Will Osborne’s speech have steadied any nerves? The biggest challenge for the blues in Manchester this week is getting the tone right. Exactly two years ago at the same venue, eight months before the election, the message from Osborne and Cameron was so laden with gloom and doom that many pundits suggest that it was where they started to lose a majority. In many ways the message from Osborne in his big speech today was even more bleak than then…
Do the blues have a long-term problem? There is currently a great deal of speculation that the Conservatives are failing to appeal to women voters and the party will suffer electorally because of this. Tories are right to be worried about the gender gap, but not necessarily about what has happened since the last general election. At the general election, the Conservatives enjoyed a 10 point lead over Labour among men (38% to 28%), but only a 5 point lead…
Thanks once again to Marf for the idea of PB NightHawks and for her excellent spoof of the Hopper painting.
Betfair Politics Chris Christie moves sharply into the GOP betting With time getting very tight for new contenders to enter the race to be the Republican party’s nominee for next year’s White House there’s been a rush of punters trying to get on Chris Christie – the heavyweight governor of New Jersey’s who’s become the favoured choice of the party establishment. The New York Times reports that “….Those pushing Mr. Christie to run include the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, former…
Why such a sharp drop in just two days? The weekly YouGov leadership ratings are out behind the paywall at the Sunday Times and show a sharp drop on polling earlier in the week. Today’s numbers have 28% saying he’s doing his job as Labour leader “well” compared with 60% who say he’s doing it badly. That makes a net minus of 32 points, just one point off his worst figure ever in June. David Cameron, meanwhile, is on 43%…
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Will he ever again lead the Tory right? One saving grace for Ed Miliband’s leadership prospects is the lack of any obviously better alternative. Strangely enough, both other party leaders are in much the same position. Clegg’s ratings remain poor though may now have turned the corner but any potential replacement is at least as compromised by policy and / or personal matters. Cameron too has remarkably little to worry about in terms of possible rivals for his job. Osborne…
We are now two thirds the way through conference season – only the Tory one to go and then normal politics resumes. Before this conference season started I thought that the Lib Dem one would be the most interesting and the Labour one the least. How wrong I was. Last week in Birmingham it was a bit boring and the roastings that were predicted for Nick Clegg didn’t happen. Labour in Liverpool has been extraordinary with people continuing to talk…