Tories appear to be thrilled that BA has pulled out of talks with Unite, which means a three-day strike will go ahead. They are in full cry against Unite, convinced it's just like 1979 and bashing the unions will mean they soar in the polls again.
However, it's 2010 and some things are different. For instance, in 1979, most union members voted Labour. That's decidedly not the case now.
Populus did a poll of Unite members between 10th March 2010 and 16th March 2010 [update: that should have said 2009 - but the rough proportions should be correct, give or take a few percent, the point is that only about a third of Unite people vote Labour]. Here's the voting intention:
Con 31%
Lab 34%
Lib 19%
SNP 6%
PC 1%
other 9%
And 79% of Unite members said they were either very satisfied or reasonably satisfied with how Unite represented their interests (amongst the Tory Unite members, this was 74%).
Tory union bashers should ask themselves why Tory and LibDem voters have voted in favour of this strike: and the answer is that they have a predatory employer, they don't want a pay cut and they are frightened. These union members are also taxpayers who helped bail out the Tory bankers (many of whom are now trying to become Tory MPs).
The smart thing to do would have been not to politicise the dispute - after all it is taking place in the private sector. All aristocrats like Cameron prove when they attack them is that they are out of touch with people who work.
The 31% Tory Unite members on the receiving end of the Tory venom (probably for the first time in their lives) will also be rethinking their vote. Nobody likes being singled out and attacked by a political party when all you are doing is legally defending your job.
As the Tories found when the Sun endorsed them last autumn and they promptly plummeted in the polls, this is not 1979. Heroes of that era such as Murdoch, are now villains. Villains of that era such as union workers, are now weary taxpayers who are bailing out the bankers, while trying to defend their pay and prospects against demands made on the management by those very same bankers in the City (who then rewarded themselves tax-payer funded bonuses).
Update 22nd Mar 2010. Latest YouGov poll shows:
Con 36% (38%)
Lab 32% (31%)
Lib 20% (19%)
The figures in brackets show the YouGov figures from 19th March, just before the strike. Look at the direction of travel. And no wonder - the Tories went straight from defending Ashcroft's tax evasion to attacking taxpayers earning considerably less, some of whom had been intending to vote for them just a few weeks ago.
When Thatcher attacked the unions in 1979, it was risk-free for her as she knew union members didn't vote for her in anycase. The situation is completely different now. If Tories can't even recognise what century we're in, let alone how different things are now compared to 30+ years ago, they arn't fit for governing.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
Weighing into this poll weighting controversy
The latest YouGov poll shows Labour at 34%, just three points behind the Tories on 37%. But how believable is this? I must admit to doing a double-take when I saw the figures. So I did what I haven't done for some time - I actually went to the YouGov site to look at their tables.
The tables for the latest poll arn't up, but yesterdays (which had Con 37%, Lab 32%) was there.
YouGov weight by newspaper affiliation, and here's how the data looked for yesterday's poll:
And here's what the Guardian reports daily newspaper circulation to be:
Looking at the above, YouGov are right to scale down their Guardian/Independent respondants sharply. The problem seems to be in the tabloid section. They are not getting many raw Sun/Star readers, and getting way too many Express/Mail readers. And it's hard to work out why they've weighted the Mirror up.
I guess this is the problem with online polling. The types of people who read the Sun and Mirror will be construction workers, plumbers, front line people who can't log onto the net during work hours, and who probably can't be bothered to go online when they get home either, especially if there is sport or soaps on TV (or the pub to go to). In addition, you get activists such as BNP types who organise to sign up to all the online polling units - and they probably give their political affiliation as Labour, to tie in with their line, "I used to vote Labour, but..." Hence the reason YouGov ask them what newspaper they read (it's less likely they will fake that, and this may account for the number of Express/Mail respondants in the unweighted figures). You can see why YouGov are having a mare and weighting their respondants to correct for this.
My hunch (and that's all it is), is that the telephone pollsters will be more accurate, as these biases simply won't occur for them. But we shant find out till the general election. Labourites should assume that there is still a ton of work to do, and should not relax till the telephone pollsters show us closing the gap.
The tables for the latest poll arn't up, but yesterdays (which had Con 37%, Lab 32%) was there.
YouGov weight by newspaper affiliation, and here's how the data looked for yesterday's poll:
Newspaper Type Uneighted Weighted
Express / Mail 370 236
Sun / Star 204 323
Mirror / Record 140 235
Guardian / Independent 128 59
FT / Times / Telegraph 173 140
Other Paper 181 184
No Paper 275 294
And here's what the Guardian reports daily newspaper circulation to be:
Express/Mail 2,790,884 (677,750 + 2,113,134)
Sun/Star 3,647,893 (2,862,935 + 784,958)
Mirror/Record 1,540,255 (1,225,502 + 314,753)
Guardian/Independent 487,480 (300,540 + 186,940)
FT(UK)/Times/Telegraph 1,314,825 (115,447 + 521,535 + 703,249)
Looking at the above, YouGov are right to scale down their Guardian/Independent respondants sharply. The problem seems to be in the tabloid section. They are not getting many raw Sun/Star readers, and getting way too many Express/Mail readers. And it's hard to work out why they've weighted the Mirror up.
I guess this is the problem with online polling. The types of people who read the Sun and Mirror will be construction workers, plumbers, front line people who can't log onto the net during work hours, and who probably can't be bothered to go online when they get home either, especially if there is sport or soaps on TV (or the pub to go to). In addition, you get activists such as BNP types who organise to sign up to all the online polling units - and they probably give their political affiliation as Labour, to tie in with their line, "I used to vote Labour, but..." Hence the reason YouGov ask them what newspaper they read (it's less likely they will fake that, and this may account for the number of Express/Mail respondants in the unweighted figures). You can see why YouGov are having a mare and weighting their respondants to correct for this.
My hunch (and that's all it is), is that the telephone pollsters will be more accurate, as these biases simply won't occur for them. But we shant find out till the general election. Labourites should assume that there is still a ton of work to do, and should not relax till the telephone pollsters show us closing the gap.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
The Change Election was 2005
Voters have a eight-year tolerance for prime ministers. Any longer than that, and they get restive and fretful. We saw that in the run-up to the 2005 election, where large amounts of left-of-centre people were fed-up with Blair and his zeal to get us involved in wars that had nothing to do with us.
Luckily for Labour, Blair announced unprompted in late 2004 that he was standing down in the next parliament. So voters knew they'd be getting a new Prime Minister. And Labour was careful to show Blair and Brown together throughout the 2005 campaign. We were as open as possible with the voters in letting them know who would succeed Blair. So the voters knew they were getting a change - the question was which change they wanted - a change to Brown or a change to Howard. They chose Brown and Labour.
Roll on to 2010, and the Tories are campaigning on Vote for a Change, and have been careful to let us know that there will be Swinging Austerity ahead if they win. In other words, if you vote Tory, you will be voting for A Change for the Worse. Only voters don't want any change at all, let along a change for the worse. What they want is things to go back to how they were in 2007. Given that 2007 was Gord's glad morning, large amounts of people think he's the one who knows how to restore that moment - hence the tightening in the polls.
Luckily for Labour, Blair announced unprompted in late 2004 that he was standing down in the next parliament. So voters knew they'd be getting a new Prime Minister. And Labour was careful to show Blair and Brown together throughout the 2005 campaign. We were as open as possible with the voters in letting them know who would succeed Blair. So the voters knew they were getting a change - the question was which change they wanted - a change to Brown or a change to Howard. They chose Brown and Labour.
Roll on to 2010, and the Tories are campaigning on Vote for a Change, and have been careful to let us know that there will be Swinging Austerity ahead if they win. In other words, if you vote Tory, you will be voting for A Change for the Worse. Only voters don't want any change at all, let along a change for the worse. What they want is things to go back to how they were in 2007. Given that 2007 was Gord's glad morning, large amounts of people think he's the one who knows how to restore that moment - hence the tightening in the polls.
Monday, February 08, 2010
House prices and the Labour vote
Even the most hardened anti-Labour activists have noticed that Labour has been recovering slowly but surely in the polls. YouGov put us at 24% just before the Labour party conference in September 2009. The latest YouGov poll showed Labour at 31%. That's a shift of some 7 points in six months. Muttering "it's within the margin of error" each time there is a poll doesn't magic away the trend.
So what has caused the move? David Cameron has undoubtedly helped - Cameron's airbrushed vanity plus his evasiveness and flip-flopping have made people nervous about him. The economy recovered slightly in the fourth quarter of 2009 and unemployment has stabalised at 2.45 million. At 7.8% of the workforce, it's roughly where it was when Labour came to power in 1997.
Tories seize on these facts to "prove" that the recovery won't mean a Labour win. Even with unemployment as "low", in Tory terms at least, as 7.8%, and an economy that had been growing for four years, John Major still lost the 1997 election.
This overlooks the fact that voters vote based on how the economy is affecting them, they arn't really swayed by headline figures in the newspapers. GDP growth means nothing. But "my house price has risen and I'm in a job" means something.
There are some 40 million people eligible to vote in the UK, and between 25 million and 30 million actually do. There are also 14.5 million homeowners in England alone, and therefore house prices have the biggest impact on voters, far more than anecdotes about what is happening to other people, or unemployment which affects a smaller percentage of the electorate.
The Labour government has taken a completely different approach to recession than the previous Conservative government. Norman Lamont and co made policy on the grounds that "if it's not hurting it's not working"; their goal was to hurt as many people as possible to wring the inflation that the Lawson boom had caused, out of the system. By contrast the 2008/9 global recession took place in a deflationary environment, and the Labour government's mantra was "we must avoid hurting people, pain impedes the recovery". To this end, all sorts of measures were taken. The bank bailout, and the stimulus are the things most people remember. But there were also a lot of small policies designed to mitigate the effects of the recession on the individual.
For instance, prior to the recession, you only got help with the interest portion of your mortgage if you had been unemployed for 39 weeks. This was promptly changed to 13 weeks. The government decided that it was cheaper to help people stay in their houses than to have to house them elsewhere with full housing benefit. It had a knock-on effect that it put a kibosh on the forced selling of homes that contributes to house price crashes. Trade unions played their part too, arguing for pay-freezes in return for no redundancies - and they found employers willing to listen; they too had memories of the early 90's recession where they made people redundant at great expense and then found themselves having to hire the same people back during the recovery.
And when it finally twigged at the Bank of England that this was a serious crisis, they cut interest rates aggressively, which meant that many of the people who were struggling to meet their mortgage in early 2008 found themselves able to breathe a sigh of relief. Home owners further used the drop in interest rates to overpay their mortgages. The Bank of England reports that mortgage debt fell by £7bn in Q1 2009, £7 bn in Q2 2009 and £4.9bn in Q3 2009. The more people pay down their debt, the less vulnerable they become to forced selling, and the less likely a full blown housing crash becomes.
The sum result of all of the above is that the Halifax reports that house prices have now risen for 7 consecutive months. The average house price according to the Halifax is around £169,777, which is down 15% from it's all-time peak in 2007. Importantly, the trend is up.
This is all in sharp contrast to the situation in 1997. Back in July 2006, I wrote a long post arguing that it wasn't sleeze that did in John Major's government, it was house prices. To illustrate my point, I posted price changes in London between the peak of 1988, and 1995. A full seven years after the peak, house prices were still in the doldrums. In fact house prices didn't recover their 1988 levels till 1999 - two years into a Labour government, whose decision to make the Bank of England independent restored confidence to the housing market.
Just to underline the difference, I'm going to repost the figures:
Average Price
Staggering, isn't it? That's the reason the Conservatives lost the 1997 election. Nearly nine years after the housing peak, house prices were in the doldrums, affecting most homeowners in the land - a vast number of people, and after all that time people simply lost patience and thumped the Conservatives in the general election as hard as they could. It wasn't just that the Conservatives lost a lot of people a lot of money (which is pretty bad). They caused social grief too. Loads of unmarried couples had been encouraged by Nigel Lawson to buy properties together to take advantage of double mortgage tax relief - when they split up they found they couldn't sell, and had to endure the hell of co-habiting with an ex. People who had started families in small flats found they couldn't trade up, had to endure the pressure of bringing up small children in very cramped conditions. The Major years record the highest divorce rates ever, as the pain gleefully unleashed by Lamont and co, tore families apart.
By contrast, the Labour government's more protective family-centric policies are holding people and the economy together.
If you are wondering why Labour has been rising in the polls these last six months, look to the similar rise in house prices in the last seven months. People who don't own property tend to be dismissive about property value. You have to live somewhere, they say, why the obsession with price. But most people who own property are long-term dwellers. They have no intention of moving. But they like the idea that they have the option of moving if they need to. And nobody likes the idea of taking losses, even if they are paper ones.
If the economy continues to recover, and houseprices continue to recover, then there is the possibility that Labour can make the final push to the 35% of the the vote that we need to win. If we can stage a full recovery just three years after the peak, we deserve victory. The Tories can do what they've been trying to do all last year - talk the economy down in the hopes of panicking people and inducing a crash. But they failed at this doom-mongering when the economic danger was most acute. Things will get more difficult for them from now on.
So what has caused the move? David Cameron has undoubtedly helped - Cameron's airbrushed vanity plus his evasiveness and flip-flopping have made people nervous about him. The economy recovered slightly in the fourth quarter of 2009 and unemployment has stabalised at 2.45 million. At 7.8% of the workforce, it's roughly where it was when Labour came to power in 1997.
Tories seize on these facts to "prove" that the recovery won't mean a Labour win. Even with unemployment as "low", in Tory terms at least, as 7.8%, and an economy that had been growing for four years, John Major still lost the 1997 election.
This overlooks the fact that voters vote based on how the economy is affecting them, they arn't really swayed by headline figures in the newspapers. GDP growth means nothing. But "my house price has risen and I'm in a job" means something.
There are some 40 million people eligible to vote in the UK, and between 25 million and 30 million actually do. There are also 14.5 million homeowners in England alone, and therefore house prices have the biggest impact on voters, far more than anecdotes about what is happening to other people, or unemployment which affects a smaller percentage of the electorate.
The Labour government has taken a completely different approach to recession than the previous Conservative government. Norman Lamont and co made policy on the grounds that "if it's not hurting it's not working"; their goal was to hurt as many people as possible to wring the inflation that the Lawson boom had caused, out of the system. By contrast the 2008/9 global recession took place in a deflationary environment, and the Labour government's mantra was "we must avoid hurting people, pain impedes the recovery". To this end, all sorts of measures were taken. The bank bailout, and the stimulus are the things most people remember. But there were also a lot of small policies designed to mitigate the effects of the recession on the individual.
For instance, prior to the recession, you only got help with the interest portion of your mortgage if you had been unemployed for 39 weeks. This was promptly changed to 13 weeks. The government decided that it was cheaper to help people stay in their houses than to have to house them elsewhere with full housing benefit. It had a knock-on effect that it put a kibosh on the forced selling of homes that contributes to house price crashes. Trade unions played their part too, arguing for pay-freezes in return for no redundancies - and they found employers willing to listen; they too had memories of the early 90's recession where they made people redundant at great expense and then found themselves having to hire the same people back during the recovery.
And when it finally twigged at the Bank of England that this was a serious crisis, they cut interest rates aggressively, which meant that many of the people who were struggling to meet their mortgage in early 2008 found themselves able to breathe a sigh of relief. Home owners further used the drop in interest rates to overpay their mortgages. The Bank of England reports that mortgage debt fell by £7bn in Q1 2009, £7 bn in Q2 2009 and £4.9bn in Q3 2009. The more people pay down their debt, the less vulnerable they become to forced selling, and the less likely a full blown housing crash becomes.
The sum result of all of the above is that the Halifax reports that house prices have now risen for 7 consecutive months. The average house price according to the Halifax is around £169,777, which is down 15% from it's all-time peak in 2007. Importantly, the trend is up.
This is all in sharp contrast to the situation in 1997. Back in July 2006, I wrote a long post arguing that it wasn't sleeze that did in John Major's government, it was house prices. To illustrate my point, I posted price changes in London between the peak of 1988, and 1995. A full seven years after the peak, house prices were still in the doldrums. In fact house prices didn't recover their 1988 levels till 1999 - two years into a Labour government, whose decision to make the Bank of England independent restored confidence to the housing market.
Just to underline the difference, I'm going to repost the figures:
Average Price
1988 1995
E1 £111,855 £ 72,010 -36% Steepney
E2 £ 80,658 £ 70,133 -13% Bethnal green
E3 £ 88,481 £ 86,269 -2% Bow
E4 £ 89,347 £ 77,110 -14% Chingford
E5 £ 79,244 £ 67,454 -15% Clapton
E6 £ 71,728 £ 51,666 -28% East Ham
E7 £ 69,497 £ 51,441 -26% Forest gate
E8 £ 96,424 £ 65,137 -32% Hackney
E9 £ 79,834 £ 65,071 -18% Homerton
E10 £ 64,831 £ 51,960 -20% Leyton
E11 £ 74,805 £ 66,005 -12% Leystone
E12 £ 72,743 £ 60,835 -16% Manor Park
E13 £ 63,935 £ 45,875 -28% Plalstow
E14 £121,729 £ 76,965 -37% Poplar
E15 £ 66,949 £ 47,655 -29% Stratford
E16 £ 71,207 £ 44,701 -37% North Woolich
E17 £ 66,885 £ 56,229 -16% Walthmanstow
E18 £ 89,053 £ 74,760 -16% Woodforrd
SE1 £ 84,712 £ 86,777 2% Southwark
SE2 £ 60,705 £ 51,552 -15% Abbey wook
SE3 £110,009 £ 91,978 -16% Blackheath
SE4 £ 71,175 £ 58,508 -18% Brockerly
SE5 £ 91,696 £ 95,027 4% Camberwell
SE6 £ 73,931 £ 63,182 -15% Catfrod
SE7 £ 72,669 £ 69,859 -4% Charlton
SE8 £ 70,171 £ 56,656 -19% Depford
SE9 £ 88,586 £ 72,842 -18% Eltham
SE10 £109,023 £ 90,617 -17% Greenwich
SE11 £107,695 £ 89,279 -17% Kenington
SE12 £ 78,779 £ 70,014 -11% Lee
SE13 £ 71,095 £ 61,565 -13% Lewisham
SE14 £ 75,195 £ 56,585 -25% New Cross
SE15 £ 74,480 £ 57,896 -22% Peckham
SE16 £ 90,481 £ 77,725 -14% Rotherhyde
SE17 £ 81,681 £ 66,449 -19% Walworth
SE18 £ 64,781 £ 53,108 -18% Woolwich
SE19 £ 71,505 £ 59,180 -17% Norwood
SE20 £ 65,283 £ 57,741 -12% Anerly
SE21 £ 88,365 £113,095 28% Dulwich
SE22 £ 74,459 £ 72,835 -2% East Dulwich
SE23 £ 74,539 £ 65,878 -12% Forest Hill
SE24 £ 91,261 £107,809 18% Herne Hill
SE25 £ 66,173 £ 52,403 -21% South Norwood
SE26 £ 72,065 £ 59,202 -18% Sydenham
SE27 £ 74,806 £ 64,903 -13% West Norwood
SE28 £ 59,946 £ 41,740 -30% Thamesmead
SW1 £155,444 £143,949 -7% Pimlico
SW2 £ 73,355 £ 75,317 3% Brixton
SW3 £179,108 £286,283 60% Chelsea
SW4 £104,969 £101,298 -3% Clapham
SW5 £123,264 £150,934 22% Earls Court
SW6 £125,794 £154,992 23% Fulham
SW7 £202,467 £309,205 53% South Kensington
SW8 £ 79,711 £ 75,780 -5% South Lambeth
SW9 £ 79,461 £ 78,125 -2% Stockwell
SW10 £138,141 £149,483 8% West Brompton
SW11 £112,650 £122,419 9% Battersea
SW12 £ 94,880 £101,541 7% Balhan
SW13 £151,440 £213,998 41% Barns
SW14 £145,167 £160,891 11% Mortlake
SW15 £116,233 £133,784 15% Putney
SW16 £ 78,829 £ 71,502 -9% Streatham
SW17 £ 78,376 £ 81,292 4% Tooting
SW18 £ 99,452 £ 93,966 -6% Wandwoth
SW19 £ 94,504 £104,880 11% Wimbledon
SW20 £119,287 £123,355 3% West Wimbledon
W1 £186,261 £160,324 -14% West End
W2 £141,258 £137,045 -3% Bayswater
W3 £ 99,658 £ 92,276 -7% Acton
W4 £112,954 £141,164 25% Chiswick
W5 £119,393 £104,85 -12% Ealing
W6 £113,409 £106,397 -6% Hammersmith
W7 £ 86,619 £ 82,690 -5% Hanwell
W8 £178,362 £252,656 42% Kensington
W9 £113,235 £129,276 14% Maida Hill
W10 £ 99,949 £102,227 2% North Kensington
W11 £147,168 £202,748 38% Notting Hill
W12 £ 96,080 £107,936 12% Shepards Bush
W13 £104,843 £108,235 3% West Ealing
W14 £103,523 £115,983 12% West Kensington
NW1 £128,027 £118,038 -8% Camden
NW2 £ 94,768 £ 82,839 -13% Criklewood
NW3 £136,916 £162,687 19% Hampstead
NW4 £112,462 £ 97,307 -13% Hendon
NW5 £111,719 £137,997 24% Kenish Town
NW6 £103,487 £100,780 -3% Kilbourn
NW7 £114,286 £ 91,416 -20% Mill Hill
NW8 £130,556 £164,265 26% St Johns Wood
NW9 £ 90,753 £ 73,471 -19% The Hyde
NW10 £ 81,750 £ 69,790 -15% Willesdon
NW11 £152,377 £144,263 -5% Golders Green
N1 £126,169 £118,018 -6% Islington
N2 £115,475 £130,491 13% East Finchley
N3 £113,428 £109,560 -3% Finchley
N4 £ 83,772 £ 86,198 3% Finsbury Park
N5 £116,772 £109,871 -6% Highbury
N6 £128,605 £169,553 32% Highgate
N7 £ 97,678 £ 86,880 -11% Holloway
N8 £ 92,203 £101,196 10% Hornsey
N9 £ 75,355 £ 58,552 -22% Edmonton
N10 £108,290 £106,685 -1% Muswell Hill
N11 £ 89,087 £ 80,152 -10% New Southgate
N12 £104,052 £ 95,928 -8% North Finchley
N13 £ 92,338 £ 70,766 -23% Palmer green
N14 £131,327 £112,201 -15% Southgate
N15 £ 73,075 £ 55,931 -23% South Tooting
N16 £ 82,812 £ 81,106 -2% Stoke Newington
N17 £ 72,228 £ 54,282 -25% Tottenham
N18 £ 78,221 £ 56,145 -28% Upper Edmonton
N19 £102,708 £ 98,869 -4% Upper Holloway
N20 £130,108 £117,172 -10% Whetstone
N21 £127,239 £114,728 -10% Winchmore Hill
N22 £ 80,880 £ 72,934 -10% Wood Green
Staggering, isn't it? That's the reason the Conservatives lost the 1997 election. Nearly nine years after the housing peak, house prices were in the doldrums, affecting most homeowners in the land - a vast number of people, and after all that time people simply lost patience and thumped the Conservatives in the general election as hard as they could. It wasn't just that the Conservatives lost a lot of people a lot of money (which is pretty bad). They caused social grief too. Loads of unmarried couples had been encouraged by Nigel Lawson to buy properties together to take advantage of double mortgage tax relief - when they split up they found they couldn't sell, and had to endure the hell of co-habiting with an ex. People who had started families in small flats found they couldn't trade up, had to endure the pressure of bringing up small children in very cramped conditions. The Major years record the highest divorce rates ever, as the pain gleefully unleashed by Lamont and co, tore families apart.
By contrast, the Labour government's more protective family-centric policies are holding people and the economy together.
If you are wondering why Labour has been rising in the polls these last six months, look to the similar rise in house prices in the last seven months. People who don't own property tend to be dismissive about property value. You have to live somewhere, they say, why the obsession with price. But most people who own property are long-term dwellers. They have no intention of moving. But they like the idea that they have the option of moving if they need to. And nobody likes the idea of taking losses, even if they are paper ones.
If the economy continues to recover, and houseprices continue to recover, then there is the possibility that Labour can make the final push to the 35% of the the vote that we need to win. If we can stage a full recovery just three years after the peak, we deserve victory. The Tories can do what they've been trying to do all last year - talk the economy down in the hopes of panicking people and inducing a crash. But they failed at this doom-mongering when the economic danger was most acute. Things will get more difficult for them from now on.
Wednesday, January 06, 2010
What were they thinking?
Today's events were topped off by a new YouGov poll showing Labour at 31% - just 9 points behind the Tories - part of the trend since the party conferences last autumn, where we've been slowly clawing our way back. We need around 34% to be able to be in with a shout of forming a government.
Amid this trend, and with the public recoiling from the giant airbrushed David Cameron pictures unleashed on them, why on earth did Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon suddenly decide to mount a coup?
It wasn't just Labour members who were taken aback, backbench MPs were irritated too. So why did they do it? If they really believe that Labour is heading for defeat, why not let Brown take the hit, and then go for a full-scale leadership election after the general election? The clue was in their belief that a change of leader could happen within just 21 days, decided by the PLP and with a single candidate. In other words they are afraid of Labour's electoral college.
Labour is structured differently to other parties. A full scale leadership election involves having to win a majority across three electoral colleges - the PLP, the constituency members and the affiliates. In this post-financial meltdown world, I can say with some confidence that the chances of the membership and affiliates electing an arch-Blairite are slim to non-existent. The party will either go for a clean unifying moderate who is not part of any faction, someone like Ed Miliband, or the party will go left.
This means that the only chance for a David Miliband or James Purnell to win is to stage a coup where it's all decided by the PLP. The coups keep failing for the same reason - because they are being staged by the arch-Blairites. The PLP is not stupid. They don't really want to upset their activists, who do the leaflet delivery out of altruism rather than careerism. They can also see the dangers of having an arch-Blairite lead us into defeat (and if we change leaders we will certainly be defeated, simply for treating the voters like idiots with presidential/personality politics - voters don't buy this presidential business, they know that in the UK we elect parties).
Gordon Brown is actually a very important transitional figure in our party, a bridge between our past and our future. He's essentially holding the ring, holding it all together. If an arch-Blairite led us into defeat, there would be a reaction sharply leftwards in the leadership election afterwards. I'm sure this is why Peter Mandelson keeps defending Brown. If Brown toook the hit on behalf of the party, then it's likely a fresh moderate such as Ed Miliband would be elected by the membership. But the best way to keep Labour moderate and thus where the voters are, is for Brown to actually win the general election. That way when he retires, a moderate centrist has a very good chance of succeeding him. Governing keeps you moderate, opposition is when the loonies come out of the woodwork - see the 1980's for Labour and the early part of this century for the Tories.
The arch-Blairites kinda sorta know that their era is coming to a close, but can't come to terms with it. The irony about these repeated coups is that if some non-factional person with integrity staged them - someone like John Denham - people would follow. But who would follow a Geoff Hoon, or a Hazel Blears?
Amid this trend, and with the public recoiling from the giant airbrushed David Cameron pictures unleashed on them, why on earth did Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon suddenly decide to mount a coup?
It wasn't just Labour members who were taken aback, backbench MPs were irritated too. So why did they do it? If they really believe that Labour is heading for defeat, why not let Brown take the hit, and then go for a full-scale leadership election after the general election? The clue was in their belief that a change of leader could happen within just 21 days, decided by the PLP and with a single candidate. In other words they are afraid of Labour's electoral college.
Labour is structured differently to other parties. A full scale leadership election involves having to win a majority across three electoral colleges - the PLP, the constituency members and the affiliates. In this post-financial meltdown world, I can say with some confidence that the chances of the membership and affiliates electing an arch-Blairite are slim to non-existent. The party will either go for a clean unifying moderate who is not part of any faction, someone like Ed Miliband, or the party will go left.
This means that the only chance for a David Miliband or James Purnell to win is to stage a coup where it's all decided by the PLP. The coups keep failing for the same reason - because they are being staged by the arch-Blairites. The PLP is not stupid. They don't really want to upset their activists, who do the leaflet delivery out of altruism rather than careerism. They can also see the dangers of having an arch-Blairite lead us into defeat (and if we change leaders we will certainly be defeated, simply for treating the voters like idiots with presidential/personality politics - voters don't buy this presidential business, they know that in the UK we elect parties).
Gordon Brown is actually a very important transitional figure in our party, a bridge between our past and our future. He's essentially holding the ring, holding it all together. If an arch-Blairite led us into defeat, there would be a reaction sharply leftwards in the leadership election afterwards. I'm sure this is why Peter Mandelson keeps defending Brown. If Brown toook the hit on behalf of the party, then it's likely a fresh moderate such as Ed Miliband would be elected by the membership. But the best way to keep Labour moderate and thus where the voters are, is for Brown to actually win the general election. That way when he retires, a moderate centrist has a very good chance of succeeding him. Governing keeps you moderate, opposition is when the loonies come out of the woodwork - see the 1980's for Labour and the early part of this century for the Tories.
The arch-Blairites kinda sorta know that their era is coming to a close, but can't come to terms with it. The irony about these repeated coups is that if some non-factional person with integrity staged them - someone like John Denham - people would follow. But who would follow a Geoff Hoon, or a Hazel Blears?
Tuesday, January 05, 2010
Tories bank on an Airbrushed David Cameron
Looks like the Tories have already started their election campaign, spending £500,000 on a poster campaign trying to get as much spending done before the election starting gun is fired (when election spending regulations will apply for the duration of the campaign).
What is interesting about their campaign is that even the Conservative party logo was omitted from the posters, and the Daily Mail reports today that the poster of David Cameron was airbrushed.
Instead the emphasis is all on Cameron - giant photo of him, (airbrushed because he's vain and fake obviously!) with the words "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS".
It's a very risky strategy. First of all the airbrushing plays into the narrative that Cameron is a phony con-man. Slippery. Fake. The emphasis on "I" rather than "We" suggests he believes in an imperial presidency rather than parliamentary government and the giant photos of himself suggest delusions of grandeur. Even Blair at his height only had a (non-airbrushed) picture of himself on the Labour manifesto booklet, never on giant posters. And he always appeared next to the word "Labour" with our logo prominent.
Then after suggesting fakery with his airbrushing, Cameron invokes the NHS. This might have worked had there not been the sight last summer of Tories going abroad trashing the NHS on American TV, disloyally talking Britain down as well as slamming a well-loved institution - and Cameron not even feeling the need to withdraw the whip from them. Who will believe him on the NHS now? Even if he offered a "cast-iron guarantee" about it.
I am feeling more cheerful about the prospects of the coming general election than I have for a while.
What is interesting about their campaign is that even the Conservative party logo was omitted from the posters, and the Daily Mail reports today that the poster of David Cameron was airbrushed.
Instead the emphasis is all on Cameron - giant photo of him, (airbrushed because he's vain and fake obviously!) with the words "I'll cut the deficit not the NHS".
It's a very risky strategy. First of all the airbrushing plays into the narrative that Cameron is a phony con-man. Slippery. Fake. The emphasis on "I" rather than "We" suggests he believes in an imperial presidency rather than parliamentary government and the giant photos of himself suggest delusions of grandeur. Even Blair at his height only had a (non-airbrushed) picture of himself on the Labour manifesto booklet, never on giant posters. And he always appeared next to the word "Labour" with our logo prominent.
Then after suggesting fakery with his airbrushing, Cameron invokes the NHS. This might have worked had there not been the sight last summer of Tories going abroad trashing the NHS on American TV, disloyally talking Britain down as well as slamming a well-loved institution - and Cameron not even feeling the need to withdraw the whip from them. Who will believe him on the NHS now? Even if he offered a "cast-iron guarantee" about it.
I am feeling more cheerful about the prospects of the coming general election than I have for a while.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
The Coming British General Election
Jackie Ashley wrote an interesting article in the Guardian recently, where she examined the tactics that Labour has been using against the Conservatives.
She observes correctly that the public don't really view Cameron as an extreme Thatcherite regardless of what his actual policies are - his persona is comfortably fat and fluffy. (She didn't point out that George Osborne does look hatchet-faced, but the Tories are carefully keeping him out of sight).
She also made the point that the toff attack doesn't really work because most people recognise that they have no control over whom they are born to, indeed you don't really have much control over the first eighteen years of your life. (What you do after age eighteen is fair game; so attacks for joining Bullingdon are valid because it shows the mindset of the adult, whereas attacks for going to Eton are really attacks on a man's parents, whom as a child he couldn't control)
Further the toff attack makes some in Labour itself uneasy. Keir Hardie, our founder over a century ago made a point of inviting the middle-class and upper-middle-class Fabians to merge with his working class Independent Labour Party, the trade unions and the co-operative movement to create The Labour Party in 1900. Hardie's view was that it didn't really matter where you came from, in a true egalitarian society everyone was equal and it was your values, what you believed that counted. Thus such men as Attlee were welcomed into the Labour party in 1908.
The true class-based party at the moment is the BNP - their entire appeal is down to the perceived victimhood of a certain class and race, and they exclude all others. If you truly believe in egalitarianism and inclusiveness, as do all Labour people, then class-based politics have to be rejected, because how can you create a truly equal society if a segment of society is pitted against another based on circumstances of birth (whether class or race) that they have no control over?
I believe the toff attack hasn't really worked because Labour's heart just isn't in it. We'd be better off campaigning on something we truly believe in - such as egalitarianism and equality: if the poor have to pay tax, then so should rich folk like Michael Ashcroft and Zac Goldsmith; if the poor are slung into jail for drug-taking, so should the rich and so on. The Tory idea of one rule for elites and another for the council estates is just plain wrong as well as unfair.
However, despite the strategic mis-hits, Labour has been clawing back position in the polls since late Oct. The vast Tory leads of earlier in the year where BPIX put them 22 points ahead and Populus put them 20 points ahead have evaporated, and the gap on average is between 6 and 12 points. Why has this happened?
In my opinion it's all down to Cameron dumping his "cast-iron guarantee" on Europe. He not only annoyed eurosceptics, he made centrists and moderates very nervous indeed.
If he knew he couldn't actually deliver on the policy, why make pledges in such concrete terms? Is he a con-man, or someone who simply can't see two steps forward to the consequences of his decisions? (His trip to Georgia during the Georgia-Russia war, to promise them Britain would send troops to fight Russia suggests the latter. What sort of idiot wants to send Britain to war with Russia? What sort of idiot makes these pledges without checking who is in the wrong (the UN concluded that far from being a victim, Georgia had provoked the war)). If Cameron can't keep cast-iron guarantees to his own supporters, then will he also dump mere promises to look after the NHS? What does he actually believe in? Is he sunshine, is he austerity, is he a weather-vane who can be blown all over the place by people more powerful than him?
More and more you hear the old story about him cycling to work while having his gas-guzzler chauffeur his briefcase behind him. Labour's first attempt to define him, those chameleon ads inspired by an idea John Prescott had, turn out to be on the mark.
That princess of pop and populism, Cheryl Cole put it best. "David Cameron. Brrrrr. Slippery isn't he?" she says in her interview with Q magazine. She's voting Labour. "Better the devil you know." The vast middle of Britain who spend more time watching X-Factor than the news will agree with her. They may not follow every twist and turn of politics, but they are shrewd about grasping the big picture. Labour's big strength in this election is that we are known quantities.
I think we should fight the election on the "cast-iron guarantee" question. If he can't keep "cast-iron" guarantees, can we trust any promises and pledges he makes? Does he believe anything he says? Or is he thinking no further than the next morning's photo-shoot? This is not only no time for a novice, it's no time for a flim-flam photo-shoot guy who doesn't know his own mind either.
She observes correctly that the public don't really view Cameron as an extreme Thatcherite regardless of what his actual policies are - his persona is comfortably fat and fluffy. (She didn't point out that George Osborne does look hatchet-faced, but the Tories are carefully keeping him out of sight).
She also made the point that the toff attack doesn't really work because most people recognise that they have no control over whom they are born to, indeed you don't really have much control over the first eighteen years of your life. (What you do after age eighteen is fair game; so attacks for joining Bullingdon are valid because it shows the mindset of the adult, whereas attacks for going to Eton are really attacks on a man's parents, whom as a child he couldn't control)
Further the toff attack makes some in Labour itself uneasy. Keir Hardie, our founder over a century ago made a point of inviting the middle-class and upper-middle-class Fabians to merge with his working class Independent Labour Party, the trade unions and the co-operative movement to create The Labour Party in 1900. Hardie's view was that it didn't really matter where you came from, in a true egalitarian society everyone was equal and it was your values, what you believed that counted. Thus such men as Attlee were welcomed into the Labour party in 1908.
The true class-based party at the moment is the BNP - their entire appeal is down to the perceived victimhood of a certain class and race, and they exclude all others. If you truly believe in egalitarianism and inclusiveness, as do all Labour people, then class-based politics have to be rejected, because how can you create a truly equal society if a segment of society is pitted against another based on circumstances of birth (whether class or race) that they have no control over?
I believe the toff attack hasn't really worked because Labour's heart just isn't in it. We'd be better off campaigning on something we truly believe in - such as egalitarianism and equality: if the poor have to pay tax, then so should rich folk like Michael Ashcroft and Zac Goldsmith; if the poor are slung into jail for drug-taking, so should the rich and so on. The Tory idea of one rule for elites and another for the council estates is just plain wrong as well as unfair.
However, despite the strategic mis-hits, Labour has been clawing back position in the polls since late Oct. The vast Tory leads of earlier in the year where BPIX put them 22 points ahead and Populus put them 20 points ahead have evaporated, and the gap on average is between 6 and 12 points. Why has this happened?
In my opinion it's all down to Cameron dumping his "cast-iron guarantee" on Europe. He not only annoyed eurosceptics, he made centrists and moderates very nervous indeed.
If he knew he couldn't actually deliver on the policy, why make pledges in such concrete terms? Is he a con-man, or someone who simply can't see two steps forward to the consequences of his decisions? (His trip to Georgia during the Georgia-Russia war, to promise them Britain would send troops to fight Russia suggests the latter. What sort of idiot wants to send Britain to war with Russia? What sort of idiot makes these pledges without checking who is in the wrong (the UN concluded that far from being a victim, Georgia had provoked the war)). If Cameron can't keep cast-iron guarantees to his own supporters, then will he also dump mere promises to look after the NHS? What does he actually believe in? Is he sunshine, is he austerity, is he a weather-vane who can be blown all over the place by people more powerful than him?
More and more you hear the old story about him cycling to work while having his gas-guzzler chauffeur his briefcase behind him. Labour's first attempt to define him, those chameleon ads inspired by an idea John Prescott had, turn out to be on the mark.
That princess of pop and populism, Cheryl Cole put it best. "David Cameron. Brrrrr. Slippery isn't he?" she says in her interview with Q magazine. She's voting Labour. "Better the devil you know." The vast middle of Britain who spend more time watching X-Factor than the news will agree with her. They may not follow every twist and turn of politics, but they are shrewd about grasping the big picture. Labour's big strength in this election is that we are known quantities.
I think we should fight the election on the "cast-iron guarantee" question. If he can't keep "cast-iron" guarantees, can we trust any promises and pledges he makes? Does he believe anything he says? Or is he thinking no further than the next morning's photo-shoot? This is not only no time for a novice, it's no time for a flim-flam photo-shoot guy who doesn't know his own mind either.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Did the great financial meltdown of 2008 make people turn left or right?
When the financial meltdown of autumn 2008 got underway, there was much debate on how this would affect politics around the world. Some argued that it would make people swing left - after all the cause of the crisis was the private sector out of control and not regulated enough (regulation, which the Cameron-commissioned Redwood report slammed as too heavy turned out to be too light). Others argued that financial crises made people turn right as they became more conservative, and cited the 1930's for proof.
Well, we've now had several general elections around the globe, so we should have a feel for how the global crisis has affected voters. Here are the general elections conducted since the crisis broke:
Canada: The Canadian federal election came during the crisis itself; it was held on Oct 14th 2008. The Conservative Harper government increased their seats by 19, with a swing of 1.38%, but failed to gain the overall majority they wanted. The result was that the incumbent conservatives continued to govern with a minority government. Swing: right
USA: The American federal election was held in November 2008, and voters swung decisively left. Obama took the White House and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. The turning point in the election was John McCain's histrionics during the TARP bailout, after which Obama started to pull ahead. Swing: left
Iceland: The Icelanders held a crisis general election two years before it was due, in April 2009, when their government resigned. Iceland was one of the worst hit countries in the financial meltdown, and a combination of being outside the protection of the EU and infuriating the rest of the world by trying to renege on international financial law meant they had to go to the IMF for help. IMF help came at the price of interest rates at an eye-watering 12%. The right-wing Independence party, which had been in power for the previous 18 years got hammered in the election. The Social Democrats were elected in an alliance with the Greens. The Social Democrats ran the election on a promise to try to gain entry into the EU and join the euro within four years. They followed through and formally applied for EU membership in July 2009, and the EU accepted the application, and has started accession proceedings. Swing: left
India: The enormous Indian electorate held their federal and state elections in stages from mid April to mid May 2009. India was relatively unscathed by the financial crisis thanks to the old-fashioned reserve requirements imposed by their central bank and heavy banking regulation imposed by their centre-left government. The governing centre-left Congress party gained seats, with a swing of 3.96%. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first Indian Prime Minister to be re-elected in 40 years - an impressive feat given that India's stroppy voters take pleasure in kicking politicians out. Swing: left
Japan: Japan held their general election in August 2009. Japan was indirectly affected by the financial crisis due to their reliance on exporting to the USA. After spending most of the 1990's mired in zero growth and deflation, they had hoped they had moved back to normality from the middle of this decade. But the crisis plunged them back into deflation and something seems to have snapped. The centre-right LDP, which has ruled Japan since 1955, was swept from power in a landslide defeat (they lost 177 seats). The Japanese finally got tired of crony capitalism where public funds were used for pet projects in LDP constituencies, while doing nothing for the main economy. The centre-left Democratic Japanese Party took power. Swing: left
Germany: The German federal election took place on schedule in Sept 2009. The centre-right CDU had been governing in a grand coalition with the centre-left SPD since 2005. The grand coalition was held to have handled the financial crisis well - but credit went to the CDU's Angela Merkel, whose party gained enough seats to be able to form a government with their preferred partners, the Free Democrats. Swing: right
Norway: The norweigian general election was held in Sept 2009. Norway was largely unaffected by the financial crisis, insulated by it's oil money. The ruling labour party was returned to power, along with the Socialist Left party and the Centre party in a Red-Green alliance. Norweigian Labour gained seats compared to the previous election. Swing: left
Greece: Greece also held a general election two years before it was due, in October 2009. The right-wing New Democratic party, which had been cooking the books, was swept from power, and the Panhellenic Socialist movement led by George Papandreou came to power with a mandate to clean up corruption and sort things out. Greece has also been badly hit by the financial crisis. Swing: left
The conclusion to be drawn from above is that the crisis has moved people leftwards. Only Angela Merkel escapes, and her government is pretty moderate as right-wing governments go.
One thing to note though is that most of Europe conducted it's general elections before the crisis hit (Sweden 2006, Denmark 2007, France 2007, Ireland 2007, Belgium 2007, Netherlands 2007, Italy April 2008, Austria in Sept 2008 - In Austria, the socialists are the largest party and hold the chancellorship, but the far-right made substantial progress too), so it's hard to tell what their populations think about the crisis. They arn't due to go to the polls again till 2010/11.
Well, we've now had several general elections around the globe, so we should have a feel for how the global crisis has affected voters. Here are the general elections conducted since the crisis broke:
Canada: The Canadian federal election came during the crisis itself; it was held on Oct 14th 2008. The Conservative Harper government increased their seats by 19, with a swing of 1.38%, but failed to gain the overall majority they wanted. The result was that the incumbent conservatives continued to govern with a minority government. Swing: right
USA: The American federal election was held in November 2008, and voters swung decisively left. Obama took the White House and the Democrats took control of both houses of Congress. The turning point in the election was John McCain's histrionics during the TARP bailout, after which Obama started to pull ahead. Swing: left
Iceland: The Icelanders held a crisis general election two years before it was due, in April 2009, when their government resigned. Iceland was one of the worst hit countries in the financial meltdown, and a combination of being outside the protection of the EU and infuriating the rest of the world by trying to renege on international financial law meant they had to go to the IMF for help. IMF help came at the price of interest rates at an eye-watering 12%. The right-wing Independence party, which had been in power for the previous 18 years got hammered in the election. The Social Democrats were elected in an alliance with the Greens. The Social Democrats ran the election on a promise to try to gain entry into the EU and join the euro within four years. They followed through and formally applied for EU membership in July 2009, and the EU accepted the application, and has started accession proceedings. Swing: left
India: The enormous Indian electorate held their federal and state elections in stages from mid April to mid May 2009. India was relatively unscathed by the financial crisis thanks to the old-fashioned reserve requirements imposed by their central bank and heavy banking regulation imposed by their centre-left government. The governing centre-left Congress party gained seats, with a swing of 3.96%. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh became the first Indian Prime Minister to be re-elected in 40 years - an impressive feat given that India's stroppy voters take pleasure in kicking politicians out. Swing: left
Japan: Japan held their general election in August 2009. Japan was indirectly affected by the financial crisis due to their reliance on exporting to the USA. After spending most of the 1990's mired in zero growth and deflation, they had hoped they had moved back to normality from the middle of this decade. But the crisis plunged them back into deflation and something seems to have snapped. The centre-right LDP, which has ruled Japan since 1955, was swept from power in a landslide defeat (they lost 177 seats). The Japanese finally got tired of crony capitalism where public funds were used for pet projects in LDP constituencies, while doing nothing for the main economy. The centre-left Democratic Japanese Party took power. Swing: left
Germany: The German federal election took place on schedule in Sept 2009. The centre-right CDU had been governing in a grand coalition with the centre-left SPD since 2005. The grand coalition was held to have handled the financial crisis well - but credit went to the CDU's Angela Merkel, whose party gained enough seats to be able to form a government with their preferred partners, the Free Democrats. Swing: right
Norway: The norweigian general election was held in Sept 2009. Norway was largely unaffected by the financial crisis, insulated by it's oil money. The ruling labour party was returned to power, along with the Socialist Left party and the Centre party in a Red-Green alliance. Norweigian Labour gained seats compared to the previous election. Swing: left
Greece: Greece also held a general election two years before it was due, in October 2009. The right-wing New Democratic party, which had been cooking the books, was swept from power, and the Panhellenic Socialist movement led by George Papandreou came to power with a mandate to clean up corruption and sort things out. Greece has also been badly hit by the financial crisis. Swing: left
The conclusion to be drawn from above is that the crisis has moved people leftwards. Only Angela Merkel escapes, and her government is pretty moderate as right-wing governments go.
One thing to note though is that most of Europe conducted it's general elections before the crisis hit (Sweden 2006, Denmark 2007, France 2007, Ireland 2007, Belgium 2007, Netherlands 2007, Italy April 2008, Austria in Sept 2008 - In Austria, the socialists are the largest party and hold the chancellorship, but the far-right made substantial progress too), so it's hard to tell what their populations think about the crisis. They arn't due to go to the polls again till 2010/11.
Friday, December 04, 2009
Tory Inheritance Tax Proposals
I just wanted to remind readers of a post I wrote in September 2008 about inheritance tax which drew attention to an article in the Telegraph entitled Tories plan to raise inheritance tax threshold to £2 million.
Just to reiterate, it's not £1 million (which is bad enough), it's £2 million for married couples. At a time when they claim that the public finances can't cope with such give-aways. Here's a quote from the Telegraph article:
Time for Labour to shout about it now?
Just to reiterate, it's not £1 million (which is bad enough), it's £2 million for married couples. At a time when they claim that the public finances can't cope with such give-aways. Here's a quote from the Telegraph article:
The detail of the Tory plan was uncovered by Clive Scott-Hopkins, a retired financial adviser and Telegraph reader.
Earlier this year, Mr Scott-Hopkins wrote to Theresa May, shadow leader of the House of Commons asking how the Tory tax plans would affect married couples.
She wrote back, saying: "I am happy to confirm that our inheritance tax proposal will introduce a threshold of £1m per person (not per couple).
"This means that it would be possible for a married couple to enjoy a threshold of £2m."
Conservative Campaign Headquarters confirmed that the £1 million limit would transfer to the surviving spouse.
A Tory spokesman admitted that the party had not publicised the detail of the now-famous plan.
He said: "We would keep the automatic transferability of the nil rate band, if it is still in place when we inherit, and we would raise the nil rate band to £1m per person.
"This has always been our position; it's just that we haven't shouted about it."
Time for Labour to shout about it now?
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Has the Sun lost it?
Rupert Murdoch isn't the man he used to be. First he bought MySpace for $1/2 billion just as Facebook was taking off. Then he got the New York Post (the American equivalent of the Sun), to endorse John McCain, shortly after McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential candidate. Murdoch was clearly convinced that the Palin appointment was a game-changer...
Then News International announced in August that it made a $3.4bn loss. Then James Murdoch launched a vicious attack on the BBC - which prompted previously indifferent people to rally around the Beeb.
And yesterday we had the news that Rupert Murdoch instructed the Sun to say they were backing the Conservatives in the next general election.
No surprise there - the Sun has been hostile to Labour since Cameron became Tory leader in 2005. So this won't change many Sun readers minds.
But it will affect how Labour voters feel. Labour's problem at the moment is widespread apathy. The September Guardian ICM poll showed Labour certainty to vote at just 53% (compared to 68% for the Tories and 59% for the LibDems). The ICM for 23/24th Sept was a little better - our certainty was 59% (but the Tories certainty had climbed to 70%). Labour needs to get people to the polls, and this could galvanise our voters. One person said to me, if Murdoch is against you, you must be doing something right...
Then News International announced in August that it made a $3.4bn loss. Then James Murdoch launched a vicious attack on the BBC - which prompted previously indifferent people to rally around the Beeb.
And yesterday we had the news that Rupert Murdoch instructed the Sun to say they were backing the Conservatives in the next general election.
No surprise there - the Sun has been hostile to Labour since Cameron became Tory leader in 2005. So this won't change many Sun readers minds.
But it will affect how Labour voters feel. Labour's problem at the moment is widespread apathy. The September Guardian ICM poll showed Labour certainty to vote at just 53% (compared to 68% for the Tories and 59% for the LibDems). The ICM for 23/24th Sept was a little better - our certainty was 59% (but the Tories certainty had climbed to 70%). Labour needs to get people to the polls, and this could galvanise our voters. One person said to me, if Murdoch is against you, you must be doing something right...
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