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Month: July 2010

How open is the Labour Party to persuasion?

How open is the Labour Party to persuasion?

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Is this now a contest between the brothers? Early on in the Labour leadership battle, Mike drew what I thought was potentially a good analogy between David Cameron’s succesful campaign for the Tory leadership in 2005 and Andy Burnham’s candidature for Labour this time round. Young Burnham, he surmised, could turn out to be the Cameron of this campaign – a relative unknown coming from behind to win while better-known front-runners faltered. As it is, Burnham has hardly achieved lift-off.  …

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And now the daily poll..forever

And now the daily poll..forever

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Couldn’t this devalue their output? According to YouGov senior executive and the man behind UKPollingReport, Anthony Wells, this week marks the start of daily polls being published by the firm – seemingly forever. The idea was started during last year’s autumn conference season and was revived in February for the run-up to polling day. Both those moves seemed logical given the proximity of the general election. But what are we to make of this latest development? Do we really want…

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What’s Bercow doing to PMQs?

What’s Bercow doing to PMQs?

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Is his high-handedness making it all a bore? There’s a fair bit of criticism developing over Speaker Bercow’s “management” of that great parliamentary tradition, PMQs. His warnings and threaten to sin-bin offending MPs led to what many are saying was one of the dullest ever sessions today. This guy simply doesn’t get it. He gives the impression of wanting to be the star of the show and his speech last night has diminished him. Come on John – you are…

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What now for the Guardian?

What now for the Guardian?

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The paper’s promotional material states:- SocietyGuardian is the most dedicated national quality supplement for the public services and charity sector. Published every Wednesday with the Guardian, and constantly updated online on SocietyGuardian.co.uk, it offers unrivalled reach of public sector professionals • 285,000 senior professionals working in the public sector read the Guardian every day. That’s more than any other daily quality title. • Over 200,000 senior public sector professionals visit SocietyGuardian.co.uk every month All areas of the public sector are…

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Was “Shy Labour” the cause of the 2010 polling disaster?

Was “Shy Labour” the cause of the 2010 polling disaster?

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Proportion who did what they said ICM Re-poll CONSERVATIVES 95% LABOUR 93% LIB DEMS 87% New study looks at what went wrong As we all know the 2010 general election wasn’t a good one for the pollsters. The Lib Dems were very much over-stated with the Tories, and to a much greater extent, Labour being under-stated. The one bright spot was the remarkable success of the exit poll which for the second election running got the leading party seat total…

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Sean Fear: “What’s happened to the Tory right?”

Sean Fear: “What’s happened to the Tory right?”

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Republished Why aren’t they in open revolt? There is a widespread view that the Right of the Conservative Party loathe the Coalition with the Liberal Democrats, after the Conservatives’ failure to win an overall majority on May 6th, and will be looking to break up the Coalition as soon as they can. Certainly, Right wing Conservatives have gained fewer ministerial posts than they could have expected, had the Party won enough seats to govern on its own. Likewise, cherished policies…

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Will the coalition end 10 months today?

Will the coalition end 10 months today?

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What’ll the LDs do if the referendum is lost? Precisely ten months from today we’ll be getting the results of the referendum on the AV voting system – that’s assuming that the necessary legislation gets through unscathed and, of course, nothing happens in the meantime that causes the coalition to splinter. Given that Labour seems to be edging towards opposition and the lack of enthusiasm from the Tories then the chance of it being approved don’t look good. What then…

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