I’m not sure that the LibDems overtaking Labour (should that happen) will cause some sort of avalanche effect, as might have happened a couple of decades ago.

If the Labour share continues to fall and if we assume that the majority or even half of that share falls to the Tories (simply based on past trends, nothing else), then I suppose you could get a poll along the lines of, say, C45 L22 LD23. If that were to happen, I suspect the main media headline would still be the labour fall. That labour 22% (or whatever) would be the hardest of the hard core, so it is difficult to see them suddenly flooding off elsewhere - in the short term at least.

Anyway, all idle speculation for a Saturday evening.

I would have thought Labour must be pretty much rock bottom actually - another 1% maybe.

Looking back over the ICM polls to late 2005, they do look as though they usually have the LDs a few points higher than they really are.

Amusing that C is on 42. The WMA is 43:27:19. ICM do seem to over-estimate Lib Dem support a bit, but the WMA gap between Labour in Lib Dems is now 8 - down from 16 at the beginning of the year and 26 last October. At this rate (1.8% per month) they would be level pegging by Oct 08. Of course trends are rarely linear for this long, but the possibility of Labour being eclipsed by the Lib Dems as the principal opposition is by no means unthinkable. Esp if the Labour Party, already insolvent, goes bust.

However the question in that poll on the “42 days” issue, which purports to show public support, is seriously flawed. The issue is holding terrorist suspects for up to 42 days without charge where there is not enough evidence to show a reasonable suspicion that they have committed an offence. If that were the question the responses would be very different.

Presumably this poll was taken before the issue of conservative MEPs, their party chairman, and their expense claims hit the headlines.

I wouldn’t write labour off just yet.

I am not sure the expenses row will be that damaging to the Tories.

In the case of the MEP’s Cameron has acted swiftly and “Nannygate” as they will no doubt be calling it was ten years ago and the person was actually doing work, unlike previous cases.

More importantly I think the expenses taint is spread so widely now that the public pretty much think that all politicians line there pockets at public expense , so the reaction may well be “Tell us something we didn’t know”.

Peter.

If that’s all little Crick can dig up, I don’t think it’s very much.

But Caroline Spelman probably realised or was told in 1998 that this isn’t the thing to do, and stopped. It doesn’t look to me like a deliberate attempt to mislead, and she doesn’t deserve this.

I don’t take a light view of expenses. On a work trip back from Munich in my old firm, I think I was the only person to refund the unused pocket money we were given, and painstakingly paid for any meals that I thought were really social ones rather than work.

On the poll, I shouldn’t think the next one will be that different.

Re N Beale. The idea that averaging poll findings can produce anything meaningful is nonsense. If the pollsters al operated in exactly the same way and the fieldwork all took place at the same time then their might be something in it.

You can only look at what’s coming out of each of the pollsters.

As a historical note the poll that’s likely to be the most accurate when compared with real results is the one that is least favourable to Labour. This worked in the past four general elections, all the London mayoral contests and, of course, Crewe and Nantwich.

We are only at the beginning of a period of adjustment in public perceptions about the future. It looks as if there has been a permanent upward adjustment in the price of energy which is beyond the power of any UK government to influence. What will be people’s reactions when they realise that a Tory government won’t be able to make any real difference to this or to any of the other global variables which are going to make life a lot tougher for most people?

The traditional attitude that a change of government isn’t likely to make things worse and could make things better is still a factor behind the current poor showing of the government in the polls, a showing which is made worse by the uninspiring leadership of Gordon Brown. Even if we had the most personable and charismatic leader possible the Tories would still have a lead (albeit smaller) given the curent economic conditions. On the future of GB, I suspect he will survive if Labour are regularly registering 30% plus by the autumn in the polls but if they are still languishing in the mid 20s then I am sure that all bets are off….and a few conversations with Labour activists in seats under threat will confirm this.

The Lib Dems will be quite pleased with this poll I think. Only 5% behind Labour.

Grabbing at short straws like the activities with expenses 10 years ago is obviously the Labour party digging through all the information they can to blacken the Tory Party under the “Freedom of Information2″ act - they want to be careful , i’m sure it would’nt take much trawling to dig up more recent activity with expenses by the Labour Party.

Glad to see people starting to agree with my earlier predictions that the Labour Party is now actually in it’s last throws as a party at all - prior to 2010 they will have already started to break up internally and after they lose in 2010 by a massive margin - they will be gone for good as a fighting political force - they nearly died off in the 1980’s and were given a reprieve with Tony Blair and copying the Tories - that will not be the case the next time round - they can only steal the Tories clothes once and get away with it.

This applies to Scotland too - Scotland will have 2 main parties after 2010 , SNP & Conservative.

Have i been wrong yet ?

Cut and paste !!

Anthony,

While it is now conceivable that Lib dems may get more votes than Labour at next election, how bad does it have to be for Labour to slip behind LDs in number of seats ? Or is that just too dependant on tactical voting ?

The point is that even if Labour slip into third place in share of the vote, they will still be the second largest party at Westminster. Unless the LDs are close to Labour in number of seats, they will not be perceived to have supplanted Labour as the opposition, even if they were several points ahead in votes.

Such a scenario would give LDs a strong platform to win more seats from Labour at the following election, but then the focus would turn to which party is better placed to win seats from the Conservatives.

So, while not impossible, it would probably take another two parliaments before LDs could really claim to have replaced Labour as the main left-of-centre party.

Mike - I think your projection of an SNP-Tory two party system in Scotland is fanciful - not just from 2010, but ever.

Glad to see the ‘Oracle’ back on form wih another of his thoughtful and analytical comments although I do have my doubts about the prospects for one party rule deep into the future. The counter argument that a brief period of Tory government would be merely a blip in what could be a mainly social democratic century is of course laughable.

Cameron has dealt with “Nannygate” promptly & decisively.As has been said-it’s a ten-year old non-story.

The MEP issue is a different matter & of an entirely different order of magnitude.

EU Accounts have never been signed off by it’s auditors.
THe EU has a shameful history of turning a blind eye to graft & fraud.Paul Van Buitenen, Marta Andreasan & Dougal Watt attest to the fact that the more serious the fraud, the less likely it is to be investigated.

MEPs recently voted not to release the details of an audit report which exposes end-of-year bonuses paid to their staff, allowances paid to those who did not employ anyone and allowances paid to companies or individuals linked to an MEP.The report may only be read in a locked room by MEP’s , who may not take notes.

MEPs not only refused to release the report but also rebuffed calls from the Ombudsman to publicise the names of the 407 MEPs who are enrolled in a voluntary pension fund, subsidised by the taxpayer.

Liberal Democrat MEP Chris Davies said the lack of transparency made it impossible to check whether some members were using other parliamentary allowances to cover their contribution, which he said amounted to ‘embezzlement’.He has been ostracized by other MEPs.

There is a well of untapped goodwill awaiting any UK political leader who denounces this wanton, institutionalised largesse with taxpayers money on a simply massive scale.

Cameron has sent his Compliance Officer to look at the cases of Atkins, Chichester & Dover.
He will add more points to his Poll lead if these individuals are deselected, and Conservative MEPs instructed to operate a code of conduct on expenses which is acceptable to UK taxpayers, and which ignores the Brussels Rule Book for “filling your boots with impunity”

If the Irish vote “No” the stage would be set fair.

Pual H-J:

Ny my calculations, as things currently stand the Lib Dems would have to be 14 points ahead of Labour to overtake them in number of seats.

I can’t see that happening in 2010, but perhaps if the Lib Dems can get in front by a couple of points then maybe over the next 2 or 3 elections we could see Labour being overtaken, or at the least close to the Lib Dems. The two opposition parties at probably just over 100 seats would make the Tory position stronger because there would not be a single, clear opposition and Labour and Lib Dems would have to work more closely together.

Interesting thoughts!

David - a century is a long time in politics Interesting to think that 100 years ago, we’d be observing politics from after a huge Liberal majority and pondering if we had a 20th Century of Liberal dominance ahead with the Conservatives finished as a force in politics.

Anthony

The difference at the beginning of the 20th century was that we had a lively new runner coming up on the outside (probably the ILP at that time) which had the growing patronage of an increasingly successful trade union movement. I don’t see any parallels to that just yet although there are inherent dangers during turbulent economic times that some extremist outfit could emerge and prosper and that would obviously be a concern!!

I wasn’t thinking of any parallel - only how impossible it is to predict history in the longer term. In the aftermath of the 1906 landslide, I’d guess that even someone who predicted that Labour would emerge as a major party would have predicted that the Conservatives were the ones who would suffer. It would have been a wise man (or a lucky crackpot) who predicted in 1906 that the Liberals would practically vanish by the middle of the century.

Admittedly polling methodology was even more questionable in the past than it is today, but the LibDems were most recently in second place in some polls throughout 1993 after their success at the local elections that year. It is unlikely that Labour will go into third place in polls although it is possible - certainly not at the general election though.

Mike Smithson:
“Re N Beale. The idea that averaging poll findings can produce anything meaningful is nonsense. If the pollsters all operated in exactly the same way and the fieldwork all took place at the same time then their might be something in it.”

I have to disagree. The ‘WMA’ may not give the most accurate figure, but I think it is a very useful indication of trend. Some of the individual pollsters’ results zigzag around quite a bit, and sometimes they contradict each other. An average at least gives a smoother indication of the overall trend.
It would be thrown off course if one of the regular pollsters pulled out, but even that would only cause a temporary blip.

Pete: Thanks.
Mike: The WMA works best when you have N different estimates of a quantity which have uncorrelated random errors of mean zero (it will then improve the accuracy by sqrt(N) and nothing can do better). So the fact that the pollsters use different techniques is a positive reason FOR using WMA. There are more sophisticated ways of estimating the underlying trend if you estimate the errors but the problem is that these more sophisticated approaches are harder to explain and will respond more slowly to changes in dynamics.

If you don’t understand, or don’t want to use, the WMA no-one is making you.

I think the WMA is fine for showing trends and summarising what the pollsters are saying but I don’t see how you can use it to compare the pollsters with each other.

This is especially true as YouGov releases more polls than the others and so is obviously going to be closer to the average. Even if that wasn’t the case it doesn’t follow that the pollster closest to the average has got it right.

Its all very well playing down the expenses affair, and pretending they’re all at it. But they are not.

Three prominent tories on the fiddle, and not with trivial sums of money. £400,000 and £750,000 of public money has been diverted into private hands quite apart from the spellman business.

It is clear that this wil revive memories of their sleazy behaviour the last time they were elected. this time, they’re at it before they even get into power. It wouldn’t be so bad for them had they not made such a thing of it with the labour funding scandals, but grabbing cash for your own use is much worse I think.

Mike:

“Scotland will have 2 main parties after 2010 , SNP & Conservative.”

After 2010, Whatever the largest party of the left will be called, it, together with the SNP, will be the only parties in the first parliament of an independent Scotland, large enough to form the government, but the former Conservative “and Unionist” party will compete with the LibDems and Greens as potential coalition partners.

“apart from the spellman business.”

How do you think Child Care on expenses compares with Window Cleaning on expenses or a new Shower on expenses or Gardening on expenses?

And who authorised the recent shredding of all MP’s expense documents up to 2004-in breach of the Governments own guidelines of six years retention, and quite possibly the Freedom of Information Act?

RE MEPs-who has been “at it” is known-there is an official report on the matter.MEPs have refused to allow us-the taxpayers-to read it.

Well actually YouGov has recently been further away from the average than most. Comparing pollsters with the WMA tests the hypothesis that the errors are mean 0 and uncorrelated. It also gives some idea of the relative errors and biases, and a hint as to whether they are changing. But it is by no means conclusive.

To the chargrin of Labour supporters the problems of one or two Tory MEP/MP’s with their expenses is just not resonating with the electorate as it used to do a decade ago.The BBC made the Spelman ‘nanny’ affair their headline news on Saturday morning but such was the disinterest that it had all but disappeared from bulletins by the evening. David Cameron’s decisive approach to these incidents contrasts so starkly with the dithering of John Major that a potential minus actually gets turned into if not a plus then something that does’nt register on the Richter scale.
Does that make expense fiddling a matter of no concern? Of course not. Where the incident-as with Spelman took place 10 years ago-well that’s one thing and in her case it sounds no more than a venal sin at worst but for more recent transgressions there should be no hesitation in forcing the resignation of the elected representative concerned.

I hope Mike’s predictions of the death of democracy do not come true as a one party state with perpetual Conservative rule would be a disaster for this country. Personally I don’t think your predictions are anywhere near coming about as there is no sign of a final shift of Labour’s core vote to the Lib Dems

Not surprisingly history is yet again repeating itself. It seems no time at all since there was speculation as to when the Lib-Dems would overtake the Conservatives and move into second place. There were also orbituary notices being prepared for the Conservatives; even a change of name was being mooted! Who can say what the situation will be in 2018?

I think Mike’s predictions vis-a-vis Scotland are a bit far-fetched too. Having said that, next year’s European elections could conceivably see Labour drop into third place in Scotland. The SNP will certainly come an easy first on current trends but the Tories could edge Labour out of second. Could the Scottish LibDems do so badly that they don’t get any representation at all?

In terms of the ideology gaps in politics, I see no reason why the Liberals could not replace Labour. The core reason why the Labout party existed outside of the old Liberal party - even the post Gladstonian ‘New Liberal’ party - was because of its link to the trades unions and explicit working class base. To me, both of those things have been eroded as key features that the main reformist party must possess.

The one thing there is now, of course, is a huge public sector and many on the government payroll. These people naturally have as a base interest the wellbeing of a party who is ideologically friendly towards state action to create positive change, and government inititiatives from government bodies. Such people are not going to want to vote for a Liberal party which is still notionally grounded in the old liberal millite view of a minimal state.

Lukw,

“Such people are not going to want to vote for a Liberal party which is still notionally grounded in the old liberal millite view of a minimal state”.

Well after eight years of the Libdems in power with Labour in Scotland we saw precious little sign of a minimal state approach or attitude, and since the SNP formed a government which has done away with ring fencing and asked for 2% efficiency savings instead of the coalitions 1.5% target the LibDems have been as vocal as labour in attacking it as meaning cuts in services and jobs.

I’d be interested in examples from around the Uk that show that Libdem councils are a path way to smaller government. They may well have shown to be more effective than some of the labour councils they replaced, but that’s not the same thing.

Peter.

There was always a contradiction in what has been dubbed ‘Gladstonian Liberalism’. On the one hand Gladstone supported free markets, industry and (sometimes) free trade while on the other he was an opinionated interfering old busibody. This contrast is most starkly set by reference to two people who are/were on record of drawing inspiration from Gladstone - Roy Jenkins and columnist Simon Heffer. Now apart from the pair of them being snobbish and pompous (and from ‘ordinary’ backgrounds)there is little else I can see in common.

LibDems have struggled in local government - Liverpool, Torbay and Norwich being examples.

As opposed to Watford , Cambridge and Sutton where they keep getting reelected .

Mark,

My question wasn’t about whether they are popular, but whether or not they reduce the size of government when they do get elected, and if that is what is making them popular.

In effect is there any real evidence of their supposed doctrine of minimal government when they are in control, because there really wasn’t any in Scotland, which is the highest level they have reached in nearly a century.

Peter.

New Populus poll with 20% Tory lead: C - 45%, Lab - 25%, LD - 20%.

I actually think Gladstone pretty much embodied traditional Liberal values. There were one or two measures only- such as the Liscencing act in his first minstry (which regulated the opening times of pubs) which where state interferance was based on moral grounds, and perhaps the education act which built Anglican schools at State expence -that involved intervention. Most of the rest of all his policy involved enabling local government to take decisions on more things, and more powers available locally. But Gladstone was an advocate of low expenditure and the minimil state to the very end, even though some of his personal views on human nature and the condition of the people were some what snobbish.

I tend to agree with you Peter, although I am not as well versed in affairs up in Scotland where the Lib Dems have held some power. But certainly, post the SDP incorporation, there isn’t too much in the existing Liberal party that reminds one of the old mantle of Gladstone, and they seem pretty weded to high public spending and direct progressive taxation.