Daily catch-up: left versus right, and more Questions To Which The Answer Is No

Graphs, numbers, pictures (but no kitteh) and even some words selected for you from the digital soup

John Rentoul
Thursday 30 October 2014 10:09 GMT
Comments

Your support helps us to tell the story

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.

The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.

Your support makes all the difference.

1. Controversial graph from Chris Jones, plotting total support in opinion polls for “the left”, Labour plus Lib Dem plus Green and Nationalists, versus “the right”, Conservatives plus UKIP. On that basis the left-right split has only recently approached 50-50.

Of course, the left-right categories are disputed. The Lib Dems are in coalition with the Conservatives and, as Matthew Goodwin and Rob Ford have been trying to tell us for some time, much of UKIP’s support comes from traditional Labour voters.

Andrew Cooper, the Prime Minister’s former pollster, pointed out a YouGov poll that found only 58 per cent of Conservative supporters and 47 per cent of UKIP supporters see themselves as being on the right, and only 61 per cent of Labour supporters and 37 per cent of Liberal Democrats as on the left.

2. The idea that opinion-poll numbers can be aggregated into great blocs of these kinds is a common fallacy on both left and right. “The imaginary progressive consensus is one of the most powerful stupid ideas in politics.” Another superb analysis of Labour's weaknesses by Hopi Sen. But the Tories who think they could gain by an electoral pact with UKIP are just as daft.

3. Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail, gave a speech on Tuesday, reproduced on The Spectator website yesterday, laying in to Hacked Off and the rest of what he called the “Liberal Establishment” (with initial capitals). This bit was quite colourful:

“Fuelling the whole sorry affair was a tiny, unrepresentative pressure group – but one with a very loud voice in parts of the left-wing media and political establishment – run by zealots, priapic so-called celebrities, and small town academics, all united to cast the debate as a biblical fight to the death between good and evil, with the press cast in the role of the devil.”

I am sorry to say that I took unreasonable pleasure from his using “grizzly” to mean “grisly”. Doesn’t he have a sub-editor?

4. Prime Minister’s Questions was another game of smokes and daggers yesterday: my review for Independent Voices.

5. The QTWTAIN cult is spreading around the world. Adherents from Colfe's History Department have taken the “Questions To Which The Answer Is No” message to The Gambia, where Matt Scobie examined an inspiring example at Kotu School.

_________

A more conventional QTWTAIN was asked yesterday by Iain Martin. “Will Nicola Sturgeon turn out to be as annoying as Alex Salmond was?” The answer is still No, because Salmond was so annoying, but Martin makes the good point that Sturgeon may turn out to be less clever and appealing than we thought.

6. And finally, thanks to Louisa Heaton for this:

“I was going to tell a joke about sodium, but then I thought, ‘Na’.”

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in