Can you be green without pain? On the eve of the budget the Government has sought to regain the initiative on green issues with the publication today of their proposed climate change bill. The plan is to create a framework that will bind future governments to work towards a targeted 50% cut by 2050. But what happens if future governments don’t obey? Is the bill simply a way of postponing the pain? For the hard fact is that if emissions…
New poll puts Cameron’s party at 11% ahead An ICM poll for the Sunday Mirror this morning provides good news for both the Tories and the Lib Dems but bad news for Labour. The headline vote share with changes on the ICM Guardian poll nearly a fortnight ago are CON 40% (nc): LAB 29% (-2): LD 21% (+2). The main move is the 2 point switch from Labour to the Lib Dems. The 11% Labour deficit is the biggest the…
The Battle of Barnet Nothing showed the extent of Labour’s triumph in 1997 more clearly than the way they took one supposedly rock solid Conservative seat after another in North London, including Hendon and Finchley & Golders Green. Up until 1994, when they lost overall control, the Conservatives had dominated Barnet council, since its creation in 1964. At Parliamentary level, they had won every seat up until the 1997 earthquake. Barnet was divided into four constituencies up until 1997, and…
Is it too much to ask journalists to check the data? Reports of an interview with the Deputy Leadership candidate, Harriet Harman, were published on the BBC web-site this morning in which she quoted from a privately commissioned YouGov poll that was carried out in November. The findings, according to the article, “…show that the Harman/Brown dream ticket is the one with most appeal to “swing voters,” the poll suggests, with 15% of those surveyed saying Ms Harman would make…
Won’t this encourage more switching to the Tories? Whether this is a fair report or not we will have to wait and see but BBC News is suggesting that today’s speech to the Lib Dem Harrogate conference by the leader, Ming Campbell, “sent out the strongest signal yet that he wants a power sharing deal with Labour after the next general election.” Missing from the list of items which the party would want is a electoral reform and the report…
Is the investigation getting near to closure ? The big political news overnight has been the gagging order that the High Court granted last night to the Attorney General to stop BBC News broadcasting an item in its 10pm bulletin on the cash for honours investigation. Clearly what I can write on a blog like this is very limited. You can only conclude that the story was of such a magnitude that the authorities, at the request it appears of…
Is the party ceasing to be a serious threat? While all the focus has been on the Labour succession we have ignored the extraordinary goings on at UKIP – the party which only a few weeks ago looked as though it might pose a threat to Cameron’s Conservatives. Hardly a day goes by without some fresh headlines – the latest being from the Times this morning as reproduced above. The combination of financial issues and the robust response to the…
Could Labour’s “hand-over” not be the foregone conclusion that it appeared? The chart shows the changing price on Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership over the past seven days. Three things have influenced the markets; the ICM poll a week ago showing how Brown’s Labour 13% behind; the Communicate Research poll yesterday; and the move by Clarke and Milburn to open up a debate within the party. The danger for Brown backers is that media pressure combined with concern over…