News of the World (£) But what does this new format really mean? There’s a new ICM poll reported in today’s News of the World (£) which does not apparently include a voting intention question. Instead the phone pollster asked a sample of 2,036 which of these would be best for Britain – Con/Lib Dem coalition (32%); Labour (26%); Neither (29%); Don’t know (12%). This has not been asked before in this format so we have nothing to compare it…
Telegraph Will Craig’s tax affairs embarrass Cameron? Bang on target and totally true to form the Telegraph welcomes Number 10’s new communications chief, Craig Oliver with a close look at his financial affairs. For whenever a new figure emerges on the political scene the paper runs stories like this. Some of them, like those about David Laws, can have a big impact – others like the missives about his replacement, Danny Alexander, get forgotten about in a couple of days….
Was he right to say Dave was “writing propaganda for the EDL”? The big ongoing row this weekend has been Cameron’s speech in Munich in which he’s attacked “state multiculturalism” in his first major statement as PM on the causes of terrorism. The UK, he argued, needed a stronger national identity to prevent groups turning to extremism. In one controversial passage on how Muslim civil organisations should be judged Cameron asked: “Do they believe in universal human rights – including…
What would real reform look like? The events in Egypt might have dominated the news this week but it’s domestic politics that determines the results of elections unless British citizens or troops are directly involved. In that respect, the most significant policy debate this year so far has been around the future of the NHS. It has been said by those on both sides that the government is proposing the most radical reforms in the Service’s more than six decades…
Guardian Is it time for the veteran broadcaster to bow out? The Guardian is reporting that David Dimbleby is in a row with the BBC over a plan to move the production centre of his weekly Question Time programme from London to Glasgow as part of the overall objectives to shift activities out of the capital. The paper reports that David Dimbleby is furious about the resignation of the QT editor Ed Havard, whom he hand-picked to run the show….
Why go to Gateshead for today’s big event? One of the big political stories of the day has been the big speech by Ed Miliband in Gateshead at which we’ve seen a new Labour slogan (Helping families get on) and a new idea – the “British Promise“. The latter, he said, was the notion that that every generation will do better than the last – something that is now under threat. He argued that “there is now a real and…
Evening Standard website The full feature’s out later – and it’s free After a couple of months when there’s been much muttering at Westminster about the speaker, John Bercow, his wife, Sally, has sparked of more controversy with an interview and photo-shoot that will be appearing in full in a few hours time in the Friday magazine of the London Evening Standard. For the “taster” on the Standard website has, not surprisingly, been getting massive coverage and, no doubt, that…
Is putting the emphasis on Clegg the right approach? Tim Montgomerie, originator of the above poster concepts and editor of the Michael Ashcroft-owned Conservativehome beleives that the best way to stop AV being introduced is for the NO camp to put the focus on Nick Clegg. He writes:“… A model is the defeat of the Maastricht Treaty in France in 1992. Maastricht wasn’t rejected because the French people had turned against the European project but because President Mitterrand was hated….