How big a risk is Nick Clegg taking? You don’t have to spend much time ploughing through the comments on PBC to work out that the most ferocious attacks on the Tories are not from Labour supporters but from Lib Dems. Those who work for the party in areas where the Conservatives are their main opponents are usually the most vocal – and this is reciprocated. So how are these Lib Dem supporters going to view the statements today by…
Will there be few tears shed for David Davis’s rounder-upper? This lunchtime’s news that Tory MP Derek Conway faces a 10-day Commons suspension after the standards watchdog said he paid his son too much from parliamentary allowances. Freddie Conway, received a salary as a researcher while he was studying at Newcastle University. The only problem was, according to the report “.. no records appear to exist of either actual work that Freddie did for his father, or of the work…
Could such an approach backfire on Cameron? Yesterday’s characterisation by David Cameron of the Prime Minster as being “that strange man in Downing Street” has prompted a number of Labour-leaning bloggers, including Paul Linford, to suggest that this is part of a Tory plan. This is what Linford wrote:“it’s clear….that portraying his opponent as somehow not one of us is a key part of the Tory leader’s political strategy..Mr Cameron clearly wants to portray himself as This Charming Man, and…
Are they both more popular outside their parties than within? Just reading what some US right wing commentators are saying about John McCain it struck me that he is his party’s Ken Clarke. Both McCain and Clarke have sought and failed to be party leader/presidential nominee in the past Both McCain and Clarke have been seen by outsider observers as being highly electable Both McCain and Clarke are probably more popular outside their parties than within Both McCain and Clarke…
Has Dave dumped his “nuclear a last resort” commitment? Watching Andrew Marr interviewing David Cameron this morning I was struck at the ease in which the Tory leader has been able to change the party’s stance on nuclear power. From a position when he became leader of regarding this as a last resort he’s managed to move it so that the only issue is whether or not there is a taxpayer subsidy. Marr pressed him a couple of times but…
Should the LDs now work with the 45% Tories to fight Brown? On the day of the best Tory poll figures for 15 years and only two days before the Lib Dems get their new leader there’s an audacious move by Cameron which could prove problematic for Nick Clegg or Chris Huhne. For in an initiative calculated to put the new leader on the spot immediately Cameron has offered to join forces with the third party to forge a “new…
Is the opposition right to focus on the man and not policies? It’s becoming apparent, as the 2007 political year comes to a close, that both the Tories and Lib Dems have managed to make the big issue not a particular policy or strategic direction but Gordon Brown himself. Almost as though they were acting in tandem both David Cameron and Lib Dem stand-in, Vince Cable, have launched lob after lob against Gordon’s personality and judging by the way events…
Will it be a third bloody session for Gord and his team? With a popular headline this morning being “Another day – another disaster” the Prime Minister cannot be looking forward to his weekly cross examination across the dispatch box at PMQs. This starts at noon. No doubt both Cameron and Brown have been preparing all morning and the interesting element will be whether there will be an attempt to pin the lost data issue on the Prime Minister. He…