Fab 5: Friday 5 February 2010

Your final Fab 5 of the week:

Don’t Belize all you read

I met up last night with Kunal Khatri, formerly of the YF Executive Committee, who readers will remember as the excellent organiser and host of our pub quizzes last year. Hard to escape, we discussed the election and the potential impact the outcome could have on our respective day jobs. Amongst other things, we talked a bit about the polls, which have improved in the last couple of weeks in a much more convincing way than the Labour boost towards the end of last year.

I’m pleased with the direction of travel of the national voting intentions. But the point I made to Kunal was that the media are reporting a minimal amount of data from the marginal seats in comparison to these headline figures, coupled with comments about uniform swing and the likely balance of seats in the next parliament. The reality is that Labour can be narrowing the overall gap in intentions but that it could be making little difference to the outcome of the election if those people aren’t living in the right constituencies. My hunch was that were we to see more polling from the key seats, we’d probably find the Tories with a wider gap than the 7/8 per cent that has been accepted right now as roughly the difference nationally. Morale-wise, this close to the election – and given how the parliamentary party in particular has reacted to polls in recent years – it’s perhaps best that we don’t see such polls and stay focused on the task in hand …

However, there are some out there and today I’ve come across an interesting analysis by Anthony Wells for UK Polling Report of Ipsos-MORI’s aggregated data for 2009 (that is, all their polls combined), followed up on by Andrew Sparrow. What we see is the Tories – last year, so not accounting for the recent downturn in their fortunes – having a 5% larger lead (a somewhat formidable 21% lead) in Lab-Con marginals. The swing to the Tories in these seats is greater than the swing in safe Labour seats and quite significantly better than that in safe Tory seats.

In other words, they appear to be winning over voters where it matters. There’s one reason for that: a certain Lord Ashcroft. Which is why it’s so important his personal tax situation is clarified.

The lesson is that we mustn’t get complacent about the direction of travel and about the electoral system working in our favour. And we mustn’t stop the fight.

UPDATE: I forgot to include a link to some recent ICM polling of marginals for the News of the World.

The Young Fabians need you!

Cartoons have been a part of politics for as long as politicians. Their popularity is about far more than aesthetics. A great cartoon can highlight an issue or satarise the powerful in ways that few articles can.

Watching Blair’s evidence at the Chilcott Inquiry, for example, I was reminded of Gerald Scarfe’s famous cartoon of the former Prime Minister. Grumpy and weighed down with Iraq’s ball and chain, it stripped Blair of his slick gloss in a way that no committee – however distinguished – could.

The current edition of Anticipations – which will be hitting members doorsteps in the coming days – contains the first ever Young Fabians cartoon (see above). Placed above the Message from the Editor, it captures my view that British politicians have been left behind online. I argue that WebCameron – which is supposed to represent the best our politicians can offer – is little more than the moving picture equivalent of a set piece ministerial speech or top line briefing. Labour should learn the real lessons of the web and use its power to give people meaningful control over the public services that shape their lives.

I want to include more cartoons in future magazines – so this is a call to arms! If you’re a cartoonist and would like to contribute to a future edition of Anticipations, to paraphrase the words beneath perhaps the most famous political cartoon of them all, we need you! Please get in touch.

Also, we’re including Letters to the Editor in the next edition of Anticipations.  Let me know your thoughts about the cartoon and anything else in the magazine. Did you passionately disagree with any of the contributors? Did you strongly support the position of an article? If so, let me know.

We’re always looking to make Anticipations even better. If you have any ideas for how it could be improved, whether it’s new sections, features or topics, we want to hear from you.

I hope you enjoy reading the magazine!

James Green

Anticipations Editor

Running on empty: are energy companies the new banks?

A somewhat dramatic headline over at The Guardian’s website – ‘Ofgem: UK cannot trust energy companies to keep the lights on’, referring to an Ofgem report released on Wednesday which proposes moving energy supply away from the competitive markets model.

Actually, the gas and electricity regulator’s Project Discovery is clear that such an option is the most radical of the potential reforms it suggests.  The Guardian reports that the carbon tax that Ofgem advocates as an incentive for the big energy suppliers to build new, more environmentally friendly, power stations, may appear in the pre-election Budget.  

We often hear of being taken to the brink of a shutdown – particularly during harsh winters – but what if the lights did go out?

Well, for one, I’m pretty sure the public reaction to the energy companies would rival that which Britain’s bankers have experienced in the last 18 months. Profits would be highlighted, bonuses lambasted, and the limits of regulation put under scrutiny. Nationalisation would likely be back on the agenda. But hopefully Britain’s commercial gas and electricity suppliers don’t see their business models as being in a similar vein to high street banks.

The view that the basic product they offer – the power we need to live our lives, both in business and in leisure - is so essential to everyday life that they can ride the storm is dangerous for us. Yet this is exactly what the banking world has succeeded in doing. You can’t immediately boycott your gas and electricity supplier the day after their sailing close to critical levels of supply has backfired.  So can they be relied upon to do the right thing?

It’s one to watch – but what is certain is the protests and hatred that would ensue. Not least because without electricity, 21st century Britain wouldn’t know what else to do other than take to the streets.