Is his former special advisor out of control? After all the controversy over the role of schools secretary, Ed Balls in hyping up the early election date speculation there’s an intriguing account of some of the goings on between Number 10 and Number 11 during the final year of Tony Blair. It comes in a serialisation of a new biography of Blair by Dr Anthony Seldon the first part of which is published in the Sir Paul Dacre’s “Mail on…
Is party funding about to become the next battle-ground? This is Michael Ashcroft who in this year’s Sunday Times Rich List was placed in position 87 with an estimated wealth of £800m. He’s a major donor to the Tory party and before the 2005 general election, as was reported here, he hand-picked a group of Tory candidates in marginal constituencies and then was responsible for providing extra attention and funding to help them with their campaigns. This morning he is…
How will the polls be affected by a LD resurgence We have not had any national polls since the dramatic announcement by Ming Campbell but my guess is that when we do we’ll see the third party increase its shares from the terrible lows that it has experienced in recent weeks. For one thing that Ming’s resignation has done has been to get his party onto the bulletins once again – and usually the more the Lib Dems are in…
Hi all, For the first time for about six months, we’re having some problems with slow database access. In particular, attempts to post comments, or stories are very slow. I’m working on the problem and hope to have a solution soon. Thanks, Robert
The State of the Parties The last three months’ local by-elections have been the worst, in terms of seat losses, that the Conservatives have suffered for some time. Over that period, the Conservatives have made a net loss of eight seats, Labour a net gain of six, and the Liberal Democrats a net gain of two. However, analysis of changes in each party’s share of the vote suggests that the Conservatives still enjoy a substantial lead over the other two…
What are we to make of today’s appointments? With Nick Clegg having now formally put his hat into the ring for the Lib Dem leadership Team Huhne has been in touch to tell me of key appointments that their man is making to his campaign. And they are making great play of the fact the today’s high-level recruits, Dick Newby and Anna Werrin, were part of Charles Kennedy’s inner circle. Kennedy himself has almost ruled himself out and will probably…
Won’t this all be forgotten about in a few months? On the face of it this should be the moment for UKIP. The build-up has been going on for months, the Murdoch press has been winding up the rhetoric and now the treaty is finally happening. Yet according to the latest poll, the one in last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph from ICM, a paltry 3 people (NOT percent) said that their choice was the anti-EU party. Surely if this was the…
Who’d do better – Huhne or Clegg? The picture above is a screen shot of Vince Cable handling yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions when the country’s third party is always guaranteed two questions. It’s a key moment in the parliamentary week because the Lib Dems often find it difficult at any time getting heard above the Con/Lab babble and the Wednesday slot is always an opportunity to be heard. When Charles Kennedy finally agreed to step down on January 7th 2006…