Are colleagues ready to slam the door on him? All the focus today is on the Lib Dem leadership and how senior MPs respond to his challenge at an angry meeting of his Shadow Cabinet that if any of them have doubts they should ” come to him by tea-time today and say so.” According to the Times this morning:- “Facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence, the Lib Dem leader tried to stamp on speculation by urging his most senior…
Who would become the next Lib Dem leader? In his “This Week” programme on BBC 1 late on Thursday night the veteran political commentator and ex-Sunday Times editor, Andrew Neil, made this statement – “I have heard that Charles Kennedy will stand down at the Lib Dems Spring Conference†This does not appear to have been picked up elsewhere and although there has been much discussion on the position of the Lib Dems in the David Cameron era the suggestion…
Markets opens on the Lib Dem leadership It’s a sign, surely, of the position that the Lib Dems now have in British politics that a bookmaker considers them important enough to open a market on whether their leader will survive. The price is 1/3 that Charles Kennedy will still be in post at the General Election and 9/4 that he won’t. Given that we might be four years off a General Election there is no point in locking up your…
.. Might David Milband and Ed Davey benefit from the “Cameron effect”? One side effect of the emergence of David Cameron for the Tory leadership has been a change on the betting markets for the Labour leadership. The 54 year old Gordon Brown remains, of course, the red-hot odds on favourite but in recent weeks there’s been money going on the 40 year old Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, David Miliband who joined the Cabinet in May….
How will tonight’s by-elections go? In the immediate aftermath of last year’s Lib Dem conference the party’s poll ratings soared to the dizzy heights of 29% – a point ahead of the Tories and just 3 points behind Labour. The share was never to get anywhere near that again and on May 5th 22.7% of the electorate cast their votes for Charles Kennedy’s party. The dashed expectations were surely one of the causes of the widespread view in Blackpool this…
Will Maude’s frank comments boost Kennedy and rebound on the Tories? With Charles Kennedy due to make his crucial leader’s speech at Blackpool today the chairman of the Tory party, Francis Maude, has thrown the cat amongst the pigeons by suggesting that his party could form a coalition with the Lib Dems if the next General Election produced an indecisive result. In an interview in the Independent this morning Maude is quoted as saying “…You look round the country and…
Does the party want to make it harder for the leader to be replaced? We might get a better idea about Charles Kennedy’s standing amongst Lib Dem activists following a decision to ask next week’s party conference to change the rules to make it harder for somebody to mount a challenge for the party leadership. In what could be a dangerous move for Kennedy delegates will be asked to change the current system where the support of two of its…
Is it feasible to think that Kennedy and Clarke/Davis could do a deal? With the party conference season due to open at the weekend in Blackpool the Lib Dem Campaign Chairman, Tim Razzell, has poured cold water on suggestions that the party could consider a deal with the Tories if the next General Election produced an inconclusive result. He was quoted by the BBC as saying he found it “almost impossible to believe” the Lib Dems could do a deal…