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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The final Bown-funded constituencty polls are out tonight –
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The final Bown-funded constituencty polls are out tonight – perhaps they’ll give us pointer to which Farage will choose
My guess is that Farage will opt for one of the Kent seats where he has roots. We had a Thanet South poll three weeks back which looked promising for him. Maybe one of the latest batch of polls will tell us more.
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The problem for Farage is that as soon as he goes public with an "intention" to fight a particular constituency, you can be sure the other party organisations (notably the Conservatives) will ramp up the activity.
I'm not so sure. If he isn't going for South Thanet, there's something to be said for preserving the element of surprise. What he really needs is an local energetic UKIP organisation (which it sounds like he's got in a fair few seats) up against a dozy, depleted Tory association that hasn't fought a contested election since 1945 and won't know what hit them. Once the Tories know where he's standing they'll send in the cavalry.
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Well, this is my point. You couldn't get the conclusion Avery wants ("spot the Labour government") from these numbers even if the trends supported it, which they don't, which is why he posted some subset of the actual numbers - local authority builds, which have basically been none since the early 90s - instead.
Surely the point is from 1997-2010 we had a labour government with massive majorities who could do what it liked. Why then were social housing completions in 1995-96 the last year of a tory led government higher than any year of the 13 years of a labour government. How mad is that, is that what labour is about? What is also interesting is that in the first full year of this coalition government (2011-2012) the social housing completions were also higher than any year under labour. Why should anyone believe what Labour say on housing with this type of record?
However I suspect it'll be Thanet S, with a late decision.
Not messaging, activity on the ground - canvassing, leaflets, things like that.
It is Alan Bown's home constituency and includes Farage's birthplace, the village of Herne (almost part of Herne Bay).
Unlike in South Thanet, which was Labour through 1997-2010, Sir Roger Gale, the Tory MP since 1983, has a 'safe' majority of 11,000. There is therefore less risk of Farage turning the constituency into a three-way marginal with the result of letting Labour back in.
Much might depend on whether Sir Roger will stand again in 2015. He will be 72. I suspect he may be delaying an announcement in the hope of warding off or at least waiting for a Farage decision.
But since Paddy Power would only allow him half a Mars bar and a packet of wine gums, perhaps not.
FPT
"Although I believe Lansley is not technically a member of the Cabinet. Is he the first LPS not to be so?"
No. Although he attends as did his predecessor Sir George Young. The two previous Labour Lords Privy Seal, Harman and Straw were in Brown's Cabinet.
My guess for Farage is a Kent constituency. He may however,surprise us all and opt for a place like St Albans.
Does anybody think
1. the troops should stay
2. They haven't done what has been asked of them to the best of their ability?
As Pork knows well, Lansley is LEADER.
That places him above the mire of Cabinet politics.
Ineos boss says Hinkley nuclear power too expensive
But you would not read this in PB. Because it is not wind or solar.
Activity by tory activists. The very people Farage seems to appeal to the most and who very likely view Cameron and the chumocracy with just as much contempt as they seem to view them. The "swivel-eyed loons" as they were oh so memorably named. I somehow doubt they have all forgotten that.
Pouring in a huge number of activists from other locales is also not a luxury that Cameron has considering the still falling tory membership numbers and all the other marginals that must be prioritised.
The activity will also be a reflection of the message. If it's on issues that enthuse the base then that will get them out but if it's something the base actually have a great deal of sympathy with then don't expect them to break their backs opposing it.
Farage wants activity in all these constituencies. He wants sitting tory MPs to start panicking and posturing on his core issues. That's a big part of why he wanted these polls.
Unite won't let him. ;-)
IMHO he'll opt for a coastal seat in Lincs or Kent.
1. He's scared he'd lose.
2. He doesn't want to have to make the case for the status quo.
3. He can't make a case for anything other than the status quo as he has no way of getting there.
Of course, there are those who say that Europe has no salience as an issue. To them, I'd say that even 3-4% of the electorate could swing the result of an election and in any case, things like immigration are intrinsically intertwined with the EU anyway.
That said, I do wonder if there's an element of deliberately losing a battle in order to win the war.
LOL
Much though I disagree with UKIP, I can't but feel there would be an important symbolism in that.
Ed could always issue a diktat freezing party voting intentions until 2017.
Should do the trick.
If Len lets him, of course.
Maybe.
Hats off to India for getting a probe to Mars for only £45Million, when the UK can't get a train to Birmingham for less than £50Billion.
A tweet I heartily agree with. Of course the probe still has a long way to go yet but the sentiment is right.
Let me know when there's a story.
Your leaders always lead the leaders.
You have lead in your pencil.
*tears of laughter etc.*
"Only a third of under-25s want to leave the European Union"
All we need to do is wait !
Only 50-50 tim thought the option was alive.
Having said that, we do need to ask ourselves serious questions about why any infrastructure project in the UK costs so much. As an example:
HS1: £5.8 billion for 67 miles, or £86 million per mile.
HS2: £21.2 billion (including £8.7 billion contingency) for 95 miles, or about £220 million per mile (£131 million excluding contingency)
A14 upgrade: £1.5 billion for building a new road and upgrades between Ellington and Fen Ditton. About 22 miles, or £68 million per mile (although is is slightly complicated by the associated upgrades).
A11 dualling: £102 million for 9.1 miles, or £11 million per mile (this was only going to be £70 million back in 2007).
Construction costs have skyrocketed over the last couple of decades, even accounting for inflation. We need to be looking into why this is.
Would the 75,001 person be forced to wait until someone left the country? Would we distinguish between a French Goldman Sachs banker on a three month secondment and a Bulgarian plumber with no job in hand?
Would it be trailing 12 months, or would 1 January see 75,000 people arrive, followed by a year of closed borders? How would it deal with emigration? Does my pensioner heading for Malaga allow me an additional Pole?
It's a suggestion that would be perfectly sensible in a 'zero' system being built from the ground up, but it is bonkers within the Realpolitik of the day.
The fact is kippers would no more believe a Cast Iron pledge on an EU referendum from little Ed than they do from Cammie.
Strange behaviour for a hard core Nat such as yourself..
The South Devon Link Road down here is budgeted at £109m for 5.5km. That's nearly £32m per mile.
I looked it up because I thought that a new road might be cheaper than dualling an existing road - which you might expect to be more expensive due to the complication of keeping the existing road open while you upgrade it. Does not seem to be the case.
Are you drunk?
LOL
I was debunking little Ed's obvious posturing for those too dumb to see what it was.
I also pointed out just how futile that posturing is since kippers aren't going to believe little Ed or Cammie's Cast Iron pledges anyway.
"There is a growing concern not just here in the UK, but elsewhere too, about the abuse of free movement, about the way in which people can move freely across Europe, sometimes for access to benefits."
The UK is tightening up rules on migrants' access to benefits, as Romanian and Bulgarian nationals gain new rights to live in the country from next month.
But Mrs May said she and Prime Minister David Cameron wanted further changes to control the access of nationals of any future EU entrants.
...
"What I'm saying is that, as we look ahead to the whole issue of reform of the European Union, I think we do need to look at this question of free movement."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-25398612
As such, it's a possibility, likely to get support from within Germany for example. Still a tough hill to climb, though, and any case probably too late.
Obviously we shouldn't have started from here, but that's the last lot's fault.
Quite. When is May going to realise its impossible to assuage concerns about immigration and at the same time play by the current EU rules.
You think David Cameron should say THAT to our troops?
Blimey.
If Labour promise a referendum or not sets the tone for the election campaign - and more starkly for a Labour or Lib/Lab govt and beyond.
It is a crucial fork in the road - no matter how many times you say it is curtains for Cammie-Crosby either way it does have an impact.
The Ukip goal, as I understand it, is to help get in a Labour govt. Their theory is that Ed is more likely to lose an EU referendum than Dave*
*IMO it's a mad strategy as I don't reckon Labour will even hold one. That said, I'm not sure the Tories would either
No 2 is that a Con defeat will bring in a BOO leader and then the referendum will be won outright in 2020 to glorious fanfare.
No 3 is that regardless of who wins only true Kipper purity matters even if it means going down to a glorious defeat.
No 4 is that they are feart of a referendum as they will lose. Aka the suicide Salmond route.
When I was studying geo eng back in 1991-4 (which I did not finish, annoyingly), we went to view the Limehouse Link tunnel in East London, which was then under construction.
This cost £293 million for 1.1 miles, or £266 million per mile, and was about the most expensive form of construction possible - cut and cover under a canal basin.
To give you an idea, when you drive through it, each wall panel - section of tunnel you see cost over £100,000 to build.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limehouse_Link_tunnel
I find it hard to understand why HS2 phase 1 will be about the same cost (in modern figures) per mile as the Limehouse Link, built 20 years ago. yet HS2 is in line with other major projects.
Construction is expensive. But we need to ask why it seems to cost more for us to build things than other countries. We should be looking into this as a matter of urgency.
The public doesn;t understand why the government doesn't just say
1. The Romanians and Bulgarians aren't coming. The restrictions are staying.
2. When you fine us we aren;t paying
Neither does half the parliamentary tory party, if what I read about amendments to the immigration bill are correct.
While under McTernan's spindoctoring 'skill' and guidance Gillard not only got embroiled in a protracted and vicious leadership challenge she then lost it and had to quit as PM with the Labor party then falling to their biggest defeat in something like 100 years.
Impressive stuff even for a comically incompetent SLAB spinner like "no-brainer" McTernan.
But someone you would ever want to take remotely seriously?
*chortle*
2) They have done, by and large, what has been asked of them to the best of their ability. A classmate of mine was KIA there a couple of years back. They are very brave men and women.
But wars are unpredictable things, and if we take Bush's proclaimation about all troops being out of Iraq that proved not to be the case, also what happens if Barry decides that some troops have to stay a little longer. Will Dave defy Baz ? OK so the troops will probably b out by Christmas next year but "Job not done yet", "Still some way to go", "into the endgame" would be a more sensible statement to make than "Mission accomplished" one year out.
Also, my Irish fiancée is scathing about the quality of road surface on Irish road projects. Maybe ours are more expensive for good reason?
I'm just playing devil's advocate here, but apart from land I'm struggling to think of a reason why construction would be generally more expensive in the UK than elsewhere in Europe.
So a Labour win = epic Ukip utter failure.
"High-speed lines in France and most European countries run to an operating speed of 190 mph. HS2, by contrast, has been designed to 225mph, adding significant costs since the curves must be significantly less sharp."
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9000911/sorry-but-hs2-is-still-going-nowhere/
"Asked whether they were coming home with mission accomplished, Cameron said: "Yes I think they do. I think they can come home with their heads held high. You know, we will not leave behind a perfect country or a perfect democracy."
So the media set him up with the mission accomplished words, wanting the parallel with Bush the Younger, but he didn't say it himself.
That is not a very promising route for taking the UK out of the EU.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/96/UK_opinion_polling_2010-2015.png
The most important things to note are of course the trends as well as the obvious correlation between UKIP and tory VI.
UKIP slumped after their May election high but they didn't crash back down to where they were before it. That was after the narrative changed to the economy and cost of living with terrible conference for Farage thanks to the Godfrey Bloom stupidity and hilarity.
What it tells you is there is some quite obvious churn between kipper and tory voters and it's amongst that churn that Cammie is betting everything on unhappy tories magically coming back. His problem is that even if many of them do all come back the 'base' for the kipper vote will keep going up the longer they are polling well.
Everyone expects the kipper vote to rise again for the EU elections and quite likely to above the level of the May local elections. It's also pretty much a given that after the EU elections they will fall again. The question is by how much since we can clearly see that, far from crashing back to 5% levels after May, the kipper vote remains stubbornly high even now and higher than the 10% or so before the May local elections.
Cammie doesn't need the kippers to slump to above where they are now after the EU elections. That's not good enough. Cammie needs Farage to crash and burn massively in a Robert Kilroy-Silk manner to well below 5% and there is absolutely no sign of that happening.
No amount of pitiful immigration posturing or Cast Iron Pledges will do that for Cammie.
A case of auto correct giving the exact opposite meaning
It also makes it much more future-proof, and also more competitive with air travel.
Having said that, ISTR that some TGV lines in France run at slightly reduced speed for much of the day to save energy costs, only running at full speed during peak periods.
(*) Yes, that was Clegg's Kink. Don't ask ...
"To me the absolute driving part of the mission is the basic level of security so that it doesn't become a haven for terror,” he said.
“That is the mission, that was the mission and I think we will have accomplished that mission and so our troops can be very proud of what they have done.”
So it is not exactly an out of context quote.
Farage want's OUT of Europe. That's it. He isn't pinning everything on a Cast Iron referendum pledge from Cammie that he self-evidently believes is as worthless as Cammie's Lisbon Pledge.
Farage is more than happy to eventually force the tory party into a full blown official OUT position and what is more he is already having that effect against a weak tory leadership like Cameron's chumocracy. The pressure will only increase as Cammie will be forced to make ever more concessions to upset eurosceptics after the EU elections. That has been the pattern for this entire parliament and it won't stop now. Eurosceptic backbenchers forcing Cammie to capitulate on the EU and both running scared of Farage and the kippers.
A great strategy - which will see Labour win in 2015 and hence we will probably be even deeper in Europe.
To me it suggests old Nigel really doesn't want a Con victory either way - he can lord it up from his high horse if Labour win.
LAB 40
CON 33
LIB 13
KIP 8
Lab +2 but all MOE
To me it suggests old Nigel really doesn't want a Con victory either way - he can lord it up from his high horse if Labour win.
Ironically, Farage could go down in history as the man who forced the UK further into Europe.
What an epitaph that would be.
Breaking Gianfranco Zola resigns as Watford manager.
http://www.itv.com/sport/football/article/2013-12-16/gianfranco-zola-resigns-as-watford-manager/
Irrelevant. Farage's job is hardly to help Cammie into power so expecting him to help a weak leader incapable of winning on his own merits is stupendously naive. Farage has his own party to manage and run even if he does enjoy pushing the tory party towards his positions. Farage clearly thinks the tory party are being led by a pro Europe leadership and since Cammie has already stated he wants to fight hard to stay in the EU has has a bit of a point.
The only people Farage considers to be real Eurosceptics are BOOers. A view that is only going to gather steam within the tory party since Euroscepticism has one direction of travel in the tory party now and it certainly isn't towards staying IN.
To me it suggests old Nigel really doesn't want a Con victory either way - he can lord it up from his high horse if Labour win.
UKIP is not the Conservative Party's bitch.
To me it suggests old Nigel really doesn't want a Con victory either way - he can lord it up from his high horse if Labour win.
Nigel and UKIP believes the Tories with their business connections will never leave the EU. That is why it is their historic mission to repalce the Conservative Party.
Personally I find this "we don't care if it takes until 2030 - we will do it our way " Kipper attitude as profoundly depressing.
Of course it isn't, it's Labour's.
Have a Free bet to the tune of almost £500 profit on him right now...
Kippers think there is no difference between labour/liberal/conservative. They don;t see a labour government as any different from a conservative one.
A labour government is just five more years of the same, to them, just like the coalition government has simply been a continuation of what has gone before.