Will the PM just stand aside when Labour chooses who will follow him? With the renewed calls for Tony Blair to leave Number 10 earlier rather than later there’s a new focus on the Labour leadership which had subsided following the French referendum, the 2012 Olympic bid success and the London bombings. As well as the “go early” calls by trade union leaders there were reports at the weekend of ministers being confused about who to please – Tony or…
Are the calls for him to quit quickly going to have an effect? With the trade union movement gathering for the TUC congress there’s pressure this morning on Tony Blair to step aside sooner rather than later. Union leaders want him out of Downing Street within a year. This follows comments on Wednesday by the boss of the TUC, Brendan Barber, that the Prime Minister should stand down in in time to have a smooth transition ahead of the next…
“Home Secretary planning to run for the leadership” – Independent While all the UK political focus has been on the Tory leadership a feature by John Rentoul in the Independent today speculates that Gordon Brown might not have the easy ride to 10 Downing Street that most commentators have been predicting. In it he states Charles Clarke is planning to run for the Labour leadership when Tony Blair steps aside before the next General Election. Rentoul contrasts Gordon Brown’s relative…
Birmingham Council House Why Labour did too well in 2002 With the main electoral cycle over for the year, the next broad ballot box test for the parties will be May 2006’s English local elections in 176 urban and rural councils. Local elections are not a perfect test of the parties’ national standings – local issues of course play their role, and turnouts are typically low. But historically they have been an opportunity for a protest vote against the government…
Is it the deputy leadership the only thing that Cabinet ministers are running for? Since the sad death of Robin Cook, it’s been widely said that Gordon Brown was planning to choose Cook as his deputy when he assumed the leadership of the Labour party. No slight is remotely intended to Robin Cook – a principled and extremely gifted politician – in pointing out that it’s unlikely this was a foregone conclusion. Though the Chancellor and the former Foreign Secretary…
The third of his generation to die so young I’ve been away all weekend and it is only now that I am able to start a thread on Robin Cook – the former Labour Foreign Secretary who will always be remembered for his resignation speech just before the Iraq War started in March 2003. Almost exactly a year ago on Politicalbetting we were speculating that in the event of a hung parliament then what we termed the “Ginger Alliance” of…
Will imposing fines on non-voters ensure that Labour stays in power? To Labour officials the party’s supporters must be exasperating. For there’s a big gap between the number who say they support the party and those that actually vote. If some means of boosting turnout can be found, they believe, then Labour’s grip on power could be even stronger than it is at the moment. Labour’s Plan A was to make voting easier. Making postal voting available to everybody seemed…
Even when he looks down keep following Lucky Tony For the fourth time in just two years punters who piled in to bet on Tony Blair’s imminent departure are set to lose money on the political betting markets. In the aftermath of the May 5th General Election the price on him stepping aside during 2005 was just 2/1. On the Betfair exchange one punter bet that he would be out by September at a price less than evens. More bookmakers…