I think we’ll be seeing another Labour leadership contest after the next General Election.

You know, this is a point I'd rather dispute. None of the tabloids have readerships that make for any large percentage of the voting population. The biggest one sells to, what, 4% of the adult market or something? Together they manage about 10%. OK, that's a degree of ingress but I'd have to assume a lot of the readers read the tabloids because they already agree with the political stance those tabloids take. If they changed their stance, they wouldn't vote differently, they'd buy a different paper. There's a very much 'chicken and the egg' aspect to it.

People believe the tabloids sway large chunks of the population but that's largely because they claim they have after the fact, when in reality they just jumped on whichever bandwagon seemed most likely to win. If they came out on one side and that side didn't get in, I'm fairly sure the headline the next day wouldn't be 'It was the Sun wot lost it'. Christ no.

Jon

OK, so it's a bit of a chicken/egg thing then. However, much stock is placed in the backing of the popular press by the parties, and it's usually reported in other media as being influential.

We do know that politicians are just chasing floating voters in marginals, and if the press can somehow influence just those people enough to vote for a preferred candidate, then it's a job well done.

Since there's no real opportunity for voting along 'English lines' over here I can't comment on that, but I've little doubt that people believe the crap the likes of The Scum and Daily Fail print, or at least want to believe it - from the 'celebs' to the government's line on strikes and banks etc. It's the same old 'Is the message dumbed down for it's audience... or is the audience just dumb?'

Not enough people read the likes of The Indy or Granuaird IMO - the right-wing papers are basically for people who wanna feel better about their own lives

I hope so, because that would mean Labour didn't win.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a fan of the traditional tory policy if cutting spending to cut taxes, but they're the only ones at the moment who are seriously trying to balance the books. If Labour had their way we'd have an even bigger debt for the next generation to pay off, never mind probably paying more for our debt as we'd probably get a credit rating cut if they got in.

Credit for trying maybe, but as George Osborne stated in the house this week, they're utterly failing to do so. We're borrowing more, not less.

Jon

Bollox, I don't mind borrowing if it creates growth and jobs but these feckwits are cutting and cutting and then borrowing more and more than they planned. All of their figures are constantly being downsized and all of their targets keep getting missed.

They're using the old 'get them to fight amongst themselves' tactics. 'Oh look their pension, although not fantastic, is better than yours, they must pay for the errors of others' whilst doing nothing for growth and jobs.

No, feck off Tory boys and LidDem lackeys, make the private sector improve employees pensions (the Chief Execs still have lovely ones), invest in the infrastructure to stimulate the economy and create jobs to allow that to happen, claim back the £150billion in unpaid tax, close tax loopholes and make the feckers who caused this problem pay - not the masses who didn't.

I can't believe how easily people in this country swallow misdirection and accept the blame for others mistakes.

Edit: Apologies for basically ranting, I hadn't had coffee. I have now. Now I'm like a fluffy bunny rather than a grumpy bear.

The irony of course being that one of the things GO was trumpeting in the autumn statement was a massive investment in infrastructure projects to create jobs, because the original plan that the private sector would miraculously find jobs for all the public sector workers he's booting out of a job (the number of which has roughly doubled since he floated the plan, by the way) somehow didn't seem to pan out. Shocking, I know. When people looked at the details it turns out UKGov weren't investing in infrastructure, they were begging for money from other people to invest in infrastructure. Which other people you say? Well, as it turns out, the people they were asking to invest the most were... the public sector pension funds, who are (if added together) the largest financial institution in the UK but who George had just told everyone didn't have enough money to pay for their own responsibilities, let alone have any money aside for investment. So which is it George, are the pension funds buggered or do they have umpti-billions available to dig you out of a hole?


Just as long as you're not now a grumpy over caffientated bear .

Jon