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Are the latest results a pointer to Thursday’s Battle for the Town Halls? April can be a bit of a poor month for local by-elections, in April 2005 there were only three across the entire country. Thankfully April 2006 has been a bit more interesting with 24 council by-elections being held up and down the country, and with the local elections being held in 176 councils next Thursday everyone will be wondering whether we have have a precursor to those…

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Every cloud has its silver lining for Lucky Tony My suggestion on Thursday that the problems with Charles Clarke and John Prescott could actually help Tony Blair stay longer at Number 10 was greeted with a mixed reception on the site. For I argued that the problems with his troubled cabinet colleagues could help him spread the blame a bit more after Thursday when Labour suffers the expected drubbing in the local elections. But there’s another element in the current…

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Lib Dems only up 1% and Blair’s ratings the worst ever A new YouGov poll tonight has with comparisons on the last survey from the same pollster nine days ago CON 35 (+2): LAB 32 (-3): LD 18 (+1). Amongst a large “others” total the BNP is at 6% – down one. UKIP and the Greens are on 3% each. The declining Labour share is perhaps not surprising given the traumatic events of the week but the big surprise, surely,…

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WHY DO LOCAL ELECTIONS MATTER TO NATIONAL PARTIES? Local councils have had their independence curtailed under successive government. Three quarters of local government income comes from Government grants, while local councils themselves are required to jump through endless hoops set up for them by central Government. In some European countries, politicians become well known as the mayors of major cities, before embarking on national political careers. That would be almost unthinkable in this country. Although many members of Parliament have…

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Who’ll take control of twelve key councils? Whether it is the pressure from PB.C users or not I do not know but the UK’s main betting exchange has now opened markets on twelve key councils. They are:- Carlisle Cheltenham Chester Ealing Hillingdon Islington Leeds Manchester Norwich West Lancashire Winchester

Why is he focusing all this effort on the wrong target? If Gordon Brown is, as has been reported, the driving force behind the Dave the Chameleon campaign, why is he investing Labour’s precious campaign resources and air-time on the Tory leader when, notwithstanding the party’s second place in Moray, the real threat at the moment is coming from the Lib Dems? For the remarkable feature of the polls in recent months is how resilient the Lib Dem vote has…

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Will their troubles take the pressure off the leadership? Another month is nearly at an end and I am another month closer to winning my bet that Lucky Tony will still be in his job at the end of next year. May 4th 2006 was always going to be a tricky hurdle to negotiate. Within a few days of Lucky’s General Election triumph last year so-called “smart opinion” had it that if Lucky did survive 2005 then Labour’s losses in…

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