Calculators on overdrive.

This Thursday the voters of The United Kingdom will go to the polls to elect their next Government.

The current Conservative Liberal Democrat Coalition is spinning for it's life trying to portray the economy zooming along in 6th gear, but the reality is it's still by and large a banjaxed car with a reconditioned engine that is going great guns for now, but may splutter to a halt in the near future.

The Labour Party, as Right Wing as ever, is engaged in a game of taking very small scale initiatives, and trying to make them out to be huge groundbreaking promises.  This is in order to try and deflect attention from the real issues affecting the Working Class in the UK, so they will not be forced to make any promises that will come back to haunt them, as it has the Labour Party here.  It really is sickening to see their electoral machine in full flow. Labour are merely saying we'll cut as much financially as the Tories will, but we will do it in other areas.  If you look at the backgrounds of many Candidates standing for Labour, they are near identical to their Tory counterparts.  there are very few miners sons standing for Labour this time around. Dennis Skinner is one, but is he the only one? Thankfully, a lot of people are not being fooled by the Labour rhetoric that the country would be a far worse place if the Tories remained in power instead of Labour taking over.  Voters in Scotland now understand (Which they would have not say 20 years ago) that a majority Labour Government, would be as bad as a Tory Government, with more fillups to the rich, be it via tax cuts or privatisations. This is a big part of the reason quite a number of people who voted NO in the Scottish Referendum intend on voting SNP on Thursday.

UKIP's Current Aggregate Poll number has them on 14%.  This is a figure that wildly fluctuates. For example there will be areas in the South East if England were UKIP could get over 20%, but there are many areas in the North of England were they would only get 5-7%. Talking anecdotally to some people from England, there is a sense the media are purposely understating the level of support in the South East of England for UKIP  as they try to push the Tories at all costs, in the forlorn hope Cameron would gain an overall majority. 

The last time around (2010) The Conservatives got 36.1% of the vote and 307 seats. The Labour Party got 258 seats on a vote of 29%, and the Liberal Democrats got 57 seats on a vote of 23%. There were a number of constituencies were Lib Dem Candidates came second, just behind the Labour or Tory candidate. Thus they could have easily ended up with over 70 seats, but it was not to be.   The poll of polls, an amalgam of all the different opinion polls, extracted and crunched to get a cumulative average result, have the Conservatives on 34%, and The Labour Party on 33%, UKIP on 14% and The Liberal Democrats on 8%.  Despite the low result of 8%, commentators say the Lib Dem vote is quite compact, with certain areas were it does really well, and others were it barely registers. Thus some commentators say the Lib Dems could get 20-25 seats.  Yet at the same time some have said UKIP will only get 3 or 4 seats, despite being 14% on the latest poll.  I just don't know how they could make such a disparity between Lib Dem and UKIP chances, unless it was a concerted effort to give  the Conservatives every jockey back it can. I fear that UKIP will get higher than 14%, and could even end up with over 10 MP's.  The last time around the Tories ended up 19 short of a Majority.  Doing the deal with the Liberal Democrats gave them a majority of 38.  Lib Dems and Labour would have still been 11 short of a majority back then. 

The predictions are that the Conservatives would be extremely lucky, when all is factored in, to get over 300 seats. Most say they could and would end up around the 390 mark.  They would badly need to get at the very least the 392 mark to make a Conservative-Lib Dem-DUP coalition reach the magic 326 number - 392 Tory seats, 25 Lib Dem Seats, and DUP retaking East Belfast and getting 9.  It is highly likely the end result will see this triumvirate between them failing to get 326 or more.

Labour got 258 the last time.  If the predictions are right, and the SNP get 50 seats in Scotland (Could be even more) and , assuming the Liberal Democrats hold onto the 2 strongest of the 11 seats it got in 2010, that would put Labour on 17 seats in Scotland, leaving Labour with 234 seats if they got the exact same result as 2010 in England and Wales.  Add the 50 SNP seats to that number, it leaves us with a total of 284. A whopping 42 seats short of a majority.  Thus it looks highly likely, based on the opinion polls, the next government is set to be a minority one. 

How does this affect us in the Republic of Ireland?  The biggest affect will be in the rate that Sterling may go to. It was recently at 70p to €1, and the lower the pence goes vs the cent, the better it is for Irish businesses as it makes our goods more cheaper to UK consumers, and thus they are more likely to buy Irish.  But Sterling has already gone up to almost 74p, and if the result on Thursday is as fractious as the polls and analysts expect, it could push Sterling up even more, and be bad news for our economy, from an export and tourism point of view.  Also if the Markets took a really bad view of the overall situation in the UK, and Sterling climbed up to say 86/87p to €1, we could once more see large tailbacks on the M1 into Newry.

Another outcome, should the numbers stack up as some are predicting, is that proposals for an in/out Referendum on the UK's membership of the EU would not see the light of day, as a Majority of Liberal Democrat, Labour and SNP reject this idea.  So if the Conservatives managed to cobble together a minority Government, and put a bill to Parliament calling on the In/out Referendum to be held, it would be defeated, and the Tories would happily put the issue well and truly to bed.

The third and final issue that concerns us is the DUP. Should they be in a position to be dealmakers, and the Conservatives come on bended knee to them looking for their support, a demand to be allowed reduce Corporation Tax rates in the North would undoubtedly be very high on, if not top of their list. This angers me, as the DUP should instead be calling on the Conservatives agreeing to allow the Stormont Assembly significantly increase the minimum wage, and other state supports, instead of seeking to make profitable foreign companies even more profitable, as many people in Northern Ireland struggle to make ends meet.

I of course hope that a good number of people in the UK vote TUSC or Left Unity, and that we see many councillors elected from both, which could lead to some of those councillors begin elected to Westminster the next time around.

Plenty of Popcorn at the ready for Thursday night!

Where now for Greece?

Where now for Greece?

So the left in Europe is rightly celebrating, with many predicting the first caricature on a radically changed Political Drawing Board has been drawn.  With other Anti Austerity Parties riding high in the polls, you can be sure there was many a double brandy was downed in Davos last week. A lot of hopes have been pinned on Syriza's back, but can they live up to them?

An immediate hurdle is approaching at galloping speed. Two Big instalments are due on Greece's debt in March and June. Will Syriza have the time & wriggle room to try and change this in anyway? If they do not, and the 2 payments went ahead as planned, could this piss off a good chunk of the people who supported Syriza, or will these people take the position of this was the previous governments doing, and give Syriza the full benefit of the doubt? 

A lot of Syriza's programme, from what I've seen of it, is in many areas essentially headlines and no article. This has left us in the dark as to what exactly the new Government will do with regards some of the key issues facing the Greek economy and the working class. Will the bulk of the Greek working class actively engage in moving to ensure Syriza are left no wriggle room, and ensure they fulfiil as many of it's election promises as is feasibly possible, or will they be able to do an Obama and roll back on promises, trying to make out it's not their fault, but due to the EU/IMF, despite their best efforts, they were unable to do X.Y and Z as they had promised.  There was a period in Ireland after Fine Gael and Labour took power, were they got away with a certain amount of things, as a good number of people believed them when they claimed "That wasn't our doing it was Fianna Fails". 

But then there came a time when people had  enough f that excuse, and began to realise there were a number of Austerity measures that had nothing to do with the previous government, but were wholly the creation of the new government. Thus their poll ratings plummeted, as was evidence in the differences between the results of the first Dublin West Bye Election and the second one.  So if a rollback is started by Syriza, how much of a "honeymoon period" would they have before things started to go sour for them? I await the Programme for Government when it's published, and I like many others will no doubt pore over it with hope, that it will indeed be genuinely radical.

Personally I am disappointed with the KKE. They had a chance to try and ensure Syriza was held to account as much as is feasibly possible.  They didn;t have to go into an explicit coalition arrangement with Syriza. They could have agreed a memorandum of understanding that if certain conditions were met and maintained, the KKE would vote with Syriza in Parliament. to me this would be doing it's duty to best represent the Greek working class.  Instead we have Syriza going into bed with an avowedly Right wing party, and pondering what sort of Devillish deal they may have concocted to get their support.  My heart is hoping that Independent Greeks will do a reverse Labour Party, and will capitulate, agreeing to everything Syriza wants, as the whiff of Ministerial office proves too strong an elixir for them.  My head says otherwise. 

There are many Economists/ economic commentators, (even those shrilling and feverishly banging the Pro Austerity drum) who accept the current situation facing Greece is unsustainable and must be changed.  Even with the big writedown Greece got at the last round of negotiations leaves Greece at a wholly unsustainable debt level of 170%.  Putting it in comparison, I remember in 2009-2010 Economic commentators on RTE Radio predicting armageddon if Ireland's Debt rose to 140%.  Thus it is inevitable that a bullet will be bitten and there will be various powerful figures sitting around a table with the Greek Government in either Frankfurt or Brussels, intent on hammering out a deal.  Will what Syriza brings to the table be seismic and final, as the left across Europe is hoping (And some, though most not) praying for? The other tack Syriza might take, which is a concern of Leftists is that what it initially brings to the table would be merely setting a out of a stall, and then watering their offering down quite a bit by the conclusion of negotiations. 

So there will be very interesting times in Greece over the next period. It really has the potential to give another powerful shot in the arm to the Anti Austerity agenda across Europe, with voters across many countries declaring "I'll have what the Greeks are having", and we could see Podemos in Spain, The Left Bloc in Portugal etc taking power either on their own, or as the bigger party in a coalition.  Some have expressed concerns that Syriza could break a lot of it's promises and severely dash the hopes and expectations of many across Europe.  I am really and truly keeping my fingers crossed the latter will not happen, but only time will tell...