A visit to Hackney to meet Labour’s London European Parliament candidates

In which I visit Hackney to hear London Labour’s new candidates for the European Parliament Election speak, and I comment on their policies and capability. I was keen to meet the new Labour Euro candidates that had beaten me to a position on the slate, so I went to visit Hackney North CLP’s selection hustings where the six new candidates to join Labour’s incumbents were talking to members from Hackney and me. …

Two political forecast models; a Labour landslide

If you check, You Gov’s midweek poll for last week, you will find they forecast, as follows. CON 29%, LAB 42%, LD 11%, UKIP 18%; the field work was done between the 21st and 23rd May. If you then go to the BBC’s House of Commons Seat Calculator, and set the dial as You Gov suggest, you get the following result.


cropped screen shot of the BBC's seat calculator

A Labour Majority of 142, with the seats as follows, CON 190, LAB 396, LD 35 and the Rest at 29. This is on a scale of Tony Blair’s 1997 Victory.

ooOOOoo

There are a number of problems with this model, it is based on 2005 results, and there have been boundary changes since, it assumes an even swing which probably discriminates against the Lib Dems who claim a positive incumbency factor, and it almost certainly underestimates the Scottish Nationalists. It’s a shame that there is no ‘hover’ over the seats to see which seat is which.

Other potential long or medium term factors i.e. the increasing xenophobia and the rise of UKIP are likely to be under-estimated or ignored. The YouGov report does count and report on the UKIP and SNP voting intentions.

I have placed the you gov news page and the BBC page together with Political Betting’s home page on my Blogroll.

This is already out of date, YouGov published a further poll with field work conducted over the 23rd and 24th May in last weekend’s Sunday Times, with the Tories having stolen 1% from the Liberal Democrats. …

Cameron, Free Trade, copyright and the NHS

So Cameron and the Tories are up shit creek on the subject of Europe. The disarray of the Tory Party and the coalition makes front page reading for the last few weeks, but I want to explore a slightly different dimension. The Tory malaise is actually aggravated by the UK’s Chairmanship of the G8 which Cameron is using as a platform to evangelise a US-EU Free Trade treaty. This is no doubt to try and focus the Tory/UKIP spatfest on “Common Market” & Trade issues so as not to have to deal with his right wing critics on justice, sovereignty and immigration. …

Vicky Foxcroft wins the Labour Party selection

Yesterday, Vicky Foxcroft, one of Brockley’s Labour Councillors won the support of the membership of Lewisham Deptford Constituency Labour Party to become Labour’s candidate for the Member of Parliament in the constituency. This is also reported on Labour List where one of the comments has published the full result. Vicky won on the first round of voting. Congratulations to Vicky, commiserations to the losers.

The voting results suggest that about 55% of eligible members voted. (I am not sure of the number of eligible members, and the list ages, as does the real electoral roll.) …

Private Members

So the European Referendum amendment to the Queen’s speech fell, the Tories will now be pursuing a Private Members bill. The Tory Party draft bill is published here….. It’s not very long, and it says that voters will be the same as for parliamentary elections plus peers, who can’t normally vote in parliamentary elections. (It’s a left over monarchy thing). This means that EU citizens living here can’t vote, except the Irish (it’s a left over Empire thing). Also many British citizens living abroad won’t be able to vote. …

The Tories Dilemma

So, Queen’s Speech or Private Member’s bill? To express regret by voting against the Queen’s Speech because there is no referendum bill, or to enshrine Cameron’s (last) promise to Britain, to renegotiate and then vote into Law. The Tory’s are now trying to outflank UKIP by legislating for their promised 2017 referendum. No doubt they feel they deserve the UKIP votes because after all, they agree with them, it seems the electorate’s less sure.

It’ll be dramatic stuff, and it’s not a month since Cameron recalled Parliament to pay tribute to Thatcher, allowing the Tory Party to demonstrate its tribalism and cohesion at its most powerful. …