The next election is too close to call
Dan Hodges has a piece in the Daily Telegraph here about why the Conservatives believe they have a chance of an outright victory at the next general election.
Lord Ashcroft has an article on Conservative Home here warning Conservatives against over-optimism and fooling ourselves by mistakes such as "comfort polling."
Who is right?
Well, actually I think the most of the arguments in both articles have something going for them.
And one issue not discussed in either is Miliband's strategy of abandoning the political centre in favour of energising his base while trying to appealing more broadly with specifically focussed campaigns on issues like Energy prices.
In most elections abandoning the centre amounts to political suicide, and it may prove so this time, but given that our present electoral system might give Miliband a majority with 35% of the vote this could be one of the rare instances where a strategy like the one he is using works.
It is still eighteen months to the 2015 election. There is a lot of ground to cover. It really could go either way. All the parties have grounds for hope. But there is no room for an atom of complacency.
Lord Ashcroft has an article on Conservative Home here warning Conservatives against over-optimism and fooling ourselves by mistakes such as "comfort polling."
Who is right?
Well, actually I think the most of the arguments in both articles have something going for them.
And one issue not discussed in either is Miliband's strategy of abandoning the political centre in favour of energising his base while trying to appealing more broadly with specifically focussed campaigns on issues like Energy prices.
In most elections abandoning the centre amounts to political suicide, and it may prove so this time, but given that our present electoral system might give Miliband a majority with 35% of the vote this could be one of the rare instances where a strategy like the one he is using works.
It is still eighteen months to the 2015 election. There is a lot of ground to cover. It really could go either way. All the parties have grounds for hope. But there is no room for an atom of complacency.
Comments
the fact of the matter is most of our laws are deterimined by brussels not our own parliamnent, we dont have control over that which is imposed and so the partys squabble over the little things left, that is why you will so often here the LibLabCon line or the "cant get a fag paper between them" line, its because they no longer have control of anything of substance.
Just saying
When Labour were last in government they imposed over a hundred tax rises, mostly stealth taxes such as the five billion a year tax on pension funds, but despite taking all this money off people, they spent so much more that they doubled the national debt to 1.2 trillion pounds and were spending four pounds for every three coming in.
When Labour finally lost power in 2010 Britain was only a couple of years away from a Greece or Cyprus style financial collapse and their present leaders, Miliband and Balls, were helping Gordon Brown run economic policy in the later period of his time in control, when he completely fouled up the country's finances.
In Brown's early years he stuck to Tory spending plans for two years and let the Bank of England set interest rates, and tried to be prudent. Although he made some bad mistakes from the very beginning he also got some things right at first, including preventing Tony Blair from scrapping the pound for the Euro.
It was only when Brown became convinced he was an economic demigod who could repeal the laws of economics (e.g. no more boom and bust) that he completely lost it.
Balls and Miliband, by contrast, are planning disastrous policies from the word go.
If Labour wins those who think there is no difference between the parties and that Westmister cannot do anything important will find out the hard way that they are very wrong indeed.
Unfortunately those who are foolish enough to vote Labour or abstain won't be the only ones going through pain which makes our present economic difficulties look like a picnic.
Currently the NHS is free, but it wont be long before we see something on healthcare running the same route of the Postal service.
Its not so much they have power to control tax, they gave that away, they just have a power to introduce new taxes on top of the older ones that they can control.
Many laws also come from global institutions such as the world trade organisation, the customs co-operation council, the European Associasion of Public Banks, The UN Food and Agriculture organisation, The intergovernmental panel on climate change, the international labour organsation, the world health organisation, the united nations environment programme.
The Uk has given up its say at all of these top tables and settled for 1/28th of 1 vote at them all, the law is then passed via the midddle man in brussels and imposed here.
Its nothing but a game is it? You can shout until you are blue in face about how labour introduced this tax, but if no steps are taken to take away such a daft idea then the conservative party are as much to blame for it.
as is often stated, its not so much the evil of evil men, but the evil that comes from good men doing nothing about it.
Labour left the country bankrupt, spending £4 for every £3 coming in and with a spiralling national debt which is still increasing. We simply cannot afford to reverse measures like this or consider scrapping VAT until Britain's financial position has considerably improved.
For example, there is a UK representative to the World Trade Organisation in Geneva, with the rank of Ambassador, who was appointed in 2011: her name is Miss Karen Elizabeth Pierce CMG.