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Author: David Herdson

A guessing game: name the royal baby?

A guessing game: name the royal baby?

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This Marf cartoon first appeared on their wedding day Is form a guide to value? In around a month, Britain and – at least for the time being – fifteen other states around the world will have a new third-in-line to the throne.  It’s an event for which there are several betting markets, some more practical than others.  As with most markets, correctly predicting the outcome is a combination of luck together with understanding the nature of the event, past…

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A joyless recovery doesn’t necessarily mean a voteless recovery

A joyless recovery doesn’t necessarily mean a voteless recovery

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Will 2015 be more like 1983 or 1997? Since speculation of a triple-dip recession was put onto the backburner with the modest growth recorded in the first quarter of the year, the preponderance of the economic stats have pointed to the embedding of a steady, if unspectacular, recovery.  The employment figures this last week were as good an example as any: jobs were up, unemployment was down and earnings are still failing to maintain pace with prices. To some extent,…

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Who will be the UK’s next Man in Brussels?

Who will be the UK’s next Man in Brussels?

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  By this time next year, there’ll have been plenty of time to pick over the results of the European and local elections, for analysts, activists, elected members and party leaders alike.  The local elections are something of a mirror-image to this year’s: heavily weighted to urban areas, including London.  Combined with European results, they hold a very miserable prospect for both governing parties.  So much so that talk of leadership change is likely, though the chances of actual change…

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No promotion and the backbenchers are restless

No promotion and the backbenchers are restless

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  Do MPs feel that they’re off the leash with no government baubles to dazzle? The stability that coalition has brought to government is in many ways a good thing, allowing ministers to settle in post, become fully acquainted with their brief, see legislation through from design to statute, and reduce uncertainty. Almost certainly, there will be just the one significant reshuffle – that carried out last summer – with any casual vacancies filled with minimum disruption. No action (or…

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Is masterly inactivity the government’s best course?

Is masterly inactivity the government’s best course?

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  Any meaningful new initiative will generate more trouble than it’s worth It is not unusual for the Queen’s Speeches of any given government to thin out as the parliament progresses.  Inevitably, those policies it ranked as most significant when it took office are likely to be introduced first, alongside the quick wins that help it to generate its own momentum. Consequently, by the second half of the parliament, what’s left are policies which are either complex or of secondary…

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Hammond has the right coalition-building idea

Hammond has the right coalition-building idea

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Social conservatives are the key swing vote of the moment When David Cameron was Leader of the Opposition, he put a great deal of effort into detoxifying the Conservative brand – the analysis being that in order to gain an election-winning coalition, the Conservatives needed to pull swing centrist voters from both Labour and the Lib Dems.  In as far as it went, that was true but it was far from the whole picture. By going out of his way…

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One election defeat then the Right will realign

One election defeat then the Right will realign

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The EU issue the only big thing dividing the Tories from UKIP The Conservative Party is one of the oldest and most successful political parties across the world.  It is so partly because it has had in the past displayed a surprisingly flexible approach in adapting to defeat, and partly because it has ensured it dominated the political field on the centre-right, either by eliminating or allying with rivals.  So can it do so against in response to the rise…

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The revolt of the Shires: Cameron’s last warning

The revolt of the Shires: Cameron’s last warning

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But should UKIP have done even better? Thursday’s elections represented a resounding raspberry to all three main parties.  Indeed, they reinforced that even talking of three main parties is an anachronism.  The Lib Dems did win more than twice as many councillors as UKIP but in all other respects they finished well behind.  In the South Shields by-election, UKIP scored another second place (their fourth in the last five mainland contests) and in the local elections, Nigel Farage’s party came…

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