Shouldn't it say something that the optimism is there and it hasn't really filtered through much at all?

Shouldn't it say something that the optimism is there and it hasn't really filtered through much at all?

 

It hasn't filtered through in the polls no, but there is still like 15 months to go so there is more chance that it will than chance it won't as it is unlikely the economic momentum will be lost

 

 

Shouldn't it say something that the optimism is there and it hasn't really filtered through much at all?

 

And it should also say something that economic optimism was last this high in early 1997.... what happened in the election that year again?

Labour's poll lead is crumbling!!!!!11

 

 

 

http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php...anilla-comments

 

...Oh wait, their poll rating has barely moved at all in the past 6 weeks.

Oh, I'd missed that reply the other day Danny! Gi's an hour or two, I'll reply after I've got the Melodifestivalen heat two thread out of the way (PRIORITIES *.*)

 

Still waiting by the way :angel:

Labour's poll lead is crumbling!!!!!11

http://www1.politicalbetting.com/index.php...anilla-comments

 

...Oh wait, their poll rating has barely moved at all in the past 6 weeks.

 

It is a marathon not a sprint

 

14 months of continual good news about the economy and jobs to come, Labour have peaked, its steadily downhill from here

 

Prediction as of now

 

Tory - 40%

Labour 32%

Lib Dem - 10%

UkIP - 9%

Others - 9%

At this stage before the 2010 election we were like 20 points clear in the polls and scraped into #10, the final margin was about 6% or something, we lost about 14 points in the polls, if Labour have a lead now of 6% then I can see similar happening and us having a final lead of about 8% on election day

It's been demonstrated multiple times that the Labour lead is far less flimsy than poll leads before previous elections, so for fear of feeling like I'm hitting my head against a brick wall I won't explain it fully now. Do some research.

It is a marathon not a sprint

 

14 months of continual good news about the economy and jobs to come, Labour have peaked, its steadily downhill from here

 

Prediction as of now

 

Tory - 40%

Labour 32%

Lib Dem - 10%

UkIP - 9%

Others - 9%

At this stage before the 2010 election we were like 20 points clear in the polls and scraped into #10, the final margin was about 6% or something, we lost about 14 points in the polls, if Labour have a lead now of 6% then I can see similar happening and us having a final lead of about 8% on election day

God Craig, as I've said forty fucking times - Labour's current lead is NOT based on Conservatives switchers as previous Labour leads were/vice versa. Hence, the rules of the last few elections do not apply solidly for this one. Why are you monumentally incapable of processing information you've been told?

 

Basically, what you're essentially predicting there is that voters who left the Lib Dems the second Clegg went in with Cameron, and who probably left Labour over Iraq/tuition fees/etc, are going to suddenly turn around, abandon Labour, and then vote Conservative. There are scenarios in which Labour may end up with 32% of the vote at the next election - but none of them feature the Lib Dems on 10%, and none of them feature Others on 9%. The only way Labour will end up getting that low a percentage of the vote and losing those switchers will be if they turn around and announce they're scrapping welfare for under 25s or something, which then makes them all think 'christ, I might as well vote Lib Dem/Green/not vote'. Either that or current undecideds decide to go solely for the Conservatives, with none of them even stopping to think about voting Labour/UKIP/Other. Not happening.

 

You also have the Conservatives on 40% and UKIP on 9%. Are you realistically trying to tell me that UKIP will triple their vote from 3% and this will have absolutely no effect (in fact, the Conservative vote will go up by four points!) on the Conservative vote?

 

With the exception of the ICM rogue the other week, there hasn't been a single poll in three whole years since September 2010 that has had Labour lower than 35 points, and most have had us higher, typically on 38 points. Most of those voters who make up that lead despise the Conservatives to their core. What on earth makes you think a couple of nice house price statistics is going to make them suddenly vote Conservative?

 

Well, I say 'what makes you think'. You weren't really thinking at all when you made any of these posts - you were just doing hacky punditry and pulling numbers out of your arse that made a Tory win without even beginning to think about the people that would make up that kind of number. You might get biggest party in a hung parliament. But seriously, give up right now on any hopes of a majority.

At this stage before the 2010 election we were like 20 points clear in the polls and scraped into #10, the final margin was about 6% or something, we lost about 14 points in the polls, if Labour have a lead now of 6% then I can see similar happening and us having a final lead of about 8% on election day

 

The other two have basically summed up everything. Again, you're completely underestimating how much the Conservatives are loathed by virtually everyone who currently say they won't vote for them - which is not exactly surprising since the Conservatives have spent the entire last 4 years slagging off public-sector workers/benefit claimants/immigrants and ethnic minorities. Once you take out those groups who are never going to vote for a party who openly say they detest them, it's not surprising their ceiling is less than 40%.

 

As I've said before, your only hope is to pray turnout falls off a cliff in 2015, that poorer people overwhelmingly feel that voting is pointless because whichever party gets in, things are going to get worse. Admittedly there's a chance of that since the New Labour thinktankbots seem determined to wreck the party's chances (the latest example being the comical "public-sector reform" guff that I see is in the news today, which will impress absolutely no-one outside of university seminars at Cambridge). But, even if Labour's comical ineptitude convinces those people to stay at home, they will NEVER be persuaded to vote Tory.

 

If turnout is 60% or above in 2015, Labour will win a majority no matter what. If turnout is below 50% (sadly a very real possibility), the Conservatives will win a majority despite getting less votes than last time. Simple as that.

Edited February 10, 201411 yr by Danny

The other two have basically summed up everything. Again, you're completely underestimating how much the Conservatives are loathed by virtually everyone who currently say they won't vote for them - which is not exactly surprising since the Conservatives have spent the entire last 4 years slagging off public-sector workers/benefit claimants/immigrants and ethnic minorities. Once you take out those groups who are never going to vote for a party who openly say they detest them, it's not surprising their ceiling is less than 40%.

 

As I've said before, your only hope is to pray turnout falls off a cliff in 2015, that poorer people overwhelmingly feel that voting is pointless because whichever party gets in, things are going to get worse. Admittedly there's a chance of that since the New Labour thinktankbots seem determined to wreck the party's chances (the latest example being the comical "public-sector reform" guff that I see is in the news today, which will impress absolutely no-one outside of university seminars at Cambridge). But, even if Labour's comical ineptitude convinces those people to stay at home, they will NEVER be persuaded to vote Tory.

 

If turnout is 60% or above in 2015, Labour will win a majority no matter what. If turnout is below 50% (sadly a very real possibility), the Conservatives will win a majority despite getting less votes than last time. Simple as that.

Why on earth would turnout be below 50%? Even in 2001 it managed more than that, and turnout typically goes up for closer elections as people are more inclined to think that their vote matters and makes a difference. For all people might think 'oh they're all the same', it's not going to ever be to the extent that another 15+% of the population look at Ed and think 'oh he's identical to Cameron', especially when the media will be going all out to portray him as the most left-wing Labour leader in a generation (which is true by default, but nowhere near as much as they'll say he is).

 

If I were pushed on it I'd guess turnout will be at roughly the same level as last time, with all the people disenchanted by Clegg et al made up for by people who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Gordon plus Farage bringing in a few former non-voters. I'd actually guess it might be a little higher - there's more reason to vote Labour this time than there was last time, so turnout won't be dampened by a lot of one of the big parties' supporters deciding there's little point in voting.

 

I think you're wrong on the public sector reform thing (surprise! :lol:) but that's for another post.

 

(replying btw)

Why on earth would turnout be below 50%? Even in 2001 it managed more than that, and turnout typically goes up for closer elections as people are more inclined to think that their vote matters and makes a difference. For all people might think 'oh they're all the same', it's not going to ever be to the extent that another 15+% of the population look at Ed and think 'oh he's identical to Cameron', especially when the media will be going all out to portray him as the most left-wing Labour leader in a generation (which is true by default, but nowhere near as much as they'll say he is).

 

If I were pushed on it I'd guess turnout will be at roughly the same level as last time, with all the people disenchanted by Clegg et al made up for by people who couldn't bring themselves to vote for Gordon plus Farage bringing in a few former non-voters. I'd actually guess it might be a little higher - there's more reason to vote Labour this time than there was last time, so turnout won't be dampened by a lot of one of the big parties' supporters deciding there's little point in voting.

 

I think you're wrong on the public sector reform thing (surprise! :lol:) but that's for another post.

 

(replying btw)

 

Why "even" 2001? Let's face it, as things stand, it looks like there's going to be even less of a choice at the next election than in 2001. Atleast in 2001, although Blair was too cowardly to stand up to the fat cats and super-rich, he atleast gave some moderate help to the poorest and improved public services. Next time, as things stand, Labour are going to be running on a programme of big cuts, with the poorest getting bashed and public services deteriating as an inevitable result of that. Choosing between cuts under a Tory government or cuts under a Labour government is not going to be the type of choice which inspires people to turn out in droves. Obviously I'm hoping that commonsense might eventually prevail though, and the question "what's the point of getting into government if we're just going to have Tory policies?" might eventually cross the mind of someone at the top of the party.

 

In the real world, very few people think Ed Miliband is some raving leftwinger. Most people think he either believes in nothing strongly at all, or, among traditional Labour voters, that he is too close to the Conservatives. There was been an opening last year with the energy-price freeze, but since then, the thinktankbots in the party seem to have reasserted their control, and it's back to "fiscal credibility" fetishism and completely unsellable academic lectures on abstract concepts like "public sector reform" or "reforming" the banks.

 

Add into all this the fact that there's been a general giving up on politics among people over the past 20 years, the perception that there's nothing politicians can actually do even if they wanted to because it's all down to global forces (the "markets" etc.), and it's pretty clear there's potentially a disaster brewing. Turnouts in byelections and local elections have certainly been lower than they were in the lead-up to the '01 election.

Edited February 10, 201411 yr by Danny

Ignoring the fact that, as far as I can see, the emphasis at the local level has been almost entirely on things like the energy price freeze.

Disagree. Simple yes/no questions about whether people care about an issue are notoriously ineffective at working out how much the public is concerned about them - if asked about a specific issue, people are almost always going to answer that they care about it, partly because they naturally think they would look ignorant if they said they didn't care at all about an issue which a pollster thought to be important enough to ask about it. Most pollsters have established that making people make choices is the best way of finding out what they really care about. (Best example of this is EU questions, and the discrepancy between almost everyone answering that they would like an EU referendum when specifically asked about it, but then, when asked to rank it against other priorities, it comes out with a very low score, hence why all the Tories' posturing on it makes no difference whatsoever.)

I absolutely agree Labour would become incredibly unpopular if they implemented cuts in government, and would probably be out for years afterwards. I'm not saying they should lie during the election campaign that there won't be cuts, then implement them once they get in - I'm saying they should say there'll be no more cuts during the election campaign, then actually stick to it when they get into government.

 

And, as I said last week, I REALLY hope Labour aren't stupid enough to go for this happy-clappy New Labour fantasy nonsense, that it's possible to make huge spending cuts yet somehow still magically improve public services even with less money going into them, because people would rightly think Labour are playing them for idiots and that would give the party a much bigger "credibility" problem than any they've had so far. People know it's a choice between cutting the deficit and letting public services/living standards getting worse, or forget about cutting the deficit as the cost of improving public services and living standards, and any attempt from Labour to claim there's some too-good-to-be-true way of achieving both and having our cake and eating it too will leave people totally unconvinced.

 

Depends what you mean by "nothing". I'm sure there'll be business people shrieking about how Britain is going to go bankrupt, and yes, maybe interest rates on government bonds will creep up for a few weeks (though that will have little effect on most people), but in the long run, I definitely don't think the sky isn't going to fall in. Just like the sky hasn't fallen in in Japan despite them having extremely high debt levels and despite the routine screeching from rightwingers that they're about to get a "reckoning", just like Britain itself for most of its history when it's had a fairly high deficit, and indeed, just like actually in 2015 having the deficit at such a level won't have caused the sky to fall in (I'm not actually suggesting the deficit should go even higher, I'm saying it should just be kept at the same level as when they come in in 2015, which would quite obviously be possible since...the deficit will be that high then, and the sky won't fall in, hence how is it logical to say the sky would fall in by keeping it at the same level in future?).

Britain hasn't had a fairly high deficit and fairly high debt simultaneously for most of its history - you can get away with having one or the other, but not both at the same time consistently before the people doing the lending start getting very tetchy. And your final point seems to confuse the difference between deficit and debt (I hope I'm not getting this wrong because I'd assume that is something you would know). Keeping the debt at the same level is something that you could easily make the argument that the sky wouldn't fall in by keeping it there, but keeping the deficit at the same level isn't, as that's adding that same amount on top of the debt every year (increasing the amount you have to pay back and increasing the interest payments we have to make, as well as increasing the likelihood that one day we may not actually be able to pay back all of the bonds we've taken at a particular time etc). It's the difference between a train being stopped five miles away from a cliff being sustainable, but the argument of 'well we've got the train speed down from 200mph to 100mph, so it'll be fine to keep it at 100mph' when you're five miles away not being sustainable.

 

But in any case, the point you're making is that we're not five miles away, so I'll deal with that. As Charlie has said, most of Japan's debt is domestically held - only about 5% is overseas debt. The majority of the UK's debt is domestically held as well, but c. 30% being held overseas is a very, very different proposition to 5%.

 

Japan are currently going about getting rid of as much of their debt as they can through quantitative easing - they're literally having the Bank of Japan print money, using it to buy up the debt and then writing it off as if it never existed, which is playing a pretty dangerous game as it relies on factors outside of their control - confidence in the currency (inflation's an issue too but it's not a big worry for Japan as it would make the debt easier to pay off) and the bond holders not noticing that this is what's happening. The other big advantage Japan has is how most of their debt is internally owed - with ~30% owed to pension/insurance funds on top of the ~5% owed abroad, Japan could feasibly do that for the majority of their debt, and can continue to rack up deficits funded typically by bonds from banks within Japan (~45%), who are by and large happy to go along with this as they get their payments back relatively quickly through that quantitative easing process, and also because they're led by a nutter right-wing economic nationalist who rubs their bellies with rhetoric persuading them that he's getting tough on the debt even though no such thing is happening (in the conventional sense, at least).

 

We can't get away with something similar as ~60% of our debt is owned either overseas or by institutions like pension/insurance funds that use bonds as a way of financing their commitments, and will be quick to demand increased yields if they detect any sense of instability - which is something they might give growth time deficits under the Conservatives a get out of jail free card on, but wouldn't for Labour. The kinds of business people whose objections you're dismissing are the kinds who we'd be relying on to finance this debt, as many are the ones in charge of said pension/insurance funds and are naturally risk-averse in their investments (hence why they're going for government bonds to begin with) - and increased interest rates do start having an effect, especially as it certainly wouldn't be 'just a couple of weeks'. Generally, the people lending you the money don't really take kindly (understatement) to a potential government openly admitting it won't be trying to get the deficit down during a time of growth, just as you'd probably be a bit wary if someone you'd lent money wasn't doing a thing about getting their spending lower than their income and kept coming back to you for more loans, at the same time as them saying they didn't really care about it. Labour could well get away with having the deficit go up once they're in office, but the key thing is perception - if it goes up after they've not said a thing about how they're going to get it down, lenders get tetchy. If it goes up after they've yammed on about how they're going to get it down, they get more leeway. And yes, yields do start hurting soon enough if they do ramp up, as all of a sudden the government finds it doesn't have the money it thought it did to spend on public services and is having to spend that money (that they've borrowed!) on servicing debt. (which is why the deficit isn't a 'southern' issue - the effects of a hugely increased deficit affect us all, not just the fabled south east stockholders, who if anything would profit from increased yields. I'm surprised you're in favour of a move which gives more money to the less well-off today but guarantees that more future spending will be going towards interest payments for wealthy pension fund holders rather than the needy where it's required, who we could spend more on overall if our debt repayments were lower)

 

Ultimately, basing a programme of government on an assumption of how lenders who are keeping your government spending going will react is incredibly risky, especially when said lenders are broadly averse to your political party and broadly inclined towards the kind of screeching about debt levels that you're on about.

 

I agree Labour shouldn't be pretending spending cuts can lead to improved public services (and I'd disagree that it's 'happy-clappy New Labour fantasy' - the national insurance increase to pay for the NHS was very much a message that if people want good services, they should expect to have to pay for them. New Labour never made out that you could magically deliver better services and cuts at the same time, at least without reform alongside). The problem is, if you want the deficit just to stay level, and you want reversals to certain cuts, you're going to have to be finding cuts from elsewhere - or putting taxes up. More of a reliance on increased tax is my favoured move (I'd go 5:3:2 tax:cuts:borrowing on financing any new spending), but it seems a little rich to start accusing groups of happy-clappy fantasies by pretending everything can just go on borrowing without consequence.

 

And on the polling - the public will always answer in favour of a referendum when asked on essentially anything. The difference is that the EU referendum has never been an issue capable of shifting many votes outside of the margins between Tory and UKIP. It's not a 'disqualifying issue' - it's very easy to conceive of people who agree with an EU referendum not caring enough to stop voting Labour/Lib Dem etc. That isn't really the case with the deficit, where it's very easy to think of cases where people who would vote Labour otherwise would be put off by the thought that we won't do a thing about the deficit and we'll just go on a spending spree. If anything, that identification is the thing that's held Labour back the most in our history, not the perception that we're 'too close to the bankers' - which may have been the case for a few years under Tony, but it's not really a perception of the current Labour Party you'll find much outside of the GRIMLY FIENDISH margins of politics.

RSI!

Oh, and on public service reform: do you really think that a prospective government should have nothing to say on it? Just because Miliband's doing a speech on it doesn't mean it's going to be his doorstep sell. There's more to politics than just the main doorstep messages that get you elected - and as it goes, there's a lot in his Hugo Young speech that I imagine most public service users would probably agree with.

Britain hasn't had a fairly high deficit and fairly high debt simultaneously for most of its history - you can get away with having one or the other, but not both at the same time consistently before the people doing the lending start getting very tetchy. And your final point seems to confuse the difference between deficit and debt (I hope I'm not getting this wrong because I'd assume that is something you would know). Keeping the debt at the same level is something that you could easily make the argument that the sky wouldn't fall in by keeping it there, but keeping the deficit at the same level isn't, as that's adding that same amount on top of the debt every year (increasing the amount you have to pay back and increasing the interest payments we have to make, as well as increasing the likelihood that one day we may not actually be able to pay back all of the bonds we've taken at a particular time etc). It's the difference between a train being stopped five miles away from a cliff being sustainable, but the argument of 'well we've got the train speed down from 200mph to 100mph, so it'll be fine to keep it at 100mph' when you're five miles away not being sustainable.

 

I was being deliberately disingenuous by conflating the deficit and the national debt, because as far as the public are concerned, they ARE the same thing. The important thing for Labour to understand is...well, just how little the public understand about the public finances (because they never particularly cared about it as much as the media thought they did, so they haven't really cared to find out about it in detail).

 

Personally, I'd be absolutely fine with the deficit going even higher, but I accept that would be hard to "sell" to the average person simply because (again, because of their very shaky understanding) simply the fact the message would be "the deficit is going to get bigger" would allow people to project their worst-case scenarios and Greek-style nightmares onto it. But "we can afford to keep spending the same as we are now and keep the deficit at the same level as now" is a very simple argument and one which I think people would agree with, assuming there is no bond-market panic in a Eurozone country all over the news at that time, which was the main reason that there was a sense of "we're in trouble, something must be done" among the average person in 2010. If there is no air of panic at the time, people will think it's totally reasonable to carry on as we are.

 

It's really not true that Britain historically has had lower debt levels and deficits than now btw, atleast in terms of % of GDP.

 

 

I agree Labour shouldn't be pretending spending cuts can lead to improved public services

 

Ok, then we agree on that, but it really does seem to me that there's a clique of people at the top of the party (I'm determined to make "thinktankbots" a Thing), who have been led to believe they're more intelligent than they actually are, who have genuinely convinced themselves that it's possible with some kind of byzantine "reform" to magically make things better even with less money going into them. Just tonight, on the news, the Labour spinners had told the BBC reporter that their reforms would deliver "more for less" with their reforms, and Ed Miliband actually claimed a Labour government would reduce inequality.....in the exact same speech as he promised further huge spending cuts. The fact he really doesn't seem to see that these two things directly contradict eachother is startling, and that's what I mean by the NewLabourites being the real happy-clappy fantasists. If it was possible to make big cuts but somehow not actually have those cuts affect anything that matters, why hasn't anyone managed to do it before now?

 

With this surplus nonsense, it seems Labour's main message at the next election will be either "Vote Labour and we'll make public services better and improve your lives EVEN THOUGH they'll be less money going into them", or "Vote Labour and public services and your living standards will get worse". Either would be a complete and utter carcrash, the former because it would be dismissed as a logical impossibility to achieve both and typical politicians pretending people can have their cake and eat it too, and the latter because it would make people wonder why on earth they should bother voting for them.

Edited February 11, 201411 yr by Danny

Oh, and on public service reform: do you really think that a prospective government should have nothing to say on it? Just because Miliband's doing a speech on it doesn't mean it's going to be his doorstep sell. There's more to politics than just the main doorstep messages that get you elected - and as it goes, there's a lot in his Hugo Young speech that I imagine most public service users would probably agree with.

 

Absolutely. Messing around with structures only increases the costs on bureaucracy and gets in the way of the professionals doing their job, with the end result of not actually fundamentally changing anything in the long run anyway, because the government eventually lets the services drift back to running the way they were before because they eventually realise there was a reason they were running like that in the first place -- because it was the best and most efficient way of doing things, and because the professionals who have dedicated their lives to a particular public service know a lot more about how it works than some politicians who fail to recognise there's a big difference between their abstract academic theories and how things actually work in practice.

 

And most people don't want the power to get involved in their local services themselves because they take the view (rightly, imo) that we pay government to run them for us, and that we're all busy enough with our daily routines to do them ourselves.

 

Public-sector reform (or "modernisation" to use the proper cringeworthy buzzword) was a vanity project dreamt up by Blair and his hardcore followers to try and make themselves feel like they'd actually created some ideology and a lasting legacy, rather than the New Labour "project" being a clever marketing exercise which was successful in political terms for a while but past its sell-by date in around 2003.

God Craig, as I've said forty fucking times - Labour's current lead is NOT based on Conservatives switchers as previous Labour leads were/vice versa. Hence, the rules of the last few elections do not apply solidly for this one. Why are you monumentally incapable of processing information you've been told?

 

Basically, what you're essentially predicting there is that voters who left the Lib Dems the second Clegg went in with Cameron, and who probably left Labour over Iraq/tuition fees/etc, are going to suddenly turn around, abandon Labour, and then vote Conservative. There are scenarios in which Labour may end up with 32% of the vote at the next election - but none of them feature the Lib Dems on 10%, and none of them feature Others on 9%. The only way Labour will end up getting that low a percentage of the vote and losing those switchers will be if they turn around and announce they're scrapping welfare for under 25s or something, which then makes them all think 'christ, I might as well vote Lib Dem/Green/not vote'. Either that or current undecideds decide to go solely for the Conservatives, with none of them even stopping to think about voting Labour/UKIP/Other. Not happening.

 

You also have the Conservatives on 40% and UKIP on 9%. Are you realistically trying to tell me that UKIP will triple their vote from 3% and this will have absolutely no effect (in fact, the Conservative vote will go up by four points!) on the Conservative vote?

 

With the exception of the ICM rogue the other week, there hasn't been a single poll in three whole years since September 2010 that has had Labour lower than 35 points, and most have had us higher, typically on 38 points. Most of those voters who make up that lead despise the Conservatives to their core. What on earth makes you think a couple of nice house price statistics is going to make them suddenly vote Conservative?

 

Well, I say 'what makes you think'. You weren't really thinking at all when you made any of these posts - you were just doing hacky punditry and pulling numbers out of your arse that made a Tory win without even beginning to think about the people that would make up that kind of number. You might get biggest party in a hung parliament. But seriously, give up right now on any hopes of a majority.

 

Charles Clarke, probably the 3rd or 4th most senior minister under Labour, said that Labour lead is worryingly low for Labour as voters to use his words 'inevitably move towards the government near an election'

 

In terms of UKIP they are gaining as many labour voters, if not more, than tory voters, i am convinced that most tory UKIP's will return to the fold for the election as we will go into the election with a very right wing message, Labour voters who go to UKIP are from the lower classes therefore typically less bright and more susceptible to Farage's advances

 

UKIP will hurt labour more than tories

 

Crosby will go into the next election on 3 key themes

 

1) The economy is going great - don't let labour ruin it

 

2) Benefit claimants are a load of workshy parasites, vote for us and we will crush them - a very popular move post Benefits St even if most benefit claimants aren't like that the public believe they are

 

3) We will get out of the HRA and be ruthless on immigration

 

Economy, welfare and immigration are the 3 things that will decide the next election

Craig, how exactly is that Charles Clarke quote supposed to defeat the BASIC LOGIC I said to you? The man is not a psephologist. That sentence doesn't mean the Conservatives are suddenly able to win over Lib Dem-Labour converts and 2010 Labour voters.

 

And do you have a SINGLE source (with cold hard numbers , not a comment piece) showing UKIP are taking as much from Labour as from the Tories? Because as I've shown you before - the ratio is at the most generous to the Tories a 2:1 Tory:Labour split, and is currently polling at 5:1. Read some bloody opinion polls. Start with Ashcroft and Survation.

 

That said, this argument STILL shows you're utterly clueless about your own predictions. You're trying to have several cakes and eat them - you're giving UKIP a six percent rise wholly taken from Labour, and the Tories an eight percent rise, wholly taken from Labour's Lib Dem convert (!) ranks.