Ipsos-MORI But does MORI give a bit of a relief to the yellows? In the build up to what one commentator is now calling “Super Thursday” – the elections on May 5th 2011 – we are going to see a fair bit of polling. For on that that day there’ll be elections to the Welsh Assembly, the Scottish Parliament, local councils in many parts of England as well as the planned referendum on the alternative vote. Ipsos-MORI has just published…
SkyNews What could it do to the SNP’s re-election chances? It’s exactly a year ago today that the man convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi, was freed on compassionate grounds by the SNP-led Scottish government after receiving a doctor’s report saying that he had only got three months to live. We all remember the row and how it has continued to erupt as we saw during David Cameron’s visit to Washington last month. One report today suggests that…
BBC News Almost certainly the key moment of this evening’s Obama/Cameron news conference were the comments on the decision by the Scottish government last year to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi and allow him to return to Libya. The condemnation from both leaders was strong and forthright and the PM has promised a review of the case to provide further information. It was, of course, the Brown government that was in power when the controversial decision was made. This has also…
BBC results 2010 election What future for blues north of the border? In 2005, across the United Kingdom, the Conservatives won less than 200 seats; in 2010, they won more than 300. That increase of more than a hundred came entirely in England and Wales; the Scottish Conservatives returned just the one constituency, the same as in 2005. This poses David Cameron and his party several problems. The one of mandate is relatively easily answered, although none of the answers…
Can the SNP reverse Labour’s fightback? With not particularly subtle timing, Alex Salmond launched on Thursday the Scottish government’s bill to put a referendum questions on independence and greater powers for the Scottish parliament – close to three years since taking office and within a few weeks of a UK general election campaign. The SNP sailed into government close to the crest of their support: in the election, they won 33% of the constituency vote and 31% of the regional…
Are SNP-Labour battles no more than a minor side-show? Anybody who reads the overnight PB threads might come to the conclusion that the only thing that matters in the coming general election is Scotland. For some reason there are periods in the twilight hours when the site becomes almost a Sassenach-free zone (see note below). Quite often I’m accused of not taking Scotland seriously enough or I’m taken to task for asserting (post Glenrothes and Glasgow North East) that Labour…
House of Commons Research paper But how important was it going to be anyway The latest YouGov poll of Scottish opinion has added to the growing narrative about a hung parliament. For the shares it found north of the border had Labour back at 2005 general election levels suggesting that the party is not going to suffer the losses that many had been predicting. The shares from the survey were comparisons on the last Scottish YouGov poll – CON 18%(-2):…
How many losses do we expect them to suffer? At the General Election on May 5th 2005 Labour won 40 of the 59 seats north of the border on just 38.9% of the vote. No wonder that Blair “forgot” about his 1997 manifesto commitment on electoral reform. Since the election they lost Dunfermline to the Lib Dems in 2006 and Glasgow East to the SNP in 2008. This was partly balanced by the “gain” overnight of the Speaker’s seat. So…