Dementia Tax

The #dementiatax is still being talked about; mainly the unfairness of having one inheritance tax for dementia suffers and one for everyone else. The private funding of the care is being downplayed. This is PFI on steroids. …

Cynic

Out again this morning, one very well informed cynic gave me the leaflet back.

You’re all the same as each other, we only see you when you want our vote

He accused Joan Ruddock of this, and remembered his last conversation with her, so it’s probably been a while since he’s seen any one from the Labour Party. He then proceeded with an accurate demolition of Lewisham Council’s historic housing policies, London Labour’s careerism and the lazy bureaucratic sclerosis of the Trade Unions. He wasn’t someone who gave an opportunity to reply. I suppose the best answer is to ask him to join us, although that’s not an easy path either. I have said below that Government’s lose elections, but its possible that Council’s do too. We’ve certainly seen it bye-elections. …

Trade

Don’t know what brought me here, possibly an article on Twitter point at the FT who were somewhat alarmed about the Balance of Payments deficit, which has been running as a deficit for a number of years. It was £38 billion representing about 4.4% of the nations GDP. The PSBR was £114.1 bn., total debt £1,772 bn. which was 86% of GDP.

The continued and historical high deficit should reflect in a higher ratio of foreign owned UK debt. This chart would also benefit from an illustration of the FX rate and the note that the UK voted to leave the EU and gave notice on the intention to quit in March, too late to impact any FY 17 figures.

ooOOOoo

My version of the BOP figures come from https://tradingeconomics.com …

Digital Liberty, a baseline

Digital Liberty, a baseline

I am preparing to write a blog on Digital Liberty and the Parties’ manifesto positions. I was looking to see how I categorised the issues so I could create a summary view and I found the motion that was the basis for my previous submission on policy. This text has been recovered from a Labour Party motion carried at the Lewisham Deptford GC at their April ’14 meeting. I used it as the basis for a submission to the LP’s New Britain site which they have, of course shit canned; it was their policy development site. I think the motion stands the test of time.  …

Mandates

In this article at fullfact.org, the authors explore the success and otherwise of Prime Ministers that become so mid term, vs. those who become so by winning a general election. They do so over a 100 year period, including that between the wars where the long term decline of the Liberals as the voice of the working class, and the establishment of universal suffrage meant that long term changes in the politics of the UK were occurring, I examine the former here.

I decided to examine the data from 1945, which “as any fule kno”, is when politics starts and history ends! I have developed the chart below, although I recommend looking at fullfact’s as they take a different visual approach.

I define winners as those who became leader while in opposition and became Prime Minister as the result of a general election; their bars are above the line. Inheritors are those who become Leader while their Party is in Government and thus become Prime Minister; their bars are below the line. The length of the line shows how long they served. I use hatching to illustrate the success or failure of the inheritors. There are no successful Labour inheritors, the Tory successful inheritors have a dark hatching, and the inheritors that lost the next election have a light hatching.

What can be learned? Not too much I think, the circumstances of each of the leaderships are so different. It interests me that both May & Brown were anointed without an internal competition, where as Major was elected in a competition against the best of his generation, or at last the best that was left after 10 years of Thatcherite purges, and we should remember that he resigned and forced a second leadership competition, although both of these were held under rules that only permitted MPs to vote. It’s possible that the evidence shows that primaries are important.

None of this talks or considers the roles of those Leaders who never won an election, Gaitskill, Foot, Kinnock, Smith,  Hague, Howard, & Duncan Smith, although the question is whether inherited incumbency is a poisoned chalice?

Of the six inheritors, only two won their next election, but a lot of it is a long time ago. …

Canards

There’s a piece in the independent, saying that as the poll reported a closing margin between the parties, Labour’s ostriches who have been arguing that Polls are inaccurate and designed to make opinion not inform it are changing our minds. We’re changing the meme (t would seem).

First, as Jackie Walker points out, the statistical treatment of the raw data is based on history. The polling companies have evidence that the out of work, low waged and the young vote less than the well-to-do and the old. If this is no longer true, and the registration activity over the last month suggests that something is changing then here is a source of inaccuracy that for once benefits Labour.

The other thing to be remembered is that old canard, “.. governments lose elections, oppositions don’t win them”, to which we should remember that voters have often punished politicians who take them to the ballot box unnecessarily …