Does Cameron really need an 11 point lead?
February 7th, 2010
We keep hearing that the Conservatives will need a lead of “about 11%” to win – but is this really the case? There has been a bias towards Labour since Major won a majority on a 7.5% lead and the decrease in the hold that the “Big 2” have over the vote and seats doesn’t ease things. But the bias is not a fixed law of Nature. In the first of two guest slots statistician and PB regular Andy Cooke tries to answer the big question
The tilt on the electoral table
These are key factors that will skew results away from the UNS which I’m going to address:
1. Mean constituency swing versus overall swing. The UNS does not translate to an equal average swing in each constituency – differential constituency sizes hamper this. If big constituencies (and high-turnout ones) act the same was as small (and low-turnout) constituencies, it would. But they don’t. When Labour is on the way up, the tendency for smaller turnouts in their safe seats increases the effectiveness of their national vote – but this factor should work against them on the way down (and did in 2005)
2 Tactical voting. In 1992-2001, anti-Tory voters flocked to whomever was best place to defeat the Tory. In 1997, the 9.55% average constituency vote increase became 10.56% in Con vs Lab seats (as against only 8.08% in Con vs LD seats). A similar effect was seen for LDs. Each time you go to the polls you have to convince last times tactical voters to vote tactically again just to stay in the same place but in 2001, Labour held on to all but a fraction of those tactical votes. Even in 2005, only a small rewind (one quarter of the total) occurred.
3 Marginal targeting/over-performance. The “Blair Effect”. As New Labour tended to appeal most to the centrist voter in the battleground seats, Labour’s performance was concentrated above and beyond the two effects above – just where they needed it most. They achieved a swing of 12.1% (on average) in the Con-held marginals (up to 10%), and a staggering 13.08% average in the “semi-marginals” – with majorities of 10-20%. Without this effect, the tactically voted constituency swing would have been 11.2%
So a 10.23% UNS swing became one of 13.08% swing just where Labour most needed it. And most of the effects were retained or even improved in 2001.
The Labour bias in the electoral table is real – but is it now fixed? A ratchet or a pendulum?
I believe all three points can go into reverse.
Point one as the battleground shifts back, point two as tactical voting unwinds and as for point three I think the evidence is that Brown does not appeal to the centre ground in a fight against Cameron as much as Blair did against Hague and Howard.
What’s the total effect?
But by how much will it affect that “11% lead” requirement - let’s break down where we are.
Point 1: In 1997, the constituency effect gave Labour a 0.28% boost above UNS. In 2001, a further boost of 0.45%. The slide back in 2005 gave the Tories a 0.24% boost. Leaving Labour holding a 0.49% swing advantage above the tide. I’d contend that this will unwind in full as those battlegrounds come into play in the other direction. That’s a half-a-percent boost over UNS that Cameron’s Conservatives are likely to get. Equivalent to adding 1% onto their vote share. Lead required: 10%
Point 2: Tactical voting enhanced the Con->Lab swing by a further 0.7% towards Labour in 1997. It slipped slightly by 0.09% in 2001, and a further 0.15% in 2005. So there’s a 0.45% residual tactical swing to play for – and CCHQ are playing for it (“love bombing” and “detoxing”). If they can rewind it (let alone push it towards the Tories), the required lead is down to 9%
Point 3- The marginals. This is the big one. In 1997, the battleground seats had an enhanced swing of 1-2% beyond the other effects. In 2001 it was more complicated, particularly in the category of seats we’re looking at (next election’s battleground).
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But when all three elections are taken into account, the 2010 Labour seats with up to 10% majorities hold an extra pro-Labour swing of 4.3-4.9%. This drops off to 4.2% for the marginals with majorities of 10-15% and 2.7% for those with 15-20% majorities, and drops down to negligible amounts beyond that.
We don’t know exactly how much of the Blair Effect we can assume to unwind, but a significant amount of those excess swings should fall back, giving a boost to the Conservatives in the battleground seats. And, of course, what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander – a strong Cameron performance could easily go further than a full unwind. Lead required: significantly less than 9%
Excellent news for Cameron, yes? A huge boost to his swing where he needs it most. Not necessarily. All of the above assumes a big move back to the Conservatives. If there’s not a big pro-Tory swing anyway, we can assume most of the factors will be lessened. If – somehow – there’s no swing at all, the effects will be minimal. Not zero (detox, targeting and change of leader will have some effect), but far less.
Further, if he has a big swing, the seats where the effects are most pronounced will be in the bag anyway. The effects drop off as the swing extends.
How much? That’s the next article, I’m afraid …
Andy Cooke
Mike Smithson writes: When I first read this, together with the equally insightful Part 2, I got excited because amongst other things it provides a highly plausible explanation for the way the ICM and YouGov marginals polls together with the aggregated MORI data are suggesting there’s a disproportionate move to the Tories going on in the battle-ground seats. These seats saw disproportionate moves to Blair’s Labour which have the potential to move back sharply.
To simply say that it’s “all because of the Ashcroft money” is only a fraction of it. The Andy Cooke thesis is that the marginals are inherently more likely to move because this is where the bigger than average swings were in the Blair years. There was always a greater potential for this to unwind once the Tories moved forward.
Andy’s piece demonstrates so clearly why marginals are different and why they should be the subject of our prime focus. Andy’s Part 2 has some models and projections that could change the way we are looking at the coming encounter.
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Excellent article. Many thanks Andy and Mike.
“Does Cameron really need an 11 point lead?”
No.
Bronze Medal!
- “Does Cameron really need an 11 point lead?”
No, of course not!
I think that all the models have got this wildly wrong. I reckon FM Dave only needs a 2-3 point lead over the Son of the Manse in order to make it to Number 10.
Why?
- large-scale tactical unwind in England and Wales
- Labour’s retreat to the classic (losing) Core Vote Strategy, thus conceding Middle England (remember all those medium-sized English towns) to the Tories
- the return of the Tory abstainers to the polling booths
- greater Lab -> Con swing in the marginals than in the safer seats
4 - So what majority would Dave have with a lead of 9%? :p
Andy’s Part 2 has some models and projections that could change the way we are looking at the coming encounter.
Yummy - that sounds like there will be some profitable betting opportunities. When is Part 2 due to appear Mike?
Wow, that is a powerful article. Well done Andy Cooke. One anecdote, check out my own seat in the Holyrood elections back in 2007, and see what havoc a paper candidate can produce when the national campaign is much in their favour. Ignore the media bias and whinging you get on here, it didn’t exist and therefore wasn’t a drawback during the campaigns then.
Excellent article (as we have come to expect from Andy Cooke), and I find it compelling. The structural advantage that Labour have is likely to be offset in the marginals, I agree, and the Ashcroft money will help (though it is by no means the main reason for the offset, as OGH notes).
I do have one polling concern though. Anthony Wells’ and ICM’s marginals polls are extremely welcome for giving us more information, but I’m still not entirely comfortable with polling marginals as a set, and would appreciate some explanation.
The marginals are (if memory serves) a collection of 130-odd seats that have *nothing necessarily in common* except that at the last election, they produced a certain range of vote-share differential between Labour and the Conservatives.
It seems to me that this might have been produced for any number of reasons, and that the similarity of Labour majority size is a false means of grouping them. It makes some sense to group similar seats into a subsample and poll them: Scottish seats have an SNP complication, similarly Welsh seats with PC, inner cities have features in common, seats in London are more alike than dissimilar.
Polling ‘marginals’ as a set makes less sense because they don’t necessarily have common features that should lead us to believe they react in the same way. It would be like polling all seats that begin with the letter C, or seats where the MP is a Catholic. The co-incidental similarity as a result of the 2005 election doesn’t a set make, and so whilst I can see benefit of a random selection of seats (sample) or a set of seats with common characteristics (Welsh seats, for example), I’m not entirely convinced of the efficacy of a ‘poll of marginals’, unless each marginal is treated as a poll in its own right. Aggregating the responses from 130 seats without innately common characteristics seems like a non-random sample, and I’m concerned that we might be misled if we treat it too seriously.
I’d appreciate the insight of those who know better - especially Mike and Andy Cooke.
8.Morus, interesting post. Has anyone bothered to gather the individual constituency polling in the by elections and then matched it against the actual results?
5 A very good question, Rob!
2. Great to see Christina expressly voicing her opposition to Scottish devolution in the previous thread.
The Scottish electorate know that the Tories detest devolution, but it is very rare (and very encouraging) to see Tories being daft enough to voice their loathing in public. Especially the Scottish sub-species, who are usually far more circumspect than their English brethren.
The dissonance between FM Dave saying things like:
- “… I stand here, the leader of the Conservative Party, and say loudly and proudly, we support devolution, we back it heart and soul…”
… and the day-in, day-out hostility to devolution voiced by ordinary Tory activists and supporters is not going to make David McLetchie’s job any easier.
That, of course, is absolutely fine by me.
The party most likely to be riven by splits over constitutional issues is the Conservative Party. The words “Europe” and “Scotland” will figure large when FM Dave’s political obituaries are written.
rte 8. MORUS. There’s a fair bit of evidence that the marginals, a large proportion of them being English towns, do have a specific demographic profile compared with Labour heartlands. See this here.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/01/22/does-marriage-matter-more-in-the-marginals/
11.”2. Great to see Christina expressly voicing her opposition to Scottish devolution in the previous thread.”
Just for clarification, actually check out my original comments on the previous thread. Please don’t rely on either the interpretations of oldnat or Mr Dickson. Lets be honest here, if only the Scotland football team could spin a ball as well as these two attempt spin the SNP cause or other posters comments on here, we might actually qualify for something. But hey, I am not bothered. I have put my money where my mouth is, I just don’t an SNP PB.com can can about it.
13.”I just don’t *do* an SNP PB.com can can about it.”
5. Rob D - “So what majority would Dave have with a lead of 9%?”
A big one.
These prices look too tasty to be true:
http://www.coral.co.uk/sbuk.go?page=supergrouppage&sportid=30&supergroup=a.UK+Politics&groupid=791102&lang=20&sid=20&ms=MS&type=0
Sharp-eyed antifrank “filled his boots” on Coral’s daft 20/1 at CON MAJ >100. They took down that price immediately!
Interesting piece.
A couple of things that could potentially counteract the trends Andy Cooke mentions - I’d be interested to hear what people think about them.
1) Tactical un-rewind. (”Tactical fast-forward”?) Labour presumably lost some tactical voters over Iraq. Brown is less connected to that than Blair was, and memories have faded a bit.
2) Palmer’s Paradox. Labour supporters who wouldn’t have bothered last time may be more likely to turn out if there’s a real risk the Tories will win their seat.
13.
Judge for youselves. Does Christina support Scottish devolution, or does she not?
- Oldnat’s question: ”Do you think that the reconvening of the Scottish Parliament was a mistake?”
Christina’s answer: “At this moment in time, yes. Economically, god yes.”
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/02/06/icm-tory-lead-down-to-9/#comment-1416051
Do you wish to (ahem) “clarify” your expressed oppostion to Scottish devolution Christina?
Maggie was “not for turning”. But perhaps you are?
17.Oh dear, what a totally dishonest and self serving piece of spin. As I said up thread, please go back and read my actual comments on the previous thread, and not just Mr Dickson’s self selective and self serving extracts. It does not do his cause any good.
Anger over MPs’ ‘golden goodbyes’
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iTuBjvla1QW2eJIZ79Zr6wghtY6Q
Surely the Commons can just sue them for repayment of the “golden goodbye” monies, once/if they are duly convicted, and any appeals quashed?
17.Oops, and remember his question is also self selecting and self serving too. Its the same one that oldnat asked, but not the points I addressed in my previous posts. Sorry if this bores other posters, but I don’t see why I should ignore or allow these SNP posters to mislead or totally twist other posters comments. And then drag this onto new threads as well. Still, not long now to the GE.
re 16. Both are fair points Edmund though the timing of the inquiry has hardly helped to expunge the memory of Iraq. Brown’s appearance is going to be a big reminder.
Palmer’s paradox assumes a hostility to the Tories which might not exist on the same scale. It was fine for 2005 but 2010 - who knows?
I do think that we’ll see quite strong anti-Tory tactical voting in seats like Brighton Pavilion and three way marginals like Watford and Bedford. Those are all current Labour seats and if the Greens in the former, and the LDs in the latter two, can establish that they are the only ones capable of beating the Tories then you can see Labour supporters switching.
The effect will be to knock off a few from the Tory target list which they might have assumed were in the bag.
18.
Does Christina support Scottish devolution, or does she not?
Don’t take my word for it. Here are Christina’s words. Judge for yourselves:
- “My gut instinct is telling me that come 2011, it won’t be petty party positions under fire, but the whole purpose and results of devolution that will be under the spotlight. Oh, and the sheer cost of the whole bubble of hot air.”
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/02/06/icm-tory-lead-down-to-9/#comment-1416038
So, are the Scottish Conservative Party going to go into the 2011 general election on a platform of questioning “the whole purpose” of devolution? Or will they (like FM Dave) support it “heart and soul”?
The battle of the titans: Deeside vs. Dave
Who will win?
Gripping stuff.
22.Absolute classic Stuart spin here folks. As I said, go back and check my actual posts in context. Or, just go for the Stuart spin dry instead. Its really sad actually, the voters lose out while this bunch play politics. And that was the main point in my previous posts. Still, they can try and fool you all on here, but that isn’t cutting the mustard at home or in the ballot box.
Now we have it! The final, incontrovertible evidence is in the public domain: The Rt Hon Dr James Gordon Brown MP is as mad as a box of farmy-farm animals:
Gordon Brown declares: ‘Labour can still win: I’m absolutely sure of it’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/gordon-brown
‘Clegg hints Tories may make better coalition partner’
- Lib-Dem leader says Ashdown told him ‘don’t go anywhere near Labour’ in hung Parliament
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/clegg-hints-tories-may-make-better-coalition-partner-1891763.html
Bookies’ best prices: 3 Welsh Lib Dem MPs (-1)?
Brecon & Radnorshire: LD 5/6, Con 11/10
Cardiff Central: LD 2/7, Lab 8/1
Ceredigion: PC 5/6, LD 10/11, Con 25/1
Montgomeryshire: LD 2/5, Con 9/4
Newport East: Lab 1/2, LD 3/1, Con 6/1
Swansea West: Lab 10/11, LD EVS, Con 10/1
Wrexham: Lab 1/2, Con 7/2, LD 4/1
Excellent article and lots to chew on.
I think edmund is right, especially regarding possible tactical rewind of 2005 anti-labour voters. Ironically though, this could in a few cases also work to the tories advantage in LD>CON marginals. Take one of my bettin interests -Solihull - Solidly Tory between 1945-2005, but owing to a total collapse of the labour vote in ‘05 (Primarily because of iraq) the lib dems gained the seat by a whisker(maj 250!) on a huge Lab>LD swing. Now the seat is notional tory anyway, any tactical rewind of the ‘05 labour collapse will reward the tories.
I’ve been betting on the tories to take back solihull on any odds above 1.3. I’d put their chances at 85% or even higher.
Can the Scots Nats, just for once, F*CKING BUTON IT!! This piece above is far, far too important to be drowned out by your bloody wibbling.
A superb piece of forensic psephology, Andy. It deserves receiving with more respect. Or I’d understand why you wouldn’t bother sharing part two with us.
‘Expenses row threatens to engulf Government’
- Call for probe into whip advice to MP
http://www.dcthomson.co.uk/MAGS/POST/news2.htm
‘Expenses MP ‘told by Labour whip to move money round’
- Jim Devine claims cleaning bill was funded from separate account on advice of Westminster old hand
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/expenses-mp-told-by-labour-whip-to-move-money-round-1891758.html
The problem for the Scottish Labour Party is that Jim Devine MP knows where some of the bodies are buried. Remember that for many years before he became an MP he was Robin Cook’s Election Agent: privy to some of Scottish Labour’s dirtiest, darkest secrets.
No shortage of those!
28. We love you too Mark!
Kisses & hugs,
Stooey
xoxox
(I’ve booked that lovely little table at the ristorante for the 14th. Can’t wait! Hugs, S)
30 If you keep quiet ’til the 14th, I’ll be there!
Labour need to get to 39-32 to make life interesting.
Although looking at the individual constituency odds the markets are predicting big anti Tory tactical voting in many Lib Dem seats.
Prices have been moving against the Tories for months.
31.
Great to see that you live in hope Mark! Light a candle; do not curse the darkness.
‘PM Brown to pledge one-to-one cancer care in England’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8502492.stm
Does “Middle Britain” equate to the same thing as “England” in Gordon’s mind? He seems to be allergic to the words ‘England’ and ‘English’. I wonder why?
Andy’s thesis is no surprise.
In unscientific Yokel world there’s a phrase known of ‘value of votes’ which in short says that votes tend to stack up where they matter most.
Labour could lose core support in North Britain, and Buckfast Abbey.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8501865.stm
Very good article.
On a side-note, the media annoy me. There has actually been a genuine polling shift, more to Labour than from the Tories. But a 1 point move in a poll with a 3 point margin of error is not cause for enormous excitement. The tracker showed us that polls bobble up and down quite a lot. If Labour’s recovery is in its heartlands, it’s irrelevant anyway. If its in the marginals, it’s huge news.
I’m also very much looking forward to seeing which pollster’s methodology is best. Rather obviously, I’m hoping Angus Reid is.
Stuart Dickson would love Tories to oppose devolution, for his own Leninist reasons.
Cameron is way too cute for that so poor wee Stuart has to resort to seizing upon an ambiguous comment left by a Tory poster on a website.
Desperate stuff - and characteristic of his bad manners in attempting to hijack every thread first thing in the morning to bang on about Scottish nationalism.
Ever ask yourself why you keep coming back here, Stuart? It’s because the quality of debate and level of analysis (epitomised by Andy’s excellent article) is so much higher than you would find on any purely Scottish website. Let that be a lesson to you: we’re better of as one United Kingdom.
I’m sure Andy is right (as mathematician, punter and LibDem PPC so hardly biased). I reckon about 7% would be enough for Cameron. Putting sensible things into Robert’s transfer model - a version of which I’ve always used - comes up with the same answer.
However I also believe Rod is right that the actual lead is likely to be lower, mainly due to Tory policy problems (like tacking the deficit).
And you thought that no Rod/Robert hybrid was possible…
This is a quite outstanding article. As Yokel implies, the central ideas have been much discussed on here, but this is the most rigorous explanation of each element that I have seen. I have nothing to add except to say that I hope that it gets the widest possible attention (but not for a week or so, so that I can get a bit of timing advantage, if that’s ok).
Good article, and reading it a 2nd time I feel it may be right.
Certainly some effort went into writing it and nobody has dissed the theory suggested yet.
Part 2 please!
How much tactical voting will be directed at Labour this tine round, and will some areas see stronger moves against Brown?
“lost some tactical voters over Iraq”
I think this is being underestimated although it’ll obviously be concentrated in areas with a lot of muslim or guardianista votes.
Two other factors which need specific mention. 1)The calculations giving rise to the 11% requirement still cover the country as a whole, spreading Scottish numbers over the whole UK.Scotland must surely be treated separately. 2) Likelihood to vote among the 5 million unemployed (including dependents) must severely skew the figures against Labour. I should appreciate a comment from Andy as to the effect on his calculations?
One point that no one has mentioned re. This latest ICM, Labour are probably still overstated with the weighting being bias towards them.
It is my guess that Nationally Labour are 26/28% max and Tories 41/42
this will be the final result!
Sort of on topic, John Rentoul really should have name-checked political betting in his article if he is going to borrow some of our host’s ideas. It’s still a good article (and consistent with Andy Cooke’s header to this piece), but manners cost nothing.
Shamelessly off-topic, is this the most pointless article published in a national newspaper today?
http://www.people.co.uk/news/tm_headline=how-s-it-bean-on-x-factor%26method=full%26objectid=22024380%26siteid=93463-name_page.html
Or is there some cryptic message that I haven’t decoded in it, telling a Mossad agent to make a dead letter drop?
Great article Andy. Wayne I agree with the overstating of Labour. Compared to 2005 there is a major voter strike by Labour supporters out there on the doorstep. 30% is dreamland. Angus Reid have a better estimate with 24%.
44 - As of yesterday evening, I very much like your prediction. I hope it’s more accurate than some of your others.
Hmmm so Green is the New Europe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/climate-scepticism-grows-tories
As the Tories are now on the way to junking all of that Green Stuff, will there be a U turn on the third runway at HR?
Oh! Iraq, (which won’t even feature as an issue at the GE) that’ll be sideshow compared with whats coming up.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iran/7173446/Tories-would-back-war-with-Iran.html
45 It’s the secret message to the Labour faithful (Sid and Doris Bonkers) that we are on for a March election. It’s the only possible explanation.
45 - I think the Labour ceiling with Brown as leader is 32 and the Tory floor is 37 and the Lib Dem ceiling 22.
What do you make of those figures?
Mike. I can read this on iPhone, but site is making IE on Windows 7 hang.
48, thought the Tories opposed the runway anyway?
Nice to see the Conservatives in tune with the British public, unlike Howlin’ Mad Miliband.
49. You forget that once Cam gets ditched for Boris (c/f Charlie Whelan) they will stimulate the economy by going full steam ahead for Boris Island.
49 Yup but el Torees wil get the heat from that. Least where i am the guardianista / muslim vote that went LD over Iraq *seems* to have gone back to Labour with all the blame attached to Dorian.
Hmmmm
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7176090/MP-Nadine-Dorries-hid-money-in-bra.html
Well that would keep it warm, but safe?
How is a marginal defined in this model and how is a semi-marginal defined?
I did get the impression from 1997 that the big swings where Labour won seats of the Tories - like Enfield Southgate - that the effect was based on a) the proportional loss of Tory voters from 1992, b) the proportion of those who defected to Labour, c) added to the previous Labour voters who just had the critical mass to take them over the winning line.
And Christina, the quotes Stuart is providing seem clear to me unless you can paste the context you are suggesting.
It is to be expected that the Labour vote would solidify. The Iraq debacle will be forgiven and forgotten by many and the prospect of a Tory government will strengthen the core as well.
All evidence howevers suggests that the vast majority of these people are Labour voters anyway, they’d never really go Tory. Yes there are some swing voters in there but I reckon they’d barely account for 1-2% of Labours current 30-31% figure.
And I stress, no matter what anyone says, do we seriously believe that Labour getting 31%, a mere touch above core vote, is enough to stop the Tories getting a majority?
No, its down to the Others and the firmness of the Tory support. If the soft edges of that support come out enough, its all over.
OT Palin making waves after making a speech at the Tea Party conference in the USA. Listening to the BBC World Service this morning the pundits still dont get it. Despite what the rest of the World thinks about the US Right, its currently having a bit of a grassroots resurgance. Cranks or not, if they mobilise anger & votes they represent a threat to Obama and the Democrats.
Thats democracy and its amazing how many pundits forget that.
tim February 7th, 2010 at 8:53 am “I think the Labour ceiling with Brown as leader is 32 and the Tory floor is 37 and the Lib Dem ceiling 22. What do you make of those figures?”
For ICM, Yougov etc and everyone excluding ARS that is about right. For the actual votes at the GE, Labour’s ceiling under Brown is 29, Lib Dems 20 and the Conservative floor is 40.
“its currently having a bit of a grassroots resurgance.”
You are aware that the Gaylord conference has revealed more splits than a British socialist party? A huge number of groups pulled out, some objected to the amount Palin was being paid.
Excellent analysis.
I have long held that the argument that it takes fewer votes to elect a Labour MP than it does to elect a Conservative is mainly an inevitable mathematical outcome of the election. The Tories, having lost so badly for 3 elections, are in safer seats with often a large numbers of votes.
By contrast, many of the Labour MPs are in relatively marginal seats, and hence the actual number of votes they received to achieve their win was fewer than their Conservative neighbour.
This is demonstrated here in Staffordshire when Bill Cash received 23k votes but in neighbouring Stafford David Kidney only received 20k. In Tamworth the number was even less at 19k.
Yes, many of the Labour seats were smaller in overall size, but these were often in the north, Wales and Scotland. In many cases, this bias no longer exists and, has as been pointed out, is not key to the battleground.
I think Stuart is far close with his 2 to 3 points than the media figure of 11.
61, whilst I like that idea, I’m not sure I can believe a 3 point lead would be enough.
But, here’s a dream scenario: 2-3 points is enough *and* Angus Reid are spot on with a 16 point lead
51 - 37 would be my guess for absolute rock bottom for the Tories. My central prediction for the Tories is about 41.
Using similar bases, my guess of the absolute top figure for Labour is 33. My central prediction for Labour is now about 30, which is a couple of points higher than it would have been in the summer.
The Lib Dems are an enigma to me and in any case are more fluid than the major two parties. If they had a halfway competent leader, they would be able to capitalise on the anti-politics mood and get to the mid 20s. Since they have a tactical idiot in charge, you may well be right with your view that their top score is 22. My central prediction is 20, but with that 20 quite well placed for them in terms of numbers of seats.
I actually prefer to think about this in terms of seats rather than percentages (which in my view are still harder to predict than seat tallies).
58 The Iraq “swingback” is purely a Lab-LD thing imo - i think the numbers of people is significant but not sure what the overall effect would be.
Palin’s a Reagan but the pundits don’t get it because they’re blinded by how much they despise proles. They were the same with Reagan if i recall it right.
Morning all, and thanks for the nice comments.
To address a couple of them:
- Morus at 8 The marginals are (if memory serves) a collection of 130-odd seats that have *nothing necessarily in common* except that at the last election, they produced a certain range of vote-share differential between Labour and the Conservatives
A valid point, but the vote-share differential and the level of excess swing tends to be consistent over multiple elections (I looked at 97, 01, 05). I believe it’s because the nature of a marginal is (almost by definition) that it will have a higher proportion of floaters/centrists/those who can be swayed than other constituencies. This will change over time - slowly - as the demographics change. I think that Blair Freebairn’s Mguest article on the “METTH’s” was an excellent insight.
- Edmund in Tokyo at 16’s two points (tactical rewind of anti-Iraqi Lib Dems and Palmer’s Paradox) are well founded, but I think that:
- 1: The tactical unwind in 2005 wasn’t that much greater than in 2001. “Kick the buggers out” is always more powerful than “keep the buggers out” in any case, and you’ve always got to sustain the same tactical voting level to have the same effect in any case, so it was always likely to fade. The Iraq effect doubtless boosted the unwind in any case, but looking at the forced choice question, these days it’s far better for the Tories than it was in 2005 (2005: 52/35 for Labour; these days about 44/37 for the Tories).
-2 Palmer’s Paradox relies on the anti-Tory feeling remaining widespread, and if there’s a realistic chance that the Conservatives could get in, the anti-Tory vote will assemble. My core argument is that the anti-Tory feelinghas been evaporating.
- Svejk at 43 on the Scotland (and implicitly, regional variations).
Agreed, but it was outside the analysis. The article was exceptionally long in any case, and I thought that the Scotland factor was unlikely to work against the premise (so you can assume a possible overshoot beyond the article).
Thanks to all for the incisive commentary, and thanks to Mike for his kind words as well.
Coldstone @49: Don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers. Don’t believe anything you read in newspaper headlines.
[Liam Fox] went on: “2010 is the year in which we will seriously have to confront Iran. We have to say that everything remains on the table – if you play a public game of “what if” that just helps the Iranians by knowing what our next move would be.
The Telegraph headline this as “Tories would back war with Iran”. What Fox actually appears to have said is that the Tories aren’t going to tell you what their policy is.
A great article, and I look forward to part 2.
Two further factors that would decrease the lead in the polls that the Conservatives need for an overall majority:
The impact of Patrick’s multi-million ‘Do Not Vote’ group appears not to have been considered. These are the people who appear vote Conservative, but only when they are scared of the Labour alternative. They last appeared in 1992.
The Northern Ireland considerations (SF continuing to boycott Westminster; the Conservative link to the Unionists) could reduce the number of seats Cameron needs for a majority by about 10.
The right are already ganging up on DC.
http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/columnists/fraser_nelson/722212/quotTrust-mequot-wonrsquot-win-the-election-Cameron-needs-something-better.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/7175685/This-wasnt-a-wobble-for-the-Tories-but-a-fiasco.html
There’ll be more of that, a lot more!
So what you are saying, coldstone, is that Cameron isn’t that right wing and is rather moderate?
Good.
So there we have it, the fickle finger of the electorate in the marginals tend to judge the Government of the day rather than engage in tribalism…
What odds that the marginals are Anti-Labour? Pretty odds on me thinks.
66 If the Tories hadn’t already decided to back a war against Iran they’d be piling in over Chilcot and Iraq.
66
Hmmm really! So when the US invades Iran the UK won’t be, ’shoulder-to-shoulder’ they all say that.
‘I’m sorry Mr President, but we’ve decided to stick with the cheese eating surrender monkeys and sit this one out’ ‘ello ‘ello hmmm he’s rung off’
69
It doesn’t matter how rightwing he is, he’ll never be right wing enough for that lot.
63 - You may think Clegg is a tactical idiot, but his personal ratings remain at the high he established during the e Gurkhas fiasco, this while Camerons have been heading south.
Thats partly why the bets I took on Lib Dem constituencies last summer have tightened in price so much.And of course, the debates will be a gift for the Lib Dems.
BBC Politics Show has a story about centralising school planning under Gove if the Tories win.
Bye Bye Localism.
Cambell just bombing (metaphorically) on Marr, good, nastiness biting back.
“he’ll never be right wing enough for that lot.”
So you are saying their criticism is worthless. Wonder why you keep pointing to it then.
Excellent article Andy.
One thing that has struck me is that all I seem to have done is quantitively described and summarised what a lot of people knew qualitatively at a gut level anyway.
Not just posters on here - I’ll bet my pension that not one paragraph of the article will come as a shock to either George Osborne or Peter Mandelson. Both of them seem to have been assiduously aiming at maximising the effects (Osborne/Conservative strategy as a whole) or trying to convince Brown not to abandon them (Mandelson).
68 As Rentoul says about what he terms the “Tea Party” tendency in the right wing commentariat “If they had any power, they would be about as helpful to Cameron as Sarah Palin was to John McCain, but I think Cameron will hold to his strategic course, such as it is.”
Perhaps Osborne and Cameron should have spent more time indulging the Janet Daley’s of this world with access and sweet talk, acting as Blair and Brown did in courting key people in the Mail, News International and Telegraph groups but part of the strategy of change was to get Heffer, Daley etc to criticise Cameron for changing - it was proof he had moved the party.
78. Andy - yes. For me, the county council results in the Midland counties espec. Staffs were a real demonstration of the ‘Yokel thesis’ upthread.
76
For the obvious reason, they share their agenda with many inside the Tory Party, it’ll be the, ‘bastards’ that’ll pull Cameron down just like they pulled Major down.
60 David
Palin wasn’t paid for speaking at the Tea Party thing.
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2010/02/column-why-im-speaking-at-tea-party-convention-.html
66 More to the point, he isn’t going to tell the enemy what his policy is. Even better.
74 - At a time when both major parties are more distrusted than ever before, the third party should be flying high. It isn’t. In a negative way, that really is an astonishing achievement on Mr Clegg’s part.
Is this a good move by Harman ?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-goes-on-the-offensive-over-tory-family-policies-1891749.html
” Harriet Harman went on the offensive, describing Tory plans for a married couples allowance as the “John Terry tax”. “
83, Iran will have gamed this out and thought it through well beyond any British political party. They’ll know what they Tories are going to do before the Tories do.
Baroness Ashton scoring nul points in her new job. As one commentator pithily puts it “another Broon disaster”.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7017833.ece
85 - From the party that describes spending as investment, we now have an allowance described as a tax. Doubleplusgood!
85. Meanwhile another government minister, Mike O’Brien, thinks Terry was hard done by….
85, it’s moronic. Every married person in Britain has now been labelled by Labour’s deputy leader as morally identical to an alleged adulterer.
ALso, she always bangs on about unfaithful men: what about unfaithful women? She’s a bigot.
78 great analysis Andy, and yes it does chime with what very high level analysis I had done led me to feel. Good to have it more thoroughly done.
I have felt that on the day a 7% lead would be at cusp of just short or just over the line, 8% over the line. That’s votes on the day not the lead in polls.
I think that while polls are probably close on Tory share they are overstating Labour by at least 2-3% (as they did in 2005) but that they are perhaps light on the Lib Dems and the Lib Dem campaign boost will be taken mainly from Labour. While the Lib Dems will lose a few seats nett compared to 2005 they wouldn’t come close to fulfilling Martin Day’s dreams.
A better performance by the Lib Dems than the UNS models show means the Conservatives need to pick up a lot more Labour seats, further down the list than the UNS models show, but the better performance in marginals the polls indicate and the bigger swings in target groups should deliver that.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2010/02/tea_partiers_have_mixed_opinions_about_palins_convention_attendance.php
She got paid $100,000.
The event seems nastily xenophobic. Someone should remind them that their hero Reagan was in favour of immigration. I did though enjoy the claim that people who couldn’t spell voted for Obama. Sure, let’s ignore the polling evidence that suggests if you were a graduate you were more likely to vote for Obama, but coupled with the anti-intellectual strand, it seems to suggest that if you are too thick, you shouldn’t vote, and if you are too clever, you shouldn’t vote. In fact, the only people that vote shoudl eb the ones who vote for the right it seems.
86 Quite possibly, but the principle is a good one. I always thought Blair was wrong to publicly rule out the use of ground forces in the Kosovo crisis (just as I thought it was wrong not to attack before the deadline and not to concentrate on military rather than civilian targets).
83
More to the point, he isn’t going to tell the enemy what his policy is. Even better.
‘Enemy’ already conditioned for the war to come. So Mr Fox is deciding policy now is he?
I’ve just looked up Iran in my, ‘Times Atlas of the World’ its a f**king big place ‘aint it! Need a lot of troops, to crack that one. The Tories will probably have to bring back conscription, as some of you lot may be in the right age group, you’ll remember this little chat when you are dug into your ‘foxholes’ (geddit) outside Tehran.
Could be another battle of Hattin, hope you lot have better luck than Reynald de Chatillon, that was not a nice way to go.
no props here
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249089/Gordon-Brown-weeps-television-talks-death-Jennifer.html?ITO=1490
*** Slightly offbeat betting observation ***
On Paddy Power, you can back the Tories failing to achieve a majority of 50 at odds of 6/5:
http://www.paddypower.com/bet/politics/other-politics/uk-politics?ev_oc_grp_ids=108313
Meanwhile, on SkyBet, you can back the Tories getting more than 335.5 seats at 5/6:
http://www.skybet.com/skybet?action=GoEvEv&id=12010635
By backing both bets in the ratio 5:6, you will get your money back if the Tories get 335 seats or fewer or 350 seats or more. However, if the Tories get 336-349 seats inclusive, you will get your combined stake doubled.
That band seems rather likely to me, considering it would be a free bet.
Just like to add my voice to those praising the lead article. Excellent job, Andy!
Knocks spots off the so-called analysis in the mainstream media.
As I just heard Hague say voters couldn’t face any more of Gordon Brown. it struck me that one of the few certainties is that seeing Hague regularly on TV is going to make it more likely. He’s less attractive an interviewee that Bob Ainsworth.
Marr has certainly had his three shredded wheat today!
Morning all
65. Andy Cooke
Excellent article Andy. In assessing how much the actual swing is how much would you take notice of the seeming contradiction between the political (Party ID and Past Vote) weightings used by the pollsters which all benefit Labour and the latest British Social Attitudes Survey which shows that the country is once again Conservative for the first time since 1989?
67. John Marston
The impact of Patrick’s multi-million ‘Do Not Vote’ group appears not to have been considered. These are the people who appear vote Conservative, but only when they are scared of the Labour alternative. They last appeared in 1992.
Surely you don’t mean decrease in regard to this. Fear of Brown (who is far worse than Kinnock) if anything surely must increase the Conservative vote.
74 - I didn’t vote for Clegg, but he’s really getting his act together now, coming over in interviews as a real person just like Charles Kennedy used to do.
IIRC, All Lib Dem leaders take a while to establish themselves. Clegg’s coming into form just at the right time. And our opinion poll ratings aren’t bad.
It’s Cameron who’s starting to look a bit phoney - e.g. on the latest “Webcameron” which almost looked like a Goodies spoof advert with Tim Brooke Taylor pretending to be a politician.
90
Ah! but you Tories always do that sort of thing so much better.
http://tinyurl.com/ybyxvo5
So much to look forward to. Sunday mornings are always much more interesting when the Tories are in power.
90 - Actually its Dave that wants to treat Terry as morally equal to other married couples in the tax system isn’t it?
92. David lol - more tea-pot than tea party!
98. Hague is one of the most popular Conservative front benchers with cross party support. And when he says he couldn’t stomach five more years of Brown, he speaks for many in the nation - not just Conservatives.
Paddy Power are offering a refund of all losing bets on first or last goalscorers if John Terry scores today, including an owngoal. That seems very sporting of them, considering how prolific his scoring has been, if today’s newspapers are to be believed.
94 No, “enemy” as in “someone who isn’t our ally”, “someone who may become our enemy in the future”.
To be honest, I think we should also have secret plans for stabbing our current allies in the back as well, as the Americans should have done with the Shah in 1979.
95, best rated comments sum it up.
100. So much to look forward to. Sunday mornings are always much more interesting when the Tories are in power.
Ah if it were to be but sadly the media is now so infested with cheap tawdry Labour vermin that the quality of news journalism is in terminal decline, no matter who is in power.
101, the Tories want to remove a bias against marriage in the tax system by giving slightly more to married couples.
Labour has now, brilliantly, managed to describe it as a tax, when it isn’t, and reckons every married couple is like John Terry. What next? A pay rise for GPs being called the Dr. Shipman tax?
95
I think this interview will be a big mistake for Brown. Coming this close to the election, after years of proclaiming how this sort of thing “wasn’t him”, it’s going to be seen as contrived.
At the risk of labouring (no pun intended) my point above, I have analysed results for the whole of Staffordshire. There is good consistency between their sizes, so any difference in the average vote taken to elect an MP is more down to the margin of their victory.
This shows that it took an average of 19,451 to elect the 6 Labour MPs (44.25% in their constituencies), but 21,767 (49.13%) for the three Conservatives (I have used the 2001 result for South Staffs due to the election that never was in 2005).
If these figures were fed into the calculation for predicting seats in the future, it would suggest the Tories need a significant lead just to stay where they are.
However, analysis of the switching intentions suggest that most of these seats are vulnerable at below current levels. Of course were that to happen you would probably see that it takes fewer votes to elect a Conservative MP.
105
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind.
And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar.
attrib.
What a pity the whole electorate didn’t watch Marr today. Hague as Tory Foreign Sec or Alan Johnson as Lab Home Sec?
I’m beginning to wonder who the Tories have to offer? If I was Brown I’d make the campaign as long as possible. Cam looked ill yesterday and the likes of Hague will swing more marginals than VIPA or any statistical analysis by Andy Cooke.
A 9% lead for the Tories is, in my opinion not enough for a Tory victory. So Sorry!
Cameron has wasted the last 6 weeks on trivia and unbalanced statements. It’s about time he and the rest of CGHQ pulled their individual and collective fingers out, say what they mean clearly and gird their loins for battle.
Still, Sarah Palin had a good day yesterday.
108 - the Tories want to remove a bias against marriage in the tax system by giving slightly more to married couples.
Confused?
There is no bias in the tax system against married couples.
The Tories want to introduce one.
Morris Dancer, you are not being imaginative enough. Housing benefit is the Vicky Pollard tax, incapacity benefit is the Andy Pipkin tax and unemployment benefit is the Jim Royle tax. The possibilities are endless.
Lots of interesting stuff here by Christopher Booker on how UK taxpayers’ money is being diverted in curious ways toward ‘climate change’ related ‘projects’. Cui bono?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/7176262/Climate-makes-money-move-in-mysterious-ways.html
112 - More Hague please.
114 - The Tories want to introduce one which will benefit John Terry.
72. “Hmmm really! So when the US invades Iran the UK won’t be, ’shoulder-to-shoulder’ they all say that.”
I’ve no doubt Tories would support the US, and that goes for future Labour governments as well, but I don’t think we are likely to be involved to any great degree. There’s no sign of the US planning or preparing anything like an invasion, currently the US is supporting Israeli and Gulf state air defences and stepping up patrols in the Persian Gulf and Indian ocean. If a war happens it will be fought mostly in the air. There’s nothing the UK could add to that that the US needs, maybe we’d launch a few Tomahawks.
115 - The Marie Stopes tax.
Why not just give the tax break straight to the clinic?
Tim, even you are going to struggle to describe this as a tax. Harriet Harman deserves to drown in a sea of ridicule for trying.
Out of work benefits the ‘Karen Matthews’ tax?
116
On the other hand
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/thinktanks-take-oil-money-and-use-it-to-fund-climate-deniers-1891747.html
I suppose you have to be as dumb as Tim to agree with Harman’s mental approach.
What with her and Brown, is there anyone not mentally damaged at the top of the Labour party?
118
There were plenty of people like you around in August 1914.
111: coldstone @ 21:58
Nice quote, do you think Mr. Blair & co might have had it in mind? After all it seems to fit what has been happening in this Country since 2001.
More problems for the LibDems in Montgomeryshire
http://tinyurl.com/powystrouble
120 - Of course its not a tax, its a tax break which equates me with Terry,Boris and Zac.
And I’m deeply insulted.
Leave me alone Dave, stop bracketing me with the sexually incontinent rich!
103 “And when he says he couldn’t stomach five more years of Brown, he speaks for many in the nation”
But when the messenger was the most unpopular party leader any of us can remember most won’t have been listening to the message but shivering at the prospect of the messenger taking high office.
117, so a tax is deemed good or bad based on a single ‘celebrity’ it affects?
That’s a sensible and reasoned view of fiscal policy.
By the way, how would you explain the prospect of lower taxation or increased allowances as a tax? Just curious. Obviously, it’s understandable if you don’t know as you’re not a member of the Government. I was just wondering if you were aware of the unorthodox and challenging thought processes that led the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party to use such an unusual and inaccurate turn of phrases.
Is Harman a complete fiscal illiterate after over a decade in power, or is she simply twisting the truth and deliberately misrepresenting Opposition policy for partisan effect?
126 How do you see Wales at the moment.
Cameron and Osborne will need an 11% lead to govern effectively with the required majority to impose the cuts required that they are not telling the public about.
111 Are you brain-dead ?
Have you not realised how many wars Labour have fought?
124 Ah yes August 1914, and a Liberal Govt. taking us into a war we should have sat out.
How do I sign up to join the sexually incontinent rich?
123. David. It is rumoured that having a frontal lobotomy or electric shock treatment is a mandatory requirement.
re 127. Tim - you have posted 16,512 times on PB and hold the record for the biggest number. The vast majority have been off-thread and sometimes you give the impression that you are following an agenda.
Can you restrict your off-thread points on each issue to no more than twice in any single thread. I think that is fair to other posters.
I have imposed similar restrictions on others before.
“the cuts required that they are not telling the public about”
Ah. You must be talking about the mental Gordon Brown.
124. “There were plenty of people like you around in August 1914.”
You really are a singularly bitter and ignorant person.
An excellent analysis, many interesting aspects.
There are a few further factors:
there is at least a possibility of not just a tactical voting unwind, but a reversal. Partly a “kick the buggers out” feeling, and partly a Tory detox.
The demographic in the marginals has changed. For example in NW Leics the constituency maintown of Coalville has changed from a depressed ex mining town to much more middle class, with much new housing and new businesses based around the good motorway links.
The voters in this election are different to the voters in say 92 and 01. Those elections were 12 and 9 years ago. Older voters are now dead and younger voters are different. They are less tribally labour or conservative, and more prone to float or vote on single issues, such as green or antiwar idealism of youth.
Finally the marginals in England are largely suburban or small to medium cities. Immigration plays differently here. Few have major non White inward migration, and indeed many have significant White flight effects. Much of the inward migration to NW leics is from Leicester, the constituency is 98% White according to ukpollingreport. The BNP were strong in the locals here, getting their first county council seat. In many ways these are the old WWC that used to vote labour but revolted by the antics of the kieth vazs of this world.
I think that a national swing will be amplified by all these effects in NW Leics, and I have never voted Tory.
If other labour partisans are as self deluding as Tim, we are in for a shock result. Did you stay up for Balls?
128. Roger - the most unpopular party leader any of us can remember is one James Gordon Brown.
Very interesting article - thanks Andy.
I agree with the starting point - it seems intuitively unlikely that the Tories need an 11% lead to win. I do have queries on the individual points, though: in particular, whether the three factors have been distinguished to avoid double-counting of the effects.
Point 1: this is the purely statistical one but I don’t quite understand it. What Andy is saying is that if Labour’s vote goes up a million, then that’ll be disproportionately concentrated in non-safe seats because they have low turnout, and if it goes down a million likewise. That’s true. But it’s not obviously true of percentage changes. If Labour’s vote changes by a tenth either way, is there evidence that it changes less in safe seats, *apart* from the factors that Andy identifies in points 2 and 3 (to avoid any double counting)? There may well be such evidence - I’m just asking.
Point 2: It’s clearly true, and glaringly obvious if you compare County results in 2005 with Parliamentary results - in marginals like mine, the Labour vote in the latter was vastly higher, and that’s almost entirely a tactical vote. However, 2005 was still a bit disappointing in that sense - Iraq was recent, and plenty of anti-Tory voters couldn’t be persuaded that we were actually at risk of losing. This time there’s no problem with that, and the Iraq factor has faded to the point that Blair’s appearance at Chilcot had no detectable impact at all. I can only offer a subjective impression: I’m finding it very much easier to attract LibDems this time. (I’m sure that LibDem MPs are finding it easy to attract Labour voters too.) The polls suggest that LibDem voters are no longer strongly tilted to Labour as second preference - but this varies a lot with the area (in places Liverpool LibDems seem to see Labour as the main enemy; in other places quite the reverse).
Point 3: I’d question the assumption that the Labour surge in the marginals was mainly due to centrism, or that our recovery has been among disgruntled leftists. Part of it was due to people in long-Tory seats recognising that Labour could win (the Tories could benefit this time in long-Labour seats in the same way). Another part was clearly the tactical vote, so arguably a double count with point 2. As for the recovery, it seems to me overwhelmingly concentrated in the ABC1 demographic (partly because it’s partly coming from the LibDems): we are still struggling among C2DEs. That make general marginal polling tricky - in seats like the industrial areas of the W Mids, I think the swing is probably higher than the polls. In seats with a large middle-class vote and a dose of university influence, I think it’s probably lower. There has been some evidence that the swing is higher in the north (masked by Labour’s normal strength there), and that reflects the demographic point.
Perhaps article 2 could touch on these points?
re 131. I would wait for part 2 of Andy’s paper before coming to that conclusion.
125
It relates to all governments, its what they’ve all done since the year dot.
I have to be honest, if they hadn’t I’d have had nothing to read all of my life.
Award for understatement of the year:
Mike to Tim: “sometimes you give the impression that you are following an agenda.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article7017929.ece
“THE discovery of three American soldiers among the dead in a suicide bombing at the opening of a girls’ school in the northwestern Pakistan town of Dir last week…”
The again there’s Pakistan to invade as well - so many wars so little time.
111 Coldy, there is a big difference between talking up a war, and sensibly refusing to tell another country that is currently p1ssing us off, what our policy to it will be if it continues to do so.
For what it’s worth, I am currently against military action against Iran, although I would be less unhappy with air strikes targeted at nuclear facilities, for example. However, I think Liam Fox’s words are unremarkable, and sensible.
133
Really and we’d have let the Germans control the Channel ports, I’m sure!
If we’re looking around for future military interventions that might actually be worth carrying out, may I suggest that we think about how we could help Yemen and S0malia? Failed and failing states are much more in need of intervention than belligerent semi-hostile but currently coherent states.
Some good interviews by Campbell and Hague on Marr this morning.
Campbell was his usual excellent slimy self, even pretending to well up when Marr asked him a difficult question!
Hague was good talking and Ashcroft and party funding. Labour are heading for a dead end if they continue to flog this issue.
147 No need to. The RN had already by 1914 won the battle of the Dreadnoughts and was outbuilding the Imperial German Navy substantially to retain naval supremacy.
The First World War was a fight the Liberal Govt. dragged us in to and frankly the UK would have emerged as the Global power broker if we had let Germany France and Russia slug it out for 4 years.
One could argue that the Germans biggest fault was they were impatient; had they waited 96 years they could simply have bought the port of Dover from the current UK govt.
136 - I’m always happy to debate the threads and the offthread subject that are begun by others.
Look at my posts today and they were all on topic until other debates started, not by me.
“131.Cameron and Osborne will need an 11% lead to govern effectively with the required majority to impose the cuts required that they are not telling the public about.”
I think that’s the key point. If they just squeak in i don’t think they’ll be able to sort the deficit out so it’ll still end in a gilt strike type event just pushed back a bit. Hence why i think they need to be either aiming very high or provoking the rich people on yachts to pull out now.
Judging by the hundreds of comments all over various newspaper websites, this weepy interview of Browns will go down like a lead baloon.
I’m leaning to this backfiring bigtime on Brown, it would seem that people know this is a cunning electioneering ploy.
This could be another Gordo PR disaster.
150
In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun’s rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water.
When the Kaiser made that statement, it was inevitable we would go to war.
As for selling the port of Dover, well the government is following in the tradition set by the Thatcher government, when they sold off the UK’s water/rail/energy to foreign buyers: the joys of the free market.
Good Morning Hopeful Scottish Rugby Supporting Voters For Nick Palmer Worldwide.
Meanwhile …. Very good article Andy.
It’s one of the enduring obsessions of PB - to find the holy grail of election predictions, that silver bullet that hits the target and allows those punters among us to draw the blood of the bookies. Some cling to UNS, others fall down in front of the new gods of VIPA or Rod Swingback. To them we must now add to the mix a new cook(e) - Andy.
I reject these false idols and like all good PBers await the verdict of my ARSE !!
One issue not noted by Andy as we hover closer to the hung parliament is what in the dim and distant past I called the Lib Dem blocking minority - Those former Conservative seats and targets now firmly in the yellow peril column and unlikely to return blue any time soon. Remember for every one of these seats - around thirty - the Tories have to pluck away another Labour seat. it doesn’t mean the Conservatives can’t do it, just that it’s more difficult so to do.
At the moment any military intervention anywhere would be stupid - we can’t afford it.
The top article is interesting - if it’s combined with an understatement of Tory votes by the main polling companies or by AR being accurate we really will have a Tory landslide.
Is Harman a complete fiscal illiterate after over a decade in power….
No, she has always given the impression of being a fiscal illiterate. It’s just more obvious now.
156. Is that what the Iranians are thinking?
149. Well said Millsy. You are a much needed antidote to the Tim and Roger ‘Hague is Very Very Unpopular’ Delusion. BTW is welling up on TV the latest big idea from the bunker? I guess they do have a lot to cry about.
One of the good things about having a GE earlier than May 6th is that we can see the end of Tim on this site and his LabourSPAD posts. Without his Govt funding Tim would have to go out and find a job.
156 Our involvement only needs to be a diplomatic figleaf for the US to ensure we get most of the blowback.
Nice article, Andy, and its good to see you took on board some of the caveats we discussed.
Putting things in perspective, we should remember that all these effects (and regional swings) together delivered Labour an extra 24 seats in 1997 - and that was off the back of the humungus national swing of 10.23%.
Three things will militate against the Tories emulating this.
i) The swing to the Tories will be modest in comparison to 1997.
ii) The tactical effect in 1997 was in large part due to ideological similarity and perceived co-operation between Labour and the Libdems. There is no analogous pact between the LibDems and the Tories today.
iii) In 1997 Tony Blair was viewed by many as the closest thing to the Second Coming. The electorate will never fall for that one again. There is simply no enthusiasm for Cameron out there.
On a very good day I could see the Tories obtaining a bare majority with a 9% lead. Below that, and I just don’t see it.
But it’s all a bit academic, since they won’t have that lead on polling day…
155 Jack W. One consequence of more efficient Lib Dem targetting maybe a less solid vote in seats where they are not strong or not trying to attack. The result is those seats which are virtually left with no resources are easier to swing between Tories and Labour as the Lib Dem vote swings more with the national tide in these seats than hitherto. So it makes the task of the party on the up at any point Labour oir Tories that bit easier.
Tim
There is an anti-marriage bias in the benefit system.
And if a politician thinks marriage is a good thing for ’society’ it follows they should tell us how they encourage it.
60. The right as a mobilised movement. Whether you like it or not, the Tea Partys of the US, whether they are a series of groups or one have the feeling of momentum right now. The Democrat strategists know this and are not simply rejecting their presence. Thats enough evidence for me.
Meanwhile to the bod who suggested the other night that I should stop being an idiot when I suggested that the NI devolution stitch may not be a done deal and that strange things could happen when it comes down to the Assembly vote, maybe the following will provide an answer.
Both UUP & SDLP are warning they are not just going to back it. This is a particular problem for the DUP who really want the UUP’s cover. Whilst neither party has enough on its own to spike the cross community vote there is always the danger of a late wobble by a few from the DUP that could ice the Unionist bloc approval.
One or the other may well collpase in the face of pressure but the DUP in particular are on dodgy ground because they have seen the UUP as a hinge on which to hang the deal to Unionists.
158 - Take a look at this graph.
http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/30/guest-slot-from-patrick-on-the-impact-of-turnout/
When was the biggest gap between turning out natural tories and keeping them at home in political history?
154
It wasn’t inevitable at all. The UK doesn’t go to war just because some foreign despot shouts his mouth of ( Blair govt. excepted ). The UK policy under Lord Salisbury had for many years been splendid isolation. And highly effective it was, the UK became substantially richer.
The drift to war began when the Asquith Govt. decided to get closer to Europe and in effect got itself caught up in a carte blanche alliance with the French. The UK could quite happily have built it’s navy and army from 1914 onwards while the major European powers pushed themselves into penury and war exhaustion.
dez - I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - the most devastating thing Cameron could do would be to withdraw the Conservatives from the election and make Brown carry on and be seen failing to sort out the mess he has made. You talk about cuts that haven’t been talked about - is there a single element of Labour’s proposals that could actually stand up if they were made to carry on? Now it is just layers of fantasy upon fantasy.
Why should the Conservatives bother taking all the crap sorting out Brown’s mess? Leave Brown to it and in a year or so everyone would be in no doubt just what a balls up he has made and how not a single one of his promises was credible. Labour would never be elected again.
154: coldstone @ 22:29
“When the Kaiser made that statement, it was inevitable we would go to war”
No, it was inevitable that there would be a naval arms race, as happened, but it was not inevitable that the UK should join in a continental land war for which we were unequipped, unprepared and unsuited to fight.
We went into the first world war because of a failure by our politicians not because it was inevitable.
166 - As late as 31 July 1914, only 5 out of the 17 members of the Cabinet were in favour of war.
165 “When was the biggest gap between turning out natural tories and keeping them at home in political history?”
When the Labour leader most successfully presented himself as a One Nation Tory in disguise.
Perhaps Khalid Mahmood has accidentally stumbled on a ’solution’ to Brown’s deficit. Renting out the Houses of Parliament for weddings?
http://www.sundaymercury.net/news/midlands-news/2010/02/07/perry-barr-mp-khalid-mahmood-arranged-weddings-for-friends-at-house-of-commons-66331-25778504/
O/t So much for open government, but is it any wonder that actions like this undermine the plausibility of the climate changers case, when data is not made available?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7178430/Met-Office-blocked-role-of-leading-scientist-in-climate-change-row.html
The leaking of data seems to have opened several cans of worms, but The Indy can bang on about foreign agents, and conspiracies of big oil and tame scientists.
Brown will not get above 30% at best, and as shown in past elections Labour never vote as high as the polls say they will.
162 Punter. I’m not too sure one scenario follows the other. Lib Dem paper candidates in hopeless seats are nothing new and in modern times goes back to Feb 74 and Lib Dem fortunes have been varied to say the least.
153. It does look as if the strategy is going to end in tears.
153, they’re trying to recreate the sympathy from the letter-writing affair.
It may play with the more emotional/moronic voters, but I hope it goes down badly.
I’d also like to know what the media think they’re fcking doing. No Lib Dem, again, on QT, no Tory on AQ and Brown gets an hour long chat with his mate on ITV.
any surprises here, doesn’t look too illuminating imho.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/margaret-thatcher/7175578/Thatcher-and-Carter-the-not-so-special-relationship.html
176. From Daily Referendum:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_lYENdXKR_LA/S26WoA1-UaI/AAAAAAAAE-k/6tQjHkI6OGM/s1600-h/LABOURS+BIG+TAX+CON.jpg
Andy, that’s an excellent article. I take all your points.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about Blair. Once upon a time, Labour would never have considered seats like the Harrows, Finchley, Hendon, Ilford North, Southgate etc. as worth bothering with, because they were so solid for the Conservatives. Blair’s skill was to appreciate that the voters there were soft Conservatives, as opposed to the more hard line Conservatives in the shires. He pitched his appeal to them, in a way that Cameron also does, and Brown doesn’t.
Harman’s reported comments this morning suggest that she has as much of a tin ear towards this group as Brown has.
Secondly, Blair appealed to instrumental voters, in places like London overspill estates, and the towns round the M25, in a way that Brown doesn’t. It’s how Labour came so close to winning places like Uxbridge and SW Bedfordshire, while taking seats like Basildon and Crawley on big swings.
It’s fair to assume that marginal seats (as a whole, though not in all cases) have more voters than is typical who judge governments on their performance, and vote accordingly.
178, hehe, I rather like that.
174 Jack W. The effect maybe rather more now as many seats seem to have had more than minimal effort without ever threatening a serious challenge. Certainly in 83 their vote seemed spread far and wide without concetration nationally.
166
I’ve walked up to that statue several times.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niederwalddenkmal
War was inevitable.
There was no way that a British government, (of any stamp) could live in harmony with a state that built that.
Oh the cablecar that Elvis Presley sang, ‘Wooden Heart’ is no 76 I believe.
176 - Thats easy, they know when Cameron wins, he’s going to take them apart. Its called trying to save one’s own backside.
The BBC is first on the Tory hitlist to be scrubbed clean of its lefty bias.
Brown’s problem is this, the AV vote is seen as an election ploy, he is is seen as an opportunist, this weepy crying thing will likely elicit small sympathy. People just think he’s a opportunistic liar, they don’t believe a word. Its a mindset now.
180. MD.
Indeed I have a vague recollection that there was a sight where you could put your own comments on that poster? Any idea where it might have been?
Andy - what a stonking article, can’t wait for the next installment.
On Marr - was that *genuine* Alistair Campbell upset or a very good stalling for time/sympathy tactic?
Either way it was gripping to watch. Good to see Hague bringing up Labour’s non-doms and union heavy donations - and he’s a numpty on AGW but I guess I can’t have everything
Re 183. sight!!!!!? = site (doh Sunday Mornings!)
182
Public art is not the basis of an effective Foreign Policy.
There was no inevitability about it, barely six \ seven years before the war the UK was seeking a military alliance with Imperial Germany if an accommodation could be reached on the Navy. The Kaiser fluffed it.
172. What’s so funny about this kind of Hollywood-cliche ‘dark corporate forces’ stuff, is that the AGW agenda is itself now being heavily pushed by vested corporate interests.
149 on the ashcroft issue good to see the guardian is upholding free speach and isnt allowing comments on its front page article ! or did I miss them and they have shut it down because of to many negative comments ?
172/188 Dr King was my favourite in last week’s Indy - it was the CIA and the Ruskies that hacked the UEA computers…
And this man once was HMG Chief Scientific Advisor???
185. The bunker seem to be going in for the crying game. It all started with Sarah didn’t it?
188. Perhaps we have the best climate change scientists that money could buy.
187
Did we fight
Yes
Therefore, it was inevitable.
You can often tell more from public art, and what it says about a country, than a thousand speeches, which are probably lies anyway.
169 Likely Britain would have gone to war eventually, the balance of power in Europe was always a British concern, and its difficult to know if the Empire in 1916 say would have fared better than 1914. The technological and strategic changes that pressure of war bought on and which changed the British Army, bought on air power wouldn’t have happened.
What would have changed though is Ireland would have held a general election in 1914 and bought in a Home Rule Government, the numbers of Irish MPs in Westminster cut from 103 to 42, and it was those Irish votes that had in large part sustained the minority Liberal Government. UK GE in probably early 1915 would have had Labour as growing third party and probably a Liberal-Labour coalition of some sort afterwards, so with quite a large anti-war component.
NickP at 141,
Very interesting article - thanks Andy.
Point 1:
Well, an extreme way to look at it would be: what if there was a 5% swing to the Tories in the Isle of Wight and a 5% swing to Labour in the Western Isles. Average constituency swing = 0%, but due to population sizes, UNS would say 3.33% or so to the Tories (add up all of the votes in both constituencies) - so Labour would get a 3.33% boost over UNS. This works, of course, with small turnouts versus large turnouts in similarly sized seats. This is an academic point, but it does appear that the big constituencies, medium-sized constituencies and large constituencies don’t have the same swings, so the effect comes about. To put your mind at rest, the three points are counted individually (for example, in 1997, I have UNS=10.23%, constituency average swing = 10.51%, tactically adjusted constituency swing = 11.2% and the marginal boost taking relevant seats up to 12.1 to 13.08% swings in the right areas.
Point 2: If you’re finding Lib Dem tactical votes easier to attract, then you’ll beat the average swing. On the whole, polling evidence is suggesting otherwise, but there will always be constituencies that are outside the average. From your comments over the years, your constituency is unusually high in the “Guardianista” population, (usually one component of the Lib Dem vote), who may not be reacting as the overall average of the Lib Dem vote. If so, you may well find it easier to beat the oncoming swing.
Point 3: Whatever the cause of the Labour surge, Blair and his team did seem to believe that attracting the centre ground was crucial. The effect of their attempts may be coincidental, but something gave them a paplpable surge in the marginals and semi-marginals. And, as you say, whatever caused it is up for grabs by the Tories this time anyway.
Two points you raised there as well that I think are very pertinent - although I’ve been punctilious to avoid double counting, the three effects are unlikely to be completely independent. This (to me) indicates that they reinforce each other fairly naturally and will exacerbate the swing in any case (unless the factors behind them are separately addressed by appropriate targetting of messages to various demographics).
The other was your point on the changing demographics you see in the Labour vote. It could be crudely summarised as Labour pulling vote share from their traditional core to try to shore up the more centrist marginals against the leakage to the Tories. This does, of course, leave one vulnerable to the larger swings being catastrophic. In article 2, where I’ve attempted to model the effects going back, I’ve tried to be cautious and assumed fractions of the “unwinds” until large swings are on the cards.
99 jsfl
Interesting point. I assumed that the ‘Do Not Votes’ are currently registering as don’t knows in opinion surveys, and will only come on to the political radar on polling day. Their conservative votes would then be additional to those shown by the pollsters.
OT, climategate, the next chapter
The most important is a claim that global warming could cut rain-fed north African crop production by up to 50% by 2020, a remarkably short time for such a dramatic change. The claim has been quoted in speeches by Rajendra Pachauri, the IPCC chairman, and by Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general.
This weekend Professor Chris Field, the new lead author of the IPCC’s climate impacts team, told The Sunday Times that he could find nothing in the report to support the claim. The revelation follows the IPCC’s retraction of a claim that the Himalayan glaciers might all melt by 2035.
The African claims could be even more embarrassing for the IPCC because they appear not only in its report on climate change impacts but, unlike the glaciers claim, are also repeated in its Synthesis Report.
This report is the IPCC’s most politically sensitive publication, distilling its most important science into a form accessible to politicians and policy makers. Its lead authors include Pachauri himself.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017907.ece
193. Is this somehow related to the 1914 geopolitics of culture and symbolism in Europe
Aargh - cut and pasted Nick’s comment to ensure I was addressing the right points, and left in the compliment at the start. I’m not that arrogant as to compliment myself - honest
190. Re. Dr King, yes - scary.
I’ll add my somewhat superfluous voice to the chorale of praise: great article, Andy. Lucid, articulate, plausible.
I also believe the Tories would probably get an overall majority if they have a 6 or 7 point lead. My worry is that if they leave their negative campaigning too late, they might not even get that.
tim - (although you are now barred from talking about this, heh) - there is no doubt that the tax credit system encourages some parents to split up by making them better off if they are single, and in that sense the system certainly disfavours marriage.
See here:
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/7705,news-comment,news-politics,tories-have-got-it-right-with-marriage-tax-break
198.193. Is this somehow related to the 1914 geopolitics of culture and symbolism in Europe?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/cdreviews/7167384/Massive-Attack-Heligoland-CD-review.html
Apologies, not easy typing with one arm in a brace.
184, for that poster I’m afraid I don’t know. If you mean the Cameron one, it’s:
http://www.andybarefoot.com/politics/cameron.php?poster=196461
172. Good point Runnymede. And for an antidote to those that think the BBC might have a pro AGW bias, try this article in the New Statesman:
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2010/02/climate-conspiracy-bbc
191 But will they discover Sarah has more in her undies
I’m having real problems with our PM going on the telly and crying - it’s not on, even if it’s entirely genuine - can you imagine what other world leaders will think of it?
The words pathetic, zero and credibility spring to mind.
192 HAHHAA - very good!
Prf Jones plea for sympathy in The Times is equally risible - he’s compared himself to Dr Kelly. One was a whistleblower who was hung out to dry, Prf Jones was hung out to dry by a whistleblower.
The readers aren’t exactly very supportive either - the first comment calls him a liar. The author has just written a book about the Climategate affair and was part of the team that broke the scandal…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
199 - no-one would begrudge you compliments based on your article and your follow-ups. Great stuff Andy.
193 ludicrous twaddle.
On your basis all actions are inevitable because you carried them out.
The Liberal government decided to enter the war. They could equally have said no; and the country would have been better off for it.
As for public art our main ally France had a massive Arc de Triomphe in the centre of its capital celebrating victories over most of Europe and a Colonne de la Grande Armee near Boulogne; a sort of one fingered salute from across the channel.
The Collapse of Global Warming, part 648.
Serious experts are now wondering if 2010 will be,for Europe, the “year without a summer”. Or indeed much of a Spring:
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/lanina/images3/euT2mMon.gif
Mini-ice age, anyone?
I was very interested by Nick Palmer’s contention that Labour are recovering in the ABC1 demographics but struggling otherwise. My pet theory is that class-based voting patterns are unwinding very quickly ,in the midlands especially,and it is perfectly plausible that Labour can hold an essentially middle class seat like Broxtowe while losing in places such as NW Leicestershire or Amber Valley.
Likewise in the West Midlands the Conservatives may fail to win Solihull but storm to victory in Dudley North & South. Even in the so-called middle class bastion of Birmingham Edgbaston ,a very likely Con gain, their best ward is the relatively deprived Bartley Green.
28. Mark, what an objectionable odious little twerp you are. People can discuss what they want.
205.
I’m hoping that after Gordon grinning on YouTube, tears with Piers will prove to be the final nail in his credibility as a serious politician.
I’m unable to reach the UK Polling Report (Wells) site, is anyone else able to/having problems?
Has Campbell dropped Blair in it (again)?
Marr was at his incisive and dramatic best. It was the first time I’ve seen Campbell under pressure and he wobbled, his lower lip did so markedly. Perhaps I do him a disservice, but I didn’t buy Campbell’s blubbing act; it was just theatre. His defence of Blair and himself rested on the tried and tested refrain that Tony’s a pretty straight kind of guy, and what he described as the “careful and meticulous” case that both prepared. There is only one problem with that latter assertion, and I write this as someone who still suppports the war: Blair told the Chilcot inquiry that he had never given the WMD intelligence “much thought”.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5757518/beyond-doubt.thtml
208 “Mini-ice age, anyone?”
I’m half-hoping that just for the world-wide irony meter explosion.
That ‘New Labour’ onion is working overtime…
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8502730.stm?ls
Is this the general election strategy ? Crying a lot on telly ?
It might work..
Fact of the day: an American hamburger can contain meat from up to a thousand cattle. Eric Schlosser on Sky
I posted this last night:
“Now a new YouGov poll, commissioned for Experian, suggests that 43.6% of people identified as belonging to the “Motorway Man” group intend to vote Tory at the election, compared with 27.5% for Labour. In 2005, the same poll predicted that 31.7% of voters in the segment intended to back the Tories, compared with 27.6% who said they would endorse Labour. The 11.9% potential swing to David Cameron’s party suggests that the Tories are picking up support from voters previously drawn to third parties, a development that is likely to alarm Liberal Democrat and Labour strategists.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/motorway-man-election-winner
214. Look at the weather in Berlin. Daily maxima of minus 5.
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/GMXX0007
It should be plus 4 or 5 at this time of year.
10 degrees below average, and this is after many weeks of similar freezing conditions.
214 Tsk, wash your mouth out with soap
Everyone knows that global cooling is infact just another manifestation of AGW…
And here are lots of other things caused by AGW
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
217. And I posted this
“Numpties. It’s a 6.0% swing, not 11.9%, and in line with current national polls”
Will the Cadbury factor impinge on Labour’s performance in the West Midlands? The collapse of Rover and manufacturing in general allied to the Cadbury sell-out affects proud Brummies at a deep-seated level.
The possible effect may be alleviated by the fact that the Tories would have done nothing more than Labour to save these industries.
That being said,seemingly unlikely seats like Birmingham Northfield and Wolverhampton North-east may be in play for the Tories.
Even the New Statesman are not wholly convinced by Campbell
http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/02/tony-blair-campbell-emotional
216 Yummy, mechanically reclaimed meat - blasting those iddy-biddy bits off the carcasses using pressure hoses is certainly a novel food preparation technique.
Kebab anyone?
For what it’s worth and how it might effect the end result for all the parties, I think the Lib Dems won’t get squeezed as much as some think. I think it will be almost an “as you were” situation for them in terms of seats with some fall back but not excessively so.
210. MalcolmG. It was bad manners to revive a sterile spat from the previous thread and ignore Andy’s excellent article. Etiquette does indeed impose a (small) restriction on free speech.
220. Mandy certainly didn’t seem to help much
http://tinyurl.com/yh9nouy
216 - it’s not the number of cattle I’m worried about, it’s everything else in there…
218 Yeah. I think it’s cooling rather than warming - i just hope it’s temporary and not actually an ice age as that would suck rather mightily.
220 peterski
I think the fact that Labour have done nothing for these seats will contribute towards the erosion of traditional WWC loyalty. A trend noted elsewhere on this thread.
It is not just Cadbury as an issue but LDV and its supply chain across the W Mids, and Marconi in Coventry. These add to the feeling that Labour, and the unions who fund, them no longer speak for the working man. Since New Labour is a bit of a rainbow alliance the trend to middle class votes in safe government jobs sits ill at ease with manufacturing jobs at threat of outsourcing or down costing due to immigration.
I think after this GE the unbridled loyalty of the working man will sit elss eady in Labour’s remit.
Good post on election timing
http://howarddenton.blogspot.com/2010/02/brown-sunday-but-what-does-it-all-mean.html
*** Betting Post ***Morning all, and thanks to Andy for an excellent article. The doubts Nick P raises at 141 are certainly apposite; double-counting is a big danger in this field. However as far as I can see Andy has been careful to tease the separate factors apart. I look forward to Part 2.
And whilst we’re on the subject of how well the Tories will do: Coral have reopened their market on Con Maj over 100 seats. The odds have gone down from the absolutely stonking 20/1 which antifrank got last night to 16/1 - still pretty stonking, given that Shadsy offers 2/1 for the same bet. I was restricted to £31, but it’s still useful bet whilst it lasts and allows you to cover the high bands very cheaply.
(Note to antifrank: clearly it can’t have been ‘palpable error’ since they’ve reduced the odds only modestly today).
Heard from someone who works at the QE2 centre where Chilcott inquiry being held,that Jack Straw and Tony Blair are being recalled this week to clarify their original testimonies.
He is a very reliable source.
224. History Boy, people should be free to discuss what they want , and quite often people miss threads and on reading them late rlike to comment. No excuse for his rudeness, very few threads stay on topic all the time, which si a good thing. One of the graet things about teh site is the myriad of topic sbeing discussed and poor show when people are so objectionable.
Rod, 161,
Thanks.
As well as the extra seats in 1997, Labour held a lot of seats against the tide in 2001, of course, which will be up for grabs. Thirty or forty seats (for example) could turn “Hung, 5 short” into a majority of 50-70, of course.
And we seem to be agreeing on the areas of distortion, merely disagreeing on the scale of the unwind. I wouldn’t be surprised if when the second bit is posted (with the modelling of the size of unwind) you were to say something like “Yeah, but the swing will be too low anyway and I reckon the factors of the unwind are correct but disagree with the scale”. Which is where we’d agree to disagree.
230. Richard. I also placed a bet about 15 mins ago on a Tory 100+ majority with Corals at 16/1. But I only managed to get £6.25 on.
230, 234 - It’s gone again. I suppose I can’t really complain about being beaten by the sold out sign.
Great article Andy Cooke. Thanks. I think Yokel was amongst the first to argue this case here, without the clever maths.
O/T Euro qualifying groups have been drawn as follows:
Group A: Germany, Turkey, Austria, Belgium, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan
Group B: Russia, Slovakia, Republic of Ireland, FYR Macedonia, Armenia, Andorra
Group C: Italy, Serbia, NORTHERN IRELAND, Slovenia, Estonia, Faroe Islands
Group D: France, Romania, Bosnia-Hercegovina, Belarus, Albania, Luxembourg
Group E: Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Moldova, San Marino
Group F: Croatia, Greece, Israel, Latvia, Georgia, Malta
Group G: England, Switzerland, Bulgaria, WALES, Montenegro
Group H: Portugal, Denmark, Norway, Cyprus, Iceland
Group I: Spain, Czech Republic, SCOTLAND, Lithuania, Liechtenstein
Looks very soft for England at first glance.
Great article!
Re Brown crying on telly.
If it wasn’t a cynical ploy he could have asked the broadcaster to cut that bit out as it was too personal and not relevant to the job of running the Country.
239 - true. It’s also interesting how it’s the only bit that has been leaked out.
239
Crocodiles crying on national television.
David Attenborough will have to do the next interview.
230. That market is down again now
239: Blue rog @ 11:49
“If it wasn’t a cynical ploy he could have asked the broadcaster to cut that bit out as it was too personal and not relevant to the job of running the Country.”
Maybe he has so asked and the TV company have said no. After all it would be a sad day when politicians can dictate what goes out on the airwaves, for then television would become little more than propaganda combined with stuff to keep the proles amused and quiet.
******BETTING POST********
For PtP
Backstage is having an outing at Musselburg at 1.30 today. First of the preparations for the Grand National.
243 - “It would be a sad day when politicians can dictate what goes out on the airwaves, for then television would become little more than propaganda combined with stuff to keep the proles amused and quiet.
To be fair, this interview was never going to be anything more than a reach-around with Mr. Morgan doing the honours.
So Gordo, how exactly do you expect to pay for this gem and where you going to find that many nurses.
A million cancer sufferers to be given free one-to-one care, Brown pledges
More than a million cancer sufferers in the UK will be offered their own personal nurse for free one-on-one care in their own homes, Government proposals are expected to reveal.
The care package for all 1.6 million people who have - or who have had - cancer is part of a plan due to be announced by Gordon Brown, thought to be a key plank of Labour’s general election manifesto promising to ‘personalise’ public services.
The Prime Minister is due to reveal in a speech to the King’s Fund on Monday that, in the next five years, he wants to ensure every cancer patient has access to home treatment and advice from a specialist nurse.
Lies lies and more lies. Never gonna happen.
After all it would be a sad day when politicians can dictate what goes out on the airwaves, for then television would become little more than propaganda combined with stuff to keep the proles amused and quiet.
by HurstLlama February 7th, 2010 at 11:56 am
And it’s not that already?
246. Yes, pure deceit - and how cruel as well.
246. Paying for this is no problem. We just sell another channel port every year.
335.5 antifrank. I have backed Tories to win 335+ seats at 5/6. I’ve also taken 10/11 turnout being less than 67.5%, also with Skybet.
245. “To be fair, this interview was never going to be anything more than a reach-around with Mr. Morgan doing the honours.”
Ugh. I’d rather get one from Edward Scissorhands.
250. That should have been directed at antifrank’s post at 96.
249 - and a bridge crossing.
240 I’m trying to think of any other UK politician who has cried on the telly…nope, still drawing a blank…
Thatcher apparently was caught on camera as she was driven away from No 10, but I can’t think of another example - or one where it was deliberately filmed.
Interestingly, women politicians *can’t* cry as it looks weak, male politicians *can* [in the US for one] as it makes them look compassionate.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/men/article2811643.ece
239. Maybe he WILL ask them to cut it out. Maybe he will make the point that it might appear to be cynical electioneering to some and that he would never use family members in such a cynical manner.
The ensuing publicity would then perhaps get the sympathy (Gordon is human after all)vote in some quarters whilst getting votes in other quarters for NOT cynically using his family.
Can I just say what an excellent and informative article. I cant wait for part 2.
254. Plato.
Didn’t Jacqui Boots do so as well (and look what a disaster she was and is)……
255 budgie,
I think it’s already too late for that it’s being talked about on all the news media. The ‘genie’ is out of the bottle. Brown could have stopped this before it got out.
Try comparing Cameron and Brown’s behaviours.
254
Cherie wept buckets when she was caught out
Crying worked well for Hilary, bought her back into the running and coloured the campaign going forward. It is probably now part of the playbook that is put into the plan being developed by the Democrat pollsters and strategists used by Labour. They are doing the standard things - try to destroy trust and image of opponent, mix of dirty tricks, briefings to friendly press, seize and exploit any misstep plus identify the weak points in your own candidate and address them.
So the press have been full Watts and others talking of bully Brown, in response show his human side, get him to talk about personal hurts and get tearful, build up Sarah (a nice woman like that wouldn’t be with a bully would she?), family man image.
With a book coming out that may repeat and headline his behaviour get his story in first. Address the Blair-Brown wars (Blair lied to me, he promised…) so the stories about the fights don’t have an impact. Recreate history in advance.
Good tactics, wonder though if Brown still has enough public credit to carry out the strategy.
72 - sorry to burst your anti tory mumblings Coldie but a couple of little points
1. We didnt get involved in Vietnam and we really are over committed right now, financially as well as militarily.
2. What the hell do you think we would fight with?
As I say we are stretched now and the budget gets tighter post election even if team red win.
The fact is that Bush / Blair picked the wrong war at the wrong time and our foreign policy choices are f*cked for a generation at least because of it.
America too to a lessor degree.
256 I know Daily Mail readers aren’t usually terribly keen on Gordon but they’ve given this one an almost universal thumbs down > it’s a cynical ploy and using his family as props again.
Top rated comment is :
“Loosing any child is a very distressful time for all people involved and can have repercussion for years within family life, however, using ones own personal grief in such a way for political gain is just downright cheap
- Andy, stoke, 7/2/2010 0:36
Click to rate Rating 841
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1249089/Gordon-Brown-weeps-television-talks-death-Jennifer.html#ixzz0eqqkEBma
IIRC when the Sun went OTT with the letter - most readers thought it was OTT too.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1226745/STEPHEN-ROBINSON-I-loathe-Gordon-Browns-politics-But-surely-doesnt-deserve-mauling-received-trying-offer-condolences.html
260. Spot on I think Ted.
I think if I am interviewed by my bank manager after the General Election and the Tories have failed to win an overall majority, tere will be plenty of tears - from both of us!
258 Blue rog, forgive my cynicism, but if it had been stopped before the publicity went out, there would have been no gain in it for him.
As it is, the genie may well be out of the bottle and it may well be too late to put it back. However, if Brown is seen as TRYING to put it back, then it might play well with those of a less suspicious nature that us cynics.
247: Blue rog @ 11:59
“You may think that I couldn’t possibly comment”
Seriously, we don’t know if Dr. Brown, or his “handlers”, have asked for the tearful bit to be removed and if they have what the broadcaster’s response was or will be. We don’t know either teh content of the interview or in what context the tears flowed, if indeed they did.
What I am quite sure about is that this advance reporting will have done more harm to Dr. Brown and home and, probably, more importantly, abroad (he is the PM after all) than good.
Now I am going to have to shut up because I have nothing useful to say about Andy’s excellent article and I have already posted more than two off topic posts on this thread.
246 Surely Labour can simply pass a Parliamentary Bill that bans cancer.
Just like the Child Poverty Bill and the Budget Deficit Bill.
Problem fixed.
264 - Bank Managers are great. I remember my bank manager from my student days, who said to me
“Mr Eagles, your overdraft is a limit, not a target”
Oops.
EXPENSES row MP Jim Devine is due to face claims of bullying and harassment of a former employee the day before he appears in court on charges of expenses fraud.
The Livingston Labour MP was charged on Friday with stealing more than £8000 of public money by submitting phoney receipts to the House of Commons.
He is one of four politicians facing prosecution over their Westminster expenses following a police investigation and is due to appear in court on March 11.
The Sunday Mail can reveal that the day before he will face an unfair dismissal claim from his former constituency office manager.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/2010/02/07/double-trouble-for-jim-devine-as-he-faces-showdown-with-ex-worker-86908-22024800/
94 - trully Coldie you are as mad as a box of frogs.
Good news fo the tories here!! a very short march to the left and I think a long way from the UK natural voters.
News of the World
Union’s £75m plot to seize control of Labour
Sunday, February 7
BULLY boy union bosses have launched a £75million plot to seize control of the Labour party, a News of the World investigation reveals today.
They are using a mountain of hard-working members’ cash to hold the Government to RANSOM and strong-arm their way back to power.
Activists have drawn up a five-year plan to storm back to the centre stage of politics after 25 years in the wilderness.
An insider gloated: “We hold all the aces. Brown needs our money to fight what will be a massively expensive campaign. But whoever gets into No10, there will only be one real winner — the trade union movement.”
261 I agree - they’re getting their spoiler in first, however along with Gordon’s conversion to AV, it’s just so obvious.
Why would ANYONE want to talk about this on the telly? Or discuss fears for their other kid with CF?
It may all be terribly genuine and heart-felt, but that’s not how it looks to even those who feel sympathy for him.
Canvassing for sympathy votes is really embarrassing stuff - if this is the only way Labour can rehabilitate Gordon’s PR - urgh.
271-Just what we need, Unions running the place.Not. That will send voters clambering for the exit doors.
Anyway, that’ll be fun, the labour internal struggle will be suicide.
272. The best response, Plato, is to not discuss it on here. I think it’s just as distasteful to use it to take shots at Gordon as it is for him to do it in the first place. I
Seriously, it doesn’t make anyone look good.
Who coined “Tears for Piers”?
http://themediablog.typepad.com/the-media-blog/2010/02/tears-for-piers-and-campbell-cries-foul-of-media-treatment.html
Great article from Andy. I know PfP already asked, but I didn’t see the answer, when will we see part 2?
167.Why should the Conservatives bother taking all the crap sorting out Brown’s mess? Leave Brown to it and in a year or so everyone would be in no doubt just what a balls up he has made and how not a single one of his promises was credible. Labour would never be elected again.
The trouble is youre right, 5 more years of Brown and the country will be in such economic and social chaos, that Brown would probably find the excuse to abolish elections
Very insightful article from Andy - it would be interesting to see if this happens on May 6th!
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2010/01/04/is-there-anything-to-learn-from-jan-2005-polls/#comment-1369897
272 I do hope the Tories do something about trade union donations to Labour - for the Party of Government to get 75% of it’s income from them is wrong, and very bad for democracy.
IIRC from Watt’s book, Labour had to be saved by Unite from going bankcrupt - if ever there was a lever of power, that’s it.
If the Tories had 75% of their donations from a handful of FTSE CEOs, they’d be rightly accused of being in the pocket of big business interests.
Or of course in the case of the LibDems - £2m from a fraudster…
I’d never back state funding - if a party can’t get people to put their money where their mouth is, they don’t have a mandate.
208. Those charts are pretty unreliable at best. FWIW I do think we’ll have a cool and miserable spring, but I have a suspicion summer might not be too bad at all this year.
275 - Bonus marks to the first news channel to show a clip from it with “Mad World” as backing music.
Until we’ve seen the clip, we can’t sensibly comment. I’m not a fan of confessional interviews, but I draw the line at automatically assuming that Gordon Brown is playing with emotions on such a deep subject. Even the coolest of customers would find their child’s death a tough subject to talk about.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Bob Hawke crying on television. He was hardly a cuddly figure, but it did him no harm.
With any common sense, the Union Modernisation Fund will come to an end, and that will clip their donations considerably.
217.That ‘New Labour’ onion is working overtime…
I’m certailn we’ll have a well orchestrated episode of Sarah Brown blubbing on the campaign trail, no doubt in response to “Tory bullying”, and would be surprised at all to see a similarly arranged Berlesconi style “attack” on Brown, on one of the few occasions he meets members of the public above school age
AF - “Until we’ve seen the clip, we can’t sensibly comment. I’m not a fan of confessional interviews, but I draw the line at automatically assuming that Gordon Brown is playing with emotions on such a deep subject.”
I don’t think anyone suggested he is playing with emotions. It the fact that this comes up as a topic of the interview, and is then leaked before the interview airs. A live emotional outpouring - or even a surprise one is one thing - but essentially trailing it to the media before the interview is actually broadcast tells me that while the tears may be genuine, planning has gone into the handling stage.
Dave B - You seem to have totally missed the implosion of the tea party conference and the hoo-ha over the Palin tea party payments which led her to drop her demands over payment.
Put simply, these people are extremists and they are appealing to a frightened electorate through fear alone. When you have someone demanding, as she did, revolution and saying that they would give their life for the cause you know you are looking at a dangerous, unstable politician who could feasibly use the current situation to drag her country into a very dark abyss.
In case you missed it - Anne Trennamen did a great post on Gordon’s conversion to AV
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/parliamentary_sketch/article7014071.ece
284 - are you that gullible, plain and simple, he’s doing an interview 2 months from an election, talking about something he swore he’d never use as political fodder, namely his kids.
You tell us how that looks. Its just completely smacks of cynical electioneering politics, however you look at it, thats outrageous timing.
I am hoping Brown did not do it because he knows in a few weeks, the media will be all over the Cameron’s doing a “1 year on from his child’s death”. You know the media will. I hope Cameron tells them all to leave them alone at that time
287
The Raven, excellent point and well put too. You captured exactly what I was trying (and failing) to say.
290 - I’m sorry that you have such a bleak opinion of human nature and so little compassion for someone who has been through such an awful experience, even if he is Prime Minister and leader of a party that you do not support.
287. No it’s not a coordinated media campaign. at all…
SarahBrown10
missed tweeting yesterday as went to watch Gordon record an interview with Piers Morgan for ITV to be shown next weekend
287 The Raven
Sorry I can’t accept that a control freak like Brown would casually let the subject come up. Most media folk these days are having to clear in advance the subjects discussed ( see TV debate paranoia from all 3 parties ). Morgan does not fit in to the category of interviewer who is likely to spring an ambush.
212 MalcolmG, those who have met me wouldn’t exactly say “little” was an epithet you easily could throw my way…
If you think that you are being an ambassador for Scotland and its politics by being a rude, objectionable odious c*nt, then that is your perogative. Others will make up their own mind.
292 - Rubbish, Brown details and micromanaged that entire interview, he would have chosen stuff not to talk about and what could be discussed, so don’t believe the hype, all political interviews usually are and Morgan and Brown will have discussed at great lengths the subjects involved by a sympathetic interviewer. You know Brown is a total control freak.
What i object to as I said was, Brown has said he would not discuss his family, they were off limits and then you get this. It does’nt take a genius brain to work it out.
An interesting and well argued article Andy. There is some evidence on Tory vote efficiency in the locals this year where they were below 40% and yet still did extremely well where they needed to. It - of course - remains to be seen if they can do the same at the GE. One area I have wondered about is the male/female split. Do we know who is more likely to vote? I ask, because we have some polling evidence that the Tory lead shrinks amongst women by a couple of points. In these key marginals, could they prove the difference?
As to the homogenous nature of marginal polling, can they be split along demographic lines as well? I know ARS have a possible marginals poll planned. Could they split it into an ABC-dominated and a DE-dominated sample, which would give some context to NPMP’s comments?
293 The Mail on Sunday report says Sarah was also on with Gordon, also sobbing.
I can predict exactly what tim would be saying about Mrs Cameron sat next to her husband, being given a prime-time spot to memorialise their dead son Ivan.
295 Marquee Mark - are you Chris Grayling? Nicolas Soames? Nikki Sinclair?
Lance Price admits that many of his leaks to papers from Downing St about the Conservative Party were labelled by the newspapers, “from a senior Conservative source”.
Just watched the debate on immigration on the politics show. The lib dem immigration policy for regional immigrantion targets is a disaster. I can see the other parties leaflets now ‘a new immigrant coming to you soon… under lib dem immigration policies new immigrants will be forced into your area. (for tories leaflets tac on ‘its time for change, its time for a national limit’)
I cant see who this policy will appeal to, unless they think those areas with massive immigration really believe such a policy will see them all leave??
Can a lib dem supporter on here explain it to me??
300. Ah, Alastair Campbell’s Tory dominated media, eh?
OK, here is my hypothesis as to what is going on.
At the General Election, certain demographics will be more inclined than others to switch away from Labour.
These are mostly the middle-class progressives and working families that were a critical part of Labour’s winning coalition in 1997.
These people are much more likely to be concentrated in Lab-Con marginals - mostly Southern and Middle English towns - and Lab-LD marginals - mostly inner cities and Northern towns.
Therefore the swing in these marginals will be larger than in safe Tory or LD seats, where there are proportionally fewer of these swing voters to get.
If this hypothesis is correct, I would also expect there to be a certain subset of seats that due to an accident of the boundaries contain a mixture of very well off voters and very poor voters. In these marginals I would expect the swing to be surprisingly small as the tendency to stick with past voting patterns in those groups will be very “sticky”.
IN ADDITION to this - Team Cameron and Team Clegg will have been directing almost all of their ground effort towards marginals for at least the past two years. This will also magnify the swing in these constituencies, and may account for some of the differential already seen in polling.
This should all be very measurable, but of course I am too busy fighting an election in a swing constituency to do it.
300. Well no surprise there - as noted many times, most political journalists are just extensions of the party propaganda machines, craven and pathetic.
Alistair Campbell is beyond shameless. Expecting us all to settle with a “I’ve been through a lot on this”! The man unashamedly loved getting involved in the mire of government spin and hurt a good many people, I’d have thought. That was the job he took. So when all of a sudden he starts getting questioned I’m supposed to feel sorry for him because he’s “been through a lot”? Sickening.
He’s also doing rather well for himself with his books and his shows and god-knows-what-else. In a perfect world the man wouldn’t get so many lucrative offers given how poisonous he has been shown to be.
262. And she got away with it, she played the ‘look at me, i am just a silly little housewife/mother, taken in by a confidence trickster’, not that she was a cunning, conniving top rank barrister who was determined to make some quick money on the property market in full knowledge of the consequences of her actions.
I thought of killing myself, says climate scandal professor Phil Jones
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7017922.ece
Don’t know about anybody else, but article makes me feel very uneasy. Talk of wanting to kill himself…The linking of his situation to that of Kelly.
Lansley dismantling costs for Gordon’s army of cancer nurses - he said this was originally announced in 2003- is that right?
Remember Cameron’s speech to conference when he alluded to Ivan’s death and the coverage cut to Samantha looking emotional?
Can’t remember too many posters damning that particular episode. Quite right too.
numbertwelve February 7th, 2010 at 1:00 pm “Alistair Campbell is beyond shameless. Expecting us all to settle with a “I’ve been through a lot on this”! ”
I have just looked at the clip and to me it came over as a genuine breakdown having seen similar in the past from someone else. Do I have sympathy? No, because of the bad things he has done and damage he has brought to our country. But I do believe that he was genuine.
Just read the article, Andy & Mike - excellent, plenty of food for thought. Looking forward to Part 2.
309
wondered how long it would take for the trolls to get the line from the bunker.
There is, of course, a little difference, as has already been posted, between a rigidly managed ’soft’ interview and a live speech.
Great photo of snow outside the White House
http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/slideshow/photo//100206/480/1161e1b700bd409391d7c80b3dc58edf/
I think Dale is right given the Brown onslaught this weekend and next, there is a smell of an early election in the air to me and let’s hope Labour think 7% is enough for a hung Parliament! NPMP’s preposterous posting pre-ICM last night based on false numbers in the end shows Lab really think thay have the big-mo.
If the reaction to Tears for Piers is bad, it can be left until May, if it works as the red team clearly hope then watch out for all the chauffeur driven cars circling again…
It’s the start of half term next weekend so fortunately I’ll miss the slimey so and so and Gordon as well.
I remember Brown’s conference speech, saying that his family weren’t props.
I’ve no doubt the tears are real and that it is an emotional subject for him. Just that the subject has been brought up on purpose, for a tactical reason, and I think this will backfire on him.
312. Blue rog
Both couples have suffered the loss of a child. We see them at their most human when expressing their unimaginable grief.
There’s absolutely no point in trying to make political capital either way.
316. hahahahaha
316 - “There’s absolutely no point in trying to make political capital either way.”
Maybe somebody should have told Gordo that before his infamous dig at Cameron in his Conference speech!
316 - We must be approaching the end of days. I agree with Gabble.
310 TC
so if it’s so stressful, why is he elbowing his way back into the limelight and putting himself through such an unpleasant experience ?
Staged-managed play-acting as per Mandy’s “underdog” theme.
316. “There’s absolutely no point in trying to make political capital either way.”
Irony alert…
Mr Brown, having been in power 13 years and with less than 90 days to an election, why did you and/or your advisers decide now was the right time to chat with Piers on the telly about your personal and tragic loss?
Since tim has been told to stick to the script and wage slave doesn’t seem to be around, I must point out that we have a most apposite juxtaposition at the top of the page between the photo and the advert for Hair that comes up so often.
“There’s absolutely no point in trying to make political capital either way.”
Like agreeing to talk about it in a soft soap TV interview with a party supporter close to an election?
Want to know what Labour’s NEC think should be the date of the GE?
From its meeting on 26th Jan 2010.
“The committee unanimously favoured holding the general and local elections on the same day.”
If Gordon chooses a different date, the party’s activists will not be in favour.
288 UK Paul
A December poll suggests that the Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or Republican parties.
http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2009/12/16/wsjnbc-news-poll-tea-party-tops-democrats-and-republicans/tab/article/
Attempting to label them extremists is silly.
“Self-identified Tea Party members say they’re not a political party and they don’t want to be one — but they do want to influence national politics. And history shows that’s a distinct possibility. While third parties face immense obstacles to electoral success, Choate says they can achieve great influence by bringing issues to the attention of the two major parties. “They’re a leading indicator in the political system to tell politicians what to do and how to do it,” he says.”
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123447238
I wonder how far in advance this contrived interview with Morgan was planned by Browen and his PR team.
And as commented above, what subject matter was requested and discussed prior to filming.
320 Alanbrooke
He is doing it to sell his books. Not for the right reasons.
I think some posters are looking a bit mean spitited this morning. I don’t think its unreasonable for Gord to speak of his childs death and how that ordeal has affected him. Its the most traumatic thing a human being can go through and natually people will be curious about it. And its not surprising that he should get upset about it.
The only complaint I have about the interview is that I don’t think ITV should be allowing it this close to an election without affording Cameron and Clegg the same prime time opportunity. But otherwise I think Conservative supporters would do well to take Gordon Browns “tears” at face value and just let the interview play out - In the end it won’t make any differance to the election result anyway.
324 Good spot - another poster noted last night that the The Budget will have to be announced by Wed next week if it’s to happen on 15th March.
Dave B, If these Fox news loving Tea Baggers support Palin then they are not Democrats. Palin in my view is genuinely certifiable; I would not give her a job cleaning out my toilet.
I remember that great 80’s song - how prescient it now seems.
Tears for Piers and “Gordon Brown wants to rule the world”
or something like that.
247 Thanks Blue Rog.
It’s clearly a warm up run, so no worries as long as it doesn’t get injured.
“Attempting to label them extremists is silly.”
These aren’t the statements of a moderate mainstream movement:
“They could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English and they put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House — Barack Hussein Obama!”
“This is our country,” he declared. “Let’s take it back!”
“God has ordained that you are not a nation if you don’t have borders”.”
I would suggest that those very people who were supportive of Gordon when he was given a hard time by The Sun over the letters to the families of servicemen killed in Afghanistan will have a sense of queasy uneasiness that the Morgan interview appears to be a set up stunt.
I think Piers Morgan needs to come out and quickly clarify that he sprang the topic on Gordon without any warning. If it emerges that the topic was previosuly sanctioned by Brown, I think that will play very badly. “Go on, ask me about my dead child…”
309 Cameron has never attacked his opponent for using his family as props (I do hope the story that Cameron’s Xmas card to the Browns was signed from David, Samantha and the Props was true).
In every Brown launch from the first in 2007 through the post Election that never was to the latest we get an interview with children’s toys, often interruption from a son, doting Sarah drifting in and out with coffee, mention ‘against his will/I don’t like to talk about it’ of his daughters death, details of his fight to keep his sight.
Fine, if you don’t also claim to be a private person and attack directly or through your proxies other politicians for talking about their families.
Fine also if when “my friend Tony” is going through a terrible family crisis and perhaps a result some health concerns you do not summon your allies and try to force his resignation, adding pressure that could have broken him. No wonder Cherie detests Gordon.
Hypocrite Gordon.
328. I agree entirely - it’s the political nature and the timing of this arrangement that I abhor (why Piers?) and nothing to do with his undoubted distress at his family’s loss.
On Palin: I can’t be the only one who noticed that there was something different about her.
She still mixed up her words and came out with some bizarre little phrases, and she is still singing from the populist Middle America hymn sheet - but she seemed a lot more *clued up* and *incisive* when it came to talking about policy. She’s on manoeuvres.
What for right now is debatable (I think going for the Presidency in 2012 is dangerous for her, she needs a better base to launch from and needs to improve still further presentationally - a long game is better for her, she has time on her side), but it’s clear she isn’t going to shuffle out of the national picture.
The Republican elite are globalist and neocon and not remotely conservative at all. The Tea Party movement are the actual conservative voters and has grown out of that disconnect. No doubt some of them are nutters same as always - bit like the Maoists Mr Hopey-Changey the Moderate Centrist brought into the White House.
337 I think she’s going for Kingmaker - and very good luck to her from me.
335 I wonder at what point the D-Notice on that family trauma Tony Blair suffered will get lifted? That period of Government would put Gordon in a wretched light if it were more widely known.
I hope Palin stands. The Republican party needs to see her go down in flames to move on.
This is a most interesting article. Thank you Andy.
One matter that is completely unpredictable is turnout (and of course it only matters in swing seats anyway). Are we going to see a pathetic turnout just like we did in 2001 and 2005 or as the election could very well result in a change of govt, will the turnout increase? Could it be a really good one as in 1997 when govt changed. For what is worth, I believe turnout will increase from 61% to 65/66%. I accept your point 1 covers turnout.
I think as you imply tactical vote unwind will not only complete but there will a small amount of tactical vote rewind; not as much tactical voting for Tories as Labour achieved in 1997 but I can see supporters of parties in third or fourth place with no chance of winning not wasting their vote.
Finally as Liam Fox said on election night 2005 and as Iain Dale predicted recently, there will be no UNS or even regional swing but varying swings in different seats. Whereas Labour are going to find it difficult holding any of their seats with a majority over Tory of up to 8%, I can see them achieving “surprise holds” of some with a majority now of 8% to 16%. On the other hand I would expect some remarkable gains by Tories where Labour majority is now over 16%.
Having said that, I must agree we need more marginals polling including Lab/LD and LD/Con and three way ones. And if possible some regional polling as PoliticsHome did in Autumn 2008 and Autumn 2009.
154 - “This could be another Gordo PR disaster.”
I’m sure it is.
Gordo seems to have quite a long list of disasters behind him with no doubt a few more to come before he gets booted out.
Dave B: “A December poll suggests that the Tea Party movement is more popular than either the Democratic or Republican parties.”
If that holds up, it seems all but certain that someone will run as the Tea Party candidate in 2012. Even if the current leaders don’t want to do it, there’s nothing to stop someone who does from picking up the brand and running on it. Up until now I’d figured picking Palin would be pretty much the worst possible option for the Republicans in 2012, but I’m starting to think she’s the only person who can hold the whole right-wing together…
337 Number Twelve
If USA unemployment is anywhere near 10% come the 2012 election, you’d have to think it was a great time to run against the incumbent.
325 - The movement includes a number of extremists, not all of them of course but a significant number, frequent homophobic, racist and other extreme beliefs have been propounded at this conference and at previous meetings.
The Telegraph here said as much about the conference even before it had got going “Tea Party convention stalled by racially-charged opening remarks”, and that’s from Tancredo, a nationally known politician, not on the fringe.
As to popular support, there are two possibilities, that they don’t realise yet how extreme they are, or that they don’t care. I presume it’s the former, if it’s the latter it would reveal a big problem and it could lead to a very dark period in US politics.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/7169597/Tea-Party-convention-stalled-by-racially-charged-opening-remarks.html
True libertarians should have nothing to do with this rag bag of grievance and hate attempting to co-opt the idea of small government.
Of course, Palin (who will run for President and who is very good value for the nomination) gave out a string of contradictory and impossible to reconcile policy positions in her speech. Ones that will appeal to those who believe they can still have cake today and cake tomorrow.
Countries need politicians who are honest about the problems we have, not those who seek to blame ‘the other’ and who promise the impossible. I tend to think that Cameron and our own right of centre of party does now understand this.
340. just before the election, someone close to the blairs leaves a draft autobiography/laptip/hard drive on the 3.34 to waterloo and ‘helpfully’ hands into a journalist/ emails it to G…..
I’d imagine someone will emerge from the Republicans who’ll be acceptable to the tea partiers and less hated by the media than her Palin-ness. Personally I think it will be about getting her endorsement rather than her standing herself.
I see that Sky Bet has now shifted its Tory seats market so that 335.5 is 8/11.
Fisking (or should that be Finking) the Brownies…
http://timesonline.typepad.com/comment/2010/02/gordon-brown-really-can-be-very-annoying-pphe-basically-lies-about-the-policies-of-other-parties-then-attacks-the-lie-he.html
349 got garbled because of unintentionally used tags. Under 335.5 is evens, while over 335.5 is now 8/11.
This had me in hysterics!
A Monkey Wearing a Red Rosette.
This interview is highly incriminating, not only of Devine but also of the fools who voted for him. I tip my hat to “Dundee wifey” Subrosa. She quotes the old saw that Labour voters would elect a monkey wearing a red rosette. Frankly, in this case, that might well have been a more intelligent choice.
http://lastditch.typepad.com/lastditch/2010/02/i-had-no-inservice-training.html
Mr Jones @348, I wouldn’t be so sure there will be an acceptable Republican who can square the circle. Palin is obviously ambitious and doesn’t seem like the kind of person who’d just let the opportunity go by. Why wouldn’t she run?
If she runs, her opponents are going to have to attack her. And attacking her is going to feed the victimization beast. At a minimum the poor unfortunate who ends up with the Republican nomination is going to have to put her on the ticket again…
345. Indeed. But Palin? She’s still not polished enough.
I am fascinated by Sarah Palin (pretty much disagree with all she stands for but she’s a very interesting figure), and it’s clear that she is honing her skills and is definitely improving from the somewhat unfortunate figure in 2008 touring the TV studios showing us she had no idea what the Bush Doctrine was and couldn’t state what her favourite newspaper was.
But she’s still not quite there, I don’t think.
344 Edmund
My impression is that they are going support fiscal conservatives whether Ds or Rs, rather than run third party candidates.
Mark Shields made the point recently that ‘Somebody Else’ has been the winner of the last few USA elections. You’d have to think that will continue.
353. Or maybe, at the least, a place in the Administration?
Would give her a good stepping stone for future positions.
353 “Why wouldn’t she run?”
Just a hunch. I think the tipping point was Letterman getting away with making sexual comments abour her 14 year old daughter. I think she realized then there were no limits even with her kids so she decided to be the guerilla President - ruling the GOP from afar.
Pure guess though.
Alistair Darling has apparently been in Canada this weekend. He has denied rumours he was looking for a new job…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zey8567bcg
352. Devine has been part of the Scottish Labour machine for years. Party chiefs are perhaps worried about what might appear in his memoirs, working title “I’ve been shelved”!
354 Number Twelve
If you wait until eveything’s perfect, you run the risk of missing your chance. Who thought Obama would be the Dem candidate?
Anyway, two years is a long time, anything could happen.
346. It’s not that they don’t realize or that they don’t care, it’s that those policies ARE the attraction.
A lot of the Tea Party movement is about giving people the Fear. It’s a world view in which Good, as represented by the white Judeo-Christan nuclear family, is constantly under assault from Evil, as represented by illegals, homos, sluts, blacks, actual Jews, Muslims and behind it all the federal government looming like the Death Star, waiting to corrupt you and your children and send you all to hell.
It’s actually kind of a fun world view, in that you’re the underdog hero of your own story, kind of like Luke Skywalker or something. Of course, it’s no fun if you’re an illegal, homo, slut, black, etc. etc.
Mike Smithson
Your attempt to restrict tim’s contributions is risible.
You can dress up the reasons for doing so in any way you please but the truth is that you have imposed these restrictions because you don’t agree with his opinions.
That’s bad news for a betting site.
Dave B @355: My impression is that they are going support fiscal conservatives whether Ds or Rs, rather than run third party candidates.
But who’s “they”? It’s a diverse grass-roots movement. To the extent that it has leaders, they’re irrelevant. Nobody is in control - not even Rupert Murdoch.
If the economy gets a lot better, you could imagine it fizzling out; Splitting into feuding factions, getting coopted by the Republican Party or whatever. But if unemployment stays stubbornly high, you’ll have a massive brand, a big fund-raising base and a wide network of activists.
Add a single excessively self-confident individual - and I’ve heard that America has a number of those - and you’ve got yourself a third party.
I think it *could* turn into a third party if a suitable Rep doesn’t show up. Alternatively the Republican elite as a whole might surrender to the forces of good (or evil depending on point of view).
If the Conservatives really did need an 11 point lead over Labour to get a majority, it would be clearly be a case of addressing the bias as a matter of urgency - and that doesn’t mean b*ggering with FPP.
The public (everyone who didn’t vote Labour) would be more than a little outraged if the GE result showed Labour 11 points behind but Gordon back in number 10, Lib Dem support or not.
1997 would look like a drop in ocean compared to what would come later under those circumstances.
The Conservatives would mearly need to keep their heads, and Cameron in place, be outraged, and wait.
363
“But who’s “they”? It’s a diverse grass-roots movement.”
That’s the point. As I understand it, it’s a ratchet of a ‘throw the bums out’ electorate.
They’ve already ‘thrown the bums out’, and they don’t like the new ones any better. So they’ll keep on throwing them out until the politicos get the message.
Gabble@362, agreed. I hope Mike will think better of this one. (Maybe he needs a break from the 24×7 blogging?)
tim restricted?
If true, then this is a sad day for pb.com
Dave B @366: “…it’s a ratchet of a ‘throw the bums out’ electorate. They’ve already ‘thrown the bums out’, and they don’t like the new ones any better.”
Are you suggesting that a substantial proportion of the Tea Party protesters voted for Obama?
362: Gabble @ 14:10
I don’t suppose Mr. Smithson agrees with my opinions any more than he does Tim’s or indeed amny other posters on his site. You may care to reflect on this point.
Dang! I have added another off-topic post. I am now well over my allowance of two per thread. Sorry, Mr. S.
If Labour under Mandy’s influence are pursuing an ‘underdog’ strategy it will be disastrous for them. No-one is going to vote for someone just because they are pathetic. People are desperate for firm government and if they don’t think they’ll get it from Brown they’ll turn to Cameron simply on the grounds that he couldn’t possibly be worse.
Since 0.1% day Darling’s chances of delivering a credible budget have disappeared. What possible growth forecast can he base his fiscal policy on? He’d be laughed out of the Commons and the markets would nosedive. Although a budget date of 15 March may well be announced next week, a Dissolution on 1 March will probably intervene.
Labour have the half-term break to finalise their strategy. Forget about the cost of the council elections in May - it will play no part in their calculations. Their only hope is to minimise their Parliamentary losses and they will go for 25 March because they know perfectly well that nothing better is going to turn up.
They may be encouraged in this by Panglossian canvass returns from Nottinghamshire marginals and favourable poll interpretations by sympathetic journalists. Or they may be smarter than that.
The Tories’ problem is that they dare not spook the markets by attacking the Government too forcefully. Even if they take office and ’see the books’ they can hardly announce that we are doomed. They will be obliged to put a brave face on Labour’s disaster in order to assuage our creditors and govern.
All in all it’s nothing to look forward to. Even the future isn’t what it used to be.
Tim restricted
He’s beeen neglecting the farm for far too long.
367/368 - Mike’s comments are at 137…
369 Edmund
I’ve not seen any polling on that, but as I recall Obama ran on an ‘anti-Washington’ platform, which is the Tea Party line.
Every US politician runs on an “anti-Washington” platform to some extent. I doubt that there’s a lot of overlap between the Tea Party/Obama vote, seeing as a lot of Tea Partiers don’t think Obama is an American citizen.
anyway where is tim? is he forcibly restricted? maybe he was murdered by dangerous overseas rappers
137 “Tim - you have posted 16,512 times on PB and hold the record for the biggest number …. ”
If the statistics are easy to generate, it would be interesting to see more of this. Who are the posters putting the most comments out per day — especially as we approach an election, it would be interesting to if there are any changes.
In my opinion, Mike has been very tolerant of tim (and a number of other posters who repeatedly hijack threads).
It is perfectly reasonable to restrict tim to say 10 or 20 posts a day. If he has something interesting to say, he should be able to do it within his allotted number.
And, in any case, we’re worried about the farm.
376. “It is perfectly reasonable to restrict tim to say 10 or 20 posts a day.”
No it isn’t.
369 Edmund
Just came across this, from Mark Shields:
“…[Obama is] speaking right now to a nation that has contempt for Washington, D.C., I mean, quite unlike anything I have seen in the past, with the possible exception of the Watergate years.
And by a 7-1 margin in the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll, 84 percent of people believe that special interests have too much influence over legislation…
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/jan-june10/shieldsbrooks_01-27.html
370. HurstLlama
tim’s narrative has been running counter to the official PB.com narrative for some time. This has, up until recently, been an annoyance to OGH. However, now that tim appears to have been right all along, annoyance has turned into intolerance.
There has also been an increasing and curious hostility towards RodCrosby, lately, over the way he conducts himself. He’s always seemed, to me, to be one of the more sober contributors to this site.
377 If tim has something interesting to say, why doesn’t he say it in a lead article? Mike is always asking for contributions.
No-one — absolutely no-one — has so much that is interesting to say that they have to make 16,512 posts.
376 Wonder how those 16,512 posts breakdown by subject? A future student of politics accessing pb.com in the National Archives would get a good idea of Labour’s web campaigning style from tim’s posts. 5,000 on fascist East Europeans, 4,000 on Osborne, 3,000 on Grayling / Norries /Fox /Hague etc, 1,500 on Cameron’s decline this month alone (all figures illustrative of course).
Not a single one on Labour policy or Labour’s ideas…..
The only reason I could think of for limiting tim’s posts would be if “tim” was really a collective of posters, as some people here have suggested. In that case, perhaps it would be best if each posted under a unique name. However, if tim really is just an individual endowed with a unique amount of stamina, there is no reason to hold him back from exercising his God-given talents.
Dave B @378, makes you wonder who the 16 percent of people are in that poll who _don’t_ think that special interests have too much influence in Washington. Maybe NBC over-sampled lobbyists?
381. There must have been at least 4000 on Latvian nazi connections to the tories.
Edmund 383
362.
It’s Mike’s site if Tim doesn’t like it he can “apply for a refund ((c) GuidoFawkes ”
Some of Tim’s posts brighten up my day with their dogged determination - at some time in his life Chris Grayling must have ambushed him in a dark alley, however it would be a shame to lose him completely.
tim has previously written a lead article that was praised by many.
“running counter to the official PB.com narrative for some time. “
Curious what the “official PB.com narrative” is, other than “can we make money betting on any of this?”
For god’s sake - you’re now debating tim’s posting and presence on PB…Notch up a thread derail for him even when he’s not posting anything.
As an aside may also I welcome Gabble actually typing something cogent as opposed to the usual tripe of mis-quoting that is usually put up in his/her name.
Don’t tell me there’s more than one Gabble was well?
“Don’t tell me there’s more than one Gabble was well?”
Maybe that explains why he bought 8 laptops on expenses!
Am I mistaken, or is Mr Cameron starting to look increasingly like Willie Whitelaw?
Talking of the MacGabble, this is a new one on me,
“Mr MacShane submitted more than a dozen invoices to the Commons bearing the heading of the European Policy Institute. Each bill was justified by one line – ‘research and translation’ – followed by a demand for fees ranging between £550 and £950.
The EPI, which has a ghost presence on the internet, is controlled by his brother, Edmund Matyjaszek.”
Right old trougher is our MacShane….
390 - Am I mistaken, or is Curious starting to look increasingly like Tressage or indeed John13?
I find Tim a thoroughly odious character, and I attempt to avoid his contributions as far as I can. I have asked Mike if it is possible to return to the format of putting posters’ names before their comments. He told me that this could ultimately be done. That would, I think, solve the problem.
Tim could post to his heart’s (or the bunker’s) content. Those who would prefer to avoid the results can do so.
390/392 I suppose he does share facial features-if you look at my face,my slight double-chin,slightly podgy cheeks,eyes-enhanced by squarish steel-rimmed speccies ,in my opinion,make me look strikingly like former Prime Minister James Callaghan -honestly!
Labour special advisers exposed for using the civil service to create anti-Tory attacks
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2010/02/labour-special-advisers-exposed-for-using-the-civil-service-to-create-antitory-attacks.html
Below is a story claiming that the BBC stand to lose billions if Man Made Climate Change is not seen as proven.
£8BN BBC ECO-BIAS
BBC’s billions that fund a green agenda
Sunday February 7,2010
By Geraint Jones
STRIKING parallels between the BBC’s coverage of the global warming debate and the activities of its pension fund can be revealed today.
The corporation is under investigation after being inundated with complaints that its editorial coverage of climate change is biased in favour of those who say it is a man-made phenomenon.
The £8billion pension fund is likely to come under close scrutiny over its commitment to promote a low-carbon economy while struggling to reverse an estimated £2billion deficit.
Concerns are growing that BBC journalists and their bosses regard disputed scientific theory that climate change is caused by mankind as “mainstream” while huge sums of employees’ money is invested in companies whose success depends on the theory being widely accepted.
The fund, which has 58,744 members, accounts for about £8 of the £142.50 licence fee and the proportion looks likely to rise while programme budgets may have to be cut to help reduce the deficit.
The BBC is the only media organisation in Britain whose pension fund is a member of the Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change, which has more than 50 members across Europe.
Its chairman is Peter Dunscombe, also the BBC’s Head of Pensions Investment.
Prominent among its recent campaigns was a call for a “strong and binding” global agreement on climate change – one that fell on deaf ears after the UN climate summit in Copenhagen failed to reach agreement on emissions targets and a cut in greenhouse gases.
Veteran journalist and former BBC newsreader Peter Sissons is unhappy with the corporation’s coverage. He said recently: “The corporation’s most famous interrogators invariably begin by accepting that ‘the science is settled’ when there are countless reputable scientists and climatologists producing work that says it isn’t. It is, in effect, BBC policy, enthusiastically carried out by the BBC’s environment correspondents, that those views should not be heard.
“I was not proud to be working for an organisation with a corporate mind so closed on such an important issue.”
Official BBC editorial policy governing how its correspondents should cover global warming was revealed after a member of the public wrote in: “I have heard reports that the BBC has decided not to broadcast any news or reports which disprove, disagree, or cast doubt on global warming theory. Could you provide some form of justification for this?”
In a reply dated October 26 last year, Stephanie Harris, Head of Accountability at BBC News, said: “BBC News takes the view that our reporting needs to be calibrated to take into account the scientific consensus that global warming is man-made.”
She went on to quote from a BBC-commissioned report published in June 2007, which said: “There may be now a broad scientific consensus that climate change is definitely happening and that it is at least predominantly man-made. The weight of evidence no longer justifies equal space being given to opponents of the consensus.”
Last month the BBC Trust announced an investigation after a string of complaints that the corporation was promoting the theory that climate change was a man-made phenomenon.
396. Sorry, all reprinted from the Sunday Express.
Pay your BBC license fee, peasants!
379. An an avowed Zionist, Gabble - someone who openly asks for the “palestinians to be annihilated” - you clearly haven’t encountered Rod Crosby’s *unusual* views on the H o l o corrst.
Using his statistical genius, he has worked out that the Germans killed hardly any Jews, truth be told, and besides, the Jews in Treblinka were quite well treated - and had a chance to do some swimming.
Do you still maintain he is one of the more “sober contributors to the site”?
Did Jesus say 16,500 things ?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00681/SCARFE_681590a.jpg
Scott P “I’ve been shelved” - that is my post of the day!
*APPLAUSE*
I’m sorry, but this article is one of the worst examples of “wishful thinking statistics” I’ve seen so far in this election cycle.
The entire premise for this is based on “I’d contend that…” “If they can rewind it…” and “If Cameron can make a strong performance…”.
I see no presented evidence that the constituency effect has been reversed in the Conservative’s favour, only a bare assertion that you contend it has.
I see no presented evidence that the Conservatives are going to get tactical voting in their favour instead of against them, as has happened in the previous elections.
I see no presented evidence that Cameron is providing a bigger swing that will be magnified by the marginals, and polling suggests exactly the opposite there.
In fact, I find that last argument for reducing the lead required to be laughable. It’s in essence saying “But if the Conservatives have a very big swing towards them, then they need less of a lead to win.”, so if they have a lead above 11 then they would only need a lead of 7?
I see no reason to alter the general assumption that the with Labour figures back above 30, and Conservative figures back below 40, that the Conservatives need to get at least a 10 point lead to form a majority.
OT - Interestingly, on the Palin front we were just discussing:
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/02/07/palin-willing-obama/
… it does strike me that she’s probably going to run.
It wasn’t so long ago that tim, who despises the Tory domination of this site, declared UDI and said he was setting up a blog of his own for all sane, rational left thinking people.
For those of you who may be worrying about the health of my ancient Blackberry, referred to on the end of last night’s thread, I have sad news.
‘E’s not pinin’! ‘E’s passed on! My Blackberry is no more! He has ceased to be! ‘E’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! ‘E’s a stiff! Bereft of life, ‘e rests in peace! ‘Is metabolic processes are now ‘istory! ‘E’s off the twig! ‘E’s kicked the bucket, ‘e’s shuffled off ‘is mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisibile!! THIS IS AN EX-BLACKBERRY!!
403
Great. When they talk about healthcare on the campaign, she can run out “Well, gee, you know it’s a simple issue and what we don’t want is government complicating it” again.
396 - Interesting to note that the other thing that the BBC like to cheer-lead for, the EU, has also given the BBC substantial grants and loans…
What are the best odds available at present on a March election?
405-StJohn-I’m really sorry for your loss.
403. Your blog would be more impressive if you didn’t misspell “controversial” after every single post.
Not once, but every time.
re 402. You really have not dealt with any of the points apart from saying “I see no reason…” which is hardly an argument.
What about the MORI 2009 aggregate, the recent ICM marginals poll or the YouGov one?
What about the repeated responses to YouGov’s forced choice “would you prefer Cameron’s Tories or Brown’s Labour?
What about the ongoing polling responses when people are asked if they want change? I think it was 66% to 26% in January for the former.
You talk about wishful thinking - please provide evidence.
405. But the good news is that Virgin are sending me a free, newer version Blackberry tomorrow! A Blackberry Curve 8520 smartphone, for those who know about these things.
I pay £20 a month for 2 years and get more phone calls and texts than I could shake a stick at, and unlimited web access.
Every cloud has a silver lining. My old device will have a dignified burial, probably at sea. Please don’t send flowers. Money would be very welcome.
408: MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th MAY 25th
412. a tacky iphone wannabe, just get the real thing…
408: Sorry I’m going daft!
MARCH 25th MARCH 25th MARCH 25th MARCH 25th MARCH 25th MARCH 25th MARCH 25th
Scotland are being handed a tediously predictable and severe spanking by the Frogs. Alors.
413. i presume you mean march 25th….
408. Shadsy is offering 8/1 @ Ladbrokes according to oddschecker
Thanks for pointing out the typo in the Blogger Template, which has been corrected.
However, isn’t that kind of stooping low to find fault in a typo because you can’t critique the statistics and opinion?
414. notme. I don’t like the keypad on an iphone compared to a Blackberry. I am a simple soul and the Blackberry device seems to suit my purposes. Especially when it’s practically free!
415. It has to be the GDP figures, the chances of showing either no growth or a small decline is very very high, this would completely undermine any ‘Brown has led us out of recession’ meme that seems to have developed since the 0.1% figures came out. Such poison coming out in the middle of an election campaign spells doom.
416. It’s ruddy depressing, as someone whose latent Scot-Nat sneaks out during the 6 Nations. Silver lining: I’m not in France this year for the ritual stuffing.
412-Your love for the old one has already disappeared!
402,
Well, Mike’s responded accurately and appropriately at point 411.
In slightly more depth:
For the first point - the battleground seats will now be in play from the other side, so those in which the effect is must prevalent will be in play again, but this time with a swing the other way.
On the second, we have the repeated evidence of the forced choice question.
On the third, all of the marginal polls to date (plus the MORI aggregate).
On your point as to the final argument - it’s an argument against overexpecting the performance and a rationale for the cautious approach to the modelling which will be available in part 2.
420. Doesn’t the Cadbury take-over count as inward investment and therefore a boost to GDP?
418. If you march on here, as a debutante, and come over all high handed with a respected poster, you can expect a pretty chilly response to your adolescent drivel.
That said, your blog shows promise. It’s boring but has a certain geeky thoroughness. And I agree with your theory that the Tories came out way too early with their campaign policies, it was like a boxer offering a series of chins for Labour to punch. Stupid.
The Tories could have cruised to victory on Labour’s venality, malice, ineptitude and general horrible disgustingness, without lifting a single significant veil on their own ideas. That’s basically what Blair did to Major in 97 - indeed Labour kept their very biggest policy (BoE independence) entirely under wraps.
But your “refutal” of Andy Cooke’s thesis, which you seem so proud of, does no such thing. You simply pose questions.
SeanT
It seems to me that RodCrosby is curious about the facts and evidence behind any particular subject, rather than the received wisdom. Given the mis-quote you attribute to me, you’ll forgive me if I don’t take at face-value the quotes you attribute to him.
After all, you have shown yourself to be one of the site’s more dishonest contributors following your ridiculous behaviour around tim’s supposed ‘welching’.
@Mike Smithson
Lots and lots and lots of pollsters and academics have run lots and lots of simulations, and they all seem to agree that the UNS figure needs a 10-11% lead margin for the Conservatives to win an outright majority in the current election conditions. I invite you to run figures through the various current seat calculating models, and you’ll find that having a greater than 10% lead is the magic number.
And that’s *without* tactical voting making an impact. Tactical voting does not increase the lead margin needed for the Conservatives to win by much, but it does increase the lead margin needed to avoid Lab/Lib coalition.
And the until we get a series of robust, and repeated, polling of individual marginal seats, then the regional breakdowns or one-off polling is statistically suspect. The breakdowns because they result in tiny sample sets, that were shaped to national conditions not regional ones. The one-offs, because there is no comparison or track against other polling, so there can’t have been any way to generate a shaping model for them.
Now, as you’re suggesting that the general consensus on the required Conservative Lead for a seat majority is wrong, it’s your burden to provide some evidence to support it beyond the bare assertion that it will be so.
424. Re: Cadbury, I was wondering - if the new owners register the head office abroad, then isn’t there a loss to HMRC’s take?
422. Me. I’m a quick adjuster!
368 - “If true, then this is a sad day for pb.com”
I for one take the opposite view, the threads are so much more enjoyable without his cr*p to wade through.
Remember that Mike hasn’t restricted him as long as he stays on topic.
426.
“If someone was raining rockets down on my family, I would expect my government to ANNIHILATE them and I would be more than happy to help them do it..
Perhaps the Gazan Palestians might reflect that if they want a peaceful future, they should avoid electing a gang of terrorists into government.
by Gabble December 29th, 2008 at 1:08″
430. SeanT
Exactly, I would expect the rocketers to be annihilated.
426 – “one of the site’s more dishonest contributors”
One of the more ridiculous posts from Mr‘moderate recession’ Gabble.
418 An absolutely terrible point. If you can’t get the basics right you can’t expect people to engage with the substance.
Back pedal not peddle.
The possessive is “its” not “it’s”
Recommended (two ms).
And this month is not Feburary.
Hope that helps.
403 - Sarah Palin is so vacuous it is terrifying.
I think i can see Gordon Brown’s thinking through all of this.
He knows that he’s not particularly good at PR and secretly wishes that politics was back in the 1950’s and 1960’s when politics was still largely a behind closed doors affair, with no cameras in parliament and a much more deferential society.
However, we cannot turn the clock back. But all that said, Gordon Brown is still daring the country to vote for the Tories. He is saying to us, ‘i know you like the idea of being able to choose whoever you want for PM on a whim, but lets see if you’ve really good the inner confidence to vote for the Tories’.
Basically he is FORCING the country to make a choice based on policies and not on personalities. He knows that another Labour leader could probably win the election outright because of being more photogenic. But his attitude is ‘i’ve waited all my life for this post, and i’ll be damned if i lose it to some flibbertytiggibit just because he or she takes a better picture.’
All in all it’s a highly risky strategy. It may work, in which case you could say that policy has triumphed over presentation. If it doesn’t, then presentation is king, and with all the implications for politics that that entails.
We live in scarey times indeed.
OT This is bizarre - the Arts Council has rejected a FOI [about those free theatre tickets] on the basis that they are planning to publish details in June 2011 - WTF?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/opensecrets/2010/02/only_sixteen_months_to_go.html
Ave its says Con can win on 36%!!!
415 lets AVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Constan Treader. Is your monicker a nod to Dorothy Parker?
431. How about Israel choppers rocketing white phosphorus at children? Is that OK? I seem to recall you denying this ever happened, but now the Israelis have confessed they, er, did it.
Or maybe you admitted that this happened and you thought it was a good way of “annihilating” the Palestinians? Did you? I’m confused.
What I don’t get is why ardent “annihilationist” Zionists like you have such a problem with Palestine. Given your history, you should know that when you have a difficult minority population, which is cowed and imprisoned within your own land, there is only one final solution.
Isn’t Flower of Scotland the most awful dirge?
Unlike Mr - we hope to change to a more changing kind of hopey change where hope can be changed to become hopeful change itself!
The welsh songs are good - caron larn (?), men of harlech etc
New thread
Completely off topic, but since stjohn’s mentioned his mobile…
I really appreciate mike/robert setting up the mobile viewer (really, it’s great) - but the 35 comment limit is extremely annoying. Any way around this? When someone posts a betting tip or opinion, it quickly gets swallowed up in some heated debate about the historical basis for cornish autonomy, or battlefield tactics in the crimean war - and all that us mobile readers are left with is something like: ‘181. Pfp - great tip, those odds won’t last’ - which is immensely frustrating, to say the least.
Ps (yes, still off topic, but i’ve started, so i’ll continue!) - I’m astounded at how cheap technology is becoming - i bought this nokia 5230 in india for just over £100 and discovered it has a full gps/satnav system built in! Sell your tomtom shares now….
405 sinjun
My heartfelt condolences to you on the loss of your Blackberry. It’s unconditional love must have been a source of great comfort to you over a long period of time.
That said, I have to admit to being a little disturbed by your persistent grieving in public. Grief is best kept private. It makes me wonder just what you plan to gain by such a public demonstration.
But I do understand and empathise with you. Me, I’m feeling down myself. I’m pining for the loss of tim.
We all have our crosses to bear.
After all that, the Tories need 9% rather than 11%. A swing of 6%. The highest swing to the Tories since the war !
Yeah, read on… and keep dreaming [ sorry, analysing ]
437 : “Basically - er - Brown is FORCING the country to make a choice based on policies and not on personalities.”
Brown’s policies, both as Chancellor and as Prime Minister, have reduced this country to virtual bankruptcy. Not too difficult to make a choice, based on that fact.