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

8

8bit

Knows the Score
ByQPKaCCAAA5PeO.jpg
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
That should be the image of Labour's conference.

Edit:
Awkward for EdM on Sky News. He supported US strikes in Syria but wd set a "higher bar" for UK action, requiring UN resolution.
Click to expand...

So is in favour if strikes or not? Why can he not commit one way or the other?
 
J

Jackpot

Banned
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.
Click to expand...

What a total moron.

Pretty much the only deciding factor for who I'll vote for is how nasty the Tories come across in the run-up to the election.
 
T

TheDrowningMan

Member
zomgbbqftw said:
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.
Click to expand...

That's not the "poll that matters". It's just not, that's not how polling works. I understand that it's logical on the face of it, but pollsters will have a methodology they use to allocate "don't knows" and arrive at an outcome from there. There's a polling consensus, and it's that Labour have held a small to moderate lead for a considerable period of time & that's why you don't have bookmakers declaring the Tories favourites - they might well emerge as the largest party despite their atrocious record, but it won't be because today's polls are inaccurate.

I expect them to take the lead after Cameron brings out some snappy, discriminatory rhetoric at their conference before the polls slump back to where they were before. The consistency has been pretty remarkable,really. We've got Ashcroft at 27 / 33 (with Green as high as 6) Populus at 33 / 37 and YouGov at 33 / 35, all in Labour's favour.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
TheDrowningMan said:
That's not the "poll that matters". It's just not, that's not how polling works. I understand that it's logical on the face of it, but pollsters will have a methodology they use to allocate "don't knows" and arrive at an outcome from there. There's a polling consensus, and it's that Labour have held a small to moderate lead for a considerable period of time & that's why you don't have bookmakers declaring the Tories favourites - they might well emerge as the largest party despite their atrocious record, but it won't be because today's polls are inaccurate.
Click to expand...

I don't think anyone is saying that they're inaccurate, it's that polls aren't a prediction - they're an indication of current opinions. Those are obviously very different things, because there aren't any "undecideds" in an election (insomuch as only people that vote end up counting). Thus the more undecideds there are, the more political support there is up for grabs. Looking forward, who is more likely to grab those undecideds? That's the important question, imo. Possibly no one will, but I think that right now the Tories are better placed to win that support, for a number of reasons.
 
K

kmag

Member
CyclopsRock said:
I don't think anyone is saying that they're inaccurate, it's that polls aren't a prediction - they're an indication of current opinions. Those are obviously very different things, because there aren't any "undecideds" in an election (insomuch as only people that vote end up counting). Thus the more undecideds there are, the more political support there is up for grabs. Looking forward, who is more likely to grab those undecideds? That's the important question, imo. Possibly no one will, but I think that right now the Tories are better placed to win that support, for a number of reasons.
Click to expand...

The issues the Tories have is that frankly they need to out poll Labour by a good amount to take more seats than them (thanks FTFP, hooky boundaries and rotten boroughs), and I have trouble seeing the Tories getting much past 35-36% which might be enough for a majority, but probably won't. History suggests that incumbent governments simply don't increase voting share, and while Cameron may be able to hold off UKIP to his right, he's not going to keep them at 2010 levels so that's an added pressure on the Tory vote.

I can't see anything other than a hung parliament and horse trading on who gets to form the government with the rump remains of the lib dems and perhaps confidence and supply from the various nationalists and from the bigot factory in NI.

You could even be looking at the particularly British bodge, of a minority or coalition Labour Government in power but unable to get anything done because of a quick EV4EL solution which ends up just excluding non English MP's at Westminster from English only affairs. As I've said before I think that sort of arrangement is a horrible mistake as it excludes non English MP's from almost all of the Executive positions; if England wants a parliament it'll need to get one either by removing the UK executive from Westminster or removing English only lawmaking from Westminster, the two can't co-exist in the same legislature.
 
T

TheDrowningMan

Member
CyclopsRock said:
I don't think anyone is saying that they're inaccurate, it's that polls aren't a prediction - they're an indication of current opinions. Those are obviously very different things, because there aren't any "undecideds" in an election (insomuch as only people that vote end up counting). Thus the more undecideds there are, the more political support there is up for grabs. Looking forward, who is more likely to grab those undecideds? That's the important question, imo. Possibly no one will, but I think that right now the Tories are better placed to win that support, for a number of reasons.
Click to expand...

The polls all have undecided support baked in. People say "I'm undecided" and the pollster, based on historical trends, allocates them to a particular party. That's how polling works and has done through the years.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
kmag said:
The issues the Tories have is that frankly they need to out poll Labour by a good amount to take more seats than them (thanks FTFP, hooky boundaries and rotten boroughs), and I have trouble seeing the Tories getting much past 35-36% which might be enough for a majority, but probably won't. History suggests that incumbent governments simply don't increase voting share, and while Cameron may be able to hold off UKIP to his right, he's not going to keep them at 2010 levels so that's an added pressure on the Tory vote.

I can't see anything other than a hung parliament and horse trading on who gets to form the government with the rump remains of the lib dems and perhaps confidence and supply from the various nationalists and from the bigot factory in NI.

You could even be looking at the particularly British bodge, of a minority or coalition Labour Government in power but unable to get anything done because of a quick EV4EL solution which ends up just excluding non English MP's at Westminster from English only affairs. As I've said before I think that sort of arrangement is a horrible mistake as it excludes non English MP's from almost all of the Executive positions; if England wants a parliament it'll need to get one either by removing the UK executive from Westminster or removing English only lawmaking from Westminster, the two can't co-exist in the same legislature.
Click to expand...

I agree that no one party will win a majority - and ultimately I think the election will come down to the success of the third and fourth parties (whoever they end up being!) and who they nick the support from. That's the only way I think the Tories will see their voteshare go up, even if their votecount doesn't. And of course, it's all about the marginals.

And I agree, any change to the make up of our country really needs to be a proper solution - the manifestos will be very interesting in this respect. I wonder how many will actually detail specific proposals?

TheDrowningMan said:
The polls all have undecided support baked in. People say "I'm undecided" and the pollster, based on historical trends, allocates them to a particular party. That's how polling works and has done through the years.
Click to expand...

Sure, and all the companies have various methodologies, but there's still a huge element of the unknown there. General elections are sufficiently infrequent, the the variables so vast, that I think there's only a certain degree of usefulness in the historic trends being "baked in" to a poll; There's never been a UKIP like there is now, and it's been a long time since there was such an atrocious traditional third party. The economy is behaving in a manner similarish to before the 1992 election (insomuch as it's recovering fairly strongly from a recession, though obviously the timescales are different today), but the political atmosphere is totally different. Labour leaders being liabilities isn't a new thing, , but the monopolising of major-party opposition hasn't happened in a very long time. I'm sure the pollsters are all very smart chaps and everything, but there's a limit to their predictive abilities and so I think the large number of undecided voters is still a hugely important point.
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
BBC said:
"For most people, they don't understand what it [the deficit] is anyway. it's something that has been hyped by the Tories, who have made people scared of it. The NHS affects people's everyday lives," said Hanna Toms, Labour's Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Truro and Falmouth.
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Fucking hell. Do they honestly believe this? The deficit isn't a big deal at all and we can just fund the NHS with good intentions?

Edit: also lol

Andrew Neil said:
Miliband promises to decarbonise electricity by 2030. At what cost? Estimate for Germany is one trillion euros.
Click to expand...

More uncosted nonsense from Labour. Does anyone actually swallow this bullshit?
 
W

Walshicus

Member
He's kind of right though, the deficit isn't as big a deal as Tories made it out to be. It's just a shame that it was an easy message to get across, people know how bad it is to be in large amounts of personal debt but don't know how little the same applies to states.
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
Sir Fragula said:
He's kind of right though, the deficit isn't as big a deal as Tories made it out to be. It's just a shame that it was an easy message to get across, people know how bad it is to be in large amounts of personal debt but don't know how little the same applies to states.
Click to expand...
But it isn't even about the debt, we have not even started thinking about tackling that. To say the deficit doesn't matter at all is complete fantasy.
 
Q

QuicheFontaine

Member
kmag said:
I can't see anything other than a hung parliament and horse trading on who gets to form the government with the rump remains of the lib dems and perhaps confidence and supply from the various nationalists and from the bigot factory in NI.
Click to expand...

I'll actually be a little bit miffed if the Lib Dems get to end up playing kingmaker again with all of 7-8% of the popular vote. While this coalition hasn't been a complete disaster, I was under the impression that it isn't really how the system was supposed to operate.

I mean they're about as popular as the Greens these days, just all their support is strategically concentrated in a few winnable constituencies. What gives them the right to be in government more than the Greens?
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
WayneMorse said:
The deficit and debt aren't actual problems since the UK controls its own currency (thanks Gordon!).
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean that it isn't a problem, though, it just means we have different (and likely much smaller) problems, but still problems. We could print a bunch of money but as long as we continue to raise money by selling bonds, then interest payments are a legitimate concern (last year we paid more in interest than we spent on all the schools in the country) and even if we did start printing, then the problem just morphs into inflation (albeit not necessarily immediately and I'm not predicting Zimbabwe - simply that it's not without cost).

In other news, it seems there was a Pro-IS demo in - surprise surprise - Tower Hamlets the other day. Apparantly it was very small but, hey, fuck those guys.

I like the pub
 
W

WayneMorse

Banned
Crab said:
Nothing will happen. None of them are insane enough to start a leadership battle right before a general election, particularly when Labour are currently the favourites to win.

Glad people are catching on to Andy Burnham, though.
Click to expand...

Either Burnham or Ummuna are going to succeed Miliband.
 
W

WayneMorse

Banned
I didn't know that Bill de Blasio was making a speech at the Labour Party conference.

Maybe this shows that Miliband is committing himself on running in 2015 on the issue of income inequality.
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
E

Empty

Member
WayneMorse said:
Either Burnham or Ummuna are going to succeed Miliband.
Click to expand...

ummuna is so so bad

burnham is great. if miliband gets a slim majority it'll be on the back of his work on the nhs issue. crucial in the marginals. if only the rest of the shadow cabinet were so effective.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
I think Burnham is great but I see him as more of an Osborne, second in command type. I'm not sure he has the gravitas for central stage politicing.
 
Jezbollah

Jezbollah

Member
I think it's too late for a leadership change now. Personally, I think either would be far more electable and already purvey better "statesmanship" than Milliband.
 
M

Maledict

Member
You have to remember that the Labour Party is instinctively against leadership challenges. They are the complete opposite of the Tories in that sense - they will leave a leader in power far longer even when it's obvious they can't win rather than disrupt the party. I think it's a hangover from the 70s internal warfare.

Kinnock, Blair, Brown - all would have had leadership challenges under the conservatives but hung on. In many ways I think it's worse than what the Tories do because it encourages and breeds the backstabbing and undermining we saw in New Labour that ended up being far more detrimental to the party and the country as a whole.

Tl;dr - decapitating leaders is not in Labours DNA anymore. They would rather go into an election knowing they will lose instead of mounting a leadership challenge.
 
M

Maledict

Member
A decent leader could actually make this a positive thing overall I think, but labour wouldn't have the foggiest clue how to do it.

Ed doesn't stand a chance with the Sun, they have been out to get him from the start, so he should bank this ridiculous attack to shore up support and enthusiasm from supporters who reads the other papers.
 
Nicktendo86

Nicktendo86

Member
dapperbandit said:
If I recall correctly Miliband made some similar guff with his First World War wreath during the anniversary this year.
Click to expand...
Yup, it may well be unfair but the image being painted is that he just doesn't care about veterans. Only has himself to blame as well, the perception may be wrong but it is up to him to manage that perception.
 
D

dapperbandit

Banned
Nicktendo86 said:
Yup, it may well be unfair but the image being painted is that he just doesn't care about veterans. Only has himself to blame as well, the perception may be wrong but it is up to him to manage that perception.
Click to expand...

These sort of mistakes will become another stick to beat him with as the EV4EL thing continues.
 
C

CyclopsRock

Member
Ahaha I just remembered a tweet from during the speech that made me literally laugh out loud (though only if you're an Office fan, I guess). It was something along the lines of:

Friends, Gareth said something that really hit home with me, and what he said was this: "Will there ever be a boy born who can swim faster than a shark?"
 
J

JonathanEx

Member
Radio 1 Newsbeat mentioned the thing on no income tax on minimum wage "if they get in to power" and I was going to make a joke "If they get in to power? Might as well promise a unicorn" and then remembered the Lib Dems.

And I'm not falling for that curse.
 
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