And yet you are simply unable to clarify why you think Ed Balls would make a far better Chancellor.

Clearly you've absolved him of any of the consequences of his several years spent running the treasury, and as Brown's "economic guru" throughout the entire tenure of the last Govt.

Now, 2yrs into trying to fix a thoroughly shafted economy, one that was left with a budget deficit 2nd only to Greece and the third highest level of private debt in the entire world, and you're blaming the incumbent for not providing "growth"?

fking LOL.

Can we clarify one thing - the only reason any incoming government didn't annihilate spending (especially on the State and handouts) was because these people have a vote - not because they cared about the spending or those being spent upon - it was utterly, utterly selfish and all about getting elected and re-elected - nothing more, nothing less.

Osborne is quite gormless and doesn't seem to really have a coherant plan. He's done whats needed to stop things getting much worse but aside from that I'm not sure he's got any ideas.

Perhaps but being slightly less st than the alternative is pretty much the best you can say about the Tories these days.

What conclusion do you draw from that regarding the Tories nationwide popularity?

So it can't just be the Conservatives fail to get the votes where they need them? That map has a lot of blue but if you look closer you'll see a lot of the blue sections are large constituencies in terms of land area. Places like Birmingham have a very condensed population and albiet it's a spec of red on the map its still 20 odd seats.

It is interesting the Tories generally do well in England (apart from large sections of the North it seems) but there's more giant panda's than Tory MP's in Scotland. Why do they struggle so much in Wales, Scotland and N Ireland? Blaming everybody but the Tories everytime the Tories fail to get a majority does smack of sour grapes though. In terms of land size that map is pretty even between Blue and Red, just theres more seats up for grabs in the heavily populated areas (obviously).

What I am saying is that due to the unholy mess NuLab left us in, coupled to the Euro nightmare, compounded by a global turndown and the cherry on top of the st pie being increased commodity prices, that this is about as good as it gets. Any other approach would have been worse.

Why do you think that? Can it not just be people in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have different political viewpoints to those in England? As for the map, constituencies are designed to have pretty much the same amount of voters in them as each other which is totally right (albiet rarely achieved accurately). A factor of that is a spec on the map can have 5 million people in it and a big blue area is more rural, so it looks like Tory landslide when it's not. That would conform to stereotype and generalisation of more expensive, wealther parts of the country with higher levels of home ownership voting Tory and the more dense, communal areas such as Birmingham voting Labour.

Could it just be that places like Scotland, Wales etc relies more on the state so it naturally sides with the left sided parties? It's interesting to note 84% of the UK's population is in England so maybe there's a case for the other nations having less say in who enters Downing Street.

Again where has this idea come from? Even in the three elections Labour won, the Conservative's still averaged 9 million votes a time. Indeed despite Labour's landslide in terms of seats in 1997, Major's Tories actually got more votes than Labour did in 2005. Seeing as the Conservative's were in office for the 18 years prior to Blair becoming PM, who do you blame for the 1997 one? Or do we largely ignore that on the basis that the 2005 election was incredibly weird, you shouldnt be able to return a 40 odd seat majority with 9.5million votes really.

What I'm saying is it's not like the Tories have lost a voterbase, I'm not sure swinging to the right is going to help them.

The public finance deficit is obviously a massive issue and the previous Government has to take responsibility for that but the rest of it is external factors. I'd hate to be the Chancellor right now, any Chancellor of any party because he/she literally would find they have no options.

Perhaps but those disillusioned Conservatives are probably the same people who were voting for Hague and Howard, well the Tories weren't winning then so getting them back isn't going to win them anything. This is why I question the wisdom of Cameron shifting to the right because a) He'd look ridiculous and b) There's no evidence to suggest that'll actually work. He doesn't need the core right-wingers, he needs to seize the centre ground. Whichever party manages that usually wins.

Don't read too much into polling, they can change every month depending on peoples knee jerk reactions to things. For instance the Tories were doing ok poll wise until the budget this year and they've fallen off a cliff since.

I wouldn't go that far because if the public really agreed with that they wouldn't have voted for Blair three times. The fact is during the Blair years (particularly at the start) nobody had any real complaints. Plenty of people experienced a better health service, their children went to upgraded schools and the economy grew for 8 years in a row. You can bang on about how the economy was already improving prior to '97 all you like but the fact is it happened on Labour's watch.

The voters main concern about Labour had always been 'can they handle the economy?' and in the Foot/Kinnock years they offered nothing to suggest they could. By the end of the 90s you'd had the ERM fiasco, Labour had 're-branded' and Blair just came along at the right time. Co-inciding with a public wanting something more 'modern' to go with the whole 'cool Britannia' thing, old fashioned Tweed Tories were out and the 'Third Way' was king. Glasses were half full for a change, Conservatism was seen as 'boring' and something your parents subscribed to. It just fit in with the new world of Dot Com, texting and zinc kitchen worktops. The Tories recognised this and Cameron has tried to make Conservatism cool, oh dear.

I think had Labour lost in 2005 then things may have been different. It almost seems you want them in for a while to spend money, but you want to get them out before they spend too much. If that makes sense. The Conservatives were still sticking with Howard at that point though, another old grey haired man which showed they just didn't get it. Maybe if Cameron was five years older and leader of the party then he might've been able to cash in on the Iraq war unpopularity and win it for the Tories then.

He's sort of subscribing to the Obama plan isn't he? In America term limits mean you do what you want for 8 years because the 9th is someone elses problem. We might reach a point where something has to give and some short term borrowing is the only option - so long as it's spent properly which is where the plan would really fall down.

1) Not the long term (2 years +) unemployed numbers, they are still growing, albeit slowly.
2) The stats seem all over the place at the moment, as is often said, stats are easy to massage in favour of whichever colour tie the message is from.
3) The full report upon the state of U.K. economy is painting a far less rosy picture than your two selective quotes. The recent growth/development spending initiated are praiseworthy, albeit very belated and its over two years economists have been calling for growth plans. Better late than never.
4)The IMF have sent a strong signal to the Government regarding U.K. lack of growth. Government now need to develop/introduce growth plans ready for the next Budget. Ease off/slow pace of the cuts.
5) The Tories didn't even raise spending plans of the Labour Government as an issue, like I said lousy in opposition and unelectable.
6) I'm not sure Osbourne has stabilised our 'sinking ship'. Looks to me that the IMF have been giving Government the benefit of some doubt for the past 18 months and now signal for a change of direction (or at least a swerve)
7) I agree the Labour Government did 'Balls' it up.