What are the chances of a 2011 general election? It’s been a pretty depressing couple of weeks for the junior coalition party. First there was Clegg’s unfortunate “am I in charge” quip, then he had to face a pretty robust DPMQs, the go-ahead to Rupert Murdoch and now the Barnsley Central result. Even AV, if the latest YouGov poll suggesting that support for NO is growing is correct, might not get through as easily as it looked a few weeks…
And UKIP wallop the Tories in the battle for second place The Barnsley Central by-election result has seen voters overwhelmingly reject both coalition parties with UKIP coming in second place in what is their best ever by-election performance. The Tories were just under a thousand votes behind in third place with the BNP and an Independent chalking up more votes than the Lib Dem. This is far worse than the worst fears of both the blues and yellows and I…
Will the turnout be higher in Wales or Barnsley? Will the LDs do worse than LAB’s 5th place & 3% in Henley? Could tonight see a breakthrough for UKIP? Lots of possible question though the elections are forgone conclusions. Have a good count. Mike Smithson
BBC Would the decision have been different with Cable in control? The big media and political development this morning has been news that the government is approving the News International/BSkyB deal in return for Sky agreeing to make their news channel, independent. There has been a row for months over the concentration of so many media outlets in the hands of one organisation. Two months ago responsibility for this policy area had to be transferred away from Vince Cable after…
Is turnout the only real issue? It’s election day with voters throughout Wales deciding on whether the Welsh Assembly should have greater law-making powers and in Barnsley Central where they’ll be deciding on a replacement for the former Labour MP who was sentenced to a year in jail over his expenses claims. The outcomes of both are forgone conclusions – there will be a big YES vote in Wales and Labour will romp home to a massive victory in Barnsley….
Can he move from a party to a national leader? According to Times’s Danny Finkelstein his old close colleague, the new Downing Street Director of Strategy, Andrew Cooper, is planning to tell Cameron that he should aim to be “be a national leader, rather than a party politician especially in the Commons.” But how realistic is this? Could Cameron really pull his punches in the way Cooper is said to want? As James Forsyth notes on the CoffeeHouse blog: “Nearly…
(Mrs Thatcher stepped down as PM on November 28th 1990) Thanks to Paul Waugh at PoliticsHome for spotting this – the latest campaign material being used by Labour ahead of tomorrow’s by-election. A big challenge in what is a super-safe seat will be getting the vote out and it’s revealing that the party feels that the Thatcher message is the strongest card. Even allowing for the fact that in the centre of what was the Yorkshire coalfield hostility towards the…
North Tyneside mayoral election 2005 Name 1st Choice Votes 1st choice  % 2nd Choice Votes 2nd choice % Final Labour John Lawrence Langford Harrison 34053 40.2 6407 61.6 40460 Conservative Linda Arkley 35467 41.8 3991 38.4 39458 Liberal Democrats Dr Joan Harvey 12761 15.1 N/A N/A N/A National Front Robert Nigel Batten 2470 2.9 N/A N/A N/A When an apparent winner became a loser The nearest elections Britain has got to AV have been in the the thirteen English councils where,…