Who will win the UK election ?

kabayiri

Uxb wrote: »

you mean we will get the referendum in the same way as last time the Tories said they had no plans to raise VAT - which they promptly did.
I reckon the Tories will invent some new excuse as to why a referendum on Europe would not be a good idea, would cause destabilization or some other twaddle and quietly drop it.
They all a load of lying scum.

Every single party was in pretend-mode during the last election run-up.

Commentators were making the point that their sums didn't add up.

Yes, people hate VAT. But it seems people hate income tax more.

andydiysaver

michaels wrote: »

This is an interesting one. In general where people put their money turns out to be a good predictor but this has not been the case with political betting (famously betfair odds were forecasting a tory outright victory last time).

In theory you might also expect the market to be biased by affected people 'hedging' their exposure to possible results, in the uk that should equate to high earners betting against the tories to cover likely losses were labour to be elected but if history is any guide the betting markets tend to err towards the right.

hedging often large and invisible...makes me wonder, has labour put the house on its own victory? - afterall- the amount they want to pay out to layabouts when they get in, prob needs a hedge bet of George Soros proportions.... can someone tell Milliband that rich hating is all well and good but who pays all the layabouts if nobody works............

cepheus

Nate Silver's 'Five thirty eight' UK election prediction. This has achieved legendary status in the US, predicting every state correctly last time.

Tories and Labour almost equal, with 90% confidence level failing to reach majority. For individual seats. Nick Clegg retains his constituency, but Farage and McVey lose theirs, with UKIP actually down to one!

http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/uk-general-election-predictions/

antrobus

kabayiri wrote: »

This factor may prove more important than they we currently imagine.

If we assume no outright majority, the initial control passes to the current prime minister. He gets first call as you say.

We could easily end up with a situation between May and September where we have a transitional arrangement led by Cameron.

It will be interesting to know the market response during such a period. They don't like uncertainty, and I don't think they believe in an anti-austerity approach.

There will be a lot of horse trading behind closed doors, that's for sure...

Thanks (I believe to Gordon Brown) we now have the Cabinet Manual which tells us all what is supposed to happen - "An incumbent government is entitled to wait until the new Parliament has met to see if it can command the confidence of the House of Commons, but is expected to resign if it becomes clear that it is unlikely to be able to command that confidence and there is a clear alternative."

kabayiri wrote: »

...Our current MP was credited with brokering the deal between Labour and LibDem. His reward ? A knighthood. Fancy that!

Do you mean Andrew Stunnell? He's certainly the only one of the four man LD negotiating team that I can see has been awarded a knighthood. I'm pretty certain that Chris Huhne has not been knighted for one thing. He got a different kind of award altogether.

michaels

antrobus wrote: »

This chap says different.

Betting markets are more reliable than polls at predicting the outcome of a national vote, says Leighton Vaughan Williams
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/general-election-2015/11457970/If-you-want-to-know-who-will-win-the-election-ask-a-gambler.html

And since he is the director of the Political Forecasting Unit at Nottingham Business School, who claims that he has a "huge data sets of polls and betting trades", he just might know what he is talking about.:)

All you ever do is demonstrate that anecdote doesn't equal data Interesting what he has to say about 2010 as I thought received wisdom that betfair was suggesting a Tory majority on the day of the poll.

Uxb wrote: »

you mean we will get the referendum in the same way as last time the Tories said they had no plans to raise VAT - which they promptly did.
I reckon the Tories will invent some new excuse as to why a referendum on Europe would not be a good idea, would cause destabilization or some other twaddle and quietly drop it.
They all a load of lying scum.

I am vaguely EU sceptic as I think the organisation is too anti-democratic but tbh I am terrified that any anti-eu referendum would be lost because the EU would spend enough money on frightening the population with what a 'no' might mean economically. And once the vote had been lost it would be full steam ahead to a more federal Europe with no further blocks from the UK....

cepheus wrote: »

Nate Silver's 'Five thirty eight' UK election prediction. This has achieved legendary status in the US, predicting every state correctly last time.

Tories and Labour almost equal, with 90% confidence level failing to reach majority. For individual seats. Nick Clegg retains his constituency, but Farage and McVey lose theirs, with UKIP actually down to one!

http://fivethirtyeight.com/interactives/uk-general-election-predictions/

Thanks for this, interesting that Tories plus LD plus DUP is still nowhere near a workable majority.

antrobus

cepheus wrote: »

Nate Silver's 'Five thirty eight' UK election prediction. This has achieved legendary status in the US, predicting every state correctly last time. ...

Except that it's not Nate Silver's 'Five thirty eight' UK election prediction. Five Thirty Eight have simply chosen to highlight the predictions being made by electionforecast.co.uk, presumably in order to keep their US readers informed.

Don't you ever actually read any of the sources you link to?:)

antrobus

michaels wrote: »

All you ever do is demonstrate that anecdote doesn't equal data ....

I know, I know. I end up spoiling everyone's fun.:)

michaels wrote: »

...Interesting what he has to say about 2010 as I thought received wisdom that betfair was suggesting a Tory majority on the day of the poll.....

Betfair is not, of course, the only game in town.

michaels wrote: »

...Thanks for this, interesting that Tories plus LD plus DUP is still nowhere near a workable majority.

It is entirely possible that no-one will have a workable majority.

Thrugelmir

michaels wrote: »

I am vaguely EU sceptic as I think the organisation is too anti-democratic but tbh I am terrified that any anti-eu referendum would be lost because the EU would spend enough money on frightening the population with what a 'no' might mean economically. And once the vote had been lost it would be full steam ahead to a more federal Europe with no further blocks from the UK....

Who are the "EU" ?

Jason74

Generali wrote: »

The British people (and indeed everyone else) saw Socialism/Communism fail in the most spectacular way in the 1960-80s period so that Bennite/Foot wing of the Labour Party was dead in the water, ironically just as they finally managed to gain control of the party.

Labour, and more importantly the unions that pay for the whole show, realised that the Socialist Utopia was never going to be built and so if the unions were going to push through the policies their members wanted (basically more money) the party had to move to the right. Blair delivered what the unions demanded: huge pay rises and a massive extension of the welfare state.

The cost of that has become apparent during the last seven years but at least some of the damage is being undone.

I've been meaning to reply to this post for a while, so apologies if it's now a bit behind the discussion :


I understand where you're getting at with the whole new Labour thought process, but I have a slightly different take on it. I think what happens in British politics, is that every so often, there is a "game changing" Government that effectively sets a consensus for decades to come. We had one in 1945, where the Atlee Government basically set the terms of debate for the next 35 years (well, 34 to be precise). This meant that any party looking to form a Government basically had to sign up to full employment, and acceptance of a significant Government role in the economy.


The debate continued to be framed in that way until the Thatcher Government basically rewrote the rules of engagement. Instead, we saw a new consensus formed around the idea that the market was sacrosanct, significantly reduced government involvement in the economy, and an acceptance that increasing inequality was a price worth paying for overall economic growth. The collapse of Communism of course reinforced the idea that "capitalism is best".


As you say, in the context of that being the consensus view, the Labour left had no answers, so we saw it move to the right to be electable. The problem was, that doing that would largely render Labours' reason for being irrelevant. The response to that, as you say, was to effectively "buy off" sections of it's core support with bungs paid for from general prosperity. As you say, this approach was ultimately unsustainable, and we're all quite literally paying for it now.


Which of course brings us to today. The "market is god, and inequality is OK" consensus is still holding for now, but the fact that the vote is split as it is says that this isn't as clear cut as it once was. If we're taking the historical parallel, I see this as being similar to 1974. Politics being based around an existing consensus, but significant discontent with the status quo leading to a situation where nobody can command enough support for effective Government. I think we'll have a similar outcome too, with a significant period of weak / ineffective government followed by someone eventually coming up with an approach that causes a fundamental shift in politics and attitudes. What that shift will be is of course another question altogether.

TheSaint_2

Brilliant post Jason.