ICM data shows Brown retaining just 60% of Labour ‘05 voters
September 28th, 2006
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New polling innovation shows problem for Ming as well
In a major new way of presenting and collating polling information the detailed data from Friday’s ICM September poll in the Guardian, just out, gives a breakdown of what people will do based on how they voted in the 2005 General Election. The news is not good for the Fife neighbours, Gordon Brown and Ming Campbell.
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For only three out of five people who voted Labour in 2005 told ICM they would do the same at the next General Election if Brown was leader.
We are able to track this because in what I believe is a first for a pollster we are now able to see how allegiances have switched between the parties since the last election and how different groups respond to questions like how they would vote with different people named as party leaders. This could be a vital resource if Labour’s succession is to be decided by a contest.
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In the past we have only been able to make informed guesses about how votes were moving between the parties. Now ICM is giving us firmer information.
It shows on the main voting intention question, for instance, that 77% of Labour voters last time intend to do the same at the next election. A total of 8% of them now say they will vote Tory and 11% would vote Lib Dem with the balance going to “others”
Thus for the Tories the retention factor is 91% with 4% going Lib Dem and 1% to Labour. A total of 74% of the 2005 Lib Dem supporters stay with 14% going Tory and 8% going Labour.
The real shock comes when respondents were asked how they would vote if Cameron/Brown/Campbell are the leaders - for there are significant losses for both Labour and the Lib Dems. These are the main points:-
Clearly in each case you gain a few votes in one direction and you lose a few in the other. However you look at it the figures for Labour and the Lib Dems when Brown and Ming are named as leaders are not encouraging.
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This is the first time data has been collated in this way and we need the evidence of a number of polls before we can draw firm conclusions - but the Brown retention element might be seized on by the Blairites who are trying to stop him.
ICM have built up a reputation as a pioneer in the polling business and should be congratulated on this welcome innovation. I am really looking forward to the next ICM poll to see if there changes are consistent. Let’s hope that other pollsters follow suit.
In the Labour leadership betting Brown is 0.48/1.
Mike Smithson
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I’m not sure this is particularly meaningful since at the next general election, we shall not be presented with a choice between Blair-led and Brown-led Labour parties.
And the Lib Dem figures surely tell us little more than that the party benefits from tactical voting against the larger parties.
Elections force hard choices. There aren’t many parties to choose from. We can’t take a handful of Labour policies and mix them up with a few Tory ones. Conservative voters are saddled with David Cameron and likewise for the other parties.
Interesting stuff Mike and well done to ICM. However I agree with John L. We are a long way off from an election and there’s a lot of difference between responding to a poll in mid-term and actually choosing a government. Brown and Ming supporters should be interested, concerned even, but not panic stricken.
I am not sure that the data whilst interesting is of real validity either short or long term . It basically reduces people’s reason for voting to who is the party leader ie a presidential election and we do not have a presidential government and many people cast their vote for other things that are more important to them than who is leader .
Btw, if St John is around, I only just picked up your query from two threads back. Does it still need an answer or did Jack W’s helpful response cover it?
How have they adjusted for false recall?
re 5. Yes Alex. The figures have been adjusted for false recall using the standard ICM process.
re 3. There we are in fundamental disagreement Mark and I’m not going to be able to persuade you and you are not going to be able to persuade me. I believe the personalities of leaders, their charisma or lack of it and their images, are critical in determining General Election outcomes. It was Blair’s ability to persuade people that it was safe to vote Labour that was behind the 1997 and 2001 landslides.
The media and the party spin machines make it into a presidential like process.
Explosive stuff, Mike, as promised - despite some of the blustering comments. Very bad news for Brown and again good news for team Cameron with a majority of Lib Dem ‘defectors’ moving to the Tories, not Labour. Ze plan is vorking…
Mike Smithson @ 7 — Blair is charismatic and Labour won: post hoc ergo propter hoc.
But Labour had massive poll leads under John Smith. Even more remarkable given that Smith was bald and Scottish: a double whammy for the image-obsessed political classes.
The danger for Labour is that money is tight for a lot of their natural supporters — witness today’s Joseph Rowntree report on Council Tax problems. Housing, health and crime are not too rosy either. These are the factors Labour should worry about, not that Gordon Brown bites his fingernails.
The irony is that David Cameron seems to be running on policy-free charisma, thus ensuring disillusioned former Labour supporters have no reason to vote Conservative.
Nonetheless the figures with these three new leaders in charge is Tory 37. Labour 31. Lib 21. As opposed to Tory 36. Labour 32. Lib. 22. with the existing leaders.
Interesting that the Lib Dems are retaining only 59% of their ‘05 vote yet still manage 22%. Obviously a lot of churning.
Also interesting that Brown only retains 60% of Labour’s ‘05 support yet manages 31% not far short of their ‘05 result.
Roger . yes, you have summed it up, probably because in the end policies do matter more than personality.
Roger - a good point - and it’s partly a case of ‘doing the math’.
What I mean is that if Party A (say Lab) got 40% of the vote in 05 and Party B (say the LDs) got 20%, then twice as many people voted Lab than LD (illustrative numbers, of course).
If these stats showed 15% of LD supporters switching to Lab and 10% of Lab voters switching the other way, then the LDs would still gain more voters in absolute terms (10% x 40% is greater than 15% x 20%).
Hence looking at straight percentages of a party’s own 05 voters isn’t comparing like with like; instead you need to look at absolute numbers.
re 9. But Labour’s big poll leads in the mid-90s started post John Smith. The highest ICM Labour share under Smith was 44% - and that was in the week before he died and followed the Tory disaster over Black Wednesday and the start of the EU crisis.
The election of Blair took it up at least 5 points where it stayed almost consistently until the 1997 General Election.
The only pollster worth comparing with from that period is ICM because it did take serious measures to deal with the 1992 polling disaster. We are now much better served by the pollsters.
There seem to me two problems with the conclusion you’ve drawn about the Lib Dems Mike.
First, it is based on a very small number of people (in Table 4 there is a move of 37 people from Lib Dem to Tory or Labour but a move of 31 people from Labour or Tory to Lib Dem - a net move of just six people). Second, the Brown/Campbell/Cameron question is pitched into the future - it’s not about how would you vote if there were a general election tomorrow.
Lib Dem voters have always been less sure that they would still vote Lib Dem in the future - even if all the leaders stay the same - and that uncertainty doesn’t mean that the Lib Dem support has always ended up going down; it’s often gone up when the future has arrived.
So the question confuses “what effect will the leaders have …” with “how sure are you of always voting for your currently preferred party…”
Add that to the tiny numbers invovled and you can’t really conclude anything.
The more you look at GB’s record, the worse it is. He inherited finances which included PSDR (public sector debt repayment–remember that?). The healthiest ever set of govt accounts. He will bequeath the largest ever budget deficit, and off-balance-sheet items (mostly PFI, but also network rail) mask the true huge deficit. He’s not even the best labour chancellor—Stafford Cripps achieved far more with far less money straight after the war.
But paradoxically, doesn’t that make GB a fine politician? He has a reputation which is many times as good as the reality. Thus, he is a formidable politician, of the first rank. Not for what he’s done, but for what people think he’s achieved. Brilliant.
So why does he score poorly in these polls? He is far behind TB in presentational skills. But then so is everyone else, from all parties, since MHT–and she’d have struggled…
So assessing GB in TB’s shadow looks bad for him. No surprise there.
He is a much worse chancellor than his friends believe. But he is a much more able and cannier politician than his enemies hope. With TB gone, he could flower into a successful PM.
The “actual” voting intentions are weighted basing on the likelyhood to vote, right? I suppose the 2005 vote recall wasn’t (well, they’ve already voted)….can it affect the comparison?
Does my question make sense?
although interesting I think all this does is show that all three leaders are vote losers.
If you compare the straight retention figures with those when leaders are mentioned you find for all three parties more people will say they will stick with the party if the leader is not mentioned.
Labour have a 77% retention rate without the leader being mentioned and a 60% with. The Conservatives have a 91% without and 83% with and the Lib Dems 74% and 59%.
So the leaders ‘lose’ the following shares:
Brown -17
Cameron -8
Campbell -15
So they’d all be better off without a leader!
I think actually all this shows is the higher certainty of Tory supporters to vote regardless - which has been apparent for a number of years now.
Mark P 14. I agree on the small number point and I did put caveats into the article. If other surveys show a similar trend then I think it is harder to dismiss the conclusions.
The Brown-Cameron effect has now been shown in 15 separate polls from the three main pollsters since the Tory election and I believe there is a lot in it. Of course GB must be hoping that he will be perceived differently if/when he is actually in office but I’m not totally convinced. He’s done himself a great degree of damage by the forced coup and the Tories will keep reminding us of this.
It has been shown time and time again that if you link the words “Cameron” and “Conservative” in a voting intention question then the Tory share increases. I would argue that this is a more realistic scenario for a General Election.
The saving grace for Brown’s leadership ambitions (if not for any subsequent premiership) is that he won’t be standing against Blair, he’ll be standing against other people who I can’t see garnering better retention figures.
Michael White in the Guardian said that McDonnell already has 41 MPs willing to nominate him to open a contest….where did he find them?!!
Prezza has backed Brown, btw.
Interesting article as ever Mike. What we also do not know is how many of the 1997 and 2001 Labour voters will vote, and more importantly those who voted in 1992 etc. who have not voted for a while.
I also think that Tony’s extended good bye is going to cause rucktions in the Labour party which will lose them votes over all.
Labour got a drubbing in the locals to be fought in May 2007, back in 2003. It looks like it could get worse, and that is going to leave lots of unhappy actavists.
Good times ahead for the Conservatives.
Had a quick look at this table. Would say it’s fairly undramatic. The only thing you can say it shows with any confidence is that when asked about brown/cameron/campbell that voters show much lower levels of certainty in their vote intention. As noted the conservative vote from 2005 drops by almost 10% as well as lab and lib dem falls. This shows the wisdom of many voters as it’s hard to really know what’s going to be on offer in a couple of years time and how the different parties will perform under the new terrrain. Furthermore, the timing of the poll comes at what is likely to be the nadir of Labour’s fortunes in this parliament.
The very interesting, and hard to predict factor next time around is going to be churn. But I don’t think quant data at this moment in time is going to be much use in making predictions.
By the way, this poll is looking at a 52% turnout. This figure will rise significantly by ge campaign itself to at least 60%, maybe up to 65%.
A technical point first. If you add up the weighted figures for those whose past votes are known and compare with the totals in Table 2 (the one Mike is using), you find a gap of 33 Tories, 36 Labour and 31 LibDems. This is the reason that you get the much smaller swing to the Tories (4%) in the overall poll than you would expect from looking at Mike’s figures: apparently, people who decline to indicate how they voted last time (or who didn’t, because they were not then British residents over 18, or abstained) are much more likely to vote Lab or LibDem than the total sample. Note also that the table doesn’t adjust for don’t knows and refusers: this is why the published figures show a 1% smaller swing to the Tories (3%) than table 2, since ICM adjusts DKs in the light of how they voted last time.
Now if I have to choose between trying to recover the vote of someone who voted Labour last year and is now doubtful or considering voting elsewhere, or getting the vote of someone new, I would much prefer the former task. We’ve had a difficult year and the Tories have had an easy ride: I perfectly understand constituents who voted labour last year are are now less sure. So although I’m mainly interested in the topline figures for the full sample, if I have to choose, I’d rather we had a problem with former Labour voters than anyone else, because it’s a problem that I’m optimistic we can solve.
This applies in particular to the group of 2005 Labour voters who really like TB and who are alienated by perceived lack of loyalty by GB to him. As everyone here knows, I’m a TB loyalist to my fingertips: I think he’s the best postwar PM, and if he had been able to carry on another 10 years that would IMO have been good for Britain. However, I think GB has been the subject of a sustained knocking campaign by the Tories, large parts of the media and some of my own colleagues (not including TB himself), and many TB loyalists now underestimate how good GB will be. It would be a good thing if Labour MPs stopped helping the Tories stitch him up, but of *all* the voting groups in my constituency, I am most confident of holding the support of this one when it comes to it: we talk the same language.
Is this deluded optimism, like the 1996 Tories suere that everyone would rally round next year? Maybe. But I have no interest in choosing a leader who will risk my seat, and in my judgment GB is the best able to help retain it. It won’t be clear from the polls until he’s actually leader, though.
re 22. The poll is not based on a 52% turnout - that was the “certain to vote” figure. ICM weight responses from those who are less certain.
What is going to be interesting is if when other potential challengers are put in the “How would you vote if XX was leader” question. Populus did that with Reid and Brown in September and the Tory margin against Cameron was one point less with the Home Secretary.
Gordon succession will be assured if it’s shown that there would be very little difference if another person got it. He’s got the party sentiment and momentum on his side.
But there are going to be a lot of polls of this nature between now and the summer and things could change.
23. Nick
Re your last paragraph - another good reason for laying Brown now and backing him when the price has drifted up, as I have recommended here several times now.
Interesting stuff Nick, I’m no Brown cheerleader, but he’s in an impossible position at the moment, everyone it seems is laying into him, but he’s unable to fight back, openly at least. This is why I don’t think data taken at this very moment is going to be very useful in making future predictions.
8. “a majority of Lib Dem ‘defectors’ moving to the Tories,”
Sorry to rain on the parade, but by my reading you get 16 out of 41 which is only 39% of “Lib Dem defectors”.
I know that some Tories do think that 39% gives them a majority, but mathematically that is not correct.
I was involved in interpreting ‘Brand swapping’ to predict market shares in the motor industry nearly 30 years ago. We had research based on over 60,000 purchases each year for 3 or 4 years. Mike is right.
As a one off set of figures this is interesting,but the trend or stability in the figures is of more importance over the next few months.
Is the effect of first time voers quantified? This was not of statistical relevance in the car market, but there will be c. 2m new voters in 2009.
18 “If other surveys show a similar trend then I think it is harder to dismiss the conclusions.”
Well, yes, Mike. If other polls say the same thing it is harder to dismiss.But the only real test is to have an election. You can “show” all sorts of things from mining stats. (Dan´s point at 17 indicates why this may be a mere artifact of the methodology.)
But if you really wanted to test this hypothesis I think you would need to hold two parallel surveys in one of which people were asked the normal question and the other in which they were asked a question mentioning the names of the leaders. (But of course yougov recently ran two polls in parallels and got significantly differnt results).
Alternatively we can just wait until next year and see how the figures change when Labour have a new leader. My assumption is that whoever Labour choose they will start with a bounce. The interesting question will be how big a bounce and how long it lasts,
I concede that at the moment Cameron is a more charismatic leader than Brown and that his ’style’ increases the Con vote whereas the reverse applies with Brown.
However I still have faith in Brown because I believe that at the moment in terms of policies and political strategy he will increase the labour vote and damage/halt the ‘Cameron effect’
Who gains most on the swings and loses on the roundabouts is hard to predict at the moment, but I think the key to the eventual fight between the two is that Both Cameron and Brown will have to move out of their respective comfort zones - Cameron does not have to match Brown on policy substance and Brown does not have to match Cameron on ‘doing sincerity’ but the winner needs to get close enough in their weakest areas for their strengths to count.
From Browns attempts at ‘doing sincerity’ and Cameron’s attempts at ‘doing policy’ you can see that neither finds it easy (It isnt ! ).But Im not sure any one else would do a better job for either party at the moment.
Re 27 - is this a dodgy graph?
More seriously the churn is the thing. Month or so ago there was some good stuff on Anthony Well’s blog about the movement to the Tories comparing different TV regions. Showed huge tory increase in SE England and less as one move further north and west. As the churn (much of which happens anyway) is also a geographical churn the data from one poll is relatively meaningless. Like the ‘who would you vote for if the leaders were different the rate of change or lack of it over time is what will matter’.
For example the poll could mask a geographical churn where for every 10 Lib Dem who moves to the Tories in London and the SE East say people move from Labour to the Lib Dems in Scotland, Wales and the north of England. This would mean a minor drop in Lib Dem overall poll rating, but could mean significant constituency gains in target seats in that area.
17: Well, the LibDems did win Dunfirmaline without a leader!
Nick P. I hope you were being facetious when you say you would like Tony Blair to rule for 20 years. If you are not, then you will have sunk in my estimateion, as you clearly have no idea about the dangers of long term power for any human. Heck, I wouldnt even trust myself to be in power over a country for more than a decade…
All, because of the large number of posters called “Mark”, henceforth I shall be known as MBoy
Let me say 31 again with the number in the last paragraph!
For example the poll could mask a geographical churn where for every 10 Lib Dem who moves to the Tories in London and the SE East say 8 people move from Labour to the Lib Dems in Scotland, Wales and the north of England. This would mean a minor drop in Lib Dem overall poll rating, but could mean significant constituency gains in target seats in that area.
I don’t think that Labour should be too worried about a comparison between two men who lead their parties and one who doesn’t - yet.
The Lib Dems, on the other hand… just how badly do they have to do in the Holyrood and Cardiff Bay elections to start a “Ming Must Go” bandwagon..?
Peter Pigeon @ 29: It wasn’t us, it was Populus who did the parallel questions asking half a question that mentioned the leaders and half one that didn’t.
Tables are here:
http://www.populuslimited.com/poll_summaries/2006_07_13_times.htm
Question Time guests tonight:
Jack Straw MP
Ken Clarke MP
Baroness Tonge
Piers Morgan
(the 5th guest seems to be Bubble from Absolutely Fabulous according Iain Dale’s blog)
34: Clearly the LibDems will not call for Ming to go just because the polls drop from 22 to 21 with his name attached! Besides, as has been pointed out, if the churn is mostly lost in the SE (mostly not up for election) and gained in Scotland & Wales (up for election), then even a drop in national vote could see decent wins, because votes are lost in areas that arent up for election…
Interesting comments from A voice from Lothian at 31 and 33. He is right to say that it is where the voters are that is important and we do not yet know what the churn in the marginals is.
It is possible that Labour and Conservative vote share could climb in thier safer seats leading to no over all gains.
35 Thanks, Anthony. I had this in mind “A new YouGov poll in today’s Telegraph is a prime example of the difference sample error can make - the topline figures are CON 38%, LAB 31%, LDEM 18%. The poll was begun before the YouGov poll in the Sunday Times, but there was a substantial overlap in the fieldwork, so the simple explanation for why one YouGov poll shows the Conservative lead static and one show it falling is normal sample error.” (You´ll recognise the quote) My point was that even where someone runs a parallel poll (as Populus did) one still has the sampling error problem when results are compared.
Still I think it is the better approach because the second question with prompting on leaders seems to me to amount to a leading question (respondents believe the new information is meant to change their minds).
36. Brave move putting Al-Tonge up ..
DK at 15 has hit the nail on the head.
Gordon Brown is, as a matter of fact, a rubbish chancellor, huge tax increases, huge spending black holes, huge deficits, never afraid to duck a difficult decision.
So, the only conclusion to be drawn is that he is an absolute genius politician.
It is true that he is completely uncharismatic (or actually quite repulsive), GB’s reverse logic is that “Oh, that must mean I am clever and sincere”. It’s a bit like Ali G using “nice personality” as a euphemism for “ugly”.
40. I think it was mentioned last here on pb.com…if it’s BBC producers who invite politicians or if they just ask parties to send them one.
Interesting figures which will be more conclusive when we se the results month on month, about time that pollsters recognised the importance of churn anyway.
One thing which appears to be clear, those tories who are going on about voting for UKIP are clearly not there, all three parties seem to lose a similar amount of votes to ‘others’. Surely, if anything was going to show up it would be this, given the mutterings of ConHome posters?!
43. That shows how wildly unrepresentative ConHome is….we keep telling you that…
Labour skill at covering up their incompetence (remember the good day to bury bad news) reminds me of the story of the tanoy announcements at the WTC , “Please return to your office, there is nothing to worry about”
Deputy leadership challenger Jon Cruddas says he cannot look his constituents in the face and tell them things have got better under Labour.
RE 46, Do you have a reference for that David?
BBC website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5387066.stm
47. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/5387066.stm
LOL
Many thanks to every one for the link. That must please teh control freaks at Labour HQ.
The deputy leader is far more interesting than the leadership.
AJ’s speech the other day was rotten.
53. contest I mean.
I wonder where Snowflake is. Surely she must have an instant rebuttal - for an influential Labour MP who admits that real wages have been decimated by mass immigration. After all, this is a government which has a ‘near perfect’ economic record, according to her.
Perhaps she just meant ‘near perfect’ for lawyers in the City, academics in cushty jobs, etc.
Because it is not so ‘near perfect’ for indigenous British cleaners.
41. what a load of rubbish Mark. Tax as a % of GDP has been stable for over a decade, and debt as a % of GDP is down sharply since the Tory years. Growth has been steady, the labour participation rate has risen sharply and we’ve had no recession. If it was that easy to deliver such conditions, any chancellor in the preceeding century would have done it - they couldn’t because they were all universally crap.
Clinton was right - people start taking the good economy for granted and imagine that “anyone” could achieve it, and that the current steady state is to be deplored and in their imaginations nirvana is around the corner if they just cut taxes.
If you want an idea of what Britain will be under the conservatives, take a close look at George Bush’s America - selective tax cuts for the very rich, while the AMT bites the middle classes hard, combined with spending rises resulting in large deficits. It’s the Hungary solution. The Bush economy has underperformed the Clinton economy and looks to be taking another lurch downwards. So much for “trickle-down tax cuts lifts the growth rate”.
Tories also seem unable to get their pea brains around the fact that cutting taxes has the same effect as cutting interest rates - you release a torrent of cash into the economy; one of two things will happen - the central bank will respond to the tax cut by jacking up interest rates, as in Australia, or the money goes straight into prices, jacking up inflation. What do you think caused the inflation-spiral of the late80’s/early 90’s eh? The torrent of cash released into the economy by the Lawson tax cuts. If you still haven’t learnt that lesson, you’re not fit for government.
If someone said you “I’m ideologically committed to interest rate cuts no matter what the circumstances” they’d be laughed at. But saying “I’m ideologically committed to tax cuts regardless of circumstances” amounts to the same thing. They are both ways of pumping cash into the economy, but the second is traumatic to reverse, (and you always have to reverse), therefore a prudent government keeps total tax as a % of GDP steady and relies on interest rates and spending to move money in and out of the economy as both can be raised and cut at will.
John Cruddas represents Dagenham.
For those not familiar with the area, Dagenham is a little way beyond Barking.
A message to Sqn Ldr Rik w, with whom I had a very interesting discussion on this site about the future of the RAF, very interesting letter in the Times this morning on this subject.
There you go, Sean T. You rub the lamp, and the genie appears!
55. Sean - considering that the Tories are the Party of Recessions (the three worst recessions of the 20th C happened under their watch), you are in no position to lecture us. Go back to writing your novels, and leave the economics to us.
55: Right on cue!
[55] SeanT refers to academics in cushty jobs - he must be the last person in the country (if he is in the country) who thinks that’s what they have - AFAIK there is no other sector where pay has declined as much in the last twenty years…
56. Isn’t hosing tax payers money up against the wall via waste and overgenerous renumeration in the public sector releasing “a torrent of cash into the economy” ??
57. Lol
RE Question Time, the BBC have the other panalist as Lance Price
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/5384552.stm
Why does the BBC continue to use the Truespeak term “Migrant”
Migrant means they will return (or move on).
The correct term is Immigrant. As in Labour’s Immigrant Invasion
65. Thanks…so no Bubble!
42: The BBC invites the parties to suggest names, but retains the option to choose someone else, and often they will not choose a loyalist representative of a party at all, so you get, say, Tony Benn as the Labour figure on the panel, laying into the Government with the same enthusiasm as the Tory. I once complained after this happened in the Radio 4 version for 3 weeks running: they claimed that they even it out over the long term. I’m not convinced (I think they like outspoken dissidents as they make better TV, and mainstream supporters of all parties get short-changed) but haven’t time to research it.
The audiences are also partly based on nominations by the local parties.
63. Here we go again. The Labour government uses spending counter-cyclically to balance the business cycle. During the boom of the late 90’s, spending was tight, during the world slow-down following 9/11, spending was loosened. As the economy speeds up, spending is being tightened agaon.
As for the notion of spending being “waste” - the Tory idea of prudence is not to maintain buildings and let them crumble, and have pupils taught in temporary huts (something common before 1997). This is the Thames Water school of business, - they thought they were saving money by scrimping on maintenance of the pipes, but all they’ve ended up doing is leaking their commodity into the ground, instead of selling it to customers.
Seriously - take a good look at the USA under Bush - that’s what tory policies will achieve.
64. Thanks Jamie…I wasn’t sure if anybody would get the joke! Maybe we should do an explanation, if only for Andrea’s benefit?
Labour MPs like Jon Cruddas must consider forming an alternative Labour Party that works in the interests of the British People.
56 If governments trust people to retain their own earnings you encourage work , entrepreneurial activity and investment and as a consequence the economy grows . This can only be observed over the long term - in the short term there may be many reasons why taxes should be cut. There are also areas where government spending is more efficient fro which taxes are necessary - infrastructure , education , healthcare ( potentially )etc or to achieve widely accepted objectives in welfare . However, if you lose sight of the need to encourage wealth creating activity then decline sets in . The UK suffered from this due to an overdose of socialism post war - the upside only started with the tax cuts of the Thatcher period . The seeds for future relative decline have now been sown by Brown - it will be up to a centre right government to turn this around but these cycles take decades. Initially probably not much room for any tax cuts because of the high debt burden but the objective should be there
69. Not all spending is waste - but you must admit that eg public sector employees pension schemes are now over generous and are paid for by everyone whether they like it or not.
Bottom line is you dont trust people to spend their own money.
56-snowflakes
‘ what a load of rubbish Mark. Tax as a % of GDP has been stable for over a decade, and debt as a % of GDP is down sharply since the Tory years.’
The rubbish is all yours,clearly if you remove the massive PFI debt off balance sheet and rename it as investment instead of debt then any numbers will look ok,its called deception.
[69] Snowflake5 says that Tory idea of prudence is not to maintain buildings and let them crumble - with respect to London’s Tube system this was the settled policy of both Labour and Conservatives in the old G.L.C. days - keeping either the rate precept or the fares down was much more important than maintaining investment…
should not be cut ( fourth line )
The mistake that many people make when dealing with Socialists, is to take them seriously.
People often take time to answer their perpetual arguments.
It is the Socialists ploy. They dont listen to you answer. They only seek to bog you down, wear you out and distract you.
Ignore the Socialists and talk directly to the People.
Re 56 and 63 (thanks Jamie) .
Snowflake5 is in a particularly sunny mood today because her online Labour Leadership poll is not going as planned!
It is neither tax nor borrowing (taken in isolation) that matter, it is government spending as a % of GDP, which has surged since 2000 (having remained stable 1997 to 2000).
The Goblin King knows perfectly well that he has hiked taxes about as far as they’ll go, so instead he is running up debt at 4% of GDP every year. Even a hardened Keynesian says that governments borrows in bad times and repays in good times.
Tell me this, S5, are these the good times or the bad times?
The number of jobs in the private sector increased by just over a million between 92 and 97, roughly the same as the increase between 1997 and now. Any idiot can create another 800,000 pseudo jobs in public sector (i.e. excluding nurses, coppers and so on, I have no problems there).
BTW, I was quite impressed with GB’s record from 1997 to 2000 and voted for NuLab in 2001.
74. Eurostat includes PFI in their figures, and calculates debt as a % of GDP to be 40% - way below the 53% of GDP in 1997.
Sorry - Tories tried their tax-cutting ideology in the late 80’s and it lead to a balloon of inflation followed by high interest rates and a severe recession. And then John Major had to put the taxes back up. It would have been better if they’d stayed the same throughout, a lot of grief would have been saved. The Tory policy was a failure. Until you acknowledge that, you’ve not come to terms with what went wrong, and you’ve not learnt the lesson.
Dont feed the Leftie Troll.
79. In summary - nanny knows best.
[78] Mark Wadsworth gives us the old line Any idiot can create another 800,000 pseudo jobs in public sector (i.e. excluding nurses, coppers and so on, I have no problems there).
The nurse in my GP’s surgery has a real job, the practice manager and the receptionists don’t. Housebuilders don’t need a land-use planning system and its associated town planners. Are tax collectors in “pseudo jobs”, Mark?
Economically, a public sector worker is a public sector worker - paid for out of taxation (or borrowing). Whether any particular voter thinks they’re cuddly or not is beside the point. Economics is a dismal science
Snowflake, tax reductions don’t seem to have done any harm for the Irish. Public spending has fallen from c.50% of GDP in 1987 to c.36% today, and taxes along with it. By your logic, the economy ought to have been damaged by transferring so much money form the efficient government to the wasteful consumer. Care to guess which advanced economy has grown fastest over the past 15 years?
70. “I wasn’t sure if anybody would get the joke! Maybe we should do an explanation, if only for Andrea’s benefit? ”
Uhm, Peter, I didn’t realize it was a joke and I thought it was a serious comment about the state of Barking and Dagenham Borough.
68. “The BBC invites the parties to suggest names, but retains the option to choose someone else, and often they will not choose a loyalist representative of a party at all, so you get, say, Tony Benn as the Labour figure on the panel, laying into the Government with the same enthusiasm as the Tory.”
looking at 2006 QT guests, they had Benn that time and Diane Abbott once, all other times there was a loyalist to represent Labour
Thanks Nick. I suppose it was BBC to invite Jenny Tonge and not the Libdems to suggest her (but maybe someone in Cowley Street has drunk too much last night…)
To be fair the last time they had Tony Benn on Question Time was when Harriet Hermann withdrew at the last minute (her husband just started the loan rows)
84. Bad editing of my comment
The first part of the reply should be the last one
“The Tory policy was a failure. Until you acknowledge that, you’ve not come to terms with what went wrong, and you’ve not learnt the lesson”
Such a failure, that from 1979 to 1997, GDP per head rose in this country, relative to the OECD average, for the first time since before WWII.
79-snowflakes
Surely even you can understand, that if a huge slice of debt,in this case PFI’s are reclassified from being a debt to being an investment and completely removed from the debt numbers (as Brown has done),then debt as a % of GDP will look completely different.
If your personal investments are £ 5,000;credit card debt £3,000 & mortgage £ 50,000,most people would say that your investments are £ 5,000 & your debt £ 53,000. With Browns rational your investments are £ 55,000 and your debt is £ 3,000.
78. Read my post 69. spending is counter-cyclical.
Look, you have three ways of moving money into and out of the economy: tax, spending and interest rates. Interest rates are the most flexible as they can be changed overnight and also the public readily accept that they move up and down. But there is a limit to how low you can cut rates - too low, and business starts to substitute capital in place of labour, and it encourages commodity inflation. So if you have a threatening situation as in the post 9/11 one, and need to put a lot of money into the economy, it’s best that rates arn’t cut too low and some of the burden is taken up by looser fiscal policy. The easiest way to loosen fiscal policy is via spending - again, because it’s easy to reverse. You can see it happening now, govt spending is slowing by simple expedient of holding wage increases low and freezing recruitment.
The Americans took a different tack after 9/11. They cut interest rates to 1% (too low, for the reasons I explained above), and they cut taxes and increased spending. They still dipped into recession briefly. They’ve reversed interest rates but are struggling to reverse the other two. As a result they’ve got an inflation problem (the Fed publishes several versions of inflation, but the one calculated on the EU CPI basis, which we use, shows CPI at 4.3% compared to the 2.5% in the UK).
The Europeans cut interest rates too, but tax and spending showed no change from the pre-9/11 level, there was no loosening - and they went into recession.
Therefore our response to the global situation was the best, and we were the only ones not to suffer a recession.
We really do have the best government in the world at the moment economically speaking.
87. john re-read my post 79. Eurostat counts PFI as debt, not investment and they calculate that debt as a % of GDP is 40%, compared to 53% in 1997.
Meanwhile … as usual Scotland leads the world in voting reform :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tayside_and_central/5385086.stm
And then again Liberal Democrats look at ways at getting rid of old bags … No, not another Jenny Tonge story !! :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5384016.stm
84. LOL Andrea! I’m sure you weren’t the only one. Somebody who is completely crazy is sometimes said to be ‘barking mad’, the reference being to a crazy dog. The Dagenham joke implies somebody is so crazy that they are ‘beyond barking’.
I thought it was funny first time I heard it but have to admit it loses something in the translation! (How foreigners cope with English and the idiosyncratic humour of the locals is beyond me.)
” We really do have the best government in the world at the moment economically speaking ”
Do you own a credit card company ?
Snowflake is comparing the incomparable. In the 1980’s we were crippled with debt bequeathed by the winter of discontent government. In the 1980’s we had a massively subsidised and bloated manufacturing base and a totally different imports/exports ratio.
The 1980’s were a totally different era. Cutting taxes works, it always has worked. It is nice to actually hear a lefty admit that cutting taxes increases revenue!
Snowflake mentioned the US economy in a derogatory sense. Surely an economy that can survive such an impact as 9/11 deserves massive credit? Surely an economy that is creating thousands of jobs a day deserves plaudits?
Clinton’s speech was a fraud. He massively underinvested in the military whilst President. The US were so weak militarily they had to fire $3million cruise missiles from ships hundreds of miles away to try to get after Bin Laden.
88. PS part of the reason the Americans are struggling to reverse spending is their peculiar constitutional arrangements. The White House produces a budget, the Senate produces it’s own budget and the House of representatives produces their own version, ane then they horse trade, so the final outcome depends on pure politics rather than a coherant economic strategy.
In Britain, the chancellor can determine the economic strategy and produce a single coherant budget that balances things out economically, and it goes through as a whole, with even the Lords unable to mess with it.
Sean Fear, you are making the mistake - it doesnt matter what you say, she isnt taking any notice of what you say.
Because she has more time than you she will always come back with another point. Eventually she will go full circle and return to the original point.
She has more nervous energy, more spare time and enjoys arguing. You are engaging in a War of Attrition.
More and more people are understanding the truth that this New Labour Government is the best Government Britain has ever had. It is more than likely that they will be in power for at least the next 100 years.
I would be more interested in knowing and crucially for the Lib Dems the willingness of each Party’s supporters to vote tactically for/against another party. I wiuld be staggered if the anti Tory tactical element had not diminished somewhat. What I would like to know is has there been a commensurate anti Labour rise amongst Lib Dem and Tory supporters. Has anyone done any surveys.
when’s Prezza’s speech ?
82, yes, half of all tax collectors, benefit administrators and tax advisors are in pseudo jobs.
Local planning officers = proper job.
Regional quangos which meddle in local decisions = pseudo job
If local GP decides to employ a practice manager or receptionist to deal with inevitable admin = proper job
If local NHS pays quangista hundreds of thousands a pounds a year for sitting on “strategic development committees” = not a proper job.
88. “The easiest way to loosen fiscal policy is via spending - again, because it’s easy to reverse”
Yeah, right, tell that to the unions!
Like the idea of the “Goblin King”- it does capture the slightly off-centre face, but maybe a bit cheerful for our gloomy Chancellor. The fact is though that Labour have a pig in a poke- and GB doesn’t look good.
“Hung parliament”: my recollection is that LibDem voters still split roughly 60:40 in favour of a Labour Government rather han a Conservative Government, if asked to choose, and this is why even with a Tory poll lead overall there is a Labour lead on that question. This marginused to be bigger, more like 75:25.
Whether they are willing to take it to the point of voting tactically is quite dependent on the local constituency and candidates and perception of marginality, and very hard for national polls to assess. There is clearly a willingness among most Tories to vote LibDem to get Labour out, and this is why the Tory vote has collapsed in places like Liverpool.
FWIW, my assessment in Broxtowe is that LibDem voters will be more willing to support me tactically with Gordon Brown as leader: many have said so explicitly. I reckon I got maybe 40% of the potential Lib-Lab tactical vote last time, partly on a personal basis but mainly thanks to Howard’s anti-immigration campaign, which was hugely counter-productive with this group. With the seat now more obviously marginal and GB as leader I hope to get it up to 70% or so next time, but it’s all guesswork at this point.
According to the poll, Labour is gaining some voters from the Lib Dems, which undermines the general conclusion, but the real omission here is that it doesn’t asnwer the question whether Brown will pull in extra voters from those who didn’t vote at all last time. It has long been my contention that a large number of the stay-at-homes are disillusioned Labour supporters who can’t bring themselves to vote for Blair but have nowhere else to go. Brown will be able to mobilise these refuseniks, in my view.
I tried to make a simple point, snow. GB is over-rated as chancellor, and under-rated as a politician.
Both are actually the fault of TB. TB lowered expectations of a labour chancellor as much as he dared. So no recession is hailed as a miracle. Politically, GB is adept and up-to-the-mark. But he looks leaden-footed compared to the master.
Snowflake is rapidly turning into Matthew Partridge - a starry-eyed attempt to defend the indefensible with some seriously awry interpretations of economic history.
100. Mark - spending is easier to reverse than a tax cut, so if you have to loosen fiscal policy temporarily, then spending is the logical option. And remember that this govt has experience in that area - Brown was determined to reduce the debt burden when he first came to office (because we were spending too much on interest) and was brutal with spending - he even admitted that he may have been too hard - but don’t underestimate his ability to bear down hard, he’s done it before.
104. I agree that people under-rate Brown’s political skills - he wouldn’t have survived so long if he wasn’t good at politics. But having no recession is also a miracle - no one else has done it in Britain for decades. It’s churlish to pretend otherwise.
05. Don’t you mean Alan ?
I must say I am amused by Snowflakes take on economic issues.
I wonder what tractor production figures are like? Oh no, I forgot, we are not supposed to be manufacturing stuff according to her.
Still as long as service wage inflation is low, the poor can eat cake.
The question for Snowflake is: if Gordon Brown is such a genius, why are his ratings so poor. Is it -
a) Because the polls are wrong and really everyone loves him
b) Because the public are ungrateful
c) Because the public are stupid and don’t understand what he’s done for them
d) Because he’s not actually a genius and the public have rumbled him, even if you haven’t.
x09 - I think you find that all the polls say he is intelligent, competant and has been a great chancellor.
The poor ratings are only on intangibles - charm etc, and are because of all the spinning against him from Cherie and co, who are trying to imply that somehow charm is the only thing that matters in a PM. Brown will continue to be competant as PM, I personally think that his decision making will be better than Blair’s, though his speech-making will be worse. And I wish Cherie and co would shut up!
The are are six principal Council byelections today - anyone expecting any suprises?
110 snowflake5 - your relentless pom pom cheerleading is as impressive as it is wrongheaded.
“The poor ratings are only on intangibles - charm etc, and are because of all the spinning against him from Cherie and co”
Wrong - the poor ratings are because he has taxed this country to the hilt, often by stealth and because he has presided over inept and fraud-ridden disasters like Tax Credits. The poor ratings are because he has supported and worked on every policy disaster that Blair has presided over - including Iraq. The poor ratings are because most ordinary people in the street realise that he is a dour, brooding, control freak.
You may comfort yourself that it is all down to Cherie, but you are deluding yourself. The poor ratings are a direct result of his actions and record. No more and no less.
Hmm. But where will most refuseniks come from 103. In the marginals alright. But if turnout rises 10-15% in say Wigan or Glasgow North to send those Labour majorities back up into the stratosphere then sfw as far as anyone else feels right.
Best economic government in the world at the moment? Not Britain, that’s for sure. Despite Snowflake’s gusset-snapping hysteria.
But who has got the best economic government? Good question. My vote: Ireland.
Any other suggestions?
Prescott’s speech is quite interesting.
Reid in sharply on the betting from since his speech
Gordo 1.49
AJ 9
JR 6.6
Hutton 42
50 bar
16. Excellent…bet some more on Reid first thing this morning, based on Mike’s story today, around 9.4-9.6.
116. Interesting Jamie.
Gordo’s price has been slipping gently and for it to do so, somebody else’s needs to shorten. As so many people on this site have noted, it’s difficult to identify a credible alternative to The Dour One. The market seems to be alighting on JR.
I’d be grateful if you, or somebody, could keep your eye on this particular ball. I have to turn my attention elsewhere for the moment.
Update ::
Gordo 1.5
AJ 7
JR 6.4
After 9 years of Labour Government.
Number of Recessions: Nil
Inflation: Stable and Low
Interest Rates: Low
Employment: Highest Ever
However you look at it. It’s not a bad record. One any previous post-war UK government would have died for.
How worse would it have been if the Tories had won, kept political control of intrest rates and overreacted to every scare story here there and everywhere.
Labour have done well. Period. This is so boring. I wish the Tories could recognise the economy has done quite well and explain how they could build on this.
Prescott’s speech: the best of the week by far. Here is a man who knows how to use rhetoric - it may be the rhetoric he learnt on the ground, but he uses it so well. Many mock his style, but if you listen closely, and disregard bias against the northern accent, he actually uses many classical techniques, even if he discovered them the hard way.
By the way…I’m far from a natural Prescott supporter, and vote Tory
121 - I just read that as “Prescott’s speech: the best of the week by far because I vote Tory”
114. SeanT - CPI in Ireland as at July 2006 was 4.2%. They calculate CPI on an identical methodology to us (as we are both EU). They haven’t really got more money in their pockets, as their purchasing power is being eroded.
Basically releasing money permanently into the economy via tax cuts leads to inflation. You should only release money into the economy temporarily, and only then during times of global stress, eg the post 9/11 situation. And when things improve, you have to reverse it, as the UK govt is doing, but the Irish govt isn’t.
20 - Successful governments always do well by ignoring long term problems, that’s the nature of our short termist democracy whereby you need to be re-elected every few years. As soon as things do go awry the tendency is to shore up problems and hope that the next lot have to deal with it.
Not at all - it is entirely possible to respect a man’s rhetoric whilst abhorring his ideology.
Jonathan. This ‘Tory’ admits - and has admitted many times on this site - that the economy has done quite well under Labour. Growth has been steady but unspectacular, recessions have been avoided, etc. All as you say.
The reason I don’t go overboard in my praise for Labour’s economics is because:
1. We haven’t done THAT well internationally. Compared to other Anglophone countries - Ireland, the US, Australia - we have been growing sluggishly.
2. Much of the credit for this reasonable performance is due to Tory reforms. We are still reaping what Thatcher sowed.
3. There are loads of related areas where we have failed. Productivity, the tax credit fiasco, the waste of tax billions on silly public sector jobs etc.
To reiterate. Labour have done OK economically, and that’s to their credit. But the record is too spotty, and too hedged with cavils, for them to be receiving hosannas.
As always with the Labour MP for Broxtowe, spin takes priority. “My recollection is that Lib Dem voters still split 60:40 in favour of a Labour Government”
Bob Worcester publishes a fascinating survey of post election voting after General Elections. The gist is clear, the Lib vote tends towards the ascendant or leading party of teh big two.
In 1983/87/92 it went Conservative. In 97/01 it went Labour (I do not have 05)
The best recordable xample is Australia where the centre party second prefernces trend towards the leading party, be it Labour or Liberal.
I suspect more Broxtowe voters may be affected by their Labour candidates unswerving support of Pervy Prescott than his so loyal contributions here.
Perhaps Broxtowe is completely under the spell of Alastair Campbell.
26.2 I think you mean Ken Clarke rather than Thatcher?
OT there is a chance for serious drinkers among you to support local pubs serving real ale. (A dogwhistle if ever I heard one!)
No Hosannas Reqd.
Labour has done well/ok. Not sure I agree with your 1,2 and 3. But hey who cares! It’s what’s next that really counts and make me lose my house or get better off.
I am really honestly sure what upcoming big ideas are. Just green taxes, possible reform of low end income tax. Am I missing a trick?
We all want the British economy to continue to be basically stable and grow. Not sure that the current settlement will continue to deliver this and Green or flat Taxes are asking the right questions.
126. Well here are the respective growth rates for UK and USA
Year UK USA
1996 2.8% 3.7%
1997 3.0% 4.5%
1998 3.3% 4.2%
1999 3.0% 4.4%
2000 3.8% 3.7%
2001 2.4% 0.8%
2002 2.1% 1.6%
2003 2.7% 2.5%
2004 3.3% 3.9%
2005 1.9% 3.2%
2006 2.8%* 3.2%*
* - forecasts
The Americans outperformed us during Clinton’s era, but we grew faster than them from 2000-2003 inclusive, and though the forecats at the beginning of the year were for them to grow faster than us in 2006, they are slowing rapidly and might not make it.
Incidently, the American figures illustrate perfectly what happens when you change administration, and in particular it reflects Bush’s downgrading of the office of the Treasury secretary (which was dominant during Clinton’s time).
130. So basically their growth was better than ours until 9/11 then after a short blip they are now back above us.
Snowflake, America also has higher productivity than us, etc etc. A comparison with Ireland and Oz would also be salutary.
But - anyway - you seem to confess that the USA has done better than us, albeit not dramatically.
Geewhillikins! Are you actually admitting that someone else might be right? And you wrong? Snowflake? Hello? Hello? Are you alright? Shall I call nursey?!!
9/11 came three-quarters into 2001, and they were slowing down well before. Since Bush came to office they only outperformed us for 2 years - just pipping us in 2004, and in 2005. They are slowing faster than forecast this year. And 2007 looks poor for them too. And what’s more, our growth has been steady - no boom and bust.
Incidently, the American figures illustrate perfectly what happens when you change administration, and in particular it reflects Bush’s downgrading of the office of the Treasury secretary (which was dominant during Clinton’s time).
So the dot-com bom and the irrational exuberance of the late 1990s was actually a sustainable phenomenon which only needed the election of the inventor of the internet (step forward Mr Gore!) to maintain its momentum? Interesting.
I also though Bush’s government was one of the biggest spenders of all time - not sure if this supports or negates you thesis though.
132. Sean if you read my previous post, I say that the Clinton economy was good and that Bush hurt America, and that compared to America under Bush, Britain is well run.