Are the polls or the punters wrong? If the polls are to be believed, Labour is on course for a comfortable victory in 2015. As Mike has pointed out in several related posts over the last few weeks, the voters who backed the Lib Dems in 2010 and have since switched to Labour seem firm in their intention and are more likely to vote than the average. Add in the effect of UKIP and the fact that Labour needs a…
Never mind Romania and Bulgaria, the real problems come down the line When Charles de Gaulle spoke of a Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, he was promoting an alternative vision of the continent to the ‘ever closer union’ of the EEC: one which spanned economic systems and didn’t impinge on national interests as the EEC did (and which in his mind was incompatible with France’s position as a great power). At the time, the EEC had only six…
This might be their one and only big chance but how to maximise it? This parliament has been about as kind as possible to UKIP. The Conservatives and Lib Dems are both having to make unpopular decisions in government (and opting to make other unpopular ones to boot), while coalition pulls each party from its core vote. Labour has not fully recovered from its own time in office. None of the three leaders is well regarded. That provides a massive…
pic.twitter.com/wRDO5Y8pyA — PolPics (@PolPics) December 14, 2013 The BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) is, like X Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Big Brother or Eurovision, very much an election. As with all elections, working out the likely chances comes down to correctly understanding four things: the candidates, the campaigns, the voters, and the electoral system. Since Andy Murray won Wimbledon in the Summer, he’s been extremely long odds on to win, to the extent that if you believe the…
pic.twitter.com/6Ua7E8MkUS — PolPics (@PolPics) December 6, 2013 In ancient Rome, the passing of great leaders would be marked by their elevation to the status of gods. While religion has moved on, the death of Nelson Mandela will no doubt see an equivalent secular process – and rightly so. In captivity, his name motivated a movement; in office, it symbolised unity; in retirement, it became iconic; in death, the transformation to legendary status will become complete. Few men, and fewer women,…
The SNP are making the same mistakes as Yes2AV One simple and obvious truth: in order to win a referendum, you need to win the support of more than half the people casting a vote. This may be elementary politics it was something that the proponents of AV nonetheless failed to grasp, or at least, failed to act on (somewhat ironically, given the nature of their cause). A second truth about referendums: those opposed to a proposition don’t have to…
pic.twitter.com/1QxbzvUsgS — PolPics (@PolPics) November 22, 2013 Will the LAB links be another casualty of the Flowers scandal? The scandal surrounding Paul Flowers has had plenty to keep the media entertained: drugs, sex, money, power and the fall from grace not just of a preacher-politician but also, and in parallel, that of the bank he once headed. However, while the human interest may lie in the man, the longer term political consequences of the events lie with the questions that…
pic.twitter.com/mI8RVHixt1 — Mike Smithson (@PolPics) November 16, 2013 And all the parties are complicit Around fifty years ago, the prime minister of the day confided in his PR advisor that “the period since 1832, in which the middle classes had dominated government and politics, was disappearing†and that “power was passing to organised labourâ€. It was a surprisingly Marxist analysis to come from a Conservative PM but not untypically for a Marxist analysis, it was wrong. In some ways, Macmillan’s…