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A recurring theme of this election has been the battle for Labours leave-voting constituencies, the so-called red wall of seats running from north Wales to the Humber estuary the seats that Boris Johnsons Get Brexit done slogan is designed to win over. But despite being billed as the Brexit election, many of the key moments of the campaign have come back to economics: taxation, nationalisation, pensions and of course the NHS. This has clearly been a strategy by the Labour party to try to hold together its coalition of 2017 voters, who are broadly united on the economic aims of the party.

Keeping the conversation on the economy doesnt seem to have been as successful as it might have been, with recent polls and modelling suggesting that Labour is struggling to reach the 40% share of the vote it achieved in 2017. Since the move to support a confirmatory referendum, it seems to be more successfully recapturing remain voters who had flirted with the Liberal Democrats than those who voted leave and had variously been taken by the Conservatives, the Brexit party and non-voting. Is the economic message failing to cut through to voters or are they hearing it loud and clear but are, nonetheless, unconvinced?

The problem is not that there are too few leftwing voters in the electorate. The British Election Study (BES) measures these political positions using a series of attitudinal statements that include There is one law for the rich and one for the poor and Ordinary people get their fair share of the nations wealth. Since these questions were first asked at the 1992 election, the British public have been on average slightly leftwing. If people voted only on their economic values, we should have had a Labour government for the last two decades. In light of its absence, it clearly isnt just the economy, stupid.

The problem for Labour is two-fold. Voters do not cast their votes based on economic issues alone, and, more critically, voters on the left are divided on non-economic issues such as justice and immigration. The BES data measures responses to statements such as People who break the law should be given stiffer sentences and Young people dont have enough respect for traditional values. Peoples positions on this social dimension are statistically unrelated to their positions on the economic issues, or in the language of political science, these two sets of values cross-cut, rather than reinforce each other.

If we compare the BES results in elections 20 years apart, we see some fascinating cultural shifts. Taking only those voters whose responses place them on the economic left, we find that in 1997, it did not matter what social values they held, around 60% voted Labour. By 2017, this picture was very different. Among those economically leftwing respondents who held socially liberal values, almost 70% voted Labour; while among those who did not, less than 50% voted Labour, and more than a third voted Conservative. While this divergence may be part of a long-term restructuring of the vote that eventually leads to two camps reflecting a Brexit position, what is interesting is that this shift was visible in 2010, well before any Brexit realignment had begun.

This divide runs deeper than Brexit position alone, which explains why appearing more leave-leaning in leave-voting areas is insufficient for Labour to win back lost voters. Attitudes to migrants highlight the divisions that run through the potential Labour vote on the left. Asked whether they agreed that Immigrants increase crime rates in Britain, one in 10 of those on the economic left with socially liberal values agreed with the statement, while among those on the economic left with socially conservative values this was a little more than half. Meanwhile, more than half of the socially conservative group also agreed that The will of the majority should always prevail, even over the rights of minorities.

These newly salient divides among the voters on the economic left make it very difficult for Labour, whenever the conversation moves away from core economic issues. But it also makes it more difficult for the economic messages themselves to cut through to these voters. Manifesto promises can be popular in themselves, but still fail to move voters, if the party making them is not trusted to deliver. On the vital issues of trust and alienation, again we find a divide among the lefts socially liberal and socially conservative voters. Asked whether Politicians dont care what people like me think, around a third of the socially liberal cohort agreed, compared with seven in 10 of the socially conservative cohort. While 44% of the socially liberal left agreed that People like me have no say in what government does this was 75% of the socially conservative left.

There has been considerable talk of the politically homeless over the last two years, and several new parties have formed in an attempt to offer them shelter. Britains lost voters are often assumed to be mostly centrist on economics but socially liberal and pro-remain. The performance of parties aimed at winning over these voters perhaps suggests this diagnosis was wrong.

Instead, there seems to be a potential cohort of voters who are economically left-leaning, socially conservative, voted leave and have become increasingly detached from both the Labour party and politics more generally. In 2017, there is evidence to suggest that these voters were more likely to stay at home than before. In 2019, some of these voters may move across to the Conservative party; some will vote for the Brexit party, where they have that option; others may stay at home again. But the Labour party needs to hold on to those more socially conservative voters who were willing to stick with the party in 2017; the difficulty is that their economic messages fail to cut through to voters who believe that the party is no longer listening to people like them.

Paula Surridge is a senior lecturer at the University of Bristols school of sociology, politics and international studies

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The difficult truth for liberals: Labour must win back social conservatives - The Guardian

This week, climate-change doomsayer and truant 10th grader Greta Thunberg won Time magazine's Person of the Year. I haven't cared about POTY since the second time they gave it to Obama, but if you do care, presumably you're either delighted or enraged. The very first person to be awarded Time's highest honor was Charles Lindbergh. He won it in 1927 for flying across the Atlantic. Thunberg just won it for refusing to fly across the Atlantic. We call this "progress."

So of course, as is customary in 2019, Donald Trump tweeted about it and everybody lost their minds:

To me, the funniest part of this is that the president of the United States is replying to the star of Touched by an Angel.

Then Thunberg owned him, or something, by changing her Twitter bio:

And both sides claimed victory, and nothing was gained, and nothing was learned.

Now, just a week ago I was defending Barron Trump from an opponent of his father who decided it would be funny to mock Barron's first name. Pamela Karlan said:

I thought it was a cheap shot. You can hate Trump all you want, but leave the kid out of it. Barron Trump didn't ask for any of this.

So my instinct is to say the same thing to the POTUS: Leave the kid out of it.

But then I have to catch myself. Is Donald Trump really the one who dragged Greta Thunberg into the spotlight? No. The global warmists are the ones who hang on her every word. The legacy media are the ones treating her like a rock star.

Libs are the ones who made Greta Thunberg the face of the climate change movement. They're the ones exploiting her for political purposes. They've taken a confused child with a head full of delusions about the world, and they've turned her into a human shield. They recruited her to spew their rhetoric, and now they hide behind her when anybody talks back. "How dare you treat a child like this!" It's cynical. It's low. It's liberalism.

I would prefer if Trump didn't tweet mean things about her, and I'm not going to tell anybody not to scold him for it. Go right ahead. But if all these adults are going to hide behind a child to push their political agenda, she'd going to get some pushback.

In fact, they know she will. They're counting on it. That's the whole idea. They love that Trump is yelling at her. He's playing right into their hands.

Libs aren't protecting Greta Thunberg. They're not helping her. They don't really care about her. They're just exploiting her. The minute she's no longer useful to them, they'll drop her like a global warming-heated rock.

Ask Cindy Sheehan. Ask Sandra Fluke. Ask the Krassenstein brothers. Ask any other one-time liberal superstar who is now long forgotten. It's a short ride.

I hope Greta Thunberg grows up to have a long, productive, happy life. And when she realizes that the world isn't ending after all, I hope she resents all the people who convinced her it was. I hope she realizes that they were not her friends.

This was all a setup, and the libs made a vulnerable little girl their dupe. They're just awful, awful people.

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Shame on the Liberals Who Use Greta Thunberg as a Human Shield - PJ Media

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau answers a question during question period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 11, 2019.

Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

So much for parliamentary reform, and political transparency. Liberal MPs have no time for that stuff.

They voted against giving MPs more power four times on Wednesday, and then tried to keep the whole thing secret.

In their first official caucus meeting of the new Parliament, Liberal MPs held the votes on governance required under the Reform Act of 2014.

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These are questions that define some of the power relationship between backbench MPs and their party leaders. Can the party leader unilaterally expel an MP from caucus? Can MPs remove the party leader? Can they choose an interim leader? Do MPs have the right to elect their own caucus chair?

On each, Liberal MPs voted against giving themselves more authority.

We now know that most Liberal MPs just dont believe they should be entrusted with real authority. They would rather have a leader such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or his staff, tell them what is allowed.

Last spring, when Mr. Trudeau was engulfed in the SNC-Lavalin affair, the Prime Minister unilaterally expelled former cabinet ministers Jody Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott. Ms. Wilson-Raybould had testified at committee hearings, embarrassing Mr. Trudeau. Ms. Philpott had resigned her cabinet post, and suggested that the government should be forthright.

But the truth is, when Mr. Trudeau kicked them out, most Liberal MPs felt relieved.

On Wednesday, there was little appetite among Liberal MPs to curb the PMs power.

Maybe we shouldnt be surprised. But this was, after all, a Liberal Party that came to power in 2015 promising a new era of transparency and openness. Mr. Trudeau went around pledging to empower MPs.

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In opposition, Liberal MPs including Mr. Trudeau had voted for the Reform Act, proposed by Conservative MP Michael Chong as a way of shifting influence back to individual members of Parliament.

It was supposed to establish new rules of governance: Each party caucus could choose its own rules, but it had to decide on each one in a recorded vote.

But in 2015, the Liberals didnt even bother to vote.

This time, at least, Liberal MPs voted as the law requires. But they said nothing about it. Caucus chair Francis Scarpaleggia insisted that the results were a secret. Its internal, he said.

This was a pathetic retreat into the political ethos of a previous century.

For some reason, MPs still think that the governance of their caucus is akin to the rules of a private club. It is not. MPs have a responsibility to Canadians for holding the executive to account, and for holding their party leaders to account. The public has every right to know the rules of the relationship between them. That is minimal transparency.

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This is not, as Mr. Scarpaleggia claimed, a matter of caucus confidentiality. MPs from each party invoke that concept to speak freely among themselves. The Reform Act results, on the other hand, are the outcome of a legislatively mandated vote on the governance of parties in Parliament. Yet the Liberal Party still thinks it is none of your business.

But Liberal sources said the partys MPs voted against empowering themselves in each instance. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because party officials do not allow MPs to speak publicly about caucus discussions.

The MPs were generally in consensus, the sources said, with many arguing that the Reform Act was Mr. Chongs bill, and if Liberals want to do caucus reforms, they would do it their way.

Dont hold your breath.

The MPs even voted against giving themselves the power to elect the chair of their caucus, and then voted to elect the chair of their caucus. Liberal MPs didnt like the fact that the Reform Act rules also gave MPs the power to remove the caucus chair, one source said.

Unfortunately, the Reform Act is now a shadow of its original intent. Conservatives adopted some of the rules, but the NDP voted them all down, too. Many MPs worry more about caucus unity than a parliamentarians independence.

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And in the end, MPs have power if they have the guts to exert it. The Reform Act was only supposed to shift the balance a little, and provide some accountability.

Still, it provided a clear signal that all the 2015 campaign rhetoric about MPs empowerment and transparency is now dead-letter politics: The Liberals wouldnt even tell the public how they voted.

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Liberal MPs still seem to think they operate like a private club - The Globe and Mail

Im glad Premier Jason Kenney is trying to knock some sense into the federal government. His junket to Ottawa this week with key provincial cabinet ministers to wring concessions out of the Trudeau government was a valiant first step to win a fair deal for Alberta in Confederation.

But Im afraid its futile. To help Alberta and the West, you first have to understand the West. And it is just not in Liberal DNA to see the West as anything other than an uncultured hinterland to be robbed and re-educated.

The results of the October election revealed the depths of Albertas and Saskatchewans frustration with the Trudeau government. Since then, the residents of those two provinces have been reassured that Ottawa is now listening. After all, the new federal Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson is originally from Saskatoon and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland was born in Peace River.

So? Before now, neither Wilkinson (who is an MP from North Vancouver) nor Freeland (who lived in New York before returning to represent downtown Toronto) had displayed much interest in their roots. Now the Liberals reassure us Freeland is a proud daughter of the Peace Country soil.

There are several good examples of the Liberals genetic incompatibility with the Prairie West from just this week.

First, the CBC carried a story with the headline, Unemployment rate among young men in Alberta nears 20 per cent, a level not seen since the early 1980s.

It is no coincidence no coincidence at all that the early 1980s was also the last time a Quebec Liberal named Trudeau was prime minister. Liberals in general and Trudeaus in particular cannot help meddling in the energy sector and, in the process, driving our provinces economy into the ground.

A second example came in an announcement this week from Environment Minister Wilkinson. (Remember, he was born in Saskatoon, so the West can count on him!) The Liberals might not allow liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to be counted even after provinces efforts to control greenhouse emissions.

Before Octobers election, the federal Liberals had promised provinces would receive credit for their LNG exports. Generating electricity by burning natural gas produces far fewer emissions than generation from coal. If Alberta and B.C. can export a lot of LNG to countries that currently burn coal, that would reduce worldwide emissions.

When they were campaigning for office, the Liberals agreed this was a good idea. Now, Wilkinson is saying the Trudeau cabinet have not made up their minds. If the cabinet turns down this idea it will cost businesses in Alberta and B.C. billions in added carbon taxes. And that added cost will drive away even more investment, cost even more jobs and extend the Alberta recession.

On Wednesday, Wilkinson approved a scheme to let New Brunswick adopt a provincial carbon tax instead of accepting the federal version. But N.B. also will be permitted to lower its provincial gas tax so consumers see little difference in the pump price.

This is the same deal Ottawa has with PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador. But it defeats the purpose of a carbon tax, which is intended to lower fossil fuel use by making carbon-based fuels more expensive.

Ottawa is happy, it seems, to make such tradeoffs with Liberal-voting regions such as Atlantic Canada but not with Alberta.

Wilkinson is also currently at the UNs big, annual climate conference in Madrid. There Canada is the only major energy-producing country still deeply committed to net zero emissions by 2050.

That, however, is a goal that can only be achieved by phasing out oil and gas. In other words, the Liberals cannot please international environmentalists and the Kenney government at the same time.

Who do you think theyll choose?

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GUNTER: Federal Liberals incapable of seeing what's best for the West - Edmonton Sun

OTTAWA The Liberals are moving forward with their signature election promise of a broad-based income tax cut, introducing a motion in parliament that will gradually increase the personal income tax exemption for all but the wealthiest Canadians.

It marks their first policy move in the House of Commons since the election and the first test of how theyll negotiate the new minority parliament situation, as the NDP look to redirect some of the money towards dental care.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau announced the move on Monday, giving notice of a motion to raise the Basic Personal Amount the amount of income you can earn before paying taxes to $15,000 by 2023. The benefit will be reduced for those earning more than $150,473, and fully phased out for those in the top bracket (earning above $214,368).

The government estimates 20 million Canadians will benefit from the move, including a further 1.1 million who wont pay any federal income tax. When fully implemented, individuals will save $300 per year on average and families $600 per year. It will cost the federal treasury $3 billion in the 2020/21 fiscal year, rising to $6 billion when fully phased in.

Of course Conservatives always support tax cuts

The change will need to be enshrined in legislation, but for now, the introduction of the ways and means motion allows the Canada Revenue Agency to start administering it effective Jan. 1, 2020.

The Liberals first move after the 2015 election was also to implement a tax-cut campaign promise. But unlike then, this time the Liberals will need help from at least one other party to get it passed in the House of Commons.

We look forward to working with the other parties, Morneau told reporters.

This is the commitment we made to Canadians during the election campaign, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added later in question period. We certainly hope to see support from all sides of the House on this measure.

The most likely ally is the Conservative Party, who had a similar broad-based tax cut in their platform, though the party hasnt yet said how it will vote on this. Asked about the Liberal plan by reporters on Friday, Conservative finance critic Pierre Poilievre acknowledged his party would find it hard to vote against a measure that reduces taxes.

Of course Conservatives always support tax cuts, he told reporters. Its in our DNA. Its who we are.

New Democrats, meanwhile, decided to use the opportunity to pitch their election platforms promise of dental care.

We have a better idea, NDP finance critic Peter Julian told reporters after Morneau announced the motion. He said the Liberals should cap the tax cut to those making $90,000 or less, and use the resultant savings for dental care for the 4.3 million Canadians who dont currently have a plan.

We know that relieves pressure on the healthcare system, and we know that will make a terrific difference in the lives of those families, he said.

NDP ears perked up last week when the Liberals included a mention of dental care in their throne speech. The government is open to new ideas from all parliamentarians, stakeholders, public servants, and Canadians ideas like universal dental care are worth exploring, and I encourage parliament to look into this, said the speech, written by the Prime Ministers Office.

Don Davies, the NDPs health critic, said he was somewhat heartened by the mention, though would have preferred a stronger commitment.

Parliament sits for the rest of this week and then isnt scheduled to return until Jan. 27, 2020. It isnt yet known whether the motion will be voted on before the break.

Email: bplatt@postmedia.com | Twitter:

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Liberals move forward on promised income tax cut, with first phase to start in January - National Post