Guardian Have they the power to stop the changes going through? There’s a story in today’s Guardian that adds to information I’ve been getting in the past few days – that the Lib Dems might veto the planned boundary changes when these come up for parliamentary approval some time before the 2015 general election. The Guardian report notes that under the plan to decrease the number of MPs from 650 to 600 it is projected that the Lib Dem could…
Or could the SNP produce some of their May 5th magic? The upcoming Inverclyde by-election will be the fifth since the general election but only the first to be called because of the death or illness of the incumbent MP. All the other contests have been either prompted by the courts in one way or another – Phill Woolas/Eric Illsley – or else because the May 5th winner wanted to fight an election for a position outside Westminster – Sir…
Isn’t this rather clutching at straws? There’s an interesting piece by the normally reliable Sunny Hundal of Liberal Conspiracy under the heading “Here’s how Boris will lose the London Mayoral election”. Sunny’s main case is about the cost of the replacement for that London icon known throughout the world – the Routemaster bus. “Consider this. Last week Boris unveiled the new Routemaster buses..Know what the full cost was? They cost £7.8 million for just five of them. In contrast a…
This was Ed Miliband on BBC Breakfast on May 5th 2011 “The central mission of my Government will be to ensure that we get the next generation to have better chances than the last, because that is under threat in this country and unless we make that the focus – unless we make that the mission of the Government – I fear the situation will get worse.” This was Jon Huntsman, third in the betting for the GOP nomination, in…
Will the government have an easy ride? One statistic released this week that received a fair amount of coverage was the median rate of public sector pay settlements in the last quarter: for the first time since the figures were compiled, it had fallen to zero. What is notable is that this restraint hasn’t been accompanied by industrial action. Why not? One possibility is that the unions are biding their time for bigger battles to come, with pension reform being…
Could something go through before 2015? I’m suggesting to Ladbrokes and other bookies that a market is set up on whether legislation will be passed before the next general election requiring at least part of the membership of the house of Lords to be elected. The detailed proposals for such a reform were published three weeks ago and include a 300-member hybrid house, of which 80% are elected. Under the plan members would also serve for single non-renewable terms of…
The Henry G weekly column Labour has to do a hell of lot of work to get in fighting shape for contention at the next election. I’ll look at some of these issues in future columns. However it struck me straight after Ed Miliband’s election as Labour leader there were three seemingly ‘superficial’ things that had to be corrected before he really got a proper look-in at becoming Prime Minister. I know this makes me sound old-fashioned but the first…
ConservativeHome A view from a Top Tory analyst There’s an interesting analysis of the May 5th local election result by Rob Hayward on ConHome part of which focuses on the Lib Dem seats which the Tories would hope to take given current polling. “…Nothing in politics is ever perfect nor consistent and the LDs showed remarkable resilience in a number of places probably in the form of incumbency. Where there was a sitting LD MP or Mayor they generally performed…