How long will the yellows go on fielding the flack? There’s a growing mood of resentment within the Lib Dems towards the Tories for the way they’ve allowed the yellows to take all the flack for the coalition’s policies while being reluctant to put their heads above the parapet to take on the arguments themselves. This is starting to get serious and could just be the spark that causes this arrangement to come apart. Iain Martin sums up the blue…
Bit will the government have enough votes? A last ditch attempt by Labour MPs to stop tonight’s controversial vote on university fees going ahead broke down late last night after government whips manage to round-up hundreds of coalition MPs to stop a filibuster attempt. The plan had to keep the Wednesday sitting going by prolonging debate until 7am this morning. If they had got to that stage then today’s business would have had to be abandoned under the the procedures…
If the AV referendum was held tomorrow how would you vote? (ICM) ALL polled CON identifiers LAB identifiers LD identifiers Would vote YES for voting system to change to AV 35 26 38 68 Would vote NO to keep existing system 22 39 21 6 Don’t know/wouldn’t vote 44 35 40 25 Who has got this right – ICM or YouGov? There’s a new ICM poll, commissioned by the Electoral Reform Society, on next May’s AV referendum which gives a…
What’ll be the scale of the yellow NO vote? This is Tim Farron, the newly elected president of the Lib Dems and the 5/1 favourite with Ladbrokes to be Nick Clegg’s successor as party leader. Whether he succeeds with that ambition might be determined in the next 30 or so hours as the machinations continue ahead of the big vote on student fees. Farron is voting against “because I made the pledge” but has been trying to sound supportive to…
Guardian Will the revelations take the heat off the SNP? Over the past eighteen months the SNP government in Edinburgh has taken a lot of stick over the decision to free Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing who was serving a jail sentence in Scotland. Now, thanks to Wiki-leaks in the Guardian, we’ve got what appears to be the real story – that Libya was threatening to take “harsh and immediate” action against UK interests in the…
Will the YES voters be more likely to hold on? With just two days to go before the big vote on student fees the Lib Dem parliamentary party has been meeting to hear their leader, the deputy prime minister and “Parliamentarian of the Year”, Nick Clegg. He told them it would be “better to walk through the fire together” to support the policy and confirmed that he would personally vote for the proposals. This is a big decision for each…
Hat-tip to Iain Dale for picking up this one – a row last night between the government chief whip, Patrick McLoughlin, and the speaker, John Bercow. It arose over Tory concerns about Bercow being what they thought was over-helpful to a Labour whip on a procedural matter. McLoughlin made an inaudible comment to Bercow who responded in a manner that I cannot recall ever happening before. It strikes me that the hostility is moving into very dangerous territory for both…
It’s 6/4 that they won’t Several traditional bookmakers have been running markets on which of the three party leaders will be first to leave their post and I’ve yet to tempted by any of them. The markets are open-ended and it could be years before you get a return. The new betting exchange, Smarkets, has a slightly different structure in that there’s an option on Cameron/Clegg/Miliband all still being in their jobs at the time of the next general election….