Is Cameron being helped by the polling revolution?
July 1st, 2008 
Would Tory leads be as big if older methodologies were still used?
It is my contention that if the 2001 line-up of pollsters and polling methods were still in place then the current Labour poll deficits would be on a much smaller scale and there would not be quite the same crisis facing Brown.
For the whole morale of a party and the internal confidence in the leadership are governed to quite a large degree by the polling numbers. Yes by elections and local council results also provide pointers but it’s the regular grind of the monthly polling that really sets the scene. And if those numbers are almost always over-stating Labour, as was happening, then that can have a huge impact.
After 2001 we saw the Daily Telegraph moving to then new internet pollster, YouGov, which surveys only those on its own polling panel on which it has a mass of data which allows it to weight by party identifiers. Then the Times started their relationship with another newcomer, Populus, which followed the ICM lead from the mid-1990s in dealing with sample bias by weighting according to how respondents said they voted at the previous election.
Even in the current parliament, since 2005, the revolution has continued. In March 2007 the Independent’s pollster, ComRes, introduced past vote weighting which had a dramatic impact its figures. Then in the past few weeks the two most long-standing UK pollsters, Ipsos-MORI and ICM have made refinements that have the effect of improving the Conservative position against Labour.
At the heart of the problem was that whichever interview methodology you used Labour supporters were almost always over-represented in samples. Quite why this was not always been clear but as part of their post London Mayoral election polling review MORI found that there was a disproportionate number public sector workers in samples. New weightings have been introduced to deal with this which will be to the detriment of the Labour position.
It’s when the pollsters get a result wrong, like at the 1992 general election or this year’s London Mayoral race, that polling firms review their approaches.
Even ICM, the pioneer of modern telephone polling, has made changes following Boris’s victory so that more account is taken of what those interviewed said they did at the last election.
In my betting I’ve always followed “the golden rule” - that the most accurate survey is the one with Labour in the least favourable position. Maybe the polling revolution will have changed that and that it is the Conservatives who are being over-stated? We shall have to wait and see but I don’t think we have quite got to that stage yet.
Mike Smithson
MessageSpace Advertising
Here’s a message for all you Tory supporters this morning. Gordon is coming back! Just read the papers hailing his brilliance with the NHS reforms. It is his thinking that makes him such a giant amongst the mediocrity of everybody else at Westminster. The public will soon see this.
Rejoice.
1. yawn.
Apologies for going off-topic in the first few posts, but there’s a really important article in the Guardian today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/01/henley.liberaldemocrats
Quite apart from the astonishing analysis in the first paragraph, Nick Clegg seems to have decided to position the Lib Dems as Labour’s conscience rather than as a potential moderating influence on the Tories. This article strongly hints that the Lib Dems would prop up Labour in a hung Parliament. Why would anyone vote Lib Dem if they wanted to oust the current Government?
On topic, I do think that the attention paid to opinion polls is their single most important feature. They are not that reliable even as snapshots (or why would they differ so much?) and are very uncertain long-term predictors. Yet as Mr Smithson says, the impact on party morale is enormous. You could argue this exactly the other way around: if the 2008 methodology had been used in say 2000, would it have been Tony Blair who had been put under heavy pressure at the time of the fuel strikes?
3. You must be reading a different article.
It’s an appeal to progressive voters, let down by New Labour, to turn to the Liberal Democrats. No more, no less.
How can the Lib Dems ‘moderate’ a Tory party which doesn’t have any identifiable policies, apart from the one mentioned that favours the richest 6% of the population?
5 - After a preamble about Henley, the opening gambit of Nick Clegg is:
“So what hope is there left for progressive voters in Britain? Has Cameron’s aversion to spelling out what he would do if he was handed the keys to No 10 done the trick? By avoiding any controversy, any meaningful policy choices, has he done enough to lull progressives into thinking that maybe it won’t be so bad after all to have a Conservative back in Downing Street?
I sincerely hope not because I do not believe that the Conservative party can deliver the changes needed to make Britain the fairer, more socially mobile society that progressives of all parties want.”
ie Nick Clegg does not want a Tory in Downing Street. In the present political climate, the choice is between Labour and Conservative in Downing Street. Nick Clegg makes his choice clear in these words.
Exactly Alan J - The analysis in the first para is also interesting - If Cameron’s Conservatives are so wonderful the share in Henley should have gone but by more than it did. Before anyone else says it the fact that the Lib Dem vote did not increase by much is disappointing. The policy message was swamped by the mass of leaflets forced on the poor electors.
Pleased to hear some Labour MPs (15 but a start) still pointing out that some poor tax payers still have not been compensated for the loss of the 10p band.
On BBC the rate of house price falls is slowing. On Sky the rate of house price fall is the fastest for 16 years.
Perhaps there should be weighting to the Mirror share price…
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/media/article4244865.ece
8, just on that I’d believe Sky given the BBC’s less than stellar coverage of political and politically related news items.
1, is that sarcasm? Not seen any papers.
On the thread: Cameron is undoubtedly benefiting from more accurate polling methods which are accounting for the strange phenomenon of would-be Labour voters who are too lazy/unmotivated to actually find their nearest polling station.
Of course, if Brown didn’t look at opinion polls and jump around for a nice headline with every policy he probably wouldn’t be so far behind.
Cameron didn’t seem to be benefiting last summer. Seems like an age ago but I seem to remember large leads for Labour and Cameron’s leadership under threat.
Can I have some of what the Professor is on?
I thought it quite amusing that some of the “Darzai reforms” amounted to giving people things (like choice of doctor) which they had 10 years ago. It really is like back to the future with Labour.
re 12. The Professor came into his own on the night of the Dunfermline by-election in 2006. See from posts 124 onwards here.
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2006/02/09/how-much-can-we-rely-on-yougov-2/
8,
It is actually doing both. Comparing month to month it is slowing - but you will see much bigger fluctuations. If you compare a rolling 3 months with a previous rolling 3 months you see a much bigger drop. The 3 month rolling is a more accurate picture.
9 - That’s what you get for covering your sport pages in snot green and using italics for headlines.
re 11. Yes - last summer showed how bad poll ratings can totally undermine a party and its leader.
I think there were special reasons for the July-September polling results. There was a genuine relief that Blair had moved on, at that sage Gordon seemed so un-spun, and most of all Brown had the support of a media that was almost totally uncritical. He was so dominating the headlines the headlines and the bulletins that Cameron could hardly get a look in.
It was when all that changed so suddenly that the collapse started.
Just read his Callaghan posts…good early morning chortle.
The Clegg piece is conclusive. There will be no change in direction for the Lib Dems; it’s staying as an ‘anyone but the Tories’ party.
What do you expect Marcus? The activists won’t support him if he tries to cosy up to the Tories.
OT: President of Poland says ratifying the Lisbon treaty is “pointless”: http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSL0155972120080701
20. Like I said the other day, at least they are being (unusually) consistant about it even if electorally I think it’s suicidal.
That Clegg article is simply gold dust for Conservatives in the South, south west and midlands.
Saves lots of money on election literature. Just reproduce that article.
“Vote Labdim get Labour” is 4 words that sum it up.
Its so nineties its so last century and its so good to read as a Conservative.
19 - I’d say it’s a bit more of a challenge than that Marcus. I agree that the analysis on Henley is pretty partisan, but by nailing his policy priorities to the mast, it looks to me like he’s saying to the Tories that if you want to be part of the gang, then these are the areas you need to come up with policies on. The criticism is that you can’t be sure of the changes in the Tories until you have the policies to prove it, and I read the article as hinting that if you are looking for support in a hung parliament, there’s a checklist there for you to work on.
And all hail the Professor! Always good value and I’ve just enjoyed re-reading the Dunfermline thread which Mike linked to.
@20:
What I expect is for the Lib Dems to adapt to the changing electoral landscape. I mean, I’m delighted that the Yellow Peril seem to be so ineptly behind the times, but also surprised.
3. That article pretty much sums up Clegg’s leadership so far. He tries to make out the tories as the bogeymen still, claims Henley was actually a good result for them, then says the lib dems are the future when in fact he’s still playing 1990’s political games. Time has moved on, the tories are no longer an easy target. Crewe and now Henley have proved that if the tories really really want to they can quite easily beat the lib dems, despite lib dem claims of increased vote share and the tories not doing as well as polls suggest. The end result is still the same, lib dems made no impact in Crewe, and only a minor impact on Henley, despite the massive ramping about their prospects in both.
What are the implications for the Lib Dems from the poll changes? I would have thought that reducing the number of public workers is likely to reduce the LD % with IPSOSMORI.
On the Clegg article matter, he is in denial over his party’s relatively poor by election performance. He uses up more space in the article attacking the Conservatives than on attacking Labour. I agree with those above that his language rules out support for a Conservative Govt. He is basically still fighting for the anti-Tory vote and not the larger anti-Labour vote. A strategy for breadcrumbs rather than a slice of bread.
Mike, you know who I am; do you want me to do the East of England, or at least Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire?
The won’t be anti tory tactical voting like there has been in the past at the next GE. In fact if there is any tactical voting on any scale it will be directed at kicking Labour out of power.
The Libdems need to understand this or they will be in for a long night come the general election.
Reducing the inherent bias for Labour at a time of unpopularity will of course add pressure but IMHO there were a couple of other things which have added to the impact on Labour MPs and activists in their view of polling.
The Ken Livingstone/Labour attack on YouGov - a number of Labour supporters grabbed the liferaft offered by complaints of bias against YouGov, thinking that things weren’t as bad as they were. They adopted an Anti-Smithson Rule; that the poll that showed Labour performing best was the correct one. Livingstone’s loss made them face the uncomfortable truth.
Expectation Management - Labour has an unlikely record of being the best forecasters in recent expectation management, even though they have actually performed worse than the benchmarks their spin doctors set out in advance. Performed worse in Locals, worse in C&N and worse at Henley. Those performance underlined that the worst Labour polling results were probably the correct ones.
So opinion polls set the political weather, rather than just report it.
And they’ve always over-stated Labour. Pollsters are making changes to their methodology to make their figures more accurate; this gives the tories X% extra margin compared with Labour.
Erm, yes.
This is not news for PB.com readers/writers. It is for the benefit of MSM commentators, who lift (unattributed) chunks from here?
Think yoyo puts his/her finger on the problem as usual.
re 29 Drop me an email Martin. This feature is going to go on for well over a year - perhaps eighteen months. Scotland is in ten parts though I have not decided whether to run that through before bringing in some other areas.
This may have an impact on any forthcoming by-elections in Scotland. The unions are balloting for strike action at the local councils. May be another reason to make sure Glasgow East is in July.
People posting here who have the time to count the words in Clegg’s article attacking the Tories or attacking Labour are desperately sad. Do they expect that the Lib Dems are going to wake up one morning, look at the polls and decide that now is the time to sanctify Mr Cameron?
Just bashing the government will do nothing for the Lib Dems. Attacking the Tories too while they are high in the polls will do the Lib Dems no harm at all, indeed if Nick Clegg doesn’t point out the utter vacuity of Cameronism he’d be failing in his duty as the leader of an independent third party.
Take of those blue tinted spectacles and look at the article again and you’ll see its pretty even handed in its condemnation of both the other parties.
24 - “if you want to be part of the gang”
I wouldn’t have thought Clegg is really in a position to set terms, to be honest. Nor is he likely to be after the next election, even if we get a hung Parliament, unless the Lib Dems start accepting electoral reality and finding some Labour seats to replace those they will lose to the Tories.
The power of the opinion polls is that they have been confirmed by real polls.
If that were not the case then the panic in the Labour party would not be as great. Many of their MPs would be taking the Livingstone route of attacking the messenger, but with two years of locals, Crewe, Henley and London they have to face the reality.
That doesn’t mean they have absorbed it, stuck as they are in the headlights of the Tory juggernaut.
A party which has encouraged the nation to pass their responsibilities to someone else, to expect that ‘they’ will do something, is increasingly trapped by this same socially leaden mentality. Surely ‘they’ will do something about Brown.
Something will turn up. Surely? Someone will do something. Please.
Saying you are going to support the Tories is not going to endear you to previous Labour voters disappointed by the Labour Government.
Mike, surely it is not a question of Cameron being helped, so much as him not being hindered by an adverse poll sampling. The polls (hopefully) now give a truer snapshot of public opinion - and seem to be well alligned with the true numbers at local/by-elections.
Presumably though, the corollary is that if the polls are a proper reflection of opinion, unlike previous years there should be little if any bump for the Tories in the actual GE result as against the pre-GE polls?
35. Have just read it again…same summary
‘vote libdem get labour’.
Why..because Libdems have no hope of forming a government so voting Libdem (for whatever- reason ) in Tory/Libdem seats will simply assist Brown.
In fact having read that first para, it looks like Clegg has been taking alternative reality lessons from his Masters Voice (AKA the Great Leader). Truly Broon like delusion from Clegg.
38 - Why not? All the polls suggest that large numbers of this group are thinking about voting Conservative anyway.
Icarus,
Previous labour voters fall into two camps, one much bigger than the other. There are the previous labour voters who, prior to 1997, voted Tory. It is these voters who appear to have come back to the Tories.
A smaller group are the labour voters who are never going to vote Tory anyway, but are disappointed with Labour. To try and lump them all into one amorphous mass like you have is a mistake.
How many Tories read the Guardian?
Hi,
I’m just getting started with my new blog. Would you want to exchange links on our blog-rolls?
BTW - I’m up to about 100 visitors per day.
Good morning all, just a quick nip in before doing some real work which pays the mortgage.
On topic: If the polls were showing a narrower Tory lead then they would still be as inaccurate as they were in the past, blowing up the Labour share of the vote and understating the Tory vote.
However it probably would mean that David Cameron would now be in No 10 because Gordon would not have seen the Poll in the Marginals which told him the Tories would have taken almost all of them and of course that would not have put him off holding the election which he said the bad polls were not responsible for him not calling in the first place after Labour had spent £1 million not preparing for it!
Off-topic: It seems from both the Scottish press today and comments by Charlie Gordon MSP (he who by accepting the Jersey donations for Wendy Alexander in part led to her downfall) that Labour is calling Glasgow East for 24th July.
How cynical can Labour get? July 24th is in the middle of the main holiday fortnight in Scotland, known as “The Glasgow Fair”, so this by-election is going to be decided by postal votes. I could see the turnout being as low as 25%. I think Labour is making a big mistake. Its voters are the least motivated and this constituency and the 2 it formerly comprised off have historically among the lowest voter turnout in the UK. Watching BBC Scotland interviews and coverage last night, the voters not the pundits, think Labour will hold easily. That is a huge danger for the Labour.
Just watch the SNP bandwagon roll in. Margo Macdonald the SNP victor in Glasgow of a staggering swinging by-election in Govan who is now an Independent said it would be difficult but not impossible for the SNP to take the seat.
If as seems likely that Labour voters believe Labour will coast home, Labour has a real problem because unless party workers literally sit with people while they complete their postal votes, they will simply be forgotten in the pre holiday chaos. In addition the postal votes would need to be issued and completed by Friday 18th July which is when most voters will be heading away.
I’ll say it again - if Brown is still Labour leader come the GE, then the LibDems will get hammered by voters who will be determined to take no risks with booting Brown out of power. And that means voting Tory. Voters will take no risk of their being a hung Parliament where Brown could wriggle back in some deal with the LibDems. And that will include much of the soft LibDem vote, whose desire for Brown to be shown the door will override their previous preference for a LibDem candidate. Forget incumbency - it won’t count for squat.
Brown Labour leader at GE = LibDem meltdown.
No ifs, no buts.
Icarus, you’re an amiable poster and normally make sone sense …. but 38 is the kind of mindset that comes from Senior-itis.
Senior-itis may well have been the way to play 1997 or 2001 — but it will do the LibDEms a lot of damage in the next GE. The disease can be terminal.
46 “of there being”
Post preview, please! About the only thing on pb.com I’d change.
@48:
Post post editing would be better. What blogging software do you use, Mike?
@49:
Oh wait, LRN2READ. Wordpress definitely has available post-post-editing plugins.
Thanks Gwynfa - its having a Welsh daughter that does it - but I fail to see how “Vote Lib Dem we’ll support the Tories” will help either the country or the Lib Dems.
Clegg needs to establish us as different and interesting. Clearly in Con /Lib marginals we need the Labour vote to collapse into our arms - whether it will be enough to take the seat depends on the individual seat. In Lab /Lib seats we need to demonstrate that the Labour party are going to lose and that we would be a better opposition than Labour.
ot but related.
Local post offices closed in my area, so big queues at the main one. Stuck in one yesterday for half an hour and to my complete amazement a great discussion of politics was going on along the queue. Nobody in it will ever vote Labour again, ‘I’m voting Conservative next time’, not one mention of the LD’s (who are the main opposition in my West Wilts constituency)and a great deal of spluttering anger by all.
51 - The phrase the Lib Dems are casting about for is “the moderating influence”. Do you really want a Tory landslide? But you can’t bear Brown? Then vote Lib Dem and we’ll tame the privatise air brigade. Simple.
51 - “take”? Shurely “defend”? Advanced Senioritis if you ask me [great term, Gwynfa]
Seriously, as I have argued repeatedly on here, if the LD’s ideological opponents are the Tories then their tactical opponents are really Labour - if they are interested in ever being more than a third party, that is. A pity for them they didn’t realise this in 2005 otherwise they’d be sitting prettier now.
RE Cleggs strategy; I think he is on the horns of a dilemmna.
In a move against a Conservative Governemnt like 1997 it is true that Conservative minded voters don’t often go direct to Labour they go via the Lib Dems; the same is not true for Labour minded voters when the travel is in the other direction. The evidence of C&N and the polls is increasingly that they switch directly from Labour to Conservative.
So I suppose Clegg has no choice, if he tries to cash in on Labour unpopularity he runs the risk of simply being bypassed by voters in their rush to dump Brown.
And if he sticks with the ‘New Conservatives -New danger’ demon eyes line he seems to have chosen there is at least a slim chance of shoring up support in Tory/LD marginals that they hold already.
Of course he runs the very considerable risk of making his party completely irrelevant at the next election. And if he does that the Lib Dems could end up back with all their MP’s not quite being able to get in a taxi, but comfortably in a small transit van.
The LibDems have a problem, they need to be Tory-lite in the south and Labour-lite in the north. The Janus party.
It would help themselves if they could also resist the silly mantra:
We have done well ( even though we didn’t)
The Tories have to do better (even though they won)
Tory policies are nasty (even though they haven’t got any)
We will consider working with any party after the election (as long as it is not the Tories)
52 Sheepdip, thanks. Very much supports my contention in 46 above.
The LibDems should be praying (and working) for the end of Gordon - unlike the Tories, who need to keep him in cotton wool until 2010.
47 SBS kindly confirmed yesterday that he would not take an offered theoretical position where they lost 30 southern LibDem seats in exchange for 40 northern/urban ones. I assume that Mark Senior would take the same position (didn’t seem much point in asking). But trying to sit on what they have, instead of wanting a position that leaves them with more MP’s, indicates to me a pressure group rather than a serious political party.
As it currently stands, the LibDems risk losing swathes of southern seats but with no counter-balancing success. Perhaps even more than Labour, they do not seem to have any game plan to deal with how far the Tories have advanced. As I argue above, if Gordon is still Labour leader, the LibDems will be seriously screwed.
43. Only the one’s who feel guilty. So not very many then.
56, couldn’t the Lib Dems actually have their own identity, rather than merely being a party of protest?
I suppose the problem is that amongst their core ‘principles’ is the urge to back down and capitulate to the EU at every opportunity.
in Henley, the latest “fact” that we have, the Conservative vote dropped by 5,098 The Lib Dem vote dropped by 2,421 since the GE. If the Lib Dems were in danger in the South (prop. D. W. D. Cameron Esq.) shouldn’t all the other parties have lost their deposits?
58 Thought not. So Clegg knows his readership, then. “Clegg slags off Tories in an Anti Tory newspaper” Shock Horror!
Sorry MD cant let that go - It has been the Conservative and Labour parties who have created the centralised, undemocratic, EU that we have today. When we hear what the Cameron Conservative’s will actually do if they get back into power then you can comment. My bet is that they will want everything to remain on a government to government basis and sod the people.
@60:
This is exactly the kind of state of yellow denial that’s music to Tory ears.
Keep up the good work!
What was the swing in Henley vote share again?
@62:
So, what. You’re now denying that the Lib Dems are a party of treasonable federasts?
61 - No one held a gun to Nick Clegg’s head and forced him to write the article for the Guardian.
Incredibly naive, amateurish reporting on the BBC’s “Breakfast” as regards June’s “slowing rate” in the fall in house prices.
“It’s good news for first time buyers” - eh??? - without bothering to add that it’s virtually impossible for such buyers to obtain a mortgage.
Rank bad coverage, sometimes, I imagine that this programme is produced by a bunch of 15 year olds - for God’s sake either get a grip or let’s go back to the good old Test Card “C”!
60: Tories replaced a larger than life naitonally recognised media personality with a huge personal vote with a worthy but dull accountant…and his vote share went up in the face of a full-on Lib Dem by-election machine assault.
What’s the phrase? Oh yes:
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE!
lib Dems 40 seats max next time.
67,
BBC breakfast in always childish and naive.
67: No it’s produced by a bunch of people up their eyes in BTL I suspect! Fat Declan is particularly embarrassing in his rubbish coverage and transparent spinning.
62, I agree both parties have made stupid decisions. But only the Tories actually voted in line with their manifesto for a referendum. We can’t change the past, but you cannot possibly argue that the present Conservatives are as europhile as the Lib Dems or Labour.
67, BBC coverage can be laughably bad. I still remember the Politics Show claiming Cameron could never be PM without getting the same number of votes as John Major, and that he needed 5 million more to win.
60.A lot of the Libdem incumbency factor in former Conservative seats has been down to the voters being satisfied with the political status quo. But like in Scotland, the political landscape has changed dramatically throughout the UK since 2005, the desire/luxury of voting for the third party and therefore leaving the present government in place by default for lack of an alternative no longer holds true.
I am intrigued by the Libdem strategy of trying to push the line that the Conservatives are a policy free zone, for it to work successfully it has to have some basis in truth before it could resonate with the voters and that’s a problem that will come back and bite them hard.
This idea that the Conservatives are policy lite is a Libdem fantasy which they cling to like a comfort blanket. It got me thinking, and I realised that for the first time in years I could not think of one stand out Libdem policy which had any solid foundations. I don’t count that stupid In/Out of the EU posturing because when the Libdems got the chance to ask the voters anything on EU policy some sat on their hands or voted against it.
1. As far as I can tell, half the promise’s on the NHS are just an unachieavble wish list. Like the idea of ending rationing. That just isn’t realistic - The only way you could really end drug rationing is to end the NHS. The NHS by its nature, is all about rationing. Gordon got a reasonable days press for this NHS plan yesterday, but thats all it’ll be. With a worsening economy, is anything soending will have to be CUT over the next year or so, there is niether the money or the ability to achieve the stuff Brown wants to achieve. It’ll be another Brown failure!
67. Sometimes I can’t decide whether the BBC is just full of vested interests or whether there’s a subconscious bias to talk things up. The problem with that is they forget that what constitutes good or bad news is subjective.
YouGov is still sitting pretty compared to the other pollsters after the embarrassment that some of them suffered following the mayoral elections. All the tweaks and modifications seem to strengthen the Conservative position, even in the Guardian!
http://lettersfromatory.wordpress.com
In case you missed it BBC Radio 4 are replaying some classic Letters from America covering their elections.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml
The 1948 letter refering to the Truman election and the failure of polls is particularly relavent to today’s thread.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/bookof_mon
Good stuff. Nothing changes.
45. If the remarks about the Jersey ‘donations’ (just below the wee limit of £1,000) are accurate, one wonders if The Electoral Commission (Scotland) had carried out a detailed examination of Wendy Alexander excuses/actions in the first place, before they issued their curious sentence of not guilty.
Would any Glasgow East voters cancel a holiday to vote during ‘The Fair’? So much for the moral compass of the PM, he must want to set a new record for Labour, the lowest turnout at a By-Election in modern times.
I think Cameron is being helped by the polls as “success breeds success” but just as important is the web. The demolition of centre left and left wing commentators in the MSM blogs is now relentless and must be very damaging to their morale as well. Apart from the usual press suspects, it has become very noticeable over the last month that all attempts by Nick Robinson to boost Brown have met with overwhelming denial by posters. This used to be much more evenly balanced and the posters appear to be new names. Anecdotal evidence from posters on pb such as 52 appear to bear this out.
There has been much talk on this thread of the lack of Conservative policies; given Labour’s track record, e.g. IHT, would you be giving detail with two years to go before a GE? Remember, Labour did not give many specifics before 1997 but that nice Mr Blair still got elected by a landslide.
A Tory spin doctor’s view - Clegg is absolutely right to keep attacking the Tories, but he also needs to attack Gordon for failing to deliver 21st century leftist policies.
1. In southern LD/Con seats he needs to keep Labour voters on his side rather than letting them switch to the BNP, Greens or even Tories. He also needs to keep his sitting MPs and activists happy.
2. In the northern Lab/LD seats he needs to look like a good alternative for the disillusioned Labour voter and capture some of their activists.
3. There simply aren’t any disillusioned Tory voters for the LDs to hoover up any more, so there’s no point wasting his time agreeing with Cameron.
Clegg needs to bash away constantly at the Tory Toffs, making Labour supporters see him as an ally, someone who understands their anti-Tory pain.
He also needs to needle away at Gordon for betraying the poor, keeping us in Iraq, privatising our schools and NHS and generally letting down those who see themselves as socialist inclined.
Those Tories on here who don’t understand why Clegg is aiming mainly at Cameron and the Conservative party should realise they are not his target audience. The Labour core is his target audience.
If he can pull off the trick of being reliably anti-Tory in his rhetoric as well as impressively ’socialist’ in his causes - then he could save a handful of southern seats and pick up dozens of Midlands and Northern ones.
I think one trick he is missing is that he should constantly push the idea that a Tory government is inevitable. Yes, Labour is in meltdown, but he needs Labour core voters to despair and turn to his brand of soft left, bleeding heart politics in the face of a generation stuck with those bastard Tories in the driving seat.
@78:
The demolition of centre left and left wing commentators in the MSM blogs is now relentless and must be very damaging to their morale as well.
I kinda wish that were true. But then we have people like Polly, just to sanctimonious and stupid to realise when they’ve lost the argument and their audience.
Yet she regularly fires off her ill-considered drivel twice or thrice weekly to a receptive audience of roughly nobody.
The Comment is Free echo chamber has become amusingly hostile since everybody realised that Polly and her commentariat chums are hypocritical, smug waste of meats with nothing useful to say on any subject.
I see Redwood is using the UK’s involvment in WW1 too justify withdrawal from the EU, he doesn’t actually say that, but his meaning is clear.
http://www.johnredwoodsdiary.com/2008/07/01/1160/
His reading of Britain’s decision to go to war is incorrect. The Balkans may have lit the fuse, but the war was against Prussian militarism, as great a threat as Nazism.
65 “the Lib Dems are a party of treasonable federasts?”
“Federast”? Martin, is that meant to be a federalist - or a pederast? We’re talking LibDems, so the context of your insult isn’t immediately clear….
43.58-I do! And no, I don’t feel guilty. Rather I need to get some adrenalin flowing in the morning, and it always amuses me to see there are people with views so diametrically opposite to mine! Peopel who actually believe the dogkr+p they spout out (low taxes are immoral for one!). Will watch out for the free schooling for African orphans article. Hope it makes it into the paper.
Alright, what does MSM mean?
72. Shouldn’t it be the party that are claiming to be the next government which has the policy commitments?
As the Clegg article says, the only concrete Tory policy which has registered is the one to favour the richest 6% of the population.
Your Shadow Home Secretary had to go to the extraordinary length of forcing a by-election just to drag out a commitment to repeal the 42-day law.
I am usually keen to pigeon-hole people into racial and socio-economic caricatures, but is the “Glasgow Fair” still the social phenomenon that it was? In these days of package holidays and cheap air travel, the idea of the whole of East Glasgow shutting down for two weeks strikes me as a little odd, and distinctly old-fashioned. My Glasgow relatives are on holiday now - but maybe that’s because they are South Siders.
83. One of the joys of the interweb is the way that irony can turn into rumour that then spreads, becoming an urban myth. Peter2, my proposal yesterday of ‘free schooling for African orphans’ was IRONIC. It was not a serious proposal. Geddit?
On the Cleggover article, frankly I’m utterly shocked and stunned …. yes shocked and stunned that the leader of the Lib Dems hasn’t pledged himself to supplicate himself before the altar of NuLab and the Tories.
How dare this potential alternative even consider the possibility that NuLab has failed and that the Tories are an empty vessel. Shocking, truly shocking.
In other devasting news …..
Martin Day revealed as Kinnock’s lovechild
seanT unmasked as EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson
Mark Senior might be a Liberal Democrat
Mike Smithson likes the odd wager
Jack W is a centenarian fruit cake
” Here’s a message for all you Tory supporters this morning. Gordon is coming back! Just read the papers hailing his brilliance with the NHS reforms. It is his thinking that makes him such a giant amongst the mediocrity of everybody else at Westminster. The public will soon see this. ”
Echo…Echo…Echo…
The public aren’t listening I’m afraid, nor do they want to listen.
42. Get some perspective on the figures - 8.5m people voted for Michael Foot. Only 2m net switched Con->Lab in ‘97.
The LDs on here, and Clegg, can position themselves as they like.
But they might do themselves a favour to look at the last time the LDs looked ‘on the pace’. It was when Vince Cable represented the govt as dithering and wrong, and the tories as irrelevant, over NR.
Is Clegg do as sure-footed as Cable? Apparently not.
@82:
It sounds to me like you understand the context fully…
84 Main Stream Media. Apologies for any confusion.
78 Loss of confidence among supporters of the losing party tends to mean a number disengage, as we are seeing on the web and on blogs. Likely as an election approaches the activists will be re-invigorated at a bit more balance will return.
On policies the Lib Dem position seems to be that the Education, Welfare Reform, Health and Law and Order policies don’t exist. They are stuck in the 2006 early 2007 Cameron is vapid with no policies mindset. Our advantage.
On thread - There is always IMO a “winners bonus” - voters who tend to follow the crowd plus voters who stay at home. That’s why good polling matters.
Shortly before the recent party, I posted here that I expected an announcement to be made there about the future of PB.com.
“What do you have in mind?!” queried either Paul Maggs or Morus.
Well Guys, whichever one of you it was, I guess what I had in mind was something like this from Mike this morning:
Weekends on PB - As from the start of July I am planning to take the weekends off to give myself a proper break from the site each week. On Saturday and Sunday Paul Maggs and Morus will be in charge - producing their own thread leads as well as over-seeing and editing guest contributions.
Prescient or what? Watch this space.
80 yes it is quite something - we have been able to watch the turn in the mood of comment is free, from friendly, polite,through to doubtful, angry, handwringing, and now downright hostile / abusive and very very bitter, over the past last year. its quite a turn around.
71. The Tories are the only party to emerge from the latest EU brouhaha with any integrity - and, more importantly, any credit with the voters.
Labour have just been deceitful to the point of sickliness: yes you can have a referendum, we solemnly promise that… oh hold on no you can’t have a referendum, what we said was a lie and you’re just a voter so f*** off. Ugh.
The Lib Dems have been wobbly and gay, as ever - Clegg claiming we “must respect the will of the people” - the Irish vote - then ramming through ratification without a referendum in the Lords JUST TWO DAYS LATER. Ugh ugh ugh.
Only the Tories have any credit. Like all parties they promised a vote, unlike all parties they did their damnedest to keep their word, they tried in the Commons, and the Lords, but they were defeated by the diseased combination of mendacious Labourites and syphilitic Lib Dems.
And you know what? You stupid lefties needn’t have bothered pouring buckets of electoral eurosh1te over your ugly bald heads anyway - coz Lisbon is gonna fall.
Today the Polish president has said he will refuse to sign.
By my reckoning that leaves the Treaty in a rather parlous condition. To get through ratification it now needs:
1. The Polish president to change his mind (he’s a firm sceptic)
2. The Czech constitutional court to approve the Treaty (far from certain)
3. The eurosceptic Czech Senate to then pass the Treaty (again far from certain)
4. The German constitutional court to apporove the Treaty, where it is stalled (probable but not definite)
5. The Swedes to approve the Treaty (rather likely but not certain)
6. The Irish to call a revote (which they will only do if all those above ratifications happen… and even then it’s not definite)
7. the Irish to then vote Yes (50/50)
8. The Labour government in Britain to NOT kick out Brown before next summer, and therefore NOT precipitate a general election which the Tories will win - thereby nixing the Treaty immediately
So Lisbon now has to jump all eight hurdles before it can be ratified. That’s like asking Stephen Hawking to do the decathlon. i.e. I can see Lisbon managing two or three of these things, maybe even four - but all eight? Hn.
I don’t think it’s gonna work. My hunch is that Lisbon is dead. So that means you Labour and Lib Dem traitors have revealed yerselves as betrayers and liars - for no reason at all. Likewise all the horrible antidemocrats threatening to kick out Ireland - you have shown your true evil faces quite purposelessly.
Heh. Heheheheheheh.
@81:
There’s a tendency towards historical revisionism about the Great War, to imply that there was no one major aggressor, that it was nobody’s fault on their own, that it was all too complicated, that we can’t simply blame one country.
No. It’s very simple. It was the Germans’ fault.
Anyone who thinks that Clegg should start to attack Lab more rather than Con, misunderstands how FPTP voting works in the UK. The whole analysis depends on the existence of 3 way marginal seats with national uniform swing.
Back in the real world, they will oppose Lab in LD-Lab marginals, Con in Con-LD marginals, probably hold onto more seats than people expect, and not do much elsewhere.
They are always accused of telling lies and being two faced but reading that article gave me the impression that in fact they have the most coherent and defined set of policies out of the three parties.
Finally, I don’t think the prospect of coalition government is either likely or to be relished by Clegg - and I always think the debate about it is a bit of a red herring, brought up at every opportunity by their opponents to try and distract attention away from what the LDs are saying.
@97:
How’s the jet lag, Sean.
Clegg should work out what he and his party stands for. Get off the fence on key issues. He can then promote what he stands for. If he has energy left, he can then attack whoever opposes what he believes in.
No-one has a clue what the LibDems are for. It’s such a shame.
From Yahoo Answers.
“The Glasgow Fair always starts on the 2nd Monday of July. It is named the Glasgow Fair after a real fair which used to take place on the Glasgow Green, a large park in the centre of the town. Traditionally all the factories, building yards and manual works closed for two weeks to allow all the workers to go on holiday. It used to be that all employees including office workers finished early on the previous Friday to allow them to start their journeys, or go to the pub! For the 2008 holidays, the Glasgow Fair officially starts on Fair Monday, the14th of July but people here unofficially say it starts on Fair Friday, the 11th of July. Hope this is helpful to you.”
I wonder how many of the voters in Glasgow East still go away during The Fair, but if the tradition was strong the timing of the By-Election would be very disingenuous if not downright cynical. Perhaps some of the resident Scottish PBer can comment.
97 “That’s like asking Stephen Hawking to do the decathlon.”
Nice. But perhaps to suggest the true scale of the task, perhaps he should be doing this whilst also singing Nessun Dorma?
99 “that article gave me the impression that in fact they have the most coherent and defined set of policies out of the three parties.”
[MM goes away to re-read, to see what exactly he might have missed between the lines. ‘Cuz there’s bugger all policies in the lines….]
99. There is another possibility, of course. And that is that the progressive left figure out that having the Lib Dems split their vote once again is in the long term always far more damaging to their cause than to ours (a sort of back to the mid 1980’s scenario).
The 1983 realignent (SDP) failed, the 1987 realignment (SDP/Liberal merger) didn’t get off the ground and the 1997 (Third Way) realignment never happened due to the scale of Blairs win.
Perhaps as the New Labour project is eventually laid to rest those on the centre left of British politics might go back to the drawing board and work out some kind of coalition that can work.
97 - “Today the Polish president has said he will refuse to sign.”
Rather he said it was pointless signing it for now. The situation may well change depending on what happens in Ireland. Touching to see people so attached to the SEA / Maastricht / Amsterdam / Nice settlement that they are so delighted to see Lisbon fall and leave us with the old position
(I presume that’s where you’re coming from.)
106 In the absence of a Lisbon Treaty, has the EU ground to a halt? Have they stopped spending money and sent all the eurocrats home without pay? No. They are just having to sort stuff out. Like they get paid handsomely to do. So Lisbon is hardly essential to the life-force of the EU, is it? Of course not. Because it was just the old constitution in a different wrapper. A constituition EU land didn’t need, but a few super-feradasts* wanted.
*Hat tip to Martin for my new word of the day.
Caption competition:
Cameron hears the news that Labour has lost its deposit - in Glasgow East.
81, 98 - Entering World War One was Britain’s worst foreign policy disaster of at least the last 200 years (and arguably the worst disaster that England was involved in since 1066). Britain entered the war as the world’s biggest creditor and left it as the world’s biggest debtor. It destroyed Britain’s global pre-eminence. It led directly to the Second World War.
What is particularly sad is that it needn’t have happened. At the end of July 1914, only five out of 17 Cabinet Ministers favoured war. Britain was (contrary to myth) under no treaty obligation to defend Belgium. The City was firmly opposed to joining in. All that death and destruction - and for nothing.
109 Caption competiton:
Poo-poohing concerns about his sanity, Gordon takes pleasure in letting out his invisible friend, Mr Moth, for a whizz around the Mandela concert…
What interests me here is the extent to which the polls feedback on themselves. Poll results buoy up parties that are doing well and depress still further parties which are doing badly. So there is a morale effect. But there is also an emulation effect. We are susceptible to other people’s opinions; we don’t want to feel like we’re the odd one out. So when we see big poll leads for the Conservatives, we’re more likely to start supporting the Conservatives. Then there’s a hidden information effect. We see the big poll leads and we start to think that there’s something we’re missing, something that everyone else can see. A big poll lead provides us with the information that the Conservatives would be a better government than Labour.
I wonder to what extent polls, which are supposed to be a reflection of our views, are in fact a determinant of them.
To read more of my views go to my blog, Just who the hell are we?, on wordpress.com at:
http://adammcnestrie.wordpress.com/
109. it always makes me chuckle when someone says “the City thinks X” or “the City is firmly opposed to Y” (as if anyone else should care!)
but that is by far the most ridiculous I have seen.
@109:
For nothing? Pah. It’s been keeping poets and documentary makers in business for a century now!
Hi Sean 97. Did you see Johann Hari’s piece in the Indy - just up your street
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-harman-could-yet-give-labour-its-legacy-856916.html
re Augustus Carp (86) and Dr Spyn (102) on the Glasgow Fair.
The relevance of the Glasgow Fair has definitely diminished, but the first Monday of the fortnight is still treated as a bank/public holiday by a lot of businesses in the city.
It had far more relevance in the days of heavy industry when mass employers, including the many Glasgow shipbuilding companies, would close down en masse for the same fortnight, forcing everyone to take their holidays at the same time.
Nowadays, you tend to find more and more Glasgow families (and indeed Scottish ones generally) will go away as soon as the Scottish schools break up for summer holidays (the last Friday in June) because foreign holiday prices are cheaper before the English schools have broken up.
However, it’s probably the case that the Fair holiday is still fairly relevant in traditionally working-class areas (where people are more used to going on holiday at that time and stick with with what they know and are used to) than in middle-class areas. Thus, you could say, it’s pretty cynical to hold the Glasgow East by-election then.
@112:
The City of London employs about 340,000 people, according to the ‘pedia. That one can ascribe a settled, single opinion to a third of a million people seems… somewhat doubtful.
105
What scuppered the Alliance, (apart from D.Owen) was, ‘The Falklands’ if that conflict had not broken out, whose to say what might have happened.
Oh! haven’t had any time to scour the archive, to find your, ‘Radical views’ on the NHS, waiting for a rainy day.
Us Odious ‘Ol narcissists do like to keep the tan up!!
@114:
Johann Hari has become increasingly erratic of late, especially since Iraq. Supporting Hattie’s “get whitey” law seems like an interesting step fruitloopwards.
106. Don’t you see what’s happening?
All the small and medium-sized countries, who were never that happy with Lisbon in the first place, are now ganging up to scupper it. But they are doing it rather cleverly, so no one country can be blamed, bullied and isolated by the French and the Germans - Poland, Ireland, Czech Republic, etc are now expressing doubts.
What’s Ulle Jensen, the Danish ex Foreign Minister, gonna do now, threaten to expel half the Union?
lol.
I suspect Lisbon is finished. As for Eire, Cowan will not call a revote in Ireland (what’s in it for him?) unless he is forced to, by looking like the bad boy who ruined it for everyone else. As he is now getting political support from Poland and Prague etc, Cowan will, I predict, delay his decision on a revote as long as humanly possible. He will buy time. Which should be enough to make a revote pointless.
Indeed I think the whole idea of the Irish, Poles, Czechs etc might be to delay ratification until the Tories are in power in London, because Cammo will officially scupper the Treaty once and all - at which point everyone can blame the Brits. As is traditional.
But we British don’t mind, we’re used to to be alone in Europe - alone and morally right.
This does not mean I think Nice/Maastricht were ever any good, they are just slightly less disastrous and evil than Lisbon.
I’d be interested to see what the odds on an Irish revote are like, at the end of the week. If you think it is still a probability, and are betting that way, I think you are wasting your money.
114. I think the Government should try to equalise the death gap between genders. Currently women live 4 years on average longer than men. This is obviously unfair on men. Therefore Harriet should propose a euthanasia order on all women at 78 (the average age that men live to in the UK) in order to ensure that this inequality is erradicated.
It is time we did away with this unfairness inherent in the country and ensured that men and women have an equal share of lifetime.
@119:
Sean, no. It’s not FAIR.
Why do Poland and Ireland and the Czech Republic get to be the ones that piss on Lisbon’s festering corpse?
That right belongs to us, dammit!
They can delay Lisbon until 2010, but if I don’t get to watch Willy Hague lighting the pyre I shall be very disappointed.
I was with you Sean until this:
“8. The Labour government in Britain to NOT kick out Brown before next summer, and therefore NOT precipitate a general election which the Tories will win - thereby nixing the Treaty immediately”
£1 to 1p the Tories will sign up to the Folkestone agreement (or some such place ) which will reorganise the administration of the EU on much the same lines as the Lisbon treaty. They wont give you (if you are in the country at the time) a referendum on anything - “These procedural matters are for a democratically elected parliament to decide.” said Prime Minister David Cameron
112, 116 - take a read:
http://www.econ.barnard.columbia.edu/~econhist/MKenner.pdf
ed, your comments in particular simply parade your ignorance of the run-up to World War One. You might want to consider page 14 in particular.
Martin Coxall, when crashes occur, it is perfectly appropriate to talk of the City as a single entity. No doubt there were some nut-nuts in the City who were in favour of war in July 1914, but their voices were totally drowned out.
87-You’d be surprised as to what goes for policy thsse days:
-CCTV cameras to spy on bins
-calling a horse “gay” being an arrestable offence
-Brown already pledging billions he doesn’t have to “Africa/Zimbabwe”
Though I hope your call to increase taxes on “high earners” was also ironic. You see, the above are just a random selection of non-ironic laws/regulations enforced or suggested over the past few years. In this vein, with this Labour government, who knows what laws/regulations proposed are “ironic” and which ones for real - read “moronic”
The only policy commitment Labour had which turned out to be “ironic” was the manifesto pledge on having a EU constitution referendum. That WAS ironic since it’s pretty obvious they never had any intention of calling one.
@122:
I realise that it’s a difficult thing to explicitly formalise to any degree of satisfaction, but I’d take that bet.
If Lisbon isn’t resurrected by June 2010, it STAYS DEAD.
119 seanT - Paddy Power has the following odds on there being a re-run referendum:
Any referendum on EU issues to be put to the Irish people before the end of 2010: 1 - 5
No referendum on EU issues to be put to the Irish people before the end of2010: 3 - 1
BS_HELP
@123:
If we’re using “The City” as a metonym for the capital markets, that’s fine, because markets are driven by sentiment. Divination of what the unambiguous sentiment actually is, though? A different matter.
114. Mike, are you possibly trying to wind me up into a lather of splenetic outrage? You’ll fail. I am too knacked by jetlag, and also to cheerful - just got a nice fat Mercedes-buying offer for my book from Viking USA.
However, yes I did see that Hari article, and I think the vacuity of it is summarised in this para:
“The critics have fixated on one tiny part of the Bill that lets employers take gender or race into account if they have a skewed workforce. All this means is that if, say, a primary school is staffed only by women, the headteacher can legally decide to pick a man to balance things out, provided he is equally good. Yet the Daily Express reported this on its front page as: “White Men To Face Jobs Ban.” It’s hard to have a functioning democracy when the press lies en masse this blatantly.”
So he doesn’t actually grapple with the point that white men can now be officially disciminated against AT ALL, he just mentions it en passant, and then rather desperately ignores it.
A poor poor column. I agree with Martin Coxall. Johan Hari lost it some time ago. About a month back, I read a column by Hari violently denouncing multiculti values (after the Archbishop of Cantab’s pro-sharia wafflings). It could have been written by Melanie Phillips. Now he’s back to Toynbeeland. Derr. He doesn’t know where he is.
But let’s be sympathetric. You have to feel for these lefties. Their whole world view is based on a post-Marxist, anti-racist, feminazi perspective formed in the the 70s and 80s, a worldview which is now literally ludicrous and utterly incoherent, in the face of Islamism, the collapse of communism, the damage wrought by mass immigration, the Iraq .
Hence their weird confusion and mindchanges, hence the fact so many of them have now given up pretending to be leftwing (Hume, C Hitchens, Mamet, Cohen etc etc) and are now righties in all but name.
We will see in 3 years time. A good reason that editing, especially self editing, should never be allowed on PB.com!!!!
Will there be a thread on the Glasgow East By - election. BTW Have all regions now been filled with nominated scribes.
126
As regards the outcome of such a referendum, the same bookmaker has it:
(Bets void should no EU issue based referendum be held before 2010)
Yes 2 - 5
No 7 - 4
120 “I think the Government should try to equalise the death gap between genders. Currently women live 4 years on average longer than men.”
Citing Lazarus, Labour instructs doctors not to sign death certificates for men for four years after the initial request. Problem sorted.
@128:
Christopher Hitchens is excellent and should have his own TV show. I want him cleansed and oiled, and brought to my chambers immediately.
Thanks.
123. I haven’t actually expressed any opinion on the run-up to WW1.
What I was saying is, noone gives a t-ss what the City thinks, then or now. They have 340,000 people to look after their own interests already.
119 - Again, it’s Cowen. You seem unable to grasp that Cowen actually wants Lisbon passed for its own sake - he’s a supporter of the Treaty. He wont hold a revote unwillingly, he’ll do it when he thinks he has a good chance of winning it. Anyway, forced or not, all the signs are that there will be a revote and you’re just conning yourself. Interesting that you condemn Labour and Lib Dems for foisting a Treaty on UK voters without putting it to them while you almost celebrate the President of Poland who tries to oppose the Treaty against the apparent wishes of his people.
126 - When I was tipping it a revote was 5/2 with PP
(Sean thought that was bad value then too)
131 - Of course they initially had ‘no’ on 5/1 for the first vote. That said a second vote would be very different and indeed maybe only likely to be held if a ‘yes’ can be almost guaranteed so I wouldnt be included to back ‘no’ a second time.
3,6 - Revolve! Revo