Ed beats David by a fraction on the Affiliates section So, Ed wins it – just – with the affiliates section proving the crucial factor and the late rumours for DM were just that and may even have been a case of talk following betting rather than vice-versa. Ed Balls beat Abbott and Burnham for third place, which with a reasonable showing in the MPs section should reinforce his claim for a top job in the shadow cabinet. On a personal…
Has Ed snatched it or did David hold on? What looks like being the closest Labour leadership contest since voting was opened up to the membership finally draws to a close in Manchester this afternoon, with the result expected to be announced around 4.40pm. Until the very final days of the more than four months of campaigning, David Miliband’s position as favourite went more-or-less unchallenged, with his odds at times implying a better than 80% chance of winning. That all…
Who’ll get what in the Shadow Cabinet? One of the first tasks that the new Labour leader will have is to assign portfolios to the members of his shadow cabinet. How he does that could be significant in determining how Labour develops as an opposition over the parliament – depending how radical he chooses to be. To some extent, his hands are tied. Labour’s shadow cabinet is elected, something the PLP stood firm on earlier this month, and so he…
Do the 2010 primaries give her hope to make it all the way? This time next year, we’ll be well into the pre-primary season across the Atlantic and from the midterms so far, it’s shaping up to be a fascinating contest, with the Tea Party shaking up any number of races. Without getting too far into the detail, the scale of the inroads the Tea Party has made against incumbent politicians has been impressive. While a lot of the media…
What chance of this government privatising Royal Mail? The privatisation of Royal Mail has been floated as a possible sale for a long time. The Conservative government under John Major seriously considered it. Peter Mandelson, under both Blair and Brown wanted to part-privatise it. In the end though, reform was minimal and it remains under government control. What chance of the government getting its way this time – and what cost? To answer that, the best thing to do is…
And either way, will it win him votes? One of the interesting developments in the Labour leadership race is the extent to which Ed Miliband is marketing himself as the ‘change’ candidate. The word is all over his campaign website. The BBC is reporting a YouGov poll publicised by his campaign team in which 72% of people considering voting Labour would be less likely to do so if the new leader continues to tread the New Labour path (curiously, there…
 Or has he built up too many negatives since he quit? Former UKIP leader Lord Pearson’s decision to resign the leadership on the grounds that he was “not much good†at party politics was a refreshingly candid appraisal of his abilities. That’s opened up the prospect of his predecessor, Nigel Farage, returning to the post he held for three years. During that time, UKIP enjoyed its best ever result, in the European elections, when they polled 16.5% of the…
Amazon.co.uk Widgets How difficult will their revelations make it for him? History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as autobiography. Or something like that. It seems almost obligatory now for retired cabinet ministers to set down their version of the time in office, their influence on events and their view of – amongst other things – their colleagues. The number of these memoirs being written always starts to increase when any party’s been in power for a…