The Sun Labour’s ratings on the economy slip back The first voting intention survey since the budget, the Sun/YouGov had CON 37: LAB 41: LD 11 – the best figure for the blues s since February and equalling the best for the yellows. The gap was down to four points. In other questions there’s also good news for both Osborne personally and the coalition government generally. The survey found that 38% of those sampled trust the coalition on the economy,…
Does the new form sound more prime ministerial? The news that apparently the Labour leader wants to be known as Edward Miliband in future has been treated with widespread guffaws – as you’d expect. No doubt we’ll see all sorts of pop psychology in the media over the next twenty four hours as so called “experts” pronounce on his motivation and whether it will have an impact. This, together with the reports that he’s planning to marry his long-standing partner…
Is UKIP felt to be not quite respectable? Last month UKIP decided that it should campaign for a YES result in the May 5th referendum. In a statement the party said:“.. we recognise that AV does enable all voters to register their first preference vote with the candidate of their conscience, and so demolishes the ‘wasted vote’ issue. Under AV, UKIP could potentially achieve a much higher share of the vote through ‘honest’ first preferences.” I’m sure that’s a correct…
But is the biggest lesson the fall of the Lisbon government? George Osborne won’t be too unhappy when he flicks though the front pages this morning – though the reception to his plans from even friendly quarters is perhaps not as enthusiastic as might have hoped. The challenge, of course, is the context in which the government is operating. It’s a lot easier to get good headlines when the economy is going well and there’s money to hand out. James…
Will getting married be a positive or a negative? If the above Tweet from EyeSpyMP is correct then Ed Miliband will soon be a married man. This had been an event on which there had been betting so some punters look set to be better off. The problem for EdM is that given he has been in the relationship for many years and had children without being married then why’s he decided to do something about it now? It will…
Will today’s measures help cut-back the Labour lead? In the end almost everything that was predicted for the budget actually came about and what we saw was a package of measures designed to meet one objective – to make the the government’s cut-backs more acceptable. Osborne focussed his big measure, the one pence cut in the price of a litre of petrol, on one of the costs that I’ve long argued is super-sensitive politically. For many the car is essential…
Are there any good budget bets? Firstly thanks to Marf for her budget day cartoon. The reason that we’ve not seen much of her work on the site recently is that all her energies have been focussed on a special exhibition that opens in April in London – more details on that later. On the budget itself the level of briefing and leaks that we’ve seen is reminiscent of Gordon Brown’s days at the treasury when lots of information and…