Although the LDs will probably still do better than than the national trend in several seats such as Eastleigh, Kingston and Surbiton, Thornbury and Yate etc and it would still be surprising if Labour sprung up to 15%+ in a lot of SW seats.

It still should not be difficult for Labour to gain around 35-40 seats off the tories though on the UNS basis (bar a few that perhaps buck the trend).

Falmouth and Camborne should be interesting though given previous electoral history and Labour might have a good chance of getting back into 2nd.

It makes sense that Labour will do less well than a UNS swing would suggest. The reason for this is that in Lab – Con marginals the Lib vote almost by definition will usually be below average, so there will be less of a movement to Lab. In Lib – Con marginals this will help Cons. Lib – LAb marginals are the rarest category and the swing will tend to be way over what is actually needed..

She had to have been for a woman from a lower middle class provincial background to reach the position she did.

So its not surprising that with the state of the country being what it was in 1979 she was confrontational with people who were confrontational with her.

Thatcher was willing to work constructively with other people if that was possible, the most interesting example of which was the coal industry.

Don’t get me wrong from the country’s point of view I think Thatcherism was no worst than the pseudo-socialist policies pusued in the 1970s that let to Britain being dubbed the sick man of Europe

It’s more its message I objected to and its tone which was unecessarily confrontational when much (but certainly not all) of what Thatcher actually did would have received much more popular support than it did

Thatcher had all the qualities that make a great leader but she was the first post-war PM who had a complete lack of interest in social justice

In fact immigration is probably the reason why David Cameron is sitting in 10 Downing Street now instead of a Labour/Lib Dem coalition – if working class voters weren’t so alienated from Labour because of immigration they probably wouldn’t have voted Tory.

Where did I say that?

What I would expect the average swing voter to be concerned with though is cuts in UK defence spending (aircraft carriers without aircraft etc) while the political establishment continues to support pointless foreign military adventures – can someone tell me if we’re fighting for the wife beating heroin smugglers and against the wife stoning opium growers or is it the other way around?

Likewise I’m sure the average swing voter doesn’t think giving jailbirds the vote and replacing the snooker tables destroyed at Ford open prison should be priorities to the Home Office.

As to continued opendoor immigration it is massively unpopular but is yet another issue where the political establishment is out of touch with everyday realities – consider the handwringing yesturday about rising youth unemployment, the principle cause being immigration.

As to charity, I give myself. The key point being I choose how much and to whom. If Cameron was so keen on charitable giving then why not give every taxpayer some form of credit which they could then give to charities of their choice. Instead we have more government borrowing in order to fund third world dictators and their presidential palaces.

The country was denied any proper debate in 2009 on the EU when the media was more interested in the expenses scandal instead.

No that is a realistic view – neither ‘uncharitable’ nor necessarily a ‘Little Englander’ approach

It dictated that government should be restricted primarily to policing and defence and that it was not the role of government to care for the vulnerable (but the vulnerable themselves)

An uncharitable view on Europe would be the ‘little England approach’ that sees the whole European project as a conspiracy by the French and Germans to control the continent, or even worst, a conspiracy by European buearocrats who want to enrich themselves at the expense of the EU’s member states – rather than seeing the EU as a flawed but worthwhile project, ensuring Europe’s citizens have some minimal rights and recognising the power of Europe as a trading block of nations so its peoples aren’t marginalised by the US and the emerging ecomomies in China, India and South America

There are many good reasons for opoosing the EU – which people such as yourself are au fait with

But much of the debate in this country is dominated by unfounded scaremongering based on little more than a general dislike of foreigners tinged with a heavy dose of wartime paranoyas

If you want an example pick up The Daily Mail or The Sun