CONSERVATIVES 41% (-1) LABOUR 28% (-4) LIB DEMS 22% (+8) Are Labour voters shifting towards Clegg over Smeargate? Further to the update on the previous thread, the Ipsos MORI Political Monitor for April gives the Conservatives a 13-point lead over Labour, but it is the closing of the gap between Labour and the Lib Dems (from 18-points to just 6) that is the dramatic headline of this poll. Nick Clegg hasn’t had the best of months if you listen to…
BBC News …but will it be a two-thirds majority? As Alistair Darling rises in the Commons for the Budget speech, thousands of miles away voters will be casting their ballots in South Africa’s fourth national election since the end of apartheid, with provincial elections also taking place on the same day. For the first time since that historic 1994 election, the ANC, on paper at least, finds itself facing a serious challenge – but as with football, it’s what happens…
What impact will piracy have this century? This has been a fortnight in which piracy has seen more news coverage than at any time since Blackbeard. Sadly, for all the romance of the name, piracy is no longer the wooden-legged, eye-patched, be-parroted world of Captain Hook and Long John Silver. In the 21st century, a ‘pirate’ will tend to belong to one of two distinct species: pirata mogadisciensis and pirata suionese (sometimes known as pirata cyberspacensis) The former can be…
Why are 30% still saying they’ll vote Labour? A couple of rules of engagement first, partly to avoid this being 16 screens long. I’m not going to focus on the past, good or bad, since I interpret Morus’s challenge as “Why should we support Labour now?†rather than “Did you do a good/bad job on the minimum wage/Northern Ireland/Iraq/Lisbon etc.?†Second, I don’t expect anyone to change their allegiance as a result of reading the article. What I’m trying to…
BBC News Should Gordon apologise for the emails? In all likelihood, a year from today the election campaign will be underway, and a month after that this government may well have been ejected from office. Will the spring of 2009 be looked at as the time when the government’s demise finally became irrevocable and terminal? For all his grandstanding on the G20 stage, the poll bounce was modest, and Brown has subsequently been brought back down to earth by the…
LabourList Is this going to be enough to draw a line under the affair? “But Damian did write and send those emails, I did respond hastily and stupidly and now, thanks – it appears – to someone hacking into my private emails, they are in the public domain. Damian has paid a heavy price for writing them but I have to stress one important point: without the hacking they would never ever have seen the light of day. They were…
Can the PM afford to be seen next to Watson & McBride? Many voters will never have heard of Damien McBride and Tom Watson before today. Few could give their job titles, or explain their relationship to the Prime Minister. Nadine Dorries demanding apologies, and Charles Clarke insisting that McBride should resign could become a Westminster Village story if Downing Street manages to keep to the line that McBride and Watson were acting independently of the PM, and that he…
Will online campaigning finally come into its own? All the blogs and news channels are running with a story about emails written by Damien McBride that allegedly suggested smears that could be run against leading Conservatives. The emails, sent from a Downing Street account, have rather unfortunately (for the Government, obviously) ended up in the hands of the irrepressable Guido Fawkes, and he has reputedly given then (‘for pleasure, not profit’ according to Iain Dale) to a Sunday Newspaper. The…