Do you think the Tories will get a majority in 2015?

[lottieandmia]

?

Or are we more likely to have another coalition?

Short and too the point enough, Sweet Cheeks???

agirlwithwings .... re my original comments on the unsustainable size of the Public Sector and halving on Manufacturing as a share of our economy under Labour, and your following comment;

"They're both completely fallacious, imo, but I'd be interested to know the sources."

Are you now comfortable with the OECD source for the first subject and managed to find a source you trust on Manufacturing yet - on top of the 1 million jobs lost by 2005, 2-years before the crash?

What on earth has this got to do with Labour's record? I haven't given any indication I support them so why should I have to actually read your cut and paste rubbish and challenge it? The discussion is about you and your idiotic infestation of this board.

And Sweet Cheeks?? Seriously? That's just creepy.

Dear Bob (I've given up trying to be nice if called "creepy") .... If you don't read MY opinions, qualified with facts (rather than ideological rants backed up with nothing on this board and more suitable for the intellect of a football terrace) then how can you be so rude as to have the following opinion of MY posts?

"It's all pointless textual diarrhoea. Political garbage."

If you're not Labour, then you must be a U-Kipperer, as that would explain why 'policies' (past or present) is a dirty word and not a subject for your consideration or interest. Bless.

Spend a little time to read them and you will clearly learn something re what to expect, when votes for Labour and Ukip, bring back Labour in 2015.

Nope, not UKIP either. Sorry, you really can't categorise people who take issue with your pointless verbiage that easily. But then, limited intellect, limited politics, limited imagination. Your post would have been perfect if you'd stopped at "I've given up."

It will be an interesting few years ahead.

I can see there being hung parliaments and frequent elections, like the 70s.

What concerns me also is that if Scotland votes yes then the labour MPs in Scotland elected in 2015 will be able to vote without a mandate from 2016 until possibly 2020.

Afaik there is no mechanism to force then to stand down.

Also if the Tories get in next year, and Scotland has voted no, then there's a EU ref in 2017 I think there will be another Scottish referendum before 2021.

Weatherall .... I tend to agree with you re the prospect of political instability for years ahead, and that will not bode well for the future of this country.

I dread to think what would have happened here from 2010 if there had NOT been a coalition agreement between the Conservatives and Lib Dems and in dire times, every emergency policy had to go to parliament, with an opposition with an 'oppose everything' agenda - so all policies would have been watered down by MP's from all sides sitting in 'smokey back rooms' micro horse trading details.

Whatever else happens, Clegg deserves thanks from this nation, as arguably, their policies were in the main, slightly left of Labour prior to 2010 - and that 'agreement' sadly lost him political capital and voters to Labour.

Re Scotland, on a YES vote, there is no reason the 41 Scottish Labour MP's should shape policies/laws within the remainder of the UK until 2020, as, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe 5-year terms are now law.

Re another Scottish Referendum, I suspect that there is a minimum time before this issue can come up again for a vote,and doubt if it could be within 7-years of this one.

Dear Bob ….. I am not “taking issue” on here, you are, trying to control other posters views that are clearly laid out with qualified with facts – so who are you to say there is no appetite on here for such posts when there are hundreds of one-liners on here EVERY DAY e.g. Ukip can stop immigration, which are 100% political lies, spread by other posters?

So you don’t like facts and are neither Labour or Ukip, so as far as I can work out, you are one of these strange non political posters on here, who ‘object’ to other posters output but have nothing to offer themselves, is that about right ‘Bob’?

Are you a kind of political hermaphrodite ‘Bob’, do you have solid views of your own, as having accused me of the following; “limited intellect, limited politics, limited imagination, your post would have been perfect if you'd stopped at "I've given up.” - I can’t wait to see YOUR views that gives you the right to criticize mine, while I continue give mine.

iimb: As I said, your statistics are incorrect.

The 'public sector' as you describe it is not 53% of the economy; it is currently 47% of the economy, which includes spending on pensions and health care, so things which affect everyone and much of which is tendered to the private sector. Over the last forty years, it was highest under the Thatcher government of the early eighties, when it was just above 50% for several years. It was lowest around the millennium during a Labour administration. You can check the figures here: epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tec00023

You said 'public sector' is bigger than the EU average of '50.4%'. Public sector spending has never been above the EU average (compared to the 15 developed economies in the EU). The average is round about 50% at the moment.

You said that manufacturing fell from 22% by 50% during the Labour government. It's never been that high. It was around 20% at the high water mark under the preceding Tory government. I'll give you that manufacturing fell sharply over the Labour government, from around 19-11% of the total economy. Fair enough, hefty, but not the 50% drop you stated.

There are two main reasons manufacturing feel sharply. A lot of low wage manufacturing shifted to Asia, particularly China. This was a global sea change which affected just about every advanced economy including the US. Secondly, the UK economy was growing rapidly during the period, particularly financial services. Perhaps the introduction of the minimum wage drove some manufacturing jobs away which were replaced by service jobs. I would be interested if you can pin the decline on some other Labour policies.

agirlwingwings ..... very quickly.

• Any figures based on % of GDP is inaccurate in our case, look at nominal figures. Few had an economy built of the proceeds of speculation, debt and public spending to our extent, as I'll show on another thread soon.

• I said that our Public Sector was a larger % of our economy under Labour than under the coalition which is falling slower than I thought, and I think you are agreeing with that.

• In manufacturing, I'm sure that it remained fairly static under the Conservatives at around 22% of our economy, but even if it was 20% in 1997 you say, and ended up around 11% by 2010, it's as closed to a 50% fall as I can be arsed to quibble about.

• Are you seriously trying to tell me that China and other Asian countries e.g Taiwan, South Korea, only began taking our manufacturing jobs in the 2000's and not the 1980's and 1990's? Next you'll say Japan was kicking our manufacturing bums in the 1990's and didn't begin in the 1970's.

• FYI there was no 'trade off' between services and manufacturing, it was probably the strength of sterling during the 2000's putting our manufacturers (exports) under pressure.

• Brown clearly saw financial services as the most important sector to pay for his fat State Utopia, hence through his tripartite regulators he loosened the money taps

• Otherwise he could have forgotten his ideology and helped manufacturers with significant tax cuts, or other reductions in their costs like Osborne - rather than 'build' a huge quangocary with £170 billion plus instead.

There was money to build homes, nuclear power stations and other infrastructure, but Brown chose the big fat inefficient State and proceeds from immigration to go for the fast fix to 'create' GDP, which I'll show again on another thread soon.

iimb: This is going off topic but I feel it is important enough to respond to.

The size of the public sector was higher on average under the Conservative governments between 1979-1997 (around 45% of GDP) than it was under the Labour governments from 1997-2010 (around 42.5% of GDP). I showed you the figures in my previous post. You just need to dig into them to see this. I can't provide a link to show this, otherwise I would.

The trade off between services and manufacturing is well known. As countries get richer people buy more services and usually stick with one washing machine, iyswim. If you scroll down to the bottom of this table you will see the global shift roughly over the period of the Labour administrations: wdi.worldbank.org/table/4.2

Sterling hardly moved against the UK's main trade partners between 1997-2010, so the idea about sterling appreciating doesn't hold.
www.bis.org/statistics/eer/

Corporation tax fell during the period. If anything, the decline was probably more accentuated due to a liberal attitude to foreign buy outs. You cite infrastructure building as a possible cause: who do think builds it and what with? The laissez faire attitude that was adopted to manufacturing was more in line with that of the Conservatives.

The problem with your analysis is that you see political parties in such black and white terms. This is why your arguments are weak, because you try to make evidence fit your views rather than the other way around. Just giving piecemeal figures about budget items doesn't prove anything. As I asked you above, if you save on some groceries but overspend on the total food bill, are you budgeting well or poorly?

Someone has to pay for the tax breaks for the highest 1% of earners, don't you think?

agirlwithwings ….. hmmm if I’m “seeing parties in such black and white terms”, I suspect by trying to hide behind figures, you are seeing the record of the last Labour administration, with red rose tinted specs.

Regarding the size of the Public Sector, the figures show near unprecedented real term increases in government spending below and while Public Spending may be skewed by recessions and the Automatic Economic Stabilizers e.g. recessions in the early 1980’s and 1990’s - lets keep it simple regarding ‘department building’ and the head count, especially as we now have a Public Sector Pension liability of around £1.3 trillion, on top of the National Debt,currently of a similar figure.

www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/
“During the years 2001-2007, there was a sharp rise in government spending. In real terms, government spending increased from just over £400bn (2009 prices) to £618bn in 2008-09.

According to the Financial Times 25/3/10, from 1997 to 2010, Public Sector employment rose from 5.2 million to 6.1 million, a rise of 18%, versus Private sector employment that funded it, only rose by 7%.

Daily Mail or not, do you dispute that there was such a sharp rise in Quangos, their costs and head count?
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1214001/The-cost-quango-Britain-hits-170bn--seven-fold-rise-Labour-came-power.html

In Local Government, although mainly funded by a 110% rise in our Council Tax under Brown, do you dispute there was a rise in employment and growth in ‘non jobs’?
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1358144/Labours-3m-town-hall-jobs-bonanza-employed-deliver-frontline-services.html

We do know our government’s expenditure on Welfare/benefits went up more than other European countries, even though Brown was boasting of record numbers employed.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10574376/Graphic-Britain-outstrips-Europe-on-welfare-spending.html

We also know that Labour borrowed huge amounts to build infrastructure like Hospitals and schools that were initially ‘off balance sheet’, locking the countryinto bad contracts for 20 years and beyond.
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/8779598/Private-Finance-Initiative-where-did-all-go-wrong.html

Which is coming back to haunt us already, with the Coalition having to pump in more money.
www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9356942/Blair-defends-PFI-as-NHS-trusts-face-bankruptcy.html

We know the money didn’t go on nuclear power stations, as clearly Brown/Miliband was trying to build them on ‘the never, never,’ funded by higher energy bills – a kind of PFI above, but with ‘the people’ picking up the cost – but never managed to get a spade in the ground, never mind build one.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/1983467-UK-Energy-Policy-Price-scandal-outages-due

As to Manufacturing, to 2006 this with loads of red tape was Brown’s help to businesses – the article below on manufacturing confirms..
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-389284/The-80-tax-rises-Labour.html

Why you say currencies were not an issue when from memory alone, when the Euro was launched it crashed to the U.S.$ and was weaker to Sterling, making our exports less competitive there, and the £/$ rate was above $2.0 to £2.10, before crashing down towards $1.37, and now around $1.70.

If you read the article I gave you on Brown’s 1 million manufacturing job loses to 2005, iit made all this quite clear.
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/million-factory-jobs-lost-under-labour-6150418.html
“Business organisations blamed red tape, rising taxes, a strong pound and the burgeoning public sector for the wave of redundancies. They urged Mr Brown to use his Budget to slash costs facing industry and do more to boost skills.”

The fact was, Labour was still putting up the ‘tax on jobs’ when they were coming into an election, which they KNEW cost jobs, which proves they only know how to ‘build’ a Public Sector, not the \private Sector that funds it.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/labour/7539343/Labours-planned-National-Insurance-increase-will-cost-jobs-Alistair-Darling-admits.htmll

As to “the tax breaks to the highest earners”, do you mean the part reversal of the 50p tax rate Labour hiked after 13-years from 40%, that hardly raised any money? The rich are paying far more taxes under the Coalition, maybe you can explain why Brown had our Capital Gains Tax down at a tapered low of 10% (before leaving it fixed at 18%) if not for his Private Equity chums/party donors ‘paying less tax than their tea lady’.
“Who Runs Britain?” by Robert Peston
www.socialismtoday.org/122/peston.html

You seem to want avoid a debate and prefer to flush the discussion with piecemeal figures and arguments from newspapers. I don't feel it is possible to have a reasonable debate on this basis.

Just to highlight the difficulty of engaging on this basis. You quote a 50% rise in public spending from 2001-2007 'in real terms'. I've checked the figures; they're nominal. This is a typical way of exaggerating changes.

2001 411,117.0
2002 442,508.0
2003 480,418.0
2004 517,337.0
2005 553,822.0
2006 588,293.0
2007 618,361.0

Because nominal GDP rose by around 30% over the same period, the rise in expenditure in proportion to the economy was far less dramatic, around 3% of GDP to 43% of GDP. (Still comfortably below the average of public spending over the Thatcher governments.)

It takes a long time to fact check; something I don't have.

My point is simple. Economic policy hasn't change that much since Brown left as chancellor. The current government has adopted an expansionary fiscal stance and promoted lax monetary conditions. The hair of the dog to solve the crisis. This point of view is hardly new. A conservative MP put it very eloquently (as I noted above), it's an established argument in economic discussions in the FT and elsewhere.
The US have adopted exactly the same strategy only at least they're honest about it.

agirlwithwings ….. I agree with you, you will not be able to have a “reasonable debate” with me (on your terms), as you want to compare statistics, without acknowledge Labour’s policies that caused our financial and economic problems.

First of all you keep comparing figures across administrations TO UK GDP, but under Brown, the record government spending, the record City profits/tax receipts, the record Housing Stamp Duties, the record budget deficits (after 2007/8) and the record consumption/personal debt both initially inflated GDP under Labour, then deflated GDP under the Coalition from 2010 – when the falling away or correcting of those excesses, became a DRAG on GDP.

The point about our GDP to spending was made in this link I gave you earlier, as were the government spending figures you contradict – so who do we believe, you, who came up with all kind of B.S. reasons we lost a million manufacturing jobs from 1997 to 2005 (without even acknowledging the near £40 billion of red tape hoisted on our businesses over that time under Labour), or the authors of the link?
www.economicshelp.org/blog/5509/economics/government-spending-under-labour/

As to the stimulus policies not changing under the Coalition, you could not be wrong so I can’t be bothered to list THEM ALL, but which G7 country no longer has the lax monetary conditions adopted after 2007/8, so hardly an Osborne "promotion".

*So all I’ll say is that Labour’s 2010 strategy of 2010 of ‘more of the same’ and penal taxes on everyone that would have been announced after, including those of the mobile rich that don’t have to put with it - has been proven to have been the wrong strategy for economic growth, and only good for the growth of unemployment and national debt.

“How Francois Hollande changed but Ed Miliband stayed the same.”
www.trendingcentral.com/francois-hollande-changed-ed-miliband-stayed/

As I said above, the figures you quote are usually from newspapers or blogs, and in both cases frequently incorrect. The figures I give are all from official public sources, so they are more reliable as the organisations that produce them, like the World Bank, have to be accountable.

You just pulled another figure from thin air: £40 billion of red tape from your favourite blog. The same blog that doesn't understand the meaning of the phrase 'in real terms', other than 'the figure appeared in the Daily Mail, so it must be real'.

The UK is a relatively low tax economy with what you could describe as a 'pro-business' environment. It's been like this for many years across several administrations including the previous one.
If you look at this table you will see that corporate taxes have been lower than just about every major high-income economy, including the US, for many years. These figures go back to 2005.
data.worldbank.org/indicator/IC.TAX.TOTL.CP.ZS

In terms of administrative burden on businesses, which may be what you're referring to as 'red tape', the UK consistently ranks one of the most business 'friendly' economies in the world.
www.doingbusiness.org/rankings
This is the most authoritative reference on the topic. Britain ranks 10.

As you can see here, under the last Labour administration, Britain ranked 9 (see page 3).
www.doingbusiness.org/~/media/GIAWB/Doing%20Business/Documents/Annual-Reports/English/DB06-FullReport.pdf
Maybe have a look around in the report, it covers things like 'ease of doing business' and 'paying taxes'. If everything was a communist utopia under Labour, why did the administration receive such a high rank.

I can't believe you 'can't be bothered to list all' your counter facts. You've shown significant commitment to this strategy so far. The problem is that your starting position in this debate is far too high. If you come in with 'reds under the bed' swimming around in your imagination, fueled by a few blog quotes, don't be surprised when you're shown to be wrong. The idea that Labour administrations are 'socialist' or even left-wing doesn't hold up to international comparison. Compared to other G7 economies, Labour governments have been 'centre-right' and Britain as a whole for many years has been considered a low-tax economy.

agirlwithwings ….. There are no Labour Party ‘reds under the bed’, but there is a Labour Party that is constantly ‘stomping all over the bed’, the difference is how long it takes to show their true ‘colour’, whether they were Old, New, or Oldish, having officially just dropped the ‘New’ title – but whatever name or positioning they try to portray, it always surfaces in overspending on big expensive government, nationalisation, State controls -and taxes have to rise to pay for it.

The fact that a government of 13-years showed complete political cowardice in 2010 of not detailing any Spending, Cuts and the extra Taxation in their manifesto (or in the long overdue Public Spending Round), over and above the other two main parties implied figures, just meant THE COST of their big expensive State to ‘the people’ was hidden this time, whereas the electorate SAW their true colour in 1979.

Tell me, was it my “imagination” that back in 1979, 3-years after Labour asked and received an IMF debt bailout mainly due to supporting failing State industries, Labour passed to Thatcher interest rates and inflation around 20%, the lower rate of income tax was around 32%, the upper income tax level started in the mid 60%s, the tax on Unearned Income (BTL?) was in the mid 90%’s and CORPORATION TAX was 50%???????

Fast forward to 1997 and Brown/Blair’s ‘New’ Labour WHO HAD TO STATE THEY WOULD ADOPT the Conservatives spending/deficit reductions plans to allay the fears that ‘Old’ Labour would come a stomping?

Did they ever 'imagine' taking over a Base rate of 6.25% (to fall further over the years as GLOBAL Base Rates and Inflation was about to fall), CPI inflation of 1.6%, low income taxes, competitive Corporation Tax AND an economy that had grown for around 26 consecutive quarters following the early 1990’s western recession and growing faster than any other European country?????

So that was the economic backdrop Labour inherited, during the best decade of global growth since god knows when, WHY WOULD TAXES GO UP DURING THIS PERIOD, they should have been coming down with the National Debt, as our annual budget enjoyed a 'boom' surplus – even Labour couldn’t screw that up immediately, but the levels of our Productivity fell and unbalancing of our economy continued up to 2010.

Yet in 1997, WITHOUT mentioning it in their election manifesto, apart from selling around 40% of our gold at a 20-year low, Labour/Brown put up Housing Stamp Tax from a flat 1% and raided Private Pensions, raising £118 billion for the exchequer to date (ONS), but costing pensioners well over £200 billion in lost returns and virtually killing off the Private Sector workers Defined Pension Benefits.

Re “the £40 billion (red tape under Labour stifling the Private Sector) from my favourite blog” – now WHAT blog would that be, please link it, as I’m using 30-years of following global economies, I’d like to know a like-mind, to shoot the Labour breeze with.

The British Chamber of Commerce was cited in this link for the £40 billion figure, and Blair was concerned that the party of new laws and red tape was stifling the private sector, too bad Blair didn’t tell Brown before they lost the 1 million manufacturing jobs.

www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/2918368/What-Blair-really-thinks-about-the-FSA.html

“Tony Blair is gripped by a desire to slash red tape - or so he claimed in a speech last month. That address attracted notice principally for Tony Blair's surprising and controversial statement that the Financial Services Authority is "seen as hugely inhibiting of efficient business" - but his assertions roamed wider than that.”

"“No one in any business - be it vast or tiny - needs to be told that the burden of regulation has increased since Labour came to power in 1997. The British Chambers of Commerce estimates that the cost for business of coping with red tape from Whitehall and Brussels will be £39bn this year - four times as much as in 1997."*

“Of course the bureaucrats of Brussels are only half of the problem. At the end of May the prime minister delivered an embarrassing rebuke to the City watchdog, the FSA, which was set up by the new Labour Government in 1997.”

agirlwithwings …. So looking at the tax rates when Labour left power in 1979, their tax surprises when they came to power in 1997, their cynical omission to detail the tax rises they promised RATHER than cut their fat, inefficient State in 2010 - AND the c current reversion to Old Labour and State controls on energy prices and rents etc, do you have any more ‘statistics’ you want to hide behind, rather that face/admit the bleedin’ obvious?

UKIP is using politics to fight a cultural war

www.gq-magazine.co.uk/comment/articles/2014-05/14/ukip-is-using-politics-to-fight-a-cultural-war

A very good read.

I think they probably will get a majority. Not happy about it, mind.

Ooops - wrong thread! Sorry!

MN - please delete!