General Election 2017

[dAVe80]

17 minutes ago, PompeyVillan said:

As an aside Labour have been working with Bernie Sanders campaign managers. And you can tell, given the present election polls it's hard to argue, Labour are running a fantastic campaign. They're picking up alot of support and when you see Labour rallies, Corbyn has huge public support. People hanging off lamposts and standing on their roofs to see Corbyn in Yorkshire.

Labour are canvassing like never before, it's a grassroots campaign alongside a social media campaign. With the help of Momentum they're getting to alot of people. The thing that they really think can make a difference is the real conversations they can have with floating voters. After all Labour's policies are already really popular, and having a real person talk to you about the issues that concern you can be powerfully persuasive. 

Even if we don't win, we're giving a bloody good go. Unfortunately we still have detractors in the party, like my own LABOUR MP, who told a local BBC reporter that people weren't going to vote Labour because of Jeremy, and the Tories were going to win by an historic margin. Talk about rallying the troops!

[itdoesntmatterwhatthissay]

3 minutes ago, dAVe80 said:

Even if we don't win, we're giving a bloody good go. Unfortunately we still have detractors in the party, like my own LABOUR MP, who told a local BBC reporter that people weren't going to vote Labour because of Jeremy, and the Tories were going to win by an historic margin. Talk about rallying the troops!

Disgraceful isn't it. It's one reason I struggle to vote Labour; a lack of unity and a focus on their own careers. 

I expect a lot more from the Labour party, but then the manifesto excluded electoral reform in favour of 'constitutional convention', so meh, what should I expect!

[tom_avfc]

5 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

Spot on!  Not only is it a matter of good versus bad, it's a complete no brainer.

I haven't seen a remotely coherent argument from a Tory supporter yet, just the repeated mantra of 'Terrorist sympathiser', 'who's doing the sums, Diane Abbott' yada yada.

I agree with the majority of this but 'who's doing the sums?' isnt really a trivial point to me. I won't be voting Tory (probably won't be voting at all) but it does come across as a labour manifesto which hasn't been costed at all and probably doesn't need to be as they know they're not going to get in.

Anybody could come up with a great list of things they'd do knowing that they won't get in so will never be held to account for it. It's like the nick clegg tuition fee promise which ruined his reputation as it was never going to be feasible. 

Now maybe this labour manifesto has been costed properly and is achievable but when you have prominent labour politicians who can't do basic sums on the cost of one proposal it doesn't give off the best idea.

As I said I probably won't be voting. I have no trust in any party at all and the move to the right from the tories and to the wishful thinking left of labour means I find myself with much less interest in politics as someone who would sit much more central on the political scale. 

[tom_avfc]

5 hours ago, Wainy316 said:

Spot on!  Not only is it a matter of good versus bad, it's a complete no brainer.

I haven't seen a remotely coherent argument from a Tory supporter yet, just the repeated mantra of 'Terrorist sympathiser', 'who's doing the sums, Diane Abbott' yada yada.

I agree with the majority of this but 'who's doing the sums?' isnt really a trivial point to me. I won't be voting Tory (probably won't be voting at all) but it does come across as a labour manifesto which hasn't been costed at all and probably doesn't need to be as they know they're not going to get in.

Anybody could come up with a great list of things they'd do knowing that they won't get in so will never be held to account for it. It's like the nick clegg tuition fee promise which ruined his reputation as it was never going to be feasible. 

Now maybe this labour manifesto has been costed properly and is achievable but when you have prominent labour politicians who can't do basic sums on the cost of one proposal it doesn't give off the best idea.

As I said I probably won't be voting. I have no trust in any party at all and the move to the right from the tories and to the wishful thinking left of labour means I find myself with much less interest in politics as someone who would sit much more central on the political scale. 

[Wainy316]

This is the year the seeds are planted, if the campaign was 3 months Labour might well have it in the bag. 

At the risk of sounding like a Liverpool fan  2022 will be the year.  If there's anything left of this country by then anyway..

[darrenm]

2 minutes ago, tom_avfc said:

I agree with the majority of this but 'who's doing the sums?' isnt really a trivial point to me. I won't be voting Tory (probably won't be voting at all) but it does come across as a labour manifesto which hasn't been costed at all and probably doesn't need to be as they know they're not going to get in.

Anybody could come up with a great list of things they'd do knowing that they won't get in so will never be held to account for it. It's like the nick clegg tuition fee promise which ruined his reputation as it was never going to be feasible. 

Now maybe this labour manifesto has been costed properly and is achievable but when you have prominent labour politicians who can't do basic sums on the cost of one proposal it doesn't give off the best idea.

As I said I probably won't be voting. I have no trust in any party at all and the move to the right from the tories and to the wishful thinking left of labour means I find myself with much less interest in politics as someone who would sit much more central on the political scale. 

On the contrary, it's been fully costed. Everything in there has a source of funding. 

The IFS have said that in their opinion it all adds up but there are a few assumptions so they don't think that in reality there will be quite enough to cover everything.

I assume that you know that Diane Abbott accidentally said 300 thousand instead of 300 million? So panicked got flustered. Not good. But that also yesterday Philip Hammond, the current chancellor of the exchequer said HS2 was costing £32 billion and not £52 billion as already declared? 

[hippo]

36 minutes ago, Demitri_C said:

Won't make a difference cannot see Labour winning this election. It might not be the landslide as being predicted though 

I think it will - that Lynton Crosby knows what he doing.

They even spread a false rumour at last election that Labour was winning the ground war.

Although everyone can vote - its a few voters in a few seats that decide the election - Lynton Crosby will be homing in on these.

[villaglint]

Here's a question I haven't heard asked of either Labour or Theresa Mays team yet. As a citizen of this country it feels pretty relevant to this election to me. 

What area of public spending do you intend to cut to cover the £75bn a year that the Treasury estimates we will lose by leaving the single market? 

[snowychap]

3 hours ago, blandy said:

 

She began her speech today with the following: Today, as we face this critical election for our country, I launch my manifesto for Britain’s future...

Not 'we launch the Conservative manifesto' or 'I launch the Conservative manifesto'.

 

I didn't see Corbyn or Farron do their speech - they may have said the same kind of thing, I don't know.

 

Edited May 18, 2017 by snowychap
Got me Fallons 'n' Farrons all confused.

[blandy]

17 minutes ago, dAVe80 said:

Even if we don't win, we're giving a bloody good go. Unfortunately we still have detractors in the party, like my own LABOUR MP, who told a local BBC reporter that people weren't going to vote Labour because of Jeremy, and the Tories were going to win by an historic margin. Talk about rallying the troops!

Jezza's paymaster and best bud, said much the same yesterday

Quote

“The scale of the task is immense. People like me are always optimistic … things can happen. But I don’t see Labour winning. I think it would be extraordinary.”

McCluskey set what many will see as a new, historically low benchmark on which the success of the campaign will be judged.

“I believe that if Labour can hold on to 200 seats or so it will be a successful campaign,” McCluskey said. “It will mean that Theresa May will have had an election, will have increased her majority but not dramatically.”

If Labour ended up with just 200 MPs, it would likely hand the Conservative government a working majority of more than 80. It would also be Labour’s worst result since 1935.

 

[darrenm]

3 minutes ago, blandy said:

Jezza's paymaster and best bud, said much the same yesterday

 

I thought at the time it would be very surprising for him to say that. Seems he was taken out of context. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/17/unite-leader-len-mccluskey-labour-seats-general-election

“My comments were part of a conversational piece, which have been slightly taken out of context because it was done on the basis of ‘if the polls are to be believed’.

He's right. At the time, if the polls are to be believed, getting 200 seats would be good. But that's only if you believe them, and if so, they're shifting in Labour's favour anyway.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, darrenm said:

The IFS have said that in their opinion it all adds up

Have they? Where? I looked at their website and the most recent thing on Labour's plans says pretty much the opposite (though it was based on the leaked manifesto which is slightly different to the final version)

Quote

Do the Labour Party’s numbers add up? If I had a penny for every time I’ve been asked that in the past 24 hours, that alone might have given me enough cash to be among the 5 per cent of people they say will be asked for more income tax.

The short answer is, as of yet, I don’t know. The longer answer is to ask whether the question even makes sense in the context of a set of proposals that would represent such a big change from where we are now.

 

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Have they? Where? I looked at their website and the most recent thing on Labour's plans says pretty much the opposite (though it was based on the leaked manifesto which is slightly different to the final version)

 

It was on the Guardian live daily political feed on the Labour manifesto launch day. Not sure it's available now. They asked someone from the IFS who said (paraphrasing) 'yes, it all seems to add up, but in my opinion it doesn't make enough provisions for the highest earners and corporations moving away so they could possibly get £30b rather than £50b'.

Even your link from the IFS web site isn't exactly opposite to 'the figures add up', I mean, why wouldn't they? The figures are costed in the manifesto so anyone with a calculator can ensure they add up. But if you don't selectively quote me, the rest of that sentence says exactly what they say, a few assumptions so in their opinion not enough will be generated but no-one can possibly know as it's such a big change.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, darrenm said:

I thought at the time it would be very surprising for him to say that. Seems he was taken out of context. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/17/unite-leader-len-mccluskey-labour-seats-general-election

He's right. At the time, if the polls are to be believed, getting 200 seats would be good. But that's only if you believe them, and if so, they're shifting in Labour's favour anyway.

The full transcript is available . "it was taken out of context" - yeah right, Len! They all say that.

Sorry, but the "out of context thing" is utter horse-dung. Have a read - the interviewer even allows McLuskey to set the context - there's nothing imposed, no hypothticials, no "based on the polling what do you think? type stuff

Quote

CC Just a very final question, you say you weren’t optimistic for that breakthrough in the next four weeks. I don’t want to quote you on that without a bit of context: what would be a successful election result, what would represent a breakthrough in this situation we’re in now?

LM: First of all, you have to recognize that Labour only lost an election two years ago. The idea that you can win an election when you’ve lost one two years ago is difficult in itself. If you couple that with the fact that Scotland is lost to Labour and is not coming back any time soon and we’ve had two years of a constant attack on the leader of the party, aided and abetted by many in the right-wing and the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party], giving the impression that the party is divided — that’s precisely why the opinion polls showed up the way they were.

Prior to the referendum last year when Labour and the Tories were, you know, kind of pretty close together, three or four points, and a couple of opinion polls put Labour ahead — as soon as there was the mass resignations and votes of no confidence by the PLP the ratings dropped dramatically. One thing is for certain, the British electorate don’t vote for a divided party.

Part of what is happening, and in the past few weeks it’s been quite effective, is a coming together of the party — the electorate can see maybe this is a united party — and then the idea that; can you can get these policies across?
The scale of the task is immense. People like me are always optimistic in the sense that, you know, things can happen you can be quite delighted with. But I don’t see Labour winning. I think it would be extraordinary.

And I believe that if Labour can hold on to 200 seats or so it will be a successful campaign. It will mean that Theresa May will have had an election, will have increased her majority but not dramatically. And people will then say, I wonder what that’s all about. So it’s about fighting for every vote now, fighting to, kind of, hold on to the seats that Labour has got. We’ve got 235 at the moment.

It’s going to be a tough task...

 

 

 

[darrenm]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

The full transcript is available . "it was taken out of context" - yeah right, Len! They all say that.

Sorry, but the "out of context thing" is utter horse-dung. Have a read - the interviewer even allows McLuskey to set the context - there's nothing imposed, no hypothticials, no "based on the polling what do you think? type stuff

 

 

 

Fair enough, I hadn't read the whole transcript. It definitely wasn't out of context. McCluskey is a numpty for that.

[blandy]

8 minutes ago, darrenm said:

your link from the IFS web site isn't exactly opposite to 'the figures add up',

Ta for the reply.

I kind of took "Do the figures add up - I don’t know." to be fairly contradictory to "Do the figures add up - Yes, more or less" 

edit: and "no-one can possibly know" if they add up is (to me) not confirmation that they broadly add up.

[blandy]

1 minute ago, darrenm said:

McCluskey is a numpty

Nailed it.

 

[darrenm]

7 minutes ago, blandy said:

Ta for the reply.

I kind of took "Do the figures add up - I don’t know." to be fairly contradictory to "Do the figures add up - Yes, more or less" 

edit: and "no-one can possibly know" if they add up is (to me) not confirmation that they broadly add up.

2 different things -

Do the figures in the manifesto add up? Yes, everything they say they'll pay for, is costed in the manifesto

Will these funding sources provide enough money in the real world? Probably not, but there's no way to know

[choffer]

Leveson dead in the water.

[blandy]

6 minutes ago, darrenm said:

2 different things -

Do the figures in the manifesto add up? Yes, everything they say they'll pay for, is costed in the manifesto

Will these funding sources provide enough money in the real world? Probably not, but there's no way to know

Just looking at the Ch4 IFS fact check and well, they think differently.

Quote

Is it really “fully costed?”

That’s the claim on page 10. But it’s open to question.

The manifesto sets out £48.6 billion a year in day-to-day spending on a range of eye-catching policies, including more money for schools and the NHS, scrapping tuition fees, a pay rise for public sector workers and 10,000 more police officers.

It promises to pay for this with tax changes including an income tax hike for high earners, a corporation tax rise and a new Excessive Pay Levy on companies with a large number of highly-paid employees.

The party claims the full package of measures will bring in exactly the £48.6 billion they need to fund their ambitious spend.

There are some problems here…

Uncertainty: The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks Labour’s assumptions about how much money these tax measures will really bring in are “highly uncertain”.

Higher taxes usually bring in money in the short term, but over time people tend to change their behaviour to avoid paying higher taxes: they might retire earlier, shift more of their income into pensions, or even leave the country.

Drill down into some of the specific numbers, and the sense of vagueness and uncertainty grows.

For example, Labour say they will bring in an extra £6.5bn a year by doing more to tackle tax avoidance and evasion – a suspiciously precise number for something that is notoriously hard to calculate.

Labour says they have chosen a number that lies “between the Conservatives’ and Labour’s own commitments from the 2015 manifestos”.

It’s true that the £6.5bn figure splits the difference between the anti-tax avoidance targets announced by Labour and the Tories last time.

What Labour doesn’t mention is that when the major parties came out with these figures in 2015, the IFS accused them flatly of “just making up numbers”.

Cost of nationalisation: Labour say they want to re-nationalise energy supply networks, railways, Royal Mail and water companies.

The detail of how this will be achieved and how much it will cost is not explained in today’s documents.

Cost of National Investment Bank: Last year the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, announced a “firm pledge” for a new investment bank.

He said the government would supply £100bn of borrowed money to float the new publicly owned banks, and raise an additional £150bn from the private sector.

The bank idea is in the manifesto, but there’s no mention of that £100bn. We asked Labour about this and they told us: “The National investment bank is mainly private sector capital with some public seed capital. We are hoping to say more about this later in the campaign.”

They did not say how much government money will be ploughed into the bank, so we can’t say whether Mr McDonnell has gone back on his word.

National Transformation Fund: Labour’s plans pass their own test for “fiscal credibility”: they’ll increase spending on the everyday business of government by £48.6 billion, and they’ll take the same amount in tax.

But it’s on the long-term spending – which Labour have exempted from their Fiscal Credibility Rule – where the numbers are trickier.

The manifesto’s flagship infrastructure package is set to cost £250 billion over 10 years. This is long-term capital spending on things like new railways, energy and broadband.

The costings of this have not been published today, but Labour have confirmed to us that the fund will be paid for by government borrowing, taking advantage of low interest rates.

But hang on. Labour’s manifesto also says:

“We are committed to ensuring that the national debt is lower at the end of the next Parliament than it is today.”

How can you increase borrowing but promise to lower the national debt at the same time?

We pushed Labour on this and they told us the commitment they are making is to have debt falling “as a percentage of (trend) GDP”.

In other words, they are hoping that the economy will grow so quickly over the next five years (thanks in part to a boost from infrastructure spending) that debt as a share of the nation wealth will fall.

This is not actually stated in the manifesto, and it’s fair to say that Labour have not published any hard figures to back up this optimistic forecast for the economy.

They've (to their credit) explained how they hope to raise some of the money, and some things excluded have nil cost (rail franchises expiring), but there's an awful lot of "highly uncertain" in there. The tory one will be the same or worse, I'm sure.

edit - the idea that things are both "costed" and at the same time "unknown" is a strange one to me.