WHO CUT YOUR HOLIDAY MOBILE PHONE CHARGES? EUROPE!

 

CAMERON PREPARES TO SHOW HIS HAND

There wasn’t a great deal of coverage in the papers about the European Parliament’s victory over mobile phone roaming charges. But then it was a good news story about a body they like to pour contempt on rather than treating it like the impressive democratic forum of 28 nations, which it is. Anyway you will soon find sending home your selfies when you are on holiday a lot cheaper because the Members of the European Parliament have used their collective power to stop the mobile phone companies ripping you off.

Enjoy the benefit while you can because its increasingly likely that in 2017 we’ll be out of the EU on our own in the world. As soon as David Cameron announced the referendum in 2013 I warned that it would coincide with the mid term of the next parliament when  governments are unpopular. Never mind the issue, people from hard working doctors to those who’ve lost their tax credits will want to take it out on the Prime Minister. Cameron and Osborne will be campaigning to stay in, so many people will want to give them a bloody nose and will vote to come out.

We could see this begin to play out in the Oldham West and Royton by election on December 3rd. UKIP have chosen John Bickley. He’s a candidate for all seats having already fought Wythenshawe and Sale East and Heywood and Middleton. I profoundly disagree with his politics but he is an able candidate and will give Labour a run for their money.

Europe is poorly reported by our media generally. Not only did the European Parliament’s victory over roaming charges get little publicity, there was virtually no coverage of the Treasury Select committee’s inquiry into the actual consequences of our withdrawing from the European Union. I sat through two hours where witnesses who knew what they were talking about outlined the complexity, cost and uncertainty of what detaching ourselves from our friends and neighbours would mean.

Next week the Prime Minister is due to clarify what he actually wants from the EU in order to campaign to stay in. He will get an opt out from ever closer union and possibly a formal recognition that the £ will always exist alongside the Euro. He may get the ability for the Westminster parliament to “red card” some EU measures. But to convince Eurosecptics he wants a four year ban on EU migrants gaining access to in work benefits. Immigration is the big issue Cameron wants to deliver on and what he wants is illegal under European law because it discriminates against people because of their nationality.

That’s why I fear people will vote “no”. Cameron will be ridiculed for not stopping what some people call “benefit tourism” . Ironically the “living wage” project of the government will make it more attractive for foreign workers to come here to cut our lettuces, clean our streets and support the National Health Service.

 

LATE SURGE FOR CAMERON?

 

THE CAMPAIGN.

David Cameron doesn’t really deserve to “win” next Thursday’s General Election, but the Conservatives will probably be the largest party and have first dibs at forming a government.

The Tory campaign has lurched from defending their economic record, to attacking Ed Miliband as a backstabber and latterly depicting Nicola Sturgeon as a female version of William Wallace set to pillage England. There have been a series of retail promises on things like the right to buy and inheritance tax. Some will impress voters but most will ask how the sums will add up. So a bit of a vision less mess really. However it is usually the economy that clinches it, and despite some dodgy figures this week, most people will probably want to give the Conservatives another term to sort things out. However this may be a very late decision by people, on polling day itself, not detected by the opinion polls. As they lift the stubby pencil, is it the devil we know or Miliband?

Ed Miliband has had a good campaign. No gaffs and an increasingly relaxed style combined with the theme of fairness which has been delivered well. However he is coming from a long way back in terms of public approval, people remember the Brown years and he is facing potential wipe out in Scotland. With those handicaps his route to Downing Street looks tortuous indeed. We have to go back to 1923 to find a party that didn’t have most MPs, forming a government. Miliband wouldn’t want to do a deal with the SNP that had just destroyed his party in Scotland and a pact with “the others” looks as incredible in 2015 as it did in 2010.

THE NORTHERN BATTLEGROUND.

Here are the seats to look out for in Downtown land from Leeds to Liverpool in order of their marginality.

Bolton West Lab maj 92: Should have been won by the Conservatives last time. Cameron tells us he only needs 23 seats for a majority. This is one of them.

Lancaster and Fleetwood Con maj 333: Labour’s No 1 target.

Wirral South Lab maj: The Tories held this seat up till 97 and Cameron needs this as part of his 23 for victory.

Morecambe and Lunesdale Con maj 866: Another must win Lancashire seat for Labour.

Weaver Vale Con maj 991: A Cheshire Labour target near George Osborne’s Tatton constituency.

Warrington South Con maj 1553: An intense campaign being waged here as Labour’s task gets harder.

Pudsey Con maj 1659: Labour should take this sort of seat on the outskirts of Leeds in a good year.

Burnley Lib Dem maj 1818: Very tough for the Lib Dems against Labour.

Manchester Withington Lib Dem maj 1894: The Lib Dems are pleading with voters not to make the city a one party Labour state at parliamentary and council level. They may be disappointed.

There are other Labour targets where the Tories have majorities over two thousand. They are Blackpool North, Bury North, Wirral West, Chester, Keithley, Pendle and Rossendale.

The Lib Dems are in a fierce battle with the Tories in Hazel grove and Cheadle and UKIP hope to land a sole North West victory in Heywood and Middleton.

CONSTITUENCY FOCUS: BOLTON WEST.

Julie Hilling’s victory here for Labour in 2010 did great damage to David Cameron’s stature in the eyes of many of his backbenchers. He was not a winner as John Major and Margaret Thatcher had been. The failure to secure an overall majority was because of Cameron’s inability to win seats like this.

Susan Williams, the former leader of Trafford Council, was a great candidate. It will be a tough task for the Conservative standard bearer this time, Chris Green, even though he only has to overturn a majority of 92 in this, the most middle class of the three Bolton seats.

 

CAMERON LAME DUCK ?

 

TWO TERM DAVE.

It’s been another week where the political coinage has been debased. A ludicrous Dutch auction of promises over VAT and National Insurance was followed by a squalid last minute manoeuvre to try and undermine Speaker Bercow. 

The there was David Cameron’s kitchen moment. Journalists call for honest answers from our politicians and when we get a straight answer, we hang them out to dry.

That could be said about the furore that surrounds David Cameron’s decision to only serve 5 more years if the voters let him. On the other hand it is surely not reasonable to expect journalists to analyse the consequences of such glimpses of honesty and there are plenty of them.

I wonder what Lynton Crosby, the strategist behind the Tory election campaign made of Cameron’s kitchen musings? He has ordered every Tory to stick to one message, the long term economic plan. Now the leader of the campaign has distracted attention from that. It was completely unnecessary because speculation about how long Cameron would serve if he was re-elected was well down the agenda. There’s plenty else for journalists to concentrate on like speculation about who forms the next government, candidates resigning and even the TV debates.

It clearly wasn’t thought through because what does Cameron mean when he says he will serve a full five years? Does he mean to fight the 2020 election as Prime Minister or have a leadership contest just before. The latter seems extremely unlikely as parties like to settle such issues well in advance. You surely couldn’t have a leader elect in place going into a General Election campaign.

If that is the case then one starts to look at what opportune moment the Prime Minister might decide to go. If he gets his way and holds the EU Referendum in 2017, then an obvious time to go is immediately after that. He will either have secured our membership or if we have voted to come out, he will have been repudiated on the biggest issue ever to have come before the British people. Either result would offer him the opportunity to go.

If he stayed on through 2018 and 2019 the Tory Party would be in the position of Labour after the 2005 General Election. Tony Blair had promised not to serve three full terms and this prompted debilitating speculation from Gordon brown’s supporters on when he would go. Incidentally Blair had made the promise to go under pressure from Brown. No such pressure has been forthcoming from potential Tory successors of David Cameron.

It was also unwise for the Prime Minister to identify George Osborne, Theresa May and Boris Johnson as potential leaders. Five years is a long time in politics and people like Philip Hammond, Sajid Javed and Liz Truss might be feeling a bit miffed with their leader.

Will it move the polls against Cameron? Probably not although some have pointed out there is a bit of Etonian arrogance at play here. After all the Tories haven’t won the 2015 election yet and the voters may determine that the Prime Minister gets a bare five years not ten.

CONSTITUENCY FOCUS: WIRRAL SOUTH.

It is very unlikely the Conservatives are going to win an overall majority on May 7th. But if they are they need to take seats like Wirral South.

Labour’s Ben Chapman took this seat from the Tories in a February 1997 by election that was a harbinger of Tony Blair’s General Election landslide months later. Alison McGovern narrowly held on last time with a majority of just 531.

The Tory candidate is John Bell who’s father worked at Cammell Lairds. He recently retired from Deeside College training staff at Airbus.

It could be close again with Tory support around Heswall and Labour’s strength in Bebbington and Bromborough.

UKIP support could be important here. They got 18% of the vote in last year’s local council elections.

 

VOTERS CHEATED BY TV DEBATE SHAMBLES

 

CAMERON SPOILER

It is a moving picture as I write, but David Cameron’s insistence that he will only do one TV debate with all the parties is the latest episode in a sorry saga that reflects badly on the Prime Minister

The TV companies had set the dates for three debates, two with seven parties and a head to head between Cameron and Miliband, before the Prime Minister’s very late move on Wednesday night. So will the TV companies back down or stick to their format and dare to empty chair him?

The endless wrangles have been yet another blow to the prestige of politicians. After 2010, the public now expect their potential rulers to subject themselves to this sort of scrutiny. This principle should have underpinned the discussions this time acknowledging that it was going to be more complicated than five years ago. This is because we have a coalition, and potentially other players because of the fracturing of politics away from the traditional parties.

Instead of trying to find a way through the difficulties, the TV companies have had to engage in a game of cat and mouse with David Cameron. The Tories have the age old fear of all incumbents that they can only lose by taking part. They fear putting themselves on the same level as their opponents. They also fear a “Natalie Bennett” episode.

This is nothing new. In my early years as a broadcaster my attempts to get constituency debates between candidates were often thwarted by what I came to call the “coward’s clause”. Election law required all candidates to agree to take part. It gave incumbent MPs a veto and both Labour and Tory MPs played that card. Later on the law was changed to say that all must be invited to take part but none could veto. Hence the opportunity for an empty chair arises in relation to the 2015 Election Debates.

It will be very interesting as one can’t believe that David Cameron would risk an empty chair but neither can one imagine Sky and Channel 4 showing Ed Miliband taking part alone on April 30.

Leaving the question of Tory participation aside, there are other problems with the format of the debates as proposed by the TV companies until Wednesday night. . We are not going to have a threesome of Cameron, Clegg and Miliband. I think the coalition partners and their potential replacement as the head of the government should have debated together. Cameron and Clegg would both have had to defend their record in government and criticise each other with Miliband throwing in his two-penneth. The coalition’s record would have been debated.

Given the Lib Dems current weak showing, I agree with the Cameron Miliband head to head bringing us a debate between the only two people who credibly can be Prime Minister. Cameron has now specifically rejected this.

But the third debate should have only involved parties fielding candidates throughout the United Kingdom. The arrangements, if they stand, for not one, but two debates, on April 2 on ITV and the BBC on April 16 are a mess. 7 parties will take part including the SNP and Plaid. The argument for the latter two is presumably on the basis that they could be players in deciding the policies of the UK government in coalition negotiations. Well what about the Democratic Unionists? They may well be players in the post election stramash. This is a fair point made by Cameron on Wednesday night. It seems the Prime Minister wants one debate with eight candidates.

Leaving aside the politics of the “hydra” debates, what will voters get out of seven or eight people all trying to have their say. There is a great danger it will either be a messy shouting match or so dull and formulaic that people will switch off.

CONSTITUENCY FOCUS: HEYWOOD AND MIDDLETON.

UKIP are fading a little in the polls and the North West is not the most promising region of the country for them. Some have their eyes on Bootle where Deputy UKIP leader Paul Nuttall faces a massive Labour majority. More likely is Heywood and Middleton where last autumn’s by election left Labour’s Liz McInness just 617 ahead of UKIP.

She should be saved by the bigger turnout of Labour voters in a General Election but a word of caution. UKIP have a good candidate in John Bickley and working class voters, disillusioned by Labour, can see from the by election evidence that three hundred odd votes could have seen Labour ousted.

Follow me at www.jimhancock.co.uk.