Labour is bound to win any Speakership election in the next eighteen months, simply on account of there being more Labour MPs than all the others put together.
By the spring of 2010, Michael Martin will be just short of his sixty-fifth birthday, so might very well retire anyway.
Some ghastly New Labour clone might then be imposed on his seat.
But David Cameron's intra-Scottish class war to remove him from the Speaker's Chair (just listen to how Cameron speaks to him at PMQs, as if addressing a waiter at a Bullingdon Club dinner) will have come to nothing.
Nor, I remain convinced, will David Cameron's intra-Scottish class war against Gordon Brown eventually come to anything, either.
Comprehensive schools produce Labour (or, in certain parts of the country, Lib Dem) voters like factories, in the way that private schools now produce Tory voters like factories (although they didn't used to, just as neither grammar schools nor Secondary Moderns had any party-political role as such).
And there are simply far more comprehensive schools than private schools.
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"Labour is bound to win any Speakership election in the next eighteen months, simply on account of there being more Labour MPs than all the others put together."
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't always work like this. For example, Betty Boothroyd was elected Speaker during a period of Conservative majority. While there is certainly no hard-and-fast rule that the Speakership should alternate between the two parties (and it certainly has not always worked this way), nevertheless many MPs think that it ought to do so, and will vote accordingly. Many MPs of all parties will not be particularly concerned about the next Speaker's party of origin, so much as the extent to which they believe he or she will uphold Parliament. It's perfectly possible that a Tory MP could win - there are a number of plausible candidates in that Party. Of course some MPs will vote along party lines, but plenty won't.
Anyway, I thought you thought that there were plenty of Labour people who secretly wanted to see a Conservative government. Why wouldn't they also want to see a Conservative Speaker?
if it were that simple, how was there every a Tory govt elected?
ReplyDelete"It doesn't always work like this."
ReplyDeleteIt certianly would under the present circumstances.
Boothroyd only got in because the Tories couldn't get their act together and agree on a single candidate.
And the alternation thing is just an urban myth, dragged out by either party when it doesn't get its own way.
If anything, there is now an alternation between the Right (Boothroyd) and Left (Martin) of pre-Bliarite, because pre-Bennite Labour, in order to keep them both sweet.
So, Frank Field for Speaker? Or Kate Hoey?
Perhaps.
But only after Martin has voluntarily retired.
"Anyway, I thought you thought that there were plenty of Labour people who secretly wanted to see a Conservative government. Why wouldn't they also want to see a Conservative Speaker?"
It's a tribal thing. It matters to them in an emotional way that which of the identical front benches forms the Government does not.
Spencer, there hasn't been since 1992, when these things were still completely different. For one thing, a very high proportion of those who had ever been to comps were still at them, and too young to vote. Not so now.
ReplyDelete"So, Frank Field for Speaker? Or Kate Hoey?"
ReplyDeleteNot a chance. The Labour MPs can't stand them, and the Tory MPs would vote for a Tory.
Also, neither of them has shown the slightest interest in standing.
"It's a tribal thing. It matters to them in an emotional way that which of the identical front benches forms the Government does not."
ReplyDeleteAre you seriously arguing that Labour MPs care more about having a Labour speaker than a Labour government?
My God, you are right. It will be 18 years between the last Tory victory and the next Election. People will have the vote who weren't born when the Tories last won. Not even Blair in 97 had that. People born in early 79 had the vote. But the 92 Election was in the spring, as the next one will be.
ReplyDeleteComprehensive schools were introduced after the 1944 education Act. By the time of the 1992 election, they had been in existence en masse for almost 50 years. Three generations of pupils had gone through them. The private sector has never grown beyond about 7% of the market.
ReplyDeleteIn short, your analysis is historically flawed, simplistic, utterly lacking in evidence, and grounded in a model of economic determinism that has no empirical basis.
"The Labour MPs can't stand them"
ReplyDeleteThey'll do as their told. There is now a three-line whip in all but name, certainly on the Labour side. A lot of them can't stad Martin and never could. And a lot of them couldn'st stand Boothroyd. But so what. Party still has to matter to something. And this, if only in the absence of anything else, is it.
"Are you seriously arguing that Labour MPs care more about having a Labour speaker than a Labour government?"
Yes.
Of course, in fact.
"It will be 18 years between the last Tory victory and the next Election. People will have the vote who weren't born when the Tories last won."
I'll have to check the exact dates, but if that's not the case, then it might as well be.
"Comprehensive schools were introduced after the 1944 education Act"
Next to none that early.
"The private sector has never grown beyond about 7% of the market"
About as many votes as the Tories can therefore expect in about 10 years' time.
"People will have the vote who weren't born when the Tories last won."
ReplyDeleteThat's true. Only a few hundred people, admittedly. But they could make all the difference, in an astronomically unlikely hypothetical scenario.
It's a sign of the shift in society and the electorate.
ReplyDeleteTrue, Labour passed the same mark in 1994. But the Tories don't see themselves as like Labour, in government from time to time but not ordinarily.
They see themselves as the natural party of government, with little or no ideology beyond being so.
But they no longer are.
So what is the point of them?
There isn't any.
And in that case, with no really existing Tory threat, there is no remaining point to New Labour, either.
Private school market share
ReplyDelete2005 – 7%
2001 – 6.8%
1997 – 6.7%
1992 – 6.5%
1987 – 6.6%
Tory vote share
2005 – 32.3
2001 – 31.7
1997 – 30.7
1992 – 41.9
1987 – 42.2
Absolutely no evidence to suggest any correlation between privately educated pupils and Tory vote share.
Yes, but that's my point.
ReplyDeleteThere didn't used to be this correlation.
There is now.
What's your evidence for this, David?
ReplyDeleteHow many people from either sector and below a certain age have you ever met, discounting those who generationally don't vote anyway (a whole other story)?
ReplyDeleteThe curriculum in comprehensive schools is designed to produce New Labour or Lib Dem voters (culturally Marxist, and not least prizing "planet" over people, but uninterested in practical social justice), and it does.
The curriculum in private schools is a parent/customer-driven reaction against that.
And there are far more comprehensive schools than private schools.
Why is there a correlation now?
ReplyDeleteThere have been around 7% of pupils educated privately for the past 50 years, and it has made no difference to Tory vote share waxing and waning. There were 7% of people educated privately in 1997, 7% in 2005, and about 7% in 2010.
There is no evidence, anywhere, that this private vote share has any evidence on Tory vote share.
There is a lot of evidence, conversely, that people vote against what might be seen as their natural interests - particualrly working class Republicans. Many political scientists have written very well reviewed books on this subject.
There used to be lots of public school Labour politicians and even state school Labour politicains like Wilson himself sent their children private. It was normal.
ReplyDeleteThere used to be lots of grammar school and secondary modern Tory voters too. That was how the Tories won elections in the 50s and the 80s.
But no one who has been through the National Curriculum would vote Tory in a million years. And no one who has been through the private reaction against it would vote any other way. So the Tories are screwed.
A whole other story, Spencer. And possibly coming to an end, anyway. If it doesn't, then that will be Obama's own fault. This blog keeps a close eye on that one.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, spot on. And, of course, Thatcher herself introduced the National Curriculm. But, as a private school pupil and private school parent, she couldn't have cared less what actually went into it. We can all see the result. Well, all except Spencer. But he will, eventually.
"But no one who has been through the National Curriculum would vote Tory in a million years. And no one who has been through the private reaction against it would vote any other way."
ReplyDeleteI've met plenty of young people who have been through the National Curriculum and say they plan to vote Tory. I've met some (fewer) privately-educated young people of left/liberal views. In both cases, I'm sure their votes are influenced by a wide range of factors, of which the curriculum they were taught is just one.
A few adolescent rebels.
ReplyDeleteAnd "left"-liberal toffs? I can't help thinking that that reminds me of someone...
So they'll still vote Tory. Of course.
1987? Spencer, can you even read? Or do you think that it still is 1987?
ReplyDeleteVery expensively educated far beyond his natural intellignece, and thus imbued with an absolute sense of his own entitlement.
ReplyDeleteSpencer only mentions 1987 twice, when setting out data from the last 20 years. It's pretty obvious from the context that he doesn't think that it's 1987. I think your criticism would be more appropriately directed at Anonymous 17.01.
ReplyDeleteNow, now, play nicely.
ReplyDeleteAny comments on Michael Martin and the Speakership?
Of course not. They have lost this one. The attempt to impose some Speaker acceptable to Quentin Letts is not going to succeed. Up the workers.
ReplyDeleteJust curious David - you do realise that everyone can see you stop putting up comments after a certain point, normally when you've lost an argument don't you? I wouldn't want you to think you were succesful with your little "no more comments, they've lost the argument" facade.
ReplyDeleteSpencer has been trying to post a comment berating me for not putting up a previous comment!
ReplyDeleteHonestly, these people really are THAT used to instant, and utterly uncritical, deference.
"Honestly, these people really are THAT used to instant, and utterly uncritical, deference."
ReplyDeleteBang on cue, on comes Jon.
Who is not playing nicely?
ReplyDeleteHonestly, you'd think that they were doing it on purpose.
ReplyDeleteSeriously, the first remotely insulting remark was yours? So who were you talking to?
ReplyDeleteI haven't insulted anyone. I feel sorry for anyone who is so unused to being taken on. They have come to the wrong place here. Mind you, if they are anything like Jon, they won't learn.
ReplyDeleteJon was like that 10 years ago.
ReplyDeleteWell, yes.
ReplyDeleteI'm almost tempted to put up some of his and Spencer's comments, just to illustrate how thick they are. But they have already done a perfectly good job of that themselves.
Jon, at least, is just about old enough to remember Tim Nice But Dim. But perhaps slightly too old to understand the origin of "That's you, that is".
And Tory Boy. Jon and Spencer, you see that Tory Boy, that's you, that is.
ReplyDeleteAh, the Nineties. Great days.
ReplyDeleteAlthough I assume that Jon's Damon Albarn days are over and that he has reverted to his natural accent in this age of Cameron and Osborne. Were they Mockneys, too, one wonders? Slightly too old, I expect.
Damon Albarn? Mockney? I thought I knew who Jon was, but clearly you're thinking of someone else.
ReplyDeleteAs I said, he has no doubt reverted to his natural accent.
ReplyDeleteNo, I thought I knew him at the same time you did - I thought he was one of our Durham contemporaries. I was sure I was thinking of the right person. But I must be mistaken.
ReplyDeleteNo, that's him, all right.
ReplyDeleteNo, but the person I'm thinking of never had a Mockney accent, so it can't be him.
ReplyDeleteHe probably used different accents to different audiences. I have been guilty of that myself. Though probably not as consciously.
ReplyDelete