(UK) Tories back in the lead with Howard

[rjbcar27]

Michael Howard has put the Conservatives back on the map three weeks after taking over as leader from Iain Duncan Smith.

A YouGov poll for The Telegraph today gives them a two-point lead over Labour, with the Liberal Democrats running a poor third.

<snip>

It puts the Tories on 38 per cent (up four points on October), Labour 36 (no change) and the Liberal Democrats on 19 (down four).

According to YouGov, 59 per cent of voters disapprove of the Government's overall record, while 65 per cent believe that it has not proved "honest and trustworthy".

<snip>

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/11/28/ntory28.xml&sSheet=/portal/2003/11/28/ixportaltop.html (registration required)


This news might keep Tony on his toes. Love him or hate him, no-one can deny Mr. Howards effectiveness at PM questions, it's awesome to watch Blair and Howard go at it hammer and tongs. I thoroughly recommend catching the show.

[xchrom]

1. ideology or ideas matter more

than personality.
this has been the downfall of labour with blair at the helm.
blair is a corporatist. and follows that philosophy first -- rather than a socialist/labour point of view.
it's blair through the power of his personality that has led labour lately -- and it ain't working. the public can be reactionary rather than idealist and vote conservative as a way to clean rather than actively working to bring labour back to it's socialist roots.

[AP]

2. I disagree with that analysis. I think Blair puts jobs and salaries first

which is actually a pretty liberal thing to do if you're also protecting the people with jobs and salaries from letting the right wing reach into your pocket while you're not looking.

But, no matter what you and I think of Blair, would you be happier with Blair or a Tory PM?

[rjbcar27]

3. Hard to tell the difference really

between Blair and a Tory PM.

[AP]

4. Let me remind you then:

The Tories are the ones who liked Pinochet, while even the right winger Labour MP Jack Straw saw the logic in exposing him to an extradition order. I'm not saying I wasn't pissed off at the way Straw ultimately dealt with this, however, recently I listened to Chileans say how satisfying it was to get what they got from the Labour government, and I'll guarantee you that that NEVER would have happened under the Tories. I think it was a very important shot across the bow for liberal internationalism.

Also the Tories were the ones whose former cabinet members left office and started entering into business deal with Slobadon Milosevic, while Tony Blair took part in a effort to remove him as threat to European stability. See, Tories like chaos because it makes money for evil people. Labour likes people to make money without them having to be evil to do it.

Another difference is that the Tories like to give the poor just enough to live so that they can show up at the factory and put in a full day's work so that profits can concentrate in the hands of the wealthy. Labour is the party that tries to make sure that more of the wealth people create with the hard work stays in their own hands.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

6. There's quite a few people on this board think the Tories are bearable.

In my eyes, they're no different from Republicans, particularly the Thatcherite wing (from whence came Howard).

Incidentally, leaders often get a good boost when first chosen. I don't see the Tories actually winning an election though.

[AP]

9. Although I agree that this is a post-selection bump

I also think it's very dangerous to be complacent. They're definitely within striking distance, and who knows what they're plotting right now. I'm sure they have some sabotage planned.

Just like in the US in 2000, as the middle class gets wealthier, there's something worth stealing. The ante is getting upped, and I wouldn't be suprised if Billy T Lyon claims that he threw down an eight when he really threw down a seven. I would be suprised if you see a lot of cheating and lying soon now that there's something in the pot and now that they might be within striking distance.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

10. Do we have a Staggerlee, then? n/t

[AP]

12. Well, in summer 2001 it looked like labour had put a bullet between the

eyes of the Tory party (over a $5 Stetson hat, or was it cheating at cards? I guess it depends on the version). But now it looks like Staggo is going to be hanged. And then we will start all over again, with the bad men, the card cheats, running the game with impugnity.

Stagger Lee is, clearly, the people. But it looks like the people might be shooting themselves in the foot, rather than sticking a knife intothe Tories' back (or shooting them, depending on the version you like).

[rjbcar27]

8. There's a growing sense of disillusionment

with Tony.

1997 - We will NOT introduce top-up fees.

2003 - We will introduce top up fees.

The gap between the rich and poor is actually increasing. While the poor have a bigger share of the wealth than they did in 1997, proportionally the rich have an even larger share than they did.

The rail/road networks are fucked and getting worse, council tax has gone up more than you can even dream of even though teachers are getting laid off left right and centre.

Who's idea was it to take the children off asylum seekers whos bid failed? What a ridiculous thing to propose.

This is the problem that Blair has, no-one is interested in Pinochet.

[AP]

11. The gap between the richest and the middle is increasing, however the

biggest gains have been made by the bottom two quintiles.

I think it a liberal economy, everyone would get richer, and the bottom and middle would get the richest. So long as everyone has an equal opportunity to get rich, and so that work is rewarded with wealth (rather than wealth rewarded with more wealth so that they don't have to work) then society is going to be OK.

Blair isn't going to be all things to all liberals. There's no way that's possible. But not to recognize the big improvements that are being made, and not to realize that Tories were just about the most evil cadre of fuckers ever to lead any government anywhere, is, well, crazy.

Do you really think Labour is evil? I don't. Blair's a compromiser, trying to stay in office in a nation still run by the wealthy, where, however, he's trying to bring about reforms which transfer more political and economic power to the middle. Yet, I know Tories are evil incarnate. You can't deny that.

[rjbcar27]

14. I don't think all tories are evil incarnate.

I know quite a few and they're not evil.

The problem Tony has is that there's so much apathy towards politics and politicians in particular, because the good things that are happening are overshadowed by the things that are failing.

We didn't elect him to renege on a campaign promise (top-up fees), we didn't elect him to preside over the massive increase in council tax only to see services decline. We didn't elect him to see a massive decline in the quality of our transport systems and we certainly didn't elect him to cosy up to a right wing republican president.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

15. They may not be evil incarnate personally, but they're enabling evil

that's not much worse. I have zero tolerance for unrepentant Tories.

[AP]

16. The way the Tories governed was evil incarnate. They sold of the railroads

to make millions for their crony tory insiders KNOWING that the profit motive would almost DEFINTELY result in people's deaths. (And it did.)

They promote chaos arround the world, knowing that people will die because of it, just because they want their friends to get rich.

Say what you will about Iraq and Blair, but when Labour governs, people don' t die so that cronies can get rich.

[muriel_volestrangler]

20. So keep your fingers crossed

that the privatisation of the London Underground that Labour is now carrying out doesn't cause more deaths. With bitter irony, the new non-executive chairman of Jarvis, the company responsible for the Potters Bar crash, and now getting contracts for the privatised Underground, is the Conservative candidate for London Mayor. So Tony is now enriching the Tory cronies.

[AP]

23. Why did Red Ken drop legal challenge?

London Mayor Drops Challenge

London Mayor Ken Livingstone ended his legal battle to stop the partial privatization of London’s aging subway network. The plan, advanced by Prime Minister Tony Blair, calls for the selling of parts of the London Underground to the private sector in a bid to generate 16 billion pounds ($25 billion) in investment for the aging network. Under the plan, two private groups, Metronet and Tube Lines Group, will take responsibility for repairing the underground system, which has had little capital investment for many years. The plan received approval from the Board of London Regional Transport in February.
However, ownership of the system will remain public. The two companies would be committed under contract to deliver specific improvements or be penalized.

London has the world’s oldest subway system, with some trains still running through tunnels that opened in 1863.

The Tories privatised EVERYTHING with the rail system, and they'd have done the same to the Underground.

[AP]

24. Some more info...

http://www.utu.org/worksite/detail_news.cfm?ArticleID=5001

Good article setting things out. This isn't an outright sale of lines and rails like the Tories did. This is a 30 year deal for maintenance work to fix some (not all) of the lines.

The purpose of the contract is to upgrade the lines. I don't think that was even a pretense of Tory rail privatization. The Tories simply said the rails are better off in private hands. The market will take care of everything.

[muriel_volestrangler]

31. "hard to come up with a rational explanation" for Tube privatisation

All of the Underground lines are involved - they are split between 2 consortia. One contains Balfour Beatty, the maintenance company responsible for the Hatfield crash; the other Jarvis, the maintenance company responsible for the Potters Bar crash. The Tories did say that rail privatisation would get the infrastructure upgraded.

Why Livingstone's appeal ended:

"The High Court judge was increasingly convinced by procedural arguments that the mayor was not involved in what amounted to commercial negotiations, and therefore should not have his appeal heard.

Because Mr Livingstone was not yet in control of the Tube, he ended up fighting from the outside - everyone else involved in the proposals was privy to the complex negotiations surrounding the PPP.

The government, London Underground, and the two companies bidding for the work - Tubelines and Metronet, were just anxious to get on with it."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/2154533.stm

Here's some comments from Christian Wolmar, probably the leading expert on the economics of the British rail system:

"The Tube Public Private Partnership (PPP) is a particularly innovative but controversial idea, as it not only breaks up a system which naturally requires a high level of integration and co-ordination but is based on contracts of such extraordinary complexity, running to 2,800 pages and two million words, that not even the contractors fully understand them.

On the Underground, too, the model chosen to sell the system had already been discredited long before the final contracts were signed. Originally, the plan had been that the private sector would fully finance the investment needed to upgrade the system, such an attractive proposition that it won over Labour MPs when the scheme was launched in 1998. The only problem is that it was a pipedream. In fact, the PPP requires subsidy of £1 billion per year, much more than the Underground ever received when it was in state ownership. Moreover, the amount of money being invested by the private sector represents a mere 25 per cent of the total, hardly worth the trouble given that the contracts cost a massive £500 million to draw up."

"It is such a radical turnaround that it is hard to come up with a rational explanation. When challenged, the Labour politicians themselves talk in vague terms of using 'whatever method works' to deliver better state services, irrespective of whether it is delivered by the public or private sectors.

But that is a fudge. So is the argument that there is not enough public money for investment. A bit of tinkering with the Treasury rules could ensure that the UK did not breach the rules set by the European Union on public spending. The truth is that Labour is anxious to move away from the legacy of the welfare state it created, epitomised by the swathes of run down council estates created in the post war housing boom. "

http://www.newsandevents.warwick.ac.uk/index.cfm?page=198

[AP]

32. muriel, tell me why YOU don't like Tories.

I'm curious.

[muriel_volestrangler]

34. the following is not an exhaustive list

Unjustified sinking of Belgrano in Falklands War, and subsequent triumphalism (old reason, but there are still some Troies left from that time)

'get Scargill at any cost' tactics in 1980's miners' strike

complete trashing of mining industry for political reasons, with no regard for communities depending on it

encouragement of 'greed is good' attitude

failure of safety in several cases during late 80's, leading to major loss of life, with no corporate accountability (eg Herald of Free Enterprise, Marchioness, King's Cross fire)

Introduction of poll tax - the most regressive tax ever introduced in any democratic country

Xenophobic suspicion of anything European by the majority of Tories

incompetent handling of European Exchange Rate Mechanism, lsoing billions for the country

privatisation of state assets, some natural monopolies, at prices way below market value, often to cronies, for short-term political gain

corruption amongst back-bench MPs and low-ranking ministers

racist attitude to asylum seekers

taking too much off the highest income tax rates, and putting the burden more on VAT and other sales taxes

abolition of student grants

[AP]

17. Furthermore, I suspect that you did...

...elect him to make the bottom two quintiles much better off (which he's doing), and to lower unemployment to 20 or 30 year record levels and to increase wages (all of which he's doing). I suspect you elected him so that London and Brussels (in which London has a say) have more control over the political an economic destiny of Brits than Washington DC has, which has happened (and, say what you will, but I think the UK's participation in Iraq is so that Britain can ultimately detach itself from DC control, which appears counterintuitive on the surface, but, just consider how much control the US would have over Europe if it were in Iraq all by itself).

[rjbcar27]

18. You're missing the point AP

to the majority of voters, the points that I made are key. Talking to voters about Washingtons control or Brussels control of this or that will just get you blank stares. Yes the economy is reasonable and unemployment is low, that's fine but don't underestimate peoples perception of what matters to them, right or wrong.

[AP]

19. Perception, I believe, is driven by a media...

...that doesn't want to let Labour out of its control.

Perhaps you don't get what I'm saying. I think the perception is very short sighted. After what the Tories did to Britian, they should be gone. It should be Labour:47, Lib Dem:42 and Tories:11, at the most.

[pasadenaboy]

21. I think Blair put the Iraq war first

allienating over 2/3rds of his base. Hence is loss in the next election. I'm afraid the same fate might befall us if we nominate a pro-war democrat. If your issue is the war, why would you bother to vote if both sides have the same position?

[AP]

22. It's more likely that whatever a liberal does, media will make look bad

And I'd rather look like I was for defending national security and have to beg the far left to get in line, then look anti-national security and have to beg the middle to vote for someone who they percieive will let them die in a terrorist attack.

[Zynx]

5. I say it serves Blair and Labor right.

If a rightwing Democrat had done this Iraq thing, I might vote Republican. That's how I feel on these issues.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

7. Really? You'd actually vote republican? I hope to god that is not true.

[AP]

13. Clinton said that he thought that US had enough evidence to attack Iraq

and he said that Al Gore was the person in his administration who wanted to take out Sadaam the most.

So, but for the grace of god, you might have easily have had the opportunity to vote Republican.

Of course, if Clinton or Gore had gone in, they woud have provided the accurate evidence, and they probably would have behaved properly once there. However, they would have been hated by the far left. And, in fact, that might be why they didn't do it even when they felt they were putting the US in jeopoardy by not doing it.

[xchrom]

25. you give god like powers of perception to blair

that he does not deserve.
his handling of the health system is a disaster.
pensioners can tell a bad deal when they see one -- to satisfy a corporate power grab in iraq meant pensioners could not receive increases they need.
you defend a corporatist sytem creeping in it's take over of civilization here and in europe.
with some increased resistance on the continent.
but the whole notion that there was anything good about britain's involvement in the destruction of innocent lives in iraq is simply despicable.
the pick-up in the economy may or not be attributable to blair -- but i promise you he made deals with the devil to get from a to b -- and what's worse if the corporate powers can swing it regardless of what tony has done for them -- you will see a torrie government.
moving government, politics and an economy along can be done with out killing innocent people to satiate greed and that's to say the least.

[xchrom]

26. and by the way

to say it's tony or the tories is always a false choice -- there are always choices to be made. like not forcing a good man to either be murdered or commit suicide.
you sound like the kind of person who might think the death of a great liberal like wellstone is a good thing -- in that it ''moderates'' the ''liberal'' view the public might have about dems. one less ''extreme liberal'' after all.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

27. If there's to be real change made in the UK, they must reform

the voting system. As we all know First Past the Post stacks the odds heavily in favour of the (usually two) largest parties. If we want something other than Labour or Tory (or Democrat / Republican) we must adopt some form of Proportional Representation. If you look at the recent Scottish Election results, PR has allowed 7 Green representatives, 6 Socialists, Independents and forced Labour to govern in coalition with the Liberal Democrats. As Blair has never achieved more than 44% of the vote in an election, he would be forced to govern as a coalition, almost definitely with the Lib-Dems, and coalition governments are less inclined to make damaging, unpopular decisions such as Blair's involvement in the War.

Lecture Ends

[xchrom]

28. it's the same here.

hopefully without starting another boring green/dem coflagration -- there is a need for diversity in representation.
however -- i was simply condemning a pragmatism at all costs approach to governing no matter who is in charge.

[Screaming Lord Byron]

29. Agreed. If Charlie Kennedy had been in a coalition with Blair when the

war started, I'd like to think Kennedy would consider it a deal-breaking issue, which may have changed recent events for the better. Unfortunately Blair has such a vast majority through FPTP, he can do whatever the hell he likes.

[xchrom]

30. you right about that

instead of war with iraq -- the health care system may have gotten a better over haul -- instead tony has compromised labour, perhaps for years. just so some innocent people could die for the multi-nationals greedy whims.

[fedsron2us]

33. You Gov polls need to be taken with a sizable pinch of salt.

After the last Conservative party conference they showed a startling jump in the support of the Tory party and its then leader Ian Duncan Smith.

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_828112.html?menu=

A few weeks later the Conservatives came third in the Brent East by-election. Mr Smith was then summarily ditched by his loyal colleagues.

As YouGov are currently engaged by the Tory party to do their own in house polling. one can not help but wonder if they are not just telling their paymasters what they want to hear. Certainly, some Conservatives think this is the case because they are currently considering replacing YouGov with pollsters who are more adept at reflecting electoral reality.

[muriel_volestrangler]

35. actually the Brent East by election was before the conference

but I agree that YouGov polls seem to jump around quite a bit. They're internet based - I wonder if the people who are registered with them are very reactive to the latest news - hence the increase in support for each party after its conference, and for the Tories now they've elected a new leader who then got a few headlines.