Danny

How well is "vote Labour for massive spending cuts delivered with half as much competence as the Tories" working on the doorstep?

Well, modestly good increases in health and education spending (though, at the risk of sounding like a rightwinger, I actually think education is one area where throwing money around doesn't really improve anything). But a good chunk of the extra spending was "corporate welfare" - topping up people's wages because Labour were too scared to actually make employers pay decently themselves.

"Do Voters Even Care About The Deficit?"

Is that Neil Findlay guy known at all in Scotland?

I never would've thought 5 years ago that Gordon Brown would look like the paragon of good competent government and of principled, inspiring leadership of the Labour Party, but such is the standard of his successors in both cases...

It's interesting that the only two Sheffield Hallam polls have been taken at times when Labour nationally wasn't doing so well (now and in late 2010), yet they STILL showed Labour neck-and-neck. Presumably any Hallam polls in 2012 or 2013 would've shown a Labour lead. ** Meanwhile, Tyron, are the whispers about Jim Murphy possibly losing the Scottish Labour contest true?!

Such as an end to austerity? :angel:

Opposition to fracking is not by any means limited to lefties or the usual save-the-planet brigade. If anything, preserving the "green belt" and generally preserving a peaceful/traditional life is one of the main things that makes people vote Tory in places like Cheshire!

You'd be surprised - I'm expecting some really good Green performances in some "true blue" Tory seats where fracking is an issue. Possibly including George Osborne's seat in Cheshire.

I would probably laugh at someone who had about 4 St George's flags on their door, in the same way I would if someone had really gaudy, flashing Christmas lights </metropolitansnob>

Miliband is just so gutless. Given how the dreary "on-message" automatons are killing the party, he should be happy one finally showed some personality. This is yet another example to feed the image of him as being someone easy to push around and dominate. "If he can't even stand up to the press, how's he going to stand up to Putin?"

My litmus test is always that, if the Daily Mail commenters back a "left-wing" stance on something, it really must be public opinion. These are some of the top-rated comments on the Daily Mail story about Myleene: "Is Klass living in la-la Richland? I don't know a single granny living in a mansion. Obviously if they live in mansions they are rich by definition. What is wrong with taxing the rich please?" "...Poor little Myleen in her mansion.....amazing what bathing in a bikini in Celebrity Jungle can do for a womans career ....and bank balance...." "You dont hear her moan about the bedroom tax,when you tread on the feet of the rich they squeal.if you dont want to pay your fair share myleen emigrate.you wont be missed" "Idiot Klass said on proposed mansion tax "you can't point at things and tax them" Sure you can. IDS said there's a bedroom, and there's a tax." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-28...arget-rich.html

Again....the Scottish independence referendum.

I think it's possible independence would've been rejected by even MORE had they not had the press and super-rich hysterically against them. Having all the elites against you actually can be an asset in this day and age when people are so anti-establishment. But Labour are too inept to take advantage of it, because they can't campaign in a populist way to save themselves, and because they're so obsessed with getting "credibility" from the establishment.

Yes, so that's two papers - even now, there are still 2-3 papers (Independent is questionable) who would support such things. My point is that there's nothing new in the vast majority of the press viciously opposing anything vaguely left-wing - it's ALWAYS been the case, and always will be, rich people are always going to be the major press barons. But that's not an excuse for left-wing people to just whine about how impossible it is and not even try to fight against it, when that 1945 example showed even THEN that people didn't pay much attention to what the press said (and for a more recent example, how about the fact that 45% of people voted for Scottish independence despite all the hysterical propaganda from the press against it, a voteshare that would be easily enough for any party to get a landslide win in an election).

Boo hoo. Just because it's difficult, that doesn't mean they can just pathetically give up time after time. I believe the entire press were hysterically against Labour's "communist" plans before the 1945 election, yet they still won a landslide - and that was when the press were far more trusted than they are now.

It's still a total travesty that he stayed last week. ** Wasn't Adele meant to be on Band Aid?

Um...I made it to £40.5bn :unsure: Maybe I'm not such a deficit denier afterall. Though I'd be spending more on health, welfare and local services which would cancel out a good portion of the savings.

Conservative spending plans that indicated (modest) increases to spending, NOT massive cuts.

No I don't. Thatcher increased NHS spending more than Miliband plans to (and yet, in yet another sign of the left's Stockholm syndrome, the pathetic, inadequate increase that Miliband plans is also hailed as "radical").

If Labour's plans are so breathtakingly daring and radical, then why do people STILL say, by a margin of 65% to 20%, that Miliband "hasn't made it clear what he stands for"? http://cdn.yougov.com/cumulus_uploads/docu...ults-071114.pdf Or is this another issue on which people in the constituency you're canvassing in mysteriously have polar-opposite views to everyone else in the country?

And yet, rent controls are something even centre-right politicians in the bloody UNITED STATES support.

It definitely would be now if Blair himself and his groupies were presented that manifesto blind, without the knowledge that it was the manifesto they once ran on. Again, I genuinely can't see how Labour's current platform is more left-wing than anything Blair stood for? That's the sign of how far things have moved to the right, and how a lot of the "thinktank left" are suffering from some kind of collective Stockholm syndrome when they think something as mild as a slight reduction in energy prices or a couple of thousand less on tuition fees than Blair ever dreamed of when he was in office counts as "radical" and "bold" policymaking.

I don't think people do think Cameron is particularly strong really - they just think he's slightly less weak than Miliband.

He HAS given in on those things. Even if they haven't formally abandoned the energy price freeze, they never talk about it despite it being an ample opportunity right now since it's winter, presumably because he was too scared to stand up to the people who were crying about how "anti-business" it was. In any case, the fact you consider things as timid as that to be "radical" just shows how far the "Blairites" have become a parody of themselves. Even Tony Blair had a "windfall tax" on the major utility companies (and he also never pledged to slash spending further when public services and help for the poor were already cut to the bone). The only difference is there is now much more resistance to the most basic of decent centre-left things than there was in 1997 from the vested interests (partly because Labour themselves have been so complicit in allowing the "centre of gravity" to move so far to the right in the commentariat's political debate). At this point, I'd settle for something as dangerous and Marxist as Blair's 1997 manifesto, rather than the truly sorry, depressing platform Labour is currently set to run on.