What are the dangers if something should happen to Dave? Over the past fortnight quite a few people have commented about the lack of sparkle in the UK political scene because of the absence of David Cameron following the death of his son. And this extended, to a certain extent, to his party as a whole for without their leader the Conservative had a much smaller impact on the media agenda. Thus George Osborne’s big speech on the economy at…
Is Pickles right – there’s no substitute for personal contact? Hardly a day goes by, it seems, without one grouping or another promising us great things “because of the internet”. Look at this week. We had the launch of “The Jury Team” party where everything is supposed to happen magically because of the internet. Funding? No problem – we’ll raise money on internet. Finding and selecting candidates? No problem – it’ll all be done via the internet….and so on. Then…
Guardian.co.uk Why won’t they even answer the phone? A story running tonight suggests that Brown’s plan to use next month’s G20 meeting in London as key part of his personal recovery plan might not work out so smoothly after all. As the Guardian reports the cabinet secretary, Sir Gus O’Donnell, told a conference in Gateshead that No 10 was having trouble even getting in touch with key personnel at the US treasury department. “There is nobody there – you cannot…
BBC News Online Could this split the Eurosceptic vote? So another day and another new party enters the UK political scene with the intention of fighting every seat at June’s elections for the European Parliament. The Libertas move looks serious given the success it had in the Irish Lisbon treaty referendum last year and the fact that it is planning to put up candidates in every single EU state. The party says it is not anti-EU but rather it wants…
CONSERVATIVES 42% (nc) LABOUR 30% (+2) LIB DEMS 19% (+1) But should Labour have expected more? Well we now have the first poll since Brown’s visit to Washington and the numbers are above. For the report on the Times website it is not possible to deduce the Lib Dem total but this will be inserted as soon as we get the number. UPDATE – [ConHome now have have this at 19%] As Peter Riddell’s report says these “…figures suggest that…
Do they still hate the Tories more than Gordon? Just reading and watching what coverage there has been of the weekend’s Lib Dem conference it’s been hard to identify a discernible strategy for dealing with what could be the toughest general election for the party for thirty years. Maybe much more was said that didn’t make the public prints but what are we to make of comments like these quoted in the Times: “We remain a centre-left party” and “Many…
Has the bar been set even higher for Gord? At the last Euro elections on June 10th 2004 the national polls shares (excluding NI) had Labour in second place on just 22.6% a full four points behind the Tories. UKIP beat the Lib Dems into the third place slot. These were the 2004 shares: CON 26.7: LAB 22.6: UKIP 16.1: LIBD 14.9: GRN 6.3 In spite of the performance, it should be said, Tony Blair led Labour to its third…
What will be the size of the Barack boost? One of the consequences of the recession is that newspapers are looking closely at their polling budgets. The result is that we’ve seen far fewer non-scheduled surveys. Fortunately the regular monthly polls are so far unaffected and the next one due is Populus in the Times which hopefully will be out tomorrow night. In February the Tories were on 42 percent 14 ahead of Labour with the LDs on 18 percent….