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Times wins two year battle to force the Treasury to hand over papers

With Labour’s leadership changes only weeks away the main lead in the Times this morning has the potential to cause bother for Brown as his team try to orchestrate a succession without a real challenge.

For the “quality” paper that has become NuLab’s most loyal supporter has just won a Freedom of Information act fight to get details of the advice ahead of Gordon’s famous “pensions raid” only weeks after moving in to Number 11 in 1997.

This was a hugely controversial measure at the time and has been blamed for much of the major deterioration in pension provision over the past decade - an issue that the opposition parties could use to hurt Labour.

According to the paper “Experts claim that the move has deprived the country’s savers of at least £100 billion over the past decade, during which Britain’s private and occupational pension system has struggled to stay afloat. The changes affected the 11 million people in Britain with company pensions and the 7 million with personal pensions.”

What the Times has acquired under the act is the advice that Brown was given before moving forward. This shows that he went ahead in spite of being warned of some of the consequences. It also reinforces the “Brown acting like Stalin” comments from his former top civil servant, Lord Turnbull.

The fact that the Treasury fiercely resisted handing over material and had to be forced to do so does not help the government’s position.

This could be dangerous because the one area of many people’s finances where they are worse off then a decade ago is in relation to their pensions.

One defined benefit scheme after another has been closed or the benefits diluted and, rightly or wrongly, much of the blame is heaped on what Gordon did in the weeks after coming into office.

The standard Labour defence on this has been to attack the Tories for the pension misselling scandals that occurred when they were in power. The trouble is that that is now a long time ago. Whatever this story will run.

Gordon’s “next Labour leader” betting price has eased a touch to 0.25/1.

Mike Smithson

How Will the Liberal Democrats Do on May 3rd?

I’m reluctant to comment on this subject, as there are a couple of posters to this site who consider that I display my inherent Conservative bias by refusing to predict anything other than stunning success for the Liberal Democrats in local elections. Nevertheless, it is only right that I do so, given that I have posted about Labour and the Conservatives in the past two weeks.

The Liberal Democrats’ performance in opinion polls is, without doubt, disappointing from their point of view. Only one of this month’s tranche of opinion polls, Communicate Research, has placed them on as much as 20% of the vote. Personally, I had expected Ming Campbell to be much better regarded among the public than appears to be the case. Perhaps he is destined to be one of those effective second-in-commands, who prove unsuccessful when they reach the top position.

However, as Mark Senior and others have pointed out, the Liberal Democrats’ record in local by-elections has been much better. Recent weeks have seen the Liberal Democrats pull off some remarkable results in Ashfield, Burnley, and Tewkesbury, and apparently holding their own in a number of other seats.

There are clearly a lot of people who tell pollsters they will vote Labour or Conservative nationally, but who vote Liberal Democrat locally.

When canvassing in Bushey, before the last election, it was clear that many people voted Liberal Democrat for the County Council, and Conservative at Parliamentary level. So I have no doubt at all that the Liberal Democrats’ national equivalent vote share on May 3rd will be far higher than the 18% or so that pollsters currently give the party.

I would expect it to be at least 25%, similar to that of last year, and possibly higher still, if Labour perform really badly. The problem for the Liberal Democrats is that the Conservatives will probably win something close to 40% of the vote on May 3rd, and a lot of rural Liberal Democrat seats are vulnerable to a Conservative advance.

The Liberal Democrats do have a good chance of gaining from Labour though, and to a large extent, I would expect their gains and losses to cancel each other out. However, it does mean that the Liberal Democrats are unlikely to be making the headlines on the morning of May 4th.

Sadly too, for the Liberal Democrats, good local electoral performances often fail to translate into good performances at Parliamentary level.

There were four local by-elections last night.

Basingstoke and Deane BC- Rooksdown: Conservative, 156, Lib Dem 122, Labour 18. Conservative hold.
Buckinghamshire CC - Stoke Poges and Farnham Common: Conservative 875, Independent 283, Lib Dem 280, Labour 89. Conservative hold.
Powys CBC - St David Within: Independent 215, Independent 156, Lib Dem 143, Conservative 47. Independent hold.
Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC - Treorchy: Labour 1139, Plaid Cymru 849, Conservative 161. Labour hold. This is in fact a very good result for Labour, as Plaid hold the other two seats in the ward. One would have expected Labour to suffer from the news that Burberry are closing their factory here, but in fact they achieved a swing of 9% in their favour.

Sean Fear is a London Tory activist

How the betting records show that Hitchens was wrong

What happened at the Tory conference at Blackpool in October 2005 has become one of those pivotal moments in UK politics and, as we saw, in the programme on Cameron on Channel 4 by Peter Hitchens, a number of myths have developed which don’t fit with the facts.

For the above chart shows the implied probabilities based on bets betting odds of the four leading candidates from the start of the party conference on October 3rd 2005 and for the following two weeks. The chronology is critical.

June - September 2005: David Davis hardens his position as firm favourite but for almost all of the period David Cameron is the second favourite. The big question is how the contest will take place - will it be MPs or the membership which have the final decision? Michael Howard pressed for the power to be returned to the parliamentary party which arguably would have benefited Davis most. Howard lost and the system stayed the same.

Monday October 3rd: An ICM online focus group in the Guardian shows the promise of Cameron and this is reinforced on Newsnight with the famous Frank Luntz televised focus group. Davis remains a firm odds-on favourite. Cameron’s price tightens a bit but he is still miles behind Davis.

Tuesday October 4th: The day of the famous Cameron speech which sees the markets move to the young old Etonian but Davis remains an odds-on favourite.

Wednesday October 5th: The David Davis speech which bombs. When he started speaking he was still odds on - by the end you could have got better than evens. This was not the media reaction but that of punters risking their money.

Thursday October 6th: Davis greeted by poor press coverage of his speech and comparisons with Cameron - but he finishes the day still in the favourite slot but only by a small margin.

Friday October 7th: The big news is a YouGov poll of Tory members which shows an overwhelming switch to Cameron who is now attracting getting on for two thirds of the potential vote in a membership ballot. Cameron becomes favourite but he could still be had at better than evens. The critical question is whether he would make the final two in the MPs ballot to decide which contenders be put to the mass vote.

So it wasn’t a media conspiracy or Frank Luntz which drove the markets but the Davis speech and the YouGov poll. The betting prices are important because they show graphically the collective perceptions of people prepared to back up their judgements with hard cash.

Mike Smithson

I’ve just recorded a 30 minute programme on my book, The Political Punter, which will be shown tonight at 7.30 pm on the 18 Doughty Street channel.

I had a good discussion with fellow blogger, Iain Dale, who presents the programme.

The book itself will be launched at the PB party on April 17th. It can be pre-ordered from here.

UPDATE - The programme can be view by clicking this link.

Mike Smithson