Is the devil within the detail? Several people have commented that this statement was very much like a Gordon Brown budget. It was certainly astute as a means of dealing with the political needs of the moment but will it stand up to scrutiny. How’s it all going to look in a few days times when it’s been subject to the most intense examination. What was very Brownesque was the way Osborne finished – claiming that what they were doing…
Twitter Isn’t this a bit melodramatic? Generally I’ve got a lot of time for the Indy’s Steve Richards but his Tweet a few minutes has left me almost speechless. Yes we do have vibrant cities but I don’t get this reference to the 80s. Yes Labour was out of power for the entire decade and seven years more but that was largely due to choosing unelectable leaders. Neither Foot nor Kinnock were ever going to be the match for Mrs….
Is it smart to bring all the bad news together? The sheer scale of what we are seeing this week is quite incredible. I can’t recall a period as intensive as this when so many announcements of such a magnitude were compressed into such a short period. The strategy, taking a five year time-span, is to get all the bad news out early so that by the time the coalition partners are going to the country then this will seem…
What’s the meaning of the Mulholland Tweet? Thanks to Gary Barford on the previous thread for picking up this one – for it could have a major impact on how the next general election is fought. The Lib Dem MP, Greg Mulholland, reports simply – Have had my amendments accepted for the Parliamentary Voting System etc Bill – to postpone boundary changes till after the next election. Unless I’m reading this wrong it looks as though the coalition might be…
But encouraging leader approval numbers for EdM The monthly Ipsos-MORI monitor for Reuters is just out and has encouraging news for both the Tories and Ed Miliband – as the charts above show. As seems to be the pattern now the non-YouGov polls are showing the Tories and Labour on lower levels than we see daily in the News International surveys by YouGov. The MORI methodology is different from all the other pollsters. There is no weighting to try to…
YouGov London ALL voters CON GE LAB GE LD GE General election CON 38 100 0 0 General election LAB 42 0 100 0 General election LD 13 0 0 100 1st choice BORIS 46 85 12 38 1st choice KEN 44 10 78 38 1st choice LD 4 2 2 23 BORIS forced choice 46 84 17 42 KEN forced choice 41 12 76 45 Could Ken close the gap? May 2012 seems an awful long time off but…
Could Osborne’s plans be too much for one or more to stomach? The coalition has been in office for five months and seven days and the only ministerial resignation, the one by David Laws, had nothing to do with the policies that the partners were pursuing. But could all that change on Wednesday – the day when George Osborne presents his statement to the commons? Could this be right time for the faint-hearts, if there are any of them, to…