Peter Kellner: The Wages of Spin

“Things can only get better”, sang enthusiastic Labour activists on the night of the party’s landslide victory back in 1997.

According to ministers and, indeed, official statistics, things mostly have got better. But that’s not the verdict of the jury that counts: the voters. They have become so fed up with Labour’s spin machine that they disbelieve virtually everything the Government says – even when it’s true.

YouGov’s large-scale poll for the Sun makes this devastatingly clear. Even after last year’s recession, average living standards are one-fifth higher than when Labour came to power – but far more people say they are worse off (44 per cent) than better off (28 per cent) than they were in 1997.

Despite smaller class sizes, better exam results and thousands of new school buildings, more people think state schools are now worse (34 per cent) rather than better (26 per cent).

Crime rates have fallen steadily over the past 12 years, yet three times as many voters think crime has gone up (49 per cent) than down (15 per cent).

In just one area does Labour win more bouquets than brickbats. Thirty-four per cent think the NHS has improved, while 31 per cent think it has got worse.  But, given the vast amounts of money spent on health, and the virtual end of long waiting lists, ministers must have hoped for far more gratitude from the electorate.

Given these figures, ministers  might be shocked, but should not be surprised, to learn that a mere 17 per cent of the electorate think Labour’s rule overall has been “good” or “excellent”, while 44 per cent say it has been “poor” or “terrible”. (Thirty-five per cent strike a middle course, saying “fair”, with Labour having done a mixture of good and bad things.)

In fact, the only real surprise is why the Tories are not heading for a landslide victory. This is because millions of swing voters have yet to decide where to place their affections. They have fallen out of love with Labour in a big way – but most have not yet fallen in love with the Conservatives.

66% say whoever is Labour leader will make no difference to their vote

The first YouGov voting intention poll of the year, with a bumper sample of over 4000, shows voting intention standing at CON 40%, LAB 31%, LDEM 17%. On a uniform swing this would be a very close call between a hung Parliament and a wafer thin Conservative majority.

The poll was conducted on Tuesday and Wednesday, so immediately before Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon sparked a fresh round of leadership speculation. We also asked where people would be more likely to vote Labour if Gordon Brown remained their leader or if he was replaced. 16% of current Conservative voters and 27% of current Liberal Democrats said they would be more likely to switch to Labour if Gordon Brown was replaced (though of course, more likely is a long way short of saying they would definitely switch).

8% of people said David Miliband was the alternative leader most likely to make them vote Labour, followed by 5% for Jack Straw and 4% for Alan Johnson. 66% said whoever was Labour leader would make no difference to their vote.

John Humphrys – 2010: Year of Decision

This post is taken from my colleague John Humphrys’ YouGov blog.

It’s the time of year when pundits like to make predictions about what’s going to happen in the year ahead. Few of them get it right and economists, more than any, tend to get it wrong. No one really knows what state the British economy will be in a year from now. But of one thing we can be certain: 2010 is a year in which there will be a general election, whose result is likely to affect what happens in the economy. What electoral outcome do we want?

That question is not simply about which party we would prefer to form the next government, although that is what the parties themselves will be banging on about between now and polling day, expected in May though possibly coming as early as late March. It’s also about whether or not we want to give one party exclusive control of our government or whether we’d actually prefer parties to share power. The polls suggest we might be heading for the first hung parliament since February 1974.

Some commentators think a hung parliament is the best thing Gordon Brown can hope for. Labour, they argue, is too far behind in the polls realistically to expect to be able to form a majority government, especially as the party will have been in power for thirteen years and the ‘time-for-a change’ argument will have more traction with voters.

Nonetheless, the Prime Minister is clearly campaigning to secure a fourth outright victory for Labour. In his New Year message he said that only his party could promise a ‘decade of shared prosperity’ and the Tories risked destroying a recovery that is still fragile.

Oddly enough, David Cameron, the Tory leader, did seem to show more interest in the consequences of a hung parliament in his message. Indeed, that message was widely interpreted as an attempt to cosy up to the Liberal Democrats, with whom, he said, the Tories now had few differences. What is perhaps strange about this is that the polls still suggest that the Conservatives have a good chance of winning a majority on their own. It may be that Mr Cameron was just flying a kite and that from now on we shall hear from him the more traditional line of a party leader: that his party alone should be trusted with running the country.

As for the Liberal Democrats themselves, Nick Clegg, the party leader, accused both the other parties of merely “parroting the language of change” and made clear that he was going to fight the election on his party’s convictions rather than with any thought of which other party he’d prefer to end up in bed with.

But if a hung parliament is looking more likely than it has for years, would it be a good idea? Some people argue that it would be about as bad an outcome as can be imagined. Indeed Ken Clarke, the Tories’ shadow business secretary and who has been an MP since 1970, went so far as to say that an election result that produced a majority Labour government would be better than one that gave no single party outright power. His leader quickly disagreed with him but it may be that Mr Clarke’s memory of the February 1974 parliament (when Mr Cameron was eight years old) led him to this view.

The reason many people are so alarmed by the prospect of no party ending up with a workable majority is that they believe that, without one, the ensuing government will fail to govern. That is particularly dangerous, they say, because of our economic predicament. Although there are disagreements between the parties about when the government’s huge financial deficit should be cut down to size, everyone agrees that it will need to be done sometime. But that’s bound to involve substantial cuts in government spending. And they are very difficult to bring about, as this week’s publication of hitherto secret government documents about Mrs Thatcher’s battles on the subject back in 1979 make clear.

The problem with hung parliaments in Britain is that even if two parties make a deal to sustain a government in power, either through coalition or through less formal agreements, there is no guarantee that such a deal will last. That’s because Britain’s constitution does not impose fixed-term parliaments. It’s always up to a prime minister to call an election pretty much when he or she wants. That means that during hung parliaments all parties are likely to act more with their own impending electoral interests in mind rather than according to the national interest. That’s what happened after February 1974 when Harold Wilson ran things in a way he hoped would maximise his party’s chances in the election he subsequently called in October.

In our current predicament the danger is that the financial markets would respond to an election result that produced a minority government that they expected to carry on electioneering rather than governing by selling government bonds and taking flight from sterling.

On the other hand, advocates of coalition governments point out that in other countries they have produced stable government and the basis for economic prosperity. Lord McNally, the leader of the LibDems in the Lords, cites Germany as an example. But Germany has fixed-term parliaments, so perhaps coalitions would work here only if the parties involved found some copper-bottomed way to guarantee that their government would stay in power for several years, possibly by legislating for fixed-term parliaments.

Between now and the election it’s likely that this sort of talk will be heard only from commentators. The politicians themselves will be intent on harvesting as many votes as possible for their own parties and no doubt claiming that they alone have the policies the country needs.

What’s your view? Have you already made up your mind how you’ll vote in the 2010 election or are you still open to persuasion? What attracts you and what repels you in the cases put by the three main parties? Do you think Gordon Brown is right to say that Labour alone can promise a decade of shared prosperity? Is David Cameron correct when he says that there is no longer much separating the Tories from the Liberal Democrats? Is Nick Clegg justified in arguing that his party alone offers change? In principle, and aside from the issue of which parties might be involved, do you think a hung parliament would be a good thing or do you share Ken Clarke’s view that even a majority government formed by the party you don’t support would be better than a hung parliament? Do you think we should have fixed-term parliaments or not? And what do you think the outcome of the 2010 election will be?

Happy New Year!

PBR doesn’t go down well

Our latest poll for the Sunday Times showed a lukewarm reception for the Pre-Budget Report. Only the new tax on bankers’ bonuses was met with widescale support (79% of respondents supported it), the public were evenly split on measures like freezing public sector wages and inheritance tax allowances, with a majority opposing the increases in National Insurance and VAT. Overall 53% of people thought the Pre-Budget Report had hurt them or their family, including 32% who thought it had done so unfairly.

However, despite this our voting intention figures showed Labour gaining 4 points, cutting the Conservative lead to 9 points. The full figures were Conservative 40%, Labour 31%, Liberal Democrats 16%. So, while the PBR doesn’t appear to have gone down well, Labour’s support hasn’t suffered – or at least, it hasn’t in our polling. A survey conducted by another polling company at the same time showed Labour’s support dropping and the Conservatives lead again at 17 points.

79% Back Taxing Bankers’ Bonuses

A YouGov poll for The Sunday Times found that 79% supported the windfall tax on bankers’ bonuses, with 11% against. The Chancellor announced the measure as part of his Pre-Budget Report (PBR) last Wednesday.

Bob Diamond, the president of  Barclays, said banks had done a “pretty poor job” of handling the bonus process, adding that his company would be deferring up to 60% of payouts — more than double the usual level.

It comes after Britain announced on Wednesday it was slapping a one-off 50-percent tax rate on bonuses above £25,000  amid public fury at 70 percent government-owned Royal Bank of Scotland awarding some £1.5 bn in bonuses for senior staff.

However, analysis of the tax suggests it might actually lose money for the exchequer. In the absence of the tax, say economists, bonuses would have been significantly larger and the bankers receiving them would have paid 40% tax. Now, with banks working to reduce or defer bonus payments, the income tax take will suffer, perhaps to the tune of £300m.

There have been rumours that some banks are considering paying their best-performing employees in benefits rather than cash this year; for example, paying their children’s school fees or their staff’s salaries.

Queen’s Speech : The Election Campaign Begins

This post first appeared on John Humphrys’ YouGov blog.

The Queen’s Speech is always a rather rum affair. The full panoply of what many regard as a Ruritanian-style monarchy is put on show as backdrop to what is necessarily the dullest speech anyone could make. Although it is written by highly political prime ministers, it is read by a monarch who has to appear above it all. The tension comes out in the turgid prose.

Queen’s speeches delivered at the beginning of a parliament at least have the merit of telling us what a government that’s just won an election intends to do with its power. But a Queen’s speech in the dying months of a parliament seems especially forlorn as everyone’s attention is on something else: the coming election and who is going to win it.

So this week’s speech was never going to set the world alight. Indeed Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, went so far as to say it should have been abandoned altogether. With only around seventy days left to enact any proposed new laws, he said, there was no point in announcing bills that would never become law. Instead the dying parliament should concentrate on the one issue it could sort out before it was dissolved next spring – the issue of MPs’ and peers’ expenses and the terms of their employment.

The fact that the Queen’s Speech had nothing to say about this matter became itself the cause of controversy. David Cameron, the Tory leader, said it was ‘big omission’. And Sir Christopher Kelly, who chaired the inquiry into MPs’ allowances, said he was ‘disappointed’.The government defended itself by saying that it had already enacted all the legislation that was needed by setting up the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority which will take control of many of the issues involved out of the hands of MPs themselves. But Sir Christopher believes the IPSA does not yet have sufficient powers to do its job, especially in relation to MPs’ pay and pensions and to its ability to investigate and enforce.

Harriet Harman, the leader of the House of Commons, subsequently said that ‘the things he wants done will be done’, so perhaps further legislation on the issue will be forthcoming even though it was not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. The suspicion remains, however, that the government faces opposition to some of Kelly’s proposals among its own backbenchers (as well as those of other parties). So it is likely that this will continue to be an issue on which the party leaders will try and score points off each other. The election campaign has certainly begun.

But aside from the expenses issue, the main charge against Gordon Brown for the Queen’s speech he wrote was that it was all about politics and little about government. In particular he was accused of using the speech to draw dividing lines between Labour and Tories in the hope that the Conservatives would fall into the trap of opposing policies that are likely to be popular.

The proposal to offer free care at home for around 400,000 elderly people was cited as an example. It is unlikely to become law, they say, but allows the Prime Minister to blame the Tories for the failure if they oppose it.

Government supporters, however, say that the opposition parties are being just as political by accusing the government of playing politics by proposing bills that are unlikely to become law. After all, they argue, it is not the government’s fault that there are only six months of this parliament left to run. It is perfectly reasonable, they claim, for a government to set out what it wants to do even if it knows that an election will intervene before it can do it: if the government wins, it can fulfil its plans in the next parliament.

But beyond all this political skirmishing there are perhaps some more substantial points to be raised about this week’s Queen’s Speech. The first is about the very function of legislation. Critics have drawn attention to proposed laws that enshrine in law an goal or confer a right with no apparent accompanying means of enforcing them.

Several examples have been cited. A new bill concerning fiscal responsibility attempts to provide ‘a firm and binding statutory basis’ to halve the government’s budget deficit in four years. The criticism is that just passing a law doesn’t make things happen. The Financial Times said: ‘This is like someone who thinks that registering for the gym is the same as actually taking exercise’.

The same charge is made against the proposed new law to eradicate child poverty by 2020. And similarly the new law to give parents the entitlement to high quality education for their children lacks, it’s argued, any obvious mechanism to bring it about.

Opposition critics say the government has had twelve years to do what’s necessary actually to achieve such desirable goals but has failed and now is supposing they can be reached just by passing a law. But the laws will be unenforceable, they claim. Only by taking schools to court would parents be able to realise their new entitlement; and as for the laws on child poverty and the deficit, if governments themselves fail to fulfil them there will be no sanction. All that will happen is that law itself will fall into disrepute.

There is also a wider issue about the importance of law. Much of what government necessarily does has nothing to do with making new laws. Deciding what wars to fight or what levels of taxing and spending the government should engage in are executive issues that often don’t require legislation. Yet governments of all parties, it’s argued, have an itch to pass new laws in order to be seen to be ‘doing something’. As a result, there is a huge increase in the number of laws and the reach of the state but little accompanying increase in the wellbeing of the country.

Some wags have suggested that only one new law is really needed: a law that forces governments to repeal an old law every time they want to introduce a new one. Perhaps the parties will be arguing about that at the next election. But I wouldn’t bank on it.

What’s your view? Do you think this week’s Queen’s Speech was worthwhile or not? Do you agree or not with Nick Clegg that it should have been abandoned in favour of parliament focussing solely on the issue of cleaning itself up? Do you think the absence of any new legislation on this was a ‘big omission’, or do you think the government has already done enough? Do you accept or not Harriet Harman’s assurance that the additional measures Sir Christopher Kelly may want will be provided, or do you think MPs are foot-dragging on reforming themselves? What do you make of the charge that the contents of the Queen’s Speech showed that Gordon Brown was more keen on playing politics than providing good government? Do you think legislation that attempts to enshrine goals and rights in law, such as the proposed bills on cutting the deficit, ending child poverty and providing the right to high quality education, are worthwhile or not? And what do you make of the claim that we have far too much law?

Let us know your views.

Conservatives still 14 points ahead

YouGov’s latest polling for the Sunday Times shows the Conservatives retaining a 14 point lead over Labour. Voting intentions stand at Conservative 41%, Labour 27% and Liberal Democrats on 18%. If this was repeated at a general election it would produce a substantial Conservative majority.

After staging a recovery over the summer economic indicators have fallen slightly this month. 79% of people think the economy is in a bad state, including 33% who think the situation is “very bad”. Last month the figures were 77% and 30%. 39% of people fear that they or a close relative will lose their job during the current crisis.