The pit-falls of using the pollster’s historical all-firms table With the first major shift in party popularity since 1992 a lot of people on the site are looking back at the data from the final years of the John Major government to find comparisons with what we are seeing at the moment. Many are asking how the Tories are doing now compared with how Labour was performing in the polls in the first year or so after the 1992 election….
Poll shows the Tory lead more than doubling with him as leader Today’s monthly ICM poll in the Guardian has with changes on last month CON 38%(+4): LAB 34%(+2): LD20%(-4). This is in line with the trend of other recent polls showing the Tories moving forward although Labour has a better showing than the recent Populus or YouGov surveys. When the voting intention question was asked with Brown named as leader against Cameron’s Conservatives and Campbell’s Lib Dems the shares…
Why Cameron can afford to ignore Manchester, Liverpool etc? The above coats of arms are from Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield – all great commercial centres, the homes of major universities and with proud industrial heritages. One or two of them, I’m told, have, or have had, modestly good soccer teams. Yet none of them has a Tory MP and some commentators are saying that the party can never return to power unless this can be reversed. Indeed –…
Will my 18/1 long-shot stop another damaging rebellion? With the controversial Education Bill coming back to the Commons the next few days could be crucial for the leadership chances of Alan Johnson – currently in the second favourite slot and who I suggested was a good value bet at 18/1. The bill’s passage gives the new Education Secretary a great platform to build up his public profile and to show his political skills dealing with the most divisive domestic Labour…
Make a few bob on the Peter Law seats not being won back? So far there’s been little interest in the Betfair markets on the June 29th by-elections to fill Blaenau Gwent seats that the former Peter Law used to occupy at Westminster and the Welsh Assembly. On the face of it the area is a traditional solid Labour strong-hold and the seats should be returning to the party as a matter of course. Peter Law won in May 2005…
Will B&C be the first Tory by-election hold of the 21st Century? For a party whose performance at by-elections can best be described as pitiful the Tories have had a remarkably good new millennium. For the only seat they have had to defend was Romsey in 2000 – a seat made vacant by the tragic fire in which Michael Colvin died. They lost it to the Lib Dems. The party went through the whole of the 2001-2005 Parliament without the…
THE TORIES REGAIN METROLAND Few parts of the Country were traditionally more solid for the Conservatives than John Betjeman’s Metroland, the leafy suburbs that sprung up in the Twenties and Thirties in West, and North West London, as the Underground pushed out beyond London into the Countryside and connected towns and villages like Harrow, Hendon, Finchley and Wembley to the Metropolis. Most seats in this region delivered five figure Tory majorities at general elections with monotonous regularity, and delivered scores…
How important is a good PMQ performance? Amidst all the big political stories at the moment there’s a special focus on Ming Campbell who, if you read some columnists, is on the critical list. After going through the trauma of ousting Charles Kennedy Ming finds himself under the media microscope every Wednesday when, as Lib Dem leader, he is allowed a maximum of two questions at Prime Minister’s Questions. The scrutiny has been going on since his lacklustre performance at…