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Month: October 2007

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Sean Fear’s Friday slot

Has Labour Lost the Overspill Estates for Good? From the late 1940s to the 1960s, when land surrounding London was cheap and plentiful, many London authorities built large council estates in the surrounding Home Counties. These varied enormously in size, from a few hundred houses in places like Ashwood Road, Potters Bar, through to estates of many thousands, in places like Borehamwood, Harlow, Loughton, Hemel Hempstead, Crawley, Hatfield, and Stevenage. Such has been London’s expansion over the years, that some…

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Is Gord still being given the benefit of the doubt?

Is Gord still being given the benefit of the doubt?

But those 40% plus Tory shares should be worrying Too often, I think, those with a passion for following the fortunes of our great parties seem to expect instant reactions from the polls to the events they see daily in the papers and on their TV screens. So Brown has been having a torrid few days and yet Labour is at 38% in the latest Mori poll trailing by just 3%. That could have been a lot worse and I…

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“Three Daves” from Ipsos MORI

“Three Daves” from Ipsos MORI

Mori shows a 5% swing to the Tories since its last poll A Mori poll for the Sun shows the Conservatives on 41, Labour on 38, and the Lib Dems on 11, which represent changes of +7, -3, -5 since the last Mori poll taken shortly after Brown’s speech to the Labour conference. This is a swing of 5% to the Conservatives, although fieldwork dates remain to be confirmed. These figures are identical to the recent YouGov poll showing a…

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More bad news for embattled Labour

More bad news for embattled Labour

Will Alan Johnson come under pressure to resign? In what’s been a dreadful week for Labour, there’s more bad news for the government today with the 90 deaths from the C difficile bug at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Health secretary Alan Johnson has described the deaths as “scandalous” and has told the trust to withold any severance pay to the chief executive who resigned last week. A police investigation has begun, with the possibility that the trust may…

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Was this the moment it all started to go wrong?

Was this the moment it all started to go wrong?

Why can’t Gordon “do” sincerity? The above screen-shot is from the weekend’s Andrew Marr interview and shows the expression on Brown’s face the moment he first started to explain why there was not going to be an election this year. Just imagine how the political scene would have looked this morning if Brown had taken a different approach and Alastair Darling’s pre-budget report had made no mention of the Tory and Lib Dem taxation ideas? Just imagine what the reaction…

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Could it be like this until 2010?

Could it be like this until 2010?

How can Brown deal with this sort of attack? I’ve been traveling and have yet to watch today’s PMQ confrontation between Dave and Gord. That treat is still to come and I can’t make a judgement. The critical thing though is how this will play on the bulletins and in the press and from what’s already been published Cameron appears to be coming out on top. He had the sound-bites so beloved by those who have to process news into…

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Will Gord pull the PMQ announcement trick?

Will Gord pull the PMQ announcement trick?

Has Dave worked out a way of dealing with Brown blanking him out? One of the ways that Brown sought to dominate the media coverage after his first PMQs in July was to make an announcement in answer to a question – thus diverting media attention away from his performance and that of David Cameron. So we saw the news on the casino re-think and cannabis come out in answers to friendly Labour MPs and there was fairly coverage of…

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Should you be a Labour buyer or Labour seller?

Should you be a Labour buyer or Labour seller?

How the papers are reporting the “Magpie Budget” As I’ve discussed here many times my main form of political betting is to “buy” and “sell” the number of seats that Labour will get at the next election. Because this is spread-betting you can realise your profits or cut your losses at any time. You can also operate without having to lock up any cash up by opening a credit account. The critical thing, if you want to end up in…

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