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Category: Coalition

Should Ashdown be brought into the cabinet?

Should Ashdown be brought into the cabinet?

Would this beef up his party’s fire-power? Yesterday I was having a natter with someone well connected within the Lib Dems who came up with an interesting idea to help Nick Clegg and the yellows with their current predicament – allocate one of the party’s five cabinet places to the former leader, Paddy Ashdown. An ideal position, given Ashdown’s former role as High Representative in Bosnia and early career as a soldier could be to replace the increasingly detached Liam…

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YouGov have the Lib Dems at 12%

YouGov have the Lib Dems at 12%

Pollster/publication Date CON LAB LD YouGov/Sun Times 30/07/10 42 38 12 YouGov/Sun 26/07/10 42 35 15 MORI/Reuters 25/07/10 40 38 14 ICM/Guardian 25/07/10 38 34 19 YouGov/Sun 21/07/10 44 35 13 ComRes/Independent 27/06/10 40 31 18 YouGov/Sunday Times 25/06/10 43 36 16 ICM/Sunday Telegraph 24/06/10 41 35 16 YouGov/Sun 24/06/10 43 34 17 Is this a reaction to the Robinson programme? The latest daily poll from the YouGov panel has the Lib Dems down to one of their lowest shares…

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Why are the Guardian and the Telegraph the biggest losers?

Why are the Guardian and the Telegraph the biggest losers?

Newspaper June figures Year on change (%) Daily Telegraph 681,322 -18.45 The Guardian 286,220 -14.82 The Times 503,642 -14.77 Daily Express 664,293 -8.94 Daily Star 809,992 -6.95 The Independent 187,135 -6.62 Daily Mirror 1,248,919 -6.12 Daily Mail 2,092,643 -4.93 Financial Times  391,865 -4.88 The Sun 2,979,999 -1.6 Is the coalition impacting on newspaper readership? Above are the June newspaper circulations figures and again we see the continued erosion in sales at the so called “quality end” of the market. This…

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Did the Tories come a bit too well prepared?

Did the Tories come a bit too well prepared?

BBC programme info Will the programme change our view of the coalition? There’s an intriguing snippet on Nick Robinson’s BBC blog about his programme tomorrow night on how the coalition came about. “..The Tories have been keen to downplay how prepared they were for hung Parliament negotiations. However, on the day after the polls closed, Letwin appeared to know more about Lib Dem policy than any of Nick Clegg’s negotiators. The Tories arrived at talks with a string of policy…

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Is DaveM Labour’s only realistic choice?

Is DaveM Labour’s only realistic choice?

Why I’m reducing my exposure on Ed There have been a few bits of news this week that have caused me to reconsider my betting position on Ed Miliband. Firstly there’s the campaign itself and the relentless and successful way that DaveM is pursuing the “front runner” strategy. He’s got more MPs and local parties and he also showed flair with the visit to Gillian Duffy which ended with him getting her backing. Secondly there was the argument by James…

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Henry G asks: How low can Clegg’s scores go?

Henry G asks: How low can Clegg’s scores go?

What do the Lib Dems do about evaporating support? Nick Clegg may have brought the Liberal Democrats into Government, but his party can only defy political gravity for so long. As one colleague said to me recently ‘let’s not forget that the Lib Dems won more seats led by a drunk Charlie Kennedy than it did with a sober Nick Clegg’. The drama of the coalition has in many ways masked the failure of the Liberal Democrats to meet expectations…

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The EdM price tightens following LFF projection

The EdM price tightens following LFF projection

Candidate Membership MPs/MEPs Trade Unions Electoral College David Miliband 34.9 38.87 26.08 33.28 Ed Miliband 30.8 27.94 39.5 32.75 Diane Abbott 20.4 6.07 15.23 13.90 Andy Burnham 9 13.77 12.87 11.88 Ed Balls 4.9 13.36 6.32 8.19 But are the brothers really neck and neck? There’ve been sharpish moves to EdM overnight on Betfair following a projected result published on the Left Foot Forward, the blog edited by Will Straw. On Monday EdM was trading in the 3.75 – 3.8…

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