Is this the way to get Lib Dems to support Labour? There are poll findings out this morning from the Electoral Reform Society which might just offer a glimmer of hope to Brown Central in its bid for Labour not to be annihilated in the coming general election. For the response to questions bolted onto last week’s Sun YouGov poll seem to suggest that a promise of a referendum on voting reform might influence some voters – particularly those planning…
Sky News What’ll be the impact on the campaign? Things seem to be moving over a TV debate between the three main leaders during the general election campaign. There are reports that David Frost could be the chairman while Sky News has launched its own campaign. Is it going to happen? The challenge is that this could play such a vital role in the campaign that Cameron, Clegg and Brown (assuming it is he) have to be ultra-cautious. This would…
Could his intervention thwart the Tories? Probably the biggest election, certainly in terms of the number of voters involved, in the UK before the general election takes place in Bedford in October when there’s a by-election for the post of elected mayor. This follows the death a fortnight ago of the union activist turned multi-millionaire media entrepreneur, Frank Branston, who had held the position since it was created six years ago. What’s interesting is that he was an independent who…
BBC IPlayer Michael Crick’s programme is a must listen I’ve just picked up on BBC IPlayer this great Radio 4 investigation by Michael Crick on the funding of political parties and the rise of what he calls “The Political Club”. The programme blurb goes: “Michael Crick reveals how politicians are increasingly becoming a professionalised and separate class, who use their status to channel taxpayers’ money into the coffers of their parties. The recent scandal over MPs’ expenses has revealed how…
Could the tactical switchers of ’97 now go straight to the Tories? One of aspects of the electorate that both the YouGov Scottish poll and this week’s GB survey from Angus-Reid have shown is the very distinctive approach to the Lockerbie bomber release by Lib Dem voters. This is symptomatic I believe of their approach to politics generally and why what they think and do at elections can have a disproportionate impact at general elections. We saw that in 1997…
Telegraph Could the strategy mean there’s even more exposure for Brown? A big discussion point on some Tory-inclined blogs today has been the Daily Telegraph story, quoting an unnamed shadow cabinet minister, that the party is planning, in that lovely term coined by the Lib Dems in 2005, a “decapitation strategy” to target the constituencies of several leading Labour figure. The paper quotes their source as saying: “..Certain Labour Party big beasts, and they know who they are, are already…
Did they fail to keep up when the Tories were so feeble? I continue to be flabbergasted by Labour’s abject failure to score a hit over the Hannan-Tories-NHS affair. They were presented with everything they needed to impede the Cameron surge and have failed to capitalise. The Health secretary who is also a Cambridge English graduate, Andy Burnham, has simply been unable to find words that work and the result is that the story has lost almost all of its…
Tory leaflet – Cheadle by-election June 2005 Was this the dirtiest campaign since the general election? There have been two over-whelming themes in the series of Westminster by elections during the 2005 parliament: the intertwined stories of the re-emergence of the Conservatives as a party capable of winning seats and the difficulties that the Liberal Democrats had in maintaining their historically excellent record of doing very well in this form of contest. For the latter Westminster by-elections had over the…