What odds an early election?
How likely is brinkmanship to go wrong? The continuing struggle within the coalition over the fate or ultimate nature of the NHS reforms is as good an indicator as is necessary that the May elections and AV referendum really did mark a watershed in the Coalition’s history. The Lib Dems, as Clegg promised, have been much more vocal and active in pressing their case, even where – as with the NHS bill – it reverses their previous stance. This approach…
Is Labour being marginalised in the NHS stand-off?
How do the reds get a look in when it’s a Blue-Yellow spat? There’s a poignant piece by Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy about the challenges for Labour when all the political focus is on the coalition partners. He wrote: “At 9am yesterday morning, Labour shadow health secretary John Healey gave a speech calling for the NHS bill to be scrapped because it essentially meant the end of the NHS..At around 11am Nick Clegg gave a press conference and pretty…
What does this do to the Huhne story..?
From the front page of tomorrow’s Telegraph The clip is all we’ve got at the moment but if the headline is borne out in the story then it looks like good news for the energy secretary and bad news for those who’ve been betting on him to be the next cabinet minister out. Mike Smithson
Labour move into a 7 point lead with Ipsos-MORI
But only 17% think Miliband is ready to be PM In what the Reuters news agency is calling a “slight fall” the Tories have dropped five points in this months Ipsos-MORI political monitor for May. Labour, meanwhile are up two and the LDs one. Fieldwork for phone poll was finished on Tuesday and this is the only non-online survey that we’ve had since the May 5th elections. But this is not all good news for Labour with only 17% of…
Was this an abuse of parliamentary privlige?
As predicted here this morning the name of the footballer at the heart of the super injunction row was named by an MP this afternoon in the chamber. John Hemming is protected by parliamentary privilege and almost all the main news orgnaisations are reporting what he said. Quite where this will end up is hard to say – but this is the main political story of the day and everybody is talking about it. Would posters please restrict themselves to…
How many more Sundays can Huhne take?
For the 3rd week running he dominates the political news If it’s Sunday then it must be the latest instalment in the Chris Huhne speeding points affair with the pressure continuing to mount on the resilient Lib Dem energy secretary. The Sunday Times front page featured above doesn’t look good while inside the paper there is a graphic showing the alleged locations and times of Mr and Mrs Huhne and where the speeding offence happened, with multiple witnesses allegedly backing…
How does the Coalition square its NHS circle?
Can both sides emerge with neither a loser? Sometimes the big story of the moment overshadows the more important story of the moment. This week has been one such time, with Ken Clarke’s policy, or consultation, or whatever it is, about reform of the rape sentencing rules overshadowing the deepening disagreement within the coalition twabout NHS reform. There are two main areas of policy that the Conservatives absolutely cannot afford to be seen to fail on if they are to…