Can the Lib Dems undermine Tory ambitions? At the height of the Tory grammar row a week or so ago Francis Elliot in the Times carried a report about some leaked secret Conservative party research that might be a pointer to the next general election. For the research underlined that the party that represents the biggest threat to the Cameron project is not UKIP or another faction on the right but the Liberal Democrats. The survey also showed a disconnect…
What do we think of Cameron-Osborne’s latest wheeze? Perhaps the most interesting political piece in an otherwise boring lot of Sunday papers is an article by Melissa Kite in the Sunday Telegraph in which she quotes from a secret campaign report prepared for the Tory leadership on the May 3rd outcome. The document concludes “…. that a strategy of not campaigning negatively against the Liberal Democrats, but rather appearing to agree with them on key issues, has been vindicated. The…
But Brown gets within 3% on the pollster’s forced choice question Regular visitors here will know that it has long been a pet theory of mine that what drives Tory ratings in the opinion polls is the amount of publicity, good or bad, that the leader, David Cameron, is getting. If he’s out of the headlines and bulletins then his party slips – if not his party moves forward. Thus after a week where the main political story has been…
Could the party lose two leaders in the same parliament? The power of the media to frame the agenda by deciding what is asked in opinion polls is shown vividly this morning with the top political story in the Times being the findings from the second part of its monthly Populus poll. Yesterday we saw that all the rise in Labour support has been at the expense of the Lib Dems which dropped from 20% to 17% – the second…
Will the anti-Blair factions move back when Gordon’s in charge All the focus from this morning’s YouGov poll for the Sunday Times has been on the relationship between Labour and the Tories and what happens when the party leaders are named. One number, however, is missing from the on-line reports of the survey – and this could make grim reading for the Lib Dems. The main numbers, as reported in the previous article had CON 38, LAB 34, LD 15,…
Is it going to be a choice between the two ex-MEPs? Whether Ming Campbell or the party hierarchy like it or not the fight for the leadership has already begun. For a contest is not too far off – at the most three years away and possibly a lot lot earlier. For whatever reasons question marks hang over the Edinburgh QC and former Olympic sprinter and Thursday’s disappointing election performances only underline his difficulties. As we saw in the aftermath…
Will he still be leader at the General Election? In the immediate aftermath of the election results the Lib Dem leader, Ming Campbell, was forced onto the back foot with questions in TV interviews about his leadership style. In response he is quoted as saying: “Let me make it absolutely clear. I will be leading this party through this parliament, into the next election and into the parliament beyond.” William Hill have announced that they are offering evens that he…
Was Ming’s party the big loser in yesterday’s elections? The above instant “poll” was taken on Tuesday amongst visitors to the site and shows how people were perceiving the possibilities for Britain’s third party earlier in the week. On the face of its things were looking up for Ming and his team. In the three previous national opinion polls, albeit on general election voting intention, the Lib Dems had shown significant improvements. Yet with about half the results from the…