Will there be votes in selling the gas-guzzler? Whatever your politics you cannot but feel a touch of sympathy for new Lib Dem leader, Ming Campbell, who has felt it necessary to put his five litre 20 year old Jaguar XJS onto the market. With green issues suddenly accelerating up the political agenda it must have been quite a hard call for Campbell to know what to do about what was clearly his pride and joy. But why should he…
Ben’s journey from Labour to the Tories Long-standing PB.C regulars who followed the end of the Donald Rumsfeld thread on Sunday evening will have been shocked to read the exchanges about Ben’s move from Labour to the Tories. For Ben was one of the earliest, and at times most prolific, contributors to the site. For a long period ahead of the May 2005 General Election his regular and lucid postings added to many people’s understanding of how the contest was…
What do people think of tonight’s PPB? This evening saw the much launch of Labour’s much hyped vehicle to attack David Cameron. If you did not see the party political broadcast you can download it here. I’ve played it several times now and I just cannot work out whether it’s very clever and is going to have an impact or whether it’s just boring. The central message seems to be – don’t trust this guy because he’ll say whatever those…
Was it just a tactic to deal with the pressure of the moment Cast your mind back to the events leading up to to Tony Blair’s dramatic announcement on September 30th 2004 that he would serve a full third term but would stand aside before the next election. For what Blair said in that short statement on the eve of him going into hospital totally dominates the current political environment. But was his commitment to step aside before the end…
Is Tory progress inevitably bad news for the Lib Dems? The primary focus of any general election prediction or analysis is on the fortunes of the two main parties. However an often overlooked aspect of a general election result is that of the electoral relationship between the Tories and the Liberal Democrats. Since the 1950s it can be argued that the performance of these two parties have been intertwined to such an extent that their electoral performance is greatly dependent…
It’s 3-1 that he’ll be out by the end of the year There’s a lively market developing on the US-focused Tradesports betting exchange on whether Donald Rumsfeld will hold onto his job beyond the end of the year. With six retired US generals calling for him to go because of the way he has handled Iraq the issue of the Defence Secretary’s future has now been taken up by Democratic Presidential hopeful Bill Richardson. The Pentagon PR machine is fighting…
Could covert recordings rule Miliband out of the race? The Sunday Times has published further transcripts of the conversations between the city academies fundraiser, Des Smith and its reporter who was posing as an intermediary. The paper, which back in January first broke the “cash for honours” scandal, reveals that Smith recommended that the second favourite to become the next Labour leader, David Miliband, should be should be tagetted. At the time the Miliband price was 7/1. It’s now eased…
HOW RELIABLE IS THE NEWSNIGHT PREDICTION ? A week ago, Newsnight produced an analysis of local by-election results by Michael Thrasher and Colin Rallings, which received considerable publicity. Studying this year’s local by-election results, they suggested that the national equivalent vote shares which the parties would win on May 4th would be CON 33: LD 29%: LAB 28 (compared to 34%, 27%, and 33% respectively in 2002). On that basis, Labour could expect to lose about 100 seats nationally, the…