Are the Tories going to tear themselves apart?

Mistermeaner

Are they lucky labour are an even bigger mess?

Are they dividing over the middle ground?

Will the EU referendum finish them off?

Is their majority too slim?

Will the uk forever be destabilised by increasingly divided votes and coalition's (even within parties)?

How often should one change their bedsheets?

Thrugelmir

Coming years were always going to be the difficult part of rebalancing the economy. Easy fruit has been picked. Expect a lot more of gnashing of teeth. As Ministers will have to make difficult decisions of how money can be saved from within their departments spend.

Mistermeaner

So did ids just bottle it or is there something else going on there?

Thrugelmir

Mistermeaner wrote: »

So did ids just bottle it or is there something else going on there?

Always going to be differences of opinion. No different to those Labour MPs who refuse to serve in Corbyn's administration. If you don't buy into the vision then there's little point being in the job.

daveyjp

Mistermeaner wrote: »

So did ids just bottle it or is there something else going on there?

Plenty going on, all because again of Europe.

EU in or Out
Cameron is going
Gideon wants his job
Cameron wants Gideon to have his job
But Boris wants his job
If EU out Boris may will get his job
What does Cameron do before the EU vote to make life difficult for Boris should the vote be Out?
Gideon misses targets, maybe austerity isn't working but he's Cameron's mate so he can't sack him as it shows he thinks Gideon isn't very good, but he wants to hand the keys to no 10 to him otherwise Boris may get them.

kinger101

I think IDS was right on this one. I thought the last budget was appalling. The government isn't meeting it's targets, so decides to cut CGT and hand £1,000 a year to anyone under 40 who can save £4K. I bet even Ed Balls thought that giveaway was absurd.

Thrugelmir

kinger101 wrote: »

and hand £1,000 a year to anyone under 40 who can save £4K.

Ever heard of pensions?

This is probably the first step in evolving a new type of pension scheme. The flexibility to use the money to buy a first property is a major step forward.

HornetSaver

Are they lucky labour are an even bigger mess?

Yes.

Are they dividing over the middle ground?

No, they're dividing over political priorities.

IDS is unquestionably to the right of Cameron, yet if you looked at the reason for his resignation in isolation you'd say he's to the PM's left. In 2009-2012 he was seen as the man who put the capital "N" in "Nasty Party", in stark contrast to Hug-a-Hoodie, We're-All-In-It-Together Cameron. But IDS's philosophy was that you front-load the savings into structural reforms which incentivise those who can work to do so - a structure which Labour or the Lib Dems would be hard-pressed to justify reversing if ever in government. His view was that once that situation was achieved, the benefits bill was an irrelevant issue provided that sufficient measures were in place to prevent fraud. The reasoning being that whether people liked the concept of benefits or not, the structure would do what it was supposed to do. Cameron's view is that the government need to be seen to be cutting working age benefits continually, which by definition means either that you were knowingly leaving fat in the system to begin with, or that you are cutting benefits below the level at which those who absolutely require them cannot sustain themselves.

The irony of all ironies is that if you look at it in cash terms, IDS was looking to save more between 2010 and 2020 than Cameron or even Osbourne would have earmarked at the start of this decade.

Will the EU referendum finish them off?

Either result could bring down the government, with emphasis on the word "could". But that doesn't necessarily mean that the next government won't be a Conservative or Conservative-led one. And I don't think it splits the party to a significant extent, given that (outside the EU debate) there is less common ground between grassroots Tories and Kippers than what tends to be portrayed in the media.

My guess is we will end up with a situation comparable to the Labour Co-Operative one, or indeed as there has been in the past with the Scottish, Northern Irish and National Liberal groupings within the Conservative party. I.e. that there is a formal grouping of MPs who are Conservatives first and foremost, however are standing on a platform of furthering certain specific policies regardless of the wider Conservative line. I don't think CCHQ will like that idea one iota, but when they realize the realistic alternatives I think they'll quietly allow a status quo of that sort.

Is their majority too slim?

Their majority is too slim for them to be confident of surviving the aftermath of the referendum with a majority. But given the split on the other side of the Commons, it's big enough for them to be sure that the only way of another party getting in is via a general election. And for that you would need current Tories to vote with Labour to secure one. That would be a suicidal move, because if there is a breakaway in the parliamentary party (be that defections to UKIP, a splinter right-wing party, or people simply going independent), the rebels will want as long as possible to influence decisions and give themselves a chance of getting re-elected.

Will the uk forever be destabilised by increasingly divided votes and coalition's (even within parties)?

I don't accept the premise of the question, because you make the idea of MPs voting on the platform they were elected on sound like a bad thing. The important thing is that the government can get its budget through, and that the largest party can count on broad support from most of the other large parties for issues of national importance such as military action and responding to natural disasters or similarly large scale events. In those limited respects a fragmented parliament is a concern, but I believe the British electorate would be far less forgiving of people playing politics with the budget than in America or Continental Europe, so there would have to be quite a significant deadlock for that to occur. I.e. another big parliamentary party emerging in England, similar in size to the SNP or to the pre-coalition Lib Dems.

But on other policies, the strength of smaller parties has helped settle the issues of the day. Would we have had an EU referendum if Cameron wasn't afraid of UKIP? Would we have had Indyref if the SNP were weaker? And whatever you think of the Lib Dems' actions in the last parliament (largely a political view), can you imagine what the economic situation would have been like today if in 2010 the Tories had 310 seats, Labour 295, the Lib Dems 15, SNP/Plaid 10 and Northern Ireland 18?

Agree or disagree with how the Lib Dems played their hand, but the fact that a neutral party was relatively large gave the country options which would not have been available had the two big parties been dominant but equally unpopular.

kinger101

Thrugelmir wrote: »

Ever heard of pensions?

Yes. And this isn't one. The money can be accessed at anytime to buy a house. Hence it's a taxpayer subsidy. It's essentially extending the HTB ISA, which was already the wrong solution.

Generali

I suspect not. I fear that the referendum debate is going to be bloody but electoral self interest is so strongly embedded in the Tory party that they'll get over it.

Thrugelmir

kinger101 wrote: »

Yes. And this isn't one. The money can be accessed at anytime to buy a house. Hence it's a taxpayer subsidy. It's essentially extending the HTB ISA, which was already the wrong solution.

Why is it the wrong solution? The Treasury recovers the bonus paid back plus more through the tax revenues generated by the activity of property purchased.