Will the budget be less painful than its advanced billing? Just a day to go before the first budget of the new government and many of the papers are speculating over some of the horrendous things that they think that George Osborne will be announcing. But is the awfulness of what the coalition’s planning being talked up so that the reaction tomorrow afternoon is that it’s not as bad as was feared? It wouldn’t be the first time that expectations…
BBC News Would the best approach been to have kept quiet? There’s been a furious reaction from the former Labour deputy PM, Lord Prescott, to this morning news that his former cabinet colleague, John Hutton, is to head up the government’s commission into public sector pensions. Linking the action to moves by Kate Hoey and Frank Field he writes: “Now we have the unedifying spectacle of John Hutton, Labour’s former Work and Pensions minister, chairing a new Independent Pensions Commission…
Could there be dangers in ceding the centre ground? The Evening Standard political writer, Paul Waugh, has made an astute observation about the Labour leadership race – it is taking the party leftwards. He noted: “…..David Miliband came up with a string of policies that will gladden the hearts of party activists and trade unions. Axeing £100million tax breaks for private schools was an easy hit and one that – surely completely unintentionally – drew attention to Diane Abbott’s praise…
NOTW The News of the World story is here. It seems that the original “scoop”, if that is what we still call these things, was by the People who possibly could feel a bit miffed that their arch-rival, the NOTW has now got its new angle on the story. Maybe their mistake was to start Tweeting about it too early? Will it have a political impact? Probably not – Chris Huhne is not Lembit Opik although his “news” could keep…
Will he take on the role of lightning conductor? There’s one recent election that I’ve not covered at all because the result, to my mind, was so much of a foregone conclusion – that of the selection by Lib Dems MPs of veteran Bermondsey MP, former London mayoral candidate and former party president, Simon Hughes, as deputy leader. He takes over from Vince Cable and will become the most senior member of the parliamentary party not to be a minister….
How long can the coalition go on? There are two big questions in British politics at the moment – who is going to win the Labour leadership and how long can the coalition survive? Both, in a way, are interwoven because as we get closer to September’s voting in Labour’s election we’ll be four months on from the creation of the coalition and the key criteria for the movement will be which of the candidates is best placed to be…
What’s the impact of improved Labour poll shares? We have spent very little time looking at the voting intention polls (VI) since the May 6th general election. The next encounter seems to far off that it hardly seems worthwhile. Maybe this is a mistake. For a marked trend in the VI surveys that there’ve been following the election is that Labour has been polling quite a bit above its 29.7% general election share. The latest from ComRes overnight had with…
Political Smarkets But how realistic is such a possibility? There’s been some movement overnight in the betting on whether David Laws will return to government following a Guardian report that talks are taking place on Laws playing an informal role in the run-up to the coalition’s first budget in three weeks time. Over the weekend the price against a Laws return this year settled down at about 8%. Now, as I write at 0300, it’s shifted to 40% – 6/4…