Overnight continuation thread…. The above picture is a screen shot I took from some of the day’s BBC coverage. I don’t know what is going on there but it appears to be quite telling. Anyway at this time tomorrow night I’ll be on the HotelTrain travelling from Paris to Madrid for a touring holiday in Spain – first port of call Granada. Once again Paul Maggs, assisted by Morus, will be acting as guest editors. I’m taking my Vodafone dongle…
Can Gordon turn the ratings round? Nearly three days after the Crewe & Nantwich result the signs are this evening that there is no stomach within the Labour party for a leadership challenge and that the movement will stick with Gordon. Those leading cabinet ministers who have been named as possible replacements have made supportive statements and it is hard to see what could bring his leadership to a head. Ministers and MPs are gambling that the dramatic collapse of…
Would the government have a better chance if Gordon stood aside? The above, the main lead in the Guardian, is typical of what is in many of the papers this morning as they get their first chance to analyse the Crewe & Nantwich result and pose questions for the future. Labour is in serious trouble facing, in my view, a Tory landslide that could match that of Blair’s in 1997. But is there a solution? Would Gordon taking early retirement…
Could an appalling result start a chain reaction? On October 18th 1990 a by-election took place in the Sussex seaside resort of Eastbourne to fill the vacancy caused by the the death of Ian Gow, the previous MP and close friend of Margaret Thatcher who had been murdered by the Provisional IRA. The result, as seen above, was a massive swing to the Liberal Democrats. The result, reproduced from Wikipedia above, particularly in view of the circumstances of the by-election,…
Is John Denham the person who can retain Labour’s English supporters? Because of Gordon Brown’s tendency to make most of the government’s announcements himself we rarely get a chance to see ministers like the Innovation and Universities Secretary, John Denham, in action. Doing a video search of BBC news and you realise how rarely he’s given a chance to appear on television. Yet from looking at the five minutes clip above from this year’s BBC’s local election results programme you…
Given the dramatic changes we are seeing I thought it might be a good moment to look back to the first Saturday in October when Gordon recorded his famous interview with Andrew Marr. It was this, it will be recalled, that was Downing Street’s way of ending the speculation about an early November 2007 general election and followed a week when the Tories had begun to start their recovery in the polls. Gordon looks a bit better in the recording…
Can Crewe’s loss be put down to McCabe’s tactics not the PM? Even assiduous PBers with a great interest in politics will probably not recognise the man on Gordon’s left in the picture – but he is Steve McCabe – a Glaswegian trade union official turned Birmingham Labour MP who is running his party’s campaign in Crewe and Nantwich. He’s also a government whip. It is McCabe who is responsible for the “Toff” attacks on the Tory candidate that has…
How’s the Sun going to affect the voting dynamics? As we discussed on Thursday night there is a non-traditional candidate running in the Crewe and Nantwich by election who might just pick up enough votes to make a difference in the overall race. And this morning the Sun is going big this morning in its coverage of Gemma Garrett – the reigning Miss Great Britain who is standing as the “Beauties for Britain” candidate. Her basic platform that “I want…