Pinch Point

With reports that one of the big reasons – perhaps the biggest – why last week's election was called at all was because the EU's Jean-Claude Juncker told PM Theresa May that her then (small) inherited majority wouldn't serve her well enough when it came to the 'pinch points' in the Brexit negotiations, we are starting to see some of the bigger picture.

In particular, a somewhat squeezed Mrs May, trying to do the best job for Britain, while undoubtedly not trusting Juncker (who would?) nevertheless must have felt that it was better to go for it than to leave things be. At the very least, it wouldn't let the EU negotiators be able to claim that our Prime Minister hadn't had the guts to try.

This and many other behind-the-scenes activities are what I have to try to discover and take into account when making my own predictions and formulating my own approaches to all the reasonably probable outcomes and consequences of what is happening out there in the political world.

As some 'old hands' here already know, my own (admittedly modest) influence is done mostly invisibly, and primarily through extending public knowledge of what the players are really up to, via a complex network of channels and other structures.

In practice, it is like a hysteresis loop, with the effect somewhat lagging behind whatever I (and no doubt others) do, and out of phase with it for a while. Steering a boat, especially at close quarters with another vessel, feels a little like it as well. Nonetheless it is the best anyone can do while respecting the population's right to self-determination – which I always do.

Most people eventually grow up politically, which is why the majority of the older generation end up no longer conned by the Left's false promises and attempted bribes, and tend toward the political Right in their leanings. Over time, the wiser heads die off, though, and the newly-indoctrinated – so mostly Left-leaning – youths reach voting age, so the whole learning cycle begins again.

Thus this is a never-ending scenario, and we all have to use our brains more effectively if we are to become a better and stronger nation in the near future. One vital aspect of that in the current time-frame is to get out of the EU completely, regardless of the outcome of last Thursday's election, and that is something we can still do.

It's All About The Sales Pitch

Although, in this General Election, I hadn't expected such a large chunk of the UKIP vote to switch to Labour (thus defeating their own professed key policy's safety), especially in the south, the outcome wasn't something I had not foreseen as a – hopefully remote – possibility. The strong mobilisation of the so-called 'youth vote' was another factor that shifted the dynamics significantly.

As ever, Labour were largely reliant on the 'freebies for the many' bribery technique that has long served them so well when dealing with the (sadly) gullible masses – and millions fell for it, as they always do. This is the 'sales pitch' that a Labour government will give you all that you seek in life, gladly handed out free of charge by the State. As long as someone else is described as paying for it (even though that is nearly always a falsehood) they are happy to go along with it.

Of course it's all nonsense; but that doesn't register with those millions of voters, either now or ever in the past. That is why the technique is still prevalent with the Labour party in particular: it works!

It is, nevertheless, salutary to note that despite all of this, and despite a poorly-devised Conservative manifesto and a lacklustre campaign, Labour still lost this election and ended up a long way short of a majority. Indeed, the Conservative vote count went up significantly since two years ago, even though it didn't translate ideally into seats in this starkly two-party election in which every other party fell by the wayside as essentially irrelevant.

As usual, my longer-term prediction is that our new path will converge on where we would have been anyway, some fifteen years hence. It will just be a much more bumpy ride than it needed to be…

Snap Election

I had been wondering for some time just how much longer Prime Minister Theresa May could put off seeking a snap General Election in the wake of all the derailing threats that other parties were making in the Commons, more especially in the Lords, and elsewhere in the country regarding the Brexit process. Although I wasn't exactly expecting it to happen, I had been watching daily for signs of a change of heart from the PM's previous position.

It has now happened, in a clear-cut case of cause-and-effect. If the others had not behaved as they did (and still are) then this would not have become necessary. It is as simply and correctly stated as that. The election will be held on 8 June, just seven weeks from tomorrow.

Because of the Fixed Term Parliaments Act, this has necessitated a Motion to be voted on in the House of Commons, and Royal assent after that. The first hurdle was completed a few hours ago as I write this, with well over 500 MPs agreeing to the General Election, and just 13 (nine of them Labour) MPs voting against. This comfortably exceeds the requirement of at least 2/3 of the full House assenting – the minimum thus being 434 out of the 650.

The general assumption is that the Conservatives will hugely increase their majority, which was just 12 seats after the previous election. I believe top psephologist Michael Thrasher (of Thrasher & Rallings fame) anticipates an overall majority of something like 120 or so. My own estimate, just for the record, is 165 plus-or-minus 9% of that figure: in effect, between 150 and 180.

A new spanner in the works, though – if it goes ahead – is a move to create an 'unholy alliance' of main opposition parties (Labour Lib Dems, SNP, perhaps Green) to field just one cross-party candidate in each target Conservative seat, so that all the non-Conservative votes will (they think) go to that candidate. As many Conservative MPs were elected with less than 50% of the actual vote, this suggests that the one significant opponent could take the seat, ultimately depriving Mrs May of an overall majority.

Thus goes the theory, demonstrating one-dimensional thinking in the process. Of course we can ignore fringe candidates like the perennial 'Save the NHS' and others of a similar nature, as well as the likes of TUSC and the always-entertaining Official Monster Raving Looney participants. This is nitty-gritty stuff. On the other hand, there is also UKIP, but their influence is waning.

If this scheme should go ahead, it makes two fatal errors: (1) that the electorate will vote the same way they did last time, or in the current polls, polarised into voting for any candidate who is not-Conservative regardless of party designation. The news is that they will not: people are already declaring wholesale that they will vote Conservative this time. Number (2) is the same for UKIP voters from last time and who have stated so to pollsters: they too are switching in large numbers to the Blue candidate.

Thus such an approach seems likely (I think certain) to fail; and if anything it will probably result in Mrs May gaining an even larger overall majority than my seemingly optimistic estimate. I say 'estimate' because – as those who have followed my prediction will know by now – I don't make any firm predictions until I know who is on the ballot paper, the day the Statements of Persons Nominated are published.

That is how I have been able to be so devastatingly accurate in the past…

That Was The Election, That Was!

Well, that was one for the history books!

The General Election saw a small Conservative overall majority (something I had been privately saying was now a distinct possibility) and the loss of most Liberal Democrat seats – fifty of their 58 now gone.

My scientifically-modelled (such as it is: I don't really go in for making nationwide predictions) expectations were cautious to the point of pessimism, though still better for the Conservatives than any poll or betting market at some 295 seats, with only Harry Cole of Guido Fawkes fame making the same prediction.

In Scotland, the SNP took 56 of the 59 seats, interestingly leaving one seat each there continuing to be held by the Conservatives, Labour and the Lib Dems. The expectation (mine and many others') that they would largely wipe out Labour north of the border has been even more devastatingly accurate than anticipated! The Conservatives had virtually no seats in Scotland to lose, which turned out to be a significant contributor to the asymmetric shifts during this election

Another such shift was in the target seats 'battleground', where the Conservatives took a fair number of their target Labour seats, whereas Labour failed to take more than a handful of their targets. Even the two most marginal such seats remained with the Blues, as did many more of their 106 targets. The Conservatives had concentrated on just forty target seats, and that focus aided their greater success, despite having significantly fewer activists and helpers on the ground.

Locally, the results have been exactly as I predicted – but only because, by now, the Conservative candidate for Rochester & Strood constituency – Kelly Tolhurst – had been able to make herself known more fully around the other eight wards in the 'patch' – rather than just her Rochester West presence as a councillor for the past four years.

This, as I said at the time of the by-election some six months ago, was the biggest ingredient in the equation at that time, as the by-election had, then, just been dropped on everyone with no time to work toward it. As I urged back then, the time to start working toward the General Election was immediately, right then – and to her credit and that of her team, they did just that. I then knew that the seat would be hers, and indeed it became so, and by a very healthy margin of 24k votes to UKIP Mark Reckless' circa 16k votes.

That was a good win, on so many levels!

Obviously, Tracey Crouch and Rehman Chishti held their seats easily, which was hardly a surprise. Poor Tristan Osborne, having door-knocked in Chatham & Aylesford for some weeks and getting the same response, reportedly had in effect resigned himself to abject defeat and has been reported as conceding that 'Tracey is doing an OK job as MP'.

The upshot of all of this is that the country now has a truly Conservative national government (despite what some try to claim) and all the drag of the past five years is now lifted away. Some will try to portray that as uncaring, a 'government without a heart' – but those who are both honest and intelligent enough to see past the Lefty spin will know that this is not so.

The breaking of the 'client State' will release the true potential of all our citizens who have true value, while protecting those who genuinely cannot contribute. These days, I fall into the latter category owing to age and health issues – though I still do not claim any benefits.

This election has done what I had been hoping for so long: it has made the next phase of our country's ascendancy back into the top echelon of the world's nations possible, and indeed highly probable, within just a few years.

Indications are strong that the international community has been waiting (dare I say eagerly?) for this, if anything even more strongly than they did five years ago, when the high probability of a Conservative-led government was the only prospect staying the hands of the big credit rating agencies who would otherwise have severely marked-down Britain's credit rating back in the Spring of 2010.

Now all we have in that respect (by the way) is a sliver shaved off our rating, purely symbolically (it was the minimum possible downgrade) to keep other affected nations happy, and only because of the Eurozone's woes that have impacted a chunk of our trading. In other words, none of that, slight though it was, has been because of any real deficiency here in Britain.

Thus the scene is set for what promises to be a very interesting few years immediately up ahead!

Throwing Money Around

As expected, the upcoming General Election has brought out the perennial policy approaches.

Basically, the right-wing is careful with other people's money, but know when and where to spend for beneficial results to our society, whereas the left-wing are profligate with the population's money that they take in ever-increasing taxes (many of them invisible to the man-in-the-street).

Now, any idiot can use his or her elected position to steal off everyone else and then fling that money at causes that suit their own ambitions, their cronies or their future electoral success. I could list numerous examples of this, from the Police and Crime Commissioner to the former Government's Ministers, and various points in between – and beyond (e.g. the EU).

A perhaps surprisingly useful 'litmus test' – surprising, that is, in what it ends up revealing – is spending on the National Health Service (NHS).

Now, there's a whole debate to be had on whether we should even have an NHS in its current form, and many with knowledge of medicine's current needs might say with justification that – given the choice – they wouldn't start from here, but we do have to work with what we've got today.

On this topic, there are those rabid Lefties and the like who are obsessed with public ownership of the entire NHS, and are – erroneously – critical of the present government for 'privatising' the NHS. In fact, only six percent (and a bit) is in private or charity (third sector) hands, and of that around five percent was transferred by the preceding Labour government. Only one percent or so has followed that during the past nearly five years. Oops...

In the present election campaign, though, it is the Liberal Democrats who are repeatedly pushing their policy of throwing money at the NHS as if that is the way to improve the service.

It isn't.

Money is only one of the means to an end, and the present Conservative-driven methodology of modestly increasing spending year-on-year – to remove the excuse of 'under-funding' or 'cuts' as the supposed cause of inadequate performance – while improving ways of working.and cutting out waste, is the right way to go. I have witnessed so much of both sides and their vastly different philosophies over the decades, including the 22 years I worked in the Civil Service, that I have become well aware of the virtues and demerits of each side of the argument.

Interestingly, it was Labour who had backed themselves into a corner through their vast overspending during their time in office that resulted in their cluelessness necessitating actual cuts in NHS spending. As I indicated above, this would provide an oh-so-convenient excuse for the dropping of standards within the (heavily-Unionised) NHS and, in effect, a form of blackmail to the government of the day to up spending on the NHS hugely. It would backfire and people would be harmed in the process.

It might sound somewhat Buddhist in nature, but 'the middle path' is the right way to deal with this whole topic – and there are others that are similar, for that matter. Apply intelligence and insight, not dogma, laziness or vested interests, and the NHS can continue well into the future, adapting and improving, staying relevant and valuable.

Take any other path and its future becomes highly uncertain...

The Blair Switch Project

Those who have read Isaac Asimov's Foundation sequence of episodic stories, and then gone onto the sequel Foundation and Empire, and remember the Bel Riose and Lathan Devers chronicles from the latter volume, will probably already have seen what has happened to the British Labour party during these early stages of the election campaign proper.

It all started when the party chose a new leader, and the real powers-behind-the-throne – most visibly the big Trades Unions' leaders – made sure (by skewing the voting in the party leadership 'electoral college' system) that an easily-manipulable individual became the leader – indeed, the weakest of the five contenders, if only narrowly weaker than one of the others.

There were always going to be consequences arising from that outcome, and as it happens the televised Leaders Debate last week generated an air of desperation within the senior Labour ranks, despite some commentators claiming that Ed[ward] Miliband had done well on the night. They said much the same a week or so earlier, after that Jeremy Paxman session...

A strong campaigner, someone with a track record of drawing people to him (and, in this case, hopefully including those who had drifted away from supporting Labour since 2010) was needed. Enter Bel Riose Tony Blair!

Yes, bringing no surprise to those of us who had been expecting this, 'B.liar' (as many have called him) is back in the electioneering game for Labour and as a credible campaigner, unlike Miliband-E. This is quite a switch for him, and for the previously self-confident Labour party as well.

Now, this is interesting because in the intervening years Blair has become something of a hate figure to much of Labour's remaining supporters. He always appealed to the more centrist elements of the party's membership and non-member voters/supporters.

He does not have much if any substantive appeal to a large chunk of what is still out there, supporting and voting for the party. Most of those will, of necessity, go along with this development – but there will be considerable friction and discomfort in the process. I suspect a modest but significant proportion of them will in fact go off to other parties or simply no longer bother, worsening not improving Labour's overall situation.

Perhaps this in The Telegraph gives us as clear an idea as any of just how divisive this move looks set to become.

If one were to step back from what has now transpired and perhaps devised a logic truth table of all the possible alternative scenarios (e.g. the weak leader working without the strong campaigner and losing), just about all feasible combinations and sequences of events in the present and recent climate lead to the same outcome: Labour are likely (in some cases almost certain) to lose the election.

Even if we had a Lathan Devers trying to force or encourage a good outcome, it doesn't really matter: it will probably happen anyway...

Too Dull

So far, the pre-election campaign has been rather dull. I hope that, now the campaign is officially under way, it will liven up and becoming more likely to grab the electorate's attention.

Although all parties (well, most of them anyway) have some value and validity, realistically it is only the two parties who have any realistic possibility of forming or (in coalition) leading the next national government are Labour and the Conservatives.

Labour have at least got an actor to participate in this evening's election broadcast – something they've tried before, as have others. Getting a celebrity's endorsement of – and, even better, participation in – a party's campaign is often thought by party campaign managers and other senior members of a party as welcome and helpful.

It probably is, but is it justified? Only if the end can somehow be said to justify the means – but not for an honest party, for the reasons that Daniel Hannan warned about four years ago, among others I could mention, and indeed have touched on two or three times in recent years. For today, though, Dan's piece will more than suffice.

Apart from that, Labour has so far shown little really aspirational stuff, just anti-Conservatism and anti-Coalition stances as usual. Boring and tedious! There is also little appearance of their party leader – who, most notably, has been conspicuously left off many of their candidate's materials completely. That in itself is very telling indeed...

As for the Conservatives, their workmanlike approach is adequate, if not exactly innovative, and mostly looking back at past successes. The trouble with that is that it is repetitive with no new material coming through (unless some news suddenly appears, so is reactive), and gives no real look to the future apart from a nebulous 'we shall do such-and-such in the next five years' and no more.

Now, looking to past success is a good, solid foundation, and reinforcement through repetition is the second biggest reason we have political soundbite slogans' (the first is for headlines in the media). Nevertheless, one doesn't make a house by merely laying the foundation. It needs more – something more 'concrete' for the future than mere, well, concrete!

If I were the Conservative strategist, I'd be preparing two very specific election broadcasts. One would be a carefully-crafted, non-exaggerated and as factual as possible, year-by-year account of how a typical family would be faring under a majority Conservative government, from now, so six brief episodes in all.

The other would feature (a) another, somewhat similar but clearly different family; (b) a pensioner; and (c) a University student living away from home. The story (again portrayed as accurately as possibly and without hyperbole) would be a 'fork in the road', and would show each of these players five years hence under a Labour or Labour-led government, and then under a Conservative government (that way around, to end on a high note).

For all I know, perhaps such works are being prepared right now – but indications so far, including attitudes and near-robotic sharing/re-tweeting the party's national output out in the country (including in my broad area of west and north Kent), suggest that they are content to keep to the old, traditional ways, with momentary flashes of innovation that will make (at most) small differences in safe seats and excite no-one 'floating' in any of the marginals.

I could of course be wrong – and of course I realise that all the donkey work still has to be done come what may, and rightly so, so no complaint or otherwise on that score – but the way the party is 'selling' itself, its candidates and its plans for all our futures, deserves to be re-thought and raised several notches.

It also needs to be geared more to drawing people in, rather than just spouting lines and statistics at them like some kind of lecturer. That approach no longer really works in today's society. David Cameron's occasional brief summary at Prime Minister's Questions does that with much greater impact in just a few seconds: "Growth up, employment up, unemployment down, the deficit halved" – that kind of approach, but make it secondary and brief like that!

UPDATE @ 1700 hrs: This by Peter Bingle at Total Politics today not only fits well with what I have written here, it goes further with some additional ideas and is also well worth reading.


Just for information: I am not attempting to get myself recruited as a party strategist, just trying to be helpful!

Pre-Election Coalition Divide

As I (and a few others) have been saying for a year or more, once the autumn party conference season was over,the coalition partners have been going their own ways in the run-up to next May's General Election. Thus it comes as no surprise to find 'big name' Liberal Democrats putting out their party's lines, and indeed it is what I'd expect them to do.

There are, however, difficulties inherent in this approach if it isn't handled well – and it seems to be being poorly managed, at least in places. There is one glaring example of this that has come to media notice and which could be very damaging for the party's chances in the election – and their hopes aren't exactly high as it is.

This is the case of David Laws, the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury who was compelled to resign from that position owing to what might be termed 'expenses.irregularities'. It is not a good idea to deploy him so publicly in the first place, as his past will be brought up in hostile reporting, but even worse when he has to trot out his party's lefty-at-heart lines about 'the cuts' to public expenditure.

What he has apparently been saying completely contradicts his (very public) stance while he was in that former office and, then, in a position to know the reality. He isn't now, except second-hand from his replacement, Danny Alexander. He will now be perceived as two-faced, and putting party dogma above truth and the interests of the country. This will also most likely curtail his political career.

I'm sure Lib Dems reading this will try to find ways to disagree; but if the boot were on the other foot and they were aware of someone in another party doing exactly the same, their attitude would suddenly be very different. That, I believe, is more-or-less the dictionary definition of hypocrisy.

However, apart from David and Danny, they have no authoritative-seeming voices on economic matters; and if they tried to push this topic onto another member of their senior team it'd come across as odd and with less 'clout' – so they are rather stuck!

Of course, if they were to grow up as a party and throw out the Lefty dogma, then this issue vanishes – and they can still maintain their essential differences from other parties on a number of important issues, which is healthier for British politics as well. I can't see this happening, sadly, so again they are going to come across as a party of deceivers and will fare badly next May, probably losing a number of parliamentary seats in the process.

The national approach is also likely to harm the chances of local council candidates who are standing this year, including in my own home borough of Medway. They are already down to three members here, out of the 55 councillors we have – easily their lowest proportion (below six percent) of the available seats since the current council was created (and first elected for) in 1997.

They could be wiped out by their party's national perception caused by their campaign methodology for the General Election, doing a disservice to their local members, candidates and supporters. We already saw very recently, in the Rochester & Strood by-election, just how few votes they are now get, even when fielding a long-experienced candidate who has been the leader of their council group for years.

Once they gofrom the Council, if that does indeed happen, it will be very difficult to come back in future: it is essentially a one-way street to oblivion. Only they can do something about that, by I don't think they will.

Exposed in Public

I am just starting to catch up with jobs like blogging, after the storm, a death, and a number of other things. I hope to write a (3-week!) political digest later today. We shall see...

Meanwhile, the subject of exposure to the public eye is worth revisiting. Old hands here will no doubt be well aware of what UI have written before, especially regarding the Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) – and specifically the Kent PCC – once any that had been accustomed to working out of the public view were plunged into the spotlight of open scrutiny.

In the case of the Kent PCC, no amount of political maneuvering is going to be able to hide the deep and permanent flaws for ever. Now, the Kent PCC ran far and away the most political campaign of the six candidates here, with only Labour coming anywhere near, despite the public stance of supposedly being 'non-political'.

Some interesting historical information has come to light that emphasises this, and the PCC's ongoing style continues to reinforce that  unavoidable perception, that more and more of the voting public in the county are waking up to, all too late for this term. The PCC's established standard approach – 'If it's a success, then it's my success; but if it's not so good I'll say it's 'an operational matter' and 'I'll take it up with the Chief Constable' – has now been realised by a fair number of separate, independent observers, and the lady ain't fooling any of them any longer.

The ongoing style that shows it is (and always has been) about her, with everything else coming second or third at best, has also been spotted quite widely now. When your newsletters are plastered non-stop with images of yourself, you do rather give away the actual nature of your approach, along with all the other clues.

This is what I have been talking about here, in other media, and in private conversations, for some time now. Exposure to the public gaze reveals more than the less-than-straight participants in these lines of work find comfortable. It is why Left-wing (and any other dodgy) régimes operate largely or (if they can) entirely in secret , from the former USSR to Gordon Brown plotting and planning in his 'bunker'.

So it is with UKIP too. Now that they are garnering a lot more media and public attention, their true nature is coming into the public arena much more and their members' own characters are becoming more widely known. Now, there are certainly elements of the media and elsewhere looking for anything they can exploit – as is done to all parties, and grown-ups just have to deal with this.

Nevertheless, there is some genuinely nasty stuff in the mix – and, of course, an outfit such as UKIP tends to attract such types. Not only those sorts, of course; but they do have a tendency to drift in that direction. Thus it becomes relatively easy to see who might switch to UKIP, especially among elected members in one or another place and hopeful candidates. I have ticked-off a few on my mental 'scoreboard' in recent years.

The latest controversy, over a fairly high-up UKIPper (Victoria Ayling) who, it is suggested, has said that her wish is for all Britain's immigrants to be sent back, is a case in point, and the story is worth watching as it unfolds during the next day or two. In fact, her 'rant' turns out to have been about illegal immigrants and others not entitled to be or remain in our country, as is coming out just as I write this (and made clearer later, so I have since edited this bit a little, for the sake of accuracy).

This is just the latest in what is in fact quite a long series of UKIP truths and half-truths coming out – most of which have not been denied, but attempted to be defended, including this one although with some justification this time.

Thus the already-disillusioned British electorate will have yet another reason to wish 'a plague on all your houses' to our political parties; but they will come out of that uniformly negative phase in due course, as they always do. Eventually, every thinking person realises that someone needs to run the nation, especially in the increasingly global nature of human society.

There is no point throwing out the baby with the bathwater, which – experience tells us (especially with Trades Union elections, as many reading this will probably already realise) – lets in the extremists whose activists will all dutifully go to the polls and cast their vote for the Unite candidate or whoever it happens to be in their own local case.

The rest of us need to be pro-active, and that includes at election times; and what we are now learning about what we might have mistakenly thought were rising stars is valuable in our need to re-calibrate our own thinking sometimes. All parties have faults, and some have lots – but what is, in all truth, the best way for the country to go?

My advice is to heed the lessons of these public revelations, and don't make the mistake that the people of Kent made when (just a few of them) elected the wrong PCC!

Team 2015 – Making It Happen

In less than a minute and a half, Conservative party chairman Grant Shapps and a number of volunteers show how the broader team that he is helping to generate can do all manner of things to help the party win in 2015.

It's a simple enough message, but effective; and bearing in mind after what I wrote in my digest earlier today,, adds to that gut feeling I have that they could actually get an overall majority in May 2015...