The Labour limbo continues

Mark C

The relative damage to Brown compared to Cameron is very telling, not least given the carping about Cameron's approach, which has left Tory miscreants exposed to the media. Cameron's initial reaction was excellent and, insofar as it is not about doing what is right, but what will "play well", has "played well".
Interestingly, 48% support eitehr the Tories or UKIP.
Finally, it is possible that the level of BNP support is understated: it is a shameful party to support and there is a risk that some of its supported prefer to disguise their true intentions. But let's hope the BNP does not get a single seat.

Ben Elford

Is that 16% supposed to be voters who actually intend to vote for Labour? If so, it seems like a serious polling error, overstating Labour support.

Publius

I see the Telegraph today carries a patronising editorial telling us all why voting UKIP is a wasted vote. It merely confirms my intention to vote UKIP.

If Mr Cameron wants my vote next week, he will need to guarantee to repatriate our stolen sovereignty, not merely talk to our "EU partners" and see what they might deign to give us.

Dirty Euro

I do not see why labour seem to be getting all the blame for the expenses row. Bill cash is not labour neither was Mackay, Kirkbride, the moat guy, etc: Maybe when labour is in opposition our mps should take bribes and then tories as the party of government will take the blame for it.

Vulture

James, You have posted several times over the last couple of days with increasingly strong predictions of Bruin's imminent demise. Perhaps you could share with us your view of exactly HOW this will be achieved ( short of a mass resignatin of his Cabinet). And can you also tell us whether you think his successor - presumably Postman Pat - can possibly then avoid calling an immediate General Election?
Personally, I don't think that PP or his party have the guts to do it. Bruin is unshiftable whatever happens in the Euro poll. I think his 'surprise move' in the wake of June 4th will be an invite to Clegg & Cable to join Govt. Hope they have the sense to decline.

Tiberius

Good numbers all round for the Tories, providing further evidence that Cameron is pursuing the right approach generally.

Brown's self-delusion has brought the country to its knees and I see no reason why he would spare the same fate to the Labour party. Its MPs are going to have to resort to something they seem incapable of if he is to be gone before June 2010.

John Phillips

Taxpayers paid Cameron thousands of pounds to help with his mortgage on a posh cottage in the countryside, yet the media brushes that fact aside. Cameron is a millionaire.

Stronghold Barricades

I am most concerned that these polls may allow Labour to make their excuses if they do really badly like "we expected this" or "not as bad as we had feared"

Dirty Euro

English people are too right wing. I give in. Nuclear energy, tax cuts for rich, euro skeptical extremism i give in, we will leave the room, and leave you to it. Mind you atleast the vile BNP are not high.

TevorsDen

Dirty Euro labour MPs have been getting payments for non existent mortgages and for houses where their parents lived or for houses where their husband lives 100's of miles for their constituency.

Labour cabinet ministers did not need to claim for an extension - they have been flipping houses doing them up selling on without paying CGT and then to add insult to injury they have been using OUR taxpayers money to pay for accountancy advice so they can avoid tax.

Masses of labour MPs have been spending money on fripperies - one even claimed for a £4000 tv and video.

The difference is cameron has been condemning Tories - Brown is saying nothing except use an excuse to do down Blears. Tories are meeting the public labour are in hiding.

Nicholas

I think Brown will Carry On Regardless. The game is up for New Labour and if Brown had any values beyond his egotism and party politics he would call a General Election now. The country desperately needs change, any change, and for Brown to grimly hang on in the belief that there will be an eleventh hour turnaround is selfish in the extreme and does not put the people of Britain first.

His true values were amply demonstrated in his "General Electiion will bring chaos" statement. Brown believes Cameron has no right to govern so he denies the electorate the right to decide. He thinks he knows better and his dogma will do the country untold damage. I strongly suspect that he will try to avoid a General Election by hook or by crook and that his dementia will become even more alarming after the June elections. We will see crazy ideas and barmy stunts - all contrived for the survival of Brown, nothing else.

This deeply damaged and deluded man should have been hounded from office long before now. His stubborn determination to continue ruining this country and the commentariat's supine apathy to let him do it is literally fantastic. His cabinet is composed of incompetent scroungers, dodgy self-serving villains who have time and time again demonstrated their venal proclivities. But they still get away with it. Even those previously disgraced have crept back in.

These are dangerous times for Britain. For 12 long years we have been dragged down an increasingly authoritarian and spendthrift path which has changed the very landscape of our beautiful country. We have become a bullied, hectored, paranoid and fleeced people beset on all sides by vociferous and powerful minority groups who shout down and intimidate any attempt to speak home truths. Our national outlook has been shaped by a relatively small group of not very bright politicians who have completely lost the plot on parliamentary democracy and abandoned the principles and safeguards which once contributed to the concept of the Mother of All Parliaments. The majority of people in that House are second rate with no respect for or concept of what has made it so effective in the past. They have besmirched our parliamentary legacy and even former Labour politicians (for example Attlee) must be spinning in their graves at the appalling lack of integrity, accountability, responsibility, gravity and above all humility. All of this is a result of New Labour and their activities, both seen and unseen.

But nothing seems to be done about it. The forebearance is almost unbelievable.

Victor, NW Kent

John Phillips

Whether an MP is wealthy or poor should not affect his/her entitlement to reimbursed allowances. Shaun Woodward, entitled also to a grace and favour home and wealthier by far also drew ACA.

It is the very word "allowances" which is the problem - it is not a synonym for "expenses".

But, even allowing you your undoubted prejudice you might have to admit that such as Morley, Hoon, McNulty and Blears have done far, far worse. Or, perhaps those are OK as they are comrades just drawing what they are entitled to?

Of course, we could discuss Brown's second home since he also has two grace and favour residences. Shall we do that?

It is as well for the country that only 16% of the electorate are so class prejudiced. We could be like Cuba or Venezuela and only allow the Supreme Leader, his family and devout henchmen to be rich.

Moraymint

Don't worry; the Orc will never pack it in. The Labour Party will crash and burn, with Brown clinging doggedly to the joystick. Indeed, it will be a joy to behold.

Andy

Dirty Euro, might I suggest that Labour is taking more of the blame because the other parties have not been telling us for 12 years that they know best how we should live our lives nor have they been controlling us to the nth degree? The patronising "if you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" as they increased surveillance over us has come back to bite them. Schadenfreude when the insufferable are hoist with their own petard is a dish to be savoured when one has the opportunity.

Sterence

What's your point, John Phillips? That someone should be disbarred from power because of the amount of money they do or do not have?

Josh Barker

If UKIP is set to beat Brown we should all get behind the party. Lets kick him where it hurts !

David Ossitt

TevorsDen

Well said; I agree.

ollie

For Clegg and Cable to join the Labour govt would be a total disaster for both parties. The Limp Dims would not stomach it - and a lot of them would probably vote Tory. How could they join a party wedded to ID cards? Won't happen,

john miller

Trevor, don't forget when Labour cabinet ministers trade properties they reclaim 100% of the stamp duty. It's called tax evasion.

There is nothing that Brown can do about this. Hence the thundering silence.

But surely, come the general election, Darling must be toast?

John Moss

John Phillips.

Cameron pays for one of his homes out of his taxed income. Brown doesn't. He has, for 12 years, lived at our expense, at 10 Downing Street. For at least the last four years he has also charged us for the cost of his "second home" in Fife, thus, living entirely at our expense.

Cameron's wealth is irrelevant. If he is entitled to a second home as an MP he is entitled to the expenses, irrespective of his income - as are all MPs. Certainly Blears, Hoon, the Balls, Purnell, Burnham, Darling etc have all claimed irrespecitve of their huge salaries - the Balls, receiving over £300kpa at our expense.

John Coles

Thanks Tevors! That needed to be said. I predict also even more bad news on the economy in the weeks to come, and thankfully labour will be out of office in a year or two.! I predicted this years ago when Bliar won, I've seen it all before, they spend themselves into oblivion, waste billions on management tossers rather than key workers and yet again, they have bankrupted us.
The trouble is, as soon as Cameron cuts a penny they will wining "I told you so!" The worst thing for me are the b*stards on both sides who claimed back money for Poppy Wreaths! Disgusting!

John.

Richard, Alicante, Spain

No doubt Gordon Brown believes that it has been his bad luck that the "Global Crisis" dropped upon the U.K. (from the USA sub-prime problem) when he was Prime Minister and that his misfortune has nothing whatsoever to do with his 11 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his unprecedented borrowing, introduction of hundreds of stealth taxes, unprecedented increases in Council Tax (how they criticised Mrs.Thatcher over the Poll-Tax), manipulation of the inflation figures changing the measure according to his requirements, manipulation of the Bank of England's "independent" and thus un-politicised" interest-rate-setting policy and his continuing uncontrolled borrowing and spending, his give-aways to the banks etc. etc. Poor chap, what bad luck and he did SO want to be P.M. Tony knew when to get out!!

Tim B

Dirty Euro:

if you do your sums, and exclude travel expenses (because they skew against non-London MPs), you arrive at the following troughing stats:
11 of the top 12 are labour
12 of the top 15 are labour
16 of the top 20 are labour.

Torys at 6 and 13
Lib dem at 14 and 19.

The gloriously ridiculous - moats duck houses etc are all Tory,, that's true. But the vast majority of the deceitful and greedy mortgage troughing, house flipping etc and the possibly criminal are labour. Just the facts - check the details yourself rather than take my word for it.

Cameron went out front and said it: “It doesn’t matter if I was within the rules, it was wrong.” He is making Tory MPs face their constituents, and doing what he has to – largely in the open – to get rid of the dead wood. The Wintertons are gone, Mackay / Kirkbride are gone – whither Balls / Cooper?

Brown by contrast – and the cabinet – has gone to ground and what has he done? He’s set up another committee and process to decide who should be fired. What criteria are being used? Who has / will appear before this committee? How does it work? When does it meet? We don’t know as it operates in secrecy. Why are only back benchers subject to this ‘star chamber’, when most of the egregious offenders are in the cabinet? Even today in “The Sun” Brown continues to spout the line that those who “broke the rules” will be got rid of, which is fatuous because as we all know you can commit fraud and still be ‘within the rules’. The rules are nonsense, but it is the only formula Brown has to fall back on to save most of his cabinet, who by any objective assessment would be gone, and of course himself as he has done his bit of troughing too.

So to answer your question as to why Labour is getting all the blame: it is because they have many more guilty troughers than the Tories (so far at least), on a larger scale, and have done virtually nothing about it except now call for proportional representation and state aid for political parties, neither of which is remotely connected to the issue at hand.

Archie

Well yes, Mr. Forsyth, but surely Cameron's cause is self-defeating because a) he refuses to go - or for SOME reason is incapable of going - on the attack, pointing out NuLabour's not insignificant troughing in the process; and b) behaving like a martinet to his own miscreants thus appearing to make the crimes of his own side seem far worse.

Richard Lawson

OpenEurope has published an important league table of MEP performance here: http://www.openeurope.org.uk

MEPs have been ranked using two main categories:
‘Transparency, openness and democracy’ and ‘Fighting waste and misuse of EU funds’.

I have gone through the data for UK Greens, Con, Lab, LibDem and UKIP and summated their scores, then divided by the number of MPEs. The lower the score the better.

Here are the results :

Greens - 51

LibDem - 116

Conservatives 152

Labour 205

Ukip 343

This survey is vitally important for the electorate. People are understandably angry with the three Westminster parties, and at the moment, due to deficient information, UKIP is the main beneficiary of the disaffection, polling 10-16% at the moment. This research shows that voting UKIP in protest at MP expenses scandals is to jump from the Westminster frying pan into the Brussels fire.

Quincecott

Excellent post, Nicholas - as always