UK General Discussion

[YL]

Nick Clegg on socialists and tax:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

(Via the Guardian's live blog.)

Nothing like a good caricature, eh?

[YL]

Chris Huhne has resigned from the Cabinet after he and his ex-wife were charged with perverting the course of justice.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2012/feb/03/chris-huhne-speeding-penalty-energy-secretary-live-updates

Interesting to speculate what might have happened if he'd been elected Lib Dem leader.

[YL]

I wish that Clegg and Cameron would create a new Liberal-Conservative party, and the super-right-wing-crazies would leave the Tories, and the clearly-socialist-left-wingers would leave the LibDems, and thus create a new right of centre party.

What socialist left wingers?

And David Cameron is fairly moderate compared to his party? What is this, 2007?

I think he is, actually.  That says more about the rest of his party than it does about him, mind.

And there are certainly left wingers in the Lib Dems.  There aren't as many as there used to be, of course, but you're always going to get some people who stick with their party in a situation like that.

[YL]

I'd say the LDs are actually the most divided party and have been for some time now. The pro-coalitionista-Orange Book-Cleggites and the lefty-SDP-Kennedy-Mingites. Bound to fall to peices once the coalition ceases to be and the LDs have about 20ish seats.

A couple of Lib Dem blogs from today:

http://miss-s-b.dreamwidth.org/1204935.html
http://stevepitt.wordpress.com/2012/02/03/betrayal-and-loathing-in-the-lib-dems/

[YL]

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17815769

You must be logged in to read this quote.

[YL]

Instant Paxman classic. You can almost see her career (and Norwich North) falling away from her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bddWaHuxTzc

She didn't even answer the question about whether she ever thought she was incompetent.  I note that if you type "chloe" into Google the auto-complete suggests "chloe smith newsnight".

Is it true that Cameron appointed Smith to the Treasury because he thought she was an accountant when she actually wasn't?

[YL]

Anyway, did anyone see the BBC 2 thingy 'Young, Bright and on the Right'? Thoughts, if any?

I've now watched it on iPlayer.  (Link here for anyone in the UK.)

The Cambridge one came across as a stereotypical Tory Boy, except perhaps slightly more socially inept.  Documentary makers can exaggerate the weirdness of people like that, of course.

The Oxford one was a bit more interesting, and was actually from what seemed to be a genuinely unusual background for an Oxbridge student, let alone a blazer-wearing Oxford Tory, and once the programme got going I thought there was something behind the affectations.  I did wonder why he'd persisted with OUCA for so long when they were so obnoxious, not only in their general behaviour but also directly to him.  I'd think he's the more likely of the two to actually crop up as a Tory MP in a few years' time, though he seemed to find it easy to fall out with people.

[YL]

He held Brent North for the Tories from 1974 until 1997 when he fell victim to the biggest ever post-1945 swing from the Tories to Labour (a barely believable 18.8%). Oddly enough this wasn't a personal rejection as such, but the result of local fury at hospital reorganisation and demographic changes combined with the national landslide.

I think that's (at least partially) a case of a strong personal vote evaporating in the face of too strong a wave/realignment.

Brent North also had the highest C to Lab swing in 2001.

[YL]

Something long suspected has been confirmed beyond all doubt: that one of the main sources for the lies spread about after the disaster was Sir Irvine Patnick, then the (Tory) MP for Hallam. There have already been calls for him to lose his knighthood, ala Fred the Shred.

He was actually named in the media at the time, so it's really no surprise.

I did so enjoy voting against him in '97 (and the outcome), partly because of this.

[YL]

14 Tories have written to 1922 asking for a leadership contest apparently.

They need 46 (15% of the parliamentary party) to trigger a confidence vote (like the one which brought down IDS) so still some way off.

No idea how the Lib Dems would react.

[YL]

Nick Clegg "singing"

This one is good too.

Any versions of Andrew Mitchell talking to the police yet?

[YL]

And new leaders always seem like a good idea, but it never works out as well as the party originally thought.

I think the Tories dumping Th*tch*r in 1990 might be an exception there.  And, oddly enough, the Lib Dems replacing Ming Campbell with you-know-who might be too; they were in a pretty bad way.

However, these hypothetical leader polls are dodgy, and have a poor reputation.  Someone asked how they'd vote if the leaders were Cameron, Miliband and Cable is effectively being prompted to think of the Lib Dems.

[YL]

Jeremy Browne, perhaps the Lib Dems' most right-wing MP, also insulted lots of people who used to vote Lib Dem and told them to vote Labour.

At the same time, the Lib Dems seem to be desparate to say that people shouldn't vote Labour because the party contains Ed Balls; the other Ed hardly gets a mention.

[YL]

It certainly looks like Ed Miliband got a good bounce from his speech if you believe today's Sunday Times/YouGov poll: 40% say he's doing a good job (though still 49% say he's doing a bad one), up from 28% (57% bad) last week.  The headline figures are not bad either (Lab 45%, Con 31%, LD 8%), but YouGov has been quite volatile recently and that's at the top end of their normal range for Lab.

(Tables here.)

[YL]

If you needed any confirmation that he's unqualified to be Health Secretary:
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/05/jeremy-hunt-abortion-restrict-time-limit-no-concern-for-women_n_1944010.html?utm_hp_ref=uk

To be honest Hunt's views on homeopathy concern me more than his views on abortion.

[YL]

Helen Pidd (yes, I know) of the Guardian has written another article about George Galloway and Bradford.

[YL]

So, Mitchell has finally gone.  I suspect he could have kept his job if he'd apologised clearly and immediately without coming across as so evasive about what he actually said.  Cameron has a bit of a record now for letting people hang on for too long when it's become clear that their position is untenable; see also Fox and Coulson.

The Osborne thing may be a non-story, if you believe the Virgin Trains version of events.  But if you believe the ITV journalist who broke the story, it has an air of "don't you know who I am" arrogance and self-importance, not unlike the Mitchell story without the swearing and insults.

[YL]

Breaking news: MacShane has resigned as an MP.

Yet another by-election in a safe Labour seat then....

I wonder how many of the names on the Barnsley shortlist will appear on this one. Just down the road, after all.

One of the candidates on the Middlesbrough shortlist, Mahroof Hussain, is a councillor in this constituency (and stood in Sheffield Hallam in 2005).

I'm please MacShane's gone.  It would have been ridiculous to leave Rotherham without an MP for a year as the committee's recommended punishment suggested, the offence seems bad enough to say that he should go, and he was never one of my favourite Labour MPs anyway.

[YL]

Nadine Dorries gets Tory whip suspended for going on reality show in Australia

Kind of difficult to talk about abortion with a mouthful of insects.

What the f**k is she doing.

Publicity seeking.

[YL]

If these polls hold up (which I doubt), its going to be impossible to ban Farage from the leaders debates, which should be fun.

It seems as if Cameron doesn't want as many debates next time anyway.

I think high UKIP shares (though 16% is surely an outlier) could last until fairly close to the election, but I still assume (as I think most do) that a lot of people currently saying they'll vote UKIP will shift back to where they came from (so in many cases the Tories) in the end.  The other question is how robust the Lib Dem to Lab shift is going to be.

[YL]

Just for comparison with the TNS poll, today's Yougov is Lab 42 Con 33 LD 10 UKIP 8, which seems much more plausible, and is fairly typical of recent Yougov polls.

[YL]

The Office for National Statistics has a set of interactive census maps on its website, done by local authority (I'm waiting for the ward figures) quintile (which of course means places with extreme values don't stand out).

Are the Welsh language figures surprising?  The last census suggested the corner might have been turned.

[YL]

Here are the percentages with "one or more skills in Welsh" by local authority, for ages 3 to 15, 16 to 64, and 65 and over respectively.  (I calculated these from raw numbers on the ONS website.) Sorted by the 3 to 15 figure, mostly to annoy the English Democrats.

Gwynedd 95%, 72%, 65%
Ceredigion 87%, 53%, 55%
Ynys Môn 86%, 70%, 57%
Carmarthenshire 69%, 55%, 61%
Conwy 59%, 39%, 30%
Denbighshire 54%, 33%, 30%
Powys 51%, 25%, 22%
Pembrokeshire 50%, 24%, 21%
Monmouthshire 47%, 9%, 6%
Torfaen 45%, 9%, 4%
Newport 44%, 8%, 4%
Flintshire 42%, 17%, 15%
Caerphilly 41%, 12%, 7%
Neath-Port Talbot 39%, 20%, 29%
Blaenau Gwent 39%, 8%, 4%
Rhondda-Cynon-Taf 38%, 16%, 15%
Wrexham 37%, 18%, 20%
Vale of Glamorgan 37%, 13%, 10%
Cardiff 35%, 14%, 9%
Bridgend 33%, 14%, 16%
Swansea 32%, 15%, 23%
Merthyr Tydfil 30%, 12%, 12%

[YL]

Sir Irvine Patnick (Conservative MP for Sheffield Hallam 1987-1997) has died at the age of 83. This is actually headline news, despite the fact that he was just a backbencher (of a fairly undistinguished hard-right type at that). The reason being the fact that he spread lies about the victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

He was a Tory whip for a time, which was what his knighthood was for.

My first general election vote contributed (in a small way of course!) to ending his parliamentary career.  The Con to LD swing in Hallam in that election was over 18%.

[YL]

I don't understand opposition to what Boris is saying at all. Or is there another side to the argument? Because upwards income redistribution doesn't seem like a good thing.

There are certain advantages to universal benefits.  For one, it's harder for people who really need the benefits to slip through the net, something which can happen quite a lot with certain means tested benefits.  Another is that the means testing itself generally involves spending a fair amount on a bureaucracy to run it.

If you have a reasonably progressive tax system, then it isn't upwards income redistribution anyway.  And the stuff about Mussolini is just silly.