ICM Nov 1-2 1996 How Gord would kill for 34% shares today! One of the challenges with trying to work out whether a Tory victory is a foregone conclusion is that the only modern parallel is Labour’s run up to the Tony Blair landslide in May 1997 – something that’s made much harder by big changes in polling practice and the fact that the only firm doing it now almost exactly as it was doing it then is ICM. Featured…
CON 42%(-2) LAB 25%(-2) LD 21%(+3) And Nick Clegg gets to just four points behind Another month goes by and Labour’s polling position remains dire with no respite in sight. For a new ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph just being reported suggests that there’s been little change between the main parties since the last survey from the firm in the Guardian a week and a half ago. Both Labour and the Tories are down two with the Lib Dems…
Tory and Labour General election leaders 1979 – 2005 General Election Majority PaddyPower: 1/4 CON majority: 3/1 Hung parliament: 12/1 LAB Majority Ladbrokes: 1/3 CON majority: 3/1 Hung parliament: 12/1 LAB Majority William Hill: 2/7 CON majority: 11/4 Hung parliament: 14/1 LAB Majority General Election most seats PaddyPower: 1/16 CON: 7/1 LAB: 80/1 Lib Dems Ladbrokes: 1/14 CON: 7/1 LAB: 100/1 Lib Dems William Hill:1/14 CON: 13/2 LAB: 80/1 Lib Dems Victor Chandler: 1/14 CON: 13/2 LAB: 80/1 Lib Dems…
 David Herdson assesses some of the options? Nearly eight years after the Laeken Summit kickstarted the process, there’s a good chance that the final hurdles to ratification of the Lisbon Treaty could be overcome next week, leading to the treaty coming into force on December 1. In Britain, that will throw the spotlight onto the Tories, whose policy on Lisbon will expire with the completion of the ratification process. The current policy of a referendum is one which is…
Is the new series reinforcing the MacBride damage? Like many PBers, no doubt, I’ll be glued to the TV tomorrow night for the second episode of the much-hyped and much-anticipated new series of “The Thick of It” – this time getting a good Saturday night slot on BBC 2. Since the last series, of course, we’ve had the Damien MacBride scandal which put the focus on the way Brown Central deals with those who it sees as threats. Just look…
Times Are we about to have “cut-price” democracy? Oh dear! Oh dear! Can they never get this right? Given current Labour poll ratings in the mid-20s you can understand that ministers are not relishing the coming fight but this morning’s front page lead in the Times sends out all the wrong messages. There are plans to reduce the costs by slashing the number of polling stations and reducing the hours that they stay open. Guess which ones would suffer? Those…
Could he open up some of the old wounds? I wonder whether all the focus on the prospect of “President Blair” and the continued attacks by Labour on the Tory EU partners is actually overshadowing what could be the biggest UK-EU political development of them all – the rhetoric which is coming from David Cameron? This was looked at by the BBC’s Nick Robinson who today has also written a piece about it. Robinson writes: “..The new Conservative approach to…
Metro Could it affect the outcome in the top betting constituency? The one thing that makes me more furious than anything at the moment is the crazy new law that’s going to impose a hideous regime that will keep adults and children apart. In the name of trying to control paedophiles our stupid MPs have allowed this over-the-top ill-thought out piece of legislation to be passed and now local councils, like Watford, are making their own preparations. Some of my…