That is the view of the bookies, click on link to read the odds. In all by-elections Labour are odds on to win. I summarise the rounded odds below for the leading 4 parties in the betting:
Rotherham Croydon Middlesborough
Lab 1/5 Lab 1/8 Lab 1/40
Respect 7/1 Respect 6/1 Con 25/1
UKIP 8/1 Con 66/1 Peace 25/1
Others 33/1 UKIP 80/1 LibDem 33/1
UKIP 100/1
So why are UKIP lagging in the bookies odds compared to Respect? Its a no-brainer. Respect have won three seats in Westminster by-elections and general elections. UKIP have never come second let alone won in a Westminster election. In bookies parlance they have no form. That's what you get if you spend most of your time in Brussels running in selling plates and get correctly rebranded EUKIP.
Remember these are first past the post odds and cannot be compared to opinion polls. They do however show that even with non-stop Farage on TV and hugely favourable UKIP publicity in Rotherham on the fostering cock up scandal UKIP will do well to come second. If UKIP cannot come close in these favourable circumstances it tells me its time to change strategy and live, work and campaign in the UK not Brussels. If not UKIP will simple stack up more bad losses in the UK. Farage may be lucky for himself but he is a loser for UKIP. Its time for UKIP to get rid.
It is clear from these odds that Labour are currently on track to win the next General Election with a huge majority, 100+ say. LibDems will be wiped out and the Tories will only survive in the shires and wealthy suburbs. EUKIP will perform abysmally as usual but by that time Farage and his sycophants will be back in their lucrative MEP seats on the back of an anti-EU protest vote in the 2014 Euro elections.
The Greek sardine can is being cynically kicked down the road until after the German elections. Merkel dare not tell the Germans that most of their Greek loans will never be repaid. She will campaign pretending the loans are in good shape and having won then she will tell the truth just like our bunch of rotters do.
As to the deal itself I can only quote Reuters, " To reduce the (Greek) debt pile, ministers agreed to cut the interest rate on official loans, extend the maturity of Greece's loans from the EFSF bailout fund by 15 years to 30 years, and grant a 10-year interest repayment deferral on those loans." In any one's language that is a default but not EU Orwellian newspeak. Our language is rendered devoid of meaning by our sordid politicians and arse licking media.
6 comments:
UKIP did come second in the Barnsley Central by election in 2011. Jane Collins, the same candidate fighting the by election in Rotherham, was the UKIP candidate.
Thank you. I stand corrected. Was that the one where Galloway won for Respect?
No, Labour won as well you know. Eric, do we not lose sight of what is happening? If there is no economic recovery and the EU issue is not resolved, the tories will be ever more aware that they cannot win the next election because of the UKIP effect. Does that situation present our best chance of forcing a referendum with the tories actively campaigning to come out, possibly with DC on the sidelines.
Stephen,
I agree there is no economic recovery and no resolution of the EU problem. I don't think its UKIP that will stop the Tories next time it will be the dire state of the economy you refer to. UKIP will be an irrelevance.
I hope we do get an In/Out referendum asap but only Nikki's WDAR party has made it their prime ussue. It would help greatly if EUKIP came back from their Brussels water holes and campaigned over the next few years for such a referendum.
Sorry I confused Barnsley with Bradford West by - election which Respect did win from Labour.
It will be interesting to see the results on Thursday night/Friday morning
Dear Eric,
This was the comment in The Telegraph accessed from Dr. Richard North's blog:-
Ukip cannot make a breakthrough in 2015 because the system they will be fighting under has been specifically designed to prevent them from making that breakthrough. It was not built to further the political ambitions of free spirits such as Citizen Farage. It was created to crush them underfoot; and so it will.
Then there is the second big problem facing Nigel Farage’s party: he hasn’t got one. In relative terms, Ukip have no money, no infrastructure and no activists. They have no organisational expertise, no strategy expertise and no policy expertise.
I could not have put that more succinctly, and sums up Nigel's failings.
UKIP have no money - Nigel has had money but frittered it away on "ventures" instead of building a solid base at Local Government level. The MEP's have trousered their "salaries" (with some exceptions) instead of using a large percentage for the party, as we had hoped.
They did have the bones of an organisation but failed to fund it, treating it as a tap for cash. Farage also killed off any organiser capable of replacing him or his cronies.
UKIP Local died because it was not enthusiastically supported by Farage.
The Lechlade Group attempted to broaden the Party manifesto - Farage and Malcolm Wood tried to kill it, and did kill the manifesto created by member groups
which tried to broaden the simple manifesto of John Whittaker. Nigel Farage killed it, along with the support of the activists.
There was no strategy permitted other than Farage's - who by UKIP rules was the strategist.
How one man has built a self-serving empire for self-aggrandisement is a lesson in itself. George Galloway's Respect Party is yet another one-man band.
By hijacking the energy and enthusiasm of thousands of UKIP supporters he has ruined the possibility of breaking the Labour/Conservative cartel which has existed for over 90 years with a brief break in WWII.
It takes years of effort to establish a strong Party - as Labour did, and as the Liberal-Democrats did. They grew out of the frustrations of the people with the ruling elite.
We are faced with another 5 years of pro-EU Labour rule because there is no other ready alternative. We are heading for national disaster because the Labour voters are on our side but do not see UKIP as the alternative for the working man.
Malcolm Wood, Farage's mentor, summed up Farage's position: "We do not want to rule the country, we only want to terrorise the Conservatives into taking us out of the EU". Nothing has changed, as Stephen Harness' ambition seems to indicate.
The Conservatives (and dim-Libs) are finished. Regrettably nobody in the bankrupt USA and Europe has a plan to cope with the expanding world population and the need to secure for them the resources of energy, food and water, and to create employment opportunities. China has been working at it for at least 25 years and they will reap the rewards.
Farage was a Tory, is a Tory - he came from a background in the City as a small trader and has used his undoubted skills as a public speaker to impress. There is not much more to say.
Alan,
I agree. Farage has been a disaster for UKIP. Its not a proper party and never will be. The SNP is the closest model for UKIP to follow. It was founded in 1934 but it has never been a one man band. The won their first Westminster seat, Winifred Ewing in 1967 and have had MP representation at Westminster ever since. They were not seduced by Westminster power. Salmond resigned as an MP to sit in the Scottish parliament.
They now have their In/Out referendum in 2014. They have a wide variety of spokesmen who are well briefed, knowlegeable and are very impressive. They have a genuinely outstanding leader who handles a hostile London media brilliantly but its all built up from the grass roots using money they raise themselves in Scotland.
Thet deserve to succeed.
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