The Tory chairman Liam Fox has suggested that Tony Blair might “cut and run” and call a snap election. One date pencilled in by Mr Fox’s team is April 21 – two weeks earlier than the widely tipped May 5 – and campaign workers have been ordered on to full alert. Fox has been quoted as saying: “I believe there are a number of reasons why Labour needs to get this election out of the way early. “They are over-borrowing…
updated 0645 After all the fuss about the alleged anti-semitic tone of Labour’s election advertising the party has now launched its main slogan for the coming election – “Britain – forward not back” And if you think that you’ve heard this line before you have – from Michael Howard! As Curtis, one of our eagle-eyed users has spotted, the phrase “…forward not back” was the same slogan used by the Tory leader when he announced his candiditure in October 2003….
What will the electorate make of the party with a Latin name? After last night’s launch of Robert Kilroy-Silk’s new party ‘Veritas’, bookmakers William Hill are offering 20/1 that Mr Kilroy-Silk will win Geoff Hoon’s Ashfield seat (Nottinghamshire) at the next election. Hills also offer 16/1 that Veritas will win one or more seats at the next election. So far the market does not appear to be online and we only hope that the bookmaker will allow internet punters to…
Has the power moved from the party spinners to the bloggers? The January ICM survey for the Guardian discovered that the proportion of adults with internet accesss is now, at 69%, more than two-thirds of the population. Those who have it at home was down at 56% – the balance get their access at work. So we are going into an election camapign with what for many people is a new means of communication which challenges the traditional agenda-setting monopolies…
Could Tony Blair regret giving up 10 Labour MPs? With just three months to go before a May 5th General Election the order confirming the Scottish Boundary changes has now gone through Parliament. This reduces the number of Scottish seats at the next election from 72 to 59 and has been designed to bring the average size of seats north of the border into line with the rest of the country. At the 2001 General Election Scottish seats had an…
What’s happened to Kilroy-Silk’s “bloody rightwing fascist nutters” ? With Robert Kilroy-Silk due to launch his new Veritas party tonight the full extent of the damage his departure has done to UKIP is only now becoming clear. All the data from Sunday’s three opinion polls has been made available and shows that Mori had the party on 2% while with Communicate Research and ICM the UKIP shares was down to just 1%, or less than the party achieved at the…
How much is immigration helping the Tories? A new YouGov poll revealed today on the pollster’s website shows a one per cent boost for the Lib Dems at the expense of the Tories compared with the survey that was published in the Daily Telegraph on Friday. The figures are: LAB 35 (nc): CON 33 (-1): LD 23 (+1).. These are small changes which could, as YouGov boss Peter Kellner writes in an article, be put down to sampling error. In…
Who’ll come out best in the Milburn-Crosby show? We’ll have to wait until the early hours of May 6th when the results from seats with large Jewish populations like Finchley and Golders Green are declared before we can completely put the lid on the Labour poster affair. If the party’s performance is disproportionately worse in these seats then no doubt some erudite commentator will be recalling the little row that’s been going on since Friday and which has now led…