Why do Ministers Resign?

An academic paper here.

Laws & the pound

I'm been very critical of making too much of the impact of political events on financial markets, but I suspect if David Laws does resign it won't help the pound, both because he's gone and was seen a City-friendly competent Minister and the wider fact of increased chance of tumoil for the government.

Can football make us happy?

Simon Kuper investigates.

David Laws

I'm not immediately convinced he should resign as an MP, or even as a Minister, after what seems like sexually motivated smear, but quite clearly he should resign as the Chief Secretary, as that is a position that requires the upmost trust in someone's handling of government finances, and one cannot now have that in David Laws. Can you imagine what would happen to a non-government minister if they bent the rules in this way (such as for housing benefit?). It's not, after all, a small amount of money.

ps RT @TiggerTherese: Have yet to hear a single voice on BBC breakfast on David Law's side. ALL against. So much for BBC balance, as usual

Is it generally considered the BBC suffers a lack of balance against the Liberal Democrats? Or do they mean the Government in general? I guess the former is possible given the preponderance of coverage of the two (perhaps hitherto) main parties.

pps After reading about fifty arguments for and against I now feel quite sorry for him, clearly this must have been a terrible day. I've still not seen a good argument why he didn't stop the claims once the rules changed, I think the idea that this would have 'outed' him is extremely weak. But I think within the context of the expenses 'scandal' that was happening at Westminister this wouldn't have been seen as that big a deal compared with some of the others if it had been revealed when that was at its height. On balance though I still think it would be best if he stepped down from this position while the investigation happens.

ppps Oooh Rod Liddle, he's so controversial.

IDS

IDS's welfare plans if enacted would be expensive (he admits they will initially cost more money than the current system) and for that reason I'm sceptical they will happen. But anyway, this article says:

Iain Duncan Smith, the first former Conservative leader to serve in the cabinet since Sir Alec Douglas-Home 40 years ago.

What about Hague, William Hague?

And this seems rather an oversight. I guess they need to invest, sorry spend, on a fleet of motorbike couriers.

pa In the Telegraph IDS says "it is not “sustainable” for Britain to carry on spending almost 14 per cent of its national income on welfare". This isn't really true, is it? If that is the figure then Britain currently has as much to spend on non-welfare as it had to spend on everything in the year 2001 or thereabouts. Advocates of a Citizen's Basic Income believe the country could, should, spend about 30% of its national income on 'welfare'.

Academies

So far I think it's fair to say the Coalition has not been very nice to families with young children or expecting them. So their schools policy will be of great interest. I've not really understood it yet, but this caught my eye:

Schools which are rated as outstanding by inspectors can be fast-tracked into academy status for the autumn.

First one to spot an 'Academies outperform existing state schools' headline wins a prize.

The Coalition is really really good and the markets say so, even those buying US debt

So we read here, with a chart of the price of Gilts. The story is that the price of Gilts was rising as investors hoped for a Tory majority government, then fell when investors feared a LibLab pact, then have risen again with the wonderful economic stewardship of George Laws.

This fits the chart, but it seems rather a stretch, to put it mildly, that such thoughts could be behind the exact same rally, dip, rally in the US Treasury market shown in the chart below, with the green shading when the Hung Parliament negotiations were ongoing (I've used inversed yield, which is much the same thing as price). After all the US Treasury market is probably seven times the size of the UK gilt market (something like that) and tends to lead other bond markets, not follow.




Coming up tomorrow: Why It Is Not The Coalition's Scrapping of Individual Government Car Drivers for Ministers that Caused Crude Oil to Fall by $1/Barrel

The new Times website

The new look is quite nice, nothing special but it captures the paper (which I think when it first became tabloid was very badly designed but is now quite readable). The best thing, and its great advantage over the old look, the Independent, and the Telegraph is that it doesn't need to carry adverts, and so content can begin only an inch down the page, rather than 2-3 inches. This is something I constantly point out about reports and so on, which is no-one wants most of the page taken up with your logo and company details etc.

The Guardian, which doesn't have adverts, wastes a lot of space I think.

Will the new Times - £1 a day or £2 a week (which includes Sunday's, I guess, which doesn't look so good) - be a success? I'm sceptical as long as other papers, namely the Telegraph, remain free, and if some of the better columnists gets permission (as say John Kay does with his FT column) post it elsewhere. But perhaps they'll all follow soonish and I imagine even a low sales figure would be seen as a reasonable success.

The other option is the print edition, and I'm not sure why anyone would want to read the Sunday Times, where surely half the point is coming across somethign you wouldn't know you wanted to read, online as opposed to in print.

From the Mail

From the Mail

A promise to end the penalty for all couples in the tax system has been watered down so that the government is now pledged only to 'bring forward plans to reduce the couple penalty in the tax credit system' - a move which will mean it still pays some couples on benefits to live

Phew!

Hastings, Tuscany

James Purnell might be a little out of touch:

The list of lost seats reads like a weekend supplement on holidaying in Middle England — Hastings, South Ribble, Worcester.

Nazi blogging

Unseen (apparently) pictures of Hitler's Bunker.

Tokenism

This 5% salary cut is annoying, isn't it? It's designed purely to look good, obviously it has no bearing on the public finances or on the individuals themselves (who have all just got enormous pay rises). It's not a pay cut, it's less of a pay rise. The same nonsense means Ministers and the Cabinet didn't take their correct pay for large chunks of the 1990s and 2000s.

I'm not even sure this is correct:

For David Cameron, the cut means he will receive an annual salary of £142,500 - £7,500 less than the £150,000 Gordon Brown was drawing when he left office.

I think Gordon Brown was taking a lower salary.

Andrew Sparrow*

"[women] make up over half of society (according to the 2001 census)."

Phew, I'm pleased he quoted the census.


* It might be Helene someone, hard to tell.

No to 55

Well there's already a campaign.

It's worth noting, although I oppose this 55% rule, that it presumably is also designed to stop the Tories losing their own confidence vote, and hence forcing an election when they want one. This is an issue with fixed-term parliaments.

Update: Actually, that doesn't work, does it? The Tories only have 47% of seats, so would still need allies, just fewer. I'm surprised Malcolm Rifkind isn't banging on about Zimbabwe. Maybe the rule should be no-confidence votes only trigger elections when supported by 90% or higher of the opposition parties.

The Coalition - it's too soon to say

While I understand why some people feel the need to say the coalition government will not deliver on its promises, and/or is a sham, which is there is rather too much breathless commentary the other way about 'new politics'*, it's really too soon for any judgement, isn't it? Early this afternoon the package seemed very Lib Dem friendly, and while that view has clearly had to be modified a bit as the day has gone on, with the rather weak Cabinet positions and the embarassing press conference, it's impossible to know how it will play out.

I would note both Cameron (very much so) and Clegg (a bit) have a history in public relations, and so they're going to tell a good story. Journalists are, of course, particularly susceptible to this sort of thing. So best to be a bit wary.



* For example, it's generally thought Cameron's team were only two weeks ago quite happy to brief the press as to Nick Clegg holding Nazi views, which hardly sounds like 'new politics'

Lib/lab coalition

Surely under this law a Lib/Lab coalition would have had enough seats?

1150: We understand that under the new agreement for fixed-term parliaments, the only way to remove the government between elections would be a vote of no confidence with the support of 55% of MPs. At present, any no confidence vote requires only 50%, plus one MP.

Update: It's a bit rich of Nick Clegg to say 'It will survive for five years because blah blah. Its chance of surviving five years is massively helped because they intend to legislate to increase their majority by 32 seats. Can you imagine the press reaction if Labour had done that?

Is Cameron unsackable?

Apparently (among others - I see inheritance tax cuts have gone, as has Trident, but we're getting a cap on immigration):

Plans for five-year, fixed-term parliaments, meaning the next election would not take place until May 2015

I think this is a good thing, but combined with Cameron's promise to not allow 'unelected' PM, and the media's apparent hatred of them, this seems to suggest that Cameron cannot be replaced until he wants to go.

Cameron and Cleggy

I think congratulations are in order. David Cameron is our first new minority PM since - well sometime before the War I guess - but collectively the new government has more votes behind it than any other since then as well, I would have thought. I think the Lib Dems have played a weak hand very well, and the head-banging tendency in the Conservative Party seemd to been stuffed well and truly. On that score it is slightly alarming that the Liberal Democrats agreed on William Hague as Foreign Secretary, a position almost guaranteed to weaken our overseas relationships except in Belize, however I doubt in such a government he will be given free reign. The other appointments seem much more reasonable.

I suppose the big test will be whether Cameron can remain as leader long enough. The Tories have made such a fuss about not having 'non-elected' PM and I think Cameron was proposing legislation to insist on this that I guess he is safe for a while.

Also, as others have said, what a great advertisement for PR. Despite what the news media says in a short time we've gone from a dodgy government to a potentially good one. And it's much more entertaining this way.

"coalition of losers"

This is the first paragraph of the Daily Telegraph's lead story. I know people keep saying I should stopped being amazed at what was once a newspaper, but still:

On a day of high political drama, Mr Brown seized on David Cameron’s failure to secure a pact with Nick Clegg by opening formal talks to agree a so-called “coalition of losers”.

Toby Young

A Lab-Lib coalition would be like a declaration of civil war

That's a threat, isn't it? I wonder what he has up his sleeve?

Update: Conservative MP and former Foreign Secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind. "It's exactly what Mugabe did you know, he lost the election and scrabbled to hold onto power.". My italics.

Tories propose elected PM of UK

Mr Hague urged the Lib Dems to accept the Tory deal, arguing that to join with Labour would mean "another unelected prime minister"

Blimey, that is one hell of a voting reform. But how would it work? What about when the elected PM came into conflict with Parliament?

Also we're 90 minutes into a Cabinet. Although I see no constitutional alternative to the government continuing, it's a bit reminiscent of Admiral Donitz's administration in Flensburg, isn't it?

Update: And of course perhaps more fundamentally David Cameron hasn't been elected either, even if you take majority of seats to mean electing an individual. So I don't really understand the point at all. I've heard someone (Boulton) say the country wouldn't stand a PM who hadn't taken place in the debates, which reinforces my opposition to them.

Adam Boulton

Adam Boulton does seem very keen on saying what should happen, rather than what is happening - the idea of a parliament is it's the bloc that has the most seats that is the most legitimate, not the party - but surely this rant is less to do with pro-Conservative bias (although I would imagine Campbell is right that Boulton would want a Tory government, simply because journalists like new names and new policies) than he's probably had very little sleep in the last 96 hours. This seems to me a great concern about all the political class - I imagine they're making (semi) important decisions off their heads on strong coffee and no sleep.

Update: Actually seeing this similar outburst I'm not feeling so generous.

Election 2010 v 1992

I was interested in how this Conservative victory compares to 1992. Of course this time around wasn't as good - then they got a majority of 21, this time they're short by a similar amount. Their vote share was 41.9% then, and just 36.1% now.

This means of the 515 seats I can match up (using Pippa Norris's election databases for 2005 and the Guardian datablog for 2010, the social data also comes from Pippa Norri's database), only in 48 has their vote share risen (and never by more than 10% - , while in 467 it has fallen, of which 117 it has fallen by more than 10%. Welwyn Hatfield has been their best performance, up 9.5%, and Birmingham, Hall Green, their worst, down 31% (however here, although the Tories clearly have been losing support, much of it is due to boundary changes).

What constituency characteristics are associated with worse Tory performances? Such analysis is made more difficult by not having up-to-date data or all constituencies, but one clearly is a higher non-white population=worse Tory performance.



Second in correlations given the characteristic I had was more people fitting area description "acorn12 (White collar workers, better off multi ethnic areas 2000) and almost as high "acorn8" (Better off executives, inner city areas 2000).

The ones associated in the opposite direction (more = Tories doing better 2010 relative to 1992) were % Christians, % in couples, % in "Acorn 11 in 2000" (New home owners, mature communities 2000) and % SEG6 (lower supervisory and technical occupations, 2001 census).

Here's all the Acorn profiles, sorted in order of the ones where more of this type is closely correlated with fall in Tory vote, down to those where more of this type saw more Tory votes (between 1992 and 2010).

-41% acorn12 White collar workers, better off multi ethnic areas
-32% acorn8 Better off executives, inner city areas
-30% acorn6 Affluent urbanites, town and city areas
-21% acorn7 Prosperous professionals, metropolitan areas
-21% acorn15 Council estate residents, high unemployment
-3% acorn16 Council estate residents, greatest hardship
-1% acorn3 Prosperous pensioners, retirement areas
2% acorn14 Council estate residents, better off homes
11% acorn13 Older people, less prosperous areas
11% acorn10 Skilled workers, home owning areas
14% acorn1 Wealthy achievers, suburban areas
16% acorn4 Affluent executives, family areas
18% acorn9 Comfortable middle agers, mature home owning areas
19% acorn2 Affluent greys, rural communities 2000
21% acorn5 Well-off workers, family areas 2000
32% acorn11 New home owners, mature communities 2000


One should be very careful with these results as just because there is a strong correlation doesn't mean a causation, but also it doesn't mean it was actually important in determining their vote as the factor might be unimportant itself. Also the 135 seats I could not match up due to boundary changes might see very different results. Furthermore the constituency data is now quite out of date - 10 years for the Acorn stuff.

Update: Perhaps crucially, I've not adjusted for boundary changes where the constituency hasn't been renamed. As these affected most of the constituencies, sometimes majorly, it could change this analysis quite drastically. I think we'll have a corrected version (whether it'll go back to 1992 I am not sure) from the usual sources sometime this week which should give us a more accurate analysis. In the meantime I would take this with a pinch of salt - some of these constituencies have changed almost beyond recognition

Just 16,000 votes for Tory majority

I remember this kind of analysis from 1992, and it's somewhat missing the point. I'm sure there are quite a few Con victorites with small majorities too, so we could do similar calculations in reverse.

We could also take off all the Tory votes in excess of what they needed to win a seat, which would probably reduce their vote to something like 27%, and then add in 16,000 and say 'Tories could have got a majority with 27%'. And so on - this is the thing about FPTP consituency system, the votes really don't have to have much in relation with the seats.

What WAS an African doing in Engand in 1190?

The Daily Mail's campaign against immigration knows no historical limits.

Coalition government

There's a lot of commentary to the effect that other countries manage coalition governments, so it can't be that hard. But doesn't our electoral system actually work against it even after the election? The major party in the coalition, in this case the Conservatives but it could be Labour, know that a small swing in the public vote towards them will give them a majority on their own. So it seems to me that they can never be that committed to making it work.

The Economist

I wonder what went wrong at The Economist this week? It made a big song dance about not publishing on Thursday so it could get the election results, and yet the issue that has just arrived doesn't have them in, with phrases like 'looked like heading for over 300 seats' ec.

Council elections

Labour seem to have done reasonably well here compared to 2005.

Election

The British public clearly weren't going to be browbeaten into following the media narrative when voting, so I have not idea why the media think they're going to follow them now.

The political betting markets. Oh dear oh dear. Is this enough to destroy the 'wisdom of crowds' on its own? I was watching Betfair and it basically ignored the Exit Poll, giving us a great experiment.

All 3 party leaders should resign as well

Brown - Labour's worst defeat since 1983/1987
Cameron - Disastrous collapse in vote since a year ago and failure to beat a person and party hs supporters believe to be weakest ever*
Clegg - Just a disaster really. 23%?

One can't help that in each case anyone could do better.

* Update - but you know he's mucked it up, completely. That's the story here. Could Davis or Hague do better?

The polls

It's worth noting that if the Libs do get 23% then all the pollsters should offer their resignation, surely? I realise that there are margins of error and so on, but that not large.

Update: This is rather intemperate! The polls weren't bad, but the problem was that the Lib Dem surge was the focus of the polls, and the bit that didn't happen. The polls did show a trend downwards for the Lib Dems, and some towards the end did show a much lower support (but then I think that company's final poll had them back up again). It will be fascinating to see what Anthony Well has to say about it.

Vernon Bognador

A great figure, but perhaps deaf? And certainly the guy with glasses, nick, is patronising.

VE day in Hertfordshire

Very good colour film of VE Day celebrations shown to some people who were in it and are still alive today, including a remarkably sprightly 80+ year old woman who doesn't seem to have aged. It's just a bit of a shame the BBC couldn't show it to them on a TV screen larger than about 14 inch.

1997

Does anyone remember one of the weird things about the post-1997 election world was what while Labour were getting on with quietly governing, the press coverage was dominated by the Tory leadership election? I guess it will be a bit different this time - the press is after all much more Tory than Labour. But it did seem a bit weird at the time, as if they couldn't let go of the world they had been familiar with for so long.

My election prediction!

I had a go on Ross's site but my inability to work out what a majority mean scuppered it. But here goes - I think the Tories will get a larger majority than is being predicted - about 30 - possibly 50 - and so seat share will be something like:

Tories: 340
Labour: 195
Libs: 85

ps Here's some others from Anthony Wells (I seem to be in the company of Angus Reid, which is alarming as everyone seems to dismiss them):

Anyway, I can’t delay it any longer: my guess is we are going to see the Conservatives between 300-310, Labour between 220-230, the Liberal Democrats between 80-90 (though I warn you, I may be a pollster, but my personal powers of election prediction are notoriously poor!)

For other pollster predictions, TNS have made a seat prediction of CON 292, LAB 204, LDEM 114; Peter Kellner’s personal prediction is CON 300-310, LAB 230-240, LDEM 75-85; Angus Reid have a prediction of CON 320-340, LAB 165-185, LDEM 105-120.

pps And here's Sporting Index's:

Conservative Seats 319.5
Labour Seats 216.5
Liberal Democrats Seats 80

Update: Well when the Tories get the last seat it will be 307, 258, 57. Basically everone over predicted the Libs and under predicted Labour. I was just about the worst.