Knackered? If so, when?

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/comment/talking-politics/clegg-lords-revenge-happens-now-082216756.html

And “The Labour leader has gone from no hoper to the most likely future prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.” Ye Gods!…

“The Labour leader has gone from no hoper to the most likely future prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Labour has lead in the opinion polls pretty much ever since Ed Miliband became leader, which hardly suggests a “no hoper”…….don’t believe everything you read in the Guardian.

Check it out for yourself (Miliband became leader at the end of Sept 2010)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8280050.stm

They both have too much invested in it [ and they fear an electoral hammering if there was an actual election] so they will muddle through

How much they now act like a divorcing couple who hate each other remains to be seen.

Shame that they can’t just pull together and concentrate on sorting out the big mess left by Labour rather than bickering and infighting.

Heaven help us if we ever get Miliband into power. He looks and acts like he’s barely out of school – no doubt a school where surely he must have been severely bullied. As a nation we’d be a laughing stock if he ever gets into the PM’s office.

There will be no instant fix to this financial crisis and whoever got into power at the last election was bound to end up being very unpopular. It’s just a shame that all Labour seem to do is snipe and complain, without seeming to have any credible plans of their own.

I know it’s the oppositions job to be critical but it would be far nicer to see everyone dropping the power struggle and actually pulling together to do something good for this country.

Ye sif only you could pull together for the country rather thna roll out the tired and frankly silly idea that Labout caused the last gloibal economic meltdown caused by the crashing of the Us sub prime markets.
Do you recall the Tories agreeing to match Labour spending plans before this.

I agree that making glib and poiintless politcal points is …well glib and pointless. Your appeal would have had more weight were you to not started the post by making one and continuing to mock milliband throughout.

Labour has suggested alternatives it is the current incumabants who have NO plan B and it appears Plan is A is not going to Plan.

As i always say in this you cannot blame either party for the situation [capitlaism does this in an unedning cycle of boom and bust] but you can criticise them for how their polices affect things.

it would appear labour got us out of the recession they did not cause and the Tories got us back into the recession they did not cause.

rebel12 – Member

There will be no instant fix to this financial crisis ………

Given the tone of your post that is a very strange comment for you to make …… don’t you support the Tory’s claim that their economic policies will clear the deficit by 2015 ? After denigrating and ridiculing Labour you actually support their claim that the Tories are talking tosh and there will be no instant fix to the financial crisis ? 😕

Well of course you are probably right……during almost the entire period of Tory governments since WW2 there have been budget deficits, so there’s no reason to assume that this Tory government will be any different.

And of course the Tories inherited a growing economy which was slowly recovering before plunging it straight back into recession. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Double-Dip Osborne.

Have you seen the polls?

If there was an election tomorrow, the Tories will do considerably worse than they did last time. Why do you think they’re trying to Gerrymander the electoral boundries? And they’ll have no Lib Dem allies to rely on as they’ll be trailing in behind UKIP. They’ll be wiped out at the next election

Call-me-Dave and his spineless lacky know this all too well

So… that leaves us with Wallace. He looks absolutely bloody useless, but lets be honest, could they do any worse than this lot. George ‘there is no Plan B’ doesn’t look like he’s going to stop until he’s driven the economy off a cliff

And of course the Tories inherited a growing economy which was slowly recovering before plunging it straight back into recession. Which doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Double-Dip Osborne.

Hmm, not exactly. Despite my post I’m no Tory fan. I voted for them at the last election because they seemed to have the most credible plan to pull us out of the mire. In the past I have voted for Labour, and would do so again if I thought that they would be the best option. At the moment all I see from Labour though is a load of hot air.

Going back to your point, given the apparent depth of this financial crisis I don’t think that this is possible to solve by 2015, not by the Tories, Labour or anyone else. Yes we are very nearly back in recession but then what did you expect?

Would you rather continue the way of the last 10 years – more artificial growth created by another debt fueled credit binge? You can’t expect to solve this overnight and a recession is just a natural course of events in any boom-bust cycle. And we’ve had one almightly credit fueled boom, and now comes the bust both for the UK and almost every other western nation.

Honestly if you expected everything to be rosy by now either under Labour or the Conservatives then you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.

Yes we are very nearly[b] firmly[/b] back in recession but then what did you expect?

FTFY 😉

Osbournes policies have had the opposite effect to those stated. He’s massively decreased tax revenues while massively increasing the bill for benefits payments

The suggestion that it might be slightly more sensible not to give tax cuts to the rich, while easing up on the speed of job-slashing in the public sector doesn’t really constitute another debt fueled credit binge?, does it?

Binners, I’m not defending Osbourne – I’m just saying that what’s the alternative? It’s very easy for Labour to snipe from the opposition bench but as yet they have not put forward one credible alternative from what I can see. At least Osbourne has the IMF on his side, the UK still has a good credit rating, and we don’t yet seem to be going the way of Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Greece etc.

Whether Labour would have done better is debatable, maybe they would, or maybe we’d be in a far worst mess now. Regardless I can’t respect a party or a leader who just critizes someone else without putting forward any constructive ideas themselves. That about sums up Labour at the moment I’m afraid.

Yet you seem to blindly respect the IMF?

Can’t argue with your sentiment really. Millibean would appoint Ed Balls as chancellor. Who, as we all know, has an impeccable record when at the treasury previously. It went really really well

All in all, its a pretty depressing state of affairs that those are the choices. God help us!!!

Well this is a fascinating point in UK political history. Coalition government is a relatively new idea for most of us and something that we have little history in the UK to benchmark against (apart from the last gov to actually implement spending cuts!)

Putting together two political parties with such fundamental differences on many policy areas was never going to be an easy task. This is particularly true in an environment of poor economic performance and prospects, which is hardly going to make any ruling party a popular one with the the great GB population.

For a period, I though that despite this, the coalition were actually making a reasonable fist of things. The LibDems were able to temper some of the Tories sillier policies and vice versa. And some of the LD’s were actually behaving in a reasonably statesman-like and grown up manner (VC apart). But NC has probably had the hardest job – in power you have to grow up and make difficult decisions and that is unpopular with the population and with your own party at times. I think he has been outplayed by the Tories and while they may feel smug about this, they should be careful about pushing their partners too far. Win-lose games don’t tend to last too long.

But Clegg (and Hughes who is a bit of a ….) have also raised the stakes here and IMO are also making a mistake. Even for politicians, their hypocrisy here is blindingly obvious. We have grown use to NC and other politicians being economical with the truth (the two issues are not linked), but playing the pious politician is a bit rich.

Still I am sure he craves power and influence more than integrity and the poltical backwaters, so I don’t expect any major fireworks.

So fun to watch, albeit depressing that few of these muppets have a real answer. JY, Labours pronouncements after the latests GDP results were hardly revolutionary nor differentiated except for the irony in having a Labour party being the only ones to push supply-side reforms. Funny old world.

i really cant see the limpdems have had much success in tempering the torries

gove has managed to set back education a hundred years or so
sell offs of policing, nhs, etc continue at breakneck speed
fptp is here to stay, forever
party funding / lobbying remains as corrupt as ever
the only u-turns have been managed thanks to public outcries and campaigns eg pasty tax, forest sell off

Hmm, yes it can’t be easy for the Tories to implement a solid and robust policy when their little pet Terrier (the Lib Dems) seems to be constantly snapping at their heels, demanding attention and pooing on the carpet.

That said I’d like to see more support for small and growing businesses, funding for research and innovation and investment in high tech business made a priority. Investment and innovation (and looking a bit further ahead than the next election) is the only way that UKPLC can stay ahead of the rest of the world.

This was one of the reasons why I voted for the Tories this time, but I’m not quite sure that they have delivered on this one yet? Time will tell.

Kimbers – they’ve already tempered the Tories more than even CMD would like to admit.

A lot of Tory backbenchers make Gove, Pickles and Landsley looke like members of some 60’s San Diego commune. They’re absolutely barking!!! They’d have us out of Europe, and probably declaring war on Germany. They’d just abolish the NHS and bring back hanging for shoplifting, and replace benefits with workhouses. The Tory party has always had this rump

Dave knows they’re all barking mad, and terrify anyone who is isn’t a retired colonel in these hardcore, nutter, home-counties constituencies.

The difference is that previous Tory leaders have had to pacify these lunatics. Which is of course impossible.

But Dave can say “I can’t do what you want, because these lot won’t let me” and blame it on the pinko’s in the Libdems

If he didn’t have them there, but Dave had a tiny majority that depending on these foaming-at-the-mouth, Europhobic headcases, then I dread to think where we’d be 😯 Heading rapidly back to 1873 more than likely

rebel12 – Member

Going back to your point….

I wasn’t really making a point – I was more interested in yours. Which was that “there will be no instant fix to this financial crisis”, even though you have castigated Labour for taking the same line.

Labour and the Tories have more or less the same economic policies, the only difference is that Labour would cut the deficit at a slower rate, ie halve it by 2015 whilst the Tories want it cleared by 2015.

And Labour wanted to do it by getting people back to work and paying taxes/not claiming benefits, with expenditure cuts later, the same as the LibDems btw – right up until the day after the May 2010 election.

The Tories however saw it as a golden opportunity to carry out ideologically motivated cuts (ie roll back “socialism” and aspire to the US model) with the claim that the 100s of thousands sacked from the public sector would find employment in a booming private sector.

And if it didn’t pan out as it was suppose to, then it was all the fault of Labour anyway for causing the mess in the first place – which is pretty much what you’re saying on this thread.

I’m suprised that the Tories let slip a chance to gerrymander their way into a stronger position, they had a lot to gain from it. Cameron’s refusal to whip his party into line over Lords reform has weakened his authority.

Despite the damage that the coalition has done to the nation the one thing I dread is a return of New labour. We’d get much of the same policies of robbing the poor to pay the rich, but also the return to the erosion of what rights we have left. I suspect one of their first acts in office would be to revive the ID card scheme…

Ernie you missed one out

Its the fault of the Europ and the Eurozone countries so we can also add in a light sprinklin gof jingoism and little englander to the mix of excuses and reasons as it is obvioulsy not theior policies wot done it…unless it worked when of course it would have been their policies which done it.

It was no surprise that Call-me-Dave made no effort whatsoever to whip his party over Lords reform. Since getting in he’s appointed more (Tory) peers to the House of Lords than any previous PM.

I think what he arrogantly assumed was that he just had to make a token effort, and the Lib Dems would just cave in anyway. And why wouldn’t he assume that? They have done over everything else? Tuition fees? NHS reform? Benefit cuts for the disabled? All passed with barely even an embarrassed whimper from their spineless passengers

Agreed Binners. But sometimes even the most timid mice roar…

I suspect though that they’ll cobble together some sort of compromise arrangement to see them through, and let’s face it, the Lib-Dems have nowhere else to go. Why not show some coaltion unity by passing a law that everyone can sign up to, something that can demonstrate that govt is decisive, has momentum, and can garner support form a prejudiced public; something like an act compelling cyclists to wear a helmet…

On a positive note for the coalition

growth forecasts slashed AGAIN

Its going really well, isn’t it?

if it was not for the lefty wingeing you would be able to hear the mighty roar of the chariot of free enterprise heading here right now…there is no plan B