Evening Standard And Spelman at 16/1 is worth a punt too Joe Murphy in tonight’s Standard is saying that Tory chairman, Baroness Warsi, is set to get the boot in a post-May 5th cabinet re-shuffle. He’s tipping Grant Shapps to replace her. Also on Murphy’s danger list is Caroline Spelman who came to the forefront a month or so ago with the forestry sell-off row. I don’t know how strong Murphy’s information is but it seems likely that Cameron will…
S Telegraph What can the whips do about the open primary winner? Of all the 650 MPs who were elected last May Sarah Wollaston was almost unique. For she became Tory candidate following an open primary in July 2009 in which every elector in Totnes, irrespective of their party allegiance, was sent a postal ballot. Other Conservative candidates were selected by so-called primaries but only in the Devon seat and in Gosport did the blues go to the expense of…
How serious is the threat to the blues? New data from Angus Reid shows that 6% of those who told the pollster in a post election survey in May 2010 that the voted Tory now saying they would support UKIP in an immediate general election. What’s significant about this is that the past vote data is not based on what they now say they did at the last election but on what they told the pollster in a survey carried…
Where will the fallout from yesterday’s vote end? If the overwhelming vote in the Commons against prisoners being granted the vote is unsurprising, it is so only because in choosing between reflecting the views of the country and setting up a clash with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), they opted for the former despite the can of worms that could open up. In the past, politicians have tended to opt for a ‘hands tied’ defence. In the short…
Independent Are we seeing another OES-type move to help Nick? Andrew Grice in the Independent is reporting this morning that there’s growing concern in Tory ranks over what David Cameron might be planning over electoral reform . He writes: “There are growing fears among Tory backbenchers that some Cameron allies would be privately relaxed about a Yes vote in the referendum, since it would give Mr Clegg a big prize and almost certainly ensure that the Coalition lasted until the…
Might AV work to their advantage? Politics often boils down to a mixture of high principle and low expediency or interest. The debate on voting reform has long been a classic example of the sort. It is hardly coincidental that all three main parties have produced principled arguments that just happen to support a voting system that is particularly favourable to them. One 1997 election promise that Labour were open about not keeping was their proposed referendum on voting reform….
Was this when it all started to go wrong for the blues? We all, I’m sure, remember this poster campaign for the blues that started exactly a year ago today. Within minutes of it appearing it was being parodied on the internet and then there was the suggestion that the image of Mr. Cameron’s face had been “air-brushed” to make him look better – something that still continues to dog the Tory leader. The approach was perhaps just too personal…
How many mistakes is one too many? Michael Gove appears to have performed so many U-turns this month that perhaps he should have been the cabinet member on Strictly Come Dancing. He’s certainly required fancy political footwork to come out of the episode without too much damage, having firstly changed his mind on the funding of school sports and then again on provision of free books. This comes on top of embarrassments during the summer when his department released inaccurate…