Why does Gord allow this sort of thing? On Queen’s Speech day and coinciding with good polling news for Labour the Times is carrying the above story on how Number 10 managed to “con” journalists up and down the country that a local school would be featured in the Prime minister’s big education speech last week. They all ran the story but then when the speech was made there was no mention of any schools by name. If I was…
Big boost for the Lib Dems Populus, the only pollster which recorded solid Labour leads since June, has continued to report a Labour margin in its latest survey for the Times. The figures are with changes on a month ago – CON 36%(-2): LAB 37%(-3): LD 16%(+4) This will bring a lot of comfort to the Brown camp after the polls from ICM, ComRes and Ipsos-MORI had Tory leads of 5-7%. Of all the phone pollsters using past vote weighting…
How certain is Clegg’s victory? The latest Betfair prices on the Lib Dem race have Nick Clegg at 0.36/1 and yesterday’s guest on the site, Chris Huhne at 2.85/1. I did notice that there was a slight movement to Huhne during the morning and I wondered whether his confident performance in our online hustings had given him a boost. Who knows? As far as I am aware there are unlikely to be any media-commissioned surveys of the electorate of party…
Should Labour go through all this grief for £72,970? Three developments in the past 24 hours have convinced me that Brown is taking a mega-risk by seeking to stop Michael Ashcroft money going to support pre-election campaigning in Tory marginals while doing nothing about the general issue of political funding. Firstly it opens up again the whole issue of “cash for honours” which was seized on by Lib Dem leadership hopeful, Chris Huhne, yesterday when he said that there was…
Take part in the live online hustings from 11am This morning the person who has become the betting outsider in the race for Lib Dem leadership, the former journalist and MEP, Chris Huhne, joins us on PBC for the first of our two live online hustings. This is your chance to put questions to the man who in six weeks might be leading Britain’s third party. Please write your questions in the comments thread below and Chris will be standing…
Has this become Brown’s Bournemouth gift to Cameron? After FPTP and the WLQ political anoraks are going to have to get used to another acronym – BJ4BW the new short-form for “British Jobs for British Workers” which is, of course, illegal under EU law. There’s lots of comment in the Sundays this morning on the political impact immigration and the number of immigrant workers in the UK with the Independent on Sunday commentator, John Rentoul, focussing on the origins of…
Whoops – the poll I nearly missed! I am just on my way home from the Arsenal – Manchester United clash at the Emirates Stadium and I’ve just discovered that there was a major poll in the Sun this morning that I missed. The headline figures with comparison on last weeks Ipsos-MORI poll in the Observer areCON 40% (nc): LAB 35% (-6): LD 13% (nc). This is a real surprise and is not what I would have expected. As Anthony…
Are the Tories really better placed to win an overall majority than Labour? The chart shows the changing market views on whether it’ll be a Labour majority, Tory majority or a hung parliament with the prices expressed as an implied probability. As can be seen the big change in the past few days has been for the Tories to squeeze ahead of Labour in the market assessment of which of the main parties is likely to secure an overall majority,…