Comment Central - Times Online - WBLG

Mapping the next election...

Politics Home has launched a rather fancy map, plotting the outcome of the next election as predicted by their Electoral Index.

It has a regional breakdown, and a snazzy way of letting you click on each constituency for more detail. Go see...

Norwich North, UKIP and the General Election

Iain Dale has some interesting posts, reviewing the Norwich North by-election. The one that caught my eye quoted the Lib Dem Norfolk Blogger:

Early reports on Sky News yesterday which were effectively saying from the count that they expected a Tory majority of 2000 because of the impressive showing of UKIP and the Greens. I saw the BBC journalist listening and scribbling notes. I said to her, without giving anything away "Take what they are saying with a pinch of salt"

Norfolk Blogger's point - a good one - was that the media had bought the story of an excellent Green performance, when in fact their performance had been disappointing. UKIP, by contrast, had done well without being covered much.

But I noted a different point. One I tried to make all Friday morning before the result was announced, but which is still relevant.

A good performance for the Greens and UKIP was always likely to mean a bigger Tory majority, not, as everyone seemed to assume on Friday, a smaller one.

Yes, these two parties took votes from the Conservatives and depressed the Tory share of the vote. But they took even more from Labour. They contributed to a catastrophic Labour result, which meant Labour lost by a landslide even with the Tories below 40 per cent of the vote.

They could perform a similar role in a General Election.

Exchange: What now after Norwich North?

From: Daniel Finkelstein
To: Philip Collins

When I was working in Conservative Central office before the 1997 election we were regularly clocking up results as bad as Labour's (actually, they weren't quite as bad. these are worse.)

Anyway though at one level we knew that the results meant we were going to lose, at another we didn't take them seriously. We thought we wouldn't quite do that badly when it came to it.

And then we did.

Do people in the Labour get it, in your opinion? At Cabinet level, say, or senior adviser level, do they see what is coming?

From: Philip Collins
To: Daniel Finkelstein

No, I don't think they get it at all. To help them I am going to write the next bit in capital letters. YOU ARE GOING TO GET SLAUGHTERED.

I think they have given up. Of course they are not saying to themselves "I have given up and I no longer care". But they are not doing even the most elementary things to help themselves. They are frozen into inaction.

Here's what they have to do. Get Alan Johnson into No10. Identify three big themes and hammer on them and nothing else. Run a campaign that says Cameron doesn't really know who he is and, although he's a decent guy, he has no clue, really, about what to do.

If all of that goes perfectly and if the moon aligns with the stars, you have an outside shot of a hung Parliament. 

From: Daniel Finkelstein
To: Philip Collins

They most obviously do have to do this, although I doubt that they will.

I am lost though on those big themes. What one earth might they be? The only one with any clout - we have to cut but we'll cut better - isn't going to wash. So what would?

From Philip Collins
To: Daniel Finkelstein

It sort of doesn't matter. All I meant is that they have to have something that they are about - rather than nothing.

My point was simply that entering an election offering no reason to vote for you isn't entirely wise. The Tories can run on "we'll clear up the mess" now. But Labour has to have something to say.

Norwich North and Monty Python

On the Progress blog, Paul Richards tries to explain Norwich North to those among his colleagues belonging to the hard of thinking:

Lesson five: we are not characters in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When King Arthur encounters the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they engage in mortal combat. Arthur lops off the Black Knight's arm, but the wounded knight says 'Tis but a scratch; I've had worse'. When his other arm is severed he cries ‘it's just a flesh wound.' He ends the scene hopping on one leg, but refusing to give up, shouting ‘I'm invincible'. Arthur's reply: ‘you're a loony'.

When Labour lost in Crewe in May last year, with a 7,000 Labour majority turning into a 6,000 Tory majority, we shouted ‘'tis but a scratch.' When we lost Glasgow East in July last year with a drop of 19 percentage points, we said it was just a flesh wound. But Labour can't keep on hopping on one leg after the loss of Norwich North.

It might be that Labour voters in Scotland, the north of England, and now East Anglia, who deserted us in their thousands when given the opportunity in a real election, are trying to tell us something.

Live blogging on Norwich North

13.10 All this means a Tory vote share of 39.5% plays a Labour vote share of 18.17 per cent. UKIP's share was impressive at 11.8 per cent .

12.57 Greens come in fifth. Bad news for Rupert Read...

12.54 The numbers, as called by Andrew Sparrow...

Conservatives: 13,591

Labour: 6,243

Lib Dems: 4,803

12.44 Iain Dale tweets: 14% swing, majority of close-on 5,000, Labour on 19%, Lib Dems and Greens both fail

12.33 While we wait (and wait...) for the results, I suggest having a laugh over Nick Robinson's guide to 'how to unspin Norwich'.

12.21 Sky reports that the Tories will win with a 4,000 - 5,000 majority

12.19 Andrew Sparrow has heard an intriguing explanation for the unreliability of the figures produced by the parties. Broadland council has, apparently, put a limit on the number of party agents allowed to observe the count to stop too many BNP figures getting in.

12.16 Results not yet announced and my colleague Sam Coates has reports that Labour has already plunged into infighting about, you guessed it, expenses.

12.13 C4's Gary Gibbon is hearing that "the Libs have held on to third place and that UKIP may have pushed the Greens...  into fifth". Well, we'll see very shortly...

12.02 Andrew Sparrow reports:

The Lib Dems seem to accept that they are in third place. One source told me that their share of the vote as much the same as it was in 2005, 16%. But he was also telling me that the Tories were doing badly because they had got less than 40%. He thinks that they're up by about six points, ie to 39%.

11.53 The BBC reports:

At the count in Norwich BBC correspondent Carole Walker said it looked as though Labour would come second, after earlier speculation it could be pushed into third, but the Labour vote had slumped.

We will soon discover what Carole means by slump. Let's say it means down to 28 per cent. That would give the Tories a majority of what? 2.5k? But it is hard to see how the rest - Libs close, Greens and UKIP decent votes can be true if Labour has as much as 28 per cent.

11.36 Chloe Smith having arrived at the count, high minded discussion moves from Theresa May’s footwear (red), to Smith’s jacket (“shocking pink”).

11.31 Tory press chief Henry Macrory tweets that he's expecting the results "at midday or just before".

11.23 Andrew Sparrow (who incidentally is doing magnificent political live blogging consistently) is reporting the general consensus:

One Tory said it was impossible to say whether Labour or the Lib Dems would come second. Another told me that the Greens and Ukip were doing well. It's starting to feel as if the Tories will win but by a relatively modest margin.

This chimes with the "relaxed but tight" Tory stuff I was reporting earlier. But it is still odd. If the Tory vote is up (as Labour say) and Labour has done sufficiently badly that it is contesting second place with the Libs while the UKIP and Green vote is hefty, it surely follows that the Tories must have a decent majority.

Mybe I've misunderstood something. 

11.05  Labour campaign manager Bob Blizzard comes as close as a politician might to admitting defeat. He says: "our vote's down, theirs [Conservative] is up, but not by as much as they might have hoped"

10.58 So with the turnout known, we can do some maths. If Norwich swung to represent the average national opinion poll, the Conservatives would only just squeeze out Labour. They would get 11k to Labour's 10k.

But if the by-election result looked more like the local election result the Tories would get 12k to Labour's 5.5k.My guess is somewhere at the top of this range. With the Tory "tight" claim making me only a very teensy bit nervous of this prediction.

10.48 The Tories are simultaneously saying (privately this is) that they are relaxed and that it's tight. My experience of the people involved in the campaign leaves me feeling that I shouldn't take the tight bit that seriously.

10.45 A turnout of 45% means about 30,000 votes were cast.

10.35 Other people live blogging include:

Andrew Sparrow, from the count
Jonathan Isaby on Conservative Home
Iain Dale
Norfolk Blogger, on Twitter

10:11 First, unscientific, cut from Norwich North ballots – very even between Lib Dems and Greens, with Labour probably just holding on to second place. A decent showing for UKIP without anything truly sensational. This would leave the Tories with the lowish vote share but biggish majority I tweeted yesterday evening.

Cameron on the election results

Your guide to the local elections

Politics Home has surveyed a panel "consisting of 100 of the top political brains in the country" to compile a cut-out-and-keep guide to the local elections. Considering that we weren't consulted, they've done rather well.

The brains were asked what result would constitute a 'better than expected' result for each of the main parties, and what would mean a 'worse than expected' performance. You can see a clearer version of the table of results here.

Sir Paul Judge: champion of ethical politics?

This morning I received an email from Sir Paul Judge.

Sir Paul is currently promoting his Jury team, a slate of independent candidates who would clean up politics. And this morning he writes that he intends to fund legal test cases against MPs.

I always read his missives, because I used to work with him.

I found him likeable and perfectly competent. I don't object to his decision to promote more independent MPs because I can quite see the argument for it.

But I must say that, as with Toby Young, Sir Paul's emergence as the champion of ethical politics was a twist in his career that I had not anticipated.

I do know that he is capable of funding legal action because just before I arrived at Central Office, he had been in court:

A top Tory Party official was not libelled by an article in the Guardian newspaper which suggested that he faced court action for obstructing investigations into donations to the party by fugitive tycoon Asil Nadir, a High Court jury ruled yesterday.

Paul Judge, director general of the Conservative Party, faces a £200,000 legal bill for the seven-day hearing he instituted independently of the party.

Hey, at least it was independent!

And I know he is, all these years later, still capable of funding legal action because a few months ago there was this:

A Conservative Party grandee has defeated his former wife's attempt to reopen their divorce settlement after he withheld £14 million to reimburse a charity but never paid it...
 
One of the appeal judges, Lord Justice Lawrence Collins, said of Sir Paul: "He was presented to the court as a successful and eminent businessman. But I remain disturbed about the way in which he used the charity to fund his own enterprises while simultaneously taking advantage of gift aid, especially when coupled with the relativity with which he seems to approach the concept of moral obligation."

The result of the appeal was an undeserved windfall, the judge said.

I was particularly amused, given all that has followed, at the description of Sir Paul as a Tory grandee.

In the circumstances, one can only admire Sir Paul's boldness, his confidence, that he can teach the political world lessons in avoiding controversies about ethics.

Your guide to election news

If you're waiting for election results, it could be a long, long night. But the following blogs and sites will guide you through. Bookmark them now for the latest information and analysis.

• The Red Box - Sam Coates brings you all the Westminster gossip
• BBC Elections 2008 (Coverage from 11:30pm on BBC 1)
• Iain Dale's Diary
• Conservative Home
• Liberal Democrat Voice
• Labour Home
• Political Betting 

The stupidity of voters

Bryan Caplan has received a great deal of feedback on his book arguing that voters are irrational. But until now, nothing quite as good as this.