I love newspaper headlines, the way that they shout at you competitively from the stand on a Sunday morning – imploring your attention like a bunch of gape-mouthed nestlings. I have always admired the art with which the headline writer will take the story before him and bleach it of conditionals, sharpening and condensing and pushing it to the limit of credibility so that the faltering fingers of the deluded consumer will feel unable to resist. And yet in all my years of knowing chuckling at the headlines, I don't think I have ever come across such a brazen confection of suggestio falsi and suppressio veri as appeared yesterday in large print across one of the Sundays. "Brown on course to win election," it said.
When I had regained my breath, I thought of some other propositions the headline writer might have touted – with an equal measure of foundation. How about "Pope on course to win Wimbledon"? Or "Simon Heffer on course to win Miss World"? Or if you want a more direct analogy, what about "One-legged man on course to win arse-kicking contest"?
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I have an answer for all those befuddled by the recent mutability of the polls. May I direct you to Betfair, a political betting website that in my experience is almost uncanny in its accuracy. Here you are looking at the predictions that people are willing to defend with their own money, and the money is still overwhelmingly on the Tories. The single most likely outcome – and you can actually watch as the bets go down and the stakes mount up – is that the Tories will have a comfortable overall majority, easily enough to govern for five years. As for the idea that Gordon Brown 's Labour Party could win the election , with an overall majority – that possibility has been flatlining for months at between five and 10 per cent. The reason I trust the punters of Betfair more than I trust a poll in a Sunday paper is that the punters have thought it through with the care of those investing their own money.
They have put themselves in the position of the tens of millions of sensible men and women who will be going to the polling stations in the next few weeks. The gamblers have focused hardheadedly on the reality of the choice.
By Boris Johnson Published: 6:35AM GMT 01 Mar 2010
Comments 107 | Comment on this article
I love newspaper headlines, the way that they shout at you competitively from the stand on a Sunday morning – imploring your attention like a bunch of gape-mouthed nestlings. I have always admired the art with which the headline writer will take the story before him and bleach it of conditionals, sharpening and condensing and pushing it to the limit of credibility so that the faltering fingers of the deluded consumer will feel unable to resist. And yet in all my years of knowing chuckling at the headlines, I don't think I have ever come across such a brazen confection of suggestio falsi and suppressio veri as appeared yesterday in large print across one of the Sundays. "Brown on course to win election," it said.
When I had regained my breath, I thought of some other propositions the headline writer might have touted – with an equal measure of foundation. How about "Pope on course to win Wimbledon"? Or "Simon Heffer on course to win Miss World"? Or if you want a more direct analogy, what about "One-legged man on course to win arse-kicking contest"?
I have an answer for all those befuddled by the recent mutability of the polls. May I direct you to Betfair, a political betting website that in my experience is almost uncanny in its accuracy. Here you are looking at the predictions that people are willing to defend with their own money, and the money is still overwhelmingly on the Tories. The single most likely outcome – and you can actually watch as the bets go down and the stakes mount up – is that the Tories will have a comfortable overall majority, easily enough to govern for five years. As for the idea that Gordon Brown 's Labour Party could win the election , with an overall majority – that possibility has been flatlining for months at between five and 10 per cent. The reason I trust the punters of Betfair more than I trust a poll in a Sunday paper is that the punters have thought it through with the care of those investing their own money.
They have put themselves in the position of the tens of millions of sensible men and women who will be going to the polling stations in the next few weeks. The gamblers have focused hardheadedly on the reality of the choice.
There you are on May 6 (or whenever), pencil poised. Are you really going to give Gordon Brown another five years in Downing Street? This is a Government that has spent the past two years lurching disastrously from one abortive putsch to another. One by one, they have stepped up to plunge the rubber dagger into his impervious back, from Clarke to Hoon to Hewitt to Alistair Darling himself, while the atmosphere has become so poisonous that some talents – Siôn Simon and James Purnell, for example – have not only abandoned their ministerial careers, but given up on the Commons altogether.
Do we really want another five years of the holepunch-hurling horror of Gordon Brown's management style? Do we want the Downing Street switchboard to be endlessly jammed with people bleating to some "bullying helpline"? Is this any way to run a country? And that is just froth compared to the real charges against Labour.
This is a Government that is so addicted to regulation that it has banned about 9,000 courses of human conduct, and done so much damage to the wealth and job-creating sectors of the economy that youth unemployment is higher now than it was 13 years ago when Labour came in, and the gap between rich and poor is bigger than ever.
This is a Government so addicted to political correctness that it has failed in the biggest and noblest ambition of Tony Blair – to tackle educational inequality. Labour has very largely failed to restore authority to teachers; and that is why we have so many bright children who are still held back by their classroom environment; and that is why we have seen a decline in social mobility; and that is why this Labour Government is driven to ever more audacious social engineering, in the desperate hope of reversing the growing dominance of the affluent middle classes in admissions to Russell Group universities – when the problem is not with the universities, but with the schools. Is it not time for reforms that encourage good teachers, and encourage good people to go into teaching?
This is a dying Labour Government whose bankrupt economic policies have left us with a 13 per cent deficit, bigger than that of Greece, and with an ever larger sector of the workforce paid for by the state, and with a private sector facing an ever larger bill to fund it all. Are we really going to continue with an economic model that means the Government is paying the salaries of 70 per cent of the workforce in Newcastle-upon-Tyne? Are we really going to try to muddle along for ever with a top rate of tax considerably higher than all our relevant competitors – higher than in Italy, Australia, China, America, Switzerland and even higher than in France and Germany? Do we really want Hattie Harman to spend the next five years cooking up more of her gender-based regulations on business? Are we going to let Labour ultimately get away with the lies over Iraq, the conniving with Guantánamo, the chaotic handling of our border controls, the fraudulent policy on the Lisbon Treaty? Well, are we?
I don't think so. I reckon the voters will enter those polling stations and give a chance to a sensible and compassionate Conservative administration, that brings new thinking to education, that begins the hard work of tackling the deficit, and that gives encouragement and support to the wealth-creating sectors of the economy, in the knowledge that this is ultimately the only way to generate the cash to help the poorest and the neediest. That's why I am inclined in my election predictions to go with the punters and not the pollsters. If Gordon Brown is on course to win the election, then Elvis Presley is on course to win The X Factor and Shergar to win the Grand National.
Comments: 112
I don't want to argue with Mr Johnson's assertion that the punters have thought the election outcome through since they put their money on the line, but the conservatives do have to climb the following set of hurdles that all should be seen in the perspective that last time labour got some 9.5 million votes: -6 million people now employed in the public sector, of whom 75% on inflation-proofed final salary pensions. Not all of them will vote labour and some of them live in 'safe seat' conservative constituencies, but they have relatives too. -a few million people on means-tested benefits. Again, not all of them will vote labour and some live in 'safe seat' conservative constituencies, but they have relatives too. -Labour activists predominantly hail from public sector and unions and will have much more time on their hands than conservative activists. -Labour require fewer votes per safe seat than the conservatives. -Labour will beat the conservatives hands-down in the murky postal voting stakes. Mr Johnson has plenty to fret about!
Try another test, watch the much maligned BBC question time. Maligned for their alleged left wing chosen audience then count the number of times the socialist gets a round of applause compared with the other panel members. I know where my money's going.
Brilliant Boris! You have the ability to correctly assess and report on a situation in a humerous yet serious manner than no other can, and which makes enthralling reading. You should be in the Cabinet!
Good analysis Mr Johnson I stopped taking opinion polls commissioned by the media as accurate years ago. It was clear to any clear-minded person that there were intrinsic biases depending on the commissioner. All had clearly read Sir Humphrey's ministrations on how to get the result you want from an opinion poll.......... I still think it possible though, that the electorate at large don't fully understand the intrinsic bias of the constituency boundaries on the outcome. That's the big imponderable in the Betfair data, not the manipulation of the polling methodology. So, my take is this: IF the public understand that and factor it in, then you're right. But if not, then the majority may be slightly smaller than you think. Or there might be a hung Parliament. Time for all you lot to go out and bat for Britain. Tell our detractors to take a hike and encourage our people to restore this country's dignity, respect, credibility and prosperity. One or the other won't do. It both or nothing. Go and get on with it, then.
Boris You make a lot of sense, but in one very important way, you have missed the point. The problem is not the Labour Party or the Conservative Party. The problem is that for years a substantial proportion of the British electorate will vote for whoever promises them the most goodies regardless of whether it makes any sense at all. Hence it seems that about 25% or so of the electorate will vote labour regardless. Needless to say, the Labour Party is promising to fix all the problems without any pain at all. The voters are hypnotised by this and accept the big lie without any critical thought whatsoever. We therefore end up with the government we deserve, and then complain bitterly when it all goes wrong (after the event). Those of us who can think, and who are generally the wealth creators in our economy (as opposed to those who are paid out of our taxes) will look to protect themselves as best they can, often by moving away. There is a nasty habit that some posters have on this site of saying words to the effect of "let them go, we don't need them". If those people could just tone down the testosterone a little, they might be wise to google the "brain drain" as it was called in the pre Thatcher years. They might find out how much damage is done to an economy when all the well educated and talented people leave. Tell me it isn't so!
I am now getting worried that Labour may still be in government after June. I think there will be riots in the streets if Brown and Labour win the general election. The only way to prevent this happening is for the party to announce that due to overwhelming correspondence from party members and the general public, the conservatives have decided to hold a referendum immediately after the election to determine the EU position held by the UK population. A referendum should offer a complete withdrawal, retain the status quo and a return to common market status (something similar to Norways position). For an even greater majority the conservatives should clarify the immigration situation by announcing a limit and a commitment to scrap EU human rights and deport ALL non british criminals from our prisons and promise a huge effort to round up the million illegal residents and deport them. I think by taking just these two actions the conservatives would win with a massive majority and bury Labour forever.
I would like to draw a cartoon picture of Cameron on a dais delivering a speech with an enormous elephant with "EU" written upon it standing right behind him.
Despite the excellence of this well deserved berating of this Labour Government and of Brown in particular, Boris is missing the point. All the finger pointing, however justified is wasted on this self-destructive and masochistic electorate. We don't suppose, do we, that the average voter reads or listens to the various party blurbs. Not at all, his narrow little mind is already made up. Cameron is a toff and therefore to be hated. No matter if Brown et al in common with every Labour Govt. since the war has bankrupted the country and worsened its social condition. No matter if we have been dragged into wasteful and unnecessary wars, the voter will still vote for the same rotten lot if it means working out his envious bile on Cameron.
I won't be voting for any party that David Cameron is the leader of - I like my party leaders to have backbone rather than to want to sell us down the river to the EU. Brown is an incompetent moron, but Cameron's not much better.
I bloomin well hope not!
Sion Simon = Talent? Sorry Boris, but you've just killed stone dead every ounce of respect I ever had for you.
The problem seems to be Cameron dipping his toe into a policy and then retracting it. It is unbelievable that after Brown's disastrous Premiership that he trails by less than 20%. Boris, what a wonderfully written piece. However when do you get time to write these articles. I thought you had to be mayor as well
All you UKIP nutters need to realise that you may be the ones who put Labour back in power.
Boris seems to be the only one with his finger on the pulse. The economy is one thing. What I and millions of others fear most is another five years of NuLab control freakery. Just in the last couple of weeks - at a time when they are supposed to be keeping their heads down - we've seen proposals for an unworkable law banning smoking within so many yards of a doorway and now an insane plan to force all dog owners to take a competency test. How much more of this can we take? You can be sure it will take ever more objectionable forms, once Harperson, Balls and co are unleashed. I am astonished Cameron has not made more of NuLab's authoritarian streak - it has always been their Achilles heel. Economies usually come right in the end. Labour's social regimentation will knock the stuffing out of Britain permanently, if it hasn't done so already.
The thing is, Boris, that although we all loathe the present incumbent, we look at the Tories and see merely a slightly better-polished turd. Punters on Betfair are probably right about the outcome, but that doesn't change the fact that we will all be sick of the next administration before it's barely had time to let itself into number 10 and put the kettle on. The fact is, our system of parliamentary democracy is badly outdated - much of the decision-making needs to be devolved to a mix of direct democracy and local representatives. Technology makes this possible. Instead, what we have is more centralised supranational control that is far easier to corrupt and control by a small global elite. Really, if you think this situation is sustainable, it is you who is deluded.
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