General Election 2015 is Lose/Lose for Labour

The polls on the eve of the general election point to a Miliband government, but one requiring vote by vote deals with the SNP to survive. If I were a Labour supporter I would be very concerned indeed.

Both main parties are neck and neck in the polls. The Tories need a reasonable margin over Labour just to match their seat numbers. There's a chance the polls are underestimating Tory support and underestimating Labour's. But they would have to be wildly wrong to allow the Tories to achieve a haul of parliamentary seats that would outnumber Labour + the SNP's total. And that is what the Tories have to do. Nicola Sturgeon has promised to "lock the Tories out of government", even if the rest of the countries votes Tory and gives them more seats than Labour.

Unless there's an upsurge in Conservative votes that the polls aren't predicting (like there was in 1992 when the electorate belatedly realised Kinnock was going to get in and turned out en masse to vote against him) Miliband will be PM on Friday but will have to rely on the SNP to get his legislation through, even if he comes second in the election to Cameron. If Cameron can't partner up with other parties to achieve a majority (as the polls suggest he won't be able to), Miliband will, regardless of how much such an arrangement lacks legitimacy in the eyes of the British people. Concessions to the Scottish separatists will be necessary if a Miliband government is to survive from vote to vote and from week to week. But he would rather that than not govern at all, whatever he says to try and placate nervous English voters before the vote. 

Miliband, who has already lurched his party to the left, will be forced to move further leftwards by the far left in his own parliamentary party and by the SNP, both of which, due to the lack of a in-built majority, will be pivotal to the survival of his premiership.

Labour's first Queen's Speech will probably sail through. The SNP will be happy to back it, as it puts the Labour fly firmly in the SNP's web ready to be influenced to achieve their own separatists and leftist agenda. In order to provide an legislative agenda for the first year that will gain adequate support from the Labour left and SNP, the speech will be chocker full of Miliband's most populist left wing policies - bankers bashing, rich rinsing, business bashing policies a plenty, similar to Miliband's ideological French soul-mate François Hollande. The effects on the British economy will be similar; high unemployment, an exodus of wealth creators, higher inflation, higher interest rates, higher taxes, industrial relations unrest as unions get more and more confident, powerful and demanding under "their" government and, eventually, a reckoning with reality.

That reckoning will come after a year or so, with the backdrop of a faltering economy about to crash to the ground as economic gravity inevitably reasserts itself. Of course, all this will come to a head quicker if the pending Euro crisis re-emerges if Greece crashes out of the Euro due to its own populist left wing leader's reality-defying ideological policies. But, assuming external crises don't occur to bring all this forward, by 12 to 18 months, Miliband's premiership will already be tarnished in England by several concessions he will have to have made to survive key votes in parliament. Now Miliband will be forced to moderate his ideological fervour and he will be at his most vulnerable. He will experience revolts from his own MPs as he is forced to move away from a left policy agenda to address the real issues the country is experiencing. The SNP will be even more important to Miliband's survival at this point.

The Labour government will limp from crisis vote to crisis vote. Miliband will experience humiliation at the hands of Alex Salmond, the SNP's leader in the Commons as well as his own left wing, and ridicule throughout the land. We can look back to the John Major years, when, after a string of lost mid-term by-elections, Major lost his Commons majority. He had to battle the Tory right from week to week, who took every opportunity to undermine him to promote their own utopian ideas and often massive egos, and he had to rely on DUP support to govern with a majority in parliament. Major's reputation was trashed in the eyes of voters as he was made to look weak, as was the Conservative party's generally. It has never fully recovered (evidenced by their failure to win a majority since then).

The DUP, being Unionists and with no strong left/right ideology (economically at least), weren't particularly demanding. The SNP will be a totally different proposition for Miliband. He'll struggle to contain them, even if he turns out not to be the weak leader people think he is.

The aftermath of this scenario is long term damage to Labour's reputation, possibly leading to a generation of being locked out of power. It's almost as if the election is lose/lose for Labour.

I'd find that funny if it wasn't so serious for the future of the country.

Local Elections 2013

Ed inspiring commuters on the Tube

Lots of spinning going on about the council elections results. In reality, it's been a typically bad mid-term result for the Tories and the Lib Dems. Labour's gains have been patchy and mostly disappointing. Only UKIP can take any pleasure in that they attracted a significant percentage of the vote and some councillors. Although no councils, of course.

Apart from the UKIP performance, the only other notable outcome is Labour's lacklustre progress. Ed Miliband had the following going for him:

• With the Liberal Democrats in coalition with the Tories, Labour are the lone party of opposition on the left. Dissatisfaction with the government should drive votes to Labour as the only possible alternative
• The Coalition parties are in mid-term, midway through implementing very painful reforms and departmental budget cuts that have sapped their political capital.
• UKIP are splitting the vote on the right, sapping support from the Conservatives
• Labour were starting from a very low point and the Tories a very high point, as the last time these wards were fought was during the darkest days of the previous Labour government. Any slight improvement in Labour's vote should have delivered hundreds of councillors.

Given all of this, you'd expect a Labour landslide, gains of 4/5/600 or more. But no, nothing like it. More worrying for Labour is its lack of success in the South. The only councils Labour won were Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire - both rock solid Labour before Labour's disastrous result in 2009. Few significant inroads were made in the South of England.

Ed Miliband has had an easy run in the media for a while. But following recent poor decisions, especially around opposing Conservative welfare reforms, another car crash interview and now these disappointing results, pressure should start to mount on the Labour leader. But, I suspect, most of the electorate have already made their mind up on him, and Labour's only hope will be no economic recovery and UKIP's popularity persisting to the election in 2015.

If yesterday's vote proves anything, it proves the country has a strong right of centre mind set. Ed Miliband's march to the left is leaving people cold.

Leveson On Political Spin

All the focus following the publication of the Leveson report has been on the big issue of press regulation and whether or not we want our newspapers answerable to politicians (i.e. statutory "underpinning"). This is a big question and one that deserves extensive coverage and public debate.

But there are a myriad of other questions addressed by The Lord Justice, not least, Labour's serious accusations about the Tories relationship with News International and Cameron's handling of the BSkyB bid. Leveson's findings here also deserve attention but won't get it due to the gravity of the press regulation debate. However, Guido helpfully distils Leveson's judgements:

Labour claimed the Conservatives did ‘a deal’ with NI over BSkyB and other policy in exchange for their support.
But Lord Justice Leveson says ‘The evidence does not, of course, establish anything resembling a “deal”’.

Labour claimed Jeremy Hunt ‘was not judging the [BSkyB] bid he was backing it’.
But Lord Justice Leveson says ‘there is no credible evidence of actual bias on the part of Mr Hunt’.

Labour claimed ‘Cameron should never have given the decision to Hunt in the first place’.
But Lord Justice Leveson says Jeremy Hunt ‘was the obvious candidate to entrust with the decision because of his portfolio… The evidence does not begin to support a conclusion that the choice of Mr Hunt was the product of improper media pressure, still less an attempt to guarantee a particular outcome to the process’.

Labour claimed ‘Jeremy Hunt “was acting as a backchannel for the Murdochs”’
But Lord Justice Leveson says ‘Mr Hunt immediately put in place robust systems to ensure… fairness, impartiality and transparency’ and Jeremy Hunt’s ‘actions as a decision maker were frequently adverse to News Corp’s interests’.

Labour claimed the Prime Minister had discussions with James Murdoch about the BSkyB bid at a dinner on 23 December 2010.
But Lord Justice Leveson says the Prime Minister was ‘perfectly in order’.

God knows there's enough dodgy behaviour going on in public life without this kind of mendacious spinning. Perhaps the next public inquiry should be into the ethics of party political spinning* and the way parties attempt to smear each other at every turn. No wonder politicians are down there with journalists in people's regard.

* Somehow I suspect this is one inquiry Ed Miliband will not be calling for.

 

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Two Eds Aren't Better Than One

Miliband slow hand claps Balls

I had a strong feeling of déjà vu this morning as I read an article in The Times based on the Labour leader's and his Chancellor's briefings against each other. Miliband's lot say Balls is domineering, secretive and untrustworthy while Balls' lot say Miliband is weak and lacks vision or any strategic direction. It's a shame they can't be as insightful about the state they left the economy in, but you can't expect too much.

This all comes after John Rentoul's article in The Independent that pointed out that George Osborne's position is secure and the real issue is with tensions between the two Eds and their lack of any credible alternative to the government's economic plans. The New Statesman publishes an article by Dan Hodges that confirms Labour's plans to avoid making any difficult policy decisions until after the next general election. They hope the Tories will render themselves unelectable allowing Labour to continue their vacuous opportunistic opposition which runs less risk of them losing union or party support.

Meanwhile, the Tory Chancellor gets some rare supportive commentary via Matthew Parris in The Times. While admitting George Osborne is getting increased criticism from all sides, each side undermines the other. From the Right, comes intellectually potent but politically suicidal pressure to cut harder and faster; from the Left comes intellectually bankrupt and mealy-mouthed pressure to cut a little less and a little slower.

It's good to see some focus on the alternatives (or in the Left's case lack of) to Osborne's plans. I don't suppose it will last. But the light being shed on the decaying relationship between Miliband and Balls shows that nothing has changed since the Blair/Brown years.

 

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It's Gone All Gordon

Hugo Rifkind wrote an excellent article in The Times (£) about Gordon Brown's evidence at the Leveson Enquiry this week. He compares Tony Blair's and Gordon Brown's views on the press, views that expose the two men's very different outlook.

Tony Blair thought back then — and doubtless still thinks — that the British press was awful. “Of course the accuracy of a story counts,” he said. “But it is secondary to impact. It is this necessary devotion to impact that is unravelling standards, driving them down, making the diversity of the media not the strength it should be, but an impulsion towards sensation above all else.”

It’s a fairly devastating critique, this, painting the press as irresponsible and amoral; a nihilistic force of mob-handed destruction. In the wake of phone hacking and everything else, this does not seem inaccurate. But this is not what Gordon Brown thinks at all. He sees a press that is not amoral, but immoral. Or, to put it another way, Tony Blair would say that the press tore apart Gordon Brown because he was rubbish, because it was fun, because it was just so damn easy, because a mindless sort of group-think took hold and ordinary humanity flew out the window. Whereas Gordon Brown thinks it happened because two or three powerful men, for ideological or commercial reasons, entered into a conspiracy to get rid of him.

I would argue that this isn't just how Gordon Brown thinks but how many on the left think. The left sees News International as a political opponent (at least since its papers swapped sides) not as a news outfit whose failings are the same as other media operators. They genuinely believe that News International is in league with the Tories and out to get them.

It is this paranoid political outlook, allied with the commercial opportunism on the part of Murdoch's competitors, that has led to the unjustifiable amount of media coverage that Leveson and any Murdoch related story gets. Rifkind concludes...

“Attacking motive is far more potent than attacking judgment,” said Tony Blair in 2007. “It is not enough for someone to make an error. It has to be venal. Conspiratorial.”

Quite. The Leveson Inquiry was born out of a sudden public awareness that print media had terrible problems. I’m not going to play those problems down. But they were Tony Blair problems, not Gordon Brown problems; problems about process, not motive. All the way through, I’ve had a sense of lawyers looking for problems with motive and simply not finding them. And thus, what started seven months ago (seven months!) as a righteous autopsy into grotesque wrongs done to ordinary folk has become a whirlwind of innuendo about whether the sidekicks of media bosses and Cabinet ministers are sending each other the right sort of text message.

This is why it’s getting boring. It’s gone weird. It’s gone Gordon.

My favourite comment under this article is from Stephanie Bennett...

"A politician complaining about the press is like a sailor complaining about the sea". - Enoch Powell

Miliband's English Interest

You won't have been able to escape Ed Miliband opining on his sense of Englishness today, as he attempts to exploit a wave of patriotism that has gripped the country following the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. He desperately needs to distract the voting public from his parties more natural republicanism, as expressed by Tom Watson, Labour MP who described the Diamond Jubilee as a "show of opulence by state elites". For the old loyal Brownite (and now MiliBrownite) spinner, Watson's comments are an unusually clumsy and honest expression of what many on the left think of the Monarchy but, as Ed Miliband knows, are a big turn off for many key sections of the electorate.

Miliband knows Labour needs to revive its fortunes in the South of England after being wiped out there in the last election, and he'll hope claiming an interest in England will help that objective. However, as with Gordon Brown's "British jobs for British workers" sound bite, this speech is likely to turn out equally as meaningless and empty.

You have to ask, what is Miliband offering the English? There isn't one policy he can point to that is intended to benefit the English. To be fair, there isn't much on offer from any political party specifically for the English, apart from the Government's plan to reduce the democratic deficit caused by the unequal parliamentary constituency boundaries. Unsurprisingly, Labour oppose this eminently sensible plan. Why? Because they benefit from the inequality as there are more safe Labour constituencies in their heartlands than there should be.

It is also this self-serving approach to their politics we should bear in mind when considering Labour's new found interest in England. Labour relies heavily on Scotland as a power base and, if they got back into power, would do everything they could to boost their recently flagging fortunes there, at the expense of England and the English tax payer.

Local Election Results - Nothing We Didn't Already Know

I'm getting a bit bored of the hysterical local election results coverage now. It's difficult to see what these results tell us that we didn't already know. There is a lot of commentary, especially from anti-Cameron right wing commentators as well as the normal party political spin from Labour, around the state of the Conservative party and its leadership.

Based on the local election results the BBC estimates the national share of the vote as the Tories on 31%, Labour on 38% and the Lib Dems on 16%. This outcome reflects what polls have been telling us about Tory support for about a month now. Labour's support is not anywhere near the peek of 45% some polls have suggested and the Lib Dems (who always do better at local elections) is higher.

If anything, the lack of much improvement in the popular vote for Ed Miliband's Labour party since last year's local elections is comment worthy, but instead we're hearing how fantastically well Labour have done and how Cameron's "gaffe prone" government is in real trouble.

Focus has been on the number of council seats gained and lost by the parties since these seats were last up for election in 2008. But Labour couldn't have failed to win 700 odd seats given the low base they were at 4 years ago and the very high base the Tories achieved. Labour did well to win about 100 more than that but that's still not terribly surprising. It's worth remembering that Labour gained over 400 seats in the local elections on the same day they lost the General Election in 2010, with a Michael Foot-esque share of the national vote due, again, to the base positions of the parties when those seats had last been elected. So, Labour haven't produced anything worth the hype. The danger is that all the positive coverage they are getting will start to embed the idea that the same lot of failures that ran this country into the ground up to 2010 are credible candidates to run the country again in 2015.

The main difference between now and last year's election is the fall in Tory support. There's no doubt Cameron has some major issues with communicating his government's agenda. This has been a major contributor to the Tories drop in support of about 5% since the general election. For example, the last budget cut taxes for the poor and increased the amount of tax raised from the rich, but you'd think the opposite was true from the coverage it received in the media. This last month has seen one issue after another spin out of control. The government's position in most cases has been reasonably defensible. But no adequate expectation setting before policy announcements seems to take place. Then, following announcements or potentially damaging events, no effective rebuttal of opposition attacks occurs, allowing them to drive the media agenda and influence public opinion.

I have to admit, the lack of aggressive media management from the likes of the mendacious Alistair Campbell is refreshing in this government. But perhaps Labour had it right. Could it be that a modern political party can't survive without aggressively bullying the media to get your line into their headlines. I hope that is not the case. But one way or the other the Tories need to get their point across. Otherwise, Labour's minor successes like these local elections will continue to be blown out of all proportion and their, often misleading, narrative on government policy will become the perceived truth in the public's mind. It could already be too late.

Of course, the Tories woes are not all down to poor communication. They are lacking a strong message that goes beyond getting the nation's finances back into shape (and even that is arguably suffering as they increasingly water down their policies as the going gets tough and in response to pressure from their worried coalition partners). The Big Society was supposed to provide a broader agenda but it's disappeared as has Steve Hilton, Cameron's policy guru and nothing seems to have replaced it or him.

Cameron shouldn't be panicked into any policy lurches to the left or right. But he should take some time now to clarify what his broad message is and how to effectively get it across to voters. He should start by looking at who he has working on media management and policy development. Then he needs to start planning to differentiate the Tories from the coalition, focusing on what he'd like to do but currently can't and how a majority Tory government would deliver if given a chance.

Red Ken's Brass Neck And Red Ed's Regret

You've got to admire the brass neck of Labour's Mayoral candidate, Ken "do as I say not as I do" Livingstone.

As Everyone will be aware he was caught out arranging his financial affairs in the most tax efficient way possible, despite condemning others who did the same as evil, tax dodging "rich bastards".

Hypocrisy in Labour politicians being par for the course the issue probably would have blown over by now had it not been for Livingstone's accusations that Boris Johnson, the Tory candidate, had similar arrangements. Boris and Ken had previously covered this territory and Ken knew full well the accusations weren't true.

Red Ken's accusations inevitably led to calls for all the candidates to reveal their financial affairs for public scrutiny. His attempts to avoid disclosure then, when forced, the revelations that he (and to a lesser extent the Lib Dem candidate - they always have to be "equidistant", don't they?) had paid a significantly smaller proportion of their income in tax than Boris, have made all the headlines over the past few days.

Now, Ken is attempting to make out that it was the Tories who made everyone's tax affairs an issue, saying it's a distraction from the "real" issues facing Londoners. In reality it was him, by making false allegations that inflamed the whole topic. The fuss being made about individuals tax affairs has been a distraction, not least as it was only Ken that had a big problem with tax efficient arrangements. But the original revelation on Livingstone's tax arrangements was very much relevant as it showed him up as the hypocrite he is. His response also revealed him to be and out and out liar. Boris Johnson would have to be condemning, and proposing the jailing of, serial adulterers to reach the same levels of hypocrisy as dear old Ken.

Mayoral elections are very much about the individuals as well as their policies. How trustworthy are they? Can we trust them to do what they say they are going to do? etc. Ken, like many politicians on the left in this country, has shown himself not to be trustworthy. His chances of winning are now looking very slim.

After losing in Bradford, Ed Miliband really can't afford to lose in another Labour orientated city like London, especially during a mid-term Tory government. He will hope the inevitable gains Labour will see in the local elections (the Tories will be defending a very high water mark result from 2008) will overshadow his failure in London.

How Red Ed must be regretting going for his colour-sake, Red Ken, now.

Ed's Progress

 It seems the public have made their minds up about Ed...

Screen grab from BBC's Newsnight