Local By-Election Preview : October 24th 2013

Local By-Election Preview : October 24th 2013

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Loughborough, Hastings on Charnwood (Lab Defence) and Shepshed West (Con Defence) Last Local Election (2011): Con 33, Lab 16, BNP 1, Lib Dem 1, Ind 1 (Con overall majority of 14) Loughborough, Hastings Result of last election (2011): (emboldened denotes elected) Labour 1,163, 1,104 Conservative 612, 492 Candidates duly nominated: Simon Atkins (Lib Dem), Sarah Maynard Smith (Lab), Andy McWilliam (UKIP), Judith Spence (Con), Kevan Stafford (British Democrats, Stop Immigration, Leave EU) Shepshed West Result of last election (2011): (emboldened…

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Marf on Merkel; a date for your diary and polling highlights

Marf on Merkel; a date for your diary and polling highlights

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Marf’s really on form today Have a drink on SeanT: Dirty Dicks, November 20th 6.30 pm Thanks once again to Fat Steve for making the arrangements. The next PB gathering will be at the Dirty Dicks pub just across the road from Liverpool Street Station in London from 1830 on Wednesday November 20th. These have become very much a tradition and a good time is generally had by all. SeanT has generously offered to make a contribution to the evening…

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Rolling back green taxes will create some CON branding issues – for a start there is the logo

Rolling back green taxes will create some CON branding issues – for a start there is the logo

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If green taxes are to be axed then it might be smart for the Tories to quietly change this first pic.twitter.com/rH73zWZAnC — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 23, 2013 This was very much Cameron’s thing It hasn’t really been touched on yet but one of the problems facing the Conservative leadership on rolling back green taxes is that it goes against much of what David Cameron was trying to achieve in his early days as leader and how he was trying…

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Nighthawks is now open and with a new Marf cartoon

Nighthawks is now open and with a new Marf cartoon

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Home of the web’s best political conversation Why not relax, and converse into the night on the day’s events in PB NightHawks. Marf’s cartoon deals with two of the major stories of the day, the fall out from Plebgate, and PMQs which was dominated with energy prices. Who would have thought when Andrew Mitchell resigned, there would be such a Sting, in the tail from the Fall Out, of his resignation. The round up of recent events (click on the…

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The main impact of the energy cap issue will be to firm up the LAB vote rather than attract switchers

The main impact of the energy cap issue will be to firm up the LAB vote rather than attract switchers

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It is now 4 weeks since Miliband raised the energy price freeze and amazingly it's dominated the political narrative ever since — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) October 23, 2013 6-0 job to Miliband, ably assisted by Bercow #pmqs — James Chapman (Mail) (@jameschappers) October 23, 2013 As the Tweets above suggest Dave had a pretty hard time of it at PMQs while Ed’s confidence continues to grow. It is exactly four weeks since Ed made his conference speech and still Cameron…

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GE2015 projections based on swing-back to the incumbent government are irrelevant: The incumbent government isn’t standing

GE2015 projections based on swing-back to the incumbent government are irrelevant: The incumbent government isn’t standing

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Final week campaign poster – May 2010 All parties will be campaigning for change In recent weeks there have been a number of GE2015 projections all based on one common idea – that incumbents governments recover in the final period leading up to polling day. Certainly that happened in 1992, 1997, 2001 and 2010, but we didn’t see that effect in 2005. Looking forward to May 2015 one big ingredient is missing – there is no incumbent government to be…

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