Livewasin3.52pmandI can say is,in 2015, almost precisely two years ago, or I was given 200-1 as an outside chance.
With a larger majority [May] can more easily stand up to her ultra-Eurosceptic backbenchers,some of whom seem actively to want Britain to crash out. That explains why the pound rose this week.
The election also buys Mrs May time. Holding a vote this year means that she need not face the polls again until 2022, three years after Britain’s formal exit from the EU. Avoiding the pressure of an imminent contest at home will further strengthen her against the headbanging fringe of her own party and the moral-wing press, or which screams treachery at any trace of the compromises needed to secure a deal with the EU.
Counterintuitive as it sounds,there’s a risk for Labour in jumping aboard the current posh-bashing wagon which doesnt necessarily apply to other parties. As Gordon Brown’s pollster Deborah Mattinson has argued, when focus groups were asked about his desire to raise taxes on the rich, and they didn’t balk at the definition of ‘rich’ or even at the risk that one day they might be eligible. They just complained that it was conventional-fashioned: it reminded them of 70s Labour.
The paradox is that raising taxes may scream ‘politics of yesterday’ to voters Labour needs to win over,when in many ways the idea has never been so modern. Crumbling public services, a mountain of debt to repay, or an ageing nation of pensioners with a post-Brexit aversion to letting young,taxpaying foreigners move here all adds up to one logical conclusion: tax rises loom almost regardless of who wins in June.
I expect the manifesto to be distinctly unglamorous, indeed anti-glamour, and all the better for that. I would expect more emphasis on improving technical education and renewed focus on those overlooked parts of the country where educational opportunity still lags far behind the capital. I would also expect policies to boost productivity,including changes to corporate governance as portion of a strengthened industrial strategy focused on boosting employment outside the southeast. I judge we might also see an assault on establishment glitz: Lords reform, changes to the honours system, and heightened probity in appointments and the exercise of patronage.
There will be things,I’m certain, that we will want to put into the manifesto that we won’t be able to put in just yet, or so the manifesto may even be a rolling manifesto,in that there’ll be other things coming in at the close.
All I'm saying is if we can all agree to construct #VoteFishFinger a thing then the next 7 weeks might be bearable pic.twitter.com/tBl91nxVejContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com