Five deputy contenders 2007 How is it that so few have really made it? About half of the parliamentary Labour party won election to the House of Commons in the 1990s. A few of those who gained their seat at the 1992 or 1997 elections, or one of the several by-election wins during those parliaments, have since left for one reason or another but many are still there. After ten to twenty years in the House, they ought to be…
SERVER SOFTWARE HAS BEEN UPDATED, HOPEFULLY THERE WILL BE NO PROBLEMS! BUT THERE MAY BE SOME ISSUES IN THE NEXT 24 HOURS How will the Budget be viewed by football fans? So, Alistair Darling did go for Clear Red Water after all, as some of us predicted he might last week. The new 50% top rate of tax has been one of the main headline-grabbers of the budget, alongside the record-breaking predictions for borrowing. Much of the criticism of the…
Will Labour aim to gain the initiative by steering for Clear Red Water? Amid the carnage of dreadful Sunday newspapers, two opinion polls giving the Conservatives leads sufficient to produce a landslide if reproduced at a general election (see previous threads), the continued rumblings of smeargate dragging Ed Balls and Labour General Secretary Ray Collins into the scandal, and the criticisms of former MP Alice Mahon, one would imagine that some thought must be being given in Downing Street to…
Sky News In the middle of a political storm, it’s not always easy to keep a grasp of perspective – and there’s no doubt that over the last two days, there’s been a veritable political storm. The question is to what extent this is a Westminster Village story and to what extent does it go beyond that? As yet, the direct damage is limited: one advisor to Gordon Brown has resigned and serious questions hang over the future of a blogger…
Are Summits Suffering from Attention Deficit? For the ten presidents, fourteen prime ministers and one king who attended the G20 summit in London it’s generally been a very successful week. All look to have got much of what they wanted from the final communique, there have been some excellent photo-opportunities which will play well to domestic audiences, there’s been welcome progress on other topics – such as the nuclear arms limitation talks between the US and Russia – and it…
David Herdson’s first post as guest editor In another recession, in another country, in another decade, an aide to a presidential candidate once declared that one of the three key themes to their campaign was “the economy, stupidâ€. In fact, it was the key issue; no-one remembers the other two (which is ironic, as one was “don’t forget healthcareâ€). The candidate was of course Bill Clinton and he duly went on to defeat the incumbent president later that year. However,…