..or is Labour using the threat to get its core vote out? Towards the end my conversation with Kevin Maguire on Radio 4’s “The Westminster Hour” the question arose of how the BNP would do in the Glasgow NE by election on Thursday. This followed reports that Labour officials have been telling the the media that the BNP might come third? But just how likely is this given that the BNP has never really got a foot-hold north of the…
“….Some Labour people may think I’m sounding too gloomy, but those who have been privy to recent private polling are a lot more than gloomy. This suggests that Labour could return to the Commons with just 120 MPs or thereabouts, taking the party back to 1930s territory…” Jackie Ashley’s Guardian column today – HatTip ConHome Mike Smithson
Would his plan have gone through if his ratings were better? The key impact that opinion polls have is not in predicting the general election but in setting the whole back-cloth for the way current politics is conducted. So is this how we should explain the lack of support for Mr. Brown’s tax plan from other leading countries at yesterday’s meeting of G20 finance minister? If Brown looked set to continue in office for the next five years then his…
Will the Lisbon compromise mean the Tories are up or down? It’s welcome back to PB’s cartoonist, Marf, with a new drawing this afternoon neatly linking linking the Tory polling position with all the publicity about the plinth in Trafalgar Square. For the next round of surveys, including the latest exclusive poll for PB from Angus Reid Strategies, might set key pointers to the eventual general election outcome. Will the Cameron switch on the Lisbon referendum, as Labour hopes, lead…
What’ll they do now the EU issue has been neutralised? I wonder whether when the experts analyse the 2010 election that the events of this week will be seen as the point when Labour finally ran out of steam. For in spite of all the challenges Brown’s party faced they could still hope that the Tory wounds over Europe would open up again when the Lisbon treaty was finally ratified. They’d seen at first hand how the Tory split had…
How come he was even thought to be a contender? The splash leads of both the Times and the Guardian won’t make happy reading at the home office this morning. For the David Nutt resignation looks set to be followed by others raising questions over whether ministers are ever serious when they ask experts for advice. Adding to their problems is the home secretary’s appearance with Adam Boulton on SkyNews yesterday when he appeared to totally lose it under close…
Have Johnson and Miliband (D) become less likely? With Alan Johnson not having too good a time of it after his sacking Professor David Nutt and the increased speculation over David Miliband going for the EU job the two who have both been favourites at various times have moved out in the betting. Johnson has sounded truly awful over the Nutt issue – his interview on SkyNews this morning was hardly that of a man who you could see as…
ICM Nov 1-2 1996 How Gord would kill for 34% shares today! One of the challenges with trying to work out whether a Tory victory is a foregone conclusion is that the only modern parallel is Labour’s run up to the Tony Blair landslide in May 1997 – something that’s made much harder by big changes in polling practice and the fact that the only firm doing it now almost exactly as it was doing it then is ICM. Featured…