MORI show decisive swing back to the Tories
Ipsos MORI’s monthly political monitor has topline figures, with changes from their last poll, of CON 44%(+5), LAB 30%(-5), LDEM% 17%(+2). The poll was conducted between the 16th and 18th of January.
Clearly it shows a very substantial shift in support from Labour to the Conservatives. Normally I’d advise some caution in any poll showing a big switch in voting intention and advise people to wait to see it confirmed in other polls, but in this case, while the extent of the switch in support is rather larger, the trend is the same as we’ve already seen from Populus, YouGov and ComRes. The boost in Labour support we saw last year appears to have gone into a sharp reverse.
UPDATE: Full tables are here. Interestingly enough, while Populus, ICM and TNS have all shown economic optimism heading back down this month, the MORI poll shows it continuing to rise: net optimism is up to minus 40 from minus 48 last month. In contrast, optimism about how it will affect them personally doesn’t seem to increasing, 49% of full-time workers said they were worried about losing their job, compared to 43% last month.
Filed under: MORI, Voting Intention
New Labour is now almost dead!
So; 14 points, which would correspond with a 52 seat majority, for the Conservatives. It seems that the YouGov poll was not a rogue as some people were suggesting, in fact if anything, the ComRes poll, giving only a 9 point lead, is more out of line.
I can’t see this trend going into reverse anytime soon, and as I said a few days ago, I think we will see Conservative leads of 20 points+ becoming commonplace over the summer.
Also, as I think I mentioned in another thread, look out for leadership challenges in the Labour party between the council elections and the conference season.
Perhaps it’s now becoming obvious that the Government has no idea what it’s doing with the economy, and Conservative arguments that we are storing up debt for our children, and that you can’t borrow your way out of a recession when it was borrowing that got you into it in the first place are starting to achieve resonance.
Perhaps the growing difficulties other countries are having with the Euro will also benefit the Conservatives who seem to be the most Euro-sceptic of the main parties.
Anthony, why is MORI only weighted at 0.35 on the UKPR Average? Just wondered.
Phil C – the details are all on the same page you found the 0.35 on! In short though, the average weights down polls that don’t have any political weighting.
‘ …Conservative arguments that we are storing up debt for our children, and that you can’t borrow your way out of a recession when it was borrowing that got you into it in the first place are starting to achieve resonance.’
Shame that the rest of the world, including the dying Republican USA, actually is doing the same thing as Labour. Not arguing for Labour but I am having trouble trying to balance the world between those countries doing actions like Labour (heaps) and those doing actions like the Tories want (well, I cant think of any). As such, Tories may be right but the rest of the world is doing what Labour is doing.
Resonance may happen, doesn’t make it right….
Another Labour slaughter in the local elections anyone? Looks like the repeated bombardment of bad economic news is finally hitting home.
Only Labour seem to be stealing from the poor to give to Russian billionaires
I think the local elections will be very interesting. Labour’s support will be even less than national polls suggest because Scotland will be taken out of the equation, and I would not be surprised to see Labour taking under 25% of the vote this summer, possibly a good bit under.
It is also bound to get the Labour party out in force baying for GB’s blood, so between the local elections and the conference season will be interesting too.
I don’t think Labour really have any credible alternative leaders, that is one of their major problems. If they decapitate Gordon, or if he resigns – who is to replace him? And, unless there is an unopposed leadership bid in the event of Gordon getting the chop – Labour will be leaderless for some time, and possibly over the conference season – which would not exactly be ideal for their position in the polls.
So yes, I think local election time will be very interesting, and the subsequent few weeks even more so.
Eeh, four rogue polls in a row … who’d ever have thunk it …
@ Jack – I’m not sure “the world” really is doing quite what Brown is doing. For one thing, Brown’s doing it all on the never-never. And the Obama-led part of the world is doing it with tax cuts thrown into the mix. We’re not looking at identical economies here, or at identical policies to tackle the crisis.
but who would want to leader of a Labour party looking like they could be defeated at the next GE?
Adrian, I agree, and as it happens I don’t think Gordon will stand down however badly Labour perform, but he might be pushed. We already know David Miliband will not want the job because he knows it will last 1 year max – at least that is presumeably the main part of the reason he didnt stand against Gordon 18 months ago.
I am sure there would be some in the party who would want the job, but they just don’t seem credible leaders: Harriet Harman; Jack Straw; Alan Johnson etc.
But mark my words, it will almost certainly be on the cards come June/July/August, there will be intense media speculation from the moment the exit poll figures are announced on the night of the 4th June, and the speeches attacking Brown will start, and it will all roll from there. So what I am asking is, what do you all think the outcome will be?
Neil – I think Labour’s best bet in the long-term will be to consider the next general election lost and instead start thinking about what it can do to give itself a fighting chance in 2014/15. If I was a Labour party strategist I’d be looking to ditch Brown, replace him with a competent caretaker to lead the party through the general election loss, then in the first year of opposition start the search for a real replacement leader who will then have a few years to grow into the job before the 2014/15 general election.
What I suspect will happen, however, is that Labour’s fortunes for the next few years will mirror the Tories’ after 1997, with equivalents of Hague, Duncan Smith, and Howard trying vainly and failing to make the party electable again. Labour will be back someday but not necessarily within the lifetimes of most four-legged mammals.
“Shame that the rest of the world, including the dying Republican USA,”
Why do you call it Republican USA? To imply that the USA has been economically right of centre the last decade? If you think Bush and recent Republican congress’ have been right of centre then you are unable to think for yourself. Look at their actions instead of reading a label.
“actually is doing the same thing as Labour.”
Yes. This is Gordons reasoning too. If America is doing it, this is all he uses to justify his actions.
We seem to have been following America off of a lot of cliffs in the last few years.
In fact I am certain that Labour spin doctors have told ministers to repeat as often as possible “we are doing X … this is what America is doing too.” Dont you hear words to that effect from them almost every day?
“I am having trouble trying to balance the world between those countries doing actions like Labour (heaps) and those doing actions like the Tories want (well, I cant think of any).”
Yes, the vast majority are doing what Labour are doing. Just like the vast majority of people in a market are buyers just before a crash. Ever heard of the herd mentality?
The people setting policy in the US are the same people that got America into their mess in the first place! Why would anyone still listen to them? It blows my mind. Once again, Gordon is following the US over a cliff.
“As such, Tories may be right but the rest of the world is doing what Labour is doing.”
Well, “you are either a contrarian or a victim.”
“Resonance may happen, doesn’t make it right….”
No, sound economic theory does.
Adrian,
Id have thought that too. Its weird though. I couldnt understand when so many people stepped up to take the leadership of the Tories when it was obvious they couldnt win for at least a decade. I guess there is always someone who thinks they can do the impossible.
The difference with America is that it has a far more productive and diversified economy than Britain and isn’t as critically reliant on financial services. America can sustain these levels of borrowing and debt for some time to come.
James Ludlow – if Labour followed the Tories pattern.. does that mean their next three leaders will be James Purnell, Jon Cruddas and Jack Straw?
It might … or worse …
James Ludlow
So in efect, you think they need someone to do a Michael Howard?
After all, he did exactly that after IDS was deposed. Took the reins, halved Labour’s majority, then conducted an orderly transfer to DC.
Our economy has been closer to the US economy in both character and cycle for at least a decade so our problems are the most alike. It’s therefore not surprising that the governments have decided on similar actions to deal with similar problems.
Both have had a decade of property price and consumer debt driven growth and both now have to deal with banks broken by it.
Europe isn’t as damaged or as dependant on consumer spending so has adopted different or smaller stimulus packages.
If the Tories top 45% in a series of polls then we will be back to October and GB will be in real trouble but with nowhere to go.
The next set of polls will be really interesting.
If today’s news carries on then on the day that the governments “Bail Out mk 2″ has seen back shares fall sharply it could be that the public that rallied to Brown with mk 1 will turn against him.
This isn’t a prediction but if this latest attempt at throwing money at the problem doesn’t go down well with the public we could have a real crisis of confidence in the government.
Even though I am not a Labour fan I really don’t like the idea of this country facing that.
Peter.
Peter.
I think that is certainly the line Labour SHOULD take, to avoid the wilderness, but I hope it is not the line they will take, and I rather suspect they will not.
Gordon Brown likes power. I don’t see him sacrificing himself for the good of his party, particularly because he himself will have a great pension and a job in Brussels – so who cares what happens to the rest of them!
So, if Gordon does not step down voluntarily, which he wont – not the Gordon I know – then there is always the possibility he will be pushed after June 4th.
What happens then is anyone’s guess, and depends on several factors. How long will it take to topple him? How many will want his job? Will anybody want his job? How long will a leadership contest (should there be one) take? Will there be a new leader in time for the party conference?
Of course, all this may not happen. Gordon may cut his losses and call an election on June 4th (unlikely). Or Gordon may hang on after Labour’s disaster on June 4th, and hold on until he feels the time is right – probably May/June 2010, when it is forced.
Another factor is the Irish EU vote. Gordon will be desperate to avoid an election, at least until after the Irish have voted, for fear of the Tories getting in and repealing the ratification. If the Irish vote NO again (we can always hope and pray) then there is a possibility he will try to hold on until after the third vote (unless the EU come up with some way of overriding the referendum before then).
In any case, nothing is clear cut yet – and no doubt it will all become clearer as the year progresses. It could be a very interesting year, but it could also be a very depressing year, politically, whichever side you look at it from.
Sorry, I didnt make clear that the last post was in response to James Ludlow
Anthony – so it does, I must learn to read.
However that’s a weighting of 0.75 so it doesn’t explain the whole of the low weighting, presumably you’ve marked it down for another reason?
I support your sentiments Peter Cairns.
Those that went back are already leaving.
I want them out but it’s worrying to think what sort of handle they will have on things in the next few months. There is no pleasure in watching a Government fall apart when we so badly need a good one.
Sky news reported Brown was ‘morose’ again. It does not bode well.
the local elections are coming and the polling points to a conservative win and a wiping clean of all countys and unitry councils up and down england, labour wipe out more like blood bath with that sort of polling. just looking 17 months ahead towards the next election, we also have local elections in the same year and the best result from a conservative point of view is for another wipe out at local level as well as national, i.e putting labour on there backside and wiping out there voter base at a local level to stop them coming back four years later.
@ Neil – yes, I pretty much agree with what you say above. There are a lot of things up in the air and the most strategic response probably won’t win the day – it will require someone with both foresight and clout to pull it off and I’m not sure Labour has enough people with both right now.
Politically I think things are rather depressing regardless of one’s political affiliations. Weak, panicky government headed by someone given to (shall we say) mood swings is not really what we need during a recession. And afterwards there’s a serious danger that Labour will collapse and the Tories will have no meaningful opposition for a number of years. Ours is a system that works best when there is a reasonably strong opposition keeping government on its toes and subjecting bills to real scrutiny. As we saw during Labour’s recent glory years, a weak opposition allows far too much leeway and the government of the day has a tendency to become arrogant, self-righteous and overbearing. Whichever party is in power, too much power isn’t good. And I say that as someone who is delighted that the Tories are substantially ahead again.
i actually agree witrh james if the bias canbe sorted out in the system which has led to such large majoritys perhaps parliament will be more meaningful to peole who are not political geeks like me
The newspapers this morning are’nt being very kind to Gordon Brown – one in particular – with a full page spread.
2010 seems so far away – will we all make it ?
Even optimistic Labour pundits must realise that if the economy does miraculously recover their fortunes will not. As in the 1990’s when the public refused to forgive the Tories even after things had begun to recover, now all the people made redundent, who have lost their homes or their businesses will be just aching to give them the most almighty kicking.
People will also ask ever more loudly how it was that Brown, who ran the economy for ten years personally, had no idea what the bankers were doing. The Government should have been the regulators. They were obviously not up to the job.
Dismal too are the long term prospects, when you consider that the next generation of Labour leaders would appear to be one of the creepy Millibands or James Parnell (The man responsible for the change in licensing Laws that have made our towns and cities total no go areas at weekends whilst forcing the best locals to the wall).
Labour’s only short term hope is that between now and the local and euro elections, Mandelson can exploit the differences between Ken Clarke and just about every other living Tory on Europe. Unlike in the past when he couldn’t resist off message remarks, I think he is now so geared up to ridding us of this inept bunch of fools, he will keep it zipped.
Brown is doomed, and he seems to be taking the Labour party, the stock market and the country down with him. The polls are begining to reflect that people now recognise this, and the polls are only likely to get worse for GB as the Tories strengthen their hand (good reshuffle), and the incompetancy of economic policy becomes apparent. The run on bank shares once again demonstrates how GB and AD just don’t understand how the world of commerce works – just as their ludicrously incompetant flogging of the gold reserves previously showed.
“People will also ask ever more loudly how it was that Brown, who ran the economy for ten years personally, had no idea what the bankers were doing. The Government should have been the regulators. They were obviously not up to the job.”
Absolutely.
I think that is coming centre stage in the public mind now.
GB’s performance at his Press Conference was sad to watch.He floundered from “Sub Prime-America” etc etc-to “Irresponsible Banks” in his desperate search for a “not me guv” story.
But RBS has blown it all away.
As The Times said the other day -if British Banks are too important to fail-how come they were allowed to grow so big so quickly?
This has been a massive failure of Banking Oversight by the Regulatory structure designed & implemented by Brown.
These are the Banks that Brown-in his pomp as Chancellor lauded to the skies .
Little did he know -apparently- that it was all smoke & mirrors.
People are beginning to understand this now & will punish Brown for it as they begin to pay the price of his incompetence and hubris.
An end to boom and bust? – I think not
An end to the riduculous Brown bounce? – I think so
Finally we are seeing that Brown hasn’t got a clue how to sort out the mess of which he is responsible for creating the conditions.
Rumour has it that one of the big credit rating agencies is about to downgrade UK Government debt!
Strange how this has only affected us and the Spanish so far among he big economies given that “the whole world is doing the same as old Gord”. Perhaps ‘the world’ isn’t quite as poorly run as we have been? Who knows.
If this happens we’ll have to pay higher interest on it and, with the amount we’ve been saddled with, that spells disaster ahead. Lack of availability of more easy money might mean Labour has to start sacking it’s own! Consultants and ‘red tape’ Civil Servants etc.
I reckon we’ll see another 50% Tory poll when this news filters down to the ‘great unwashed’…in about 3 months.
Weighted Moving Average is now 42:32:16 and of course this will be lagging the real shift in opinion. So the Retrospectives suggest that the CLead reached 10.6 on the 15th (when the WMA was 7.5) and it could well be 13-14 by now.
Although they now have some extremely competent people at the Treasury and working on this, the fact that Brown is still blundering around and is rightly completely discredited means that trust will not be restored until he goes.
I suspect that within 2 months we’ll have CLeads of 20%
My method has the Conservatives on a 106 seat majority at the moment (it does assume that the Labours poor electoral showing compared to the polls happens again).
Tories are currently polling 10% higher than they were before the last election, Labour 6% lower and LibDem 7% down – changes applied to election results has 42/29/15.
The county council elections represent a real problem for Labour because the last three have all taken place on the same day as Labour has won a victory at a general election. That means that they have always coincided with a Labour peak and have always had a general election-level turnout.
The next round will be very different with a much lower turnout generating results that will amplify Labour’s unpopularity. Moreover, the wards concerned cover a huge amount of the vital marginal seats with many Labour councillors defending small majorities.
The result could be an absolute bloodbath.
Whatever these figures show – when the Cons policies are put under scrutiny in a election campaign – they will be exposed as empty PR driven pap and the lead will evaporate.
How the Cons have reacted to the economic crisis speaks volumes on how they would govern – panic, do nothing and panic some more.
Out Gordon Out! As a strong Labour supporter I want a leadership challenge now!
This Poll is not good for us (Labour) and it is clear Gordon Brown is not going to be able to pull us back on top, last summer I was fully behind him when others wanted him to go, now I’m not!
I do think that when the election is called Labour will make some gains but to me Labour needs a fresh voice.
If things get as bad as they did last summer in the polls, I have no doubt Gordon will be driven from Number 10 by his own Party.
I should have added that the reason he is facing these problems is because he was chancellor for 10 years. This is a world economic crisis but no matter how hard he tries since he was the chancellor he will always face the blame.
I want him to think about the party and step away.
Jackr
Who would you have as leader?
Partially related, suppose you were a voter in Kirkaldy and Cowdenbeath. Could Brown’s popularity ever get so low that a protest vote, against him personally, in his constituency would give the 21% swing needed for an SNP victory?
Mark M,
Almost certainly not, ex leaders are rarely removed even if their government is seen as a failure.
Brown would be there as long as he wanted which in some respects presents Labour with a problem, does he over shadow his successor and remain, a bit like Thatcher, or walk away and give a new leader a free hand.
Peter.
@ JackR – “I have no doubt Gordon will be driven from Number 10 by his own Party.”
Nevermind his own party. Hopefully he’ll be driven out by angry little demons jabbing him with red hot pokers.
@ PeterCairns – after his disastrous premiership, I doubt Brown could overshadow anyone. Thatcher – love her or hate her – was of infinitely greater significance than Brown. He’d be more like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
If Brown is ousted as leader, my guess is that he’ll stand down as an MP. His famously brittle ego won’t tolerate demotion.
“This is a world economic crisis but no matter how hard he tries since he was the chancellor he will always face the blame”
JackR
The reason he will face the blame is that Britain was is a considerably WORSE position to face the recession, which is why we are now in it deeper than any other industrialised country. The reason for this is that GORDON decided to try and make the boom years look as good as possible (so he would be more popular) by ridiculously high levels of debt and taxation to fund government spending on a level that was totally unsustainable.
So it is absolutely right that Gordon should take the blame. His uber-socialist policies are the reason our economy is in such a bad way. However hard you try to say he was really a good chancellor, and is now the unfortunate scapegoat for some distant global problem, the fact remains he has been the worst chancellor – probably ever – but certainly of recent times.
It is all becoming apparent now, but those of us with a little more understanding of the economy have seen this coming for the last 4 or 5 years. And it will not stop any time soon – certainly not this year.
well if we think about it he was very lucky to survive after last summers polls and I think many in the party were prepared to give him a chance last summer but for it to happen twice will be too much. If the council elections are a disaster (which lets be honest they probably will be) then his time is up.
Who will take over? Well I hope we have an exciting leadership election which engages the party and the country. The problem last time was the Gordon Brown just got the job and we didn’t have the chance to express an opinion.
Hey, what happened to my comment? It got editted out!
From the MORI Poll – where does this leave the AW thesis which was looking a good one?
Public optimism about the economy continues to increase, and is now at its highest level since October 2007 – although those who think the economy will get worse over the next 12 months still far outnumber those who think it will improve. The proportion of those who feel the economic condition of the country will improve in the next twelve months is at 20%, compared with 18% last month. Six in ten (60%) think the economy will get worse, down from 66% last month. The Economic Optimism Index (those who think it will get better minus those who think it will get worse) is now at -40, compared with -48 last month.
The problem for the government and particularly Brown is that the attitude of the electorate seems to have tipped back to where we were at the end of last summer; namely they react to anything they do or say with tired ears and eyes. In other words they are simply bored of Labour. That is so corrosive for a government because the more Borwn attempts to look busy or the more announcements he makes the more desperate he looks.
I think this is shaping up to be the state of play for the foreseeable future; the Conservatives polling ~15% ahead and Brown trying to come up with a new initiative every day and repeating his mantra of ‘do-nothing’ which seems to have no real resonance anymore.
I doubt there will be any leadership challenge. For one it is best for any Party to allow the incumbent to take the brunt of an election defeat. But additionally I believe Brown is so consumed with the will to keep power that he would make deposition so arduous and drawn out that it would not be in the interest of the challenger to get involved.
Sadly this board is not what it used to be – a discussion of polls and polling, but has become apart from a few posters, increasingly partisan and now reads like the 5 Live message boards. Shame.
@Stephen
I think you’re wrong. Healthy debate on what direction a poll will take does happen here. Yes people are partisan but that’s what allows us an insight into the minds of other people supporting from other camps.
I think AW does a great job at moderating the direction of conversations and the information he provides is invaluable.
Thankyou Anthony keep up the good work.
Keir
I would actually rather have less of the partisanship
At its worst it doesn’t give us much insight beyond silly insults, recitation of tired party lines and yah-boo-ery. The comments are supposed to be about politics, not a venue for politics.
Anthony,
Well said,
I get rather tired of the;
“This poll means eternal sunlight for my party and doom for all others” , predictions.
I am clear about my allegiances and what I’d like to see happen, but I do try to say what I think is likely rather than what I’d like to see and I don’t have much time for those who try to use this site to promote a particular line.
Having said that, as I have commented before, I do have a tendency to defend the SNP if I think our position is being misrepresented, intentionally or otherwise.
Peter.
John – I don’t think it’s tiredness (eventhough 11-12 years is a long time) – it’s mor ethe feeling that the Govt is being taken for a ride by the banks.
Although it’s not particularly well thought-out (eg”They paid their debts off, what about bailing me/my company out), there’s a powerful attraction to the notion that they could do more to help the man in the street.
The tories don’t have to say anything, or come up with anything. If latest plan “works” they can say theirs would have worked better, without even necessarily explaining the alternative in any detail.
I had a partisan rant in amongst that, but I deleted it before hitting the submit button.
“I had a partisan rant in amongst that, but I deleted it before hitting the submit button.”
Gold star for that man!
I appreciate that Anthony, but if Chris Newey’s rant of 11.28 am 20th Jan is non-partisan, then I dont know what you call partisan.
My comment which was edited out was simply a response to another poster who had put up one view of why GB was taking the blame for the economy. I replied with an alternative, and in my view more accurate view, which was edited out. There may have been partisan undertones I suppose – I make no bones about the fact that I am a Conservative supporter (and party member), but I think the main point being made was very pertinent and unpartisan.
Ever since i joined in the discussions on this site we have had to be continually hauled back into line by Anthony and reminded that this is a debating society about politics or rather the impact of politics and not a party political broadcast.
I am as guilty as anyone. Sometimes my anger at what I consider to be stupidity on the part of the government eg the VAT cut gets my goat to such an extent that I find it very hard not to say something partisan so I do say to you Anthony that you can’t expect us to be choirboys and I think you should cut us a little slack now and then!
As for the latest opinion polls why is anyone surprised at the latest trends? Time and again I have pointed out that the underlying fundementals that gave rise to the unpopularity of this government had NOT changed but some people simply could not see the wood for the trees and read far more into the “Brown bounce’ than was wise.
Finally a word to Mike ‘the oracle” Richardson. I mean this nicely Mike but you are one of those guys who likes to crow when the polls are in your chosen party’s favour but as soon as they are not or when you get windy on the eve of a by election as you did last summer then you come over all shy. Strange that…
“Gold star for that man!”
What… you can get Gold stars, no one told me that……
Peter.
Neil – I didn’t actually put yours in moderation, the spam filter did!
The word socialist triggers the spam filter as it has the word cialis (some form of viagra apparently) inside it.
Anthony,
So we can have; George Galloway the man who put ****** in So*****t.
Peter,
I enjoy this blog. It’s one of the best in politics. The comments (partisan or not) which are germane to the post add to it’s value. As a Conservative I enjoy some of the others, but I should be reading them on Guido or Iain Dale, not on Polling Report. If I want to be told what I want to hear I’ll read the Mail or the Torygraph. If I want to be annoyed I’ll read the Grauniad or the Mirror. So please keep the PPBs out of this blog, and help to keep up it’s outatanding high standards. Sounds very priggish, but that’s how I feel.
Mike S on PB said the much awaited ICM poll will be out on Monday.
A quick question about the issue of why Labour seem to do slightly worse than the polls predict in most local elections.
How much might the Scotland factor be responsible? (forgive me if this has been discussed before).
Namely that a national opinion poll showing Labour, say, five points behind the Conservatives will include Scotland, where Labour support is higher and Conservative support lower than the rest of the country.
A subsequent round of council elections in England and Wales then produces a result with Labour seven or eight points behind.This seems to be a common occurence.
Surely the exclusion of the Labour-friendly figures could account for this?
Has anyoen looked at the polls in the run up to last years local election, excluded the Scottish subset, and then compared how accurate the polls actually were for England and Wales?
@everyone who’s for none partisanshipingthing
I agree
Come on you tories
Should be interesting to see the polls over the next few weeks (monday may be too early) to see the Obama effect or is it more affect on HM’s GOV.
anthoney wells- unlike some comments from rude posters like (BS seaker) i keep my-self to the polling data and what it means
the govenment seams to be heading for a blood bath yes, but what about the lib dems or for that matter the BNP or UKIP who both could feature in the county’s this time round, and hear in leicestershire, i am exspecting big changes and a likely wipe out for labour, they are not very popular in NW LEIC or charnwood for that but in harborugh this is where some of the big changes could happen, in my patch (melton BC) there should on this polling be no LAB reps at all, on the bigger picture its looking real bad in seats where labour are in control and the CON’s are second, out of the 27 county councils up for election i see non of them being labour, the only area where labour could hang on is lancashire but not much chance, small gains for the lib dems, odd single seat gains for labour where the lib dems or others are first, but other than that not much hope at all.
I think what any UK administration should do to any US president is – have a good relationship with him, but don’t be afraid to stamp on his toe if necessary. Most PMs find this a difficult balance to strike. GB was just too rude to GWB, whatever you think of him, and I cant see him stamping on BOs toe.
Even Churchill, our greatest PM ever, couldnt give FDR a red nose, it is a major failing of most British PMs and I dont think the public like it.
I dont think it will have much effect on the polls, because both GB and DC will be falling over themselves to agree with everything Obama says, which is a great shame.
i think it would be unrealistic of our Labour-supporting friends here to suppose that a General Election campaign would somehow improve Labour’s position.
Even under Blair, who was a talented speaker and an outstanding campainer, presiding over a booming economy, Labour votes in the GE were significantly worse than the polls. And whatever Gordon Brown may be, he is surely not a more talented speaker or campaigner than Tony Blair.
(see also Robert Peston on Brown’s international credibility)
Jim,
My answer would be I doubt it can have that much of an effect really no more than 1%, although that could be the difference between 5% and 7%.
If the UK poll is;
Tory 40%, Lab 30%, Libdem 20% and others 10%,
and Scotland;
Labour 36%, SNP 32%, Tories 16%, libDems 12% and others 4%,
then as Scotland is only 8% of the UK electorate it works out that if you strip out Scotland the rest of UK figure ( although you could take out NI and Wales too) would be;
Tory 41%, Labour 29%, LibDem 20% Others 10%.
One of the interesting things about the Euros will be the results for the various regions as these may give us good data for looking at regional swings. If it hasn’t been altered the Uk is twelve regions, nine in England plus Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The English regions are; East Midland (5), East of England (7), London (8), North East England (3), North West England (8), South East England (10), South West England (6), West Midlands (6) and Yorkshire and Humberside (6).
Scotland still 6 MEPs, Wales 4 and Northern Ireland 3.
I think the regional swings we see in these results in June could well give us real insight in to what the relative swings will be come the next general election.
Peter.
@Neil
We can but hope.
Do we have any data on polling figures versus a council election and any bounce the tories/labour can traditionally expect? I appreciate normal GE figures rise for tories and drop for labour, but I have nothing re council elections.
I hate to have to say it but I belive our economic problems are just begining its just the tip of the iceburg.
I am an electrical engineer and been out of work since November ( my first experience of this)
I have always been self employed and in previous recessions of the 80`s and 90`s companys carried on recruiting freelance staff for short term contracts as
that was benificial financially rather taken on full time staff as they didnt know how their situation may be in 6 months time.
It has become apparant to me after never ending telephone calls and job aplications that even employing freelance workers was definatley not on their agendea.
A number of companies even told me that taking on freelance workers was a last resort because of goverment regulation on time which a freelance employing can work for a company ( I didnt understand that one).
I think what im trying to say here is things out their are not good and worringly different from passed recessions and employment regulation and law which has no doubt increased under the Labour government may be its downful.
Because cant if you get back to work quickly the people who may except that this is not a recession caused by this government will start to doubt that if its own policies are preventing them obtaining work.
Hope I havent bored you all with my owm woes!! really enjoy this Anthony site love the statistics and comments from all sides.
Good luck Glenn
Yeah, very sobering post Glenn.
Lets just hope, whoever is in power, that we get out of this mess as soon as possible. Good luck.
Thanks Colin
Fortunately for me I have been a saver rather than a spender over rhe years and have something, (not a lot) to fall back on when times are tougher and something usually turns up!!
I was one of those who did “Get on their bike” in the 80`s I lived and worked in Germany for 6 years and made a good living whilst people suffered in the UK But even that option seems to be fruitless today (anyway im a bit to old to move sticks today)
I just fear there may be a far more number of people and from a wider sector badly effected by this recession
I think only when we have time to analize and compare how better or worse other countries start to come through this recession can we really see if Gordon Brown and his Government were correct in saying that “we are better placed than other countries to get through the downturn”
This time next year should be about that time!
I think Obama’s presidency will have some impact on the polls. I’m trying to avoid sounding partisan here but watching yesterday’s inauguration, with all its energy and hope, it struck me more than ever how tired, glum and uninspiring Brown is. The contrast between American politics and our own right now seemed very stark indeed.
For those who feel any anti-government comment is too partisan I would suggest you read the vitrioilic anti-Brown comments on the Labourhome blog.
During the Crewe and Nantwich byelection the comments on there were similarly negative on the Labour party which made me realise that the Conservatives would win with ease.
Thanks Ivan
Im with you on that
The biggest problem is I have`t got any excuses for doing all those”little jobs around the house” my misses wants doing!!
Gizza job pleeeeeease!!
For all the enthusiasm about Obama, it takes more than hope and speeches to turn round an economy and the US economy is in a mess. The US plan is essentially the same as Brown’s, to borrow there way out of it.
The US is in some respects worse than us in that it’s debts are truly terrible. All that keeps it afloat is the fact that as a reserve currency in times of crisis people move to the dollar.
In some respects that is way the US doesn’t like the Euro, if an alternative reserve currency emerges then the dollar might lose it’s ability to prop up the US economy.
Obama set the right tone in saying that the US couldn’t go on as before, but that doesn’t mean that the US public will be willing to take the medicine that goes with the cure.
We haven’t got the debts of the US but we don’t have a reserve currency either so when we get in trouble the pound takes a beating. The issue that is now worrying the markets is who will buy UK debt through bonds if the currency they are in us under pressure.
The way to counter that is to offer more interest that other nations but then the tax payer has to foot the bill and markets still worry if we can afford it.
Peter.
“We haven’t got the debts of the US ”
I’m not convinced & would like to see an authoratitive update of UK State Debt vs GDP-including those of RBS for example, 70% of which now fall to the taxpayer.
We know what the debts of these “State” Banks are-but we seem to have no idea what the real value of their assets is.
The Budget will hopefully be instructive on these points-well we can hope!
The USA has key advantages over EU countries:-
It’s vibrant entrepreneurial spirit , it’s “can do” attitude in business, and it’s natural resources. It’s lack of stultifying bureaucracy, and a real local democracy.
It’s people too are different-they identify with their country & flag regardless of their personal creed & religion . If Obama’s election has done anything positive so far it is to cement that credo of “Americans”.
I should have mentioned the forensic examination which US politicians are constantly subject to.
Beside the accountability of their political class, the miserable grubby attempts of our MPs to keep their expenses from the gaze of those who pay them is stark.
@ Peter – of course it takes more than speeches, but I’ll take a lot of convincing that a demoralised population with a deadbeat miserabilist leader is going to fare anywhere near as well as a hopeful, energised population with a dynamic leader.
Colin
I think you are probably right
“MPs to keep their expenses from the gaze of those who pay them”
Update:-Tories & LibDems to vote against Harperson’s attempt to circumvent FOI for MP’s expenses. (Brown has whipped his MPs on it)
Well done to Clegg & Cameron.
Mike “The Oracle”’s absence is puzzling – is he attending the McCain inauguration, or has his cover been finally blown ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7839375.stm
A cautionary tail, if ever there was one.
Peter, “We haven’t got the debts of the US”,
Maybe in terms of public debt we’re a little behind but in terms of what we owe foreigners (mostly in the rapidly appreciating Dollar unfortunately) each person in the UK has been saddled with over FIVE TIMES as much as an American.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2079rank.html
I appologise if this sounds partisan but I do object to the idea that we all (the countries of the world) start from the same base with this reccesion. The UK is UNDOUBTEDLY ONE OF THE LEAST prepared in terms of debt levels.
One can argue if it was worth such spending for better schools, hospitals, lower crime etc if you believe they have improved at all, but to say that others are all in the same boat is incorrect.
The losses are most keenly felt in the economies most exposed to the banking collapse. If Frankfurt had become the world’s financial centre at the end of the 90’s and not London, then Germany would be suffering more from the disappearance of tens of billions of tax revenue, and UK plc would be suffering less.
Any excessive amounts of money spent on NHS,education, police in the last ten years would not be much help to us in the face of the sheer scale of the bad debts.
Of course, that will have very little effect on public opinion, as it’s much too difficult to get a full grasp of what’s going on, and much too easy to blame it all on the man at the top (who’s been there throughout and should have known better, etc) I
don’t mind Ivan et al thinking Brown’s made poor spending calls , but it would be a stronger position if it took proper account of the scale of the poor lending calls by the banks
Ivan – your link is to a list of countries’ gross debt. It takes no account of money owed to the US or UK, and puts a the top of the list , naturally, the world’s financial capitals where trades happen. It’s not money which has been “saddled” on anyone.
Thank you JOHN T T for noticing my absence in this particular POLLING result – I know many of you wait for my precise forecasting.
It’s hard to make a comment on something I predicted during the mini Brown bounce – you will see more to come of these sort of POLLS – it is sort of historic for all of us to see our country destroyed by a group of our own citizens rather than an invading force from Europe – oh yes, I forgot – this regime also favour the forces over the channel.
Enjoy the POLLS – you will see a lot more contributors on here as the weeks go by as more and more have extra free time after losing their jobs.
Per head my country owes, to the rest of the world, a massive sum of money. More than almost every other developed country in the world. As my currency depreciates in value to other currencies this money owed becomes greater.
I admit that not all, by any means, of this debt was the result of Labour being profligate in public spending alone.
However, by allowing us to borrow at lower rates than ‘prudent’ and with little regulation or oversight of our financial institutions over many years, our government must hold some of the blame.
“It takes no account of money owed to the US or UK”
You think the world owes us?!
Brown dumped most of our foreign currency and gold reserves many years ago and if the banks had any overseas capital left that they could liquidate they would have done it by now surely.
I personally didn’t borrow more than I could pay back but I bet I’ll have to pay higher taxes for this mess in the coming years. Therefore I stick by the use of the word ’saddled’.
***Government Owned Northern Rock Employees Get 10% Pay Bonus***
This is how the government spends your money, people. At a time when everyone else is either losing their job or just delighted if they dont have to take a reduction in income, government staff at Northern Rock are getting a 10% pay bonus. Northern Rock being the company that performed so badly it had to be bought by the government for it just to survive. Just remember that 10% is coming out of your salary.
Arent we all looking forward to increasing out stakes in RBS and Lloyds etc?
Jim Rogers: “The UK is finished.”
I dont think anyone with any sense can really argue against that. As he says, the UK had two things supporting it: North Sea Oil, and the financial centre in London. Both are now gone.
The UK really has had it. I dont think the vast majority of people really understand just how dire things are for the UK. Or they just want to bury their heads in the sand.
Even if the Tories win next year there are two problems. First is that so much damage will already be done it will take a decade to find our feet again.
Second is that I have my doubts about just how great the Tories will be. I fear they will go not nearly far enough. The UK is so far out of whack structurally. The public sector needs to be utterly decimated. GOVERNMENT DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO SPEND MONEY WISELY. Because it doesnt earn it, it doesnt care about getting value. When it runs out it just takes some more from your pocket. But when they take it from your pocket and spend it inefficiently, it prevents YOU from spending it in a way that DOES get the best return. For an economy as a whole that translated to lower growth. Less prosperity.
In addition, ridiculous red tape and regulations that get in the way of anybody doing anything in the UK need to be slashed too. People wonder why no company wants to do business in the UK any more. The answer is they simply cant do business in the UK. Its too expensive. Companies dont just leave a country because it rains too much you know.
With this rancid economic climate, i really think Labour should count their losses, and start thinking strategically as a collective rather than be dictated by Brown all because of an out-of-date ruling.
Labour really should call an election in May/June 2009, as prolonging it till 2010 will only play into Tory hands. There is no evidence to suggest things will get considerably better in 2010. It could be that the difference between Labour holding an election in 2009 & 2010, could lead to another 1 or 2 terms out of power, not just the one term.
The most worrying thing for Labour is that it is still another 5 months before the estimated time when the economy will be shrinking at the most.
“The most worrying thing for Labour is that it is still another 5 months before the estimated time when the economy will be shrinking at the most.”
Yes, it is worrying for Labour, but it is even more worrying for us, the public, who have to foot the bill. In 5 or 6 months I will be finished my 3rd year at university, and although I hope to do 4 years and gain an honours degree, I need a summer job for 2 reasons.
1) to keep me afloat financially over the summer
2) if I want to become a solicitor, I need to find my traineeship this summer.
With the way things are going, very few law firms are recruiting, and those that are seem to be flooded with applications – the competition is cut-throat.
Politics is only part of this, it is the first time that the younger amongst us (those of us just finishing our degrees) have experienced such worrying financial times.
“If Frankfurt had become the world’s financial centre at the end of the 90’s and not London, then Germany would be suffering more from the disappearance of tens of billions of tax revenue, and UK plc would be suffering less.”
Well yes john-but you make the crazy growth of some of our banks under the gaze of Chancellor Brown, sound like some sort of natural phenomenon.
It wasn’t-as indicated in a piece in the FT by Willem Buiter which draws interesting parallels with Iceland-now under the tutelage of IMF.
:- “.. …. The excesses in Iceland during the past decade were greater than in the UK, but not qualitatively different. In both countries, the regulation of banks was laughably lax. The UK’s much-touted light-touch regulation turned out to be soft-touch regulation. Relaxation of regulatory norms was consciously used by the British government as an instrument for attracting financial business to London, mainly from New York City. Fiscal policy in both countries became strongly pro-cyclical during the boom years preceding the financial crisis. Households were permitted, indeed encouraged, to accumulate excessive debt – around 170 per cent of household disposable income in the UK, over 210 percent in Iceland……..
The article draws attention to the size of RBS-Balance Sheet totals of £1.9 trillion-or127% of UK annual GDP.
Equity of £70bn-Geared by X 27 where a 4% fall in Asset values destroys all Equity.
LLoyds TSB is geared X 33, Barclays X 41.
The FT article observes that :-
“…………….Both countries pay the price for the hubris of policymakers who believed that they had engineered the end of boom and bust and replaced it with perpetual boom. The risks associated with asset market and credit booms and bubbles were dismissed . In neither country have the responsible parties (the prime minister, the minister of finance, the governor of the central bank and the head of banking regulation and supervision) admitted any personal responsibility for the disaster. ”
-and concludes by discussing the likelihood of a Sovereign Debt Crisis for UK.
Brown’s Chancellorship will be written in the history books, for it is the reason behind his nightmare Premiership-Four years of Prudent Mr Hyde, using Ken Clarke’s legacy to pay down Debt-before the manic Jekyll takes over creating the conditions for an unsupervised explosion of Banking, Credit & Debt ,for which he takes the plaudits-and the tax revenues-and spends the lot, before the Bubble bursts.
I too think from a Labour point of view they are better off calling/losing an election right now instead of waiting. Things could easily still be terrible in four or five years and they could come back and say “look, the Tories have had five years and done nothing.”
Debt to equity ratios for banks of 20 or 30 to 1 are extremely unhealthy but is anyone seriously arguing that if the Tories had been in power they wouldn’t have let the same thing happen.
The growth of the city through exotic financial vehicles drove the housing market and share prices and through them public spending in the last decade. The public wanted higher spending and if it had elected a Tory government that is what it would have got.
Almost certainly the Tories would have spent less but they would also have cut taxes so we wouldn’t have put aside any more money and there is good reason to think that the city consumer spending and even house prices would have been higher.
The other alternative would have been to try to slow it with interest rates 2 or 3% higher than they were under Labour.
Which would you rather have to slow the consumer boom higher taxes under Labour to employ nurses police and build schools and hospitals, or higher interest rates under the Tories with the interest going to the banks so they could borrow even more and give themselves even bigger bonuses.
I am not taking a swipe at both just because I am a nationalist, it’s just that those here pointing out Browns mistakes seem to skirt over the fact that looking at their policies over the same period the Tories would probably brought us to the same place.
The growth of the city, rising house prices and easy credit was the orthodoxy of the last two decades up to and including my party’s calls to emulate the Celtic tiger or the arc of prosperity.
Some of the comments here remind me of things like;
“If it wasn’t for America we’d all be speaking German”
The fact is you can’t say that. You can say if things hadn’t been the way they were they would have been different, but you can’t say exactly what that difference would be.
There are numerous possibilities, some more probable than others and on that balance of probability I just don’t see much from the policies of the different parties that would have the UK right now in much better shape to ride out this crisis.
Peter.
Neil,
I respect your concerns over your personal future. My remark was an attempt to keep within the purpose of this website which is to assess the political meaning of polls.
I wish you well. And I wish that the probable winners of the next election, the Conservatives, will serve this country well.
Philip,
Thanks, I wasn’t disagreeing with what you said, I think you were absolutely right; the point I was wishing to make was that most of the public couldn’t really care less about what happens to the Labour party as they are more concerned about the personal effects of the recession.
@ Peter – you may be right but a fictional alternate history imagining that the Tories rather than Labour had been in power for the last 11 years doesn’t alter reality. And, as a scenario, it doesn’t have the bestseller punch of Robert Harris’s Fatherland.
We are where we are and the government of today is led by the man who really has been in charge of the economy for the past 11 years. To get back to the polls – it’s pretty clear that much of the public has lost confidence in Brown and perceives the boom years under Labour as something of a confidence trick that has now been exposed.
What can Brown (or rather Mandelson) do to restore that confidence? I just can’t see how it’s possible now. He enjoyed a honeymoon period in which the public was very willing to give his premiership a chance. He pi$$ed that away and the polls reacted accordingly. He then enjoyed his “bounce” for a while, though it was never all that impressive (as I’ve pointed out many times before, even at its height Brown didn’t manage to actually overtake the Tories). Now it’s over.
“if the Tories had been in power they wouldn’t have let the same thing happen.” :-
I don’t agree Peter.
“The fact is you can’t say that. You can say if things hadn’t been the way they were they would have been different, but you can’t say exactly what that difference would be.” :-
I agree Peter
“the public has lost confidence in Brown and perceives the boom years under Labour as something of a confidence trick that has now been exposed. ”
I think that is true James.
@Colin
”
“if the Tories had been in power they wouldn’t have let the same thing happen.” :-
I don’t agree Peter.
“The fact is you can’t say that. You can say if things hadn’t been the way they were they would have been different, but you can’t say exactly what that difference would be.” :-
I agree Peter
“the public has lost confidence in Brown and perceives the boom years under Labour as something of a confidence trick that has now been exposed. ”
I think that is true James.
”
Well I for one am glad you cleared that up.
An easy way of telling whether it would have been different would be to point to the speeches by Ken Clarke, which warned against excessive securitisation, cds etc. I’d settle for any anecdotal memories of him or any other Tory politician doing so.
What i remember very clearly is Clarke urging fiscal relaxation in 98-00 as his own plans were being carried out too stringently in his view at the time. I distinctly remember laughing at his nerve.
Ivan – please do some research on the difference betrween gross external debt and net debt, it might lower the temperature of the debate if people used facts.
BTW Evan Davies’ programmes o the crisis are well worth a look – some of the pundits are media tarts, but some really do explain it clearly.
M –
“Jim Rogers: Oil Bull Market Has Years to Go ”
MoneyNews.com
Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:18 PM
I hope you didn’t believe him then – you’d have lost your shirt.
Is Jim Rogers related to The Oracle? (Good to see you’re not banged up in South Korea, Mike)
I’m not old enough to know for sure but I recall that the last Tory administration wasn’t exactly afraid to use very high interest rates to cool the economy in the past.
Who’s to say they might not have hiked them a few years ago and, with much less government spend a given, reduced the size of our cumulative debt at this point.
That would have put us in better shape to weather this period of turmoil. Just a thought.
Given the news over the past few days I get the impression we may see a big reduction in Labour support in any upcoming poll. Even the Beeb seems to be sticking the knife in!
John,
“Ivan – please do some research on the difference betrween gross external debt and net debt, it might lower the temperature of the debate if people used facts”.
I admit it. I was ’selective’ in my use of data to make my point. I’m in training to go into politics one day!
In that case you won’t need to research facts
You might be right to say one thing or another would have made a difference, but the point is that you can’t say that the Tories were advocating higher interest rates, or tighter supervision of all those weird financial instruments. They didn’t understand them any more than the bankers and traders.
Ivan,
” I’m in training to go into politics one day! ”
It’s not training you need it’s therapy”……..
Peter.
Interesting that the word social*st has the word cial8s in it and therefore hits the spam blocker!
There must be a joke or too in there about the Brown bounce finally deflating, or social8st fiscal stimulus!
@Ivan the Terrible
“Given the news over the past few days I get the impression we may see a big reduction in Labour support in any upcoming poll. Even the Beeb seems to be sticking the knife in!”
Could we have examples please
Re the discussion on whether things would or would not have turned out better had we had a Tory Government for the last few years, I entirely agree with those that say we cannot know, however so what.
Interesting as such debate may be, surely the key question is whether Voters percieve this to be true.
If they agree or disagree (however well founded or otherwise their view may be) that the Tories would have been less likely to have got us into this mess then it would be likely to influence their voting intention.
It would in my view be less of an influence than the question of who is best able to get us out of the mess, but if they cannot make up their mind or are neutral on that point, then their view on how such an alternative historical scenario might have played would be important.
Of course such considerations would not influence the population as a whole, but does I would conjectuire influence at least some voters. The degree of the impact depends on how many, and on that point I am afraid I have no opinion.
Talking about alternate scenarios, we have already had the “Labour ejects Prime minister as least bad alternative in the autumn and runs for late 2009 general election under new leader”
How about “Stirling crisis develops into a full blown Icelandic style economic collapse but with a long row of extra 0’s at the end, – Government implodes and crisis so severe that Govt collapses and new Labour joins Lib dems/Tories in a Govt of national unity a la 1930’s with old Labour rump disapearing leftwards
Probably PM Cameron, C of E Cable, Labour posts depend on size of new Labour rump that joins Govt of national unity
Govt of National unity elected in crisis 2009 General election and all bets off on political re-allignment in subsequent 2012 General election”
Keir,
“Could we have examples please”
Of the bad press?
Various bad reaction to the second bank bailout, both by the city and the media. Also some bad press on crime figures and the U-turn on MP’s epenses to name but a few.
On the BBC coverage I’ve been under the impression that their traditional bias for Labour has wained of late.
Just take a look at their news front page; no more ‘Superman Brown’, instead we have higher knife crime and various sleaze allegations against Hain et al.
Yesterday they even broadcast an interview with Jim Rogers of “The U.K. is finished” fame!
I just get the feeling that the government is doing so badly that even it’s supporters are finding it hard to paint a rosy picture any more.
Ivan – the BBC has been against the Govt for as long as I can remember. Their stance has been well to the left of Blair, which meant that they were even more against the Tories, with the result that you might think they were pro-Labour.
There are two things going on with BBC news journalism – one is that they try to reflect the views of the public, and the other is that they always emphasise what suits the current narrative best.
Neither leads towards balanced reporting (hence Jim Rogers’ view that the banks should be allowed to collapse passed unchallenged during PM).
Indeed, any BBC policy makers reading your comment followed by mine would assert that they must have the balance right because I’m convinced they are anti-Labour, and you are convinced they are pro-Labour. Utter rubbish, of course.
@ JohnTT – you make a persuasive argument. It seems to me that the BBC has a very clear political agenda all of its own – broadly leftwing and emphatically internationalist – and attacks (sometimes explicitly and sometimes subtly) any party or politician it regards as contra the BBC’s own party line.
I disagree though that the BBC tries to reflect the views of the public. Rather, I think it tries to present its own views *as if* they are the views of the public. On programmes such as BBC Breakfast, there’s a very blatant assumed chumminess and shared value base with viewers, one that emphatically attempts to make viewers complicit with the BBC’s chosen line on any particular issue.
Personally I think this is a significant problem. For one thing, it presents journalists and other commenters as if they are public representatives (which they are not) while positioning politicians (who actually ARE our elected representatives, whatever one thinks of their performance) as “the enemy”.
James – thanks for the correction and I agree it’s more accurate.
I think it got worse when Greg (spam filters prevent?) youknowwho took over and called for more dramatic coverage.
Which makes it all the more frustrating that talented interviewers had to become more and more adversarial and less subtle. It allowed the politicians to engage in blow-for blow argument (which they’re trained to do), rather than detailed (more boring) discussion.
John TT said:
***“Jim Rogers: Oil Bull Market Has Years to Go ”
MoneyNews.com
Thursday, June 12, 2008 5:18 PM
I hope you didn’t believe him then – you’d have lost your shirt.
Is Jim Rogers related to The Oracle? (Good to see you’re not banged up in South Korea, Mike)”***
Actually John, if Id have listened to him, maybe I would have been a billionaire too. But nice cherry pick when absolutely everything has dramatically fallen (save perhaps gold) given massive de-leveraging and freeze up.
I see you ignored the fact he said the bull market has “years” to go. If you look around more youll see he means 10 or 15. Long term. Not “now now now, gotta have it now now now.” Long term. A novel idea for some. I wish Gordon Brown had been familiar with the idea of the long term. Talk about sending the country right back to the 70s. Bankrupted by Labour twice in 25 years.
And in addition, Jim Rogers has said in the past that oil has corrected by 50% or more two or three times on its way up and it probably will again.
Guess what Jim Rogers is buying as much as he can get his hands on at the moment. Lets see where oil is in two or three years. And lets see where the UK is.
M It didn’t so much correct as fall off a cliff. Anyone following his pronouncements on oil in June would have picked up his signal and piled into it as far as they could. His pronouncements have one purpose – to make money. Good for him, but don’t pretend he’s an independent expert with no agenda.
Why are there do few leading Tories advocating that the banks should be allowed to collapse? Perhaps they are a bit more savvy than Rogers.
John, being on the left like Brown, you just arent going to ever get it. Its called the “long term.”
Cherry picking one call at a time as crazy as this reminds me of the desperate thrashing around, gasping for political life, that Gordon Brown is doing at the moment. And its one call that will rebound to terrifying levels for anyone that wants to heat their home or run their car. They havent found a decent oil field in 40 years. And guess what, to Gordon Browns despair, the BoE cant print oil.
And no, there are not any Tories as savvy as Jim Rogers. As I mentioned a couple of days ago, the Tories will not go nearly far enough with the slashing of red tape and public sector employment. And the Tories will continue to manipulate the price of money (interest rates) and supply of money just like both parties have for so long.
However, despite my criticism of them, I know one thing for sure: the nation would not be on the verge of bankruptcy like it is now. No way.
He was quoting short medium and long term when he said that oil was going up. It then plummetted.
Wherever one is positioned doesn’t determine how far one “gets it”
The tories presumably want a stab at running the country. As some-one who doesn’t yet trust them to rein in free-market capitalism, i hope they seriously consider hiring Rogers (and you for that matter) to explain their politics to the electorate. I have a feeling the polls would be affected quite a lot.
@ KEIR
Yes my cut & paste from Peter went awry-then my home power supply went off for most of the day!
I meant to say that Peter lacks a degree of logic in pronouncing the Tory economic policies which would have been in place had they been in power….and then claiming on another issue “You can say if things hadn’t been the way they were they would have been different, but you can’t say exactly what that difference would be.”
I am amused by the trawling for evidence that Ken Clarke would have made the same errors of Banking oversight as Brown.
Actually KC was against BoE independence , which would certainly have obviated FSA- arguably the epicentre of failure.
However-as ODDJOB observes, all this vicarious blame for the Banking Crisis is irrelevant if-as seems likely-the public are focussed on who is best to get us out of this mess.
That is the battle ground-and if the public do refer to past performance in reaching a judgement, then as James has said-Brown will probably score badly now.
His only hope is a sudden & dramatic improvement in the economy during this year. Whatever the reason for such an outcome-he would get the credit.
John,
Free market capitalism doesnt need to be reined in. Government does. Free market capitalism is what has brought millions out of poverty in China. Government and socialism is what had kept them in poverty all that time. Government and socialism is what is taking this country back to poverty, and what is going to dramatically reduce the standard of living in the USA. (Bush was a socialist-look at his actions not his label. Obama is more of the same, economically.) You may not like to it, but I promise you, you just dont get it.
And I agree, me or Jim Rogers speaking on behalf of the Tories would be bad for the Tories. You see, these days we have more spongers than workers and entrepreneurs. And they vote too. More people that cant look after themselves than ever before. More people than ever before demanding to take what other people have rather than creating that wealth for themselves.
And with the encouragement by Labour for these spongers to enter the very lucrative baby manufacturing industry, whilst the people that provide the wealth for this country only have one or two, the situation is only going to get worse and worse.
I dont go in for political correctness, btw.
It still hasnt become apparent to people in the UK just how dire the situation is. There is nothing… nothing in the future for the UK.
I dont know where this is going so lets just meet back here in two years and take a look at how oil is doing and take a look at how the UK is doing.
Poll numbers are still a negative for Labour not a positive for the Tories and different ,therefore, from 1995-97.
The shadow shadow chancellor line was the best from Brown for ages, I wonder who came up with it? Expect more out of depth remarks and some will stick.
Cameron got lost on PMQ’s when Brown asked him for an alternative to re-capitalising the banks, first time for a few weeks.
It shows that whilst the Tories are now getting some good advice and a stronger position on the financial turmoil Cammo and Osborne still struggle when debating.
Reckon still Tory victory but not 97 style Labour wipe out whenever the GE, partly due to FPTP vaguaries.
Re the media Steve Richards was a guest Radio 5 with John Piennar for PMQs and compensated for the anti Labour narrative (perhaps over compensated) that comes every week from Piennar.
I’d rather not if you don’t mind M!
One thing we agree on though is that systems of govt do have an enormous effect on the standards of living/progress of that country. If they’d innovated in style of government as brilliantly as they did in hydraulics/explosives/astronomy etc, we’d have been conversing in Mandarin for centuries by now.
I stand by my assertion that a bull market in a commodity stops being a bull market when that commodity sees its price reduce by 70% in nine months. If Jim had worked as a trader in the City and held on “for the long term” he’d have lost his job.
Colin.
Sorry but my logic is sound.
You can’t say if it wasn’t X it would be Y, but what I wanted was evidence from Tory policy or statements that the Tories had markedly different policies from Labour with regards to the city and the Housing market.
You do make a valid point about BoE independence and the way Brown reorganised oversight and financial regulation, so in some respect the Tories might have done things differently.
However I just don’t see the Tories having taken a tough line with interest rates and the housing market for the greater good of the nation and risked getting booted out of government.
I just think that the Tories were as likely to follow Labour and give the city what it wanted as Osborne and Mandelson were to be found on the same yacht.
I have no problem blaming Brown for his mistakes but I can’t go along with those Tories who post here attacking all things Labour and suggesting that none of this would have happened under a Tory government.
Equally I think it’s fairly probable that if Scotland had been independent since the 79 referendum we would probably be in much the same situation that Ireland is in now, or indeed the situation Norway faced ( I wouldn’t draw parallels with Iceland because it really is a micro economy).
How we would fair is hard to say, but the one think I am sure of is that just as Ireland hasn’t asked to rejoin the UK or Norway Sweden, we’d be staying an Independent country.
Peter.
Peter
I think the Tories could reasonably claim to have flagged concerns about debt-as did Cable.( Cable in November 2003 & Letwin in 2005)
The record , I think , shows that these concerns were dismissed summarily by Brown .His speeches at Mansion House in June 2007, (… Britain needs more of the vigour, ingenuity and aspiration that you already demonstrate that is the hallmark of your success. ) , and CBI in 2005 (…. “no inspection without justification, no form-filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification, not just a light touch but a limited touch”. ) show the mood he was then in.
Adair Turner has said today that “governments, regulators and institutions around the world had failed to respond to a credit binge fuelled by low interest rates and a dangerous boom in credit securities.
He urged regulators to take a far more active overview of the world, rather than taking a institution by institution approach to their work.”
Clearly there was an international dimension to these failures. But the exponential growth of Northern Rock & RBS took place under the gaze of UK authorities.
Brown would gain much more support for his attempt to maximise the international aspect if he would – just once- concede that his creation the FSA was understaffed, underskilled & focussed on process rather than outcomes( a common criticism of this Government’s approach)
Would a Ken Clarke-still in control of BoE-have used interest rates to control the credit bubble ?-who knows.
Would such an incarnation of the HushPuppied One have acted to stop NR & RBS gearing up in the way they did-who can say?
I really think these questions are of interest only to Labour apologists who want to tar the opposition with their own dirty brush.-the public are thinking about their future-not the Tory’s putative past.
Your admission about an independent Scotland is very fair-especially given your leader’s admiration of Goodwin.
I’m sure Ireland will wish to stay independent-whether it’s awfull financial situation in the wake of it’s own banking crisis will help “Yes” or “No” in the second referendum is an interesting thought.-as is the position of the Euro-which judging by the widening bond spreads for Member States appears to question the very status of the “currency union”.
“I really think these questions are of interest only to Labour apologists who want to tar the opposition with their own dirty brush”
They should be of interest to Tory “apologists” as well. Why wasn’t the shadow chancellor speaking out against the limited, light touch of regulation? Would they keep firmer control when the sector recovers?
Questions very much for the future.
@Colin
I agree with you in general, but I believe the battleground is wider now than before. The public (I included) are weary of the economic woes of the country and will probably fall into a state of apathy regarding the issues, if not already then very soon – I am not suggesting their strength of feeling will deminish, only their belief that nothing can be done.
Which is why I belive issues such as lack of transparency regarding reciepts will have more traction thatn last month
The issues around statistics not being published will have more traction than last month
In fact anything this government do which seems to either make MP’s different from us JOE BLOGGS of the worl or where they seem to be covering scandle/politically sensitive information will have much more traction than at the end of last year.
What the Tories have to do is not try to get too involved in making these issues flare up that may see the government being able to divert to critisim onto them.
I may be completely wrong about all this, but people are looking for fresh meat and they want to spend some anger at someone (the current government seem the likely candidates as would any incumbent governing body)
PS If anyone believes that my comments are partisan then I apologise, I am simply trying to show what I beleive will make a big difference in the polls over the coming weeks.
As to the future john, you can read the policy statements-though whether you trust them is of course a personal matter.
As I understand it they include the Bank of England taking a broader responsibility for debt.and giving FSA it’s regular assessment of the extent of risk in the market.
An independent office of budget responsibility is proposed which would evaluate & comment on the nation’s debts, including liabilities currently not counted on the balance sheet such as major PFI projects.
I presume the Cons would broadly support & encourage international co-operation-they would have to if monstrosities like Fed Goodwin’s RBS are to be effectively regulated-or even avoided in future?
I have a feeling that GB has a rather prescriptive form of Globally imposed regulation via say the IMF in mind.
Whether this -as opposed to international co-operation of national regulators-will meet with USA support-or is indeed practicable remains to be seen at the upcoming London G20
Colin,
I don’t see why widening Bond spread question the “currency union” as you see exactly the same thing with regards to bonds issued by US states and that isn’t being seen as a reason for the dollar to collapse.
Osborne and cable may well have criticised Brown on debt as opposition spokesman, but just as Brown and Cooke attacked Tory policy and then adopted it, If the Tories were in power I doubt they would have done that much differently.
I certainly can’t remember a Tory election manifesto saying;
“We will reintroduce credit controls”
“We intend to raise interest rates to cool the Housing sector”
“We must restrict the expansion of the Financial sector”
“We will take the bank of England back under direct treasury control”
“We need greater regulation and less innovation in financial products”
Peter.
Peter-I’m not at all sure that “greater regulation” is the alternative to the failures at FSA/BoE.
It seems to me that there were plenty of warnings & data available, from IMF down-including from BoE itself. !!
What was needed was two things which didn’t happen:-
* More effective regulation through clearly defined responsibilities as between BoE & FSA
* Appropriate counter-cyclical policy response from Government.
With regard to the Conservatives-they called for the former of those two-in terms-in the “Redwood” 2007 Competition Report.
Whether they would have met the second requirement-who can say? There doesn’t seem to have been a single global example of an administration which did-though Merkel made all the right noises at one time.
These politicians can talk the talk about better regulation till the cows come home-but unless they give theire regulators teeth-and respect, it’s all hot air.
Maybe the Cons would have been beguiled by all that tax revenue too?
Keir-I agree.
The public must be weary of economic minutiae by now.
If Cameron can just keep smiling that should be enough to get him elected!
@Cllr Peter Cairns (SNP)
Yes but there are statements that say that tories would (and have been proven too in the past) spend more within their means.
So no they may not have done something different, except they would not have started from the same place and therefor would have had more options.
@Colin
“Maybe the Cons would have been beguiled by all that tax revenue too?”
I struggle with this as it’s the same argument about old money new money people. Those who have grown up with money physically/metaphorically (or business experience at a high level) are less likely to be overly effected when that money (or position) is thrust upon them.
For example Gordon Brown with a protestant minister for a father probably had a very reserved and spend thrift upbringing. This does not mean to say that Gordon caused this or that he shares the same values. In fact if phycologists are to be believed (and you’d be mad if you did) then it is more likely that when given the almost unlimited sums of money Gordon was faced with and the investors who had his ear, that he would be more likely to splurge and show favour rather than follow the father.
The one thing I will say is that just as with Labour, the conservatives had been in power too long and would have made other possibly more damaging mistakes had they continued (one reason people argue for a maximum government term).
To add to my previous statements about what has more traction, then I believe we will also see a marked increase in the call for change (that was around prior to the credit crunch) rear it’s head again and I do not think recovery in the economy with have much bearing on that.
Sorry Anthony but I think this goes against your economy tracking argument (that I have agreed with during the crisis)
I’m finding all this speculation about what the Tories “would” have done rather weird. We don’t really know what they’d have done because there are so many possible variables. How big would their hypothetical majority have been? What would their cabinet and reshuffles have been like and how might they have affected policy? Would they have changed tack when presented with certain facts or indicators? Who would have been prime minister, bearing in mind that Cameron only became leader in 2005? We just don’t know.
I agree with Keir re: governments in power too long. If Labour has one almost defining characteristic right now, it’s that sense of having run out of ideas, energy, confidence, and talent – much like the Tories in the mid-90s. Time for a change indeed.
I have heard recently that Britain may agree to take more non British nationals from Guantanamo Bay after Obama`s announcement to close the camp
This may be a deeply unpopular desision ( there maybe a poll in the future on this subject)
Why would a Government that is trying to get the public on their side and an election looming make this kind of decision especially if it doesn`t have to?
The Government are saying they are trying to make other EU countries to take some of the inmates as well
But this may be seen as allowing these people in from the back door if they wish to do so
The press and the Tories will have a field day
So why shoot yourself in the foot?
@Glenn Benson
It’s another article that can be attributed to being in power too long. They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
A lot of issues (like Heathrow) are just vote losers – they do not make people vote for you only against no matter what decision you take.
Keir,
Very true but I bet Blair would have been better able to spin it his way.
Sitting, slight lean forward, hands clasped with a fake tear in the eye. Talk of ‘Future’ and ‘Investment’ and a ‘new’ and ‘Green’ way forward blah blah…
Brown, with his jowly jaw, ‘angry’ hands and gruff monotone just can’t pull it off with the susceptible moron masses the way Blair did. Thank God!
You miss the point Ivan – it’s the “no-win” that’s intractable. If they ‘d cancelled the third runway it would have lost as many votes as if they proceeded with it.
I agree that looks count an awful lot amongst the masses, but Keir was correctly pointing out that the longer a govt stays in, the more people will respond to issues with “that’s the final straw, I’m changing my vote now”, no matter that there is no great ideological move away from the govt. (If anything the masses are becoming more protectionist and less “free-market”)
IVAN THE TERRIBLE
To repeat what you state in your post above:
“Very true but I bet Blair would have been better able to spin it his way.
Sitting, slight lean forward, hands clasped with a fake tear in the eye. Talk of ‘Future’ and ‘Investment’ and a ‘new’ and ‘Green’ way forward blah blah…
Brown, with his jowly jaw, ‘angry’ hands and gruff monotone just can’t pull it off with the susceptible moron masses the way Blair did. Thank God!”
What exactly does this comment have to do with Opinion Poll analysis. It is nothing short of PATHETIC PERSONAL INSULTS. They seem to again confirm the insulting hysterical attitude many Conservatives have.
With regards to you insulting the electorate describing them as “..the susceptible moron masses..” is contemptable nonesense. Sort it out!!
“They seem to again confirm the insulting hysterical attitude many Conservatives have”
So we’re both capable of it then!
A display of mild irritation at a party (and to a certain extent those who voted for them) that is intent, it seems, on wrecking my country is not hysterical.
Also Browns inability to ‘relate’ in comparison to his predisessor has a bearing on the polls. I was simply pointing out that perhaps Blair would fair better.
GDP figures out today. As bad as could be, are you not becoming mildly irritated too?
This is no place for irritation, mild or otherwise.
Are the voters irritated with “Brown’s recession”, or can they be persuaded to be even more irritated with the people who played with the dangerous toys created by rocket scientists without understanding the instructions on the packet, and without the benefit of a “this may explode” warning?
Again, where is the evidence that voting tory in 1997, 2001 or 2005 would have led to anything better than a few more billion in the current account to pour into the failing banks?
The voters were not presented with an alternative that would have prevented it.
That’s not a “hypothesis” but a real fact – there is no evidence that Cameron, IDS, Howard or Hague would have instigated a regime that would have prevented it.
If there were evidence, Cameron would have waved it at the despatch box every Weds since NR threatened to go pop.
Bloody hell – give us another poll quick!! This is descending into sub-HoC yah-booing of the worst extremes.
UK – bankrupt? Show me the proof – recession does not equal bankrupt
BBC – pro-Labour? Again, the proof rather than just invective (come on – the dodgy dossier anyone?)
Electorate – susceptible moron masses??
This is meant to be a site which looks at the polls and the evidence behind the polls – not a forum for some of the crudest politicking I’ve seen since schoolday debates
Whilst some of the language is colourful the debate about a hypothetical Tory Gov’t in recent years is in my view valid on this site.
I think most posters (even strong Tories) agree that most of the polling numbers are as a result of Labour regaining some unpopularity (I like that). At the same time the Conservatives suffered last Autumn from a lack of clear narrative and have sharpened up. Colin is right that Cammo probably needs to just keep smiling to win but this is by no means certain and he clearly is a little worried or else why risk bringing Clarke back.
The debate then is to what extent the Conservatives need to set out their own agenda in the months ahead in order to not just win due to protest and ‘time for change’ which may or may not lead to a narrower popular vote victory and even closer for seats.
The discussion then around Conservative policies in opposition is a pre-curser to what many of us see as greater scrutiny of the conservatives in the next 12 months.
In this context speculating about whether things would have been substantially different is valid as the Cam, Osborne etc will be asked just this.
The back-drop then is that some of us believe that the lead will narrow as the year goes on (may be widening first) as this scrutiny takes place whilst others don’t.
All legitimate stuff.
FWIW I am with Peter Cairns, with a Tories govt in recent years we would be where we are now Macro wise but probably with less public spending and lower taxes.
I genuinely don’t think the vtoing public will buy the suggstion that the Cons would have reulated more effectively. It was Thatcher and Raegan who started the de-reg trend.
Of course the desire to punish Labour may well be so strong as to make little difference.
Well, I’m with you there Jim Jam if we’re talking about a reasoned discussion.
The problem, of course, is that there is nothing that the Conservatives have said or done over the last decade which would have indicated a radically different response at the macro-economic level. It’s also likely that they would have had less regulation (if that’s possible!) – cf Osborne in 2006:
“In an age that demands a light touch, [Brown] offers that clunking fist. He has clobbered business with £50bn of regulation, when we should be
liberating our economy to compete.”
To be fair, he also said: “An economy built on borrowed money is built on borrowed time” but cutting public expenditure and lowering taxes wouldn’t necessarily have done much about the PSBR.
So – we’d've still been in the same situation with – I agree – probably less public spending and lower taxes.
The question is: where does this hypotheticating get us? Nowhere really.
The point for me is can – or even should – Camoron (I picked that up from a Tory poster on this site – tsh, the state of education today!) move away from the ‘you got us into this mess’ line (the natural retort, of course, being ‘well, then, we’ll get you out of it too’) and move onto a more forward-thinking platform where he proposes readily identifiable and viable alternative economic policies?
I’d suggest that the fact he’s brought in Clarke is a recognition that up until now, he hasn’t been able to do that (Clarke of course promoted the idea of a VAT cut in the first place, so harping on about the past is probably not going to be in the big man’s lexicon). Can Clarke help the Tories articulate a new deal – hmm. What do you lot think?
@OSBAK
“This is meant to be a site which looks at the polls and the evidence behind the polls – not a forum for some of the crudest politicking I’ve seen since schoolday debates”
Glad to see you don’t add your bias on this … oh no wait a minute you did.
I must agree with IVAN that in the modern “Global” era more people work on face value. It’s well known that we each form a lasting, difficult to change veiw of a person based on our first veiw of there appearance. That’s why it counts so much in interviews etc. Second to this is the current soundbite 10 second slice we see of a person. Tony Blair was and still is a master of this. Gordon is not. DC is better but still not Blair (and I vote Tory). Rarely have we seen a politician who could through words and gestures change the way a country thinks. I’m not putting Tony in the same league as Obama as I think they play different games, but Tony was deffinitely up there as one of the great media manipulators (postive and negative) of all time.
PS OSBAK – some polls indicate that they would rather not have proof that we are bankrupt (because then we would be) but increasingly feel that we are. Even the treasury (mainly labour) are asking for more transparency on current spend.
The BBC have always been left of center and therefor have always had labour bias within it’s programming. The mandate is not to be unbiased, but to present balanced argument (not neccesarily in the same program) – I previously complained and this was the response (i’ll send you the actual email if you would like) – if they counld not have biased programming then they could not air Party Political Broadcasts – This is why the narative at the moment is that people are amazed to see the Beeb actually reporting on items that the government find embarrassing (although still nothing about yachts and oligarchs)
Electorate – susceptible moron masses – yeah ok I’ll give you that one, maybe the masses bit was a bit off
@Keir
Your spelling is really bad…please improve
Cheers Keir – totally agree that we’re in a media age and that DC scrubs up well! I try not to actively politick but – as you cleverly note – it sometimes slips through
I still dispute the line that the BBC “has always been left of centre”: can no-one remember the joys of old Marmaduke Hussey or (granted, this goes back some years . . .) Auntie’s treatment of the General Strike? Sure, this may seem to some as ancient history, but it’s all to easy to say sweepingly that the Beeb is ‘always’ left-leaning. It’s not.
What I’ll give you is that the Beeb is the only UK-based organisation with the clout to set certain agendas and so it needs to be closely scrutinised, but I’d put Strictly Come Dancing, Eastenders, The Proms and Waterloo Road into that pile just as much as the Today programme and Breakfast!!
@OSBAK
Interesting for me is that until recently I have not been partisan, but I find it harder and harder as the years go on. It’s one of the questions I asked in a prior blogg about which polls reflect not just voting intention, but depth of feeling. I truly believe that labour will be met with a huge wave of apathy from it’s core vote similar to the Tory destruction during their last government.
I also wonder if governments suffer from having too much of a figure head – following the “hard act to follow” line. I for one consult on IT policies and management and am always happier when fixing someone elses mess than trying to improve on excellence (although I still manage it
)
I don’t think Cameron is really worried about whether he will win the next election (the Spread Betting odds are 75%) but I think he is seriously concerned about the state of the economy and public finances when he does come in. International investors have almost completely lost confidence in Gordon Brown (who didn’t even know the name of ABN Amro), hence the collapse of Sterling and the fact that UK Government Debt Credit Default Swaps are trading at 136bps – ie the expected loss from a default in the next 5 years is thought to be about 6.8%. Since in a default investors would get about 75% of their money back, this suggests the markets now think the probability of a default is about 25%.
The blanket use of the word “regulation” to somehow encapsulate party attitudes is far too broad brush.
” Business regulation” encompasses a whole range of stuff from Employment regulations, through Statistics gathering, Health & Safety, Human Rights & God knows what else.
Some of it is of questionable value & definite disadvantage to Business, & any Political Party with aspirations for an entrepreneurial economy should be constantly weeding it out.
The current & overiding “Regulation” issue is Banking & Credit Regulation-and perhaps more importantly , Oversight ( just ticking boxes is useless as the FSA found out )
On this issue the Conservatives-like Labour know that the tripartite system set up by Brown failed.
They are entitled to point out that Redwood’s Competition Commission Report -which looked at Business Regulation, specifically identified that weakness in 2007 :-
“…..We are concerned about the division of responsibility between the FSA and the Bank over banking and market regulation. Fortunately, conditions in the last decade have been benign internationally, with no serious threats to banking liquidity.
We think it would be safer if the Bank of England had
responsibility for solvency regulation of UK-based banks, as well as having an overall duty to keep the
system solvent. Otherwise, there could be dangerous delays if a banking crisis did hit, with
information having to be exchanged between the two regulators; and there might be gaps in each
regulator’s view of the banking sector at a crucial time, when early regulatory action might have”
It is reasonable to note that the Conservatives 2005 GE Manifesto provided no indication that Banking & Credit regulation was considered a risk.
Equally it is reasonable to note that the 2007 document I quote did identify the very risk which allowed NR, RBS et al to slip between the cracks of the regulatory regime, at a time when Gordon Brown still believed that his system was adequate, and was dismissing all concerns about the bubble in Debt & Property values.
Any chance of this site returning to talk about the polls instead of some using as their own political debating society? Some of you might be better off on PB.com, Conhome or Labourlist (god forbid!)
If the Polls are to be entirely divorced from their Political context, there is very little to discuss.
Anthony provides an analysis of National current opinion, pointing up the implications for the main parties and reminding us that one Poll on it’s own means nothing.
Peter Cairns invariably does the same for Scotland.
Then follow the usual caveats about relying on sub-sets.
Pollwise-there is nothing much more to add -except the rather pointless exchange of personal forecasts for some time in the future.
Surely the Political Opinion Polls are a function of people’s perceptions about the Political Parties-and it is this aspect which the majority of us like discussing.
By and large it is not too partisan, for fear of Anthony’s wrath-& speaking for myself I find the discussions most informative & stimulating-particularly from those who have a different political outlook to me.
@NigelJ
To echo colin, I would be happy to move away from the discussions we have been having (quite happily thankyou) if someone has a point to discuss. As it stands though we have had 2 people ask for a return to a discussion about the polls without actually suggesting something to talk about.
You start mate and we’ll carry on the thread.
Ivan the terrilble, makes a good point about the rough persona of Brown. When confidence in Labour is now in a state of precarious balance such a handicap may well make a significant difference.
I should like to add that when I said that Brown has a rough persona I am not just expressing a personal opinion but something that has often spoken of in the media over the years. For example, since becoming PM it has been pointed out that Brown has made a deliberate attempt to smile in front of the cameras, and sometimes with dubious results.
Brown’s tendency towards being morose is in striking contrast with Blair’s personality and it is logical to presume that in times of difficulty this is a considerable disadvantage.
While I would not call people morons I think I understand what Ivan is getting at. The changing nature of the polls over the last six to nine months does demonstrate it seems to me that a considerable amount of people are fickle when it comes to their support for a party. And this is why personality and not just policy matters!
I last commented in the middle of December and said then that it would be difficult to comment further until around mid January. The latest poll seems to have produced such a welter of comment that I think it has become counter productive.
May be this is too radical but might it be a useful initiative to restrict comment to any made within say 5 days of a poll or a maximum of say 70 or 80 whichever came first with another maximum of one comment per contributor?
I think that the second bank bailout this week may prove to be a turning point – somewhat like devaluation in 1968; 3-day week in 1973/74; IMF in 1976 and the ERM ejection in 1992 – whereby the polls will turn against the government and there is no way back. The key issue for the economy is confidence – not just in banks, but also in the government. The latter is now clearly as much, if not more, of a problem, and cannot be resolved without a general election to restore authority and credibility to the British government.
For a government that was already struggling, that is bad news indeed – and yet, from Brown’s performance on Radio 4, there is total denial of any problem, still less that the game is up. On the other hand, maybe Darling’s plea for more time is the first recognition, and a precursor to emergency legislation to delay the election beyond 2010 ?
I expect that the next set of polls will all show Tory leads in the teens, but also that we could be seeing leads of 20% or more within weeks rather than months. Unfortunately, the one thing we desperately need is likely to be denied us for up to 17 months, or even longer if Brown thinks he can get away with it.
On a related point, Labour must be ruing the day they decided to delay the County Council elections to June in line with the Euros. If the aim had been to reduce the media impact of County Council losses on the back of good European results (based on comparisons to 2004 instead of 2005) , this plan is likely to backfire spectacularly. Not only will the County Council results prove a bloodbath – a clear parallel with 1993 – but also, by virtue of producing differential turnout in the mainly Tory shires vs the urban areas where there are only European elections, they could exacerbate the overall Tory lead in the European elections. (see my separate post on the Euro thread for analysis and likely impact)
Ok, I’ve been busy, not least since I have been entered into a new kindergarten, namely Mike Smithson’s place. Yet – lo-and-behold – I had time to spare so I thought I’d revisit Ant’s place.
‘Boy,’ I thought, ‘where were these comments last year, when I made the same forecasts?’ Then reality bit: Ant’ stepped in with the non-partisan rule.
So I have broken my self-imposed rule (based upon the Wells mantra) that any contribution I make on this site should be about the polls, and not my personal, political or economic views. Sorry Ant’!
Still have to read the remaining comments of the last few days, then off to the PB play-pen. When are the next polls due…?
I really don’t think there’s a realistic chance of Brown trying to (or succeeding) in delaying a general election beyond the legal limit.
Leaving aside the interesting constitutional decision that would give to Her Majesty, not even Labour MPs would vote fo such legislation. Well, some might, but not enough. The outrage would be enormous, in Parliament, in the country, and probably internationally!
Her majesty, would not sign such a bill, i fact i think 4 years would be better for a genaral election and half elections in the so called metropolitan councils, half in the unitery councils and full elections in district and county elections, all in all a shake up .
James,
Spot on.
Only Labour MP’s who thought they would lose their seats would support such a move, while all those in safe seats (particularly those off the payroll with nothing to lose financially) would take a principled stand in the name of democracy.
This kind of speculation really borders on the paranoid and comes from the two types of bad government. For some Labour is “Bad” as in evil and dangerous and for others ( like me) it’s “Bad” as in not very good and lacking in quality.
It’s about whether you want rid of duff government (me) of you think it’s an evil one.
Peter.
Peter.
To change tack a little, what are the chances of a vote of no confidence in the government? How bad would things need to get before that became likely? What are the procedures? Are there any precedents?
If the country continues to plummet down the recession abyss, polls show a massive decline in support for the government (which seems extremely likely and fairly imminent), Brown goes on blundering, and ministers are running around like headless chickens, how long can such a situation feasibly persist? I just can’t see government holding together for another 17 months in such circumstances.
The country will plummet down the recession abyss.
We have had a decade of excessive consumption paid for by debt & fuelled by asset price bubbles which went unchecked by so called Regulators.
This was always going to self correct-and we have to go through the pain of de-leveraging & asset price correction.
Brown will not suffer loss of support because of this pain,but because he said-and keeps on saying-he will ensure we won’t feel it.
He cannot deliver on these ridiculous promises to people & they will feel let down. A degree of honest warning to us all might have seen his Polling support more favourable.
Obama told his people that it’s going to be bad-but of course he has the advantage of not being at the helm when the fires of the Boom were being stoked.
It yet remains to be seen whether Obama’s fiscal stimulus will deliver the millions of jobs he has promised…and his approach is quite different to Browns, with huge reductions in Income Tax, and large Infrastructure spending programmes.
There is huge debate to be seen on US TV Channels about the effectiveness of all these fiscal & monetary interventions.
The Jury is well & truly out on them all-and on the Administrations around the World who are relying on them to work.
Bills to extend the lifetime of parliament are (as I recall) specifically exempt from the Parliament Act so even if the MPs voted for it it would never pass in the Lords.
Ooh, constitutional stuff. I like that
James – the procedures for a vote of no confidence is that the opposition tables it, and then by convention the government provides time for the debate and vote, normally almost immediately.
It would be unpredecented, at least in modern times, for a government with a working majority to lose a vote of no confidence – and no reason to think they would now.
For extended the life of the Parliament, as NBeale says, it would require the consent of the Lords which would be unlikely to come without crossparty agreement that the situation was so dire that an election really should be delayed, and in those circumstances the monarch would have no cause to overrule the will of Parliament (in fact, in the last century it was accepted that one of the circumstances that the monarch could legitimately refuse an election when the PM requested on was the it would be detrimental to the economy).
While it’s interesting to discuss the constitutional possibilities that would allow a PM to delay an election without cross-party support, it’s not something that is realistically going to happen.
At the risk of going further away from a discussion of the polls (until we get another one to discuss!!)…
If, hypothetically, one Party had a large majority in both houses (say Labour packed a load more peers into the Lords, or consider the Conservatives in the 1980s), what is to stop the government from tabling a bill to extend the Parliamentary term to 10 years, or even more? If they were able to persuade their own MPs and Peers to vote for it, could it theory come into law? could a strong enough governing party abolish elections altogether?
Other than the Queen refusing to sign the Bill, without a written constitution what other safe guards are there?
For teh record, I don’t think that there is any prosepect of this Parliament being extended, but I do think that Brown will try to hang on for as long as possible.
Even were Labour to somehow pull off a third Brown bounce, past form suggests that this would need to be strong and sustained for Brown to risk going to the country.
Technically, Brown can wait until 10 June 2010, but with Local Council elections due in early May, he cannot realistyically seek a dissolution days after these, so GE is likely to be 6th May 2010.
The only way this coould be earlier is if Brown chooses to call an election, or loses a motion of confidence. For the latter to happen, too many Labour MPs would need to either vote against him or abstain, so it is rather unlikely.
Even if the polls fall through the floor, I can’t see Brown choosing to sacrifice himself for the good of his Party, let alone the country. There is an outside possibility of teh Labour party choosing to dump him if teh June results are catastrophic. However, the procedures involved, and the time it will require for a new leader to be formally elected and settled in, would probably take us to the end of this year, so it would not be unreasonable for the new caretaker PM to hold out for May 2010 anyway.
NBEALE
In one of your posts you predict a near certainty of a Conservative victory at the next GE on the following basis:
“I don’t think Cameron is really worried about whether he will win the next election (the Spread Betting odds are 75%) but I think he is seriously concerned about the state of the economy and public finances when he does come in. International investors have almost completely lost confidence in Gordon Brown (who didn’t even know the name of ABN Amro), hence the collapse of Sterling and the fact that UK Government Debt Credit Default Swaps are trading at 136bps – ie the expected loss from a default in the next 5 years is thought to be about 6.8%. Since in a default investors would get about 75% of their money back, this suggests the markets now think the probability of a default is about 25%.”
January 23rd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Hold on a second! You allude to Spread Betting odds that are stacked heavily in favour of a Conservative victory. Big Big Big mistake making a comparison with Banks and Markets.
Which institutions indulged in hedging betts with billions of pounds of our money and what system was it that has descimated our economy??
Oh it was the Banks and the Free Market!
On the basis of your argument and comparison Cameron should be very worried. Very worried indeed!
Just listened to the PM on the Today Programme on Friday. He practically gave the game away with his constant repetition of “global financial crisis” by saying “we’ve accepted it’s a global problem so you can’t blame me”. Evan Davis is hardly Jeff Randall or Simon Heffer and the PM made himself look (sound even) even more evasive and defensive than normal.
My favourite part is near the end:-
Davis: “Boom and bust is a term associated with you, I see you’re hanging your head as I say it…”
Brown (interrupting): “I’m not hanging my head”
Caught out on radio methinks there Mr Brown – he wouldn’t even use the words ‘boom and bust’.
Who would fight for Gordon Brown.apart from SO19 ?
Anthony, thanks for you response regarding votes of no confidence and extensions of parliament. Very interesting.
there is a strong case for shortening the parliament to remove the worst government in modern history and restore confidence in the uk economy and debt market.
i wonder if the queen would go for that ?
This is just the beginning.
The polls are going to keep tipping towards the Conservatives as the news gets bleaker and bleaker.
The debt levels are truly stratospheric, the public sector liabilities are enormous and the private sector which has to fund both is in complete freefall.
We are watching a slow-motion national disaster unfolding the likes of which haven’t been seen in living memory.
A visit to the IMF in late 2009, early 2010 is looking distinctly likely, despite the protestations of our dear leader.
While I admire labour supporters loyalty they are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think re-arranging the deckchairs on the titantic will make any difference to the election. It won’t matter who is leading them, the country will show absolutely no mercy at the ballot box.
In fact I will make a prediction that May 2010 will probably see the worst election disaster for Labour since the 1920s
It will make the 1997 Tory rout look like a walk in the park.
I wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to see a Tory win in the 48-52% range with a thumping 200+ seat majority.
SImon – of course she wouldn’t. The monarch does not involve themselves in partisan party politics, not least because it would lead to a constitutional crisis that would likely end the monarchy. It would be a statement by the monarch that she would prefer David Cameron to Gordon Brown as PM, which is one she cannot make (indeed, for all we know she might very well not think it!) Clearly a lot of people don’t think this is the worst government, or 30% of people wouldn’t be saying they would vote Labour.
There is no recent precedent in this country of a monarch dismissing a government. The most recent prededent in a Westminster style legislature is the Gough Whitlam affair in 1975, when the Australian Prime Minister was unable to get his budget passed by the Sentate, but was also unwilling to request a dissolution to resolve the impass (though he was willing to request a half-dissolution of the senate).
The Australian Governor-General dismissed him, appointed the leader of the opposition on the agreement that they would immediately request a dissolution, which they did.
The Governor-General Sir John Kerr, experienced angry demonstrations when he appeared afterwards and eventually resigned early from his post 2 years later.
We could sure do with a new poll sometime soon. It’s getting harder to keep it non-partisan around here.
When accessing this site I had another glance at the table on the right hand side which gives a fairly comprehensive record of the recent Opinion Poll history of the 3 main Party’s.
In a serious attempt not to be too Partisan, it appears that, particularly in the case of Labour and the Conservatives, their share of the vote has risen and fallen rather like frequent ‘Tidal Waves’. Their support seems to me to be all over the shop!
There appears to be a very high level of volatilaty in their support. This makes for fascinating politics for us ‘Anoraks’! but I think means that it will be almost impossible to predict the outcome of the next General Election.
The one thing that I rekon we can be sure of is that one of the following will happen:
A wafer thin outright Labour victory (possible)
A Hung Parliament (Most Likely)
A narrow Conservative victory (possible)
A comfortable Conservative victory (also possible).
On the wait for a new poll I’d say it’s something we may well have to get used to over the coming year for a number of reasons.
We are in a recession,
newspaper circulation is falling,
Advertising revenue, particularly housing and cars is falling,
A lot of energy and utility costs as high,
Newspapers are cutting back on staff and spending,
Companies are cutting back on advertising and market research,
All this may well result in fewer political polls being commissioned, particularly if there is no prospect of a general election in the next year.
It could be one of the main pollsters pulls out of a regular poll for a paper, the likes of the BBC cuts back on their occasional polls or a newspaper switches to a cheaper possibly not BPC pollster.
In addition it might be that the Pollsters put more effort in to getting business clients in a shrinking market that chasing shrinking political work.
YouGov as far as I can tell is well placed being highly regarded and low in debt although that is supposing it hasn’t paid to high a price in acquisitions to expand recently.
Anthony.
if you are looking to meet and make new clients I think there are still spaces left at the SNP conference where being the Government we tend to attract the great and the (not so) good.
On that subject it will be interesting to see the stall count at this years conferences as it’s a great indicator of who the private sector expects to be in charge in a years time. The government always does best but I’d expect the Labour conference to be a bit smaller and the Tories to be busier.
Peter.
@ James Thurston – my money would be on a comfortable Conservative majority unless something very unexpected happens (such as Gandalf coming to Brown’s aid, or a tsunami wiping out everywhere south of the Scottish border).
It’s even possible that by the time the general election arrives we’ll be talking about a Tory landslide.
Even if the economy does recover during 2009, the employment figures aren’t going to look good for a long time later, so I fail to see how Labour will be rewarded for the mess we are in and the geniune fear people are feeling. A 15%+ Tory victory is surely on the cards whenever the election is.
Also, why are people talking about a parlimentary extension? Have I missed some news? There would be riots if that happened.
a poll!!!
hang on
Apparently Tim Montgomery broke an embargo by Twittering about a 15% Tory lead tomorrow.
I popped ver to Political Betting, who are now covering it.
43/28/16 with Comres in tomorrows Indy.
Labour down to 28%. what a speedy fall from grace!
The ComRes result if true puts other on 13% which is quite high.
It will be interesting to see the Scottish figures.
Having said that I’ve always found ComRes to be one of the most erratic of the Pollsters so even if this looks bad for Labour I’ll wait a poll r two before I believe they have dipped below 30%.
Peter.
MIKE R
You claim:
‘A 15%+ Tory victory is surely on the cards whenever the election is.’
As I explained earlier the polls have over time been far too eratic. I would assume absolutely nothing even at this stage!