Is the new series reinforcing the MacBride damage? Like many PBers, no doubt, I’ll be glued to the TV tomorrow night for the second episode of the much-hyped and much-anticipated new series of “The Thick of It” – this time getting a good Saturday night slot on BBC 2. Since the last series, of course, we’ve had the Damien MacBride scandal which put the focus on the way Brown Central deals with those who it sees as threats. Just look…
Will Hague’s opposition thwart Tone’s EU hopes? With just one country left to ratify the Lisbon treaty we are getting closer to the moment when the EU will be appointing the first President of the EU council who is likely to become referred to as the President of Europe. The big question, and there’ quite a bit of betting on this, is who is going to get it? Can Tony Blair, Labour’s star three-times election winner who was ousted to…
Or is Brown’s party just clutching at straws? According to Gaby Hinsliff and Henry McDonald in the Observer this morning ” a private analysis by Labour strategists suggests that the blues could be denied up to 50 seats at the election because of UKIP supporters splitting the Tory vote. The figures in Labour’s study, if that’s not too grand a term, “..are based on 100 “supermarginal” seats where its MPs are holding on with majorities of less than 2,000.” Certainly…
Who’s got this right? Herdson or Peter the Punter Earlier this week, I had an e-mail exchange with Peter the Punter following a bet we made a week last Monday as to whether Gordon Brown would go within the week, where we both set out our thoughts on Brown’s chances of survival through to next May. The first e-mail is from me in response to a question that Peter asked – whether Labour would sleepwalk to a sub-200 seat total,…
South Shields Sanddancers Is there really plotting going on? On Wednesday we ran a thread based on a comment from our reliable north eastern Labour contributor, HenryG, suggesting possible moves over the leadership involving Peter Mandelson and South Shields MP and foreign secretary, David Miliband. Last night while all the focus was on Mr. Griffin the “Mole” in the online newspaper, The First Post, carried more speculation noting that this weekend Peter Mandelson is travelling to South Shields to give…
SkyNews Will the fingers be pointed at Mandy? So it’s happening. The long-threatened postal strike starts tomorrow for an initial two-day walk-out. Quite what it is about is hard to fathom but it looks messy particularly for a government that’s due to be going to the country within the next few months. In what was a rather lacklustre performance at PMQs today Cameron made the action his sole subject for all six of his questions. He seemed to labour his…
CON 44 (-1) LAB 27 (+1) LD 18 (nc) A second pollster adds to Labour’s gloom The second of tonight’s three polls, ICM’s for the Guardian, is out and shows very little change on the last survey from the firm taken in the immediate aftermath of the Tory conference and David Cameron’s speech. A lot of people assumed that the last figures were down to the conference effect and that once we “got back to normal” then the scale of…
What do we think of HenryG’s tip? The overnight thread has been dominated by a comment by the usually well-informed HenryG that could have an important bearing on the Labour leadership. He wrote simply: “..I’m hearing that Mandelson could be about to shift support away from Brown into David Miliband’s direction. Not sure how that is going to manifest, or when or if it’s just whispers that do the rounds.“ Make of this what you will. Henry has set it…