“Sorry, no, I have never said I’m anti-women. I have got absolutely nothing against women. Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can’t do without them. My god, take my wife.†What does she do for a living? “What does she do? She looks after me. Looks after the children. Runs the house.†The above is attributed to SW Norfolk Tory big-wig, Sir Jeremy Bagge, in a Telegraph interview by…
How less than one in five are ex-Tory voters This is the first part of some analysis I’ve been doing on the rise of “others” – UKIP, the BNP and the Greens – and the impact that they might have at the next general election. A big question to start with is where is UKIP support coming from? What can we find out from the polling data? The following numbers are based on the aggregation of all the relevant data…
CON 39%(40) LAB 25%(27) LD 17%(18) OTHERS 19% (15) [LAB/CON 64.1% (67.5)] Another week goes by and two more polls come out which will add to the discomfort at Number 10. The first from Comres is above has the Tories slipping a point to below 40, Labour slipping two points to 25 with “others” seeing a massive boost to 19% – which is the biggest proportion in any survey since the EU election effect had worked its way out of…
Guardian What would be the impact of a defection? One of the early signs of what was to come from Brown Central was the ferocious campaign to undermine and eventually secure the sacking of Frank Field at the start of the Labour government. He had been brought in by Blair to “think the unthinkable” about welfare reform until the Brownies got there way. This is recounted at length in Tom Bower’s brilliant biography on Brown and the man who is…
This is the Telegraph writer, Gerald Warner, who has made this amazing prediction on the Julia Kirkbride and Elizabeth Truss re-selection issues. He wrote: “Both Truss and Kirkbride, in their respective constituencies, have slightly less promising prospects than Osama bin Laden in the Tel-Aviv mayoral race. So it seems almost too much to hope that they will succeed in being selected, thus reducing Dave’s putative majority by two seats.” Eh? You must be bonkers. Here’s a tip Mr Warner. Before…
Are local parties threatening Cameron’s remodelling? In South West Norfolk, the selected Tory candidate faces deselection, the stated reason being the non-disclosure of an affair from some years back; in Bromsgrove, the sitting Tory MP has changed her mind about standing down at the election and now wishes to contest the seat. Apart from both being political fallout from the Expenses Scandal, the two stories could damage the Tory party, especially when taken together, and both concern events around local…
Will the Lisbon compromise mean the Tories are up or down? It’s welcome back to PB’s cartoonist, Marf, with a new drawing this afternoon neatly linking linking the Tory polling position with all the publicity about the plinth in Trafalgar Square. For the next round of surveys, including the latest exclusive poll for PB from Angus Reid Strategies, might set key pointers to the eventual general election outcome. Will the Cameron switch on the Lisbon referendum, as Labour hopes, lead…
BBC news What a terrible day for UKIP for this to come out? On the day after the Tory change of heart on the Lisbon referendum the anti-EU party that did so well last June, UKIP, must have been hoping for better headlines than this. This was the opportunity, surely, for them to be presenting themselves as an alternative to Cameron’s Tories. And what happens? We get the news from Southwark Crown court and UKIP has to deal with terrible…