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Your Sunday morning papers Lord Mandelson

Your Sunday morning papers Lord Mandelson

The Independent on Sunday..“..Peter Mandelson’s last act as European Trade Commissioner was to advocate new trade rules that will directly benefit the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska..Less than a month ago, in one of his final speeches before being recalled to the Cabinet and after he accepted hospitality on the Russian’s yacht, Lord Mandelson announced a new EU trade strategy giving multinational companies freer access to raw materials, including scrap aluminium and natural minerals used in the production of the metal..Mr…

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Could Mandy end up being the biggest loser?

Could Mandy end up being the biggest loser?

Why has he written to the Times today? One of the problems with having a “back story” like Peter Mandelson, fairly or unfairly, is that the default assumption is that you are up to no good. So what are we to make of the latest developments in “Yachtgate” where Mandy has written to the Times today to “explain” that his contacts with the Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska, went back two years further than previously publicly stated. So his first account…

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How can Gord/Mandy get these numbers down?

How can Gord/Mandy get these numbers down?

How can Cameron be stopped if the Tories are in the 40s? In the panel above are the Tory shares from the latest polls by the six firms that carry out monthly voting intention polls in Britain. There seem to be two clusters – ComRes/ICM/YouGov which have the party in the low 40s with Populus/MORI/BPIX recording shares in the mid-40s. These have varied from time to time but in spite of all that’s been happening Labour has found it all…

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Why was the alleged “ask” only for £50,000?

Why was the alleged “ask” only for £50,000?

From a fundraising perspective this story does not add up For twenty years before switching to work full-time on PB my day job was as professional fundraiser running the operations at Oxford, Cambridge, LSE and York universities as well, in an earlier guise advising on a professional basis organisations such as the Liberal Democrats. And from where I sit the Osborne story as it is being related at the moment simply does not add up. The fundamental flaw is the…

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Was Brown Labour’s “Weakest Link” in 1997?

Was Brown Labour’s “Weakest Link” in 1997?

What does this say about his potential at the next general election? Almost everybody with an interest in politics remembers May 1st 1997 – the day that Tony Blair’s Labour party swept to power after eighteen years in the wilderness. The 13% margin in the popular vote and the way anti Tory voters were prepared to vote for whoever in their seat had the best chance of beating the Tory meant that Labour’s landslide majority was substantially greater than any…

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Is today’s move going to help or hinder Labour?

Is today’s move going to help or hinder Labour?

Now the battle moves on to who will get the blame? On what the BBC business editor, Robert Peston, is calling “Momentous Monday” the FTSE 100 has moved up more than 100 points as the City digests the news that RBS is now 60% owned by the government with a 40% share being held in the newly merging Lloyds and HBOS. As part of the deal the chief executives and chairmen of both RBS and HBOS are resigning and Peston…

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Is Labour’s boost confined to places where it doesn’t matter?

Is Labour’s boost confined to places where it doesn’t matter?

Could the move to Gord be in the heartlands – not in the marginals? Firstly the caveats: As I’ve been saying for weeks polling during the conference season is almost always very odd and we need to wait until the end October surveys at the earliest before we can start drawing conclusions. Secondly looking at sub-samples in polling data can often deceive. But on Saturday the Guardian’s polling writer whose judgement I respect, Julian Glover, produced an analysis on the…

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Is Labour doing worse in the marginals?

Is Labour doing worse in the marginals?

UPDATED ICM marginals poll suggests a big Tory majority After the euphoria in the Labour camp following recent poll improvements an ICM survey of 192 Labour-held marginals for the News of the World will bring them back down to earth. For it suggests that the party is set to lose 164 seats to the Tories at the general election. and that Cameron’s Conservatives will have a majority of 78. That is on top of any seat losses-gains in the battles…

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