When are all sides going to move on from Maggie? Ed Miliband had a difficult hand to play on Saturday. The thrust of most of the hundreds of thousands who joined the TUC protest was that all cuts were wrong and should be opposed. As Andrew Ranwsley observed in the Observer this is “..not a position the Labour leader can afford to be associated with and not the position he has taken. He tried to finesse his dilemma by addressing…
Should he have stayed away? The BBC coverage of Edward’s speech to the cuts rally in Hyde Park moved first to a split screen and then blanked out completely as trouble erupted in the Oxford Street area. The vast bulk of the demonstration has been peaceful and good-natured but there was always a risk that a small minority would want to operate differently. I cannot believe that the timing of the violence was a coincidence. Mike Smithson
Who does it make life harder for – government or opposition? It would be easy to see the admission made by George Osborne in this week’s Budget that the anticipated growth rate for 2011 had fallen and that the expected levels of borrowing had gone up as bad news for the government. And in the short term, it is. It means Labour have the opportunity to claim that the government’s policies aren’t working (whether or not they are isn’t the…
The Sun Labour’s ratings on the economy slip back The first voting intention survey since the budget, the Sun/YouGov had CON 37: LAB 41: LD 11 – the best figure for the blues s since February and equalling the best for the yellows. The gap was down to four points. In other questions there’s also good news for both Osborne personally and the coalition government generally. The survey found that 38% of those sampled trust the coalition on the economy,…
But is the biggest lesson the fall of the Lisbon government? George Osborne won’t be too unhappy when he flicks though the front pages this morning – though the reception to his plans from even friendly quarters is perhaps not as enthusiastic as might have hoped. The challenge, of course, is the context in which the government is operating. It’s a lot easier to get good headlines when the economy is going well and there’s money to hand out. James…
Will today’s measures help cut-back the Labour lead? In the end almost everything that was predicted for the budget actually came about and what we saw was a package of measures designed to meet one objective – to make the the government’s cut-backs more acceptable. Osborne focussed his big measure, the one pence cut in the price of a litre of petrol, on one of the costs that I’ve long argued is super-sensitive politically. For many the car is essential…
Are there any good budget bets? Firstly thanks to Marf for her budget day cartoon. The reason that we’ve not seen much of her work on the site recently is that all her energies have been focussed on a special exhibition that opens in April in London – more details on that later. On the budget itself the level of briefing and leaks that we’ve seen is reminiscent of Gordon Brown’s days at the treasury when lots of information and…
S Telegraph What can the whips do about the open primary winner? Of all the 650 MPs who were elected last May Sarah Wollaston was almost unique. For she became Tory candidate following an open primary in July 2009 in which every elector in Totnes, irrespective of their party allegiance, was sent a postal ballot. Other Conservative candidates were selected by so-called primaries but only in the Devon seat and in Gosport did the blues go to the expense of…