So, what lies ahead for politics in 2013? Pausing only to admire my willingness to have a go, given my mediocre track record in predictions, let’s get stuck in. The current state of play Where are we now? For this, I can borrow wholesale from my summary from last year. The public doesn’t approve of the Coalition. The public doesn’t much like David Cameron. The public really doesn’t like Nick Clegg. The public doesn’t rate Ed Miliband either. The…
Tonight is that great annual event, The Eurovision song contest. It will be interesting to see if the issues in the Eurozone affects voting tonight. I’m not expecting the Germans to give the Greeks zwölf punkte or the Greeks to give the Germans δώδεκα σημεία, but will the rest of Europe give the Greeks a sympathy vote? There have been rumours that some countries don’t want their contestants winning as they don’t want the costs of hosting the event next year…
And if not, are they condemned to eternal obscurity? The Euro-elections in 2009 were close to a perfect storm for the minor parties. The electoral system, the (un)importance of the election, the Expenses scandal engulfing the main parties and the availability of candidates to vote for meant that all did well but UKIP especially so, finishing ahead of Labour and the Lib Dems. Come the General Election 11 months later, they were back in low single figures. The events since…
Will he get the required 100,000 by February? As I’m sure we all know Guid is running a campaign to get capital punishment restored for certain cases of serious murder and he’s set up a petition on the Number 10 e-petitions site. If the total reach the threshold of 100,000 within six months then it becomes eligible to be debated in the commons. His move has received a fair bit of attention in the media and also prompted a rival…
What’ll this do the Met’s battered leadership? What a Monday morning. The riots in north London spreading with suggestions about the veracity of the original reports of the incident on Thursday that sparked off Saturday’s riots – and of course the financial turmoil across Europe. The papers have no doubts about the main story – riots in North London which moved to Enfield last night. If the latest reports about the shooting of Mark Duggan are correct then that is…
How did so many lose the plot over the last decade? Banking, politics and journalism have in the last three years been engulfed in their own crises. Is this just a coincidence? In some ways yes – the problems in finance were international in scope whereas those in politics and the media were domestic – but there are still striking similarities in behaviour and timing. Ed Miliband spoke about it in quite a good speech earlier this week, which touched…
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Shouldn’t they be benefiting more from the big boys’ unpopularity? This ought to be a good time for the minor parties. The government contains two of the three main parties but still consistently registers approval ratings in the minus twenties. Labour is led by someone in whom the public appears to have little confidence, yet is rated higher than his main shadow cabinet colleagues. The government is making cuts across large parts of the public sector but has increasingly appeared…