Election 2010: if this was a horse race
Friday, April 23, 2010 Another disappointing debate for the Conservatives, in my view. Some commentators, including Iain Dale, thought Cameron edged it but I am inclined to agree with the person who commented on Iain's blog:
"As much as I want Cameron to win I have to say his inability to win a debate against a fatally flawed leader and a lightweight is depressing."
Personally, I thought Clegg edged it. He struck me as more confident than Cameron (not surprising, perhaps, given the circumstances). His voice, which used to sound very similar to Cameron's, has developed a richer, more expressive tone. Cameron's voice sounds lightweight, even anonymous, in comparison.
They used to refer to Cameron as Blair Lite. But the former PM was, if nothing else, a great communicator. I have seen no hint of that from Cameron which is amazing, really. Worse, Brown and Clegg made some pretty outrageous comments about the Tories and Cameron said nothing ... The strategy, clearly, is to avoid a scrap but, for me, it makes him look weak. Come on, David, get your fists up and start punching!
Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to vote for Clegg or the Lib Dems. Vote Lib Dem and you'll get five more years of Labour. But Cameron has been a huge disappointment in the two debates to date. I listened to him last night and I can't remember a single thing he said.
OK, I can't remember much of what Clegg said either, but he seemed more assertive, using his hands and arms to emphasise his points. He also seemed to respond intuitively to one or two questions, whereas Cameron, like Brown, appeared to stick to the script in his head.
The less said about Brown the better. I don't agree with those who say he was better than last week. That mouth - stop gurning, man! I know we all do daft things when we're nervous (my habit is to laugh), but I have never seen anyone smirk (smile?) so often at the most inappropriate moments.
Nuclear weapons? Smirk. Al Qaeda? Smile. Does this man have ANY facial control at all?
Despite the polls, I still think the Conservatives will win the election, albeit with a smaller majority than I predicted a few weeks ago. But I'm not as confident as I was. If this was a horse race the Tories would have their noses in front as the leaders approach the final hurdle but there are a number of possible outcomes, including a Devon Loch style fall in the run-in.
I can only conclude that someone at Conservative Central Office is either masterminding a superb, understated campaign in which the party holds the lead and pulls away smoothly in the final furlong ... or there has been a cock-up of monumental proportions and the old nag is about to collapse and expire at the finishing post.
Reader Comments (18)
I have to agree that last night's debate was certainly no great breakthrough for Cameron and most polls showed Cameron and Clegg pretty close with a poll of polls showing them 33% each.
However, a YouGov poll for the Sun newspaper showed Cameron a clear winner by 4 percentage points, way out of line with anything else. Given that the Sun is supporting the Tories and the history of YouGov polls, surely it is time to stop using or listening to this polling company.
I for one do not believe any of their poll results and this is nothing to do with political persuasion. I would disbelieve any poll for the Mirror which showed Brown winning if produced by Kellner's lot.
Is it a case of 'he who pays the piper calls the tune'?
I agree, Cameron was disappointing again - he mostly looked wooden and out-manoevred. I also agree about the bizarre gurning.
But can you explain Simon why a vote for the Lib Dems would mean five more years of Labour? Isn't a Conservative/Lib Dem coalition looking the likely outcome, given that they are currently both streets ahead of Labour? Or am I missing something?
Rose, the price of any coalition with the Lib Dems is a change to the voting system. I can't see how the Conservatives can support PR, which is what the Lib Dems want, because that would almost certainly condemn the Tories to decades in opposition to a virtually permanent centre-left coalition.
Of course, some would argue that Cameron is centre-left already, but that's another argument.
The Tory strategy Simon, is for DC to play the nice guy, and to let others in the party do the attacking, as we have seen over the last few days. I personally do not agree with this, and I think it makes him look weak, when he isn't at all.
The only time he strayed from this strategy was when he attacked Brown for the lies Labour are sending out to voters. I thought "Great, at last he is hitting back at this jerk". Brown stumbled and fumbled and did a little more gurning, but you can bet your life he and Labour are going to have to climb down big over this one.
What I want to see now though, is DC ripping up his CCO orders and getting stuck into the second half of that abysmal double act, in the same manner that he tore into Brown. After all, Clegg has nothing positive to offer, his policies, are just vacuous sound-bites. With what we are now learning about the Clegg-machine, he looks to me to be an easy target.
If Clegg was a car, he would be a 1986 bright orange Ford, with yellow stripes down the side, a tail-bar and large exhausts that makes lots of noise. You could get your Clegg-mobil from Arthur Daley Autos, and it would grind to a halt two minutes after leaving Daley's forecourt.
And to think, some people are seriously thinking of exchanging their old car for one of these. As Del Boy would say, "Don't be a plonker all your life Rodney"
The Lib/Dems allying themselves with the Tories ?
Yeah, that'll be the day.................
While UKIP is more aligned with my views these days, I wonder if there is any mileage in voting more strategically to engineer a hung Parliament. Where I live, the LibDems were 4000 behind the Tory MP, and everyone else was an also-ran. So there is no point in voting other than LibDem.
Of course a hung Parliament would probably mean we still have Gordon, but the electorate are going to be pretty upset if Labour do it off the back of the smallest share of the popular vote - and the LibDems do better than labour but fall short a couple of hundred seats (which they will). The upshot has to be PR, which will help parties like UKIP gain seats in a future elction. And ironically Gordon will have to clear up the mess he has made!
@Simon, so what would happen then, if as seems possible, the Tories had the most seats, followed by the Lib Dems, with Labour a poor third? Are you saying the Conservatives and Lib Dems would just refuse to work together, and then ... Labour take over instead? Doesn't seem very logical to me, although I am of course much too young (!) to remember much about how coalitions work. I take your point about PR, but wouldn't Cameron feel that being in power with a promise to introduce PR be preferable to being out of power with the present system?
From where I'm sitting, as a very much Ex Labour voter looking seriously at Cameron's Conservatives and Clegg's Lib Dems for the first time, they appear to have a lot more in common with each other than either does with Brown's Labour.
Moreover, the idea of the Lib Dem's libertarian leanings (and they have some) being in partnership with the Conservatives' laissez faire attitudes and hatred of big Government has a certain appeal.
How many times are we going to hear all this rubbish that a hung Parliament would be all right for this country, or worse still, "good for the country?"
A hung Parliament is good for one thing only, and that is greedy politicians who care only for their jobs and nothing for our country.
Hung Parliaments do not work. How can they? You only have to watch any political debate to see how opposed each party is to each other. Look at last week's Big Debate, when daft old Gordon kept saying "I agree with Nick". This week he heard that Nick doesn't particularly agree with him, and so he turns, as quick as a rattle snake to bite the man that just one week ago, he offered his hand in marriage to.
That is the nature of politics. "We are right and they are wrong" Can anyone imagine a controversial bill such calling for an amendment to the smoking ban, coming up before a hung Parliament? It would hold up Parliament for months, absolutely no business would get done, and in the end it would have to be shelved in order to let ordinary business continue. Is that what these people who keep talking up a hung Parliament really want, because I am bloody sure I don't?
As for the soppy whet Liberals, who are the current cause of this furore, maybe they would do well to take a leaf out of their own book and look back to November 1830, when Earl Grey, a Whig (Liberal) became Prime Minister. One year later, Grey went running to William IV, asking him to dissolve Parliament so that the Whigs could secure a larger majority in the House of Commons. "We just cannot get any of our proposals for Parliamentary reform through", he whined. The King eventually agreed, but it resulted in riots on the streets of Britain.
Now we have this same party today, wanting to throw a spanner in the works of democracy, in order for them to take partial control of our country. No matter that it could not possibly work, as it didn't for them all those years ago, no matter that they went crawling to the King asking for the power to increase their majority, no matter that we would have no way out of the mess that they and Labour would create between them.
Anyone with any sense knows that minority Governments cannot get things done, and the same goes for hung Parliaments and the likes of Clegg and Brown know this, and are traitorous to even contemplate such action.
Don't say you are too young to remember much about how coalitions work Rose.
You don't have to be a 1,000 years old to know about the Roman Empire, just read up on your history.
Shame they got rid of William Hague
Peter, we all know your views. You want everyone to vote Tory. Period. We've got it. Enough already!
We don't all have to take what you say at face value, however.
You don't have to take what "anyone" says at face value Rose, and if I might remind you, that as far as I know this board is for debating according to the subject, and I am not going to be stopped by you from doing that just because you disagree with my views. You sound just like one of thos antis. They don't like smoking, so no one else should do it!
Like it or not, this election has as much to do about personalities as it does policies. The electorate believe that all politicians lie and look after their own interests anyway so may as well vote for the least worst.
Voting LibDem can temper the excesses of the 'Big 2' and had we a hung parliament in the past we would not have had the Poll Tax, Iraq war, European agreements that gave away too much power,toadying to America against the national interest etc,etc,etc.
It is clear the public want a middle ground. They want stability not boom and bust, soldiers on peacekeeping missions and not fighting fruitless and illegal wars, trade with Europe but not controlled by Brussels and a safety net not a gravytrain for the workshy.
Each political party has policies that the electorate like and dislike and a coalition government that works with consensus and not dictat may be the solution.
Had the Tories a believeable leader like Ken Carke or even as Timbone says William Hague, they might be electable, but Labour, LibDems or a LibLab pact could not be any worse than Cameron.
Rose, see my latest post.
In any case - even if there IS a hung Parliament, the thing would fall apart within a year or so.
At the subsequent election, the electorate would tend to vote (probably) in such a way that one party at least came out ahead with enough votes to govern.
One thing that IS interesting however:
On Betfair, the odds on a Conservative majority have gone out (from 1.71 a week ago) to 2.82. To those of us who pretend to understand such things, this is quite astonishing.
Cameron should be MILES ahead at this stage - after 13 years of appalling misgovernance by Labour.
Just consider the position of Maggie T in 1979, or Tony Blair in 1997.
And the 'favourite' result (at 1.71, ironically)) is 'No overall majority'.
Only one thing's certain at the moment:
This ain't 1979 (or 1997).
Interesting times, indeed !
Very.
Peter, I apologise if the point I was trying to make did not come across. I was asking a particular question about how hung parliaments work and why voting Lib Dem was likely to result in a Labour Government, which Simon has been good enough to explain to me in his subsequent post.
My post was not criticising the views you hold, which you are of course perfectly entitled to, but rather expressing a little gentle frustration that you seem to take any opportunity to repeat your beliefs (that everyone should vote Tory, and that anyone who doesn't is a complete idiot), even when doing so is something of a non sequitur.
Thank you Rose, not many people can admit to ever having to stoop make an apology. I do appreciate what you were asking Simon, and I thought I would try to make some effort, in a roundabout way, to answer you, in my post about the Liberals, or Whigs as they were know back in the 1800s.
Regarding me taking every opportunity I can to ram my message home, you are 100% correct, but I only do it in the context of an individual thread, which is asking or talking about political beliefs and ideals.
I consider it my duty to try and get my message across to as many people as possible, because I believe the Conservatives are the only party who can save this country, and let's be honest, we don't have much time left to put our arguments across do we?
Please explain to me what you mean by your end statement, "anyone who doesn't (vote Tory) is a complete idiot), even when doing so is something of a non sequitur".
How can voting for any party be an inconsistency?
Hi again, I meant that it seemed to me as if sometimes the content of your post didn't seem to follow the one you appeared to be replying to (ie someone says, "what's the price of fish?", and you say, "Don't be an idiot, Vote Tory!")
However, no one can doubt your dedication to the cause Peter, that's for sure ;-) And as you say, there's not long til the election so I'm sure emotions are running high.