And another thing…

Hi Tom,
Yes interesting piece. Can you please ask Mr brown to stop the 1964 Tory toff rubbish. It goes down well with the Labour “Tribals” but not with the rest of us. We want solutions, ideas and leadership. I think most of us would want a PM that has had some education.

For what it’s worth, here’s my own view on that.

Good article, although I disagree with its conclusion. Bagehot is absolutely right to point out the daftness of assuming a General Election is going to be a neat repeat of a choice historical one. But it’s an assumption that political pundits cling to like a cuddle blanket.

What I think is going to matter in the next GE is public disenchantment with politicians generally. Voter apathy and the seeping away of Tory votes to UKIP are going to put a big dent in the Tories’ chances.

Indeed – my main hope is that the election brings with it a re-balancing that limits the apparently untrammelled influence of London-centric frappuccino sipping blackberry waving Guardianistas.

I paint with a broad brush (of course) but some acknowledgment of the cultural landscape beyond the M25 would be lovely.

@Andy

I completely agree with you. Talk about fighting the battles of the past. I don’t even think it goes down all that well with the faithful. Well, perhaps with the hopelessly besotted. But no one else.

It’s okay, I suppose, as a quick riposte.

It’s bloody stupid as a theme.

You’re right about the 2010 election being a one off, possibly more unlike almost any we might now imagine would be the best comparison I suspect.

Re tory toffs: Could someone persuade Mr Chameleon to take a more sensible line on employing former Old Etonians and Bullingdon Club members? (others are toffs, but he would be hard put to manage without those who went to public schools)

Shortly after he was elected over the relatively untoff Dave Davis he took on a higher number of Old Etonians and former Bullingdon Club members than any Tory leader since Macmillan – about 1/2 of his front bench was in one or both of those categories.

Some of us objected, this was unfair to all sorts of Tory MPs who hadn’t been to Eton, or in the Bullers.

He acceded to our demands to a fair extent but, in view of Old Etonian multi millionaire Zac Goldsmith’s role in Chameleon’s policy making, it looks like we should expect yet more unfair discrimination if the Tories win, increasingly unlikely.

People should let Dave know they want some fairness, bringing Dave Davis back would be a start, and bring some rather wild water inside his tent.

A few false oppositions here I think. No-one is suggesting that 2010 is going to be an exact replica of any previous election, merely that it is more likely to resemble 1964, 1974 (twice), 1992 or (possibly) 1979 than, say, 1983, 1987, 1997 and 2001.

The most relevant comparisons are with 1964 and 1992 because those were the only two previous contests in the relatively recent past where one party (the Tories in both cases) was attempting to win a fourth term. In 1964 they narrowly failed, while in 1992 they narrowly succeeded, although had a few thousand votes gone the other way we would have had a hung Parliament and, in all likelihood, a Neil Kinnock government with Paddy Ashdown as Foreign Secretary. In other words, two opposition parties combining to oust one that had been power for 13 years. This, for me, still seems the likeliest outcome of the 2010 contest – not history repeating itself as such, more history repeating what was nearly history, if that makes any sort of sense.

History doesn’t repeat itself – historians repeat each other.

You are alluding to the idea of parallel universes, infinite variations of the space/time continuum where an infinite range of outcomes are possible.

It is the protagonists who are utterly predictable.

Over at the Spectator, James Forsyth is speculating on a March 25th election, albeit swathed in the usual caveats. I think he fails to taken in one crucial point of form, and that is Gordon Brown’s inability to be pre-emptive. It is impossible for someone who spent £1 million pounds on preparing the ground for an election and then cancelling it to be decisive in the way Forsyth suggests. It is impossible for someone who saw the expenses scandal unfold, only to react, change tack and react again, to respond to a mood, even if he recognised it. It is impossible for someone who cannot face even the simple facts of his failure, an has a chronic inability to repent, to actually see the light.

Brown will do the only thing he can given his previous form. History, as you say, will be created; not only an unelected Prime Minister, but the first in in decades to hang on until an election must legally be called.

Unless there is a new Labour leader, this present one will hang on until the last ballot box is opened on June 3rd.

Time is an illusion, and the historian a great sorcerer.

So far as the expenses scandal was concerned Brown invited Chameleon & Clegg to a meeting a little before the Dully Tele broke the bulk of the stolen unredacted information.

They would not support temporary measures which would have forfended some of the furore, and left the way open forpoliticians to avoid some of the loss of their credibility.

They hoped for sectional advantage, which, to an extent, was forthcoming (people always blame HMG, even on matters which are usually dealt with cross party by back benchers) for a time . . . .

The class warefare tactic really is a dumb one, as Harriet Harman’s discomfort showed yesterday when asked, as a privately-educated member of the aristocracy, to condemn it.

The news from the ONS that manufacturing declined 3 times more under Blair and Brown than under Thatcher, coupled with the report showing that the poor were getting poorer under Labour even before the recession started just shows that Labour has done little or nothing to help the core voters it’s now trying to appeal to.

After 12 years of Labour, voters just need to ask themselves, who is better off ? Obviously Tony Blair is. That is widely reported. Doctors and dentists have got big pay-rises, but thanks to their new contracts, patients are worse off. There are now over 350 civil servants earning more than the prime minister, so they’re ok. Quango members seem to be doing rather well too.

But of those of us ordinary workers, whose taxes pay for all those above, who is actually better off ?

Just about everyone is better off.

Particularly a tory friend who is having her NHS operation within a fortnight of it being found to be necessary.

May well be another Labour vote!

(One byproduct of a fourth successive Labour Victory will be that amateur tory trolls may become eligible for Crashcroft Cash. Lord Ashcroft has said he will withdraw his funding and direct control of part of Tory HQ and it may be he will be looking for such as Simon to support. He has already started buying up “independent” websites, is “supporting” Sir Iain Dale’s publishing company etc)

“Just about everyone is better off.”

Except of course those people who are unemployed. And those people on low incomes who have got poorer under Labour. And those people worse off thanks to the 10p tax band being removed. And those people who died in one of our dirty NHS hospitals, because the Trust spends more money on bureaucrats than cleaners. And those soldiers who died because of a lack of planning or equipment. And those people fined for putting their dustbin out on the wrong day. And those people whose council tax has doubled under Labour.

So after taking out that lot, I think I’m back to my original list.

Silly Simon, troll away . . .

Many of the Tory Unemployed are a lot better off cos they are in work.

Only by relating some poor peoples’ incomes to the average can even a troll make out the poor are worse off of course. We all recall the great Laffer curve – which represents inequality in a society – in Mrs Thatcher’s day, more extreme that that of India most of the time.

Our soldiers are and were well equipped as the Second Iraq War started as Lord Boyce made clear yesterday at the independent Iraq war Inquiry. (Funny how the Falklands did not have anything worthy of comparison)

I do know of someone who died unnecessarily in a hospital whose relos sued successfully – in the USA of course.

Life under a labour Government is too good to waste refuting your lies.

Be unhappy, it suits you.

@Quietzapple

“Many of the Tory Unemployed are a lot better off cos they are in work. ”

So it’s just the “Labour Unemployed” who are unemployed now ? I’m not sure Labour supporters will be ok with being picked on like that.

The Falklands war was a different scenerio completely, since UK territory was invaded by a foreign country. It’s not like we had a year to plan and equip ourselves, unlike Tony Blair who did have this luxury with the Iraq War. Shame he chose not to use it, in case people found out the real reason for the invasion.

Exactly what is it about Life under Labour that you enjoy so much ? Rising knife crime ? Falling education standards. Rising unemployment ? The biggest debt in history ?

Or is it the personal intrusions in almost every aspect of your life ?

The Tory Unemployed are those whom the Tories would have thrown out of work in addition to those suffering from the World Economic Recession & etc – with your trolling support it has been quite clear.

I like the increased prosperity of many kinds under this decent Government.

I was put on an MI6 list of political suspects aged 14 in 1962, under a Tory administration, and this was confirmed when i worked for a security company when Mr Heath ran HMG, and again by my local Tory MP under Thatcher.

You are specifically ignorant about the Falklands, whose Inquiry was conducted so as to minimise the bad publicity Mrs Thatcher and the M o D deserved.

Cannot recall precisely how many Brits and others burned to death on British warships in the Falklands, but I do know that the PVC sheathed wiring of various kinds was partly responsible, and that at least one supplier had repeatedly warned the M o D of this danger.

You cannot imagine the contempt such as you deserve. If we ever have another Tory Government you may live to rue your nonsense here, or perhaps collect your dies.

@Quietzapple “You cannot imagine the contempt such as you deserve. ”

I’m not sure that was necessary !

I agree. A bit of civility, please or you’ll be barred. The landlord has spoken.

Well Tom, would “psychotic troll” & etc only be acceptable as incoming then?

And in practice that was from someone whose only contributions I have seen here in the past few weeks were two such pops at myself.

Off course I respect the landlord’s decisions, and not solely perforce.

Golly gosh, a confessional column,well we are all rich now, er — aren’t we?

I spy a niggardly restless spat!

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

Walter Bagehot

Do you see?