Mori shows a 5% swing to the Tories since its last poll A Mori poll for the Sun shows the Conservatives on 41, Labour on 38, and the Lib Dems on 11, which represent changes of +7, -3, -5 since the last Mori poll taken shortly after Brown’s speech to the Labour conference. This is a swing of 5% to the Conservatives, although fieldwork dates remain to be confirmed. These figures are identical to the recent YouGov poll showing a…
Why can’t Gordon “do†sincerity? The above screen-shot is from the weekend’s Andrew Marr interview and shows the expression on Brown’s face the moment he first started to explain why there was not going to be an election this year. Just imagine how the political scene would have looked this morning if Brown had taken a different approach and Alastair Darling’s pre-budget report had made no mention of the Tory and Lib Dem taxation ideas? Just imagine what the reaction…
How can Brown deal with this sort of attack? I’ve been traveling and have yet to watch today’s PMQ confrontation between Dave and Gord. That treat is still to come and I can’t make a judgement. The critical thing though is how this will play on the bulletins and in the press and from what’s already been published Cameron appears to be coming out on top. He had the sound-bites so beloved by those who have to process news into…
Has Dave worked out a way of dealing with Brown blanking him out? One of the ways that Brown sought to dominate the media coverage after his first PMQs in July was to make an announcement in answer to a question – thus diverting media attention away from his performance and that of David Cameron. So we saw the news on the casino re-think and cannabis come out in answers to friendly Labour MPs and there was fairly coverage of…
How the papers are reporting the “Magpie Budget” As I’ve discussed here many times my main form of political betting is to “buy” and “sell” the number of seats that Labour will get at the next election. Because this is spread-betting you can realise your profits or cut your losses at any time. You can also operate without having to lock up any cash up by opening a credit account. The critical thing, if you want to end up in…
Or does it make Labour look weak? So there we have it. Exactly eight days after the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, announces his inheritance tax plan to the conference and Labour Alastair Darling follows suit with his own scheme. Would this have been in the Chancellor’s statement at all if the Tory plan had not given the party such a post-conference poll boost? Does it all look so obvious? Is it actually an admission that we’ve reached a stage where…
Are the Lib Dems the big losers from the conference season? The regular monthly Populus poll for the Times is out this morning and the shares are, compared with the last survey from the firm last week CON 38%(+2): LAB 40%(+1): LD12%(-3). It is important to note that the fieldwork took place over three days, from Friday to Sunday, and all but 200 of the interviews had been carried out before news of Brown’s election retreat became known. The big…
Who is going to get the blame? Masses and masses of coverage in the papers this morning that won’t make comfortable reading at Number 10. Having skimmed most of them on the net the piece that seems the most wounding is from the usually loyal Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. The headline says it all “They will call him Bottler Brown and it is going to hurt”. He writes: “This was not got up by the media. It was a…