Despite the Brown bounce, the Tories are still ahead by double-digits

hadrian

One must also hope the English have more sense and less 'tribal' fealty to a political ideology that is clapped out. Painting a rock solid Labour Glenrothes hold with a slashed majority as a 'triumph' rather puts in context Brown's desperation.
The SNP should have played the underdog all the way along..instead they got so over confident it did for them. One trusts they've learnt!

Ed B

This shows that the so called Brown Bounce is nothing more than a Westminster Bubble thing, and that the general public are less susceptible than the politicians and journalists to the general silliness and hubris we have seen in the last few weeks. As you say, the fundamentals are unchanged.

r

It's the useless tories turn to get in so they can open the envelopes from Brussels that tell our govt what to do. They'll probably win whenever an elction is held, people are tired of Labour. However, nothing will change until we get a real democracy back and a choice of parties, not soft centre left coming in pink or light blue.

Dave B

What Hadrian said:

"Painting a rock solid Labour Glenrothes hold with a slashed majority as a 'triumph' rather puts in context Brown's desperation."

Holding a safe seat is a disaster avoided, not a triumph.

Short the UK

This is a great analysis, by Siwel100, of three potential scenarios for Blighty:

'A light recession where asset values (housing and commercial property) quickly stabilise. Primarily because the debt burden is reduced as slashed interest rates filter through, therefore ending the house price crash spiral as the number of forced sellers/repossessions are limited AND more importantly the asset writedowns by financial institutions end as their leveraged property based derivative holdings firm in value WHICH returns liquidity to the system by ending cash hoarding and enables the debt market to function again. The reinforcing negative cycle is broken and a slow road to recovery can then commence.

A deep recession as the House price spiral isnt slowed because the rate cuts are not passed through and/or unemployement ratchets up markedly so forced sellers/repossessions increase sharply causing another round of Financial institution markdowns....etc etc.....Until finally the bad debt is bled out of the system.

Or the shit hits the fan, the spiralling markdowns defeat the ability of the financial system to cover (as with Iceland). The government is forced to seek liquidity. The obvious nationalisation targets (by whatever name they give it) being North sea oil for foriegn currency earnings, pension funds for foriegn assets and cash, the banking system to access uk savers funds which would be converted into "secure" govt. bonds, and not forgetting the utilities to provide cashflow. All packaged nicely with the cherry on the top being Govt. direction of major industry (whatever is left) in order to provide access to resources and to control labour. Add in a maximum £500 p. annum limit on currency transfers out of the country and a ban on International purchasing without approval, plus of course a wage policy freezing at .5% any wage increases.........and you have an economy geared to deal with a depression.....All thats then left to do is a slash and burn on Govt. expenditure.....while keeping people employed, fed, housed, with light and heating and without any riots on the streets.
Siwel100'

I think we have already passed number one and it is now a matter of how near/far we go into number three.

The economic collapse is gathering momentum and by Spring '09 it will be truly awful and Brown will be unable to call an election.

I just feel sad that the Tories have been so poor in understanding the British economy and this makes me nervous if they become the next government.

JONNY

So we're Brown-Bouncing backwards are we.
By mid-Jan we'll very likely be arriving back where we were before at 20 plus?
A definite maybe.
But do I take back what I've been saying about Osborne?
No I don't.

Forlornehope

But, we are still waiting for a positive reason to vote for Cameron.

Nicholas

Beyond the polls the clues are in the hundreds of comments posted to political reports or articles in the newspaper blogs. They are almost unanimously and vehemently anti-Labour. Most people I talk to are anti-Labour, even former Labour voters and supporters, and cannot wait for the chance to vote and get rid of them. Paramount in many people's minds are the authoritarian nannyism of Labour (which has not penetrated the mindset of the Westminster bubble or the Conservative party) and the way local government behaves, which is perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the work of Labour.

It seems that the more Labour spins and the more their own activists blog or post the more they are detested. Their "fight back" has really backfired on them. Pursuing the super database and ID cards will prove disastrous for them, although I see that another MI5 document warning of large scale terrorist threats to Britain has been "leaked" ahead of the Queen's Speech. How convenient for Labour, the party of "dodgy dossiers".

Augustus

Speaking of fundamentals; how many times must a ship run aground before dismissing the captain? Or is the crew that stupid?

dilys

Forlornehope
November 9th, 2008 11:04am
But, we are still waiting for a positive reason to vote for Cameron.

I agree, being Eton educated isn't going to get me to vote Tory. I want more than that.

Fergus Pickering

I'm not sure you can extrapolate from the blogs to the 'real' world. Lots of people don't look at these things but they vote. Any Answers is very pro-Tory but then the sort of person who phones in to Any Answers is a). old and b) Disgusted Tunbridge Wells. Dilys, it it YOU who is Eton educated. And if you're talking about Cameron, surely it's the Oxford-educated bit that matters. The most popular Shadow Cabinet Tories among Tory supporters are Haig and Pickles. Not a lot of Eton there. And there's David Davis who should be in the Shadow Cabinet. Not a lot of Eton there either.