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[The Bishop]

I think he has said that Labour in power would also have to carry out painful cuts on numerous occasions - both in the leadership campaign and since being elected.

Hell, its only weeks since he was booed and heckled by some at that anti-cuts rally for saying pretty much that! ;D

[Deleted]

It speaks volumes that he attended and spoke at that rally at all, and others like it. He's also compared such rallies to the American Civil Rights and the anti-apartheid movements.

[The Bishop]

Well, the fact you think the mere fact of his attendance so heinous explains why you support the party you do, I suppose

[erlend]

I'll be honest. I don't dislike Ed M. He's a pleasant chap. I said similar things about John Major when he was PM. And it takes some guts to appear an anti cuts rally and say that some cuts are necessary. It would have been easier to not attend and sens a platitudinous message. I suspect he does not even privately know what cuts and where to get to the level Labour advocates but I would rather he agreed the principle.

[Deleted]

yes but maybe we would do it different.

you wanted 80/20 in favour of cuts we wanted 70/30

We would have cut 12.5% off the police you cut 20%

We even admitted we would trim some of the NHS budget, you call them savings and not cuts and Hunt and Cameron have been found out for that lie.

Few in Labour deny cuts were not needed but it is what you target and how, would we have spent £3.5bn and growing on a top down NHS reorg, doubt it

[Deleted]

However the debate is redundant because the situation in 2015 will be different.

[Deleted]

Did we see a wet Tory swing to LD's last night ?

IF so then I think it does confirm for many of these the current govt policies have gone to far. Still some on the right believe they are not hard enough but programmes like Panaorama last night show the majority of Benefit cases are genuine and not false. Some polling evidence suggests others see this and these type of cases will only increase as the ludicrous benefit cap and HB cuts go deeper.

[Crimson King]

possibly, but I would like to think it is a positive endorsement of the experience of Liberal Democrats in government.

On your second point, I think you are mixing two distinct things up. It is possible to acknowlege that most benefit claims are genuine, whilst wanting to see some limit on the extent of them. Just as it is possible to want to see generous benefits whilst stamping down on fraud

[Deleted]

I just think that the LD's have now established for a number of 'wet' tories that they maybe the party of choice for them. I do not believe it is a lot of people but in certain type of wards as we have seen you have made inroads into their vote. Lets be honest on our side that is not a bad thing !

of course but then you have to be careful of intended consequences.

OK Panaorma picked three obvious deserving cases

1) a cancer victim

2) Someone who was made unemployed but found a job (as the govt wants)

3) a middle class worker with two cars

However these are not rare cases and they seem to be in the SE where obviously housing costs are far more. Unless you as a govt party want to see people move 50 miles away then you and I both know in the SE housing costs are the biggest problem. To put a fixed ceiling on this is going to cause a lot of problems.

[Pete Whitehead]

Dec 14, 2012 8:35:15 GMT @ianrobo said:

Did we see a wet Tory swing to LD's last night ?
.

Its a shame you didn't wait for an answer before trying to draw all sorts of conclusions from a supposed swing that you have no evidence for.
The result the last time this ward was contested was Con 976 LD 801 Lab 376
This by-election LD 623 Con 395 Lab 208 UKIP 127
In other words the only party which increased their vote waas UKIP (not surprisingly since they hadn't p[reviously contested it. All other parties vote was down - Lab and LD by about 170 votes and the Conservatives by nearly 500. Overall turnout was only 63% of what it was in May 2011 as one would expect on a cold day in December. There is no indication of a large movement of so-called wet Conservative voters to LDs. There is rather more evidence of UKIP eating into the Conservative vote

[Deleted]

no evidence look at the figures it is not just only voters to UKIP that the tories lost (thats if you presume every UKIP vote is an ex tory rather than someone who voted other or never voted last time)

last time the Tories got just under 50% of the vote, this time what around a third of the vote and the LD's nearly a half ...

Can claim differential turnout of course but we have seen a strong clear trend the past few weeks of LD's winning these type of seats.

[Pete Whitehead]

I am looking at the figures. The LDs didn't gain any votes from anywhere. They retained higher proportion of their 2011 vote than the Conservatives did which is an entirely different thing

[Tony Otim]

Pete, has Mark hacked your account?

Whilst some, or probably most, of the changes in vote share would be down to differential turnout and UKIP winning votes from people who vote Tory last time, it is not an unreasonable assumption that some who voted Conservative in 2011 voted LD yesterday, whilst perhaps some who voted LD in 2011 may have voted UKIP yesterday given the option.

[Pete Whitehead]

Sure there's no doubt that some did and there will have been flows of votes in all directions but ian is just looking at the swing and trying to draw all kinds of conclusions which suit his own prejudice and for which there is no evidence. Often as not there will be local factors involved in these (afterall local) elections, such as the parking issue in Folkestone a couple of weeks back

[East Anglian Lefty]

Dec 13, 2012 16:29:33 GMT The Bishop said:

Of course, you *do* have a point with the other Ed. But the man has his plus points as well, so its a tricky one. I would put his chances of still being SC come 2015 as only a bit over 50/50, though. And his gaffe last week didn't really help

Why do you say that? The argument that he's the real leader is a definite exaggeration, but he does have a significant stature within the party and a reputation for not shrinking away from internal confrontations. Removing him from the Shadow Chancellorship absent a scandal would therefore be a risky move unless we were a nailed-on certainty to win, and if we are then that'll be evidence that he's not a drag on our vote.

Is there any scandal that is likely to emerge? If it relates to his previous time in Cabinet, I'd be amazed if it hadn't been used yet.

Dec 13, 2012 19:46:34 GMT erlend said:

I'll be honest. I don't dislike Ed M. He's a pleasant chap. I said similar things about John Major when he was PM. And it takes some guts to appear an anti cuts rally and say that some cuts are necessary. It would have been easier to not attend and sens a platitudinous message. I suspect he does not even privately know what cuts and where to get to the level Labour advocates but I would rather he agreed the principle.

I'm pretty certain he doesn't yet know what cuts and at what level. The OBR fan diagrams show the uncertainty well, and as most of the easier cuts are to a large number of small programs rather than a small number of large ones, even small variations in the growth rate may mean some can be saved or have to be ditched.

Plus the guiding principle seems to be making the cuts that the economy can stand at the time, and confidence is even more difficult to predict than growth.

[Deleted]

Dec 14, 2012 10:27:24 GMT Pete Whitehead said:

Sure there's no doubt that some did and there will have been flows of votes in all directions but ian is just looking at the swing and trying to draw all kinds of conclusions which suit his own prejudice and for which there is no evidence. Often as not there will be local factors involved in these (afterall local) elections, such as the parking issue in Folkestone a couple of weeks back

yes there could be local issue but the trend for the past month or so ?

[erlend]

My point was re in private. I would in his position want to in effect know very roughly what I was prioposing to do. And to move it with every change in the economy. Not to wait for January 2015 an then produce it deus ex machina (if I use that image correctly).

[The Bishop]

EAL - my point is just that he is a bit associated with the "bad old days" in a way that the other Ed isn't. And that he is a bit of a Marmite politician anyway.......

(never forget, Miliband didn't make him SC originally)

Both on here and elsewhere, he is relentlessly attacked by the Tories - often in very personal terms. That can be, and probably should be, read both ways

[The Bishop]

Anyway, today's figures - LibDem blip over??

Lab 43
Con 33
UKIP 10
LibDem 9

Approval -33

[The Bishop]

The weekly ST survey - no UKIP surge here.......

Lab 45
Con 33
LibDem 9
UKIP 8

Approval -33