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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Two years before an election, how much of a lead does the O
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Two years before an election, how much of a lead does the Opposition have.
As we can see, generally speaking most oppositions have a lead two years before an election, the exceptions being William Hague and IDS who were facing Tony Blair, who could be accurately described as the most successful politician of recent times.
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This is like the pb equivalent of having a party in your parents' house while they're out and hoping you can clean it up before you get back.
When we finish talking about this don't forget to edit the thread to make it about something else before he catches you comparing polls from different eras with completely different methodologies.
Labour's remaining hope is the bias in the system in their favour as a result of the efficiency of their vote. Will that be enough to overcome what looks like a losing position? Very hard to tell. The game's afoot. etc.
"Why would housebuilders build enough houses that it reduced the price of houses?"
Well, housebuilders are not a homogenous single entity. They are a selection of smaller and larger companies, each looking to make a profit. Each firm has imperfect information about the plans of others.
Right now, with housebuilding, there are plenty of opportunities to earn a profit by converting unused land (low value) to developed land (high value). In a world with no planning restrictions, economics would arbitrage the difference: so enough houses were built that the difference between the price of land and the price of a house was simply the cost of building it, plus an element to compensate the developer for taking a risk that the price would move aversely.
What makes this not happen - and results in a big difference between the price of undeveloped land and the price of a finished property - is a tortuous set of planning restrictions, whose purpose (it sometimes seems) is to increase the value of peoples' existing homes (by restricting supply of new homes) than to ensure that there is adequate and affordable housing for all.
If there was a relevant comparison to be made I think it would be Thatcher in 77 as she was facing a first term govt with a small majority, or Wilson in 72/Heath in 68
If the numbers can be compared at all that is.
Is why sometimes it is very difficult to fit graphs with very high shares and very low shares without compressing the data.
IMO Labour have had a bad 2013. Personally, I feel that the death of Thatcher changed the tone of the debate. Following it immediately with a clumsy "we will borrow more" statement was a bit of a disaster.
UKIP took the wind out the sails of the opposition, in much the same way as Nick Clegg damaged Cameron in 2010.
The only silver lining is Cameron is having a worse time and the election is still some time away.
The bet on the horse to win the Guineas and Derby... In principle if I were making that market I would have laid singles at the prices offered, moved the prices and laid the double at the new price.
Though for £25 would you bother?
Let's say (for example), UKIP takes a large chunk of Tory votes, but largely focused on the South. In the marginals and North they take largely NOTA. Overall though, despite a large vote (say 10-15%) they don't win any seats and because of the votes they attract (i.e. NOTA) they don't influence any results.
Clearly a simplistic example - but in this case the Tory votes would fall far faster than their number of seats, and hence the efficiency of their vote would rise dramatically.
Surely that needs to be factored in to the analysis?
One of the other threads coming up in the next few days tracks where Dave was two years before an election, and compares him to where Ed is today.
Shows some interesting parallels and some optimism for Ed, and some pessimism for Ed.
http://youtu.be/IcR6AQEbEdY
Electoral Calculus suggests this puts Labour 17 seats short of a majority, 17 seats ahead of the Conservatives - though the detail of that depends on how well the Lib Dems hang on, and how well UKIP do.
This is the scenario - Labour largest party in a hung Parliament - that is currently suggested by swingback on the by-election swings.
Although the rise of UKIP in the polls has been jolly exciting, on another level the political situation has been quite stable. Not enough people are persuaded that the Coalition has been competent for either constituent party to benefit in 2015. Enough left Lib Dems will vote for Labour to make them the largest party in a hung Parliament, but the country as a whole is not sufficiently convinced to give them a majority.
It has been like this since the autumn of 2010, pretty much.
Hacking group Anonymous publish mobile numbers and addresses of senior EDL members as they vow to bring down far-right organisation
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2332550/Hacking-group-Anonymous-publish-mobile-numbers-addresses-senior-EDL-members-vow-bring-far-right-organisation.html#ixzz2UgHQmSyl
You are assuming that there is a functioning competitive market in housebuilding, but it doesn't look that way to me. The housebuilding companies can sit on their land safe in the knowledge that no new entrant to the market is going to build lots of houses and take their market away from them. This can only happen because land is a scarce commodity, particularly land in places where people want to live.
Perhaps if we taxed land to encourage people to make productive use of it, rather than hoarding it, we would encourage the housebuilders to either build on their land or sell it to people who will.
The EDL probably think that was an email sent by one of them to a group of Muslim extremists that has pinged back
My recollection is that, before every election, numerous people* explain why uniform national swing is inadequate, and yet when the results come in it does reasonably well in terms of the broad outline of the result.
Will your effect really be large enough to change the result from Labour largest party in a Hung Parliament to Conservative largest party?
* Yeah, I'm pretty sure I've done this.
The UAF are just the other side of the EDL coin IMO - but until they're proscribed, they have a right to protest within the law.
I'm here, Ben.
Surprising figures so soon in the recovery cycle, but it does look like Osborne is managing to achieve his goal of moving the economy away from demand driven consumption dependency.
Arguing for the State to do something is not the same as arguing for the State to do everything.
Eligibility for The 'Help to Buy' Mortgage Guarantee Scheme
The scheme is designed to help creditworthy households struggling to save for the high mortgage deposits required by lenders in the current environment. For this reason, a mortgage eligible for a guarantee under the scheme will need to:
• be a residential mortgage, and not buy-to-let;
• be taken out by an individual or individuals rather than an incorporated company;
• be on a property in the UK with purchase value of £600,000 or less;
• have a loan-to-value of between 80 per cent and 95 per cent;
• be originated between the dates specified by the scheme;
• be a repayment mortgage, and not interest-only; and
• meet certain minimum requirements in terms of the assessment of the borrower’s ability to pay the mortgage, for example a loan-to-income and credit score test.
Note particularly that the scheme iexpressly excludes buy-to-let purchases.
Note too that loans will only be provided to borrowers who meet normal credit risk criteria: i.e. these are not 'sub-prime loans'.
A new one seems to pop up every five years or so and then disappear into the annals of psephological history.
Where would they be without them?
Taking the former: it has around 54,000 plots of land with permission - that is, it can build 54,000 homes. As Barratt builds and sells c. 12,000 homes a year, this means it has 4.3 years of supply. Given the time lags between getting planning permission and actually selling a house, this seems like about the right amount of time. If it had six or eight years worth of inventory your claim would hold true. But four years - given it has to organise all the infrastucture, design, build and then sell the homes - seems about right to me.
Taking the latter, Barratt has 10,500 acres of land on which it does not have planning permission. On an acre-for-acre basis (and conservatively estimating 0.1 acres per Barratt home), this is twice the size of the bank on which it does have permission. So, my original point holds: home builders do not have planning permission on the bulk of their land.
Continuing weakness of euro area trading partners, slow real income growth and necessary public and private sector deleveraging are generating strong headwinds for the economy. Growth is expected to pick up gradually through 2013 and 2014 as gross fixed investment and exports gain momentum. Inflation expectations are above the inflation target, but inflation is projected to decelerate owing to persistent economic slack.
..
The pace of fiscal consolidation of about 1% of GDP per year in both 2013 and 2014 is appropriate and should be implemented as planned while letting automatic stabilisers operate in the event growth disappoints.
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Business/pdf/2013/05/29/OECD.pdf
Page 94
The Eurozone on the other hand... they are now predicting a 0.6% GDP fall this year in the Eurozone as a whole.
We have to be careful not to cast the EDL in the light of being victims. That plays right into their narrative. ie 'We are put upon home boy patriots horribly betrayed by the people in charge of mother England, and we are only doing what we are doing because we have no choice...'
If you read the 'most liked' on the threads on the mail and telly, antipathy to the EDL is not as wholehearted as is might be.
I'm sure there must be sighs of relief at their HQ that they have your approval. ;-)
I don't follow your logic. Besides, isn't the New Homes Bonus (which amounts to a fair sum in my patch) designed to reward new build (with even extra for social housing) and bringing empty homes back into use.
Really good article in GQ by the way. The muslim response to the murder has generally been impressive. I hope that the moderates who have spoken out so clearly and vehemently about this have learned the importance of not letting the extremists appear to speak for them. It could do a lot of good.
AveryLP said:
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We can invest in new right wing parties of political protest, John.
A new one seems to pop up every five years or so and then disappear into the annals of psephological history.
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Another outright lie! When was the last time a RIGHT wing party started polling 20% of votes.
The Greens perhaps, or the SDP - great right wing parties. Puerile nonsense.
The FLS scheme is open to all borrowers. It is designed to facilitate credit supply through the banking system at a time when banks are being constrained from lending due to regulatory and market demands for increased capital adequacy.
Are you arguing that banks should be prohibited from lending to property companies, buy-to-let landlords and households seeking to remortgage their properties?
There is no more a taxpayer subsidy to these groups than there is to widget manufacturers in Warrington.
I'm not sure I agree that 4.3 years of supply is about the right amount of time, but that is just my opinion set against yours, and I would have to look at historical figures from, say, Barratt Homes to test our opinions.
Perhaps DavidL has something to say at this point? It was he who earlier said on the previous thread that the housebuilders could increase housebuilding rates by this autumn in response to Osborne's Help to Buy scheme.
Also, my vague recollection of the facts is that housebuilding rates have declined since the credit crunch. Since the planning rules previously allowed a higher rate of housebuilding than at present, I'm not sure how it can be argued that they are the primary restriction now, unless planning restrictions have been tightened recently.
I suspect they are just buttering up George Osborne in the hope that he will allocate them a prime property in central London where all their staff can move to avoid the excesses of Hollande's tax regime.
Anecdote time but a solicitor was telling me earlier this week that he had a client who was proceeding with a relatively small housing development which was going to be worth £2.1M on completion. The houses were designed for those with social need and effectively 100% pre-let to the Council who would be placing the tenants in them. The development therefore had an assured income of over £120K a year. The maximum that any bank was willing to lend to fund the development? £875K.
This is really the problem for the smaller builders. 5 years after the crash and our banks are still just not lending in a way that facilitates growth. The funding for lending scheme needs to reach cases like this and unlock development if we are to have substantial growth.
• seasonally adjusted house building starts in England are estimated at 27,370 in the March quarter 2013, 4% higher than the previous quarter
• completions (seasonally adjusted) are estimated at 24,900 in the March quarter 2013, 8% lower than the previous quarter
• private enterprise housing starts (seasonally adjusted) were 7% higher in the March quarter 2013 than the previous quarter, whilst starts by housing associations were 1% higher
• seasonally adjusted private enterprise completions decreased by 7% and housing association completions fell by 9% from the previous quarter
• seasonally adjusted starts are now 62% above the trough in the March quarter 2009 but 44% below the March quarter 2007 peak; completions are 49% below their March quarter 2007 peak
• annual housing starts totalled 101,920 in the 12 months to March 2013, down by 3% compared with the year before; annual housing completions in England totalled 108,190 in the 12 months to March 2013, 8% compared to the previous 12 months
Indeed, he is so desperate that he is now having to rely on Old Etonian interior designers endorsing his relative facial beauty.
I have a lot of sympathy with your view that it's easy to carp from the sidelines, those in the hot seat have to take decisions and that inevitably means messy compromises from time to time. Anyone sensible will understand that a degree of leeway is essential. However, to govern is to chose, and my main issues with UK foreign aid are the wrong choices are being made imo.
There appears a bit of a mind set in our governing class that we must dabble in everything, a relic I feel from our Imperial past. It always seems strange to me that we wish to forget other nations have their own politicians and it is primarily their job to get their nations out of poverty and not ours. I'm all for targeted help in countries which which to move in the same direction we do but blanket money showering and dressed up bungs I still think are actually counter productive. Hence my approach that we should focus on putting our own house in order rather than doing a bodge job in someone else's.
I agree with you. Much as I have no truck with the EDL, I don;t think its funny and I don;t think Anonymous should have done it - largely because it helps the EDL, but also for the reason you cite.
This from the Labour party who served up horse burgers containing 125 % donkey ?
But we have a slow bicycle race between Ed Miliband and David Cameron as to who can look least in control of events. It's a hard one to call right now.
"This from the Labour party who served up horse burgers containing 125 % donkey ?" LOL
I notice that Tesco's now don't actually say what's in their pies and other Value stuff - they refer to it as *meat that complies with our policies* or something equally meaningless.
When pork pies or chicken slices are described using such language - I'm glad its only my pets that are eating them ;^ )
I stopped eating mammals at the turn of the year, and have to say I feel it is one of the few things I have done recently for the best!
I didn't eat ready meals or pies anyway, but it is nice to finish a meal and know that I havent just been gnawing on some random unfortunate animal.
Erm unless its a bird or a fish!
I wonder how this will play out in the coming weeks for EZ bond markets. At some point investors will look at eg. France and think '2% for 10 yr bond - on yer bike!'.
A debt death spiral is all too possible and indeed now pretty much unavoidbale for the GIPSIs. We've seem alot of pushing on the Euro problem in recent years. Shove is now arriving.
While I don't want to be accused of being Pollyana-ish, but the leading indicators for both the UK and most of Europe are beginning to look a little better. One of my favourite early warning signs is the performance of temporary staffing agencies, because firms will tend to take on temporary workers before they hire permanent people. (Conversely, when times are getting worse, they drop temporary workers first.) Randstadt's first quarter results (http://www.ir.randstad.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=758889) and Randstad is the world's largest temporary staffing agency showed that things in the UK improved throughout the first quarter. France looks to be getting worse (1Q staffing revenues were down a horrendous 14%). But Spain (Iberia) showed a dramatic turnaround: in the last quarter of 2012, staff revenues dropped around 12%, and started the year weak. By the end of March, however, revenues were up 3% year-over-year.
1979 Opposition? (Won)
1983 Government (Won)
1987 Government (Won)
1992 Government Marginally/Evenish? (Government Won)
1997 Opposition (Won)
2001 Government (Won)
2005 Government (Won)
2010 Government (Lost but only to Coalition? after extreme economic circumstances)
2015 Opposition ??????
It doesn't matter if you are ahead in the marginals.
What really matters is who can game the system in their favour.
Hmmmm.
Could you link me to an example of what you saw?
Much of the problem with foreign aid is that it is invisible to the public and expenditure is not directly justified to the taxpayer. So the public feels disengaged and inclined to oppose it.
Compare this to the public engagement and support achieved by the BBC for its aid efforts, Comic Relief and Help the Children.
I realise that you might accuse me of trying to revive the woolly 'Big Society' brief, but there is a clear opportunity for the government to win support for its aid activities by closer and more visible involvement with the UK voluntary sector and the wider public. Such engagement would also encourage closer scrutiny of projects and better evaluation of cost benefits.
That is why I like Charles's proposals on matching or double matching public donations for popular projects. This would involve a tricky job of promoting a government initiative through the media and safeguards would need to be put in place to avoid such activity becoming politically partisan. I am sure though this is possible: the National Lottery being an example of a generally successful apolitical implementation.
We can't let the whole shebang become a luvvie-fest though and the broader interests of the stakeholders in government aid (FCO, Trade etc) would need to be balanced. But a substantial effort could be made by the government to bring a least a substantial part of the aid spend further into the public domain.
After all much of foreign aid is PR for Britain. Why can't the direction of positive communication be both inward and outward?
But
1) Comparing polls from different eras like this is always dodgy, as others have noted.
2) The UKIP surge has muddied the waters a bit, making it more difficult to know where the parties "should" be at this stage.
3) If we assume that Labour will outpoll 2010, and put their floor at, say, 33 (and the Lib Dem floor in the low teens, both safe assumptions) then the key number to watch is actually the Tory share.
In this scenario, the Tories will need around 32 just to deprive Labour of a majority.
They will need to more or less match their 2010 result just to deprive Labour of being the largest party.
And they will need to significantly improve on 2010 for a majority.
Current polling, with the Tories flatlining around their core vote and their internals horrible, suggests any of those tasks might be beyond them. And of course Labour and Lib Dem shares (and the LD tactical / incumbent dynamic) could easily be less favourable to the Tories than that.
Except:
Since 1981 our landscape [ in England ] is a three party one. And swingback occurs to the governing party from , usually, the principal opposition party.
According to Rod's projection, given Labour's Local Election average leads in this parliament, Labour would poll about 8% below the Tories in 2015 [ even below 2010 ! ]. The difference with 2015 compared to earlier GE's is that some of the [ net ] swingback votes will accrue to UKIP and not to the Tories.
I feel Rod's analysis can be "improved" by taking in the last LE lead. Firstly, being more recent that will be more up-to-date and, secondly, the UKIP figures will have been assimilated in the net leads.
Of course, it will not take into account, the "swingaway" from UKIP.
I guess sending them to Ireland is the only option then.
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-University-students-sexual-partners-UWE/story-19122429-detail/story.html
The recommendations for the UK are here:
http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/europe-2020-in-your-country/united-kingdom/country-specific-recommendations/index_en.htm
A bit for everyone here:
1 keep up the good work on deficit reduction, but with target growth expenditure
2 more house building
3 reduce youth unemployment
4 clear work incentives to the tax and benefit system, including cheaper childcare
5 more lending to business
6 more renewables and more transport infrastructure
F1: new tyres will only be used at Canada in practice, and introduced properly at Silverstone.
http://www.espn.co.uk/f1/motorsport/story/109334.html
1995 Blair +19, Election lead +12.5, difference -6.5
1999 Hague -17, Election lead -9, difference +8
2003 IDS -4, Election lead -3 (different leader), difference +1
2008 Cameron +14, Election lead +7, difference -7
To me this data strongly indicates that the relationship between the ICM and the general election vote share is based on a bunch of random numbers created by my cat walking across the keyboard.
But FWIW the average is a little below -1, which would imply Labour +5 in the popular vote. That's quite a big majority, although I doubt they'll do that well.
Especially when US treasury bonds are blasting up well above 2%...next stop?
The eurozone won't be able to ignore the reawakening of the US economy - either monetarily or politically....and neither will Britain.
They will not be, I would suggest, a good investment. (Especially as the Japanese government has pledged to double the amount of money in circulation.)
One newish early indicator is the SWIFT Index which predicts GDP performance based on payments activity within the SWIFT network.
It does separate indices for the OECD Countries, the US, Germany, the UK and the EU27. It produces early quarterly reports to predict the official reports but also has running 'Nowcast' predictions of the rate of growth in the current quarter and a running forecast of the next quarter.
The SWIFT Index has a very good record for its predictions (albeit over the short time it has been available). For example, it was one of the very few forecasters that got UK Q1 2013 GDP right at 0.3%.
For those wondering where it stands today, the Nowcast for UK Q2 2013 is 0.1% growth and the forecast for Q3 is 1.0% (QoQ) or 1.1% (YoY) for both quarters.
If there are markets available for Q2 GDP growth then it may be worth looking at an undershoot of expectations for Q2 and an overshoot for Q3. NIESR seem to have set the expectation of 0.5% Q2 growth in the media, which appears to be a rolling 3 month to April growth rate rather than a Q2 on Q1 rate.
Anyway if you haven't come across the SWIFT index before you can reach it on http://www.swift.com/zdoc/swift_index/swift_index.page
A simple registration process gets you free access to the stats in either pdf or xls format.
You've nailed it - again.
Edit. Found it: http://www.swift.com/assets/swift_com/documents/products_services/Press_Release_SWIFT_Index_Feb_2013.pdf
Quite encouraging.
Disaster relief ( unpredictably predictable - it happens every year but you just don't know what or where )
Health programmes
Environment
I was going to add Education but I think we're often hypocrites on the issue. I'd say Education should be a number one or two priority. But as soon as we get doctors or engineers trained up in a target country we tend to let them emigrate to places like us so it's not quite a zero sum game but we get a diminishing bang for our buck. I'm for it if people stay and build their country against it if it's just a ticket to leave.
erm...if France keeps borrowing like it's out of fashion, lowering the retirement age, millionaire tax, etc it will for sure see its debt as % GDP ballon way beyond the 100% limit (already at 90%+). So who is going to be buying their debt? Well I guess the marjet will have zero interest and that only leaves the ECB. Likewise for the GIPSIs.
Fine. But we will see is the continued ballooning of the ECB balance sheet. A balance sheet totally stuffed with crappy assets - EZ junk governmetn bonds. To maintain its own capital ratio it will need to be funded. By whom? Germany.
So the borrow forever plan is basically a construct whereby the debt side of the ECB's balance sheet is funded by Germany forever. Not sure the Boxheads have entirely signed up to this plan, even if they could. Insolvent governments and insolvent central banks can't prop each other up in a spending gone mad world even where the country has its own currency. In the EZ its pure fantasy.
The GIPSIs are already insolvent. France pretty much so. Insolvency problems cannot be resolved with liquidity solutions. Bailouts bail out nothing they just expand and delay the denouement.
Quite an interesting model is that many East European countries (for historical reasons unknown to me - it's not a Russian thing) allow taxpayers to nominate a bit of their tax (typically 1%) to go to a good cause - the list of causes varies a bit but it's basically like our charities. This is a Big Deal for NGOs and charities - I know animal welfare groups who get over half their income that way. The theory is that it makes people feel a bit more in control of their taxes. Obviously governments need to fill in the gaps for necessary but unsexy things and possibly they cunningly move the budgets around so they end up spending where they would have wanted anyway - but in terms of engaging the public it works well.
While I am probably more pessimistic about the French economy than any other in Europe, I would point out a few things:
Firstly, French government debt-to-GDP is lower than the US (c. 101%) and Japan (250%). In addition, France is a highly centralised country, and so there is very little public sector debt in the regions (unlike the US or China). So, its overall debt load is *relatively* modest by international standards.
Secondly, France has some of the lowest levels of consumer debt in the world. Total household debt is in the low 50s as a percentage of GDP, which compares to 100% in the US, and 200% in the UK. If you look at an economy being able to support a total amount of debt (across public and private), then France has a very modest amount.
It's also worth noting that US bond yields are rising because the economy is improving. If you anticipate the US economy will grow, then that means interest rates will rise. Nobody wants to be left holding 10 year bonds in the event that interest rates rise.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AswNZWYSW1uvdHJ1OGRHZXQ5Y2lzYVVEV1VJc190QWc&usp=sharing
Not looking good at all for Labour
I frankly wonder if there is some politics in this. Given the much worse downgrades in the EZ was it too much to bear having the UK going in the opposite direction. I still think their forecast is going to look pretty silly all too soon.
Is the relationship stronger with local election results? Are they showing consistent results at present?
Careful with consumer debt figures. Apples and Oranges. In the USA people seem to live on their credit cards and this number is very scary and requires major debt service and often has little or no matching asset as collateral. In the UK the vast majority is house mortgages with low credit card debt. There are some mortgages underwater in the UK for sure, but overall the associated stock of saleable assets, cashflow demands to service and interest rate for UK personal debt is genuinely not a problem. France I really don't know. Are they a nation of owners or renters? Is their personal debt mostly mortgage or mostly credit card? Owing 100,000 but having a 200,000 house and a monthly payment in the hundreds is MUCH less a problem than owing 75,000 on cards with no asset and a monthly service charge of thousands. Devil is in the detail.
Either way the French debt dynamics are not sustainable. Their state is just too big and they have raped their private sector for too long. Chicken roosting time is here for them I'm afraid.
I am very much in favour of a proportion of income tax being available for allocation to charitable cause. I remember even arguing for this on PB as a route for Osborne to take in preference to reducing the top rate of income tax. Being a true Tory, I would also have wanted to move existing government contributions to the voluntary sector into the tax funded pot as a means of cutting central government expenditure, but this could have happened with the outcome still net positive for the charities.
I guess the whole Big Society initiative got lost in the priorities forced upon the coalition by the real state of the economy. Still an opportunity missed in my view.
That's not great news for a government that is dependent on support from rural constituencies and perhaps goes a long way to explaining UKIP's success: if you live in an area with no Labour presence and where social democracy has been intellectually vanquished, if you want to protest against the government's handling of the economy, you need to turn to a new party.
The Local election results suggest Labour could be 7 points behind in 2015.
The two methodologies will probably converge somewhat. We could split the difference now and say 3 points behind?
Using a slightly more sophisticated local election methodology, Chris Prosser of St. Catherine's College, Oxford forecast last year that Labour would probably lose the PV in 2015 (76% chance of the Tories winning it.) I await his 2013 update with interest...
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-why-labour-wont-win-the-next-general-election-probably/10496
Look: I agree with with as regards size of the state, the retirement age, etc. But, France is lucky to have low levels of debt to start with, and also has the most sensible pro-natal policies in Europe. Under Hollande's 'leadership', I think it is highly likely the country will lose out relative to both Germany and the periphery. But at the same time, it's worth remembering that France has a well educated workforce and some excellent, world-class companies, as well as (unlike the UK) a functioning and well capitalised banking sector.