Don Brind evokes Mrs Thatcher’s memorable assertion It’s International Peace Day and I’m in the strange position, for me, of defending Jeremy Corbyn. My audience is someone who ought to be a natural Corbynista – a veteran campaigner for peace and international development. “I like Jeremy as a person,” I tell her”. He’s a decent man.” She is having none of it. “I think he’s a vain old man. He’s loving all that adulation but he’s peddling false hope.” Fast…
Perceptions about its size could be greater than the reality I’m only a few years younger than Neil Kinnock so when he tells John Pienaar on Panorama he fears that he may never see another Labour government in his lifetime it’s an “ouch” moment for me. I regularly go in to bat for Kinnock with fans of Tony Blair, especially when they trot out the line “he won three general elections”. My argument is that Blair benefited hugely from the…
Where the total seats are being slashed from 40 to 29 The boundary changes to be announced tonight (and to the MP’s from England and Wales today) will see the first reduction in the number of seats in Wales since the Great Reform Act of 1832 and see Wales be reduced from forty seats to just twenty nine (it’s lowest number since the Great Reform Act) and will the be fifth set of boundary changes since true democracy (one elector,…
When I joined the BBC in the 70s one of the senior writers was regarded a bit of legend for having spotted the start of Ping-Ping diplomacy – what the US official historian describes as “fraternization” between table tennis players from the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China during an international competition in Japan. It led eventually to the 1972 meeting between Nixon and Mao. Not quite on the same epic scale but there are signs that a rapprochement…
1921 – 1979 The six counties of Northern Ireland (created after the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921) have been returning MP’s to Westminster centuries, but it is only since 1950 when the concept of one elector, one vote was established with the abolition of the university seats that Northern Irelan’s MP’s really started to count. It is quite amazing to think that for twenty nine years (with the UK wide boundary changes in 1955 and February 1974)…
Polling a changing and complex electorate is a huge challenge Mike Smithson doesn’t pay me to play safe. Or to put it another way, I write for the prestige of appearing on PB but Mike is more than happy for me to stick my neck out. And my neck has been right out there in the last few postings: suggesting that the race was “too close to call I said there was no solid evidence for making Jeremy Corbyn favourite….
The Lochs (Non Party Independent defence) on Fife Result: Labour 1,318 (47% +1%), Scottish National Party 1,079 (39% +20%), Conservative 270 (10% +7%), Communist 86 (3%, no candidate in 2012), Green Party 45 (2%, no candidate in 2012) Labour GAIN from Non Party Independent on the fourth count with a lead of 239 (8%) on a swing of 9.5% from Lab to SNP By-Election Summary : August 2016 Labour 10,865 votes (30% -1% on last time) winning 6 seats (unchanged…
A certainty – maybe not With three months to go until election day, people all over the world are lining up to place their bets on who’s going to take on the role of the 45th president of the United States after Barak Obama’s two-term presidency. Up until now, the odds have been everywhere – Donald Trump may have started off with odds that would make you a millionaire if he was elected, but right now, the fact that he…