UK PoliGAF thread of tell me about the rabbits again, Dave.

If Balls didn't get booed during his party conference speech today consider me disappointed.

If Labour thinks they can win this election by default they're in for a rude awakening.
 
QuicheFontaine said:
Not liking this layout on the BBC website - they inserted part of Robert Peston's blog right into the article.

I've not watched the speech, does he go into any detail about what that "Jobs guarantee" is?
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I'm going through the talk now, but searching for the scheme, I found that Labour detailed something about it earlier in the year.

Labour says its "jobs guarantee" scheme for young unemployed people will last for the whole of the next parliament, if it wins the 2015 general election.

Under the plan, 18 to 24-year-olds out of work for a year will be offered a taxpayer-funded job for six months - with those who refuse losing benefits.

Labour says it would pay for this by taxing bank bonuses and changing tax rules for the pensions of high earners.

Up to 80% of the jobs that will be created will be in the private sector, Labour hopes.

"We've got 56,000 young people who have been unemployed for over 12 months," he said
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26506522

EDIT: I do like Labour's idea of subjecting election budget manifestos to the OBR. More transparency, independence and less uncertainty is always welcome. Of course, there are always going to be varying interpretations from different institutes on the forecast of the economy. THE OBR hasn't escaped criticism in the past.

EDIT 2: Also, 'tackling tax avoidance' really is the new buzzword in post recession politics.
 
8bit said:
Yeah, forgot to mention that. More than doubled their previous membership which I believe was just over 2,000 last week. The SSP have added at least 1,000 as well IIRC.

SNP are apparently over 45,000 members now, between them and the Greens they're going try their damndest to chase Labour out of Scotland.

--

ByIR0ULCQAAN0lV.jpg
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ROFL.
 
Is the idea for the OBR to look at manifesto budgets based on the currently submitted manifestos, or are they suggesting that they actually make a "budget" as part of their manifesto now? Because I'm pretty sure that any analysis done on existing manifestos would have an utterly enormous margin of error, given the lack of details, no?
 
Volotaire said:
I'm going through the talk now, but searching for the scheme, I found that Labour detailed something about it earlier in the year.

Labour says its "jobs guarantee" scheme for young unemployed people will last for the whole of the next parliament, if it wins the 2015 general election.

Under the plan, 18 to 24-year-olds out of work for a year will be offered a taxpayer-funded job for six months - with those who refuse losing benefits.

Labour says it would pay for this by taxing bank bonuses and changing tax rules for the pensions of high earners.

Up to 80% of the jobs that will be created will be in the private sector, Labour hopes.

"We've got 56,000 young people who have been unemployed for over 12 months," he said
Click to expand...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-26506522

EDIT: I do like Labour's idea of subjecting election budget manifestos to the OBR. More transparency, independence and less uncertainty is always welcome. Of course, there are always going to be varying interpretations from different institutes on the forecast of the economy. THE OBR hasn't escaped criticism in the past.

EDIT 2: Also, 'tackling tax avoidance' really is the new buzzword in post recession politics.
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Hmm, I've got mixed feelings about that. Could be good, could be bad depending on what said jobs actually are.

I mean financially is there much difference to the tax-payer between paying benefits claimants to do a job and just giving them benefits? The 'guarantee' aspect implies to me that these jobs aren't extant, but instead will basically be just made up to give benefit claimants something to do. I kinda feel like I'd rather they simply receive benefits and spend their time applying for jobs they actually want.

Although looking again, it is for people that have been out of work for a whole year. Maybe they'd benefit from just having a job at that point...
 
I wouldn't mind but it is her brief! She should know this stuff. She has embaressed herself further by claiming the mansion tax Labour are proposing will be used against the deficit, but Miliband will say today it will be used to fund NHS spending increases.

Labour's front bench are not joined up at all on economic policy, they are all over the place. I cannot fathom how anyone could vote for them.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
Ed Balls refusing to answer if the current situation is unfair. Labour are going to be battered over this.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/telegr...s-for-english-laws-those-non-answers-in-full/

Edit: Ed Balls speech seems to have landed like a lead balloon, so boring people have left early apparently. This is not the party conference of a party ready to sweep into power.
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They're not going to sweep anywhere. Their whole "tactic" or hope is to scrape past basically by doing and saying very little in the hope the Tories have pissed off enough of the constituencies that Labour won in 2005 but went Tory/Lib Dems in 2010.

I'm not even sure they want to win. oh I'm sure the current leadership do, but I reckon there's a decent amount of their MP's who would be far happy continuing to rail against a Con/Lib coalition or a minority Tory government tearing itself apart on Europe. Another 5 years of that sort of Government would save Labour from making any hard decisions, and they don't like making hard decisions. Hell if things go well for Labour, they could even get enough additional MP's but fail to get enough for an outright majority then they could blame the remaining Lib Dems for choosing the Tories over them. That would probably the ideal situation, they could remove the dweeb, sideline Balls etc and attempt to find a competent shadow cabinet. I'm sure there are actually 30 or so competent folk in Labour if you look hard enough.
 
kmag said:
They're not going to sweep anywhere. Their whole "tactic" or hope is to scrape past basically by doing and saying very little in the hope the Tories have pissed off enough of the constituencies that Labour won in 2005 but went Tory/Lib Dems in 2010.

I'm not even sure they want to win. oh I'm sure the current leadership do, but I reckon there's a decent amount of their MP's who would be far happy continuing to rail against a Con/Lib coalition or a minority Tory government tearing itself apart on Europe. Another 5 years of that sort of Government would save Labour from making any hard decisions, and they don't like making hard decisions. Hell if things go well for Labour, they could even get enough additional MP's but fail to get enough for an outright majority then they could blame the remaining Lib Dems for choosing the Tories over them. That would probably the ideal situation, they could remove the dweeb, sideline Balls etc and attempt to find a competent shadow cabinet. I'm sure there are actually 30 or so competent folk in Labour if you look hard enough.
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I agree completely. Politically, the next parliament is going to be pretty austere again, and I can't imagine any big political visionaries really wanting it to be "their time". I'm actually impressed by the sheer volume of pretty far-reaching reform the coalition has managed given all the budget cuts and whatnot but - say what you want about their actual reforms - Gove, IDS etc are pretty driven people with obvious goals. I'm not sure you can say the same for Labour's front bench right now, so yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them would rather another term in opposition, shouting from the sidelines.
 
CyclopsRock said:
Is the idea for the OBR to look at manifesto budgets based on the currently submitted manifestos, or are they suggesting that they actually make a "budget" as part of their manifesto now? Because I'm pretty sure that any analysis done on existing manifestos would have an utterly enormous margin of error, given the lack of details, no?
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I think the idea is for the OBR to look at the currently submitted manifestos. I'd agree, budget manifestos are lacking in a lot of detail.

Still astonishing that Miliband memorises these speeches. A trick he borrowed from his late dad, who lectured notes-free at the LSE. #lab14
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I never knew this. I tend to forget from time to time about Ralph Miliband unless I'm going glancing through his lectures series.
 
Fucking hell, this speech is hilarious. He's met so many people! And they all seem to back up exactly what he already thought! One of them was even in the room - he got her to stand up, made everyone clap her (twice) then told her to sit down.
 
He's digging really hard into the rich and financial sector here. I wonder how much of it he will reverse once he's in government.

EDIT: Miliband's 6 National goals he will transform in his 10 year plan

ByOUxQQIcAE1FOF.jpg:large
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very vague.

But it is disconnected Ed! You helped destroy the faith too!

EDIT: Oh snap, 16 and 17 year old votes

EDIT2: As if that will help evaporate the disillusionment amongst young voters.

EDIT 3:

Ed Miliband pledges:

- 20,000 more nurses
- Voting from age 16
- "Senate of Nations" replaces House of Lords
 
Oh wow...

People are walking out in boredom of the last leader's speech before an election. 6 so far. pic.twitter.com/QcjR3dkP0Y
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ByOXiX7IMAAfKcy.jpg:large
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EDIT: what does the Daily Mail speech and your dad have to do with this ED? Yes, he was a prominent politician and academic. But this is Labour's future, not your past.
 
It seems the Conservative's official line on the speech was that 'there was no mention of the deficit or a reduction plan' and this is irresponsible, from the various MP's on twitter today.

EDIT: there are some certainly some ... unusual people on the interviewing part of the Daily [Politics.
 
Cameron caught on camera saying to Bloomberg in NY that the queen 'purred down the line' when told Scotland voted no and he wants to sue the pollsters for giving him stomach ulcers! Lol!

Jesus Christ miliband's speech pandered so much to the audience/current labour voters it was unreal. No sign of reaching out to other voters or middle England at all, no mention of immigration, law and order or the deficit. Stuck to the NHS, tax and spend, laughable history of England that consisted of only socialists and trade unions.

No mention of one nation anymore, just we save NHS and Tories are evil. Pure one dimensional pandering, no vision for Britain other than a vague six point plan and two terms. It is so obvious they are banking on their 35% strategy, and it sickens me to say they will probably succeed.
 
So looks like Miliband DID have paragraphs in his speech about the deficit and immigration, but forgot them, which is why the speech was 20 minutes shorter than expected. Not such a great idea to not use notes huh, what a complete and utter tit. How can you just 'forget' to mention the deficit and immigration in the keynote conference speech before the general election?
 
Nicktendo86 said:
So looks like Miliband DID have paragraphs in his speech about the deficit and immigration, but forgot them, which is why the speech was 20 minutes shorter than expected. Not such a great idea to not use notes huh, what a complete and utter tit. How can you just 'forget' to mention the deficit and immigration in the keynote conference speech before the general election?
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Where's the source on this?
 
So I guess this is how Tories felt watch IDS at the 2003 party conference.

edit: But, to be fair, even if Miliband is kind of a twat the policies they announced this year are decent enough to win them an election.

I'm interested to read more about his plan to replace the Lords that was mentioned a few posts up.
 
Bit of an awkward speech, he's given better ones for sure. It wasn't bad insofar as that there wasn't any point where I went 'well that's a bloody stupid idea', but it was just a bit... flat. No verve or inspiration. Still, he's on course to win so in a way anything that doesn't rock the boat too hard is probably going to play in his favour in the long run. I'm not sure a very narrow win is in Labour's interests, though. I think they'll be wanting to win a majority even within England given recent events, and they need to be doing better for that to be a plausible prospect.
 
Who do Survation et al poll on stuff like this? Surely it's only wankers like us that listen to this guff, and we are typically the exact sort of the people with sufficiently entrenched views that a party conference speech is unlikely to change how we feel about anything.
 
CyclopsRock said:
Who do Survation et al poll on stuff like this? Surely it's only wankers like us that listen to this guff, and we are typically the exact sort of the people with sufficiently entrenched views that a party conference speech is unlikely to change how we feel about anything.
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People give them money to do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Also, it's quite important to win wankers like us, because wankers like us write newspapers.
 
Volotaire said:
.
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Populism is popular. Who would have thought it.

No mention of the deficit though and Ed Balls would run a capital deficit and only seek to balance the current budget while also "paying down the debt". I'm not sure how he will manage to do the former and the latter. Gift for the Tories.

The Tories are going to win the most seats, not enough for a majority though, it will happen on the back of EV4EL and continued laser like focus on the economy.

All of this populism from Ed and Labour will allow them to defy gravity until the campaign proper starts and people really think about what a populist government will mean for the economy and their jobs. Exactly the same thing happened in Scotland, the final polls averaged out to 44.5 - 48 to No and the final result for 45 - 55 No, with the last round of DKs breaking for No (or the shy No factor).

Previously I thought Labour would get the most seats, but with Ed hamming up EV4EL so badly and the Tories getting it almost exactly right the pendulum will swing their way, especially in a lot of northern constituencies and in the south west against the rump of the Lib Dems. It won't be billed as a question of constitutional change, but one of fairness for England within the Union, the former would not win any votes, but it has been proved time and again that the fairness agenda can swing a lot of votes in marginal seats, which is why Ed has campaigned on it since he became leader.
 
Zomg, read above he had a section in his speech about the deficit, along with immigration, but left it out. We don't know if this was intentional (trying to mislead the public and not wanting to have any boos from this crowd) in which case he would be a sneaky bastard or if he just forgot in which he is even more incompetent than we thought.

I can't decide which is worse.
 
It's like, on the one hand, he's much better at the natural speeches than he is scripted stuff in cases like this.

On the other, scripting it would involve script editing, which he desperately needs to tighten things up, and not forgetting the economy.
 
CyclopsRock said:
Who do Survation et al poll on stuff like this? Surely it's only wankers like us that listen to this guff, and we are typically the exact sort of the people with sufficiently entrenched views that a party conference speech is unlikely to change how we feel about anything.
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Pretty much how I feel. The party conferences are almost always meaningless; it is hard to recollect any party conference in the history of British politics where anything meaningful occurred. In recent times, the 'New Labour' conference, perhaps? But even that may only be valuable in retrospect (Labour could not have failed in 1997, New Labour or Old Labour).

At best they reflect the general mood of a political party, but even then they aren't a great help because we already know that (Lib Dems, dispirited, vulnerable but putting on a brave face; Labour confused and disconsolate; Tories fractious and antsy but held together by surprising resilience).
 
vcassano1 said:
Pretty much how I feel. The party conferences are almost always meaningless; it is hard to recollect any party conference in the history of British politics where anything meaningful occurred. In recent times, the 'New Labour' conference, perhaps? But even that may only be valuable in retrospect (Labour could not have failed in 1997, New Labour or Old Labour).
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Well there was the tory one with the osbourne inheritance tax thing which spooked brown so much we had "the election that never was"

Without that we'd probably have had another term of new labour.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
Zomg, read above he had a section in his speech about the deficit, along with immigration, but left it out. We don't know if this was intentional (trying to mislead the public and not wanting to have any boos from this crowd) in which case he would be a sneaky bastard or if he just forgot in which he is even more incompetent than we thought.

I can't decide which is worse.
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It seems incredibly convenient that the two bits that went walkies were the two "nasty" bits - talking about immigration and actually making cuts - but at the same time, if he didn't want them in the speech, he doesn't need to go through all the rigmarole of writing it, sending it out and then saying he forgot (which just makes him sound like an idiot). He could have just said "Balls dealt with the economy yesterday" and been done with it - he'd have given the same speech with the same contents but without the appearance of incompetence. My guess is that he did mean to talk about them, but that he couldn't remember all the details of the whole speech perfectly. When you're talking about meeting Gareth in a park, going slightly off-script and mixing it up a bit doesn't matter, but when talking about your two weakest areas - the economy and immigration - you can't afford to get it wrong. I think he made a call, on the stage when he realised he wouldn't be able to confidently recall it, that it'd be better to just jettison the whole thing and let the print do the work.

That's my guess, anyway.
 
Sir_Crocodile said:
Well there was the tory one with the osbourne inheritance tax thing which spooked brown so much we had "the election that never was"

Without that we'd probably have had another term of new labour.
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Yeah, this one sticks in my mind. More or less pulled a rabbit out of a hat there, which I think is why everyone gets so slippery over his Budgets - they want another rabbit!

Also, whilst personally I think the pledge was a load of old hogswash, it's undeniable that Ed's speech last year about the energy price freezing made real headlines and set the terms of the debate well past the Tory conference. Furthermore, it intertwined nicely with his "cost of living" schtick - which I think might have been a case of a stopped clock being right twice a day, since this seamless integration of policy and narrative occurs so rarely for him that I struggle to imagine it was intentional - so he had that going for it too.

The Tory ones are always more interesting because of the (perceived, at least) jockeying for position of the potential next Tory leaders - until now I think it's had an element of newspaper wankery to it, but now it's pretty much universally acknowledged that this'll be Cam's last election campaign, these sorts of things begin to take on a much more significant importance I think.
 
I just find it unbelievable that a man, in his words, being interviewes for the job of prime minister spends his last major speech talking about stalking people in parks rather than two of the biggest issues to voters. You couldn't make it up.

I agree with your assessment Cyclops.
 
Nicktendo86 said:
I just find it unbelievable that a man, in his words, being interviewes for the job of prime minister spends his last major speech talking about stalking people in parks rather than two of the biggest issues to voters. You couldn't make it up.

I agree with your assessment Cyclops.
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What Ed gets up to on Hamsted Heath is his own business.
 
JonathanEx said:
What Ed gets up to on Hamsted Heath is his own business.
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Aha, they had Gareth on Newsnight last night and, assuming the image wasn't photoshopped, he was captioned "Met Ed Miliband on Hampstead Heath". Lots of fun being had there.

I'd love to go to a Tory conference one day. I'm pretty sure that all the young, lovely, sexy, posh Tory Activists just all get drunk and bang each other in the conference hotels. I have a thing for posh girls. If you've got massive teeth and a horse, I'm interested.
 
TheDrowningMan said:
Possibly a bit less, but in the ballpark. Not a resounding endorsement but the polls have been against the Tories for too long now.
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In the poll that matters, ICM Guardian, the true figures are 18% Con and 23% Lab with 23% of people undecided and 8% refusing to answer. That means 31% of people are still out there to be converted to Lab/Con/UKIP, of those Con and UKIP are definitely going to be doing better among the DK/Refused. Even the headline figure is Con 33%, Lab 35%, hardly a ringing endorsement of Labour.

Throw EV4EL into the mix and the Tories picking up the fairness agenda for England and that will draw some support back from UKIP for the Cons and if Labour are painted as anti-England (which is probably how it will end up if Ed doesn't come up with a simple answer very quickly) then I think a lot of WWC will peel off to UKIP. The next big test for Labour is the Heywood and Middleton bye election where Labour have gone from 1/50 out to 2/9 and UKIP in from 13/1 to 3/1, even a strong second for UKIP will be troubling for Labour in a core vote constituency. I think one aspect the polling hasn't caught on to yet is the Lab -> UKIP drift of the WWC as the are still very shy UKIP voters while the old Conservative bloc are much less shy about their UKIP support.

Overall, I think a Labour majority seems very unlikely, and most seats seems like a stretch given their poor policy position on stuff that matters and dreadful leader and economic ratings. Con most seats, between 295 and 310 is where they will end up and they will hold an E&W majority. A recent poll put the Cons just 2 points down in Wales on their GE performance with UKIP on 14%, Lab -> UKIP seepage is going to be a big theme of the election post-mortem I think.
 
Just to check, EV4EL = English Votes For English Law?

Little update, the Mirror hacked:
Shane Ritchie
Shobna Gulati
Lucy Benjamin
Alan Yentob


I guess they just wanted to find out the answer to the biggest question, What does Alan Yentob?
 
Interesting point re Wales. If Labour continue to pissarse around on EV4EL (which I guess also corresponds to a Welsh alternative) then there could be a shift there (which as of 2010 has it's constituencies share of Lab (26), Con (8), LibDem (3), Plaid Cymru (3).....)
 
What a hilariously banal group of people to get caught hacking. At least go for senior politicians or leaders of industry or something. Shane Ritchie, really.

I think it's pretty amazing how the Tories have managed to try - and largely succeed - to snatch the concept of "Englishness" and basically run with it. Even though the idea of cricket on the village green and holidays to the Dales isn't actually a familiar one to so many people, I think Labour have done a good job of alienating a lot of people recently. And I don't think Ed helped yesterday when all his examples of Englishness were basically Socialist protests (their rights and wrongs aside).
 
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