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Is Labour too desperate to find a magic bullet? Looking back over the past few weeks it struck me that there are strong similarities between the opposition attacks on the Daniel Hannan-NHS comments and the response to the Guardian stories at the start of July over what happened at the News of the World when Cameron’s communications chief, Andy Coulson, was editor. With both the core information had been known about for a long period before the story broke. Everybody…

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By-elections.co.uk Is there mileage in using some of the C&N rhetoric? Last week I finalised a chapter on by-elections that I’m contributing to a book on the general election that’s coming out in the autumn. During my researches I found this great site which is building up a collection of campaign materials from almost all by-election campaigns of recent times. From going through the literature you can get a real feel for how each of battles progressed and one that…

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Why did they fail to capitalise on the Tory-Hannan open goal? The events of the past couple of days have underlined what is becoming increasingly apparent: Labour never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I’ve been trying to do a piece on this them but have just discovered the Soho Politico blog which is making all the points I was trying to write but only better. “Labour should have just sat back and watched the reaction to Hannan from…

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Isn’t this all getting a bit ridiculous? At last the weekend but I fear that we won’t see the end of the “we care most about the NHS” race amongst British politicians. Cameron, back from holiday, was fast off the mark slamming the comments by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan and, of course, arranging suitable photo ops of him with smiling and apparently enthusiastic nurses. Meanwhile with their leader, Gordon Brown, still on holiday in the Lake District it was left…

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Can the Tories “steal” one of Labour’s main words? At one level the current verbal spats between Labour’s lone capable communicator, Peter Mandelson, and George Osborne look like standard silly season stuff when there’s not much other political news about. The Independent is presenting it this morning as a “grudge march” between the two key strategists in the main parties following last autumn’s fiasco about what happened in Corfu. But it is I believe much more than that. What we…

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