Tory poll lead halved overnight after Brown’s speech

A poll for the Sun and News of the World has revealed that the Tory lead over Labour has halved overnight after Gordon Brown’s speech. The Tory vote dropped 3% and Labour’s increased 7%.

I’ve read recently that the typical bounce after a conference is four points. The Lib Dems had their bounce and this poll has wiped that out. It remains to be seen if the Tory conference will provide their own bounce and wipe out the Labour bounce, but at least Labour’s bounce is significantly above the usual 4%, so maybe we’ve claws back a few percetage points thanks to Brown’s speech.

What’s also interesting is that the Tory lead dropped, so it’s not just a bounce for Labour but it’s eaten into the Tory vote too. Hopefully those swing voters will stick with us after the Tory conference, and then it’s game on.
NB - Perhaps Labour ministers should note that the bounce is solely attributed to Brown’s speech, not the speech that Miliband, Johnson or Purnell made. Obviously as Leader he gets the most attention but if Miliband had delivered a superb speech then that may have changed things.

Tory votes falls 50% in Farnley and Wortley (Leeds) by-election

The Tories have hit the magic 50% this week nationally, but in Leeds they’ve hit it for all the wrong reasons.

In the Farnley and Wortley by-election last night their vote halved, falling from the 800s to the 400s.

The Green vote also halved although they held on and took the seat. Labour’s vote did fall but marginally compared to the other two parties. The major gains were made by the Lib Dems, possibly because of their conference being in the news and people not wanting to vote Labour but also not wanting to vote Tory or Green.

Always nice to see places still doing anything to avoid voting Tory though, even if it means voting Lib Dem!

The Tories are clueless on the economy.

You can always tell when Labour have done something right, because generally you don’t hear anything from the Tories. Scrolling through PoliticsHome I found a comment from Chris Grayling on the HBOS takeover, why he was speaking and not George Osbourne I don’t know - perhaps because Osbourne and Cameron are totally clueless.

Whats funny, apart from the grudging acceptance, is that they are still harping on about the US tax cuts, which have allegedly ‘energised’ the economy.

How many banks have the US government had to nationalise again? Is it 3 of the top 5? Or is it two with another one allowed to collapse? I’m losing track to be honest with you. Are house prices still plummeting in the US? Thought so. How’s the US dollar doing? Oh dear. Unemployment…ah.

The only speck of hope for the US economy has been that last quarter it had something like 0.8% growth over the quarter. Why the Tories think that people are so stupid they won’t actually know what’s going on in America in one of the biggest economic crises arguably since World War 2, I don’t know.

The other reason the Tories are missing the mark so much on the economy is that Labour already gave a big tax rebate, £2.7 billion worth. We’ve just received our first £60 rebate this month, with another £10 a month to come for the next six months. Obviously any effects on the economy have yet to be felt, but you’d expect it would only slightly help consumer spending.

In the weeks leading up to the tax rebate, the Tories had been calling for one like the US. Then when we announced one, they turned round and said it was careless borrowing. More than a few people noted this turnaround and have subsequently ignored nearly everything they’ve had to say about the economy, preferring someone who knows his arse from his elbow like Vince Cable of the Lib Dems. Thus when you read reports about the HBOS takeover on BBC news, you mainly see quotes from Alex Salmond of the SNP, and Vince Cable, with nothing from George Osbourne and David Cameron.

We’ve also seen the only action from George Osbourne this week, which is an open letter to Alistair Darling offering ‘cross-party support’ for extending the amount of protection for investors up to £50k, up from the current total of £35k. Osbourne made this suggestion around the time of Northern Rock, the fact that in all the time since thats the best he can do is testament to his uitt

In ordinary times a combination of having your opinions ignored and not respected with you not having anything of note to say on the economy would be political poison. But with the right-wing press so anti-Labour and the Tories so far ahead in the polls, they’re getting away with it.

 

Update: Ha! Vindication from any quarter is welcome. Even someone from the Telegraph has noticed how silent and pathetic the Tories have been while everyone else comes to terms with the biggest banking shocks since the 1920s. I have to admit I was surprised to read that Cameron had been calling on people to ‘defend capitalism’ in case the left wrecks the global economy in reaction to the current crisis. Maybe he has been spending too much time in one of the various ivory towers he has in his multi-million pound property portfolio, but if he hasn’t noticed, the global economy is to many people already wrecked. Idiot.

 

Labour meets target shock!

Good news today that reminds me that this government isn’t clueless and is achieving some very worthwhile things in amongst the never-heard-of-you backbench and small-time ministerial rebellions.

Labour has met its target for cutting the rate of infection on MRSA. It’s also seen a drop in the number of C-Diff infections.

Even The Times is giving praise.

Heady days indeed!

Are you an idiot, or Charles Clarke? Then why not overshadow any chance of Labour’s recovery for a brief moment of fame?

Well they say Brown’s a ditherer but I thought he was pretty ruthless yesterday in sacking the Junior Minister who called for a leadership election.

‘We don’t know if she’s resigned but either way she’s sacked’ was pretty much the message from Brown’s HQ.

What gets me is that there are people out there who actually believe they may be making things better by trying to oust the man they all voted for unchallenged last year.

On the ground, I’ve not spoken to one party member who wants us to change leader, they all say it will be too bloody, it won’t make any difference because we’re still pursuing what are essentially the right policies, we don’t want to poison the chalice of a younger leader by making him immediately lose an election, and nobody votes for a party that commits brutal regicide.

Similarly, in Progress a group of 12 MPs have written an article lambasting the current direction of the government, whilst not calling for a leadership challenge.

Now, in times like this I try to put myself in their position and understand exactly what it is they think they’re going to achieve? Because of them we go into conference season with even more heightened speculation about Brown’s position, and our cause hasn’t been furthered one bit. Maybe in their local constituencies these MPs hope people will see how they are standing against the unpopular government and still vote for them, but I doubt it very much if that will happen.

The problem for the government isn’t Brown particularly, it’s the communication issues. Now obviously that’s in many ways Brown’s fault, but it’s also the fault of people like Stephen Carter who have failed at their jobs (though I’d be interested to see his side of it…) and frankly the rest of the cabinet who have been pathetically meek in defending their record in government.

Where are people like Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw shouting from the parapets? It comes to something when our most staunch defense in recent times comes from John Prescott, who stood down with Blair last year.

And, with the great timing inherent in all no-namers and ex-somethingorothers, it’s overshadowed our energy efficiency announcement and ruined further chances of a fightback over the conference. Or at the very least made it that much harder to achieve.

And who are these people? They’re all the nobodies you’ve never heard of, who’s opinions don’t really count for much and are out to save their skin. Or they’re idiots like Charles Clarke, with an inflated sense of ego and importance who are so lost in the shining light of their unique insights that they can’t see the damage they’re inflicting on the party.

We’re stuck with Brown, for better or for worse. And the sooner the party realises this and gets behind him and takes the fight to the public and the Tories, the better. We’ve wasted months now speculating and wringing our hands about the current situation and what has it achieved? Nothing positive, and has more than likely contributed to our current poor standing in the polls, which are skewed enough as it is with people taking out their frustrations on the global economy on the government.

At the end of the day Labour MPs have to assess how they want to go on for the next two years. Do they want to go on with their heads held high, defending the admirable record of the government that they’ve until recently been so proud to be a part of? Or do they want to go on with their tail between their legs, muttering behind closed doors and doing nothing at all to help the party avoid utter destruction?

Shock as Tory makes ridiculous progressive claims to the Guardian

Less than a week after commenting on the stready stream of Tories heading over to the Guardian to proclaim themselves the true progressive arty lefty party, George Osbourne heads over for a natter about how Gordon Browns anti-poverty measures have failed so badly and why the Tories are now the true progressives.

Aside from the implication that until recently it was Labour who were the actual progressives, and that actually the Tories have been wrong for a political generation, his comment that Labour has failed on poverty is particularly weak. In the current media climate I’m sure the right-wing blogs and press will lap it up faithfully and recycle some quotes and the like.

It’s never the original accusations that get you in the end, it’s the lies

Well surprise surprise, Ray Lewis has resigned, the day after Mayor of London Boris Johnson defended him fully and denounced the allegations as a conspiracy because he had the guts to go work for Boris Johnson.

However, it’s not the accusations that made his position untenable, but the lies he’s been telling. The key moment came when the Ministry of Justice issued a statement (and I imagine Jack Straw was quite gleeful about it) saying that, contrary to what he says, Ray Lewis has never been a Justice of the Peace. Lewis tried to clarify his comments by saying he’d been ‘considered’, but by that point the game was up.

George Osbourne - What we’d do in this economic crisis

George Osbourne has come out with what the Tories would do if they were in Government now:

“There are three things we would do.  First stop the planned increases in tax in the pipe line such as that on the low paid, small businesses and others.

How? And how would he make up the shortfall in tax flow? More borrowing? He slammed the government for doing that with the recent mini-budget tax cut.

“Second we would allow the government to grow more slowly than the economy grows and thridly we would look at long term reigning in of spending in the good years to stop the cycle of boom and bust.

Long term reigning in of spending? It would be like the government in reverse. Between 1997-2001 Labour stuck to Tory spending plans, and then spent lots of money to try save our public services from complete ruin. The Conservatives look like sticking to Labour spending plans, then cutting funding to public services, or are they going to reign in spending, lower taxes and somehow maintain historically unprecedented levels of spending on our public services?

He then said that the Cabinet’s decision to not take a pay rise this year was a ‘gesture’ and what mattered was families pay. Well of course it’s a bloody gesture, how else are you supposed to interpret it?

“Look, I am a Conservative who would like to reduce taxes.  However, if I were fortunate enough to be Chancellor after the next election I would have to deal with the broken services left over from this government.

These sorts of comments never fail to annoy me. If the services we have now are broken, what were they in 1997? What would they be without the unprecedented spending and investment? The Conservatives can’t try and make out like 100% of Labour’s investment has been wasted, in which case they would have to tacitly admit that whatever the state of the services now, they were much worse under the previous Tory government.

Why not let Kelvin McKenzie do Labour’s job for them?

So it looks like it’s going to be a three-way race in the Davis By-Election between David Davis (Conservative? Independent? Independent Conservative? Who knows!), The Monster Raving Loony Party and ex-Sun editor Kelvin McKenzie.

Now the line that Davis and probably the Tories are going to try to spin out of this is that Labour are too cowardly to stand, but in reality it just emphasises the farcical nature of the situation that Davis has plunged himself and the Tories into.

What’s more ‘Nasty’ - ‘Tory Toff’ or ‘N*gger for a Neighbour’?

Shadow Chancellor George Osbourne has come out and claimed Labour are now the new ‘nasty party’ in a reference to the reputation of his own party for the past few decades.

While I’m not going to defend Labour’s campaign in Crewe & Nantwich, which was peurile at best and at worst did have some uncomfortable echoes of xenophobia with the lines about foreign nationals carrying ID cards, is it on a par with the things the Conservatives did to earn them the reputation in the first place?