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Politics in the newspapers as Summer Time begins The Sunday Times reports that a leaked Home Office memo shows that hundreds of illegal immigrants are working in care homes in the UK, while Brown has been condemned as “stilted and lacking personality” by one of his own Downing Street insiders. According to The Mail on Sunday, Westminster insiders privately predict that the scale of the expenditure on refurbishing his residence could be the final straw for the beleaguered Speaker, following…

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Just to say that my wife, Jacky, and I are off to France for a week – we’ll be stayig in an apartment in one of the houses above. Although I’ll be writing the odd article our stand-in editor, Paul Maggs will once again be in charge. Tomorrow morning we have a guest article on Pennsylvania by Ben Surtees and there are one or two of my “prepared this one earlier” pieces which will be published. Whether I am able…

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The good news for the Tories – Part 3 After all the discussions over whether the weekend YouGov poll with the 16% lead was an outlier there’s more confirmation this evening that there has been a marked shift to Cameron’s party. The March ICM poll for the Guardian, just out gives the following shares with changes on the survey that appeared yesterday – CON 42% (+2): LAB 29% (-2): LD 21% (+1) The poll was carried out over the weekend…

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Voters give a big “thumbs down” in the first post-budget polls Reports are coming in of two new polls showing big moves to the Tories. YouGov has the party on 43% a massive 16% ahead of Labour. The shares with comparisons on the last YouGov survey at the end of February are: CON 43% (+3): LAB 27% (-6): LD 16% (nc) ICM for tomorrow’s News of the World has Cameron’s party with a lead of 9% – up from just…

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Has Labour Lost Its Core Working Class Supporters? It has become fashionable to argue that Labour has alienated its core working class supporters, in favour of middle income supporters in marginal constituencies. A good example of this was written by Seamus Milne in yesterday’s Guardian , and plenty of other left-wing commentators, such as Polly Toynbee, Roy Hattersley, and Dagenham MP, John Cruddas, make the same point. Usually, the argument is that Labour’s core supporters have lost out economically, although…

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How long are will to have to ensure tedious BBC coverage? For the last few months I’ve spent an hour or so each day watching the developing story of US election on CNN and on the web-sites of the major networks – ABC, CBS and MSNBC and its been hugely impressive. The graphics are innovative, the presentation is sharp and most of all the analysis is superb and expertly prepared. Complex situations and stores are presented in an informative and…

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Can Darling pull something out of the hat? After a decade of Gordon Brown budgets it’s going to be quite a change seeing Alistair Darling delivering his first budget with his predecessor at his side. What has he got in store? Will he be able to wrong-foot Cameron who has to make a response immediately afterwards without having had any chance to read and assimilate the details? Given that a general election might only be thirteen months away what’s announced…

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But Cameron sees an increase in his personal ratings The Populus survey for the Times has just been published and shows a significant increase for Labour and, as predicted here this morning, a boost for the Lib Dems. These shares are with changes on a month ago CON 37% (-3): LAB 34% (+3): LD 19%(+2) The numbers are fairly similar to that which the pollster found at the start of January, immediately after the Christmas break. The Lib Dems will…

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