Tories Poll rating plummets - 13 points behind Labour

[Gromit]

But good news for UKiP.

http://www.dailymail....e-Plebgate-storm.html

Does this make a Con/UKiP Alliance at the next election inevitable?

[sandyRoe]

Don't UKIP want a cast-iron guarantee of a referendum on membership of the EU?

[BayBoy1]

they have got to win it first.

[Duncer]

"Don't UKIP want a cast-iron guarantee of a referendum on membership of the EU?"

Weren't we promised one? (or two?)

I suspect Cameron's posturing over Europe is to subvert defections to UKIP, although I doubt he wil commit to a referendum.

[modeller]

No ! The UKIP vote is a protest vote in safe Tory seats. Tory voters may abstain instead but they are not going to vote for Labour and their Union friends who were willing to ruin the Olympics with their demands for extra money just for doing their job. At the TUC rally the Communist and the Socialist Worker Party waving their red flags were well in evidence., and there was Red Ed giving his support. True he got a few boos but he didn't
comment on them .
The Tories have a near impossible job to sort out the inherited mess and in addition their soft approach to the things important to most people e.g immigration , crime, and the EU have failed but what would be the point of voting Labour who made most of these problems worse during their 13 years rule.

[Coldicote]

Whatever government is in power there will be opposition - that's the opposition's job for what it's worth! No government can be right all the time. I agree with Modeller's comments about the inherited mess and dread the prospect of another Labour government.

[Quizmonster]

"Labour and their Union friends who were willing to ruin the Olympics," eh? Have you forgotten that - about a fortnight before the Games were due to start and years after everyone knew that - the Tories and their LibDem 'friends' suddenly discovered that they were thousands of personnel short for security purposes? So, but for our ever-ready military services they were pretty close to "ruining the Olympics" without any helpfrom Labour!

"The Tories have a near impossible job to sort out the inherited mess," eh? That'd be the mess created by the casino bankers - the Tories' paymasters - and Labour's need to prop them up with taxpayers' billions, I suppose ?

[jake-the-peg]

I do love the continuing claim that Labour ruined the economy

So clever of them to have done the same in the US, France, Spain, Italy Irelang and Greece all at the same don't you think?

My Goodness Coldicote - Are you a deliberate disseminater of Tory propaganda or an unwitting dupe?

[ichkeria]

There'll never be an electoral pact between the Tories and UKIP - at least not one involving candidates from one party standing down in favour of the other.
It would work in the Tories favour, of course, for UKIP candidates to stand down in certain seats in the hope that their candidate would get most of the UKIP votes, but there's no way the opposite would happen. The Tories won't stand down candidates in favour of UKIP because that assumes that all Tory voters are Euro-sceptic.
It would also split the Tory party, as not all of them by any means share the rabid isolationism of UKIP.
What might happen is some sort of agreement where Cameron promises an in-out referendum on the EU in return for UKIP patronage, but that would look like an act of desperation.
Cameron has to weigh up the benefits of appealing to the centre to attract undecided or uncommitted voters against appealing to the Eurosceptics to stop his core voters defecting in greater numbers to the right.

[modeller]

Quizmaster I'm glad you agree that the Tories inherited a mess after 13 years of Labour rule .
#That'd be the mess created by the casino bankers - the Tories' paymasters - and Labour's need to prop them up with taxpayers' billions, I suppose ? #

I'm glad we agree that the inefficientcy of the security company was jumped on and the Tories immediately drafted in the services. An option which had been agreed by the Olympic Committee as a part of the initial planning.

The fact that the Unions were prepared to blackmail the country by the deliberate withdrawal of their labour at Heathrow and the Underground apparently gets you blessing.

jake #So clever of them to have done the same in the US, France, Spain, Italy Irelang and Greece all at the same don't you think.#

I agree you are quite right it was a mess and Labour had 13 years to do something about it. They failed !

This government inherited the biggest debt of them all, as a % of GDP. the only reason we have avoided a bail out, so far, is because we are not in the Euro .

I'm not a Tory , I criticise their softness but neither am I blind to the failures of Labour and their paymasters the Unions.

[Gromit]

The only reason we faired better than some countries in dealing with he banking crisis was because we were able to borrow money more cheaply. This is because we have always paid our debts, whether it was a Conservative or Labour Government in power and our credit rating was excellent. With London being a major world banking centre it was no surprise that we had more bankrupt banks than everyone else that needed saving, and we needed to spend a lot more than everyone else saving them.

[emmie]

let's hope that those who want to make all banks accountable under one EU banner don't get their wish. I can see London's financial centre bods throwing a tantrum and telling them to get stuffed.

[emmie]

and polls go up and down as we all know.

[Quizmonster]

Given that I have pointed out this fact to you before...namely, that my user-name is QuizmONster, not QuizmAster...I think I shall have to start calling you Yodeller or Swiveller or some such, instead of Modeller.
Mind you, I'm not sue it's worth the trouble, since you rarely seem quite to grasp the point being made, as clearly shown in your replies to Jake and myself above.

[modeller]

And what point is that ? You have admitted: #That'd be the mess created by the casino bankers -# That was the situation during 13 yrs of Labours rule and they did nothing about it.
You can blame previous governments both Tory and Labour if you like but that doesn't change the basic fact Labour failed and the housing bubble burst during their watch and even then Brown ran up vast extra debts.

[modeller]

Quizmonster . I apologise for getting your username wrong and I agree calling yourself monster rather than master is probably more appropriate.

[Quizmonster]

The point, old bean, is that there IS an AnswerBanker called Quizmaster and another called Quizmonkey. In the words of The Life of Brian, "We are all individuals."
You appear to forget that, when Labour was applying a "light regulation" regime on the banks, that was precisely the policy of the Tories as well and, of course, it was Thatcher who set them loose in the first place!

[jake-the-peg]

If Labour was applying the same "light legislation" policy as the Tories why was Cameron running around claiming that the Labour government was tying up the city in red tape?

[Quizmonster]

Why? Because he was in opposition, perhaps. The point is that, had the Tories won in 2005, they would have been in precisely the same situation vis-a-vis the banks as Labour was three years later. Further loosening of red tape would only have made things even worse!

[jake-the-peg]

I agree the Tories would have been in the same situation - I think too that people conveniently forget that Cameron was at the time calling for precisely the wrong approach.

What I've never been quite clear in my mind on though is if the Tories had won (under Michael Howard wasn't it) and faced the Bank crisis whether they'd have had the nerve to stump up the money to bail out the banks or whether their free-market instincts would have won out and they'd have let them fail and risked bringing down the whole apple cart

[Quizmonster]

Jake, as you suggest, Tories/right-wingers rarely seem to have memories that extend much further back than a lustrum!