What are the lessons from the first encounter? I’ve just go round to looking at the coverage of this afternoon’s first clash between chancellor George Osborne and his new shadow, Ed Balls – an encounter that has been several years in the making. It was planned to have started in June 2009 but Gordon Brown found himself so weakened by the elections of that month that he had to keep Darling at the treasury. Then it could have been on…
Poll/Publication Date CON % LAB % LD % Populus/Times 06/02/11 36 39 11 Populus/Times 24/10/10 37 38 15 Populus/Times 12/09/10 39 37 14 Populus/Times 23/06/10 39 33 18 A second traditional phone pollsters shows a very different picture We’ve now had the first Populus national voting intention poll since October and the picture it paints is broadly the same as with last week’s Guardian ICM poll. Both Populus and ICM operate in a very similar manner so it’s no surprise…
Which one of the following two options do you think would be best for Britain? (ICM) all 18-24 % 25-34 % 35-44 % 45-54 % 55-64 % 65+ % A coalition of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats 32 21 25 27 30 36 47 Labour governing in its own right 26 24 31 29 28 25 20 Neither 29 37 29 29 33 28 24 Dont’ Know 12 17 16 15 10 11 8 We’ve now got the detail…
Guardian Should Clegg remain invisible for the entire campaign? The Guardian is reporting this morning that Ed Miliband has told the YES campaign that he will not share a platform with Nick Clegg because he believes that the Lib Dem leader is so toxic to Labour supporters that it could affect the outcome. Apparently the Labour leader is happy to share platforms with other prominent Lib Dems – Ashdown/William/Kennedy etc – but not the leader. Given the way that Labour…
News of the World (£) But what does this new format really mean? There’s a new ICM poll reported in today’s News of the World (£) which does not apparently include a voting intention question. Instead the phone pollster asked a sample of 2,036 which of these would be best for Britain – Con/Lib Dem coalition (32%); Labour (26%); Neither (29%); Don’t know (12%). This has not been asked before in this format so we have nothing to compare it…
Telegraph Will Craig’s tax affairs embarrass Cameron? Bang on target and totally true to form the Telegraph welcomes Number 10’s new communications chief, Craig Oliver with a close look at his financial affairs. For whenever a new figure emerges on the political scene the paper runs stories like this. Some of them, like those about David Laws, can have a big impact – others like the missives about his replacement, Danny Alexander, get forgotten about in a couple of days….
Which is most to blame for the cuts? (YouGov) CON-LD coalition Last Labour government Both of them Neither 25/01/11 26 40 24 5 10/01/11 22 40 25 8 11/12/10 23 41 24 7 15/11/10 22 43 23 7 07/10/10 17 47 20 10 20/09/10 21 44 22 7 06/09/10 22 45 20 6 31/08/10 23 45 20 6 16/08/10 22 45 21 6 02/08/10 22 45 20 6 19/07/10 21 48 19 7 05/07/10 21 44 21 8 23/06/10 18…
Why the strange reticence? The publication of the economic figures yesterday gave us our first chance to see how the protagonists for the government and opposition would perform – and as I observed in an article yesterday I thought that Osborne was poor. But what about Ed Balls – Labour’s new economic spokesman of whom great things are expected by the red team. How did he do? Would his sharp brain and normal combative approach see him through? The answer…