Is July a good by election month for the LDs? One of the big bets of the Gordon Brown era has been that “Labour losing a by election” might be the first to happen from a range of options listed by William Hill. Given that almost all the other items in the market – “Raith Rovers winning promotion”, “A full UK withdrawal from Iraq”, “Gordon and Sarah having another child” etc – seem far more remote the 10/1 that was…
Can Ming’s by election team prove the polls wrong? A new YouGov poll for Sky News which was published overnight has the Lib Dems at their worst ever figure from the firm – even below the last low point of 13% in January 2006 in a survey taken after the Mark Oaten and Simon Hughes tabloid revelations. The figures are with changes on the last YouGov poll in the Sun Times a week and a half ago are: CON 37%…
Was Brown being serious or just playing politics? Perhaps the element that shows the level of seriousness that Brown attached to his desire to create “a Government of all the talents†is the job that was actually offered to Paddy Ashdown – Northern Ireland secretary. Important? Yes – but not as big a job as it was now the power sharing government at Stormont is operating properly. Surely given Ashdown’s former role as the international community’s High Representative for Bosnia…
But would a new leader pose a bigger threat to Brown’s ambitions? With the change-over in the Tory leadership being the catalyst for the January 2006 departure of the last Lib Dem leader, Charles Kennedy, could the arrival of a new Labour leader have the same effect on Ming? For the reverberations from Monday’s offer to Ming of ministerial places for Lib Dems are continuing to dominate the political headlines and any change in the line-up of party leaders can…
Should the Tories be cheering such a development? Reproduced above is part of the top political story in the Guardian this morning which, if true and implemented, could change the face of British politics. For Ming Campbell and the Lib Dems such an offer could appear to be very tempting and for Brown it would be a way of showing from day one that his approach is going to be vastly different from Tony Blair’s. Yet such an offer if…
Is this why the Lib Dems do so badly with the pollster? One of the great puzzles of modern polling is why the Lib Dems always seem to have the lowest shares with the internet firm, YouGov. Thus the latest 14% total compares with the 21% that ICM was reporting in its latest survey. Clearly there’s something about the methodology of the two firms that causes such a disparity. Thanks to data that was prepared for last Friday’s British Polling…
How punters reacted to PMQs on Jan 11th 2006? Just five days after Charles Kennedy resigned in January 2006 Ming Campbell took, for the first time as interim leader, his party’s leader’s slot at Prime Minister’s Questions. This was a key moment in his career and, for once, all eyes were on the prospective head of the UK’s third party when he got to his feet for the allocated two questions. Alas Ming came to what should have been a…
Will Lynne Featherstone hold on in Hornsey? Those who followed yesterday’s thread will have seen a fierce argument between two long-standing contributors, Mark Senior and Gladstone, over whether the Lib Dems will hold onto Hornsey and Wood Green at the next general election. Mark has laid a bet 5/1 on the possibility that the incumbent who took the seat in 2005, Lynne Featherstone, (pictured above promoting a soup kitchen initiative) will fail to hold onto the seat. So if she…