But how bad will it get for Scottish Labour? You wouldn’t know if you only received your news from the London media but there are three general elections in the UK this year. Voters will go to the polls in May to elect new Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland and to the Scottish Parliament (as well as a London mayor, various lesser mayors, a bumper set of councillors and PCCs across England and Wales – it’s probably the biggest…
In three weeks’ time, the nominations could be locked up The preliminaries are all but over with the first phase of the presidential primaries doing the job assigned them: knocking out (most of) the also-rans and narrowing the field to the serious contenders and the hobby-horseists. The game of musical chairs that is Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada left Huckabee, Fiorina, Christie, Bush, Rand Paul, Santorum and O’Malley all standing after the music stopped. Thank you and good…
But what happens if they do? It could have been very different. Had Bernie Sanders won the caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, Hillary Clinton’s campaign would now be in disarray. Rather than today’s South Carolina primary being a foretaste of the likely landslide she’ll win on Super Tuesday, it would be seen as a must-win vote simply to remain in the race; Super Tuesday itself would most likely have been a closer contest building off the back of a hat-trick…
The initiative swings back to Remain But for Tony Marlow’s blazer, Michael Portillo might have ended up prime minister rather than a rail-hopping TV presenter. To have done so, he needed John Redwood to do sufficiently well in the first round of the Conservative Party leadership election against John Major. Redwood, however, never really recovered from his initial press conference when he “was lost in a mass of eccentric jackets and lime-green silkâ€, as Major put it. That one press…
She might lose the nomination never mind the general election Eugene Debs must be grinning in his grave. OK, Bernie Sanders isn’t quite the firebrand radical that Debs was a hundred years ago but the notion that there is a credible route for a self-declared socialist to the White House is one that only a few months ago would have been dismissed with derision. Not now. Two polls released yesterday give the Independent Senator for Vermont genuine cause for hope….
David Herdson on why he’s yet to be convinced Ted Cruz can feel a little hard done by. It was he, after all, who won the Iowa caucus, beating Donald Trump, the reports of the pollsters, and indeed everyone else. Normally, that would be enough to fire him into the media spotlight as the man with the momentum. Not this time. The ‘momentum’ badge has instead been awarded to Florida senator, Marco Rubio. Although he finished only third in Iowa,…
David Herdson questions whether minor benefit reform will be enough When Cameron gave his Bloomberg speech three years ago, kicking off his whole renegotiation policy, he set out a vision of the European Union he believed was fit for the twenty-first century, built on five principles: 1. Competitiveness. In particular, completing the Single Market in services, energy and digital, and “addressing the sclerotic, inefficient decision-making†and “creating a leaner, less bureaucratic Unionâ€. 2. Flexibility. He mentioned doing away with ‘ever…
Can he beat Clinton and if so, the Republican? In contrast to all the interest that the Republicans have delivered in their pre-primary contest, the Democrats’ affair has been a low-key, staid affair so far: two candidates plus an also-ran, of which one has been an overwhelming favourite for a long time, backed with huge financial and political muscle; the other, a 74-year-old self-described socialist who has never even run for election as a Democrat before. It ought to be…