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The bad news for LAB from Prof John Curtice – Corbyn has NOT solved its turnout problem

The bad news for LAB from Prof John Curtice – Corbyn has NOT solved its turnout problem

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Relying on previous non-voters not a viable winning strategy The conclusion from John Curtice’s new analysis: After the collapse in turnout in the 2001 election (and, indeed, in local elections held at the same time) considerable concern was expressed about the apparent disengagement of voters from the electoral process. A particular source of worry for some was the marked decline in turnout amongst the latest generation of new voters who, it was feared, might now never adopt the habit of…

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Labour candidates fear doorstep questions about Corbyn and the Kremlin

Labour candidates fear doorstep questions about Corbyn and the Kremlin

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Labour members on the front line are worried about how voters will react to Jeremy Corbyn’s equivocal response to the attempted assassination in Salisbury of Russian double agent Sergei Skripal, and his daughter. The front line in this case is the May local elections, including polls in the 32 London boroughs where the Tories fear they are in for a drubbing. But at a training session last week for new candidates in one of those boroughs the very first question…

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Introducing the new Confident Corbyn

Introducing the new Confident Corbyn

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Two-and-a-half years after being elected, he’s finally acting like a leader Something has happened to Jeremy Corbyn; something which few would have thought possible, never mind expected a year ago: he has become comfortable doing the job expected of a party leader. Indeed, more than that: he has become confident in the role. Part of that is, of course, a consequence of the general election – but it’s only a part. Sure, he revelled then in addressing mass rallies, in…

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Eight months on from GE17 how LAB doing is performing in the polls compared with earlier main opposition parties at the same stage

Eight months on from GE17 how LAB doing is performing in the polls compared with earlier main opposition parties at the same stage

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David Cowling, the leading election analyst and former head of BBC political research, has produced an excellent paper which asks the question of why Corbyn’s Labour is not doing better in the polls. The response that is coming from the party to recent surveys is to refer back to the polling what happened on June 8th and the fact that party did better than most, though not all, of the surveys on the day itself. The concluding part of the…

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Jon Trickett – Labour’s man to sort out the outsourcing mess?

Jon Trickett – Labour’s man to sort out the outsourcing mess?

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Don Brind on the politics of the post-Carrilion world When Jon Trickett was leader of the Leeds City Council in the early 90s he had a regular Friday date with finance department officials. He got them to bring along every bill the council had paid that week. He then pulled out at random a number of bills to prompt a discussion on whether the ratepayers had got value for money from suppliers. “I hate waste” declares Trickett and his hands-on…

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Why Tony Blair should be Diane Abbott’s role model

Why Tony Blair should be Diane Abbott’s role model

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Don Brind on the shadow HomeSec There was something churlish about Diane Abbott’s attempt to put down Tony Blair recently — “no one can now remember that they supported Tony Blair.” She surely can’t have forgotten how the then Labour leader came to her defence in one of the most uncomfortable phases of her career when she sent son to a fee paying school. She is now Shadow Home Secretary the job in which Blair made his name. If she…

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In defence of John McDonnell. Don Brind denounces the “interview as humiliation”

In defence of John McDonnell. Don Brind denounces the “interview as humiliation”

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpEK73kjiDQ “If only we Germans had a word for it”. The BBC’s comedy news programme The Now Show came up with an imagined quote from Chancellor Angela Merkel reflecting on how her failure to form a new German coalition government was being relished by her detractors. Two alleged car crash interviews by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell also inspired Schadenfreude and it was probably not confined to Tories. Over the years McDonnell has rubbed up against plenty of his PLP…

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Letter to Laura. Does Momentum want to help Jeremy control the party or run the country?

Letter to Laura. Does Momentum want to help Jeremy control the party or run the country?

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“When are we going to convert you?” I was frankly rather flattered to be asked that question by Laura Parker, then political secretary to Jeremy Corbyn and now national director of Momentum. Her question was whether, in effect, I had abandoned my Corbo-scepticism following the General Election in which her boss had led Labour to a better than expected result. I pointed her to my PB verdict on that result. I said I was wrong – and right — about Jeremy:…

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