FROM today’s Sunday Times:
Here’s another thing that some people might have overlooked about the Tories: the Conservatives still haven’t recovered, in the public’s minds, from the Major years. Yes, he left office nearly 13 years ago and there will be many people voting this time round who can barely remember a Conservative government and others who can’t remember one at all.
But they will be outnumbered by those who can and do. The Conservatives lost catastrophically for a reason, or for many reasons. In the immediate aftermath of 1997, there were many who predicted that the party would never recover electorally, that it was finished. Others (me included) refused to write them off but felt it would take them a very long time to get back to the point where government was a realistic target.
Too many Tories thought that all they had to do was keep quiet, behave themselves, and wait for the pendulum to swing back towards them. But it’s now becoming clear that such a strategy was flawed. It’s predicated on the assumption that the pendulum is still working normally, and I’m not sure it is.
It’s still too early to predict a definite outcome one way or the other, but the message from the polls is that the momentum is with Labour. If the Sunday Times poll is confirmed by other polls (and I accept that might not be the case), then Labour will head into the campaign with a healthier polling position than Major did in 1992. There is some discussion in the blogscape that a fourth Labour win would be good for the Tories in the same way that a four Tory victory in 1992 effectively finished Major’s party for the next three elections. I’m not so sure.
In the aftermath of the 1992 election, Labour held its nerve. It didn’t implode. It got on with the job of offering effective, if safe, opposition under John Smith, and then even more effective, and radical, leadership under Tony Blair.
What would happen to the Tories were Labour to win a fourth successive Commons majority? I’m sure Cameron would not survive. But he would not be replaced by another “moderniser” in the same mould. The party would be in danger of disintegration as the old right wing, anti-EU brigade took their revenge on the Cameroons. Such civil war didn’t happen to Labour because Kinnock had taken Labour in the general direction the party wanted to go. Cameron cannot say the same.
I’ll be out door-knocking in the constituency later this afternoon. The view of my agent, campaign manager and activists is entirely uniform: the sooner Gordon calls the election, the better. Let’s get on with it.
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Sunday 1 November 2009 at 9:22 pm
Surely the point here though is that the classification system is supposed to group drugs by the harm they do.
The allocation of drugs into those groupings must be based on evidence or the exercise is pointless. Ignoring the advice of the experts means that the drug classification system is in fact a system to signal to the population how much they morally disapprove of the users of each drug.
Advisers advise, and ministers decide. That’s fine – and proper – for matters of policy. The relative harms of drugs however is not a matter of policy – it’s a matter of fact. And to some extent the cat is now out of the bag – Alan admitted as such when he explained on Sky News how the assignment of drugs to different categories is a matter of government policy. So – be honest – and admit that drug policy has very little to do with fact, with reason, with evidence – and very much to do with how ‘tough’ the government wants to appear on a drugs issue, regardless of how proportionate that ‘toughness’ is to the problem.
Sunday 1 November 2009 at 9:31 pm
Witlessly, Nutt has not given the likely consequences of his campaign sufficient thought.
The desperation of the pro illegal drug squad here says rather more than any critic ever could. The comments on the Yahoo thread I linked above are like breath of fresh clear thinking air.
Tom’s drug trolls are like those who tell us there are no islamo-fascists, pity they cannot be the first victims of some kid who thinks he’s been told that cannabis/LSD/ecstasy is harmless, less harmful than tobacco.
Do you people really want my country to consume More Cannabis, LSD, ecstasy? Most of us would regard that as pretty perverse.
Sunday 1 November 2009 at 9:41 pm
They fall apart, I’ve superglued my most recent one.
I suspect planned obsolescence.
Sunday 1 November 2009 at 10:35 pm
They are ADVISORS and it is for the government to decide if they take that advice or not. You can tell they have had free reine as the first time their advice is rejected they stary throwing their toys out of the pram.
Labour have used far to many advisors and I hope tis is the start of getting rid of them.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 11:25 am
Bother – if only I’d scrolled down before rushing to type my words of wisdom I could have saved a bit of cut & paste in my comment on your next post – to say nothing of a visit to tiny url.
But, as it’s too cold and wet to go canvassing, at least it’s given me something other than hoovering to do whilst listening to the cricket. Bangladesh seem to be going the way of the Tories, a promising start to the campaign but then a bit of a collapse…
All to play for.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 1:34 pm
On reading the excellent polling results the first thing I feel is that we must remain solidly on the policies that matter to people and communicate those.
We must not gloat or anything like that over the Conservative party’s massive failure.
Although the Conservative party and its ultra wealthy friends have used underhand tactics against Labour, the Labour party must now continue to stick with policies and issues that matter to the electorate. We must work to ensure that the electorate understands what we mean to them. Leave the Conservative party to collapse on its own.
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 2:59 pm
I’m pleased to see the movement in the polls and especially pleased to see the Tories in a mild panic.
But I do hope Gordon doesn’t rush off to the Queen too quickly. For a long time now, the perceived wisdom has been for a 6 May election and while that doesn’t actually mean much, the busketload that will be poured over Gordon’s head if he were to go early wouldn’t, in my view, be worth it.
The election will be here soon enough. More time for the Tories to misfire.
On this note, evidently Dave is talking about it being his “patriotic duty” to win. What does that make those who want to stop him? Aren’t we patriots too?
Sunday 28 February 2010 at 5:59 pm
It will be down to the marginals.
As for principles – don’t make me laugh, it hurts …
These sort of principles?
Early Day Motion 1754 from October 2002 states:
That this House agrees that the first-past-the-post electoral system is the most appropriate for electing honourable Members of Parliament.
It’s signed by, amongst many others, Tom Watson and Jon Cruddas.
Yet:
Alternative Vote: Why we should change the First Past the Post voting system
From Tom Watson’s blog last Summer.
And:
A grown-up Labour party needs to embrace proportional representation
That’s what Jon Cruddas wrote in the Guardian in March last year.
Monday 1 March 2010 at 11:25 pm
Tom,
A post I’d genuinely like to see you write is this. If this poll was turn out correct (the polls tonight suggest otherwise, but that’s a different story), then Labour would win far more seats than the Conservatives (assuming a uniform swing, but that’s another caveat), yet the Conservative’s would receive far more votes. Now you, like me, believe in FTP. I believe it retains the link between me and my and MP, and that it is a fair way of selecting a reasonably representetive parliament, and still delivering a stable government. But a parliament where one party fnishes 2nd in votes yet wins most seats is, I think, unprecedented. What would be the implications? How would that play at Westminster? Would Labour need to be more concilliatory? etc etc. I could guess a lot, but I’d be interested in the insiders perspective.
Sunday 7 March 2010 at 6:44 pm
“Is the pendulum broken?”
If it is we know who broke it. Let’s see, who is paying more in wages to the public sector than taxes actually bring in? who is paying more in benefits than income tax brings in? Clue, it wasn’t Mrs Thatcher.
“What would happen to the Tories were Labour to win a fourth successive Commons majority?”
More importantly, what would happen to _the_country_ if Labour were to win a fourth term? It would be finished. Broke & Broken. An Ex-country. Deceased.
Still I’m not worried there are other countries out there which aren’t yet completely broken. I and most of the productive third of society would leave you with your core vote and see how that works out for you.
Sunday 7 March 2010 at 6:46 pm
Missing you already.
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