Again though, just because the public thinks there isn't any difference (mainly because most policies have been fired and forgotten in the space of a day and not mentioned again, hence most of them haven't noticed) doesn't mean there isn't, or that it won't be apparent there is a difference when it's all being stated on a stage in front of 10 million viewers.

 

25 hours free childcare a week, rent caps, public bidding for all rail franchises, an energy price freeze, a guarantee to see a GP the same day, increased jobseekers' allowance for those who've been in work longer, free training for under 25s, and a likely implementation of the living wage are hardly 'WE DISAGREE BECAUSE OF TECHNICALITY!!!!', and they're miles away from where the Tories are, not least because the Tories aren't going to be arguing for the status quo - they're going to be arguing for all the things they say they can't do with the Lib Dems on board. You'd have to be a total ideological purist to look at that offer and think it's basically the same as the Tory one. Most of the public aren't.

Yeah, microscopic variances might excite the Westminster bubble, but do not cut it for the public. Ed is not going to be substantially disagreeing with Cameron on the 3 big economic issues of the day (government spending, living standards and the power of big businesses), no matter how many piddling little differences he tries to play up on side-issues, so nothing in the content of what he says will make enough of an impression on the viewer to distract from the...lacklustre presentation.

 

It's going to be a repeat of the 2010 campaign, with the public being doubly turned off because the main parties won't be giving any real choice and because, as a result of that lack of choice and not opposing eachother on the issues, will resort to playground name-calling. Incidentally that's also why I think UKIP are going to do even better than people think, because I can't see how the public aren't going to be utterly disgusted at an election campaign filled with nonstop talk about the "evil Tories" and "weird, incompetent Miliband" with no actual discussion of the issues, and will be desperate for any alternative (I still to this day don't think Clegg was anything special in the 2010 debates, it was just because it came against a backdrop of Cameron and Brown flinging shit at each other while essentially saying the same thing on the issues that it was so powerful).

Edited August 1, 201410 yr by Danny

Hang on. What about literally everything I just said there doesn't substantially disagree with Cameron on living standards? It doesn't become microscopic just because you say it is.

 

You'd have to be a total ideological purist to look at that offer and think it's basically the same as the Tory one. Most of the public aren't.

Oh.

Yeah, microscopic variances might excite the Westminster bubble, but do not cut it for the public. Ed is not going to be substantially disagreeing with Cameron on the 3 big economic issues of the day (government spending, living standards and the power of big businesses), no matter how many piddling little differences he tries to play up on side-issues, so nothing in the content of what he says will make enough of an impression on the viewer to distract from the...lacklustre presentation.

 

It's going to be a repeat of the 2010 campaign, with the public being doubly turned off because the main parties won't be giving any real choice and because, as a result of that lack of choice and not opposing eachother on the issues, will resort to playground name-calling. Incidentally that's also why I think UKIP are going to do even better than people think, because I can't see how the public aren't going to be utterly disgusted at an election campaign filled with nonstop talk about the "evil Tories" and "weird, incompetent Miliband" with no actual discussion of the issues, and will be desperate for any alternative (I still to this day don't think Clegg was anything special in the 2010 debates, it was just because it came against a backdrop of Cameron and Brown flinging shit at each other while essentially saying the same thing on the issues that it was so powerful).

Clegg's impact was largely down to him speaking into the camera and sounding like he was interested in hearing peoples' questions. The Lib Dems in 2010 were far closer to Labour in policy than Labour were to the Tories but he pulled off the very basic trick of exaggerating the differences between them and the other two. Given that half of Labour's attack plan over the last few years has been to paint Cameron and Clegg as two sides of the same coin, I can't see a scenario where Miliband won't do the same thing. If there's three of them in the debate then he'll have by far the easiest time convincing people he's the outsider.

Hang on. What about literally everything I just said there doesn't substantially disagree with Cameron on living standards? It doesn't become microscopic just because you say it is.

 

Because they're not. How is "public bidding for rail franchises" (btw, isn't this already allowed?) going to impact living standards? How is making some minor technical adjustment to rent contracts going to impact living standards (they have not promised rent caps)?

 

The only one which might have potential is the childcare one, but that's going to fail since there's no "credible" explanation of how it's going to be funded. Or is this another policy which isn't going to need old-fashioned money and is going to be achieved by waving a wand and asking people nicely to do it for free?

 

And yes, by your standards, the centrists of the 1980s were "ideological purists". Hell, even the Tories before Thatcher were left-wing ideological purists I guess.

Edited August 1, 201410 yr by Danny

Clegg's impact was largely down to him speaking into the camera and sounding like he was interested in hearing peoples' questions. The Lib Dems in 2010 were far closer to Labour in policy than Labour were to the Tories but he pulled off the very basic trick of exaggerating the differences between them and the other two. Given that half of Labour's attack plan over the last few years has been to paint Cameron and Clegg as two sides of the same coin, I can't see a scenario where Miliband won't do the same thing. If there's three of them in the debate then he'll have by far the easiest time convincing people he's the outsider.

 

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Miliband's personality needs to be a killer in itself. If he had a popular and well-defined raison d'etre and list of policies, I don't think he'd be unelectable. I don't think people see his personality as so infuriatingly unlikeable that it would override what people thought was decent substance (in the way that I think might have been the case for Brown or Ed Balls even if what were they were saying was liked by the public).

 

But my point is Miliband's personality is certainly not appealing enough to get the job done on its own, in the absence of good, distinctive policies, in the way that Clegg's was to some extent or Blair's was.

Edited August 1, 201410 yr by Danny

Don't get me wrong, I don't think Miliband's personality needs to be a killer in itself. If he had a popular and well-defined raison d'etre and list of policies, I don't think he'd be unelectable. I don't think people see his personality as so infuriatingly unlikeable that it would override what people thought was decent substance (in the way that I think might have been the case for Brown or Ed Balls even if what were they were saying was liked by the public).

 

But my point is Miliband's personality is certainly not appealing enough to get the job done on its own, in the absence of good, distinctive policies, in the way that Clegg's was to some extent or Blair's was.

Wait, are you suggesting Clegg has a personality?

Because they're not. How is "public bidding for rail franchises" (btw, isn't this already allowed?) going to impact living standards? How is making some minor technical adjustment to rent contracts going to impact living standards (they have not promised rent caps)?

 

The only one which might have potential is the childcare one, but that's going to fail since there's no "credible" explanation of how it's going to be funded. Or is this another policy which isn't going to need old-fashioned money and is going to be achieved by waving a wand and asking people nicely to do it for free?

 

And yes, by your standards, the centrists of the 1980s were "ideological purists". Hell, even the Tories before Thatcher were left-wing ideological purists I guess.

Do you think rail renationalisation would impact living standards? If you're like the 70% or so of the British population that think it would, then having the government run some/all rail lines again by taking part in the bidding process would too, it's just not a case of the government saying they'll run all of it for definite (not to mention that he's already said he'd cap annual fares). And given the likes of Virgin are actually quite popular for how they run the likes of West Coast Mainline, it's not a bad thing per se.

 

And yes, Labour have said they will cap rents - an upper limit on rises will be put in place based on average market rates.

 

The childcare plan has been costed by an increase in the overall banking levy of £800m.

 

I'm sorry, what exactly would the Tories and the SDP have pointed at in this manifesto and claimed there to be no difference from the Tories? The Tories don't believe anything at all should be done on helping people with energy bills, childcare, railway fares, rents, training for those under 25 out of work (WTF at the idea that this is a 'minor technical adjustment' that won't impact living standards. It's only something the FE arm of NUS have been trying to get for AGES), and those on JSA who've worked the longest. Most people can tell the difference between a party that does nothing to help and a party that does something to help, and 'well, you COULD do more' is not the same as 'that's basically exactly the same as what Cameron just said'.

 

Except most people are grown up enough to realise that we don't have endless goodwill from the people we're borrowing from and that it would be utterly mental to declare war on them as a method of...uh, trying to get them to give us more money?

I don't think people would necessarily be open to just a 'we're putting up taxes to put it into the NHS' that they haven't noticed falling apart especially, but I think they would be open to a tax rise for a specifically new service - e.g. adding on something like the National Care Service.

 

 

Half would pay extra tax for the NHS

 

Almost half of voters say they would be happy to pay more income tax as long as the money went directly to the NHS, which is facing a £30bn gap in its finances by 2020.

 

Polling firm ComRes found that 49% of people would be prepared to pay more tax to help fund the health service, one in three (33%) people said they would not be ready to do so, and 18% did not know either way.

 

However, if only the views of those who expressed an opinion are considered, as many as 60% of people are willing to pay more tax to help the NHS providing its wide range of services; 40% are not.

 

The public's willingness to pay extra tax to help the NHS has reached its highest level in over a decade amid growing concern about hospitals slipping into the red, waiting lists lengthening and the service becoming unsustainable.

 

The 49% and 60% figures are the highest seen for either of the methodologies since the early 2000s, just before Tony Blair's government kickstarted a sustained campaign of well above inflation NHS budget increases.

 

Professor Chris Ham, chief executive of the King's Fund health thinktank, said the increase in people willing to help the NHS financially was likely to be linked to public perceptions that it had started to struggle financially and clinically and because it was so highly valued.

 

The findings should tell political parties that they should not shy from discussing the money needed to ensure the NHS survives and showed that voters might be more willing to pay extra tax for a specific purpose than MPs usually imagined.

 

"It's a wake-up call to politicians to be willing to debate the funding of the NHS and to avoid colluding with each other in saying spending can't be raised until deficit reduction has been completed," Ham, who helped advise No 10 on health during 2011, said.

 

"They may be surprised that the public are willing to support politicians who promise to raise taxes for specific purposes like the NHS."

 

 

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/au...x-fund-nhs-poll

Yeah, but we've seen this so many times before. What someone says they're happy to pay for in an opinion poll isn't something they're always happy to pay for once they've been bombarded during an election campaign with a load of material saying how much extra it'll cost them in practice. Which is one of the main reasons IMO that the national insurance increase in 2002 worked - doing it in government means people have gotten used to it by the time the election rolls around and haven't been scared off.

 

I've no doubt that there are a lot of people happy to pay extra, I just don't think in the heat of an election campaign it would be anywhere near as many as 49%.

Oh right, so when an opinion poll throws up a right-wing result, it's a reliable snapshot of public opinion, but when it's a left-wing result, it's wrong and people just haven't thought about it enough :lol:

 

I'm sure you're talking about the 1992 election here (which is basically the Godwin's law of all Labour rightwing people), but in actual fact taxes was not even one of the top factors in Labour's defeat that year.

Edited August 15, 201410 yr by Danny

Not really. I've no doubt that in the event of a referendum there'd be a solid majority in favour of staying in the EU and not bringing back the death penalty. Tax in particular is an area absolutely infamous for people answering one way then voting another though.

 

EDIT: oh you CAN'T just whip out a statement like that without anything to back it up! The 'tax bombshell!' and shadow budget attacks were one of the huge things that exit surveys in swing seats found turned off a lot of voters at the last minute. There were other big factors (Shy Toryism/the big drive on the NHS falling apart so spectacularly) but it's the height of pretending the public always agrees with you to act like tax had no effect on the 1992 campaign. In the middle of a recession, one party offered to put taxes up, the other didn't. Are we to act like that was just trivia?

Not really. I've no doubt that in the event of a referendum there'd be a solid majority in favour of staying in the EU and not bringing back the death penalty. Tax in particular is an area absolutely infamous for people answering one way then voting another though.

 

Examples, apart from the false example of the 1992 election?

Must...fight....urge...to...post...that...video...

 

But I'll not. I'll just provide a link to the raw data provided by COMRES, note that the poll was commissioned by a health consultancy firm, Incisive Health, and allow you all to draw your own conclusions from it.

 

The other two elections of the 1980s for a start. And I don't buy that the public is in a totally different place now than it was in the 1980s. I think it's more favourable to tax increases in general post New Labour, but not hugely moreso to the point that 'we'll put your taxes up and make the NHS better' is a silver bullet election winner - not least as the perception is out there that so much of the increase in public spending was wasted, thanks to those lost six months of opposition in 2010...

Must...fight....urge...to...post...that...video...

 

But I'll not. I'll just provide a link to the raw data provided by COMRES, note that the poll was commissioned by a health consultancy firm, Incisive Health, and allow you all to draw your own conclusions from it.

 

But, irrespective of who commissioned the poll, the question is not particularly leading (if it was something like "Do you agree the NHS needs extra funding to sort out the calamatious crisis" then you might have a point, since that would obviously be phrased to make the person think they'd be stupid to disagree), and Comres is obviously reputable.

 

 

The other two elections of the 1980s for a start. And I don't buy that the public is in a totally different place now than it was in the 1980s. I think it's more favourable to tax increases in general post New Labour, but not hugely moreso to the point that 'we'll put your taxes up and make the NHS better' is a silver bullet election winner - not least as the perception is out there that so much of the increase in public spending was wasted, thanks to those lost six months of opposition in 2010...

 

But this just isn't true. Labour had a lead on tax and spending policies in each of those elections. The biggest negatives for the public for Labour were defence (which obviously was considered one of the most important issues in the 80s, and which the Tories had a MASSIVE lead on), the trade unions and the perception they were a mess who wouldn't be able to agree among themselves. Plus by 1992 there was an additional factor where they fought a stupidly negative campaign because they were too scared to talk about their policies (they barely mentioned their tax rise plans at all), which led people to think that they may as well stick with the devil they knew since they didn't know what they''d be getting from Labour anyway.

Edited August 15, 201410 yr by Danny

Barely mentioned their tax rise plans? John Smith commissioned an entire shadow budget based entirely around them which was easily up there as one of the big topics of the early campaign! The idea that people didn't know what they were getting from Labour in 1992 is ludicrous - well, I'll clarify, they didn't know, given a lot assumed they'd be getting 'same old Labour', but they definitely had a perception of what they'd be getting.

 

And are you sure they had a lead? Ipsos Mori gave the Tories a 43 - 24 lead on the issue of taxation in the 1983 election, didn't ask the question in the '87 election but had a 38 - 27 lead in '86 and '91, and had a 38 - 33 lead in the '92 election. That doesn't look like an electorate just dying to vote for Labour on the condition they didn't scrap nukes and bring back the closed shop.

Barely mentioned their tax rise plans? John Smith commissioned an entire shadow budget based entirely around them which was easily up there as one of the big topics of the early campaign! The idea that people didn't know what they were getting from Labour in 1992 is ludicrous - well, I'll clarify, they didn't know, given a lot assumed they'd be getting 'same old Labour', but they definitely had a perception of what they'd be getting.

 

And are you sure they had a lead? Ipsos Mori gave the Tories a 43 - 24 lead on the issue of taxation in the 1983 election, didn't ask the question in the '87 election but had a 38 - 27 lead in '86 and '91, and had a 38 - 33 lead in the '92 election. That doesn't look like an electorate just dying to vote for Labour on the condition they didn't scrap nukes and bring back the closed shop.

 

Yes, and after announcing their shadow budget, they immediately backed off and rarely mentioned it again as soon as the Conservatives started their "tax bombshell" campaign because they were too scared to defend themselves. "I don't know what a Labour government do" WAS a common sentiment, because it seemed to a lot of people that most of the focus was either on how they were different to the Labour of the 1980s or on how evil the Conservatives were, and little focus was on what Labour now actually were for. And this is the real mistake today's Labour are going to repeat, incidentally.

 

See this article:

 

Labour taxes. Labour's proposals for taxation and national insurance contributions - outlined in John Smith's 'alternative Budget' - were relentlessly attacked by the Conservatives. Faced with the prospect of a cut in their disposable income, the argument runs, voters had second thoughts about the wisdom of letting Labour in.

 

But our surveys find little evidence to back this argument. It arose because the polls showed a small Labour lead throughout a campaign in which taxation was one of the dominant issues and yet the Tories won. Our research, however, confirms that the pollsters had it wrong all along: they consistently underestimated the Tory vote. The Conservatives were ahead throughout the campaign. There was a late swing, but far too small to account for Labour's defeat. And the people who deserted Labour were not particularly averse to high taxation; rather, they seemed to have relatively little faith in Labour's ability to improve services such as health and education.

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/exclu...45-1439286.html

Edited August 15, 201410 yr by Danny

Yes, I'm going to post that video. Whenever an opinion poll on a specific subject is reported you should demand a list of all the questions asked, including those not reported.

 

 

Many years ago the Lib Dems proposed a 1p increase in the rate of income tax with the money going to education. It was overwhelmingly popular. However, further research showed that rather a lot of people thought that they would be expected to pay exactly one penny more income tax each year.

Yes, and after announcing their shadow budget, they immediately backed off and rarely mentioned it again as soon as the Conservatives started their "tax bombshell" campaign because they were too scared to defend themselves. "I don't know what a Labour government do" WAS a common sentiment, because it seemed to a lot of people that most of the focus was either on how they were different to the Labour of the 1980s or on how evil the Conservatives were, and little focus was on what Labour now actually were for. And this is the real mistake today's Labour are going to repeat, incidentally.

The difference being that "I don't know what a Labour government would do" is a far more valid point after thirteen years in opposition than after five.

 

Speaking of which, surely opinion polling on NHS spending won't be an accurate indicator unless it frames the question around Labour proposing it? As has been said, the fallacy that New Labour spent too much is still pretty fresh in public minds so it would put more people off the policy if it was tied to the party.

 

I'm not quite sure what point you're trying to make anyway. Are you suggesting Labour should be deliberately vague about how our additional spending will improve the NHS?