Slugger O'Toole

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Latest comments from Sammy Morse (see all)

Sammy Morse has commented 67 times (0 in the last month).

1. Comment on Northern Ireland and the aftermath of the May poll
   on 19 April 2010 at 6:08 am

   maybe jeffrey forgets that it was the lib dems who were unionist enemies under gladstone when he wanted to introduce home rule for ireland.

   On the doorsteps of Lagan Valley, they speak of little else. Jeffrey’s failure to remember Gladstone’s treachery is sure to unleash a surge of support for Daphne Trimble and the New Conservatives and Unionists. On the doorsteps of Drumbeg, they talk of little else.

   Anything else about LibDem policy you want to throw into the mix? The Whig policy on Grattan’s Parliament, perhaps?

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2. Comment on David Cameron Eclipsed? Party horsemen ride abreast in Tory Home Poll of Polls…
   on 19 April 2010 at 5:38 am

   Have heard of one post debate poll that showed a surge of blue in Northern Ireland.

   Another General Election, another mysterious poll with no attribution, let alone a published methodology or crosstabs, shows a mysterious surge to the Ulster Unionists is selectively quoted to NI media insiders. Remember the mysterious NIO polls allegedly showing all the Ulster Unionist MPs narrowly ahead in 2001 and 2005?

   I’ll believe it when I see it. Unless and until I see it, it’s empty ramping and not worth blogging. And if they really had a poll like that, they’d publish it.

   The old saying is “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I’m not sure how you complete that phrase for fool me three times.

   Just as an aside, I’m not sure even the political media pros realise how much an opinion poll, even one with a sample as small as 300, costs to commission? Various people here sometimes refer to parties’ “private polls”, and while I can just about imagine Ashcrofts millions can buy one or two for UCUNF over the course of a campaign, and the DUP might stretch to one at a pinch, that will be as far as it goes. If even that far.

   Take claims that “we have done a private poll showing we are just 2% behind in Ballyxxxx and can win if we squeeze the XQP” with the dose of salt they so transparently deserve unless they publish the methodology and the cross-tabs. Especially if the specific people mentioned are Willie McCrea, Reg Empey, the Alliance Party and the SDLP.

   As for across the water, either Cameron does something really game changing that resonates with the electorate – and I mean spectacularly game changing, because he needs to get from 32% to 40% in a hurry – and he gets to be Prime Minister; or he does something really game changing that blows up in his face by making him look like a hard-right loony.

   If he potters along with his old game plan, it will do nothing to dent the LibDems who can ride the high publicity that being in a dog-fight for first place in the polls will bring them from now until polling day. The Tories game plan with the LibDems was to say “We hate Brown too and you can’t beat him. Besides, we’re not like old Tories, we have loads of gay friends and love the environment. Don’t waste your vote.” That line transparently does not work if the LibDems are ahead of Labour and neck and neck with the Tories.

   The old adage that when confronted with a choice between conservatives and liberals masquerading as conservatives, the electorate always choose the genuine article surely applies in reverse too?

   Final thought – if these poll numbers hold through the second debate, a few front bench Tories, perhaps mindful of what happened to Chris Patten in 1992, might find themselves suddenly tied to their constituencies. Some of the targets of the LibDem decapitation strategy which dismally failed last time are still vulnerable, and there are a few others: Liam Fox would lose North Somerset on these sorts of figures, for example.

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3. Comment on Are the Tories as rattled as they seem?
   on 18 April 2010 at 9:25 pm

   The Tories have abandoned carefully a media grid which will have been carefully thought out months ago, and more critically, have stopped pushing their key narrative so they can pump out squeeze lines on the LibDems.

   Not only have some of these been delivered in a way that will do some damage to the Tories (e.g. Cameron’s comments in Gloucester yesterday which implied the Tories were as bad as any other politicians and couldn’t be trusted to put the country’s interests first in the event of a hung parliament), but it keeps the lines they need to be getting into the media off the screens and buried at the back of the papers.

   Finally, the messages themselves are designed around squeezing a LibDem party trailing in third, but one challenging you for first place.

   Who knows how long all this will last? But I’m enjoying it while it does!

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4. Comment on Clegg bubble boosts Brown
   on 18 April 2010 at 5:41 am

   Mick,

   I may be wrong, but I believe the boundary commission has reviewed you out of the perennial Lib Dem near miss of North Dorset into the LibDem held super-marginal and top Tory target of Mid Dorset and North Poole. Any chance of an blog on how being a voter on the receiving end on that sort of onslaught feels?

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5. Comment on Clegg bubble boosts Brown
   on 17 April 2010 at 5:37 am

   a vote for the Lib Dems means a raft of barking and policies

   Barking policies like inheritance tax cuts for millionaires while public services are decimated*, being the party that engineered the complete deregulation of the UK financial services sector and is still in its pocket, and spending close on 100 billion on a non-independent nuclear weapons system while public services are decimated so Cameron can induldge his bedtime fantasies of nuking China? (Hint on the UK’s “independent” nuclear deterrent: it’s a double key system – the Americans have the other key and Britian can’t fire without their say-so.)

   * It’s not that I have any illusions about the overall state of the UK’s public account and am not unaware that difficult resource decisions will have to be taken. It’s the glee in Tory eyes when they talk about “paring back the state” I don’t trust.

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6. Comment on Clegg bubble boosts Brown
   on 17 April 2010 at 5:25 am

   You are assuming a Uniform National Swing here, Brian. It was that Uniform National Swing that saw the Alliance in 1983 return only a tenth the number of MPs as Labour despite polling over 90% of their vote share. However, 1983 was a long time ago and much has changed.

   First of all, the LibDems have become much better at turning votes into seats.

   Secondly, trust funding has to some degree evened up the resource disadvantage the Lib Dems have with the two biggest parties.

   Thirdly, the Alliance surge in 1983 happened at the same time as a Tory surge. Alliance overtook Labour in many seats but the Tories moved even further ahead and won them. This election is starting to deliver a Labour collapse (especially in southern England) along with, at best, a rather flaccid Tory boost, and a record vote minor parties, especially for right-wing splinter parties. Every UKIP vote in Eastbourne, say, makes it easier for the LibDems to take one against the head from the Tories in a town with a lot of poverty that belies its genteel image.

   If this poll is more than a blip and holds through the second debate, money, literature and phone banking resource will be turned on a host of second-tier target seats, especially from Labour. Most of these seats are dominated by the LibDems at council level anyway, so have an election-winning infrastructure in a way their equivalents did not in 1983. About 10% of the electorate in England consistently vote LibDem in local elections but Labour in General Elections, and that segment of the electorate is concentrated in about four dozen strong LibDem council areas.

   If the LibDems can harness half of that on the back of a credibility boost, they would be well into the 100s in terms of seats won on a 30% vote share. I am not privy to any LibDem targeting decisions, but I would imagine if canvass data and national polling figures are showing, say, Liverpool Wavertree is in the bag, resources will be poured into Garston and Halewood or St. Helen’s South. If City of Durham looks in the bag, Newcastle-upon-Tyne North will have a surge of HQ interest, if Islington South and Hampstead and Kilburn both look in the bag, resources will be piled into Holborn and St. Pancras, etc., etc.

   And on these sort of figures, you would also get the sort of gains from nowhere that Labour had in middle-class North London in 1997 (Red Metroland) – e.g. you might have all three Newcastle seats, Blaydon, Wansbeck and Blyth Valley falling if skilled working-class voters on Tyneside defect en masse as they already started doing in 2005, despite the fact that those the non-City seats have never had great party membership or activist bases despite persistently high Liberal votes since the ’80s.

   At the moment, the most likely scenario is that 30% is a blip and the LibDem poll rating will drift gently down to the mid 20s. So that sort of strategy can blow up in your face if there is a late swing away, but if ever there was a time when the LibDems should be marching towards the sound of gunfire, this is it.

   And who knows what will happen if the LibDems look like they actually might win the election? At the very least, if the LibDems outpoll Labour but only win 100-120 seats to Labour’s 200 or so, then the case for some form of PR, in a parliament that seems almost certain to be hung, becomes almost unanswerable.

   That’s still unlikely, but I can’t at this point see the LibDems not polling more than Kennedy managed in 2005. And that will probably keep all but the most hopeless of southern marginals (Romsey) in the bag.

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7. Comment on Fermanagh South Tyrone: Some Stats to Ponder
   on 13 April 2010 at 4:54 am

   Ah so the Tories are now linked to the OO – presumably in a vast worldwide conspiracy involving the NeoCons in the US, Israel and little green men in a giant flying saucer in geosynchronous orbit beaming signals down to confuse us into no voting SF.

   Nice try at creating a straw man but it doesn’t add up. I wasn’t aware that Israel and little green men were in talks with the DUP and the Orange Order at Hatfield House a few months ago.

   And the American neocons were unsuccessfully telling Cameron to get Reg under control.

   If UCUNF wants to indulge in grubby little sectarian pacts, that’s their business, but it makes a mockery of any claim they might make about changing the nature of politics here.

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8. Comment on Tories: “Fermanagh and South Tyrone has characteristics that are unique within the UK”
   on 10 April 2010 at 12:11 am

   Only in the bizarre world of self-deception that is UCUNF could a candidate being backed by both Unionist parties and not by anyone else, not least in places with the history of Fermanagh and South Tyrone, be described as a “cross-community” candidate.

   Repeating a load of tripe 63 times in an interview with Seamus McKee does not make it any less a load of tripe. Dominic Grieve always strikes me as one of the more substantial Tories, but in that interview was that showed both that he’s a smart man who can stick to an interview brief well and that he knows less than nothing about Northern Ireland, and that he might well have a significant role in its future ought to give us all cause for concern.

   Similarly, Rodney Connor has reserved his right to not follow the Tory whip on issues that affect Northern Ireland. Even taking the narrowest possible reading of what that means, it implies he doesn’t have to follow the Tory whip on the budget, welfare policy, defence and foreign affairs, national security, parades (significant in FST), Europe or aviation policy. Which isn’t quite what the Tories said, but then again entering into grubby little sectarian deals wasn’t quite what the Tories said when they decided to shack up with the UUP either.

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9. Comment on “At no time did Sinn Fein contact any of the Councillors…”
   on 9 April 2010 at 11:56 pm

   Mark,

   Briege Meehan was not a member of Sinn Féin at the point of her disqualification, so it’s dubious to claim that Sinn Féin have any entitlement to nominate her replacement.

   Anyway, there is no way an SF co-option would have made it through Newtownabbey Council and you well know it. Frankly, I very much doubt an Alliance co-option would make it through Newtownabbey Council. Despite us trying to talk to Sinn Féin, they also made no attempt to talk to us until a few hours before the meeting. In fact, they showed no sign of even being aware of the issue until a few hours before the meeting.

   In those circumstances, we were faced with a by-election which the DUP would be almost certain to win – although personally I’d have relished it – or an attempt to find an Independent co-optee who could command cross-party support and ensure every community in Glengormley could be well represented. I’m glad we succeeded despite Sinn Féin’s lack of interest – the election of an Independent Councillor committed to putting the good of Glengormley first is a good outcome for Glengormley residents.

   If Sinn Féin want to big up this issue, that’s their call, but if I was in their shoes, I’d probably want to quietly bury that sort of incompetence, not to mention the circumstances of Briege Meehan’s disqualification, her consistently poor attendance and poor contribution on the council.

   Newtownabbey, embarrassingly one of only two councils in Northern Ireland which have never deigned to elect a Catholic as Mayor, remains a bastion of 1980s-style Unionism. While others prefer to talk big and wave flags, it’s the Alliance Party that still does the heavy lifting in ensuring fair treatment for every resident of Newtownabbey, as it has for 40 years. I’m confident that Alliance councillors can go into next year’s council elections and defend their record of ensuring everyone in the Borough, from Bawnmore to Ballynure, receives equal treatment and good representation. Can Sinn Féin?

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10. Comment on Sir Reg wouldn’t have a gay about the B&B either…
    on 8 April 2010 at 5:48 am

    Sammy the day the government tell you who you can or cannot have in your own house is the day we should all be scared.

    Governments have always, and probably always will, possess powers that should rightly scare any citizen. Running a business from home involves tangling with government at its scariest. Have you ever heard what happens to some poor cratur sole trader who had poor filing systems and then got hit with a VAT inspection? That’s the nature of the beast.

    I’m not an anarchist of a minarchist libertarian, so I accept that governments are going to have the *capacity* to do terrible things. That’s why free elections, a free media, freedom of assembly, free speech and similar freedoms we take too much for granted are so important, so we can make sure they don’t act on that capacity, and are brought to book when they do.

    In the past, some guest houses refused to take in guests who were black. That is now illegal. Are you seriously telling me it’s wrong that that’s now illegal?

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