Miliband’s Tactical Blunder
Europe is now the third most important issue to voters. A few months ago Guido suggested that if Ed had any eye for the long game he would ground Labour in popular Euroscepticism. He didn’t listen, in fact he did the polar opposite, and now he’s paying the price in the polls. Miliband’s lead over the Tories is about the only reason most of the Parliamentary Labour Party put up with him. Today every major polling firm has the Tories ahead or at least level with Labour again. Uh oh…
YouGov and Ipos-Mori both have the Tories on 2 points ahead on 41, while Survation and ComRes have them tied on 38. The LibDems are still just on the right side of double digits, while UKIP, who have been enjoying a recent surge while it appeared Cameron was going to sell the country down the river, have dropped back down to the 4 or 5 point mark. That vote is sure to trickle back up after the initial veto-honeymoon for Dave…
Miliband has slumped in personal rankings as well. And it’s not just the pro-polling:
“But it’s a new LabourList poll of grassroots members that may also dismay Team Miliband. It found that the number of their readers rating Ed a good or excellent leader has fallen from 40% in November to just 26% this month. His decline in popularity appears to be linked to the public sector strikes: although 83% of readers backed the industrial action, only 25% though the Labour leader handled his party’s response well.”
Labour will win tomorrow’s by-election, but if these numbers become a regular feature it’s going take more than a “five-point plan for jobs and growth” to save Ed’s bacon.
Miliband is like Brown, 2nd choice and a loser.
What do you expect ? I’m still working off a blank sheet of paper.
Unemployment hits 17-year high as the number of women out of work soars to the highest level since 1988
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2073942/UK-unemployment-hits-17-year-high-128-000-jobless-months.html#ixzz1gVJwY5OX
Just like the men then, they’ll have to go and do something else, won’t they.
If Labour get rid of Miliband, just who do they have to replace him that is credible beyond the die hard left and untainted by the fiasco of the last government.
In true self flagellating style they will probably be bullied into accepting Ed Balls (the Tories choice)
Kate Hoey
Don’t panic, we’ve still got shit loads of immigrants arriving to join the dole queue.
The economy is still showing the results of 13 years of Labour’s devastation. Even Gordon couldn’t undo the healthy economy he inherited in 1997 until 2004, so how much longer will the far less able (sarc) George take to revitalise it?
Which I think is the meaning behind the Chancellors xmas card. The wise men pass him by because he aint no messiah or miracle worker.
Amazed the pollsters managed to find anyone who rated Eds leadership as excellent, this must be a typo!
The ‘imported’ electorate ?
Postal respondents?
I’m tired of asking how can anyone vote for this loser and his lousy party.
I can only think they must be backward or the towel-headed brigade. I just give up!
Well, well. Looks like all the BBC’s efforts have come to naught. In spite of all the s*** they’ve thrown at Cameron over phone hacking and Europe for the last 6 months, it hasn’t worked. They really do underestimate the intelligence of their audience. But then, we know that they think they know what is best for the little people.
On the BBC 10 o’clock news last night the commentator could barely hide their incredulity that in the depths of an economic crisis, after we had the “whole nation out on strike” [sic] and we have had the phone hacking and the austerity cuts, that the tories would be in the lead in “ONE” poll!
They must be wondering how is it possible? The BBC has been in full on 24/7 doom and gloom mode, exclusively blaming the tories and their banking friends for the economic troubles, suggesting that we are in recession, (we are not) and always doom-mongering that things can only ever get worse.
The scale of the fiscal deficit the coalition inherited was so large, that it would take a decade to recover from, yet the BBC are blaming the tories for what is still obviously the natural and on-going consequence of labour’s lunatic levels of maladministration and economic incompetence. Not that any BBC viewer could ever get that knowledge from watching the biased BBC.
I can just see emergency meetings of panicked BBC executives meeting to analyse what has gone wrong, and how can they better attack the tories to boost labour whilst not “compromising” their charter duty to political impartiality any more than they already have.
I can see the day when someone at the BBC tells the labour leadership, “Fuckit! you are on your own. We have done the best we can to help you, but you picked that fuckwit Ed Miliband, NOT us. We even announced that his Brother had won, up until that awful moment of reality dawned, so fuck you guys, we quit!”
Make them go to a subscription model.
The sudden, grinding realisation that people will NOT voluntarily pay en masse to have endless liberal Guardianista bullshit dripped into their ears might just make the luvvies reassess their hopeless devotion to Labour.
Still Cameron wants to share power with Clegg!
He has no choice.
OH YES HE HAS. Dave could call a general election because Clegg has broken the agreement of the coalition.
Has the fixed term parliament bill passed?
Back to opposition then tories They have 5 years and won’t be giving that up even when Dave has done the dirty – that’s to Clegg’s shame.
I think Dave would lose support if he went for election now as he would come across a bit manipulative – if the Limps could be persuaded to pull out and force election however then thats a different matter and a working majority could be on the cards
Well the thick as pigshit Clegg has actually realised one thing… An election now would be complete political suicide for the Lib Dems. He is happy to be known as the Lib Dem who finally got the libdems into government. He does not want to be known as the libdem that killed his party for doing so.
He has completely ruled out a “divorce” in the coalition, and is happy to sulk until the general election.
As for Cameron calling an election. Not a chance. He was the one who was pushing fixed five year terms the strongest, he cannot reverse that now it is law (or on the verge of being law), additionally even if forced into an election situation, he would rather wait until the boundary changes have gone through in late 2013.
There will not be a general election before the end of 2013.
An excellent summary of Clegg
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2011/12/13/scientists-capture-first-glimpse-of-elusive-clegg-boson/
Yvette dear, am I what you’d call a popular Eurosceptic?
You’re as popular as the Black Death, Ed.
Just septic
Leave the bugger alone. Last thing Dave needs is Midiotband having a good idea, as at the moment he’s busy putting out a contract on bloody HUUUUUHNE!
Good ideas are not part of RedEd’s genetic inheritance.
Can’t Cameron put out a contract for a double hit, Huhne and Fable?
I think Miliband should to go on a Unite-sponsored mission to Europe to single-handedly save the Euro by showing the Germans how to plant money trees.
That’s my boy !!
He peaked at school debates.
Despite the combined forces of the BBC,the Guardian,Independent,Lib-Dems and every which way Labour the British public are mainly eurosceptic and think that far too much power has been transferred to Brussels without politicians ever asking the people and that’s why they are desperate to avoid a referendum on the matter at all costs
The Eurocrats are quite merrily destroying themselves, anyway.
Problem is, they’re going to bring us down with them. Count on it. Hope you’re too old to be conscripted.
I’m beginning to think they are doing it on purpose. Who knows if Merkel and Sarkozy really believed in the Mitterand/Kohl crap? Maybe they never bought into it and want to go back to the “old ways”. Destroying the EU totally through economics will sure work a lot better than having a referendum or a Parliamentary vote that the Socialists would just reverse at the very next opportunity.
Merkel/Sarkozy/Cameron could be in a right-wing plot to destroy the EU forever. Sure as hell aren’t doing it any favours.
The rot started in the financial sector. The Germans thought they were popular enough to take charge, brought the French in as a sort of fig leaf, lost the Greeks – have propbably lost the Euro, then our great PM did something totally bonkers no one in Europe can understand and here we all are: up the creek without a paddle.
There are at least six other EU countries expressing deep reservations about the deal signed by the 26 last week. In addition to those, if Sarkozy (as looks highly likely) looses their general election, then the man who is most likely to win has stated that he too will revoke this deal.
Far from being isolated, Cameron is the first EU leader to scramble from the sinking ship and head for shore. There are others already talking about following.
It is the Eurozone which is up the creek without a paddle. A majority of people in the UK are actually glad that we are not there!
Face it, the EUro drones are tenth rate local council pen pushing marxists, way out of their depth.
The more they talk the more ridiculous they sound and the more ridiculous they sound, the more ridiculous they act.
The EUro and EU will die because of the laughable EU elite, their collective idiocy, aggressive hatred of democracy and personal freedom.
I can’t wait.
I cannot disagree but I do fear for the future. Two wars in Europe in less than 50 years with the Germans as aggressors led by many of the type of nutters seen posting on here suggests to me that the lessons of the past have still not been learned. I reckon the Yanks look on in absolute terror.
We don’t seem to have any Statesmen any more. Look at the likes of Balls and the rest of the opposition rabble, then Cameron(!)
You could conclude that things are not very good just now.
Where is the Churchill like character?
The BBC and the rest of the liberal controlled media in this country ridicule the only British politician who is even remotely Churchillian… Nigel Farage.
Much as they would most likely actually ridicule Churchill, if if he was Prime Minister now!
I wish Cameron had even half of Farage’s passion to defend the UK and put the people of the UK first second and third.
I wish Cameron would take a look at the UKIP manifesto and ruthlessly steal all the many common sense and decent policies therein!
How about David Davis or Hannan for the Churchillian role?
Stealing policies is one thing, Misterned, but acting on them is something else altogether. I’ll believe it when I see it.
The BBC does not understand that the public is confronted with the evidence of the downsides of the EU every time they are served in a shop by a Pole (as pleasant or not as they may personally be), everytime they see a Lithuanian alcoholic stumbling about on a park bench, every time they can’t get a seat on the overcrowded underground, everytime they see a crowd of Romanian pickpockets lurking around the station . The degradation of our national life by the sheer overcrowding that the influx has caused is ever-present and no amount of glossing it over with multiculti bullshit and propaganda will obviate that.
Don’t mind Poles or Lithuanians or Romanians. I do object to Afghans and Somalis and the rest of that lot.
Spend a Monday morning in a few remand courts in the London area and then tell me if you haven’t changed your mind a weansy little bit about the malign influence of organised Romanian criminal gangs.
If Guido ever were to bring back the thumbs up icons (in a manner which could work) then this is one of those posts (which are rare) in which I actually miss those thumbs.
Thumbs up!
+lots
++++++ ad infinitum!
Milliband only has a 5 point plan because he doesn’t want to take his shoes and socks off.
Did he forget his other hand?
That’s for whacking off over his blank sheet.
Still don’t know whether he would have signed the treaty or not.
He allowed it to be known via labour aides that he would not have signed it. He (to my knowledge) has not actually publicly admitted this yet, because he is far too cowardly to openly admit how much of a snivelling, cowardly, deceitful opportunistic hypocrite he is.
And he owes a great debt of gratitude to the BBC for refusing to push any labour shadow minister to answer that question at all. They have allowed shadow minister after shadow minister to spread bullshit about diminished influence and being isolated, without once pressing them about what they would have actually achieved. The BBC have repeatedly allowed labour shadow minister after labour shadow minister to get away with the ridiculous claim that they would have “built alliances in the EU for our position and achieved a different outcome”
WHAT FUCKING OUTCOME WOULD YOU HAVE ACTUALLY ACHIEVED?!?!?!?!
They have never been pressed any labour shadow minister to answer.
Considering the main purpose of the actual summit was to agree to a binding change to the Lisbon treaty, requiring all 27 EU members to agree, in order to save the Euro by SPECIFICALLY taxing the shit out of British pension funds in a direct attack on the UK financial sector, and THAT was the one and only goal the French had in their sights, then there is no way in hell that a shit 6th form debater like Miliband could have ever changed sarkozy’s mind when he had his mind in election mode solely on screwing the Brits out of further billions.
The fact is, labour are completely on the wrong side of this argument and this is why labour are getting fucked in the polls.
Brilliant appraisal.
Neither does he!
Dad, I got it wrong again!
For Labour it must be a shame, they wanted another Blair (winner) and got another Brown.
If only they had picked his brother….
What, Andrew Brown?
A decent poster campaign showing that weirdo holding his banana and he would be unelectable.
He will be replaced with the Boy wonder, also unelectable as PM.
Oh, there is far worse than that banana skin for him to slip up on.
IMHO Bananaboy Milliband was the obvious selection – how Ed. stole in is a mystery to me (ignoring Union involvement). None of the others even figured.
I am incredulous that Labour are even a blip on the radar, so bloody piss poor are the tories.
The tories could be the most wonderful, fantastic, fair, competent and brilliant politicians ever to grace the green benches in Parliament, and still there would be about 29% of the voting public who would vote labour no matter what (as they did in 2010). Add to those 27% another 10% points or so for those braindead people who insist on voting against any party who happens to be in power, purely because they are in power, and you are getting very close to explaining labour’s current support.
That additional 10% points of voters are made up of former liberal democrat voters who could never, ever vote for a party of government. The tories were in government for four successive terms, and so they could not vote tory in 2010. Labour were in government for three terms, so they could not vote labour. This is why they supported a party which had not ever been in government in it’s current form.
They supported a party who wanted PR, so presumably they supported coalition government. But when actually presented with one, they ditch their own party and turn to a party which offered them much less of what they had campaigned for, than the tories did.
There is absolutely no rational logic, or reason in their heads.
The Lib dems made out like bandits in the coalition agreement and got so much more of their policies implemented than their electoral result deserved.
Yet 10% points worth of THEIR voters turned to labour, who offered them NOTHING. Labour who had told the lib dems that they had to accept whatever terms labour dictated and accept and support 100% of the labour manifesto to form a coalition.
What are these 10% of voters thinking???
Banana boy signed Lisbon. That alone should keep him out of domestic politics for the rest of his life and in a court for tre*ason. I wonder why he has not had his collar felt for that crime?
Be careful what you wish for Billy.
The coalition may outlast Edm, Balls is a worthy successor to continue the demise of the Fabians.
Ah yes. The Japanese Knotweed of British politics.
Except knot weed makes good compost
Never, ever, put knotweed in compost. Burn it, and burn it again. Keep burning it. Spray it with weedkiller. Take off and nuke it from orbit.
Same applies to Ed Balls.
You have to make sure it is really really dead – by burning it perhaps.
He will be out on his arse by the summer
As his brother has decided to start showing up again 1
Banana man is just as useless as he is .What a family.
I still think he (bananaboy) has a chance with Clinton’s missus.
What are you on? Hillary is a well known dyke.
I had no idea. It all fits together now. Sorry.
What fits? The banana?
“UKIP, who have been enjoying a recent surge while it appeared Cameron was going to sell the country down the river, have dropped back down to the 4 or 5 point mark.”
Unsurprising. There is nothing to put people off UKIP like taking a good close look at UKIP.
Neil Hamilton, yeuch.
I agree, vile lot, always talking about getting out of the EU, saying man made global warming is a scam, tough immigration controls and sound money policies. Vermin!
And lets not forget the brown envelopes stuffed with cash. Lovely, lovely cash for questions. Slurp.
Cash for questions? Think you mean Labour MP’s and their union puppetmasters.
“…the number of [LabourList] readers rating Ed a good or excellent leader has fallen from 40% in November to just 26% this month.”
26%?!?!?!?!? Who are these sick people?
LabourList has been talking to the ‘Postal voters’. LOL
The good thing about postal voting is that you can do it on behalf of other people. Very neighbourly.
That’s about 7 of their 30 readers, isn’t it?
The bit Guido overlooks is that Dave “No Mates” is not so alone after all! The indications are that at least half a dozen apparently enthusiastic supporters of the Euro Quickfix are now back pedalling for all they are worth…………. Just maybe Cambo really got things right on the button!………. I think he did……….. forget the secession issues……..
That’s fine. The Milibands are tainted goods. Dave lost any chance of a serious political career with the ‘Banana’ photograph Bring them on as they say. Vote for a monkey your pension will be peanuts!
To build on his slimmest of leads in the polls I think Mr. Cameron should invade The Falklands again, dear.
and then go on to free Europe.
The Yanks are a bit closer than us so they might be able to do that for us, especially as they now have lots of spare, battle-hardened GIs home from Eyerak.
As Ed is a communist, then of course he has to support the EUSSR.
If he speaks for Merkozy and not Britain, is it any wonder that the Hunt is in trouble.
He is more useless than Nick Clegg, but at least he won’t be called Prime Minister by Bercow the dwarf.
It’s not just Milliweed who has miscalulated. Clegg is now dead in the water.
Clegg’s description of Britain as a Pigmy nation at the week-end will come back to haunt him and will be replayed over and over again if he manges to hang on until the next GE campaign.
Clegg is now seriously damaged. That huhne, Huhne know this which is why he is on manouevres once more. Another low calibre fantacist lacking in self awareness. Anyway, HTF does he expect to run a GE campaign from Pentonville?
Yes, going to bed and leaving Dave to “negotiate” with Merkozi was a mistake. Not turning up for PMQs another.
That’s why we call him Calamity Clegg.
I agree. He is a dead man walking. His self-loathing as a Dutchman pretending to be British finally got to him and he let his mask slip. The best thing for Clegg would be to keep his mouth shut for the rest of this Parliamnet and then go and live in Spain with his wife, as he has no long-term future in this country.
I’m not sure can take 5 years of this!
The annihilation of the LibDems was almost certain the day they signed up to coalition with the Conservatives. Europe was a trap that even hitherto undiscovered tribes of Pygmies in the Congo valley with no interest in politics were warning them about. Thought everybody knew.
Blair gave back the rebate, Brown signed the Treaty of Servitude, Miliband just wants a photo op of him signing something surrounded by important looking foreigners. A little something for the vanity wall back at Labour HQ.
He can get the same effect by applying for the dole at any local job centre. No shortage of foreigners working in our public services these days.
And Thatcher signed the Single European Act in 1986 – ‘The SEA embodied a vision of a European Community where integration was real and covered a large number of areas. It also made it easier to pass EU legislation by loosening the voting rules in the Council of Ministers, which suggests a vision of ever deeper union.’
I don’t think many people at the top of the Labour party will be too unhappy – if there have to be cuts (and all agree there have to be) better than the Tories and Lib Dems carry the can for them. Labour can afford to lose the next election (as they were lucky enough to do in 1992) and get back in the one after.
“….Labour can afford to lose the next election….”
Labour can’t afford to fight the next election. Also, their problem is that a majority of the public think their analysis of current economic problems is flawed, and their solutions unworkable. They are also seen as strongly Europhile in an increasingly Eurosceptic atmosphere of public opinion.
As I said. Labour can afford to lose the next election and let the Tories and Lib Dems carry out the cuts. Losing in 1992 was a useful thing for Labour because it enabled Lamont to sod things up and discredit the Tories for 13 years.
Losing the 1992 election was a grievous blow for Labour and only a socialist could spin it as a positive thing! I could equally say that Lamont getting it wrong meant doubts were cast on Britain having the Euro, which probably saved us from joining.
So the public don’t like Ed because he’s not right-wing enough, and Labour members don’t like Ed because he’s not left-wing enough.
Labour are screwed aren’t they really?
I agree. A bit like the tories are.
And the Lib Dems. A good time really.
Bet that fare dodging know it all Zoe Williams won’t be ‘forgetting’ to pay her bus or train fare if Guardian readers have their way or if the Big Man is in the same vehicle.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/dec/13/big-man-throws-passenger-train
You can’t go throwing students around without consequences these days, even if they are drunk, foul mouthed and disobedient. “Big Man” will be charged with assault and battery before long.
No jury would convict. Indeed, he would be roundly applauded.
It is interesting how the news is even getting through to the Guardian readers that the country has produced too many of these anti-social scrotes and they need to be dealt with firmly and with force if need be.
The Big Man is an Investment Banker, but the student ought to know the difference between right and wrong, if he had paid his fare he wouldn’t have got into the mess.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/2011/12/14/big-man-train-passenger-to-be-quizzed-by-police-after-ticketless-student-makes-official-complaint-86908-23633758/
Cif Strangely sticking up for Big Man rather than the oppressed student struggling with debts standing up to corporate Britain
That vote is sure to trickle back up after the initial veto-honeymoon for Dave…
Well, it might, unless Dave finally realises his drive to the centre actually cost him a lot of support.
Question is, whether Dave will make that connection.
Dave ain’t gonna do anything until Labour’s rigged boundaries are corrected in 2013. And anyway the fixed term parliament thingy bill was passed recently so it’s gonna be 2015 for the next election.
….by which time the Euro will probably have collapsed, taking a fair chunk of the EU superstate machinery with it, confirming the wisdom of Dave’s refusal to be dragged into saving the moribund currency.
Why Tories didn’t plan on sorting out the BBC whilst in opposition to coincide with the boundary changes remains a mystery to me. Massive advantage to Labour that could and should be negated.
Oh, and I think Caroline Flint has the look of the slum about her.
She’s common. She ought to be behind the pie counter at Lidl.
Do they have pie counters at Lidl? When I went there they had mountains of Bockwurst and Slovakian pasta stacked on plastic pallets.
In that case Dave can ignore the Fib Dems and implement real Tory policies.
Plagiarist!!
Milliband and Clegg do not believe in facts they distort their socialist programming, as was very evident in Mondays debate. Looking forward to today’s PMQ’s for another episode of “let’s ask the same stupid question 50 times”. Cameron should get a medal for coolness under fire from fake rage.
Let me get this straight. Clegg and Miliband are ‘socialists’. That, presumably, is why Clegg sits with Cameron in Cabinet and supports the government’s ‘socialist’ policies of privatising the NHS and destroying the public sector?
I’m always available. You love me really and miss my wit and vision.
The Ed’n'Ed show was just a temporary diversion to let me finish my top-rated book. There is talk of a filmed version, possibly starring Higgs Boson and Susan Boyle. A sure-fire winner.
Nice to see you’ve got a bit of TV work Gordon:
A friend of mine in the BBC tells me that they have just altered the viewing schedules over Christmas to remove ‘Zulu’, ‘The Dambusters’ and ‘The Great Escape’ amongst others because they are Jingoistic and anti-european, pandering to the new found sense of national pride.
To be replaced with An American in Paris, Charades and Das Boot.
Stuff Europe. They are living in cloud cuckoo land.
They reckon we put our country first, Europe second and only regard the EU as a free market.
Well they are right. That is EXACTLY what we believe. And that is the right belief. No British person should lay down his life for Brussels
the ego on the fat title tatler is becoming comical. Who the fuck does Guido think is going to take his rather silly political strategy suggestion seriously
what a Hunt
http://wackyiraqi.com/wtf/waambulance.jpg
A boy in Chav Inch High luks like Ed. He is in with the remedials n he gets his bonce washed in the lav. They call him milimong.