Don’t write off Labour’s “Toff” attacks?
May 13th, 2008
crewe.tv
This could be a good strategy to get the vote out?
Labour’s core strategy in Crewe and Nantwich to portray their main opponent as a “Tory Toff” has attracted a lot of criticism and has even proved a bit too rich for some contributors to LabourHome.
The sight, as above, of Labour activists seeking to follow the Tory candidate dressed up as “Toffs” and the emphasis on his background in campaign leaflets has been the principle theme of the party’s by election defence.
It easy to write this off but this has become almost standard by election fare when Labour has been threatened with losing a seat. The strategy, first seen at Birmingham Hodge Hill in 2004, is to find what appears to be a weakness in the party’s main opponent and then going hell for leather to repeat this on every occasion. It’s not pretty but it worked in that by election as well as at Hartlepool a few months later.
In the former Labour was able to exploit the fact the Lib Dem candidate’s day job was in the community relations aspects of the location of mobile phone masts. In the latter the party made their central theme unwise and patronising comments that the Lib Dem candidate made in her blog about some of the people of Hartlepool.
The “Toff” attack does not quite have the same potency as these earlier campaigns. Labour needs something firmer and more specific about the Tory candidate and that might come in the remaining eight days.
It’s important to understand that all this is not designed to switch votes but simply to provide a message that motivates Labour activists and voters to make sure they turn out on May 22nd. The main danger is if the approach fails to resonate with your own supporters but has the effect of motivating the opposition.
For me the big development today should be the publication of the full data from ICM’s C&N poll that came out at the weekend. This should give us a clearer idea of the cross-party dynamics and help to explain even further the disparity between the general election voting intention in the constituency and the by election. The former figures had the Tories 16% ahead while in the latter it was just 4%.
Mike Smithson
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It’s clearly a load of cobblers, just like Edward Timpson’s family background. People know the Timpson name as the nice little traditional shop that sells key, shoe laces and house signs. His family may own a lot of them, but it’s not an image that screams ‘Loadsamoney’ to anyone.
the disparity in the ICM poll isnt too surprising. Think about it this was, C&N is the Tories 165th top target seat, so assuming they take their 165 top targets and nothing else at the next election, and that they lose no seats, they would end up with a majority of about 72, which is roughly inline with the national poll given by ICM. If you consider that alot of that increased vote share will go into making current Tory seats even safer, as you go further along the list of target seats, the number of votes likely to be won over by the Tories is fewer, while the number required to beat the Labour candidate would be greater.
It would make sense if the Tories took their 20th top target with a majority of 4,000, their 100th top target with a majority of 1,500, and their 165th tip target with a majority of only 200. If you look at it this way, the disparity isn’t too surprising.
It didn’t help Ken against Boris.
I suppose this line of attack has greater significance beyond this one campaign. From a purely amoral and calculating perspective, it makes sense to use one by-election, largely out of the national spotlight, where you put the toff issue front and centre to see how much it works. Then they can make a decision about whether it would be helpful or damaging to use it against Cameron on a national basis.
What is the ethymology of ‘toff’?
toff
lower-class British slang for “stylish dresser, member of the smart set,” 1851, probably an alteration of tuft, formerly an Oxford Univ. term for a nobleman or gentleman-commoner (1755), in ref. to the gold ornamental tassel worn on the caps of undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge whose fathers were peers with votes in the House of Lords.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=toff&searchmode=none
So I guess — using the ‘toff’ argument — the Labouristas are saying : we are a low-class British mob!
6 Philippe,
Labour used to be the party of the working class. Now its leaders are a bunch of toffee-nosed prigs; people from whom one would certainly not purchase a partly-used Bentley.
Malcolm
3. Socrates
I think you are spot on.
Mike, great article. I think you are right that this is a core vote strategy. I just get the impression that it isn’t going to work. It would be interesting to see if we could dig up how the Conservatives defended by-elections with Blair as it could be instructive.
1 - you’ve misunderstoof the point.
re 1. Oliver - I think you might be mistaken because it reads as though you think there were two ICM polls. There was only one and it was solely of C&N voters. The disparity was that on by election voting the Tory lead was 4% while from the same people their general election voting intention had a 16% Tory lead.
This doesn’t look right and there have been a number of explanations. Getting the detail will be very illuminating.
Crewe and Nantwich isn’t Hartlepool. The swivel-eyed moron section of the core vote won’t turn a by-election and the real lowest common denominator voter is the only one who will be actively turned on by pathetic posturing of this kind.
This is such a cheap campaign trick that it deserves to fail.
It is truly desperate stuff and if it is the best Labour can come up with it proves they are on the road to electoral disaster.
12 - I’m not suggesting Hartlepool is full of swivel-eyed morons by the way. It might be, I’ve never been, but Labour’s core vote is much more dominant there. I should perhaps have made two points in that post. Sorry, just woke up!
The final nail in John Major’s coffin was hammered in when he launched a similar campaign against Tony Blair in ‘97.
JM attempted to make great play of his own lowly origins in contrast to those of his rival.It went down badly and I thought Major let himself down.
I am not sure it really did work in Hodge Hill. We will never get to test the hypothesis of what would have happened had Labour not majored on the Lib Dem candidate’s job. But the swing was significantly bigger than in Leicester South and the fall in the Labour vote was fractionally bigger than in Brent (although the swing was slightly smaller but this may have been down to Respect more than Labour).
Certainly, if it did work, its effect was marginal albeit on the figures it may possibly have just saved the seat as the result was extremely close - but I am sceptical. Of course, if the Conservatives achieve a swing of even half that in Hodge Hill, they will win quite easily.
The Labour vote in 97 was a coalition of various groups. By 2005 that had diminished but in 2008 it has clearly fallen apart.
What is the size of the Labour core vote in C&N? Probably under 20%.
What does 20% do for Labour? Answer gives it 3rd place.
Which is what it deserves.
Have posted this before but had no serious reply. The 4% by-election margin is after adjusting some 9% for “shy” Labour voters with the lead being around 13% without this. Have the GE margins been similarly adjusted? If not, then the margins are not far apart.
Another key internal Labour group comes out against Brown.
Spectator “Brown loses his Compass. ………the piece by Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, in The Independent calling on Brown to return to the Treasury for the good of the movement does seem like a seismic moment…”
http://tinyurl.com/4xtl3f
So that is the Blairites, the Far left, the soft left, Guardianista commentariat….. all openly anti-Brown.
Which leaves 2 groups not calling for Brown to go, Brownites and the unions. And some former Brownites like Bendy Wendy are putting some distance between themselves and Brown.
Was Major this beleagured?
As a Labour Party member, I think this isn’t just puerile (imagine if the Tories said someone shouldn’t be an MP because they’d been to a comprehensive, or if they labelled a candidate a ‘chav’) but also counter-productive. It could easily be construed, particularly when taken alongside the rows over the 10p tax rate, high fuel taxes, schools admissions policies, and non-doms, as Labour hating success and aspiration, of being against people getting on, something we spent absolutely ages to live down from the seventies and eighties. It’ll remind people of a time when the likes of the late Mo Mowlam were driven to despair by Labour Party meetings resembling Monty Python’s Four Yorkshiremen sketch (’You had it easy, we to live in a rolled up newspaper’), or of Labour Left Briefing’s feature ‘Class Traitor of the Month’.
Also, it may reinforce Cameron’s compassionate conservatism con trick - many voters, when they hear toff, might think of the likes of the late Ian Gilmour and the late Francis Pym. If many people think (mistakenly) that the Tories have gone back to the days of Macmillan, with a middle-of-the-road Old Etonian as leader, what better way to reinforce this than to hark on about top hats and big houses?
Most of all, the people behind this don’t seem to realise that things have moved on. It’s just summed up by referring to the Tory candidate as ‘Tory Boy’. Enfield’s anti-hero might have captured the mood in the 90s, but Richard Curtis has made it socially acceptable to be upper middle-class. Besides which, all these swivel-eyed apparatchiks such as Ed Balls look and sound like Labour versions of Tory Boy anyway.
In fact, it just reinforces the image of the party having become an unpleasant sect taking a break from talking to itself (and fighting with itself) to have a go at particular social groups, rather like Peter Lilley singing songs about single parents in the early 90s. We look like some ASBOed family which, when not having ear-splitting rows with each other, throws bottles at the ‘nobs’ next door.
And I think many people will find such chippiness and inverted snobbery merely the mirror image of, and as hateful as, members of the fogeyish Tory right sneering at the proles (you know the sort of thing, Simon Heffer sneering at football fans in replica shirts, Digby Anderson wailing how difficult it is to differentiate betweeen undergraduates of different social backgrounds, Peter Hitchens lambasting what he sees as Matthew Parris’ submission to a BBC ‘anti-southern’ agenda for pronouncing a flat a in Aldermaston, and Theodore Dalrymple sneering at a train station announcer for rhyming the second part of Newcastle to rhyme with hassle).
14 URW. By 1997 brand Conservative was so damaged that Major could have accussed Blair of eating new born babies for breakfast and still lost in a landslide.
The 92 election is a better example where in one cringeworthy PPB Major was seen touring Brixton in a chauffeur driven Jaguar pointing out his humble origins and the shops where he bought his grey Y fronts and frozen peas !! ….. at the time it was said that if you were seen in Brixton in such a car you were either a drug dealer on the make , a pimp on the make or a desperate politician on the make. IMO all three deserved a tug from the local constabulary !!!
Then there was the old Folkestone grave robber who used a decent line against Blair in the Commons at PMQ’s :
“This Grammar school boy will take no lectures from that public school boy …….”
‘Cost of new Navy carriers soars to £4.2bn’
“… even if a swift resolution is found, neither HMS Queen Elizabeth or HMS Prince of Wales are now likely to meet planned in-service dates of 2014 and 2016.
The politically-sensitive carrier contract is designed to underpin about 10,000 British shipbuilding jobs, including 3500 on the Clyde, until the middle to late years of the next decade and is regarded by Downing Street as sacrosanct in the run-up to the next General Election, due between now and 2010.”
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2265948.0.Cost_of_new_Navy_carriers_soars_to_4_2bn.php
14: Without commenting on Crewe, I agree at a technical level with James about the Hodge Hill and Leicester S by-elections: Leciester S was marginally the better result in swing terms (even though we lost the seat and held Hodge Hill), and in Leicester S the LibDem fought the nastier campaign. I remember a full-page “Shame on you Peter Soulsby” leaflet attacking the Labour candidate for some council decision that had been taken many years earlier. The Labour criticism of the LD candidate was limited to the fact that he’d almost never spoken in the Council, which I think was a reasonable point to make and proved a justified warning - once elected, the LD as an MP IIRC rarely spoke in Parliament either, and he lost heavily at the following GE.
But it’s hard to analyse these things as there are so many other variables. What stuffed us in Leciester S was the temporary loss of the ethnic minority vote to the LDs and Respect over Iraq - it largely returned at the GE. As I said at the time, I’ve never met so many *polite* people telling me to get lost in the nicest possible way - ‘Regrettably, Sir, on this occasion I am afraid that due to our disagreement on Iraq…’ I never met anyone who was influenced by the LD attacks on Soulsby.
Incidentally, the LD candidate was (I think) Pakistani-born and Peter Soulsby isn’t, so the GE result showed again that ethnic minority voters don’t just vote as a bloc. One of the more entertaining experiences of the by-election was meeting an openly racist ex-Labour voter who said he was voting LD as he thought we were too soft on immigration. I just smiled politely at him without comment, and, when the LDs won, consoled myself with the thought of the voter’s fury when he found out what he’d done.
20 - Nurse, Quick…the old boy’s having one of his Major turns again. Hurry, and order a Currie: that usually does the trick.
23 John O.
I don’t think it’s a good strategy, waging class war died out years ago. It may get some of the core vote out, but as was proved by Boris v Ken, you can get your core vote out AND more by being positive and not taking cheap shots. Labour are desperate to shore up their crumbling vote by any means they can, this campaign may get out the dyed in the wool labour voters, but many swing voters and others may turn against it.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/andrew-grice/andrew-grice-darkening-mood-in-the-downing-street-bunker-826995.html
Some comments from ministers:
A cabinet minister said Mr Brown was “much more resilient than John Major”.
“If we don’t stabilise this very quickly, we are f*cked,” said another minister.
It could work to bolster the Labour vote, but it could also serve to infuriate natural Tories and those who feel the attacks are unseemly. I suspect overall it’ll have a slight negative effect.
Labour as the nasty racist party who would have thought it? Even if this strategy holds Crewe the damage to the party’s support base will be terrible. How can Shaun Woodward still support a party who despises and hates him not for what he thinks or does but who he is? The funny thing is that Shaun’s move let Cameron into Parliament and the rest is history. Was Shaun really a Trojan horse?
New Washington Post/ABC/TNS Presidential and Primary Poll :
McCain 46% .. Clinton 49%
McCain 44% .. Obama 51%
Clinton 41% .. Obama 53%
http://www.abcnews.go.com/images/PollingUnit/1064a208Election.pdf
19. One of the best posts of the last few weeks.
Richard Finlay, Professor of Scottish History at the University of Strathclyde, has a thought-provoking essay in today’s Herald on the topic of Thatcherism and the Scottish self-government movement in the 80’s and 90’s:
‘Who was her real enemy… Scotland or herself?’
There was even an element of cockiness following the 1987 defeat: “I am sometimes told the Scots don’t like Thatcherism. Well, I find that hard to believe - because the Scots invented Thatcherism, long before I was thought of.” This was political condescension at its worst.
… She accused devolutionists of seeking “separation by degrees” and said they wanted to “tear the kingdom apart”. It is quite remarkable the degree to which the Conservative Party refused to engage with the issue. The party of the Union could come up with no better defence than it was “necessary” to ensure English subsidies.
Funnily enough, that pretty much sums up the Scottish Labour Party’s arguments in favour of the Union: it is necessary to ensure English subsidies. (Utterly bogus in my opinion, but they really do believe it to be true.) Avarice and jealousy are profoundly unattractive character flaws.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/features/display.var.2265811.0.Who_was_her_real_enemy_Scotland_or_herself.php
19. Harry Enfield’s prime ‘toff’ character was Tim-Nice-but-Dim. A fairly high profile recent election would suggest that when someone is perceived as that kind of person, it’s not necessarily an electoral liability. Of course, Boris isn’t dim by any stretch of the imagination, but that wasn’t always the impression that came across.
Toffs are only a drawback on the ballot-paper if they’re not pleasant or look as if they’re using their privileges for their own benefit. I’m not even sure this is a good core-vote strategy for Labour; their core vote is surely more important about the 80 or 90 pence in the pound in their pocket than the background of their MP?
Assume the New Labour class warriors also consider Ed Balls with his public school and Oxbridge education a toff?
The “Daily Telegraph” speculates on whether a Hillary ‘Thank You’ video signals an early end to her campaign :
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/1951184/US-elections-Hillary-Clinton-thank-you-video-signals-pull-out.html
34 - could it be possible that she bows out gracefully on a “high” after her WV win tonight/tomorrow?
Labour should be taking a leaf out of ‘Tyson’s’ book and attacking the Tory candidate for being white. That would be guaranteed to pay big dividends in Crewe.
The “Independent” also reports on a shift in tone as Hillary campaigns in West Virginia ahead of her expected blow out win against Obama :
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/hillary-softens-tone-for-primary-swansong-827014.html
35 Eddie. Possibly, although her surrogates have all said that they want to play the game out until the final primaries in early June. Money is also short, so that has to put into the mix. Hillary may decide on a long valedictory tour to the end without the rancour or expensive ad buys etc.
18 you forgot the third group who are backing Brown all the way and to the next election - the tories
O/T: Alliance and Leicester lending is down more than 50% in the first 4 months of the year.
http://www.sharecast.com/cgi-bin/sharecast/story.cgi?story_id=2097733
36
That must be next on their hate list,now that they have done private education,Oxbridge education,success,large houses and aspiration.
40 thats a shocking figure. coupled with the news today that property transactions have fallen off a cliff suggests we will be in recession by Q3
40…and RICS house price survey at the weakest level since it began in the late 1970s. More fabulous news for Brown!
OT but what a fabulous site PoliticsHome is. I had that tracker all wrong, it’s actually a vital daily tracker of 5000 and YG runs it.
Today’s Daily Tracker says Govt approval has crashed over the last month, dropped off a cliff
“The overall scores have crashed from a net negative of c -20% at the start of April to net negatives of up to -60% in the last few days. This covers the period running up to the elections, and the Government relaunches and attempted fightback
There was a slight improvement at the start of April, when a deal was being reached over 10p tax, but the trend has been unremittingly downward for each indicator since then
Gordon Brown has been better judged than the Government in general, and Alistair Darling considered worse. In the last few days however, Gordon Brown is for the first time considered worse than the Government in general”
PoliticsHome is like a sort of “serious Drudge” ie, it has all the important links, all the important video and audio files - eg if you want Frank Field or Alan Johnson they’re there - and it does nothing lighthearted, just all politics all the time.
And the tracker goes up at 7:30 every morning
PB is by miles the best site for comments and debate but PoliticsHome will become the go-to site for junkies
40, 42, 43 - well, we all knew the housing market was due a fair sized correction. Let’s just hope it manifests as a sustained period of weakness rather than an abrupt crash: that could get ugly.
29 - That poll was of adults which is practically meaningless as millions aren’t registered/won’t vote. It is no wonder US polls are so inaccurate, they either don’t sample correctly or have ridiculuously small sample sizes. The polls for the nomination are worst - a recent national CBS/NYT poll had a sample size of c. 280! With a country the size of the US you need at least 1,000 and preferably 2,000.
Now even pledged delegates are switching..
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051202554.html?referrer=digg
O/T - Brown won’t like this, Northern Rock rearing its ugly head again.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=565920&in_page_id=1770
46 - To add FWIW Obama now leads McCain by 4.5% in the RCP averages, the biggest lead since he became the presumptive nominee. He is already getting a unity bounce, but would expect even more when Hillary withdraws.
48 what a shock. that is after all the reason it went bust in the first place. it has a toxic loan book of liar loans and high LTV mortgages. Nrock will cost the taxpayer 5bn if it goes to plan and 10bn+ if the property market collapses.
it is a nightmare position for the country.
Re. 30, cheers Harry.
Re. 32, quite, like Jonathan Guinness in the 1973 Lincoln by-election, the Tory candidate who was reported as saying that the death penalty wasn’t necessary because you could just give a murderer a razor, and leave him to do the decent thing.
Re. 33, oddly enough, as Dominic Lawson points out in today’s Indy, it’s not ministers from working-class backgrounds such as Alan Johnson who go in for this class warfare, but the likes of Ed Balls. As Lawson says, it’s as if they feel guilty at having received a private education, and want to take their guilt out on someone else.
40 42 43
Ed will be along in a minute to ressure us that everything in the UK housing market is rosy. LOL
Is he an estate agent I wonder?
31. Stuart - why even bother postıng that? What’s your poınt? It’s not as ıf the RSN (Royal Scottısh Navy) or (Republıc of Scotland Navy, ıf you prefer..) wıll consıst of anythıng more than a few fıshıng trawlers and a 25-yr old mınesweeper. All the serıous stuff wıll be ın the resıdual UK.
Not sayıng ıt to wınd you up, but much of Scotlands defence ındustry depends on ıt remaınıng ın the Unıon.
Eıther way, we’ll stıll end up protectıng you - and gettıng crıtıcsed for ıt - ıt’s just you won’t have the jobs jımmy!
Toff attack, isn’t a good tactic while the Tories are in opposition, but once in power, and the inevitable happens, gilt and gingerbread separate, then it becomes much more potent.
‘Well what do you expect, bunch of old Etonians, what do they know about real life’ etc. etc.
Re. 53: I meant “21″ naturally
45 The size of the grossly inflated house price bubble suggests that it’s going to fall off a clif rather than the “soft landing” or “plateauing” so desperately desired by the vested interests in the industry.
The time when a soft landing of some sorts may have been possible was back in 2005 when the air was coming out of the housing bubble but 5 of Brown’s stooges on the MPC voted to cut interest rates allowing the industry and its shills to hype it up all over again.
We are now reaping the consequences. Nominal falls of 30 to 40% over the next 2 or 3 years IMO.
This might successful as a defensive measure, rather similar to the Tory concentration on their core voters after 1997. It helps shore up a weak position but makes it more difficult move out and capture the other voters necessary for national victory. As such it is a sign of weakness, a desire to reduce losses and ensure that at least 25-30% of the vote nationally is retained. In this limited respect, it can be successful. I think it is arguable, though we will never be able to prove it, that Hague’s concentration on core voters in 2001 prevented a further collapse of the Tory vote. It ruled out the chance of winning but it reduced the losses and left the Party able to fight another day.
In C&N I don’t think the Labour core vote is large enough for this strategy to be successful. It might keep them in second place, however, which might be the best they can expect.
54. Coldstone, as your much shrewder colleague posted at ‘19′ noone gıvıng a flyıng f**k about class any more. And they haven’t for over 20 years.
People aspıre to be wealthy and successful. They don’t even have a problem wıth ınherıted wealth.
As I’ve saıd before, ıt was almost worth votıng for Cameron for hıs class background *ALONE* durıng the Conservatıve leadershıp contest ın 2005.
Why? Because Labour sımply cannot RESIST a bıt of class baıtıng. It’s lıke holdıng a red-rag to a bull. Wavıng a chunk of fresh meat ın front of a salıvatıng Alsatıon. A plate of beer to a thırsty slug. A fresh carrot to a hungry rabbıt. THEY CANT RESIST IT.
Class warfare. The Labour Party. It’s theır raıson d’etre. It’s why they exıst.
I am perfectly happy for them to enjoy themselves havıng a go at “toffs” however, because ıt alıentates mıddle-england and completely dıstracts them from a strategy whıch mıght actually land some blows on Cameron and be successful.
Don’t ınterrupt your enemy when he ıs makıng a mıstake!!
http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=94e9005d-d8d6-46e2-b09a-697a4e23a900
Latest SUSA poll for Oregon:
Obama 54 (+4)
Clinton 43 (-1)
Changes on last week. They are voting now / have already. Don’t see Clinton pulling off a surprise.
54 - Do you want to bet on that?
It will take much more than this nasty, childish, and desperate attack on Timpson as a “toff” (which he clearly isn’t, anyway) to get the Crewe working class down the polling booths to vote Labour. Increasing numbers of traditional Labour voters are angry and disillusioned with their party and will sit on their hands or even vote elsewhere.
It will be a comfortable Tory win IMO, though I’m not sure if the Lib Dems will push Labour into third place as most of the huge, growing anti-Labour vote will go to the Tories.
57. I agree. But I thınk Hague dıd overplay the Euro a bıt. He should have combıned ıt wıth Immıgratıon, and Constıtutıonal Integrıty.
2001 ıs stıll the low poınt. Lower than 2003 ın my vıew. It ıs also probably true that had turnout been *larger* ın 2001, cırca 70%, the Conservatıves could have lost another 15-20 seats.
44/46 Kieran. I put all the polls I find up with a link and then leave it upto the punters to decide on their individual merits.
The pollsters have been all over the place. Some with a good record have bombed in more recent contests and vice versa !!!!
57 I already am betting on it, and I don’t mean the odd fifty quid. I’ve got a huge bet on UK house prices falling off a cliff within the next couple of years and I’m looking forward to cleaning up.
19 - Good post. And Theodore Dalrymple said that? Pillock.
I’m sure all this was put to bed long ago, but in response to Tyson’s post yesterday about white towns being boring - well, I think it’s more the size of Exeter that makes it boring (to his tastes) rather than the colour. Luton, for example, isn’t desperately much fun either despite the ethnic mix. Meanwhile, Newcastle, Sheffield and Liverpool - the whitest of our big cities - tend to be more fun than their more cosmopolitan counterparts like Leeds and Birmingham. Nothing to do with the racial mix; all to do with the size and vibrancy of the city.
60 - Well don’t take this the wrong way but I really hope you lose.
56 Kieran. That SUSA is much in line with other recent Oregon polls - Obama around 10 points plus ahead. As you say Hillary will struggle to pull it out.
On thread, it’s a wretched strategy. It is likely to fail. It deserves too.
58 - “I’m not sure if the Lib Dems will push Labour into third place as most of the huge, growing anti-Labour vote will go to the Tories.”
I’m still far from convinced we can wright-off the LibDems, my head says that both in Crewe and in Henley they will do poorly (compared to the party’s strong showings in by-elections over the last 15-20 years)… but the LibDems have been ignored or dissmissed in the past and come back to confound expectations.
Either way I’m not convinced this is a ’sure thing’ from a conservative perspective and lots of work still needs to be done over the next two weeks (Leicester will be down to Crewe next Wednesday through till the Friday
).
test
62 K, no offence taken
It’s as close to a one way bet as it’s possible to have IMO.
61 - Obviously this is personal opinion.
White towns are not necessarily boring, but everywhere is boring compared to say London.
FWIW I reckon Newcastle is totally overrated. Depends if you think vomit is fun I guess.
Leeds is much better than Sheffield.
Luton is an irredeemable dump.
Ethnic mix doesn’t make a town great in itself. Bradford is as cosmopolitan as you can get, but it is still a dive and half of it has been bulldozed. York and Lancaster are great places but there’s not much of an ethnic mix. Cardiff and Swansea are very white but frankly awesome nights out.
How on earth can Labour protest about the Tory candidate being a toff? Tony Blair went to Fettes College, Scotland’s answer to Eton, Alistair Darling went to Loretto, Scotland’s answer to Harrow, Ed Balls, Harriet Harman etc etcthe Government is full of public school educated “toffs” and of course we have Tessa Jowell who is so rich she didn’t enquire from her husband why she was signing £300,000 mortgage documents every other month, Geoffrey Robinson who loaned £300,000 to Peter Mandelson because he was a nice chap. If after 11 years in power Labour (forget the “new” tag as they have never managed to grow up and leave the politics of envy behind)can only attack the fact the Tory candidate’s father bought back the family shoe making company, it doesn’t say much for their supposed record in Government. Are they going to give equal publicity to the fact that the Timson family gave hope to over 80 kids from difficult family backgrounds by fostering them over the years, I doubt it. Mike could we have a whip round and buy something new for Tamsin Dunwoody to wear? Obviously no-one has taught her how to put her arms into the sleeves of that red cardigan which has been draped over her shoulders for the past week!
64 - A toff strategy is clearly not going to work nationally but may do locally in Crewe, I don’t know enough about the situation. In terms of Cameron though I think it is fair game to highlight his privileged upbringing. The reason is that he has tried to cultivate an image as an ordinary man, in touch with common people and their problems. I don’t think it is morally objectionable to point out that he has had a much more priveleged life than the vast majority of people. It is unlikely to work though as (a) Cameron’s image is largely set and (b) class is less important to people and (c) policy issues and the performance of the government are far more important to people.
Even if the 10% tax band issue subsides, The Tories could start reminding voters in Crewe and Nantwich about Darling’s increases in Road Tax - for environmental reasons of course - and how it will hit car users.
Testing
UK inflation numbers are horrific, worse than anyone imagined.
Politicshome has news of another helpful Levy intervention
“Lord Levy told Gordon Brown that he was under “great pressure” at the moment, and urged him to: “get yourself physically together and work out how you’re going to win back the confidence of the country”
Asked what he thought Tony Blair’s feelings were, he said: “Mr Blair must be horrified at the state of Labour”
And he said that current opinion polls suggested it was now “unquestionable” David Cameron would become prime minister at the next election.”
They should have come to his book launch!
im sure the ‘Toff’ issue will pass like a ’summer storm’….. Gordons gone in days
71 - Indeed, see this from ConHome. Also includes a misspelling on the Dunwoody website. Oops.
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/goldlist/2008/05/tory-campaign-i.html
73 - Perhaps people will now stop suggesting there is some conspiracy keeping the inflation figures down.
22 “The Labour criticism of the LD candidate was limited to the fact that he’d almost never spoken in the Council”
You are being overly generous there Nick.
At the end of the campaign Labour were distributing a leaflet to all the white estates. It had Soulsby on one side with just the word “Strong” and Parmjit on the other with just the word “WEAK”.
Labour’s justification for this would no doubt be that he didn’t say much at council metings but the imagery on the leaflet was, at best, open to interpretation.
I think it’s a reas0nable strategy certainly as a pr0totype. Being a t0ff has never been a problem in Britain but when it’s linked to wealth and particularly priv*lege in the unmerit0crtatic sense it can quickly become one.
Take for example the sons of Derek Conway. Had they been working in downtown Bombay fighting malaria we’d have been cheering the Public School ethic to the rafters…..but “f*ck off I’m rich” parties is what most people believe the reality is. So far Cameron’s got away with it and if B0ris manages to avoid a ‘let them eat cake’ moment then he might continue to. But I doubt he will.
77. Will that make you feel better?
67: Where do you bet? I’d be tempted to join you. 40%+ fall is nailed on.
74
There’s only one way Labour would win C&N Test, for you to go there and campaign for the Tories. After all you did a brilliant job in E&S!!
One thing GB hasn’t been responsible for at least.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=566023&in_page_id=1770
61: Any monoculture tends to be rather dull be it Anglo-Saxon, Bengali, or Oxford liberal.
80 - Not really.
On the inflation figures CPI is 3%, RPI 4.2%, RPIX 4%. The figures last month were 2.5, 3.8 and 3.5.
Note: Increase in excise duties has had an effect.
77 - Well if the CPI is dreadful then RPI would be worse and even that is probably way off the marginal impact of certain aspects of inflation on essentials etc.
So far everyone has assumed that his background will be a problem for Cameron. However, I detect ways in which he has tried to turn it to his advantage, although it’s still to be seen how successful this will be. In his conference speech last year he described the public spirit of his parents, and especially his mother, serving as a magistrate and being an all-round local worthy – sitting on local charities and taking leading roles in the Mothers’ Union and the WI. I wonder if stressing this old style upper middle class public service ethos will play well to a public increasingly disenchanted by politicians who have clawed their way up from humble backgrounds but seem only too eager to put their snouts in the trough. After all there is a long tradition of duty and disinterested service, still exemplified in many people’s eyes by the Queen, which contrasts with the antics of the new ‘political class’.
86 good post
73. The worst part about those numbers is that the old RPIX measure has reached 4% - the central target used to be 2.5%. The highest figure since 1992. The Bank won’t be able to cushion the downturn like the Fed has - a recession is coming, Labour to poll 20% at the GE whohoahahahahaha
I think it’s time to put the ES myth to bed, Coldstone. We did well there, iirc. Our vote went up when Labour’s went down, against (again iirc) national opinion polls at the time. We gained five councillors and we had a charismatic candidate. Our mistake, mine certainly, was to extrapolate from the enthusiasm and ground activity that we stood a chance in a rock-solid safe Labour seat. I doubt the Blair photo/corporate donation made any difference at all to the vote. We were fighting on Labour turf during a rough patch for the Tories nationally and that was really that.
I think the C&N result will show the techniques used at ES work, in a seat that’s very difficult but not totally impossible.
84 I’ve been doing this for 13 years now and I don’t think the picture has looked so bleak since before not so black Wednesday. We are heading for a recession at least as bad as those during the tory years.
I’m pretty much inflation proofed and I feel worried - people whose disposable incomes are small are in desperate trouble even if they don’t know it.
85 - According to the ONS the main reason for the increases are food and fuel.
86. Well said. I think there is a real appetite for a political leader whos epitomises the old fashioned values of disinterested aristocratic government which served Britain so well in the 19th century.
A man of means has no reason to pilfer the public purse, and indeed would consider it shockingly poor form to do so. The contrast with the behaviour of the insecure, grasping middle class types who inhabit the upper echelons of the socialist party is very clear.
65/72. I think this more to do with Tysons apparant dislike of White people.
I really wouldn’t read too much into it.
Interesting to note that the front page link on the Labour C&N website to the notorious toff page has been removed.
As far as I can see, you can only get to it now if you know the address.
91 so should we be cutting taxes to help boost the economy in face of a slowdown?
O/T ……PtP a knighthood for Saddlers Wells???
91. Oh well that’s OK then. All people need to do is turn off the hot water, turn off the cooker and stop eating. Easy.
90, not good for any government, but particularly dire for one led by a former chancellor who claimed to have abolished boom and bust, presumably after creating the heavens and the earth.
95 should read Sadlers Wells!!!
92 - Which Labour Minister has pilfered from the public purse?
96 - I never said that it wasn’t a problem, was just conveying a piece of factua information. But of course a Conservative government would miraculously lower the price of food and fuel.
92 - honestly, I think this kind of thing might help Cameron more…
http://adamboulton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/05/cams-the-man.html
97. Perhaps it’s the seventh day now, and he is resting.
The Downing Street Parrot cries out “Inflation is 2%, Inflation is 2%.”
[99] Why argue with someone who thinks the country would be better governed by hereditary peers than elected politicians?
104 - Good point!
109. Constitutionally, the whole country is run on an hereditary principle - the Monarch.
95. Would have to be honourary as he lives in Ireland. Not had to pay tax on his income for years as well!!
79
Roger,have you now finished your move?
Nice to Cameron leading on Burma aid and suggesting air drops.
Just a minute though didn’t Clegg suggest that very idea last week?
rogerh
Even at 3% inflation is still being massively understated. Wonder what King’s letter will say.
‘It’s your fault’
108: Just after the French and Americans did.
102 - Well he certainly isn’t smiting his enemies. The zeal of the Gord isn’t accomplishing much really is it.
109 - I would expect it to talk about global economic circumstances. You know things like oil being over $120 a barrel and huge rises in gas wholesale prices. Because both those are down to the mistakes of our Prime Minister.
Well of course inflation is going up. You don’t have fuel at this absurdly high level and inflation doesn’t move. Beats me why Labour don’t cut the tax on petrol. In the end, the government has got a vested interest in trying to keep the price at a reasonable level so that prices and inflaion don’t got up.
Regarding Labour’s behviour in Crewe, I don’t deny this class war politics has worked before, but the Tories are in a completely differant place now and the country has moved on. My prediction is hat whilst it may galvanise a small number of class warriors, many more will be turned off by Labour’s negative message.
112 so the obvious thing to do is cut taxes to boost the economy. oh we cant cos the govt is bankrupt and putting up taxes for the poor.
105.
(1) Tax could be reduced on fuel.
(2) The remit of the competition commission/planning law could be altered to allow greater, local supermarket competition
(3) Silly one - but one could be encouraged to grow ones own veg in a revitalised allotments programme - “dig for cheap food!”
Were we not in the EU…
(3) Import duties/levies could be reduced on non-EU food imports
(4) Additional bilateral trade agreements with other countries could be struck
The most important change a Conservative government would bring about is more stable public finances, better financial regulation and a lower tax burden.
19 - excellent post and it reinforces many of my own fears.
I mean it all looks a bit desperate. Have Labour got any beef on this candidate? It’s not enough to say he went to a certain school. If he were a socially elitist snob, that would be something else. No doubt throughout the campaign he can claim that he’s concerned with all the local issues like schools, hospitals, cost of living, whilst his Labour opponents just want to make cheap jibes. Coldstone has a point though, that when in government it will be difficult for Cameron to introduce radical policies on things like welfare etc. and people will start to focus more on the privileged backgrounds of so many of his advisors. ‘What do they really know about us’ people might think.
So the one way in which the Toff line might work in this election is it could remind people that the Tories are run by a group of almost exclusively privileged individuals and do people really want this?
81. So when are you putting your house on the market, then?
If you’re so confident you’ll be able to buy it back for a song in a couple of years …
112. Some of the blame for the high oil price can be laid at the feet of the previous PM and this one for funding aggressive wars on sovereign oil rich nations and destabilizing the region.
Pre the invasion of Iraq oil as $22 a barrel.
Guys (Mike S/Paul etc) - why are all my comments held up in moderation?
Yes, I’m postıng from abroad, but my username and emaıl should be all kosher!!
60: “I’ve got a huge bet on UK house prices falling off a cliff within the next couple of years and I’m looking forward to cleaning up”
What a cheery post for those of us who have got on the property ladder fairly recently!
109. inflation massively understated? how so? are you implying fraud by the ONS or some magic missing ingredient in the sums? it seems to me that people who parrot this line basically misunderstand what inflation is.
112. neither are down to UK government policy, of course.
114 - I agree it would be better if there was more room to do this. It would be perverse to suggest otherwise. I’ve never claimed the government is perfect. The problem I have is people trying to argue it is all the fault of the government and international factors are not important at all.
115 - Who, in the Cabinet today, is NOT a privileged individual?
44 - PoliticsHome may have lots of good content but it is the ugliest website I have had the misfortune to look at in a very long time. I only visit it when directed by an important story and I have a strong aversion to exploring a website with such an eyestrain-inducing design.
Re the “rescue package”* to be announced by Darling, what’s the betting that it ends up full of holes, and creates further chaos?
It would be sweet justice if GB’s attempt to wrongfoot Dave in the 07 Budget ends up bringing down Gordon, Darling and the whole Labour government…
(* - ie, attempted ‘rescue’ of Labour’s hopes in the C&N by-election…)
voxpop, glad to hear your money is where your mouth is on this - but you are betting against historical price movements and against the UK economy really so I would be nervous in that position (as I am to some extent with my own massive de facto bet on house prices holding up somewhat).
and please don’t accuse me of being an estate agent!
119. Yes massive fraud. The huge deflationary pressures on manufactured goods from China is used to hide hyper inflation in other goods.
Goods like ipods, plasma tvs, digital radios are put in there, such products can reduce in price by 50% over a year, hiding the 25%+ increase in food prices, the 100% increase in fuel prices etc.
117. I think that is a highly tenuous line of reasoning, and the implication that oil prices would be a fraction of what they are now if it weren’t for that pesky war is contrary to all logic.
123 - “what’s the betting that it ends up full of holes, and creates further chaos?”
Out of interest - what would make you happier? A neat and elegant solution which reimburses the 10p rate losers in a targeted way or a complete shambles which leaves more questions than answers?
114. Isn’t the autumn pre-budget report going to be fun? Darling will face collapsing revenues and may have to tighten policy even as households are screaming for relief due to their disposable incomes being so badly squeezed. It will really be ‘let them eat cake’ time.
This is the price for squandering the proceeds of a decade of growth on trying to build a payroll vote.
Labour are in the deepest hole you can imagine, at least as bad as the Tories in 1992-1993. Very possibly worse.
Whoahahahaha
127. this graph seems to suggest the invasion of Iraq had an impact
http://www.wtrg.com/oil_graphs/oilprice1947.gif
125. so you don’t want to include any falling prices in your hypothetical “inflation” measure of whether prices are going up or down? explain! that sounds crazy.
125 - How do you think inflation should be calculated?
The ONS figures seem a reasonable method. Essentially they have a basket of goods which they weight in proportion to the spending habits of the average person. So if the average spend on food is 15%, the index will be made up of 15% food products. Obviously some individuals will experience higher inflation than others but this is a national measure.
However the ONS is transparent. Each month it gives a breakdown of which sections have seen increases and decreases (so no attempt to hide) and have an individual calculator on their website.
130. When you gerrymander the basket of goods to hide peoples growing costs, then yes it is a fraud.
112. Remind how much tax the govt take on fuel? How come when inflation is low it’s the govts doing and when it’s high it’s the fault of global markets. Funny that.
119. The magic ingredient is to take out things like council tax. Would love to know how I go about not having to pay that!
133. The government is profiting quite well out of high fuel prices, outside of the duty etc, by the tax on corporation profits of oil companies and the larger value of the oil revenues.
Perfectly possible for the government to temporarily half the fuel duty and it be revenue neutral.
Cheers, tears and fears as Hillary wows them in West Virginia :
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-women13-2008may13,0,7026289.story
From today’s FT: “The pound recovered sharply from early losses on Monday after soaring producer price inflation data stifled expectations for aggressive UK interest rate cuts.
Figures showed UK output prices rose 1.4 per cent in April, taking the annual rate to 7.5 per cent – the highest readings since the data series began in 1986.”
With retailers trying to maintain their cash margins on lower sales by increasing mark up expect RPI and even CPI to soar in the next few months. This as the market knows will stop the Bank reducing interest rates which is in fact what is needed. Interest rates higher than our competitors will just exacerbate the slow down that is coming.
But at least some companies have their priorities right (also Todays FT):
“Alliance & Leicester, the mortgage lender whose share price has halved in a year, is consulting shareholders about easing a key performance target in its incentive plan for directors.”
[133] Woody, which taxes do you actually want to pay?
133 - Could easily turn that around. For Tories when inflation was low it was all due to international markets, now it is higher it is all down to the government.
Yes lets just cut taxes by c. £20 billion. That won’t (a) cause any inflation whatsoever or (b) mean cuts in public spending will it?
The conservatives can get a lot of mileage out of criticising the government but seem much more reticient to offer tax cuts. And the ones they do offer would be of no help whatsoever. Cutting IHT is hardly going to help those most hit by inflation.
137. My point was Council Tax is unavoidable for most people so what justification can there by for leaving it out of the inflation figures.
136 - And Bankers wonder why they are hated… At least estate agents and bankers are set to join those of us they have fleeced in the dole queues
We’re in a mess. I feel no joy but tax cuts on things like fuel would be very welcome. Sadly, this government have squandered so much money that tax cuts seem impossible to contemplate.
Gordon Brown abolished boom and bust by creating BOOM and BUST….
The best way to help those hit by inflation is to cut VAT.
71 - dr spyn - “Even if the 10% tax band issue subsides…” It won’t!
The abolition of the 10% tax band creates a huge number of long term problems which a suggested increase in heating allowance this winter (for people aged 60 - 63) will not solve.
There are hundreds of thousands of men and women who have retired and will continue to retire well before the age of 60 or 65 for a huge variety of reasons.
Many of them were - and still are actually required to retire ‘early’ after having given decades of service to the country. Those in the armed forces, in the police service, in the prison service, in the fire service as well as in the lower management and clerical grades of the civil service are but a few examples.
The increase in the tax they pay on their occupational pensions isn’t just for 2008/9 - it will continue to bite until they receive the age allowance for people over the age of 65.
This isn’t just a summer storm - it will reverberate for years to come.
140. It’s going to be bust for the public finances, that’s for sure. No way do the Tories want an early election.
138. Who cares what the Tories would do or what the Tories say. Labour are in power. Labour promised they had done away with boom and bust. Labour are the one that will now carry the can. When the Conservatives get into power, then we can start looking at ther decisiins, but for now Labour fairly and squarely take the blame.