Can Labour expect a drubbing on June 5th? Cast your mind back to the last Euro Elections which were held on the same day as the local elections on June 10th 2004. In the weeks beforehand the Tories had suffered serious opinion poll reverses as UKIP’s strength started to emerge and all the predictions were that the Tory leader of just eight months, Michael Howard, was going to fail at his first major electoral test. Yet when it came to…
Are there national implications in the C-Charge rejection? First of all hands up! I read the Manchester C-charge referendum wrongly thorough putting too much weight on the polls and believing that the £2.8bn promised investment would swing votes towards the proposal. What are the national implications? Firstly the Manchester vote following last year’s Edinburgh rejection will mean that it’s going to be much tougher pushing through such schemes. My guess is that we won’t see a further big C-charge proposal…
Is it down to passengers against commuting motorists? At 10pm tonight voting closes in what’s been, after the London Mayoral Race, the biggest single UK election of 2008. A total of 1.94m electors across ten boroughs in the Manchester conurbation have been voting by post to decide whether drivers should pay peak hour congestion charges. If this was down to the punters there’d be an overwhelming NO vote. Ladbrokes has reported that 92% of all bets placed have been against…
Who’ll win the UK’s second biggest election? The picture is of part of Manchester tramway system which is set to be expanded provided voters in the region back a controversial Congestion Charge scheme. Voting by post is taking place at the moment and closes in a week’s time. This is the UK’s second biggest election this year with 1.94m voters involved. The vote covers Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Manchester and Wigan – with most ballot papers…
Who will be dragged to the chair next? When Michael Martin decides to step down as Speaker of the House of Commons, a new mechanism for election to this office will be used for the first time. Following the glut of nominees for the post in 2000, proposals recommended by Tony Benn were modified and adopted by the House Select Committee, whereby MPs will vote by secret ballot, eliminating a candidate who comes last or receives less than 5% of…
Is the environment only something we care about when we are prosperous? The chart above is from the latest Ipsos-MORI and shows responses to the firm’s unprompted “What do you thing are the main/important issues facing Britain today” which they have been asking in exactly the same way for more than two decades. As can be expected the current top topic raised by respondents was the economy. But just look at the way “green” concerns have been declining. When your…
Will British voters learn from the lessons of a new American Presidency? In a fantastic post over at the Spectator Magazine’s Coffee House blog, James Forsyth asks whether an expected Obama presidency will either prove or disprove Gordon Brown’s claim that “this is no time for a novice” He writes “If by the time of the next general election, which will probably be about 16 months into an Obama presidency, Obama is seen as a success, the line will lose…
Does his latest session merely add to the confusion? As Mike has noted before, when Frank Luntz conducted focus groups on the Labour leadership back in September 2006, there was a complete lack of appetite for Gordon Brown. The other much-noted result was the extent to which these findings dashed the hopes of Alan Johnson. The results were not just definitive – they were damning. So what are we to make of last night Luntz performance for Newsnight, when he…