Thought Id start this one going because its rather dead on this board at the moment and I suppose all my usual muckers are either at the Stella tennis event watching Dim Tim (lose again) or at Henly Regatta eating cucumber sandwiches (they wish,...NOT).

Anyway please feel free to just talk to yourself blast away and let it go on any company or subject you wish. Just wish Id thought of this one before.

cheers GF.

By Peter Dominiczak, Steven Swinford, Christopher Hope and Matthew Holehouse
10:00PM GMT 21 Nov 2014
Labour in chaos following the sacking of Emily Thornberry as Ukip says it will replace them as the party of the working class

Ed Miliband is facing further turmoil in the wake of the Rochester and Strood by-election as Ukip claimed it was now poised to replace Labour as the party of the working class.

Labour was in crisis after Mr Miliband was forced to sack Emily Thornberry from his shadow cabinet over a "contemptuous" tweet she posted of a house draped in England flags with a white van in the driveway while campaigning in Kent.

Mr Miliband had been hoping that the Rochester by-election would mark a change in his fortunes and turn the focus on to David Cameron and the threat faced to the Tories by Nigel Farage and Ukip.

However, the party’s division over the handling of Miss Thornberry’s sacking placed spotlight once again on Mr Miliband’s leadership and the direction of his party and allowed Mr Cameron to accuse the Labour leader of "sneering" at Britain’s working classes.

One senior Labour MP warned that the party was losing touch with its traditional voters, saying "the leadership are talking Swahili when ordinary people in ordinary jobs are talking English".

Douglas Carswell, who last month became Ukip’s first MP, said the row showed that the "Labour leadership despises ordinary folk" and is "no longer in touch with working people".

Ukip will displace Labour as the party of working class voters because it is "prepared to take on the vested interests in the economy, politics and Brussels", Mr Carswell said.

Mark Reckless, a former Tory, won Thursday’s by-election for Ukip with 16,867 votes - 42 per cent of the total cast.

The Tories were in second place with 13,947 – 35 per cent – of the vote despite Mr Cameron having previously pledged to "throw the kitchen sink" at the campaign in a bid to defeat Mr Reckless.

Labour received just 17 per cent of the vote and the Lib Dems were humiliated after being overtaken by the Green Party and coming fifth with just 0.1 per cent.

Mr Farage said that the result showed that his party was now capable of winning anywhere in the country and predicted that more MPs are likely to defect to his party.

However, pollsters and senior Conservatives predicted that the Tories would win the seat in May as Ukip’s margin of victory was lower than had been expected.

There was intense speculation that Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, could be planning to join Ukip after he introduced Mr Reckless as he was sworn into the House of Commons and then voted alongside him against the Government in a vote about the NHS.

However, it was Mr Miliband and Labour who faced the biggest questions after the by-election following the furore caused by Miss Thornberry.

Miss Thornberry was sacked as shadow attorney general shortly after 10pm on Thursday after prompting anger when she posted a picture of the house and captioned it "Image from Rochester".

The Prime Minister accused Labour of "sneering" at patriotic British working people and Dan Ware, the owner of the house, described her as a "snob".

Mr Miliband was said by senior sources to be "f***ing furious" at Miss Thornberry. Labour sources likened the gaffe to the one made by Gordon Brown in 2010 when he was overheard labelling Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman” while campaigning.

However, senior Labour MPs criticised his handling of the situation.

Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, said that the situation highlighted that there are not enough "authentic working class voices in the shadow cabinet".

"There aren’t enough authentic working class voices in the shadow cabinet or the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] as a whole," he said.

"There are far too many people who have started off as MPs assistants and ministerial bag carriers who have made it up the ranks. The PLP needs a much wider base, people who have worked in supermarkets and on building sites.

"It makes it more difficult for the labour party to understand and communicate with the range of working people in this country."

He added: "It’s the language that’s used by some of the leadership that’s not connecting with the problems that our voters and potential voters. Some in the leadership are talking Swahili when ordinary people in ordinary jobs are talking English.

"This is a huge catastrophe for the Conservatives, they have lost two people, they have lost a seat that they have won by 10,000 and it has turned into a story about a sneering Labour MP."

Austin Mitchell, MP for Great Grimsby, said Miss Thornberry’s sacking was "totally unnecessary".

"The leader has bigger things to worry about. He shouldn’t have his acolytes running about getting people to resign over trivia," he said.

Alan Johnson, who in recent weeks has been the subject of feverish leadership speculation, said he did not think it was a "resignation scandal".

And Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North, said: "It illustrates what lots of people round the country suspect the country is run by an out of touch metropolitan elite that doesn’t understand anything about their lives, doesn’t understand their concerns and sneer at them."

A senior Labour source said: "Everybody said that Rochester would be the turning point and suddenly everyone would be focusing on Cameron and his problems with Ukip. But despite the Tories losing to Farage, everybody is still talking about Ed Miliband and Emily Thornberry. It’s a disaster.

The Telegraph

The leadership of the Labour party have no connection with working people. It is about time that the public realised it. It has become a party run by detached, intellectuals. They live in Islington and Hampstead. Examples have been Foot, Blair, Miliband, Glenda Jackson, Manselson and plenty of others. It was those intellectuals that made it easy for immigrants to come here because they thought it would increase the Labour vote.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/spectator-life/spectator-life-life/9022871/socialist-climbing/

Revealed: Ed Miliband's Bollinger bolsheviks

Despite the class-war rhetoric, Labour’s elite is still intensely comfortable with being filthy rich — and it’s becoming ever more so

Not a day goes by without some second-tier shadow minister squawking about the ‘cabinet of millionaires’. Under the new politics that Ed Miliband heralded when he won the Labour leadership, the backgrounds of David Cameron and his posho chums are fair game.

Some on the red side are a little quieter on the topic of dosh and background, though. Thanks to a complex web of companies, foundations and trusts, no one knows exactly how much money Tony Blair has made since he left office, but it’s safe to say it’s a bucketload. The earning capacity of other architects of New Labour — Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell, for instance — is well documented. And things aren’t exactly grim for the colleagues they left behind at the coalface. In the Miliband ranks there are some spectacularly rich individuals: gold-plated MPs, millionaire spin doctors and property-tycoon donors. Milibandism is awash with money.

Politicians’ wealth and background is an obvious line of attack for any Labour team, especially one as left of centre as Miliband’s, yet you might think Ed would have a look around his own back yard first. Perhaps he could start in his actual back garden; he has acknowledged that his house, valued at £2.3 million, would be subject to the sort of mansion tax he wants to introduce. It’s in Dartmouth Park, a leafy corner of north London that’s a favourite with Labour’s current ruling class — nice schools, a low crime rate and not too many poor people.

Miliband played the market well, selling flats and a house in Hampstead as well as employing some rather nifty accounting with his brother and mother in what appears to be a very efficient reaction to their inheritance from his late father. Add to that a house in Doncaster, his £139,000 salary and his wife’s reported income of £200,000 at the Bar, and life is pretty rosy for the Labour leader. He is in good -company, too.

On the Labour benches, the steel heiress Margaret Hodge’s millions are an obvious example. Steel giants Stemcor have made the Oppenheimers more than £190 million and their daughter Margaret, with her £18 million slice, is the richest woman in Parliament. Hodge and her brother own 9 per cent of the company, though Hodge describes this as ‘tiny’. And who could forget Shaun Woodward, who married a Sainsbury’s heiress and declares property in ‘France, New York State and the West Indies from which rental income is received’? With a good claim to being the richest man in Westminster, the former Northern Ireland Secretary has done well out of property, selling a St James’s Park townhouse to Sting for £5.7 million, making about £3 million on the deal and ploughing the cash back into other properties. In 2011 it was reported that Woodward sold his palatial Hamptons retreat for £11.5 million, leaving he and his wife with just half a dozen properties. Woodward sold Sarsden House, his Oxfordshire pile, in 2006 for £24 million. It is not known whether he retained the services of its famous butler.

While Ed’s focus groups tell him to whack the government as ‘out of touch’ Etonian toffs, you will not hear Harriet Harman having a dig at Osborne for going to St Paul’s. The Labour deputy leader is a niece of the Earl of Longford, has a Suffolk estate, and an is Old Paulina herself. Not content with her bumper government pension, she managed to get hubby a seat on the gravy train too. Old-timer socialist Michael Meacher could help solve the housing shortage by flogging one of the ten homes that make up his extensive property portfolio.

You don’t hear shadow international development secretary Hilary Benn saying much about Dave and co having big houses either. Along with a £2 million pad in Chiswick, Benn does not like to mention the family estate. While his old man gave up his titles to become an MP, the Benns were a little more reluctant to lose all those acres of Essex.

I would have thought the images of the white van, union jacks and driver would make perfect advertisement for the little englanders of the Tory Right (similar in nature to Haze) and the mob members of UKIP.

Reminds me of images of football match yobs banned from away matches in Europe.

God help British Political standards.
==

The days of Cameron and his invitation to Lynton Crosby to debase decent standards of political life.

Mind the likes of Haze and Hairy one will probably immerse themselves at the new level.

I wonder what they are defending against or hoping for?

We will see, but I still guess the moderate middle are going to turn their back on gutter politics driven by the media and cohorts.

Ah, so you have a problem with the average working stiff eh Fred?


Why am I not surprised??

Ed Miliband's leadership in turmoil after Rochester and Strood by-election disaster
Labour in chaos following the sacking of Emily Thornberry as Ukip says it will replace them as the party of the working class

By Peter Dominiczak, Steven Swinford, Christopher Hope and Matthew Holehouse10:00PM GMT 21 Nov 2014
Ed Miliband is facing further turmoil in the wake of the Rochester and Strood by-election as Ukip claimed it was now poised to replace Labour as the party of the working class.
Labour was in crisis after Mr Miliband was forced to sack Emily Thornberry from his shadow cabinet over a "contemptuous" tweet she posted of a house draped in England flags with a white van in the driveway while campaigning in Kent.
Mr Miliband had been hoping that the Rochester by-election would mark a change in his fortunes and turn the focus on to David Cameron and the threat faced to the Tories by Nigel Farage and Ukip.
However, the party’s division over the handling of Miss Thornberry’s sacking placed spotlight once again on Mr Miliband’s leadership and the direction of his party and allowed Mr Cameron to accuse the Labour leader of "sneering" at Britain’s working classes.
One senior Labour MP warned that the party was losing touch with its traditional voters, saying "the leadership are talking Swahili when ordinary people in ordinary jobs are talking English".


Douglas Carswell, who last month became Ukip’s first MP, said the row showed that the "Labour leadership despises ordinary folk" and is "no longer in touch with working people".
Ukip will displace Labour as the party of working class voters because it is "prepared to take on the vested interests in the economy, politics and Brussels", Mr Carswell said.
Mark Reckless, a former Tory, won Thursday’s by-election for Ukip with 16,867 votes - 42 per cent of the total cast.
The Tories were in second place with 13,947 – 35 per cent – of the vote despite Mr Cameron having previously pledged to "throw the kitchen sink" at the campaign in a bid to defeat Mr Reckless.
Labour received just 17 per cent of the vote and the Lib Dems were humiliated after being overtaken by the Green Party and coming fifth with just 0.1 per cent.
Mr Farage said that the result showed that his party was now capable of winning anywhere in the country and predicted that more MPs are likely to defect to his party.
However, pollsters and senior Conservatives predicted that the Tories would win the seat in May as Ukip’s margin of victory was lower than had been expected.
There was intense speculation that Philip Hollobone, the Tory MP for Kettering, could be planning to join Ukip after he introduced Mr Reckless as he was sworn into the House of Commons and then voted alongside him against the Government in a vote about the NHS.
However, it was Mr Miliband and Labour who faced the biggest questions after the by-election following the furore caused by Miss Thornberry.
Miss Thornberry was sacked as shadow attorney general shortly after 10pm on Thursday after prompting anger when she posted a picture of the house and captioned it "Image from Rochester".
The Prime Minister accused Labour of "sneering" at patriotic British working people and Dan Ware, the owner of the house, described her as a "snob".
Mr Miliband was said by senior sources to be "f***ing furious" at Miss Thornberry. Labour sources likened the gaffe to the one made by Gordon Brown in 2010 when he was overheard labelling Gillian Duffy a “bigoted woman” while campaigning.
However, senior Labour MPs criticised his handling of the situation.
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, said that the situation highlighted that there are not enough "authentic working class voices in the shadow cabinet".
"There aren’t enough authentic working class voices in the shadow cabinet or the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] as a whole," he said.
"There are far too many people who have started off as MPs assistants and ministerial bag carriers who have made it up the ranks. The PLP needs a much wider base, people who have worked in supermarkets and on building sites.
"It makes it more difficult for the labour party to understand and communicate with the range of working people in this country."
He added: "It’s the language that’s used by some of the leadership that’s not connecting with the problems that our voters and potential voters. Some in the leadership are talking Swahili when ordinary people in ordinary jobs are talking English.
"This is a huge catastrophe for the Conservatives, they have lost two people, they have lost a seat that they have won by 10,000 and it has turned into a story about a sneering Labour MP."
Austin Mitchell, MP for Great Grimsby, said Miss Thornberry’s sacking was "totally unnecessary".
"The leader has bigger things to worry about. He shouldn’t have his acolytes running about getting people to resign over trivia," he said.
Alan Johnson, who in recent weeks has been the subject of feverish leadership speculation, said he did not think it was a "resignation scandal".
And Ian Austin, Labour MP for Dudley North, said: "It illustrates what lots of people round the country suspect the country is run by an out of touch metropolitan elite that doesn’t understand anything about their lives, doesn’t understand their concerns and sneer at them."
A senior Labour source said: "Everybody said that Rochester would be the turning point and suddenly everyone would be focusing on Cameron and his problems with Ukip. But despite the Tories losing to Farage, everybody is still talking about Ed Miliband and Emily Thornberry. It’s a disaster

Max,

You seem to be labeling a group as "average working stiff" please elucidate which group you are referring to more specifically and the particular features which you are thinking of.

SNP
although one might argue that SNP has a greater affinity to labour than the tories, it is more than presumptuous to assume that they would be happy to (formally) align themselves with the labour party in westminster

i think, that like UKIP, they will sell themselves to the highest bidder with little regard to the colour of the rosette

Emily Thornberry Twitter row: white van man Dan Ware is cage fighter who says 'she's caused me a lot of grief'
Neighbours suggest Emily Thornberry might not have tweeted picture of "gentle giant" Dan Ware's house if she had seen his muscular frame

Gordon Rayner By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter5:56PM GMT 21 Nov 2014
Had Emily Thornberry known that the occupant of the now famous “three flag house” was a heavily-built cage fighter, she may well have thought twice before posting her career-ending tweet.
On Friday Dan Ware got his own back by turning up on Mrs Thornberry’s doorstep in Islington, north London, where he was photographed knocking on her front door for the benefit of the tabloid newspaper that had taken him there.
He said Mrs Thornberry’s “snobby” tweet proved that “Labour is full of the upper classes”, adding: “I’ve come to her massive £3 million house in Islington to demand a personal apology from Miss Thornberry, Ed Miliband and the Labour Party on behalf of all ordinary, decent working people.

“I think they need to get out of their mansions and visit the working class.”
Mrs Thornberry had already left for Parliament by the time the muscular 37-year-old arrived on her doorstep.
Mr Ware, a car dealer who has four children with his ex-wife, lives with his new partner, Donna, and shares parenting duties with the children’s mother.
He was upset not only at the way Mrs Thornberry appeared to be looking down her nose at the three England flags on his house in Strood, Kent, but also by the fact that his white Ford Transit van’s number plate was clearly legible in the picture she tweeted.
“She’s caused me a lot of grief,” he said. “She’s been very stupid.”
Mr Ware, a passionate fan of both the England football team and West Ham United, describes himself as a Sun reader as well as being “working class”. He and his then wife bought his house for £119,000 in 2002.
He is the sort of voter Labour needs on its side if it is to stand any chance at next year’s general election, but is so disaffected with politics he says he “can’t even remember when I last voted” because: “No matter who you have in, it doesn’t matter.” He had not even been aware that a by-election was happening in Rochester and Strood before reporters started knocking on his door.
His neighbour Sharon Taft, 54, said: “Dan is a gentleman, he is a gentle giant.
"Everyone thinks it's ridiculous what has happened, he put [the flags] up for the World Cup and just kept them there. I think he just feels a bit embarrassed about it all, he's quite a private person.”
Another neighbour said: “We all saw him this morning and asked for his autograph.
"He was a bit red-faced but took it in good spirits.
"He's just a normal bloke, there was no reason for her to say what she did and post the picture.
"He is a cage fighter so I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of him, but out of the cage, he isn't like that at all, he's so nice.”

A further indication that UKIPers are nutters

https://yougov.co.uk/news/2014/11/21/supporting-ukip-has-more-personal-stigma-than-the/

Supporting UKIP has more personal stigma than the other parties

A significant minority of voters would find it hard to stay friends with a UKIP convert

It may have been too little, too late, but the Conservatives briefly made headlines with warnings that making Rochester and Strood a UKIP constituency would lower the value of homes there.

The last-ditch effort clearly wasn’t enough – the UKIP candidate, Mark Reckless, won with a majority of nearly 3,000 votes – but it did raise the question of whether there was a particular stigma attached to voting UKIP, and new YouGov research suggests there is to a greater degree than any of the other main parties.

To test this, YouGov asked the following question about supporters of the four main parties: How would you feel if a good friend of yours became a supporter of ­­­_________?

Respondents were allowed to say whether they would ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with their friend, but also whether it would affect their friendship either positively or negatively.

It revealed that while most Labour voters would (predictably) ‘disagree’ with their friend if they began supporting the Conservatives, few (only 14%) would find it harder to stay friends. The same was true of Conservatives on a Labour-supporting and Lib Dems on a Labour- or Tory-supporting friend. Overall, only 3% of voters would find it difficult to be friends with a Labour supporter, 3% would find it difficult with a Green supporter, 5% for a Lib Dem and 7% for a Conservative.

With UKIP, the numbers are much higher. One in four voters (24%) would find it harder to stay close with a ‘good friend’ if the friend became a UKIP supporter. While most voters still wouldn't feel this way – 31% would even 'agree' with their newly UKIP-supporting friend – the response to the UKIP convert is significantly more negative than for other parties.

The negative sentiment towards UKIP was much more common among Labour (40%) and Lib Dem voters (42%) and than among Conservative voters (13%).

just shows how much house prices vary across the country .... in merthyr or even somewhere quite nice on the carmarthen coast, you could probably buy a mid-terrace house for about £60,000

it's called supply and demand (aka market forces) and, without getting silly about it, it does rather highlight the current PC nonsense about "mansion tax" for the so-called super-wealthy

i won't get drawn on that one, but the appalling "wealth tax" currently applicable in france really does show its stupidity

Oh belt up Alf, you will be dealt with later.. again -):

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2844749/Labour-chaos-sacking-snob-MP-War-breaks-party-desperate-Miliband-claims-respects-White-Van-Man.html

Labour in chaos over sacking of snob MP: War breaks out in party as desperate Miliband claims he respects White Van Man

Labour MPs split after Miliband orders Emily Thornberry to stand down

Some branded gaffe 'horrendous' while others called her treatment unfair

Aides said Miliband was 'angrier than he has ever been' after news broke

Ed Miliband tried to end Labour’s disastrous ‘elitism’ row yesterday by insisting he admires the working classes.

Ukip’s second poll victory over the Tories had been eclipsed by a Labour frontbencher apparently sneering at a white van driver whose modest home is decked with England flags.

Mr Miliband bizarrely declared he felt ‘respect’ on seeing a white van and insisted it was right for Emily Thornberry to resign over her tweet.

But his desperate intervention failed to calm Labour Party turmoil.

Some of his MPs said Miss Thornberry’s gaffe was ‘horrendous’ while others claimed he was playing into Tory hands by asking her to quit.

On a dramatic day at Westminster:

The full scale of the doomed Tory attempt to hold Rochester was laid bare, with Cabinet ministers making 100 visits;
Nigel Farage claimed Labour had shown itself to be ‘anti-English’ and Ukip was now the party of the working class;
A potential Tory defector welcomed Ukip’s new MP back to Westminster and sided with the party in an NHS vote;
David Cameron was urged by Tory MPs to toughen his stance on the EU and immigration;
The Lib Dems suffered their worst ever result, finishing fifth with just 349 votes.

The furore over Miss Thornberry, MP for Islington South and Finsbury, erupted after she tweeted the picture of Daniel Ware’s home while campaigning in Rochester.

When accused of sneering, she claimed she had ‘never seen anything like’ the house and said her critics were prejudiced against Islington, which has become a byword for champagne socialism.

But Mr Miliband was said to have exploded in fury when he heard about Miss Thornberry’s tweet, first ordering her to apologise and later telling her to stand down as shadow attorney general.

Labour strategists had hoped a Ukip landslide in Rochester would mark the moment that pressure switched on to Mr Cameron and away from Mr Miliband, who has endured weeks of speculation about his leadership.

But with Ukip’s win narrower than expected, a result likely to deter further potential defectors who want to keep their Commons seats after next May’ s election, there was little sign of Tory disunity.

Instead, Labour was riven over whether Mr Miliband’s treatment of Miss Thornberry had been over the top and how it should counter the threat to its working-class vote from Ukip.

Her treatment was particularly brutal, given that she was the first MP to nominate him for the party leadership. However aides said Mr Miliband was ‘angrier than he has ever been’.

Some senior figures privately accused the Labour leader of overreacting because of his own sensitivity about accusations made earlier this month in the traditionally supportive New Statesman magazine that he is an ‘old-style Hampstead socialist’.

‘Ed’s abandoned an ally when his enemies have survived far worse,’ one source said.

Miss Thornberry said: ‘I made a mistake, I’ve resigned and if I’ve upset anyone or insulted anyone I apologise.’

Mr Miliband insisted: ‘I’m afraid her tweet conveyed a sense of disrespect.

'That’s not my view, that’s not Labour’s view, it’s wrong, it never will be our view, and that is why I think it is right that she resigned.’

Asked what he thought when he sees a white van outside a house, Mr Miliband replied: ‘What is going through my mind is respect.
'Respect is the basic rule of politics and I’m afraid her tweet conveyed a sense of disrespect. There is nothing unusual or odd, as her tweet implied, with having an England flag in your window.’

Mr Cameron said: ‘Emily Thornberry is one of Ed Miliband’s closest allies and aides. Effectively what this means is that Ed Miliband’s Labour Party sneers at people who work hard, who are patriotic and who love their country.’

Mr Farage said Labour voters looking at the party’s leadership would not recognise them as ‘members of their own tribe’.

Labour MP John Mann said: ‘It was horrendous. It insults people like me, it insults the people I know – my friends and family – Labour voters across the country because white vans, England flags, they’re Labour values.’

Ian Austin, a former Labour frontbencher, said: ‘Lots of people around the country suspect the country is run or politics is run by an out-of-touch metropolitan elite that doesn’t understand anything about their lives, doesn’t understand the pressure they’re under, doesn’t care about their concerns, and sneers at them.’

But Labour’s Alan Johnson said he did not think Miss Thornberry should have quit: ‘She’s not a stranger to council housing – it’s where she comes from. It doesn’t sound to me like a resignation scandal.’

Though it held the seat for 13 years until 2010, Labour put little effort into the contest in Rochester, triggered by the defection to Ukip of former Conservative MP Mark Reckless, who won it for his new party.

The full scale of the doomed Tory attempt to hold Rochester was laid bare, with Cabinet ministers making 100 visits;

Stan

A man of few words and even less brain cell's

Fred

Have you been reading , Readers Digest's "lean a new word every month " elucidate Do you do an impression of that other Welsh wind bag Niel Kinnock ?

stan - quite seriously .... have a look at how the current french wealth tax is levied ..... it is so-called socialism gone mad and with far-reaching effects even for hard-up farmers and the like

Hollande was in atricky position when he was elected. He won on an anti-austerity, socialist platform. The problem is that he didn't have an alternative plan that was costed. He essentially had the same plan as our Labour party, which was to pump money into the economy. He wanted to spend money on infrastructure projects and took a Keynesian stance of trying to spend his way out of a recession.

He found quite quickly that funds were not available. He had two choices. One was to increase taxes or borrow. It was then that France's credit status was downgraded making borrowing more expensive. He did borrow quite a bit, but there were threats to downgrade France even further. Clearly borrowing was a dead end, especially as the medicine was not working. He then switched to taxes and introduced very aggressive higher tax rates. These have hit wealthy people, some of whom have left the country. As cynic says, it has hit farmers and people with any assets.

The sad thing for Holland's, is that even the tax hikes haven't worked and he is now France's most unpopular leader. If there was an election tomorrow, his party would be wiped out.

There is a lesson to be learnt by the UK.