Labour down 7% over the past year Today’s Populus Poll in the Times makes good reading for Simon Hughes (above) who was elected as President of the Liberal Democrats last week. The details are:- CON 30% (-2), LAB 32% (No change), LD 26%(+2), OTH 12% An indication of the challenge facing Labour is that its share is down 7% on a year ago which in itself was affected by the suicide a few weeks earlier of the scientist David Kelly….
By-election a test-bed for Labour’s new anti-LD approach A conventional bookmaker, Paddy Power, has now joined the betting exchange, Betfair and opened a market on the Hartlepool by-election to find a replacement for Peter Mandelson.The prices are:- LAB 4/7: LD 5/4: CON 8/1: UKIP 14/1 The Tory price seems a bit mean given you can get 29/1 on Betfair. UKIP are so out of this race following their decision not to have a high-profile candidate that the 14/1 is ridiculously…
New poll shows a Hung Parliament now a probality not a possility A Populus poll, just out, shows that Labour has lost the support of LD voters who at the last ’97 and ’01 General Elections were prepared to switch parties to help get Tories out. It shows that the scale of the ‘tactical vote unwind’ is at a level far bigger than anybody envisaged and means that Labour stands to lose far more seats than a calculation based on…
Looking at the British political scene from a sunny French beach it’s clear that’s what’s changed in the past 2 years is that Blair’s adventure with George Bush has cost him the support of the chattering classes. It was these groups’ abandonment of John Major and their enthusiastic embracing of New Labour that set the scene for the ’97 landslide. The media honeymoon that continued until last year was driven by the widespread view amongst the chattering classes that Blair…