I do feel a little sorry for them in their desperation.

The gap has narrowed from 17% to 9% in the past 5 months . . .

A Tory party defeated 4 times in a row, with so many losers in the wings will not survive as it is. UKIP may be taken on as an affiliate, as may the Ulster Unionists.

Osborne or Davis next?

yup. have you noticed how perpetually divisive the left is, especially when threatened? hundal perfectly embodies this dysfunctional and bilious mindset, one that i can only rationalise as mental illness.

i note with a wry smile that this site states “misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic comments will be deleted.” however class hatred is fine. pathetic.

the Party is over. the left deserves the thorough beasting it is about to receive. i for one will be laughing my socks off and clapping my hands with glee as this deeply unpleasant, cancerous and hypocritical credo is excised from our body politic and its crapulous acolytes returned to the ideological asylum from whence they came.

“Conservative leadership loathes the party’s core vote” http://url.ie/4go9 Heffer & True Tories loathe Chameleon and are readying themselves for a succession.

As Jack Straw says: “Never before in the history of British elections has a political party spent so much to help so few”

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jack-straw-the-tories-are-trying-to-buy-the-election-1852839.html

Cashcroft had a similar and unsuccessful bash in Oz though. Gave more money to the losers there than anyone ever had before . . .

Next time a BNP guy wants to kick your head in, good luck to him. You need a good slap so you understand what war implies.

Yes it’s a puerile argument, like the one about more lefties being mentally ill, but you started it…….

PS

… to wild cheering from the throngs of banner-waving, newly liberated voters, every one of them roaring at the tops of their voices, ‘Never again! Never again!’

I think it’s the well-founded anticipation of that ‘never again’ that’s got the left so king desperate.

Close. It’s actually the sound of fingernails on the inside of the coffin lid just before it’s finally lowered into the abyss.

go for it … don’t let sanity stop you. and watch how we the modern electorate – rather than a perpetually chippy band of fellow travellers locked inside a toxic ideological box of its own making – reacts.

can you hear that? it’s the sound of socialist fingernails digging panicked grooves in the last inches of boardwalk before the abyss.

http://bastardoldholborn.blogspot.com/2009/12/libertarian-policy-at-last.html

If not, why not?

Firstly, correlation does not mean causality. I’ve not said anything about fighting 80s style ‘class wars’, nor do I doubt that most people see themselves as middle class and won’t reward parties that hate aspiration.

But if you see my points on what I’m referring to here – none of the points go back to fighting Michael Foot style wars.

Voters favour the Conservatives’ IHT proposal by 55% to 38%, according to Com Res

they also think by that same percentage that the Tories have policies that favour the rich over the poor. Why shouldn’t a party press home that point?

Yougov polls consistently show that voters prefer the deficit to be reduced more by cutting public spending than by raising taxation;

I accept that – New Labour did a very bad job of framing that debate and ultimately lost. I still don’t accept rightwing arguments, though if its emphasised what the impact of Tory policy would be – then people would think twice.

Interesting post on pb about the effectiveness of class war strategy:

I think Mike Smithson’s post not only spells my name wrongly (as always) it is incredibly muddled – economy is the number one issue for voters: and that is the issue I’m talking about here and arguing the parties should set a clear dividing line on. So either he doesn’t get what I’m arguing for, or he’s just mindlessly echoing Tom Harris.

Nosemonkey: It’s too charged a phrase – utterly inappropriate for what is actually meant (which, as you note, is more nuanced and subtle).

I agree – I’m calling it that but it doesn’t New Labour should do it too. I favour Ed Balls’ approach – say you hate ‘class war’ while saying the Tories are for the rich anyway.

I wouldn’t go as far as DK in this, but his reaction is understandable when the general strategy is couched in such outdated and easily misunderstood terms as class warfare.

The thing is I’ve explained what I stand for – if DK and his mates can’t read and come to this late then they look like fools.

I recognise the electorate doesn’t do nuance: which is why I’m all for saying publicly they should eschew the ‘class war’ while emphasising how Tories are favouring the rich.

The thing is, nuanced and subtle doesn’t cut it. You *can’t* be nuanced and subtle when it comes to politics these days. I wish you could, but you just can’t. All people hear is the soundbite. And the soundbite here is “class war”.

Hell, I’m fairly politically engaged. I follow the news closely. But I’m positively fucked if I could tell you precisely what Labour means by “class war”. I know they aren’t stupid enough to mean “fuck the middle class”, but I genuinely have no idea precisely *who* it is they’re against.

I wouldn’t go as far as DK in this, but his reaction is understandable when the general strategy is couched in such outdated and easily misunderstood terms as class warfare.

Because it *isn’t* class warfare. It’s a poorly explained attack on the rich – and wealth has nothing to do with class.

/poorly-explained drunken attempt at more in-depth explanation from somewhere politically in the middle of this

Interesting post on pb about the effectiveness of class war strategy:

http://www2.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/28/do-class-war-issues-really-poll-well/

I’ve worked in factories with working class folk from Portsmouth estates.

While I doubt they agree with me that HM Labour Government is the bees knees, thank heaven they won’t recognise the crapulescent tosh you spout as anything other than irrelevant.

You are like a troll implanted to give the class war element to Labour’s campaign a worse name.

Most working people want tax credits, and all the other benefits introduced and extended by Labour Chancellors retained rather than senseless abuse of our Government.

Look at the polling figures. Voters favour the Conservatives’ IHT proposal by 55% to 38%, according to Com Res; big majorities oppose the increases in National Insurance Contributions, according to Yougov and Populus; Yougov polls consistently show that voters prefer the deficit to be reduced more by cutting public spending than by raising taxation; Yougov, ICM, and Populus indicate that far more voters trust Cameron and Osborne with the economy than trust Brown and Darling.

Extra taxes on “the rich” have always commanded majority support, and for much the same reason that reducing social security payments is usually identified as one of the most popular forms of reducing public expenditure; most voters don’t expect to be affected by it. But, the problem with Labour advocating extra taxes on the rich is that they give the impression that Labour is opposed to aspiration, hard work, and bettering oneself, an impression that Tony Blair spent years trying to dispell.

It is the system which you supported that has destroyed these ladders, so why the fuck do you deliver your usual insubstantiated whinges about leftists? The fact is, anything your side can claim as your achievement- right to buy, deregulation, service “industries” and banker scum dominating the economy, absence of manufacturing, are in fact all gigantic frauds and failures.

This government has got fuck all to do with the left, who were speaking out against their lies and retention of Thatcher’s so-called laws, and were sneered at throughout but have in fact been vindicated as the old system went up in smoke in 2008. The feeble attempts to restore the status quo ante with taxpayers’ money will fail.

Someone working in a call centre in Portsmouth and living in a right to buy semi fucking IS working-class, as much as he may not realise it, but when the plastic runs out and his son can neither afford to buy a property nor get a council house, but remains living at home, on the dole and wondering why he can’t have any kind of decent life, then this youth will blame the real culprits. And if others don’t, it won’t take long into One-Term Cameron’s failed tenure, when we have gone from a government of Thatcherites lyingly claiming to be Labour to an openly and proudly right-wing government, that the left will come into its own.

The fact is that we will continue to need “class war” as long as the state apparatus props up the people who caused our woes in the first place, but vilifies working-class people who have fallen on hard times and comes up with elaborate ways of persecuting ordinary, harmless citizens. Of course it is utter hypocrisy for the government to wage it because they are the ruling class themselves, and are Tories, but it is wholly appropriate for me to continue using the language of class until workers have decent employment and control over the management of their own lives.

We have to put forward the case for what HMG has done, which is outstanding, and what we shall do, which is developing.

For instance, a quick scour over the conservative website reveals these two concrete proposals.

1. Implementation of Work for Dole. The Australian model has been shown to unfairly advantage certain service providers at the expense of others – nepotism? – and to make exiting the welfare system an average of 20% harder.

2. Equity for Good Behaviour. Any council tenant with 5 years’ good behaviour gets GIVEN a 10% share in equity in their property. Apart from the presumption that most council tenants are ne’er do wells tamed by the prospect of property, this will only serve to financially tie the individual or family to a safety net that is supposed to be a moveable feast for the disadvantaged.

where’s your evidence for that? I’ve already pointed out that most of the policies that could be pursued under this umbrella are very popular with the public. Up till about 67%. How that is seen purely as a core vote strategy doesn’t stack up.

Lastly, the problem Labour has is in getting its vote out and motivated. If it’s unable to do that then it loses regardless of whether the Tories win swing voters.

Huh? I’ve never heard such stupidity. It’s like that saying about stupid people overwhelmingly being conservative.

Would you call progressive taxation a form of discrimination against rich people then? Should they sue for being singled out because they pay a higher percentage of tax?