Enough for them to warrant an alternative at present or in two years time....
With the probable collapse of the Lib-Dem vote at the next GE a Conservative majority 7/2 is a cracking bet imo.
Shame it contravenes my strict moral code to contemplate putting a wager on them.

People seem to be forgetting a few points when predicting a Tory majority.

1. They couldn't secure one in 2010 when people had nothing to judge Cameron and Osbourne on and when Labour were being blamed for everything and had Brown as leader. They should have had a landslide but failed to get one.

2. UKIP are not going away and neither is European question

3. This government is wreaking the NHS - that alone is vote winner for any opposition

4. The economy is a mess and the its "all Labour's fault" is rapidly running out of steam to the extent people are, I believe, sick of hearing it. They aren't that interested in who's fault it was but why it hasn't been fixed.

5. That have not managed to gerrymander the election by getting the number of constituencies reduced

6. A lot of people are being affected directly in a negative way with kids having to pay tuition fees of £9K or losing housing benefit/tax credits.

7. Back to the economy, its just not going to pick up that much if at all between now and the election so they won't have much success to point to.

What Labour has to do other than relying on all the above negatives about this government is come up with an effective way of mitigating Tory spin. It's been apparent from day 1 that they have a tactic of telling lies often enough so people will believe it. The way in which any discussion on the economy is always predicated by "Clearing up labours mess" is a case in point.

The whole point is, yes you can. Darling was going to make cuts to reduce the debt but not as far or as fast so as not to choke off growth. What he predicted would happen if you cut too far too fast has happened. He as been proved correct, Osborne proved wrong and the loss of the AAA rating is the latest indicator of that.

I am surprised you even posted the above because the economic debate has always been about how far and fast to cut in order to get debt down. Labour has always said you can't just cut your way out of this problem but that you have to grow the economy to increase tax revenues as well. This is not news and neither is the government's opposite view so to post the above suggests you have been on a different planet since 2010.

All decent valid points Dave but through experience I don't have the same confidence in the electorate that you seem to possess.
We haven't had one-term party Government now since the 70's.
I know this is meant to be a coalition, but it's only in name.
I fear the Tories may get the whole gig next time, carte blanche.

The other fascinating thing is the automatic assumption that the LibDem vote will be non-existant the next time around - based on what ?

There is the tuition fee promise of course, played a blinder there did Clegg in an archetypal "I don't care what we said, this gets me five years sitting at the top table", but other than that can anyone think of anything that the LibDems have done or said since 2010 that will cost them in 2015 ?

They have effectively sat on their hands in the same way that Labour have done with the benefit of a few of their members drawing Ministerial salaries and come 2015 you can bet that their PR people will be cherry picking various quotes to show where they were influencial in some of the more beneficial government policies (no I can't think of any off hand but they will when the time comes).

What we have is two posh boys who are now taking all the flak for the Tories and the Lib-Dems hiding behind the curtains but still drawing the salaries - come an election they'll be the party with the blank canvas ready to pitch whatever the hell they like.

We already know you'll be registering for them once again next time round JC.

The scary thing in this country is the amount of people who have actually given up on, or have no interest in, politics.

With the state this country is in and with such an uncertain future, you would think we should have a very high turnout at any upcoming election, yet its highly likely that come any election, we will see a record low turnout....With that in mind, it could be argued that any government are actually there by default, just stumbling along, knowing full well that they can inflict their ill thought out policies without much response, bar the political anoraks in the media.

The sad thing is, there is nobody who appears capable of inspiring people back to the ballot box - Cameron and Osborne are just a pair of upper class chancers, helped by a mainly supportive press, Milliband is unelectable simply because he is totally charisma free and Clegg is a combination of those mentioned.

It comes to something when the country's most popular politician is Boris Johnson, a man who most typifies the bumbling mess that this country has got itself into.....Its almost as if people think he represents best the state of politics today - A joke, and just there for laughs.

the lib dems courted and to a large extent relied upon the student vote in 2010 and Cleggs pledge was a large part of that strategy. The lib dems treachery wont be forgotten on any campus. The lib dems also attracted a large part of the labour vote as a protets against the banking collapse by people who couldn't bring themselves to switch to the toxic tories. A significant proportion of that vote will switch back to labour

The major point being that those who are most affected by the student fees, this years intake, were 14 or 15 years old at the last election, do they hold a grudge, do they recall any of it at all - the students of 2015 will have been 12 or 13 years of age when Clegg made his promise, do you know any 12 year olds with an interest in politics enough to form their allegiences at that age ?

By 2015 student fees will be the norm, no-one blinks even now when signing up for £27,000 worth of education and the idea that the postman should not have to pay for your further education seems to have won over a self-centred electorate.

The LibDems in my area are a set of p1ssheads

Have a look and see what they specialise in when speaking in the HoC, its beer and breweries



I know exactly where to find my MP if I need to speak to him on any Saturday or Sunday, well that is, I can narrow it down to two or three pubs

Labour wouldn't have cut public services as far as this Government has. They wouldn't have tripled University fees. They wouldn't have wasted money on back-to-work schemes that aren't working. They wouldn't have siphoned off vast sums of public money to their mates in the private sector. They wouldn't have public money funding private schools. They wouldn't have a nutjob busy trying to turn education back 50 years. They wouldn't have screwed over the NHS. They wouldn't be contemplating the privatisation of emergency services. They wouldn't have wasted money on elected 'crime commissioners' that nobody wants.

That's just off the top of my head, and just the things affecting 'middle England'. If you add in the disgraceful actions of that scrotum IDS, demonising the disabled and the unemployed, it's hard to see how the majority of people in this country wouldn't be better off.

And I neither voted for the last 2 Labour administrations nor for Labour at the last election.

My kids are 16 and 19. They both know exactly who they blame for student fees rising and who betrayed a pledge. And they are both fully aware of the implications of graduating with a mountain of debt.

They won't be voting LibDem any time soon.

Quote ="The Video Ref"So, Moody's downgrade the UK's credit rating. They cite one of the main reasons as being our high levels of debt.'" The two main reasons are low growth. Read it here: www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-d ... -PR_266844 Debt only gets mentioned in point three as the main factor in our predicted inability to cope with any future economic problems. At least Moody's know that you can't cut debt without growth, even if our Chancellor is too economically illiterate to realise it.

Quote ="The Video Ref"So, Moody's downgrade the UK's credit rating. They cite one of the main reasons as being our high levels of debt.'" The two main reasons are low growth. Read it here: www.moodys.com/research/Moodys-d ... -PR_266844 Debt only gets mentioned in point three as the main factor in our predicted inability to cope with any future economic problems. At least Moody's know that you can't cut debt without growth, even if our Chancellor is too economically illiterate to realise it.

The reason why no has is interested in politics is because of the appallingly low calibre of our politicians and their propensity to destroy eveything good about the country.

The problem with both Labour and the Tories is that they both ignore the poor and cynically suck up to the miiddle simply to get elected. Neither party tries to be positive and rebuild a great nation taking the people en masse on a journey , largely because both parties are infested by low-grade individuals who could not build anything.

Has an ex Coal Miner from Doncaster and naturally a Labour supporter I must admit our local MPs Milliband, Flint and Winterton are non existent on policies when this lot in power are in the mire. Only one guy seems to beat the drum and that is John Mann who took the expenses scandal forward and exposes every mistake this lot do in power, Credit rating taken away and the country in collapse ., come on Milliband or move on.

They will almost certainly lose the student vote and the left of centre want-an-alternative-to-New-Labour-because-of-the-Iraq-War vote. But they won't go to the Tories.

If Clegg hadn't sold his soul for a Ministerial limo, they might have gone with the Lib Dems

General point about these ratings is they are more important for private firms than for governments. The idea of a credit rating from an agency is to solve information problems for potential investors, if you want to lend to sally cinnamon enterprises you might not know much about its financial viability so an independent credit rating agency giving a rating of Aaa or Ba3 etc tells you whether it's investment grade (safe) or speculative grade (take your chances).

However if you want to lend to a government there is much more information available about the viability of a government to allow you to assess the risk of whether or not the government is going to default. Potential investors will be guided by this rather than the credit ratings. Hence it hasn't hit the US.

The main problem for Osborne is a political one, he is the only chancellor that has ever gone on about the importance of protecting our AAA rating and has used this as justification of his success "credibility in my strategy has been endorsed by us keeping our credit rating" and also as an attack on Labour because under Labour the AAA rating was put on 'negative watch' but never removed. Now of course he has egg on his face because the UK has lost its AAA rating for the first time since 1978 and he has to try and argue that 'credit ratings aren't that important anyway'.

Osborne has to change his position on things all the time, up to 2007 he was pledging to match Labour's spending plans, after 2008 he changed his position to "Labour spent too much". In 2006 he was writing an article in the Times saying that the UK should model its economy on Ireland, in 2011 he was warning that if we didn't follow his approach the UK would end up in the same position as Ireland.

These kind of inconsistencies mean he doesn't even have much credibility from his own side, right wingers see him as a light weight. He is a Chancellor out of his depth.

No one is going to vote in the next election with reference to the Iraq war.

The election was in 2010 and my son who went to Uni in Sept was 16. So you should ask my son. Of course he holds a grudge. He is affected now and he knows what went on before in terms of fees and what was said at the election. It's naive to think this years students do not know who put the fees up and who said they would scrap them but them didn't.



The propaganda may well have worked outside of the student population - and their families but not within it.

And as to £27,000, where do get that figure from? After three years on the [iminimum[/i maintenance loan the debt ends up as over £56,000 due to a real rate of interest being charged and it compounding.

If you think people seeing their indebtedness going up like that is going to be ignored by those affected I think you are mistaken.

Osborne was daft to make a statement about protecting our rating in the first place since the decision on what our rating will be is out of his control. So far it is only one company that has downgraded us isn't it?

I doubt money will be flowing from London to New York since the US had their rating downgraded months ago.

I'm sure I read on the BBC website that only Canada and Germany now have a triple A rating across the board? But maybe I got that confused with something else.

Also, we are hardly in junk status.

Its a very simple nett figure of 3x9000, however I am well aware of how The Student Loan Company and the whole student loan thing works as my eldest (luckily) completed her degree two years ago on annual tuition fees of £3k plus a maintenance loan - its when you see the annual statements coming in now that you realise how much she potentially owes.

To hear Ministers speaking of student loans being irrelevant to the individuals is crass and irresponsible, whether or not they ever earn enough to pay them off is not the point, its only a matter of time before credit rating agencies start to take into account the £50/60k student loans and suddenly you've got a lot of graduates who'll struggle with future finance.

Is this the same party that 'invented WMDs'?, so you have said what they would not do - now in you view what would they have done?

Nice try at a deflection from the issue there Sal.
They said they would aim to halve (not eliminate) the deficit in one parliamentary term.
They said they would concentrate on growth as much as cuts.

We'll never know whether that would have succeeded.

All we can go by is by looking at what has happened, not what might have happened.

Before the election, Osborne was warned by Labour and LibDems that by cutting too deep and too early he would stifle the growth that would contribute to recovery and ultimately to the reduction of the deficit and debt.
Nonetheless he set his stall out on two main planks.
1. Eradicate the deficit in one parliamentary term.
2. Preserve the UKs AAA rating.

Epic fail ... even by his own measure.

His tune changed every year in opposition (see Kosh's earlier post) ... in government he has made his case and shown that he can't fulfil it and has also shown he is totally out of his depth.

Osborne will now be under extreme pressure from the right-wing Tory backbenchers to lower taxes and to slash public expenditure. We have already seen, over the EU, that the current Tory leadership buckles under pressure from those back benchers when push comes to shove.