Sunday 24 January 2016

The Report of Reports


This week there have been two reports published into the failures of the 2015 General Election, one by the Labour party and one by the pollsters.

The Labour Party's report shows how far the party has to travel in order to be electable. Not by the eloquent way in which it describes how Labour had piecemeal populist policies, but no overriding economic plan. Or by the way in which it aptly suggests that they chose the wrong leader in 2010 and couldn't ever recover from that. Or even that Labour became a complete joke with the EdStone.

No, the report didn't tackle these issues. It said that Labour had let them be blamed for the economic crisis but it wasn't their fault. Ed Miliband was a great leader, but those nasty media types had it in for him. Or that their policies were great but most people didn't know about them.

Ostriches and sand come to mind.

Labour lost due to the horrible Tories, the nasty media, and I guess, the public's stupidity. Not a problem with Labour at all.

It should be remembered that only three Labour leaders have ever commanded a majority in parliament in their 100 year odd history. In my lifetime there has only been one, in which there have been three Tory PMs. The only Labour leader in recent times to be successful has been the one nearest the centre of the electorate and not on the left. This is where the public is. And if there is no viable centre, the public likes to dress to the right rather than the less.

Since the election Labour has moved even further left under Jeremy Corbyn. I guess Labour will have to wait for the next electoral disaster report.

The second report went into the reasons why the pollsters got it all wrong in the lead up to the election. This report was more reasoned and explained that the methodologies weren't really to blame. It also said that there wasn't much bunching of polls, although that is slightly hard to believe. Their main finding was that they hadn't sampled enough Tories.

Which when you think about it - is obvious, after all that was the outcome. But what they mean is that the voters they contacted - and had responses from - were more likely to be Labour voters and so were more represented. The theory is that Tories are less likely to answer the phone to pollsters and have less time to fill in online polls. That's probably a reasonable theory, but it's difficult to make adjustments, maybe they have to add more weight to the Tory voters. They already have to do this since the 1992 election fiasco. But it makes you wonder if the bias is so great smaller fluctuations will be exaggerated.

There's two ways joe public can handle these polls until any new polling techniques have been proven to tally accurately with election results. On normal voting intention polls, add three percent to the Tory percentage and subtract three from the Labour percentage.

Alternatively, if you just want to know who will win the general election for sure forget voting intention polls and look at the leader ratings, and who the voters trust with the economy. If both these are favouring one party (and they invariably do) then that party will win. This has been proven in each election since 1979 even in 1992 and 2015.

Maybe this is the last time to discuss the 2015 GE, but it's making me want to watch the election programmes again!

Squiffy.

Thursday 7 January 2016

The Labour re-shuffle has finally come to an end

Starting at Monday lunchtime, the Labour party has been having a re-shuffle, and it has finally come to an end. Four days later. The longest re-shuffle in history. So it must be a real night of the long knives with lots of changes then? Not at all. Two sackings from the front bench, and one move.

After briefing in December that Hilary Benn was going to be sacked, that Diane Abbott was going to be the new Foreign Secretary there was no change in this respect.

Michael Dugher was sacked, as was Pat McFadden. Maria Eagle was moved from defence to make way for Emily Thornberry, Corbyn's fellow unilateralist.

Dugher and McFadden were dismissed as being disloyal and incompetent - which when compared against Corbyn's record is pretty laughable.

The supposedly even handed review of Trident looks like a joke now, with both Thornberry and Ken Livingstone both being unilateralists. Livingstone even went so far to say we should pull out of NATO today.

Following the front bench re-shuffle, three shadow ministers went onto resign, one live on TV. There were bitter tweets from MPs. Some MPs have blocked other MPs on twitter. There was a spat between Diane Abbott and Jonathan Reynolds.

This is a party at war with itself. 

To think that 8 months ago this party could have formed the Government. We had a lucky escape.

To Corbyn's credit, the re-shuffle has slightly moved the front bench his way, but Labour is heading for oblivion whilst the moderates do nothing but snipe. They need to act and soon, otherwise Labour will pass into history.

Squiffy.


Saturday 2 January 2016

2015 rolls into 2016

It's that time of year again when I have to review my predictions from the last year and make some new ones. So let's review the last year:


  1. The economy will continue to recover, and will grow by 2.5% this year. Wages growth will really begin to outstrip inflation. 1 point
  2. The General Election will be close, final tally Tories 36%, Labour 31%, Lib Dems 10%, UKIP 12%. 1 point (very close)
  3. Tories and Lib Dems will form a second coalition. 0 points
  4. Lewis Hamilton will win the F1 World Championship again. 1 point
  5. Sebastien Vettel will not perform as well as Alonso at Ferrari, and Ferrari will end the year in greater turmoil with Raikkonen being sacked. 0 points
  6. Labour will have a leadership election with Chukka Umuna winning. 1/4 points
  7. Vince Cable will lose his seat in the election (hopefully) 1 point
  8. UKIP will gain 2 seats at the General Election, but Rochester & Strood will not be one of them. Douglas Carswell will be re-elected. 1/2 point
  9. Hilary Clinton, Jeb Bush and Rand Paul will all run for the US Presidential primaries. 1 point
  10. Nick Clegg will resign the leadership of the Lib Dems. 1 point

Overall 6.75 points is not bad. I was caught out by Ferrari being a lot stronger than planned, and who could have predicted Jeremy Corbyn being elected as Labour leader?


Now for 2016.

  1. Lewis Hamilton will win the F1 World Championship again.
  2. Sebastien Vettel will be second in the F1 World Championship and will win more races.
  3. Nico Rosberg will leave Mercedes at the end of the year, and Raikkonen will retire.
  4. It will be Hilary Clinton vs Marco Rubio for the US presidency.
  5. Marco Rubio will win the presidency.
  6. The EU referendum will happen this year with Remain winning by roughly 58% to 42%
  7. The Tories will beat Labour in the local elections by a small margin, with the Lib Dems coming back quite strongly in third.
  8. There will be a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn's leadership
  9. Douglas Carswell will leave UKIP and stay independent
  10. At least 2 MPs will defect from Labour

Let's see how well we go this year.

Squiffy.