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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » GE2015 could be decided by whether enough people have felt
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » GE2015 could be decided by whether enough people have felt the benefit of this ‘economic recovery’
These last few months have witnessed David Cameron and Ed Miliband place a sizeable political wager against each other, with the keys to Downing Street at stake. The Conservative leader believes the economy will show positive signs of recovery by 2015 and enough indication that the government has made good on its promise to repair the economy.
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Get up you lazy sods, off to work and pay for my pension ....
Go figure.
But it's going to take place in May 2015. A long, long, long time in politics.
It really is as simple as that. Poor tim.
Does anyone think it will come up in the election campaign?
Meanwhile, Labour eases slightly in YouGov to 39 +6, tho there is directional encouragement in the internals for Lab and worry for Con:
http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/document/l1nhfvd66b/YG-Archive-Pol-Sun-results-071113.pdf
S&P cuts France's credit rating from AA+ to AA. Citing weak growth high unemployment and slow reform. Retweeted by Paul Waugh.
All is not well in the EU, sluggish there demand won't help the UK, more effort to export elsewhere could help.
Mark Senior 4 : 4 Andrea
Aberystwth..........Durham
Harborough.........Bootle
Nottingham..........Corby
West-Oxon..........Spelthorn
We haven't really made any significant inroads into the legacy of 13 years of incontinent spending though, and there just is no panacea. We already spent the future and now we must pay for it. A painful, slow, disciplined slog back to sanity is required. The public sector needs profound reform. Spending discipline and public reform - from Labour? Yeah right! Ain't gonna happen.
I think Miliband is set to become a figure like Hollande - the most unpopular PM for a long, long time. And we'll be the ones who pay for it. Literally.
That is a correct and important observation Henry but it does have its limitations. The news for much of the Parliament has been downbeat with the double dip/triple dip story lines and the undoubted flatlining over an extended period. The news over the next 18 months will be better although you are also right to point out there will be black spots such as very modest increases in the standard of living and higher energy prices.
So will people feel better when they are told about record employment, that their wages are rising in real terms again, albeit by amounts most of us will find hard to spot, when their house is no longer falling in value in real terms, when the news is reporting that we have the highest growth in the EU? I think it is really hard to call and the tories would be very unwise to take it for granted.
The tories dream of 1992 when the public were unwilling to trust Mr Kinnock. It's a possible scenario, especially if Ed continues in his current mode where short term gains come at a price. But for me the centre point of this country is further to the left (at least as measured against the political parties) than it was then. The tories have a lot to do but it is not over yet.
Meanwhile Britain is booming.
Vote Labour get France.
With so many Don’t Knows it is astonishing the price that you can get on Yes at the moment:
Betfair – Scotland Independence Referendum 2014 – Winner
Yes 6
No 1.19
(Matched bets = GBP 36,536)
It will not last.
"'The core of the problem is Hollande’s own personality': France's President clings to the last of his credibility"
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-core-of-the-problem-is-hollandes-own-personality-frances-president-clings-to-the-last-of-his-credibility-8927672.html
It has halved even though the public are supposed to have missed any value from the growth thus far.
There are plenty of green lights going off in the claimant count, in the available vacancies numbers, in the PMI surveys that now talk of wage pressures, backlogs of work building up, the Eurozone finally pulling itself round....
Balls might yet get to trot out his "too far, too fast" line - but it will be about growth rather than cuts.
That remains a real risk. Like the UK they have still got major structural problems. Unlike the UK they have done remarkably little to address them. The money supply figures for the EZ, again unlike the UK remain very, very poor and a sovereign debt crisis in one or more countries there is almost evens for 2014.
At present, it will simply be won by the settled intent of left-wing 2010 LibDems and Gordon Brown voters to get the government out. Neither group is going to switch because growth goes up to 1.5%, or Falkirk, or whether they think Cameron looks statesmanlike or Miliband looks geeky. To win, the Conservatives need to get 40%+ largely from elsewhere, in the biggest two-party squeeze for 20 years. It's possible, but looks difficult.
- It's not clear there are a lot of floating voters out there who will shift as a result.
- The government's messaging hasn't left them ideally placed to benefit. They started out with exactly the right grimly determined vibe but then got blown all over the place and did a lot of general right-wingery that makes it hard to expand their support to people objectively impressed with their record, in the event that they end up with a record to impress people with.
- The economy may not hold up that well. It tends to follow the US, which has started to splutter a bit again lately.
UK Hiring stays strong, fastest wage growth since 2007
1. BoP deficit which is forecast to get worse since we don't make enough of what we consume
2. Chronic underinvestment in national infrastructure
3. A low skilled workforce with poor education
4. A banking oligopoly
5. Large economic imbalances between the regions
Quite frankly if our politicos couldn't attack this list on the back of our worst economic crisis then we can only be pessimistic that they'll ever get round to it and we will continuosly lurch from boom to bust on the back of a flawed property market.
I know that you would like them to stop talking about this, but the wish is the father to the thought.
I still think the election will be won by the party people trust to manage that austerity. An attitude like yours seems way too relaxed to me. Labour ducked all the hard choices in the last election campaign. Are they really hoping to do so again?
http://www.glasgowsouthandeastwoodextra.co.uk/news/scottish-headlines/father-signed-up-woman-to-labour-1-3179474
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article3915787.ece
http://www.scotsman.com/news/politics/top-stories/ed-miliband-refuses-to-condemn-labour-membership-1-3179802
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2491712/Second-witness-stands-Unite-vote-rigging-claim.html?ITO=1490&ns_mchannel=rss&ns_campaign=1490
http://www.scotsman.com/news/leaders-miliband-needs-a-new-falkirk-inquiry-1-3179788
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/nov/07/falkirk-row-clear-legal-evidence-ed-miliband
http://www.snp.org/media-centre/news/2013/nov/miliband-challenged-go-falkirk
Remarkably durable "non-story"!
Don't tell Labour, the other 2 parties said they would have sorted that out and tidied it up for them by 2015.
We know Ed doesn't like democracy - is he busy hiding somewhere today ?
Net should reopen Falkirk inquiry:
OA: +25
Scot: +41
London Labour - are they trying to lose the Union?
What do you expect the baby eaters to learn? That the way to get into power is to use 'leverage'?
Mr. Ajob, Labour were still blaming the Conservatives for just about everything despite three consecutive terms of office. Given the scale of the recession, the debt and the deficit it's entirely legitimate to point out that the two chief minions of Brown now occupy the seats of Leader of the Opposition and Shadow Chancellor.
F1: Hmm. Still no word on the driver market. It'd be interesting if Magnussen got the gig at McLaren. He's 21, a little older than the Russians Kvyat and Sirotkin, who are both 19.
Fact: it nearly cost 10% of GDP. You think the other parties will let that go?
The real worry 'and then what?'. The UK is on a (not nearly fast enough) path towards fiscal / financial sanity. When Labour get back in that will die. The market will respond.
It's also a near certainty IMHO that there will be a MAJOR financial crisis worldwide in the next few years as market valuations and the economic / corporate fundamentals are badly out of whack and sovereign debt loads are unsustainable. (2008 was a mere warm-up act). It's more likely this will really hit after 2015 than before - catching Ed between the teeth.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/09/george-osbornes-speech-to-the-conservative-conference-full-text-and-audio/
Deficit reduction is the centrepiece of Tory policy. There's none so blind as will not see.
http://www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2013/10/david-camerons-speech-conservative-party-conference-2013-full-text
"These past few years have been a real struggle.
But what people want to know now is: was the struggle worth it?
And here's the honest answer.
The struggle will only be worth it if we as a country finish the job we've started.
Finishing the job means understanding this.
Our economy may be turning the corner - and of course that's great.
But we still haven't finished paying for Labour's Debt Crisis.
If anyone thinks that's over, done, dealt with - they're living in a fantasy land.
This country's debt crisis, created by Labour, is not over.
After three years of cuts, we still have one of the biggest deficits in the world.
We are still spending more than we earn.
We still need to earn more and yes, our Government still needs to spend less.
I see that Labour have stopped talking about the debt crisis and now they talk about the cost of living crisis.
As if one wasn't directly related to the other.
If you want to know what happens if you don't deal with a debt crisis..
...and how it affects the cost of living...
...just go and ask the Greeks.
So finishing the job means sticking to our course until we've paid off all of Labour's deficit, not just some of it.
And yes - let's run a surplus so that this time we fix the roof when the sun is shining...
...as George said in that brilliant speech on Monday.
To abandon deficit reduction now would throw away all the progress we've made.
It would put us back to square one.
Unbelievably, that's exactly what Labour now want to do.
How did they get us into this mess?
Too much spending, too much borrowing, too much debt.
And what did they propose last week?
More spending, more borrowing, more debt.
They have learned nothing - literally nothing - from the crisis they created."
IMHO, the best thing the government could do politically is to cut Employees' national insurance contribution, providing a measurable boost to people on low to medium incomes. Voters like prizes.
Overall, the economic recovery to date has had an impact on the government's standing. Approval of the government's handling of the economy has moved from the high twenties to the high thirties; net disapproval of the government has moved from the high thirties to the high twenties.
For reasons we all understand, Labour might wish people would stop talking about the deficit.
But it hasn't gone away, and the government hasn't stopped talking about it:
""An improving economic situation in the UK does not automatically lead to a windfall for the public finances because we shouldn't assume that a structural deficit is solved by an improvement in GDP," Osborne said.
"It's called a structural deficit for a reason," he said."
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/10/22/uk-britain-economy-osborne-deficit-idUKBRE99L0GE20131022
I can get decent odds on that elsewhere, thanks.
Has it ?
Is the non story now really a gone story - is Falkirk "over" ?
Please let us know oh wise sage...
Ed is right to go with the 'cost of living' issues, although his policies are wrong, but it still matters to the 'man on the street'.
It won't be enough to just react to labour though, on say energy bills, we need something more proactive. The tory in me says tax cuts, so people have more in the pay-packet, but theres other things as well.
You say, "Somewhat surprisingly the Conservatives still don’t have a policy on energy that stands up to Labour’s."
In fact Labour does not have an energy policy in the same way that it did not have one from 1997-2010. EdM has proposed a short term fix without explaining how he would impose a price freeze. I doubt if he wants to be remembered for another 3-day week energy crisis, but he is dependent on the energy companies supplying the energy. If it is not economic to do so, then the energy companies are not obliged to supply that energy. LNG will not be imported if a loss is to be made. France does not have to sell us electricity if the price is not right.
Also you make the mistake of conflating the Conservatives with the Coalition. It is highly probable that in the autumn statement most of the Green energy taxes will be removed from the energy bills whether over Clegg's dead body or not. - Is EdM in favour of that or not?
You said, "Many bills are expected to continue to rise ahead of inflation." Did you mean wages and not inflation? Or do you mean energy bills rising more than average inflation?
Either way, UK people have paid themselves too much for years and the good times have got to stop. We have to live more efficiently and less wastefully at public and personal levels. There is no need for council tax to rise next April as more cost reduction and efficiency can be found easily across the public sector. Having built up a management empire in the public sector, this has to be pared to the bare minimum. Tax and child credits have to be reduced to cut the load on the Treasury as does qualification for those benefits. If this is not done then the UK may be reduced to being a dying museum.
I'd like to see reductions in NI.
Mine, my neighbours, his? Everyone where they stand on 6th May 2015?
Unfortunately NI is now really part of Income Tax and is too easy to collect. However, I could see the "discount" on employer's NI given to SMEs being extended - I have never seen a tax on jobs being a sensible tax - but Labour has always been prepared to ramp it up.
Two days ago.
“The seeds for this situation were sown in the 1980’s when the Thatcher government used European structural funds to close shipyards, rather than funding investment that would have allowed Britain to compete in the global marketplace for shipbuilding orders against the likes of South Korea.”
http://www.unitetheunion.org/news/unite-to-fight-for-a-future-for-shipbuilding/
It's also step one of Matt Yglesias's Five Steps To Fix Everything. They could take a look at the other four while they're at it...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/23/how_to_fix_everything.html
A courageous strategy, minister.
Apparently the supply industry took such a tanking in the down turn that it is not in a position to meet demand.
Sounds like a long term positive to me though in demand terms.
On the contrary, 'steady as you go' is exactly what they should and will do, firstly because, when the ship is safely sailing out of treacherous waters, you'd have to be mad to lurch towards the rocks on the port side, and secondly their entire platform for re-election is, as antifrank rightly observes, going to be based on being the serious party of government which eschews dangerous gimmicks and too-good-to-be-true snake oil. Since in any case they can't out-snake Miliband, it would be insane to try.
That's not to say that they won't make some minor adjustments to taxation of energy; that seems to have been strongly signalled already.
It's also step one of Matt Yglesias's Five Steps To Fix Everything. They could take a look at the other four while they're at it...
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/10/23/how_to_fix_everything.html
Isn't ukip the only party suggesting this?
The reason I hate employer's NI is that it can be raised without affecting take home pay. Unless, as in our case, after the 2002 election, when employer's NI was raised, therefore the company wage bill was raised, so they made 3% of the workforce redundant.
But it's difficult to have a sensible conversation about this subject with someone who has already had the Conservatives' set piece conference speeches pointed out to him and has simply ignored their central theme.
*ponders deeply*
I've got it! Repeal the restriction on child benefit!
Cllr Harry Phibbs – from Hammersmith & Fulham council where they have cut Band D bills 17 per cent since 2007 – compiled a list of 201 ways to save money in local government. Some of the items can yield big savings, like sharing services with other public sector bodies. Other recommendations are about changing the culture at councils, like implementing maximum word limits in reports. This will keep staff focused on providing services, not shuffling paper.
This is worth a read even if you may not agree with all his ideas. The only place I have found it is on the TPA site.
http://www.taxpayersalliance.com/201waystosavemoney.pdf
I'd like to see the Tories explain this much more clearly - when the vast majority have no idea what Tax On Jobs means - how can they expect to be motivated by it?
Best strategy - tax cuts. For once I agree with Plato. There is a first time for everything I suppose.
(I'm not saying that is economically wise but it may be politically so)
But that brings us to the real problem with the line that Bobajob suggests, which is that the factoid about the debt doubling under the Tories may be true (is it? not sure) but even if it is, the voters won't believe it. Especially after Labour have been making a big deal about Tory cuts.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/why-do-so-many-critics-of-those-of-us-on-the-left-assume-we-are-consumed-by-class-envy-8927496.html
And he appears to have mislaid his irony meter entirely:
"Tony Benn famously said it was about policies, not personalities. He knew that his critics made it about him because then they wouldn’t have to debate the issues. Discredit the person, and then you won’t have to debate the housing crisis, falling wages or the lack of secure work. These attacks will undoubtedly escalate in the run-up to the election,"
But that's only something the right does.......
Full list here (before the downgrade of France):
http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobheadervalue2=inline;+filename=TC_Assessment_Histories_10_18_13.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application/pdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1244331583896&blobheadervalue3=UTF-8
But part of the reason why the Tories don't have much of a response right now is because their response will come later, in the form of pre-election budgets. Tories must be feeling a little bit nervous about running a full-throated campaign against Labour's cynical, economically illiterate pandering while they can't be quite sure what similar cynical, economically illiterate pandering they're going to end up fighting the next election on.
Real Scottish voting at Dunfirmline did not suggest that Falkirk is damaging the Labour vote.
It survived the Iraq war, the worst PM ever and the wrecking of the economy.
It is bullet proof.
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My mother (age late 70s and retired)
My mother in law (age late 70s and retired)
My accountant (self employed)
My gardener (self employed)
My wife (works part time as a carer)
Why do you think they are stupider than in other parts of the UK?