Will the SNP knock out the pollsters on Thursday?
July 20th, 2008
Will Labour’s position, once again, have been massively overstated?
Those who are basing their betting on Labour in Glasgow on the opinion polls should be warned - the pollsters have a long record of over-stating the party’s position and, occasionally of getting the outcome wrong. Just look at the record:-
Hartlepool September 2004: The only poll suggested that Labour would hold onto the seat by margin of 33%. On the day the party won by 7%. Labour’s position was overstated by 26%.
Blaenau Gwent June 2006 The only poll suggested that Labour would regain the seat from an independent by a 12% margin. On the day the independent won by a 10% margin. Labour’s position was overstated by 22%
Crewe & Nantwich May 2008. The polls showing the Tories 6%, 8% and 13% ahead. Actual result had the Tories with a 19% margin. The best poll overstated Labour position by 6%
So what’s going to happen? I don’t know and won’t be risking the sort of sums that I have wagered on other elections in the past three months. But a characteristic of by elections is to give the government of the day a good kicking and for voters to switch allegiance and choose the most effective means of doing this. It’s close and if the prices much further to Labour then I’ll be betting.
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I just found an interesting piece on Labour’s Glasgow east campaign:
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/centreright/2008/07/labours-shambol.html
Whilst the source may spike some of it’s credibility, the tories don’t really have any interest in this seat so i doubt they are doing a LD exgereated intelegiance report. I apologise if it has been posted before but i think it is very interesting news!
Indeed the source was not the Tories but the Times:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article4362917.ece
If the SNP win Glasgow East, the Labour come second, Tories Third and LD’s forth. Glasgow East may kill two leaders off with one shot. Brown and Clegg - This could be a more pivotal election on the national prospective than realised previously.
UKPaul
Wee message for you. You didnt lure anything, stop pretending you had a plan.
You can chop on about NI, or that I’m not man enough and so on. I know you want me to rise to it..so I won’t. And thats why you’ll not get the better of me, because I know what you are aiming and won’t give you it. That frustrates you as you sit at the keyboard (yes I know you’ll deny it but thats ok, you work away there). Do keep it up with any comment you want about me, because it simply doesn’t matter what you think of me, because you aren’t important. It’s just a statement of fact.
So go ahead and knock yerself out there kid.
re 4. OK you guys - cool it.
I think the SNP could upset the apple cart. I’m npt convicned by these polls showing a comfortable Labour win.
3 Martin The likelihood of ANY Glasgow result affecting the Lib Dem leadership is minuscule!
And frankly, the likelihood of any more LD leadership changes before a GE is even smaller!!
Yokel and ukPaul- please! Even more stupid because you are 2 of the more saner folk who inhabit these parts.
On thread, maybe through stubborness I am still clinging onto my 100 bet on SNP at 1.1.
I nearly lost a grand today on some mad and quite blind Open gambling. One just gets this inking that the SNP will do it come Thursday.
8- and I think Clegg is a good leader with a veritable shed load of potential
7. & 8. Just saying Brown would be toast in those circumstances and Clegg has question marks over his performance over C & N, then Henley. A bad LD result might mean Huhne mounts a challange to Clegg as Huhne may well be out on his ear looking at national opinion surveys. From the tax cut agenda Clegg instigated last week, Huhne may calculate that Clegg is sufficiently weak amoung LD members to mount a coup. Not many LD’s on these pages have greeted the Clegg Tax Cut agenda; indeed the silience and refusal to be drawn is astonishing.
Maybe it won’t affect Clegg but if the LD’s were to come fourth i think some serious questions would be asked about the LD’s lack of momentum.
11 Martin , stop making such a prat of yourself .
12- Mark- if the LD’s hadn’t changed their leader quite so much Martin would have a good point.
As it is he hasn’t
Yokel and ukPaul- please! Even more stupid because you are 2 of the more saner folk who inhabit these parts.
They are two of the more saner folk? Hells bells what does that say about the rest of us?
Its one of the great,’What would have happened if’ of British political history: What would have happened if, Labour had lost Darlington in 1983, would Labour have dumped Foot and chosen Healey?
Friday morning, could be the start of a new political era: who knows?
If its evens (1/1) you have two choices o viously, dump it or maybe stay with it in case the talk of polls gives way to talk of tight races. If you ignored the polls and listened to the political talk, hard to do but think about it, that 1/1 probably wouldnt be great as the SNP are still outsiders but the talk outside those 2 polls has been almost entirely of a close run thing. I have no idea if another poll is due on this election but if there isnt, and you are really trying to predict human behaviour here the talk of Labour being under threat may grow and move the market back a bit enabling you to either get out with a smaller loss at worst or best,get a big enough move to shift things but you may be waiting until election night.
As for me, I intend to bail for sure its just whether I can come out ahead which I;m still confident or take a minor hit.
If its 1.1 decimal on the other hand , eek…
10. Clegg has potential but i think he has succombed to the Peter principle like Brown. Clegg would have made a good junior member of a cabinet as the LD representative but leader - No. Clegg has failed to take his party with him this week, it was one thing to be leader in name but if you strike out a new agenda and look behind you to see your supoorters in the distance - your in trouble!
This is why i mentioned Clegg and his Hallam seat in a GE, he has to appeal to more conservative inclined voters in Hallam, whilst the rest of the party membership wants a message more to the left and differentiated to the big two. A very difficult message to get out. In terms of leadership maybe Clegg thinks he can survive in Sheffield Hallam through leadership bonus and the electorate will dispense of Huhne in eastleigh due to Clegg’s tax cut campaign eroding his soft left coalition.
8 Tim13 “And frankly, the likelihood of any more LD leadership changes before a GE is even smaller!!”
There is a very good reason for this, they will have run out of MPs to take a turn as Leader.
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- thereby demonstrating yet again a propensity for tripping over his own ego.
Despite a hostile local and national media, Mason will win this for the SNP. He’s lived in Barlanark (IMO an absolute hellhole) since 1990 and still stays there.
He’s been the councillor for the Garrowhill ward for ten years, and is the first SNP councillor in Glasgow to have won 3 elections. He has an immense personal following in the East end of Glasgow, and unlike David Marshall or Margaret Curran has cultivated the constituents since teh SNP’s Activate voter registration system was introduced. As SNP leader he’s seen the SNP opposition grow from three to twenty-two. The smart money is on Mason
16 Martin you mention Clegg and Hallam day after day ad nauseam , where is one shred of evidence that the party and its members are not behind him , you have zero knowledge of LibDem members their beliefs and what motivates them . Huhne will also be reelected in Eastleigh and to infer that Clegg is hoping for his defeat there is one of your most unintelligents posts you have made although there is severe competition for that accolade .
Martin at 1: we debated the Times piece on the last thread - it’s factually wrong (the canvass data is NOT being done by hand) and I’m pretty suspicious of the rest too.
The funny thing about this by-election is that not only does nobody really know what’s going to happen, but nobody’s sure whether to massage expectations up or down. So we’re all going by anecdotes and polls of dubious validity. Do not bet the house either way.
19. Yes, should be a great night on thursday/ Friday Morning!
What time does the result normally come in for Glasgow east must be fairly early i would have though as it is in a city?
Anyway here is one LD activist’s view of the SNP vs Labour debate in Glasgow East.
“Saw my only Labour activists on the street at about 7 PM, after seeing loads of SNP and being serenaded by Alex Salmond…”
Stephen Glenn
http://tinyurl.com/6mupqt
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article4368978.ece
Piece in tomorrow’s times with Labour saying they are 1000-1500 ahead.
Which is pretty much my own view for what it’s worth.
20. Mark do you support Clegg’s stance on tax cuts as top priority?
“In the Govan by-election of 1988 the final opinion poll published 3 days before poll by System 3/Herald-STV showed Labour 20% ahead of the SNP.
The SNP won the Govan by-election with a 12% lead.
System 3/Herald-STV
Reported 7th/8th November 1988
Labour - 52.9%
SNP - 33.4%”
http://snp.org/node/14054
24. On a low turnout that would be quite alot.
15- thanks Yokel- no, no- I have 100 pound to win 108 at SNP. I can cash it now for 40 meaning I take a 60 hit.
There is though this slight feeling, and by gosh I will feel clever hanging on to it to gloat on Friday morning on pbCOM.
Tricksy one- I very rarely show my hand here out of superstition.
26. Labour were not an unpopular national government then and the SNP did not have control of the parish council in scotland…
25 Yes
18- peter- how did you do on the golf?
Unless Tiger plays, my golfing betting days are finished. Too much uncertainty.
I had my luckiest day ever today on gambing, and could have easily been at least a grand down
21. Nick Palmer MP
On the previous thread you were trying to infer that the hand-canvassing story was an SNP-based slur on your campaign. In fact it eminates solely from the Times’ journalist (no idea who he is, but from reading the article he barely seems to have visited Scotland before, let alone being an SNP supporter).
23 - I was in Glasgow on Saturday and that wasn’t the impression I got. Saw quite a few Labour people out and about.
28 Tyson, I would hang on - the downside is limited (to £40 actually!) and there must be more than a few pints worth down the pub were you ultimately to prevail.
BTW are you looking forward to another beautiful sunset in Oxford around now, here in Hudds it’s virtually pitch black.
The LibDems came 6th in Hamilton South in 1999, garnering only 600 votes. Didn’t hurt Charles Kennedy. In fact the worse the LDs do, paradoxically, the better for them, since it confirms the tactical alliance emerging between them and the SNP…
14. Thatcher would have won a majority of 100 in 1983, not 144. Probably a majority of 50 in 1987, not 102, and 1992 would have produced a hung parliament… That’s where the speculation really begins…
30. Ha ha ha.
PB’s biggest hard leftie turns into a capitalist overnight. That’s some going Mr Clegg!!
16. Im surpeised at your thoughts on Sheffield Hallam. Clegg seems solid as a rock there, regardless of his policies. The Lib dems are so effective in the Sheffield area and the Conservatives have consistently lost council seats to the Lib dems there for years. Just look at the Dore ward - one of the wealthiest villages in the country and the tories have been losing councillers to the Lib dems there for the last two years.
Clegg will survive in Hallam if nothing else then because the Sheffield Tories seem pretty hopeless
In the locals, C&N & Henley Labour did worst than their expectation management forecasts claimed so I’m waiting to see what they say - will it be a new Rule to add to the Smithson one on polls? I’ve thought throughout that Labour would hold it, just, and still feel that way but if Labour starts saying that they indeed expect to hold but barely then I’d move towards expectation of an SNP win.
22. Glasgow East declared at 02:26 in 2005….
33. Max, are you calling this one for Labour? I would value the ‘neutral’
opinion of a Scottish Tory (who usually has a pretty level head).
16: Martin, it clearly fits in with your desired narrative of imminent Lib Dem collapse to claim (1) that a possible fourth place in a by-election in a deeply unpromising seat will provoke a leadership crisis; (2) that despite excellent results in local elections, Huhne and Clegg are doomed at the next GE; and (3) that Clegg has failed to take his party with him on the policy announcements last week. However, although I don’t necessarily agree with Mark S’s wholesale dismissal of your approach, it’s true that you’d look less like a single-issue obsessive if you occasionally provided some evidence for your beliefs. On the claim that Clegg ‘has failed to take his party with him’, you may want to look at http://www.libdemvoice.org/clegg-launches-make-it-happen-with-call-to-cut-taxes-3028.html. Not a unanimous welcome for the policy, but on the whole positive.
Mason has rightly been slated by the press for his off the wall opinions that do not represent the majority of Scots. Curran is definitely the better candidate but the SNP have the better campaign machine. In summary no-one knows but my hunch is a small Labour victory as most polls are showing.
Will the Glasgow East byelection wake up Labour? They still seem to be in a state of denial about how bad things are.
I am not sure that the byelection has done the SNP any good. Their core voter base is strong but much of their support is still a protest Labour vote. Putting up a candidate who hates the English and wants to get rid of the monarchy seems to have been a major goof.
As for my Conservatives we have fought a good campaign but have to accept it has yet to make a big impact. And for the Lib Dems this campaign has been a disaster from day 1.
28. Yeah, difficult. You’ve nothing to lose by staying in if thats the odds you have, your losses have a defined bottom and if Labour look like running away with it trying to claw back any of the losses isnt going to get you far.
31 I finished £45 up on Harrington, after selling my entire prospective £120 profit on Norman last night and then some - in fact he was the only player on whom I would have lost money.
“How can you possibly do that?” asked her indoors.
“When it comes to betting, there’s no room for sentimentality” I replied.
“You’re worse than hard-hearted Hannah” she countered, sipping from a very pleasant glass of Sancerre paid for by my exploits on Betfair.
39.
2010 - Labour expectation management “We think we will get 1 seat in the House of Commons”
34- peter- not as spectacular as last night, and darker now- but still the last shimmering of light blue on the horizon.
30. It was your reluctance to state this and others that formed my opinion on the Clegg policy not being shared with LD members. If you do enthusistically support it with the other LD members on here; Clegg has nothing to worry about! It just seemed to me obviously wrongly that he had left you all behind. But if you are for lower taxes welcome to the club - you obviously will be hoping for a tory-LD govt to slash public spending and give tax cuts on all manner of things! If you are in a Labour-Tory marginal Mark you may think about voting Tory to make sure the tax cuts get through!
41 - I’m really not 100% sure but I have a suspision that Labour may well hold out. If it was pretty much any other seat in Scotland then I reckon Labour would lose. There is a strong core vote but I suppose it’ll depend if they can get it out.
If they lose this seat then I think Labour in Scotland would go into total meltdown - it would be a trully catastrophic result - and one that Scottish Labour may not recover from.
43. Jono
You can cut the “hates the English” crap right now. That nonsense has never done any Unionist party any good whatsoever. In fact I put down the modest Scottish Tory recovery recently largely to the Tories stopping spouting those types of lies about the SNP, and being generally far more positive in their approach, while Labour and the Lib Dems haven’t fully learnt that lesson yet.
48 Martin I am in Worthing West LibDems 2nd to Conservatives .
I don’t necessarily agree with Martin that Clegg will either lose his seat or that Huhne will challenge him before the next election, but in general terms I don’t think he is wrong.
I cannot see a single way in which the Lib Dems are better off now than they were under Ming.
The local elections were no better in terms of share of vote, no by-election have they met expectations, they are stagnant in nation polls, and they are getting no more positive media coverage now than a year ago.
I fully expect them to lose 15-20 MPs at the next election, and don’t see why they would keep Clegg after that. I know they don’t have an issue like the war to bolster them, but they shouldn’t need an extraorinary political event to improve from where they are. A good leader should bring more media coverage, improved poll ratings, and good results in elections (by- and local). Failure to manage that as a new leader is just failure. It is no excuse to say that you are no worse than the last guy. If that is how high you aim, then you shouldn’t be a major party leader.
Unless they are invited into Coalition, I cannot see Clegg being leader more than 6 months after the next election.
21. Nick
Agree completely, there are known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and the situation is too complex even for parties to take ‘lines’. Your point about keeping to small stakes is right on the money - it is too ‘interesting’. I declare a tenner on the SNP; am not a gambler by nature but wanted to have a stake in this out of interest.
43. I cannot imagine what makes Curran definitely the better candidate. If UK politics has reached the point where that is true, then we are in a truly sorry state.
43 - I can’t imagine many people in and around Parkhead would be too dissapointed at getting rid of the Queen!
I agree WRT the candidate. Margaret Curren is a far more polished performer than John Mason but she has the advantage of having a good deal more experience.
43. Read Herman Kahn - denial scales to the size of the problem. A big enough problem will lead to denial of Titanic size. The problem that Labour have is that their entire way of doing business is out of date.
The whole process of announcing the same spending (always spending) 10 times, the rubbishing via anon briefings etc. doesn’t work any more. The truth behind it - shovelling cash at schools and hospitals, has just proven the old business rule about giving money to dysfunctional organisations.
Cameron and some around him seem to be waking up to the fact that in the Internet age, there are enough anoraks out there data mining publically available information to make spin *itself* a problem….
45- I won £ 5.98 on Harrington (made a quick 20 on the grand prix as a diversion)-but at one stage I was 1100 in the red on Padraig with 200 green on others as Padraig’s odds went down to 1.6 (betfair) after hole 8/9- meaning that I was literally a grand down
God alone knows how I got myself in such a mess, but no more golfing. Thankyou Padraig for that run of three bogies.
45- peter- btw- good choice of wine
52. The Lib Dem problem Morus was that its where we are in the political cycle. Last election the Lib Dems had a collection of circumstance that they are unlikely to see again in a hurry.
Since then theres been a move to more two party politics. Inevitably the LDs are going are in danger of being squeezed now and next election.
In that context was never going to make a huge difference to the Lib Dems who their leader is unless it was someone truly extraordinary, and that they simply dont have. Thats exactly why I’m fairly pessimistic abiout LD chances next GE based on the current known situation.
going to/are in danger of…
51
A very distant second Mark!
Last Updated: Friday, 6 May, 2005, 03:07 GMT 04:07 UK
Result: Worthing West
CON HOLD
TOP THREE PARTIES AT A GLANCE
Conservative 47.6%
Liberal Democrat 26.7%
Labour 19.2%
Swing: 0.1% from CON to LD
IN DETAIL
Name Party Votes % +/- %
Peter Bottomley Conservative 21,383 47.6 +0.1
Claire Potter Liberal Democrat 12,004 26.7 +0.2
Antony Bignell Labour 8,630 19.2 -2.3
Tim Cross UK Independence Party 2,374 5.3 +0.8
Chris Baldwin Legalise Cannabis Alliance 550 1.2 +1.2
Majority 9,379 20.9
Turnout 44,941 62.6 +2.9
KEY SEAT
People labelled “idiots” and “lunatics” under archaic mental health laws could soon be allowed to stand for Parliament.
Ministers are considering scrapping ancient rules after complaints from mental health campaigners that they are discriminatory.
Laws created in Elizabethan times define idiots as “incapable of gaining reason” and lunatics as capable of only periods of lucidity.
They are banned from becoming MPs “in their non lucid intervals”.
And there we were thinking that they were already in parliament
32: Stuart - yes, sorry, it sounded to me like an SNPish sort of story, but you’re right that the source was the Times guy who wandered in and doesn’t seem to have been local at all. Apologies!
61: yes, the Mental Health Alliance is pressing for this, on the basis that one can be off with a physical ailment for years and still retain the seat, but if one has a bad psychiatric bout then one has to resign. They point to Bondevik, the Norwegian PM who admitted to severe depression, was allowed to take time off to have treatment, then later got re-elected as the Norwegian electorate felt it was nice that he’d been honest about it.
The scope for jokes is obvious but I’m sorry to see a doctor joining in.
9 - Tyson, there is a tendency in politics to try and deny proof, it’s just a spill over from my position on that.
On topic, I started off by thinking the SNP wouldn’t win, even when most others were saying they would. Now - I think they stand a 50/50 chance.
Jono,
There is no evidence that the swing to the SNP in the last couple of years is a protest swing. I think that some people might not want to wake up to the fact that the SNP are a popular government and that there has been a major political shift towards the SNP which is not temporary. Perhaps in this by-election there is a protest vote too..
On the canvas returns, I’m very confused about who doesn’t declare their voting intentions or are undecided. Is there any evidence that suggests that these tend to drift from the incumbent, especially when it is unpopular?
I say this because I was told by canvassers that there are a lot of Labour deserters who don’t know yet where to go. If these ‘don’t knows’ people who make up 30% of the vote are definately not going to vote Labour then the SNP will take the seat.
58 - Yes, and it would be unfair to brand Nick Clegg a failure just because he couldn’t get to Kennedy’s highs of 25% for the LDs and most popular party leader.
The fact is that had Ming been leader in 2005 they would not have done that well, and if Kennedy were still leader now they would not be doing this unimpressively.
The circumstances of the war changed the scope of what was possible, but that is now gone. There must be other ways to get them regularly back over 20% short of another war, and it is the leader’s responsibility to find them. Political cycle explains it only if you consider that the party is only reactive - it never seeks to make its own political weather. Combine that with Clegg’s low personal ratings (which previous Lib Dem leaders didn’t have) and I don’t see any argument *for* keeping him after the next GE, unless he’s in the Cabinet.
Surely if Labour lose, getting “good” polls before hand will make it all the worse for GB. Expectations and all that. If the polls were slipping away from them and showed a close race, people would have seen it coming. This way it will still be a heck of a shock if the SNP win.
52. Maybe it’s not possible in the internet age to take a long-term cyclical view, but historically Liberal/Lib Dem leaders see a dip in their party’s support at their first election, and then a big rise in votes and/or seats at their second. This was the case for Thorpe, Steel and Ashdown. The exception was under Charles Kennedy, where they had two successive moderate rises.
The last equivalent time to now in the political cycle was 1977-1979 and the Lib Dems are in a whole lot better shape now than then.
66. The Lib Dems should be mopping up the left-leaning vote that is disgusted with Labour. That they haven’t is reason enough to get rid of Clegg.
People like to vote for the winner. A “good” Poll is designed to sway undecideds in the last few days.
Fortunately due to overkill by the Scottish media more and more Scots are immune to this
63. Surely it’s not beyond the wit of parliament (or maybe it is) to come to some arrangement with Sinn Fein so that voters can expect to be represented full time (i.e apply the six-month rule as in local government)?
69 - Exactly.
71 - Sinn Fein make a stand by not taking the oath. I don’t know they’d want to change that.
In fairness, it’s not like the voters don’t know what they get for it when they vote SF. If they really want an MP they vote SDLP.
69 - I don’t think he’s sufficiently shown the public how he is different to Cameron at the moment, he also sounds and looks relatively similar (a point I raised during the election) which doesn’t help.
63. I thought there was a Tory MP in the 1992-1997 parliament that thought No.10 was being manipulated by a witches covern! This MP apparnetly stayed in a monestry most of the time to protect himself from evil spirits! Maybe he was an alcholic and the evil spirits were booze?
Given that IIRC medical books suggest that varying degrees of phychosis and schizophrenia afflict about one in a hundred adults there must be about six or so in the commons who have phychological flaws now or in the past.
Mental health policy has changed considerably over time, it would seem to me though that some of the more serious conditions are difficult to diagnose because the patient does not show consistant behaviour. For instance when a medical services person conducts an interview they react *normally*, when the rest of the time they may show a multiple of symptoms. I put this down to social conditioning; you would not fart in front of other people who were speaking to you and so unless it is a highly disturbed case they are unlikely to show the symptoms that are most disturbing.
52,68
ICM will b eout this week and historically ha sbben good at Lib Dem share.
At present Lib dems are rather absent from the media which partly accounts for a slip in share.
I agree that here is a squeeze risk but still think most likley election shares are 40:30:20. which is hung parlament territory.
I am amazed at the amount of time Tory posters spend running down Nick Clegg.If he is so useless why are they wasting their breath?
My oen view is that Clegg is gradually establishing himself as a reasoanble likeable and articulate leader.He needs more exposure and a beefed up prees office should help that.
rogerh
73. I fully appreciate SF’s stand. It’s just a shame that mainland voters can’t get full-time representation.
76. To be fair it is mainly me who questions Clegg’s long term (even short -term) viability. But why not? He is far game! - Cameron looks as safe as houses and Brown looks doomed! Salmond looks as safe as houses from the Scottish perspective. The reason why i mention Clegg frequently is his situation is the most fluid other than the blinding obvious and boring Brown leadership.
49.”If they lose this seat then I think Labour in Scotland would go into total meltdown - it would be a trully catastrophic result - and one that Scottish Labour may not recover from.”
I agree Max, losing this *seat* unlike C&N would be catastrophic for Labour both in Scotland and elsewhere. Gordon Brown’s premiership would be under severe pressure, and at the moment they do not even have a leader of the Scottish Labour party, incredible.
79. Even cabinet minows like James Purnell are setting their stall out on Sunday Morning programs.
76 - I’m probably Clegg’s second -stauchest critic after Martin Day, but I hope you don’t infer from that that I’m a Tory?!
I’d be fairly likely to vote Lib Dem if they demonstrated the following:
(a) That they would be an effective opposition to the next Cameron government (because Labour will struggle to be at first)
(b) That they were ideologically coherent and had a strong policy platform.
(c) That they were a serious party with full intent of taking power one day - starting by beating either Labour or the Tories into 3rd place.
All of these take a decent leader. Huhne was that leader, and Clegg never was. I’d happily vote Lib Dem if they just got a little better at everything, but they aren’t showing the signs.
Can anyone name a single thing that has improved for the LibDems in the nine months since Clegg took over?
62. Thanks Nick! I appreciate that. And I also appreciate that you have been trying to report Glasgow East as you actually experienced it. A certain amount of spin by an involvee is totally acceptable. Indeed it would be odd if a canvasser did not try to promote their team!
81 “Can anyone name a single thing that has improved for the LibDems in the nine months since Clegg took over?”
The almost total lack of references to Werthers’ Originals?
83 - Sold to the man with a dislike of nostalgia!
54.”I agree WRT the candidate. Margaret Curren is a far more polished performer than John Mason but she has the advantage of having a good deal more experience.”
I keep agreeing with you Max!
It pains me to say it, but Margaret Curran was a better performer than Mason on the Scotland QT debate, and I don’t normally find her a good performer or very easy on the ear full stop. How many people watched whose vote will matter on Thursday watched though?
Stuart, I might not have couched it as strongly as Jono did, but Mason does come across as a more hard line nationalist rather than the more friendly manner used by Salmond or Sturgeon. Who knows, that might appeal to the people of Glasgow? One thing I do know, the rise in the amount of SNP councillors down in that part of Scotland is doing wonders for the SNP. They have now got a real foothold in some of Glasgow’s heartlands and I expect that number to increase in the near future.
65.”Jono,
There is no evidence that the swing to the SNP in the last couple of years is a protest swing.”
Come off it, the elections last year are a perfect example. People wanted to send Labour packing and many people who have never voted SNP before or agree with independence lent them their vote to do just that.
That is why Alex Salmond did not want an immediate referendum on independence, he was well aware that he would lose it and quite possible might scare away those voters he is now cultivating at the next elections.
81. Despite agreeing with the Lib Dems on most issues, their slavish europhilia means I couldn’t vote for them. If they took a position of europhilic in theory, but demanded the EU cleared up its corruption and unaccountability first, it would help them a lot with centrists while not particularly upsetting the left wing.
83. Werthers’ Originals?
Perhaps you could explain this to me?
86. But the corruption and unaccountability are because the EU delegates responsibility for these things to the nation states. To stop the corruption and unaccountability you need a stronger EU centre, not a weaker one.
86 - Again, I can wholeheartedly agree with that.
Night all,
87 Martin -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werthers
The said Robert Rockwell is considered to bear an uncanny resemlance to Menzies Campbell.
Coffee house blog has this, Breakfast briefing
“Spotted: Alastair Campbell tucking into a full Scottish breakfast in the Crutherland House Hotel in East Kilbride – a mere 20 minutes drive from the Glasgow East constituency. Coincidence?”
85. ChrisD
My understanding is that John Mason is a practising Christian, who has worked in a trans-denominational group abroad. As such it would be highly unlikely that he “hates” any ethnic or national grouping, eg “the English”, or indeed any fellow human being for that matter. What kind of Christian would that make him?
Being a strong supporter of independence makes one strongly pro-English in my judgement. The corollary of Scottish independence will be English independence.
Just a thought, but wasn’t Jesus himself a bit of a fan of self-government for his nation?
90. I see, well i always thought he looked like a charecteture from a TV advert!
I don’t understand why Margaret Curran is sometimes touted as the stronger candidate - she’s the highest-profile candidate given that she’s an MSP, but that’s about as much as can be said. I thought she was garbled and unconvincing in the two televised debates. She kept falling back on formulations like ‘I’d be sympathetic to that idea’ or ‘I’ll want to look at that to see if something can be done’. She was desperately trying to give the vague impression she MIGHT do something about banning air weapons, for instance, when it’s blindingly obvious she intends to toe the government line when she gets to Westminster (if, indeed, her dual mandate ever allows her time to turn up).
As for Mason, my only complaint is that that there were a couple of times in the debate when he really could have driven a point home and he inexplicably just stopped speaking! Other than that he’s been pretty good.
92.Stuart I never accused his of those things, I simple said that he comes over as more of a hard line nationalist. They do exist.
“Being a strong supporter of independence makes one strongly pro-English in my judgement. The corollary of Scottish independence will be English independence.”
Yes, and we see the kind of unhelpful, if not downright dangerous baiting on the blogsphere as well.
61, etc: this always reminds me of Screaming Lord Sutch, who when questioned about the apparent lack of electoral success of his Raving Loony party, would say that in fact there was always an absolute majority of loonies in the Commons ….
I’m off up to Scotland on Wednesday, and hope to return to East on election day …. I have of course toured it several times when researching the Almanac, and the most recent time I felt it looked less despondent than back in the 80s. Indeed I only spotted one obvious crack house in Easterhouse.
I would still say, as right from the beginning of the campaign, that I’d consider the by-election a 50-50 call.
However, anyone who thinks this would on its own be the death knell for the Labour party in Scotland may recall the two Govan byelections they lost to the SNP, the more recent the year before they won a general election.
I’d also have a bet with anyone who thinks that if the Lib Dems finish no better than fourth (a good chance, I’d have thought) that they’d change their leader, and also with anyone who think Clegg will lose Hallam.
Labour wouldn’t have changed leader if they hadn’t won Darlington either. This idea that when things go awry the leader is vulnerable is really rather modern. Lord knows how many Labour leaders (and PMs) we’d have had between 1966 and 1970!
Finally. Morus, 66, it is not ‘fact’ that the Lib Dems would have done worse than with Kennedy, it is a reasonable but unquantifiable surmise, though I remain convinced that the leadership factor is over-estimated nowadays. I suspect that the replacement of Campbell by Clegg has had no significant effect whatsoever. We still do not have a presidential system here (and indeed the US has become significantly less presidential and more party-oriented in voting patterns in the last decades, as we may find again in November).
85. “People wanted to send Labour packing and many people who have never voted SNP before or agree with independence lent them their vote to do just that.”
But you could say that about virtually any election. Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. The 1997 landslide was largely an anti-Tory vote (Labour’s job was simply to look as un-scary as possible) but that didn’t mean the votes that were ‘lent’ to Labour were remotely easy for the Tories to win back.
I consider myself to be a “hardline” supporter of independence. In fact I have yet to meet an SNP member who is not!
98.You know what I mean Stuart, and I can tell you right now that if Alex Salmond adopted the demeanour of some of his supporters he would not now be First Minister!
98. Quite right! The London-based media sometimes talk about the ‘pro-independence’ wing of the SNP versus the ‘pro-devolution’ wing - who on earth is the latter supposed to consist of? George Reid?
No I do not Chris.
Last time I saw Reid make a speech he made an eloquent appeal for independence!
101. Glad to hear it, I sometimes wondered if he was wavering!
Off to bed. Goodnight and goodwill to all men… And Chris
Fewer people facing bankruptcy
“The number of people facing bankruptcy has fallen compared with a year ago, says the Ministry of Justice.
One type of bankruptcy petition filed with the courts in England and Wales fell by 15% from the first quarter of 2007 to the same three months of 2008.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7404225.stm
96.”This idea that when things go awry the leader is vulnerable is really rather modern. Lord knows how many Labour leaders (and PMs) we’d have had between 1966 and 1970!”
Robert, history or just plain hindsight is a very powerful tool. I don’t think that the Labour party fancies being in opposition for as long as they were last time anymore than the Tories do. One thing the last 30 years has taught us all is that the leader is now more of an issue than ever before now that we have the internet and 24 hour media coverage. Whether we like it or not, with ever decreasing party membership and much less generational voting influence we don’t have the luxury of hanging onto failing leaders.
IMHO losing a seat like Glasgow East will be catastrophic for Scottish Labour, especially when you combine it with last years Scottish elections and the loss of two Holyrood leaders in 12 months. Gordon Brown is already so unpopular and weak, if he carries on another two years he has become the magnet for all the woes of the government in much the same way as Thatcher did in 1990. He may not have been PM for 10 years, but he in effect had a dual premiership with Blair directing economic policy from No11.
104.”Mike Gerrard, a personal insolvency partner at Grant Thornton, said that the quarter-on-quarter rise was a “true reflection” of aincreasingly sizeable minority of people getting into problems with debt.
This [the quarter-on-quarter rise] shows a trend that cannot be ignored
Mike Gerrard, Grant Thornton
He predicted the numbers would rise throughout 2008 as household food and energy bills went up and people could not use equity in their homes.”
“This shows a trend that cannot be ignored,” he said.
Does that include people taking the recent option of IVAs?
92 Being a strong supporter of independence makes one strongly pro-English in my judgement. The corollary of Scottish independence will be English independence.
No it won’t, we’d still be lumbered with NI and Wales. Unless Scottish independance would lead to the complete break-up of the Union. However, as Ireland joined after Scotland, I imagine that rather than simply repeal the 1707 Act of Union (which would surely leave NI in no-man’s land) there would have to be a new Act making Scotland independent from the UK.
104. Do they have figures on political bankrupcy?
If they do i should imagine the Labour party has an enron sized problem!
This by-election will not cause a meltdown in the Labour vote in Scotland. That’s already happening.
82: Thanks, Stuart. And to make a non-political comment - it was my first visit to Glasgow and I liked it - both the place and the people whom I met. Incidentally, I’m not pathologically opposed to Scottish nationalism: it does seem to me possible that small countries work best nowadays (in the bad old days being small simply meant you got invaded by someone big). I’d be sorry to see Britain split up, but perhaps in the EU context these things matter less than they used to.
Brown cannot afford to keep the fighters flying:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4369290.ece
But gives away more money to an overseas country:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7515786.stm
That’s £30M that could be spent here on maintaining defence that he has gifted to make himself look statesman like. It all adds up like the Labour MP Communication allowances etc…etc.
112.”That’s £30M that could be spent here on maintaining defence that he has gifted to make himself look statesman like.”
Sadly, Brown will be trying to spend money where it will deliver the core vote rather on what is essential for our armed forces.
Sober,quiet thought:I take it as read DC will wint the next GE.
Some fright is taken by the stock market;base rates rise.
By conventinal logic,public spendings cuts/slash-ans-burn delete to taste) exageratte a new (i)In terms of govt (ii)Home-grown through policy
Result?
UK GDP grows by a good deal less than otherwisde could have been the case..
Erm,where have we seen this one before??
My consolation?
(a)In defeat,which despite the schoolgirly noises on this site will be NOTHING like as bad as all that
(b)A Blairite will be a very solid Leader of The Opposition
(c)Within 2 years,David Cameron will be politically,psychologically,smashed through events-and privately praying for the subsequent election so he can retreta to being leader of the Opposition.
No malice meant.No spin.Just a reasoanble hunch,as someone who has closely followed UK politics since age 14,in 1985
114. Fair enough! Who knows what would happen in a hypothetical Cameron government. But for the sake of democracy now Labour have been tested beyond destruction; the tories deserve a chance. Labour have set us up collectively for a big fall.
I cannot believe the lie that the government has said we are amungst the best placed countries to ride out the economic turmoil has not been more chatogorically shot to pieces. The public fiances are a shambles, Brown even tries claiming that they are in a better state than 1990!
They were in surplas in 1990 but now…..
I can’t see the publishing on today’s Welfare Reform green paper that advocates tougher regimes for those on benefit going down too well in a constituency where 50% of potential voters are on Welfare.
It looks like Brown has shot himself in what’s left of his foot again.
SNP win.
108 - dont worry - when Scotland goes Wales will not be very far behind………
#98 - 102
From memory, the last YouGov poll showed that 12% of SNP-supporters opposed Scottish Independence. I suppose (like all opinions/polls) the answer is determined by how the question is phrased.
#116
Are benefits in Scotland governed by the local assembly or Westminster? I ask because one of the oddities of the SNP’s local income-tax proposal is that the ruling-party also want to continue receiving £400million in council-tax benefits from Westminster.
Labour has chosen the former. I’m just saying what I’m saying and I’m sharing what I’m seeing as Scotland. However, remember to choose one of a dip and you shall see the SNP soar.
Some speculation on Herald thread that the SNP has beaten Labour in the postal votes for Glasgow East. These would have been opened and samples taken by the parties: http://tinyurl.com/5ky5cv
This is ominous for Labour and those of you who have bet on them.