BBC News Will voters still not get it? The day’s big political news has been David Cameron’s speech setting out more of his ideas for what was a key part of the Tory election campaign – “The Big Society”. It hardly moved opinion in April and after listening to his speech today I am not much wiser. The trouble is that the words themselves are almost meaningless. My guess is that the political motive is to try move on from…
CON/LAB lead Election outcome LAB lead 2.7% plus LAB overall majority LAB lead 0% – 2.7% LAB most seats in hung parliament CON lead 0% – 4.1% LAB most seats in hung parliament CON lead 4.1% – 11.1% CON most seats in hung parliament CON lead 11.2% plus CON overall majority The table, based on data from John Curtice, shows the range of trigger points for the next election assuming that there’s no change in the voting system and constituencies….
One MB: UK price = £0.01; EU price = £1.00 Like many PBers I have a smart phone that allows me to access the internet, read the site and deal with email just about anywhere I happen to be. The more you have such a facility and the more advanced your phone then the more you use it. In the UK my operator, Vodafone, charge £5 per month for a maximum of 500mb of data – that’s one penny per…
It will mostly be open threads In a few hours time we’ll be heading for Portsmouth to take the 24 hour car ferry to Santander. During my time away PB will not operate as normal. I might pen the occasional piece but won’t be following the ongoing news narrative. I have no idea what the internet connectivity will be like at our holiday cottage over-looking the Minho river on the Spanish-Portugese border. There are some guest slots ready and members…
Was Osborne’s aim to stop Labour doing this again? For me the above Labour PEB was by far the best piece of campaigning by any party at the election. It was designed to sow doubts about what a Tory government would do by focussing on key issues that affect middle income voters. The child credit was its first main point. If there was a single reason why Labour recovered so well in the closing days campaign it was because they…
How long can the coalition go on? There are two big questions in British politics at the moment – who is going to win the Labour leadership and how long can the coalition survive? Both, in a way, are interwoven because as we get closer to September’s voting in Labour’s election we’ll be four months on from the creation of the coalition and the key criteria for the movement will be which of the candidates is best placed to be…
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…
Labour leadership betting PoliticalSmarkets Ladbrokes David Miliband 60% 1/2 Ed Miliband 30% 11/4 Ed Balls 10% 12/1 Andy Burnham 25% 14/1 John Cruddas 6.25% 16/1 Harriet Harman 3.3% 25/1