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Does the Rooker amendment give Nick Clegg a blank cheque?

Does the Rooker amendment give Nick Clegg a blank cheque?

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Could AV be introduced even if the country voted NO? So Monday’s vote (a squeaker at 219 Content vs 218 Not-content) in the House of Lords was on an amendment introduced by Lord Rooker, and read simply: “If less than 40% of the electorate vote in the referendum, the result shall not be binding” Ignoring for one moment the rights and wrongs of turnout thresholds, I’m not sure what impact this might have on the respective campaigns. My first thought…

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How bad will it be for Fianna Fáil?

How bad will it be for Fianna Fáil?

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The Irish election: Part 1 In the 2007 Irish general election, Fianna Fáil got 41.6% of first-preference votes. If the opinion polls are to be believed, the party’s vote share in the coming election on 25th February is set to collapse to something between 15% and 18%. That is comparable to the infamous collapse of the vote of the Progressive Conservatives in Canada in 1993, which saw that party wiped out from 169 seats in the Canadian Parliament to just…

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Jonathan asks: “What’s Labour’s big idea”?

Jonathan asks: “What’s Labour’s big idea”?

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His latest Sunday evening column In Gateshead this week, Labour took another step on its journey to discover fresh political ideas. It is an objective that it is easy to say, but hard to achieve. If there has been a trend post-Thatcher, it is that politics has become more consensual, focussing on fewer ideas. Is Labour seriously attempting to reverse this trend? Can it really discover something fresh and create a winning formula? Labour starts from square one. They have…

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Nick Sparrow’s February PB Polling Column

Nick Sparrow’s February PB Polling Column

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Smoke and Mirrors. The art of poll weighting So far, in 2011, the polls have had the Conservatives as high as 41% and as low as 32%, Labour as high as 44% and as low as 39%, meanwhile the estimate of support for the LibDems has ranged from 15% to just 7%. Such variation can suggest only one of two things; either the electorate is in a nervous state of flux or the methods used by the polling companies produce…

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Harry Hayfield’s January council by election summary

Harry Hayfield’s January council by election summary

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January council by elections Votes Cast % Votes Cast Seats Won Change Conservatives 7297 44.05% 3 -2 Liberal Democrats 3774 22.78% 3 +1 Labour 3682 22.23% 2 +1 Green Party 739 4.46% 0 nc UKIP 546 3.30% 0 nc Independents 381 2.30% 0 nc BNP 52 0.31% 0 nc Others 93 0.56% 0 nc Are there any pointers to May’s big elections? And so starts a new year of local by-elections, and for the first time since July 2010, the…

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AV referendum will fail, say the “PB 104”

AV referendum will fail, say the “PB 104”

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PB 2011 predictions now out The AV referendum is predicted to result in a “No” vote – that’s the main finding from the 2011 Politicalbetting Prediction Competition. 104 of the site’s sharpest pundits took part in PB’s annual crystal ball-gazing exercise, looking at everything from the state of the party leaders at Christmas and the opinion polls, to UK interest rates, the GOP race and the Irish election. Full details of the player-by-player predictions are

Jonathan on Sunday on the week’s big political story

Jonathan on Sunday on the week’s big political story

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How did the main protagonists do The big political story of the week was the shock economic growth figures. The initial estimate for Q4 2010 was that the economy shrank by 0.5%. This was much worse than anyone expected. The political reaction was fascinating. Now that the dust has settled, how do we think the parties handled the surprise and what are the implications for the future? George Osborne blamed the weather. A political slight of hand designed to buy…

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Patrick asks: “Is the left leading a fight against reality?”

Patrick asks: “Is the left leading a fight against reality?”

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A Guest Opinion Slot on today’s union calls for action Much has been written about the scale and speed of public spending reductions announced by the chancellor. The political right is welcoming the move as unavoidable and long overdue move to address the dangers of having an enormous deficit and debt position. The left is warning of a double dip recession and civil unrest. The overall trajectory of the advanced nations since the Second World War has been, until recent…

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