollande-type situation where everything gets worse. Right now that seems like the single most likely outcome of the next election.
And for those into F1, the early discussion for Bahrain is now up. All comments and thoughts welcome: http://politicalbetting.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/bahrain-early-discussion.html
The question is therefore can it (or other 'gasm(s)) be repeated to climax on the right day?
Now that Cameron/Osborne are the incumbents there is the potential for winning some of those voters over. This is why the issue of competence is so important.
I do not know whether terminal damage has been done to the perception of competence of Cameron/Osborne by budget 2012, the squeeze on living standards, the lack of growth, etc, but there is certainly a great deal of work to be done.
There is also the potential to craft a positive story for the election campaign, which I think the electorate might be particularly keen on, given the past five miserable years.
As I'm sure Seth will remind us daily for the next two and a bit years, the key is the economy or rather three aspects to it - a) the perception of the individual voter as to their own economic prospects, b) the perception of the individual voter as to the country's economic propsects and c) whether the individual voter thinks Labour will materially affect either a) or b) to their benefit.
From a personal perspective, despite all the rather frantic talking-up and plethora of (we are told) positive economic data, I don't feel any better off. My salary is behind inflation and when my Travelcard goes up 6% per year, that's just rubbing salt into the economic wound.
I've never demurred on either the need to bring the public finances back under control or the responsibility Labour has to accept for their disastrous state but the problem, for me, is as much about getting money in to the coffers as spending. The problems really started when income collapsed and some of the tax receipt numbers are still far from encouraging.
That said, it may also come down to a simple case of "better the Devil you know". It's never good to pattern-match elections - no two are ever the same. The Coalition parties have to "hope" that somehow there will be a perception of improvement by early 2015 but I suspect, to paraphrase another former and controversial Prime Minister who got a State funeral - it will be "a damn close-run thing".
2010 LD Voters VI: (Ignoring DK 18% and WNV 5%) Con10; LAB37; LD40; UKIP6; Gn 4. Nats 2.
LDs only for the following.:
Approve HMG record: Yes 32; No 46; DK 22:
NC Doing Well/Badly: Well 60; Badly 34; DK 7.
Coalition Well/Badly: Well 55; Badly 41; DK 4
HMG Good for You: Good 42; Bad 46; No Diff. 17
Coalition Managing the Economy: Well 40; Badly 46; DK 14.
1. The extent of the Ukip down trend.
2. The extent of the Labour mid-term poll lead collapse.
3. The strength of LibDem incumbancy.
4. The economy stupid.
5. Labour trust on the economy.
6. Will the voters stick with the devil they know a la 1992.
The new ConDem incumbents killed that stone dead.
Tories should not win any plaudits for their handling of the economy at all.
Manufacturing employment in Britain peaked in Britain in the mid 1960s at over 9 million.
By the time Thatcher became prime minister over 2 million manufacturing jobs had already gone.
This was inevitable as new technology replaced workers and cheaper foreign competition devasted industries with high employment but low added value such as textiles.
Revealing though how some people are so outraged over manufacturing job losses in the 1980s but are completely indifferent to the nearly four million lost manufacturing jobs which happened during Labour governments.
It amazes me how the message of Cameron / Osborne lost it is never rebutted with: in part, but the electorate went 'for the devil you know'.
The argument is whether you resuscitate or turn off the life support.
We know what decision Thatcher took. And it's costing us dear today. Last year's trade deficit in goods of 6.9pc of GDP is testament to Thatcher failure.
And she never unleashed anything close to an entrepreneurial revolution. For all the Tory talk, their ideology has failed.
In totality.
Yes. I think Clegg will see through the 2015 campaign.
Will he be more handicapped than other politicians caught with their pledge pants round their ankles? - not sure. Of course the difference in 2015 will be that LibDems and Clegg will be able to point to five years of government experience - good and bad.
Presently my range for the LibDems is 40-45 seats.
The question is how many people currently saying they will vote Ukip and Labour are just protesting and how many will be dissatisfied enough with Con/LD or satisfied enough with Lab/Ukip for the polling to turn into actual votes at the general election.
In the 2005 parliament there was a big temporary move of Lib Dem voters, with the Conservatives borrowing a lot as the main opposition (and Brown getting a few in his short honeymoon). But most of them returned to the yellows in 2010. The only permanent change was Labour losing votes to both Con and LDs.
Does anyone have a Kindle Paperwhite, and how does it comapre to the Nook Glowlight?
Each costs $119 over here, so any input would be much appreciated.
Tell me Ben how many Japanese car factories were built in Britain under Labour governments?
Or perhaps you can name a single industrial inward investment which happened between 2000 and 2010?
And perhaps you should ask the Redcar steelworkers about government support?
At least the bankers got their life support from Labour, the Labour view seemingly being that bankers were good and steelworkers bad.
As far as 2010 is concerned, I missed more than two weeks of the campaign while in Las Vegas. I remember an ICM poll on the day before I left (the Monday before the infamous first debate) which showed 39-31-18. Given the final result, I would agree that heightened exposure to the LDs in general, rather than the debates per se, contributed to the small advance at the almost equal expense of the other two parties.
The problem for the Conservatives now, as we all know, is that a close election in terms of votes won't be a close election in terms of seats.
For me the 2010 was a curious mix of time for a change/stick with nurse. One of the more peculiar responses was the perceived disappointment of some Conservatives. However Cameron gained almost 100 seats and the 36% of the vote he achieved would have put Labour back in office with a comfortable majority.
Funny old thing FPTP.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/14/margaret-thatcher-legacy-david-cameron
FPTP will see to that. Also, no boundary changes under the new rules.
For me the 2010 was a curious mix of time for a change/stick with nurse. One of the more peculiar responses was the perceived disappointment of some Conservatives. However Cameron gained almost 100 seats and the 36% of the vote he achieved would have put Labour back in office with a comfortable majority.
Funny old thing FPTP.
</blockquote>
And, it is the Tories who support FPTP !!!
</blockquote>
And the electorate who voted for it. Funny old thing, the electorate!
</blockquote>
The electorate might want it because they are used to it. Why the Tories want it, only God knows ! Regardless of boundaries, FPTP will hand Labour 15-20 extra seats. Simply because Labour does not waste too many votes.
For example, Labour does not get 500,000 votes in Scotland for 1 MP. 450000 votes in the North East for 2 MPs.
Tories have chosen and funded FPTP. Good luck to them !!
Many of the Labour supporters of electoral reform are tribal anti-Tories who believe that they have a right to Lib Dem second preferences and coalition support, rather than having to campaign for it. I suspect they would be very disappointed by the political realities after any electoral reform, just as they were outraged that the Lib Dems formed a coalition with Cameron in 2010.
For me the 2010 was a curious mix of time for a change/stick with nurse. One of the more peculiar responses was the perceived disappointment of some Conservatives. However Cameron gained almost 100 seats and the 36% of the vote he achieved would have put Labour back in office with a comfortable majority.
Funny old thing FPTP.
</blockquote>
And, it is the Tories who support FPTP !!!
</blockquote>There are many Labour supporters of FPTP too. People who like the idea of majority Labour government on just 36% of the vote.
Many of the Labour supporters of electoral reform are tribal anti-Tories who believe that they have a right to Lib Dem second preferences and coalition support, rather than having to campaign for it. I suspect they would be very disappointed by the political realities after any electoral reform, just as they were outraged that the Lib Dems formed a coalition with Cameron in 2010.</blockquote>
I am aware of all this and still voted for AV. One, it maintains the constituency link and, two, it does mitigate somewhat this disproportionality of seats to votes.
Ironically, the biggest beneficiary of AV amongst the mainstream 3 would be the Tories. Any leakage to UKIP will not matter. Because those Tories who are defecting, in the second round, will have voted for theTories.
Actually, it is LD which would get squeezed !
Output may have increased as remaining factories got more productive (mainly by sweating assets they had) but here we see the paradox of productivity. The steep job losses in manufacturing between 1979 and 1981 just were not replaced by jobs of equal worth and geographical distribution.
Perhaps had the decline been managed properly (after all manufacturing employment is in constant decline throughout the world) with proper government intervention and less emphasis on demonising the victims of the shift to services based economy, we might view Thatcher in a better light.
But it wasn't - whole communities were devastated - so we don't.
@SkyNews 13s
Antarctic Ice-Melt Is 'Worst In 1,000 Years' http://news.sky.com/story/1078276/antarctic-ice-melt-is-worst-in-1000-years …
Present-day concerns and arguments will firmly take centre stage.
It is interesting how Thatcher's death has pushed the benefit changes down the news agenda. There were questions on the bedroom tax, etc, at last Friday's Any Questions that weren't taken because the panel spent so long arguing about her legacy.
The Ukip vote gain,according to one pollster,is at the value of 4 Tories,to 2 Lds and 1 Lab..They are bound,therefore,to do much better where there is a higher concentration of Tory voters ie the shire counties coming up for election.
Shame,though, the important things that local councils ought to be discussing,clean air,clean water.rivers and seas, sewerage etc are all put to one side due to blanket media coverage of the Iron Lady's funeral.
It's driven from high cost countries, to low cost countries. If it was cheaper to manufacture in the UK than it is in China, there would be more manufacturing in the UK than China.
Lot's of talk about the destruction of the old british major industries and who is to blame.
The main blame can be laid at the doors of the trades unions on the one hand and feeble, stupid management on the other.
First the Unions:
Even in the darkest days of WW2 the unions kept on striking and using their peculiar and soul destroying demarcation disputes to halt production and down tools at the slightest provocation. Shop Stewards could and would make a shop down tools at his slightest whim. For instance a platemaker or layer couldn't also punch in the rivets in a shipyard even if this was the most cost saving way to make a ship, he had to wait for the riveter to be on hand to punch in the rivets; if he was off sick, well, to bad, that part of production had to stop.
Indeed, it was so crazy that it became a national joke: on "What's my line" a 1950's panel game, The most talked about of these demarkation jobs became famous when a 'Saggarmakers Bottom Knocker' was introduced. While Britain laughed, it was also going down the pan.
This sort of thing carried on until Thatcher put a stop to most, but not all of it.
http://www.thepotteries.org/bottle_kiln/saggar.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUA7DzMEcHs
Secondly British management:
Instead of trying to fight these arcane union practices, the management feebly acquiesced to these working conditions where workers were forced to join a union, or else there would be trouble. Some managers who tried to fight this sort of thing were actually sacked by upper management, so as not to rock the boat.
See books by Correlli Barnett:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Audit-War-Illusion-Reality/dp/033034790X
http://www.amazon.com/The-Lost-Victory-Realities-1945-1950/dp/0330346393
Lastly Government:
Governments, Labour or Tory presided complacently over the whole sorry mess.
On topic, I've been thinking about how all those tactical labour voters felt after the last election. Will they really give the LD's their vote when it could lead to another Con/LD coalition?
The silence now is deafening.
Another inglorious fail.
"The welfare state is finished"?
Not according to YouGov Cambridge it isn't.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/apr/14/britons-sympathetic-unemployed-france-germany
"if we are to talk about a country 'paying her way', we need to bring into account spending as well as revenues. Public spending per capita has averaged more than ten per cent (10.86%) higher in Scotland than in the UK since 1990/91, while tax receipts (including a geographic share of oil revenues) have averaged less than ten per cent (9.67%) higher in Scotland than in the UK since 1990/91."
http://www.scottisheconomywatch.com/brian-ashcrofts-scottish/2013/04/scottish-tax-and-spend.html
The interesting one is not so much about manufacturing and mining - a cursory look at the figures shows there is no evidence whatsoever of any extra decline in the Thatcher years compared with preceding or succeeding governments, or in comparison with other similar countries of the eighties. That is so crystal-clear that the only surprising thing is that anyone even bothers to argue otherwise. More subjectively, it's the continuing claim that she brought division to the country and promoted selfishness that I find so bizarre. What on earth do people think life in 1970s Britain was like? It's hard to imagine a more divided and selfish country, with industry divided firmly into 'Them' and Us', at each others throats, with separate career structures, eating in separate dining rooms (dining rooms with drinks and fags for the managers, canteens for the workers), with millions of days lost to strikes, which often hit completely unrelated businesses and were accompanied by intimidation and violence.
And this had been the case for at least 15 years before 1979. Barbara Castle's famous (but unsuccessful) proposal to deal with it in 1969 was called In Place of Strife, not In Place of Harmony, Consensus and Unity, which is the impression you'd get from the nonsense the left speaks about Thatcher.
All that viciousness and division was swept away by the Thatcher governments. The Britain of the Nineties was much less divided than the Britain of the Seventies.
http://labourlist.org/2013/04/are-these-labours-least-transparent-and-most-open-to-abuse-selections/
"FA Cup - Paper Round: Millwall fans 'took cocaine in front of kids'"
http://tinyurl.com/cl8fr5n
http://fullfact.org/sites/fullfact.org/files/strike 4.png
Labour candidates are selected by the regional board.
Tory candidates by an electoral college of regional party officials and constituency chairmen.
I don't know what method will UKIP use this time, but in 2009 they had a selection panel to shortlist candidates.
The problem is that the media focus on MEPs do that they can send there basically everybody and no-one will notice even if they are useless bonkers (maybe as a payback for having been blocked in some Westminster selection)
Unions were being pretty selfish striking for more pay regardless of the consequences for others e.g. the poor and pensioners who were hammered by the resulting high inflation, those who had to sit in the dark and cold etc. Even junior doctors went on strike and operations were postponed as a result. That caused suffering and in one case, that of my father, death.
There always has been and always will be selfishness. There always has been and always will be decency. To say that these attributes belong exclusively to one political side or another is infantile nonsense and offensive, too, to those on all sides who go into public service for decent and worthwhile reasons, whatever disagreements there are about how to achieve broadly similar aims.
Thatcher's biggest failing is that the spirit of entrepreneurism and achievement she unleashed was not accompanied by an equally strong emphasis on the obligations of those who are fortunate and lucky and better off to do something for those who aren't. Ironically I think Cameron does understand this but his attempt at doing so - the Big Society - has been utterly hopeless. The left's mistake is to think that obligations to others can only be fulfilled by the state, rather than by a mix of collective/individual/voluntary provision.
But I would hope that we would put to bed the idea that the 1960's and 1970's were some golden age ruined by Thatcher or, equally, that hers was some golden age where nothing ever went wrong.
The Lib->Lab switchers tend to be particularly determined in my experience, more so than the traditional Labour core vote. The perception of betrayal is very powerful, and I think the LibDems will only get most of them back if they make a solid rejection of the Coalition. They don't need to apologise or say it was wrong to try, but at some point they'll need to say it was an experiment that's failed and will not be repeated in 2015. Alternatively, they can keep their options open, kiss goodbye for now to the lost voters, and hope to still hold the balance of power with a diminished number of seats..
So Conservative strategists should be worried that although Lib Dems have lost left wingers to Labour, they will be gaining some ex-Conservatives.
Switching from Con to Lib Dem will be slower than the instant switching from Lib Dem to Labour on the formation of the coalition. But if Con and Lib Dem again form a coalition after the next election, it may be that more and more left wing Conservatives feel comfortable switching to the Lib Dems.
Will we ever see a Conservative government again without needing a coaltion with a centre party?
Pensions. I know we are getting older as a populace, but really £65.7 B to £114.6 B from 2000 to 2010, and heading up to £149.5 B in 2015. Did the number of old people really triple ? Gov'ts really should have stuck the pensionable age up to 75 or even 80 already.
In contrast welfare has bobbed around a bit, but doesn't look to have had the meteoric increases of pensions and health..
Seemingly good reasons to avoid voting for them such as Labour's demonstration of similar competence with money as that Pools winner from the 1960s who vowed to "spend spend spend" butter depressingly few parsnips with the electorate.
Look at the chart at the top of the page. The LDs lost their soft Labour support, then flatlined.
2010 Conservative voters have been lost to Labour, UKIP, and the sofa. Not the LDs.
Thatcher increased division:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/datablog/2013/apr/08/britain-changed-margaret-thatcher-charts#poverty
The 1979 to 1981 slump in manufacturing employment:
http://duncanseconomicblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/manufacturing-jobs.jpg
The decline in voter participation since 1992 is remarkable.
http://www.ukpolitical.info/Turnout45.htm
@Jude_KD
New BCC poll shows 60% of firms say full withdrawal from EU would have a negative business & economic impact. Only 18% say positive
When I retire the pension age will be 68. Thats far too low still, should be heading up into the 70s.
You are talking about when the state pension is given regardless of when the worker retire through its employment scheme...or are you suggesting about people working until 75/80?
Because I dread to think about the productivity of some workers (depending on the job, obviously)...and the death rates at Stafford Hospital with 75 year old nurses.
"Voting technology now persuades Westminster parties that they can target the swing voters in the swing seats: the golden 4 per cent that can decide British elections. They think they know the names, addresses and concerns of this group – so the system almost obliges Westminster parties to shape their whole politics around this tiny sliver of the electorate. This leaves a great many people feeling, correctly, that they have been abandoned. "
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/04/is-ukip-posing-as-the-new-party-of-the-british-working-class/
Asquithian splitter.
The survey conducted across the north and north-east showed half of voters want to stay in the UK – an increase of 5.3% since a similar poll carried out at the beginning of last year
And compared to the results of the January 2102 (sic - or its even worse news for the SNP) survey, support for Scotland going it alone slipped by 1.2%."
http://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/Article.aspx/3199363
In this context it is just the age that State Pension becomes payable. While officially that has nothing to do with retirement as time goes on I think we'll find that many people need to wait until State Pension Age to be able to afford to retire.
@anotherDave
That's IOS and his algorithms! (Though presumably he wouldnt acknowledge that the Tories might be able to identify the vital 4%!)
For some jobs it's more than reasonable. For example being an accountant, its not very taxing physically, and jobs can be set up that the work load is broken down so it can be flexible.
But for physical jobs there's a limit, and there's a limit in how productive you can maintain people which are winding down.
But of course, keeping people on older then just makes problems for younger people trying to get in, especially in creative full time roles when employers have to cater for older winding down people....
Tory backbenchers probably thought that when they ganged together to thwart attempts to make the Lords mostly elected last year, they had got rid of what they saw as a “constitutional threat” for the foreseeable future.
But conversations I have had in recent days with senior Liberal Democrats suggest there is a scenario under which the plans could be resurrected.
Officials close to Nick Clegg have told me that if there was a hung parliament at the next election and a deal with the Conservatives was the most likely outcome, this would give them an opening to insist that the plans were put back on the table.
http://blogs.ft.com/westminster/2013/04/lib-dems-plot-to-force-through-lords-reform/
(Repeated from the last thread, as BenM apparently did not see it):
"Thatcher did kill British manufacturing - as a major employer."
Which is very different from the usual claim that 'Thatcher killed off manufacturing' which was made countless times on the radio and TV last week. It is also so politically biased as to be ridiculous.
Some questions:
- What were the trends in manufacturing employment in other industrialised nations during that period? Was what happened a result of the government's policies, or somethign that was common to all developed countries?
- What would you have done to keep those industries going, not only as economic concerns, but also as major employers?
- What do you class as manufacturing? Where do I come in, as an engineer developing consumer products, or Mrs J, who designs computer chips? Are we service industries or manufacturing?
Over the years, the boundary between services and manufacturing have become increasingly blurred. Rolls Royce (aero) is seen as a traditional manufacturing business, but they actually have a massive services sector as well that is worth a goodly proportion of their turnover.It is a trend that continued massively under New Labour (see figure 32 of (1), although also note the caveats). If Thatcher killed it, then Labour danced on its grave.
Like it or loathe it, the world has changed. Manufacturing has changed with it.
(1): http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/BISCore/business-sectors/docs/m/10-1334-manufacturing-in-the-UK-supplementary-analysis.pdf
George Galloway hopes to disrupt Margaret Thatcher funeral plans
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/392069/George-Galloway-hopes-to-disrupt-Margaret-Thatcher-funeral-plans