Could relations with a McCain White House be undermined? Lots of coverage in the UK papers this morning of the article that appeared under Gordon Brown’s name in a specialised publication in which it appeared that the PM was backing Obama over McCain in the White House race. The gentle mocking by the McCain campaign is reflected in the headline in the panel above with the term – “The Coveted Gordon Brown endorsement”. The piece opens “Far be it from…
Even without the “adjustments” things look awful One of the nagging doubts at the back of my mind about the current Tory poll leads is that much of it could be down to modern polling techniques. Could it be, I’ve been asking myself as I work out how much to risk on the spread markets, that part of Labour’s deficits are down to the adjustments that pollsters make and not fundamental shifts of opinion? The new polling techniques have not…
Will the Birmingham away-day keep Gord in his job? Well there they are after a summer of apparent discontent and whispering and the cabinet all travel to Birmingham to hold the first meeting outside London for ninety years. Every single one of them joins in by doing outside public events before the meeting itself which receives much more media attention than usual. And judging by the statements of loyalty and support afterwards it appears that this novel move by Brown…
But who will carry out the great lady’s command? With the first of the September conferences, the TUC, just about to start the Guardian columnist, Polly Toynbee, returns to the theme she was developing a few weeks ago that Gordon, the Labour leader that she invested so much in, has to go. Her dismissal of what’s happening at Number 10 is vicious and she clearly she is on a mission. Her first paragraph sets the scene “..The smell of death…
What’s the point of ousting Gord if Labour would do no better? It seems an age ago, but it was only the end of July, that David Miliband produced his famous Guardian article that was seen as a challenge to Brown’s leadership. The Foreign Secretary denied it of course but the widespread assumption was that he was a laying down a marker for a future leadership challenge. Since then, until today, there has been no proper polling evidence about the…
Is is time for a McCain-style gamble? Charles Clarke, the former Home Secretary, has launched another not-so-subtle attack on Gordon Brown, claiming in the New Statesman that Labour “is destined to disaster if we go on as we are” and that “we will not allow that to happen”. In spite of some fairly significant pressing concerns about the Party and the Government, fully a quarter of the article is given over to complaints that the term ‘Blairite’ is being used…
I was very struck by this post by ChrisD overnight. The only way I ever saw Gordon Brown still leading the Labour party through a GE, was if there was a good to certain chance they would win. Even if he was not openly challenged or quietly pushed, I have never bought the into the idea that he would therefore cling on till the bitter end to lead his troops into an absolutely certain defeat in 2010 like Major did…
Does Labour’s candidate choice make it that more personal? Given Labour’s by election record and the terrible poll ratings then as soon as the news came of the the death of John MacDougall, MP for Glenrothes, the assumption has been that this will be the party’s third loss in Scotland of the four Westminster seats it has defended since the last general election. For after seeing a thirteen-and-a-half thousand vote majority overturned in Glasgow East in July, the real surprise…