Should the electoral calendar have been taken into account? So now we have the day for the royal wedding – and the plan is to stage it on Friday April 29 just before the May bank holiday so many people will gain the benefit of a long weekend. But what’s it going to do campaigning for the elections due to take place on May 5th? That day sees voting right across the UK with the av referendum, the four yearly…
Antifrank on Labour/the polls/Nick Clegg Since the Lib Dems threw in their lot with the Conservatives in the aftermath of the general election, Nick Clegg has come in for a lot of flak on the more left wing blogs and newspaper sites. It is often asserted that Nick Clegg is despised as a hate figure, perhaps even a figure of fun. Is that true? Well, we have had two recent polls where the public were asked to judge his performance,…
Poll/publication End date CON (%) LAB (%) LD (%) ICM/Guardian 21/11/10 36 38 14 ICM/Guardian 24/10/10 39 36 16 ICM/NOTW 22/10/10 40 36 16 ICM/Sunday Telegraph 07/10/10 38 34 18 ICM/Guardian 29/09/10 35 37 18 ICM/Guardian 15/08/10 37 37 18 ICM/Guardian 25/07/10 38 34 19 ICM/Sunday Telegraph 24/06/10 41 35 16 ICM/Guardian 20/06/10 39 31 21 ICM/Guardian 23/05/10 39 32 21 ICM/Sunday Telegraph 13/05/10 38 33 21 Labour take a two point lead with ICM Tonight’s Guardian ICM poll has…
A guest slot by ex-Labour MP, Nick Palmer First a quick word on where I’m coming from. I’ve been a Labour partisan for 40 years, but not one of the ultra-tribal kind who hates everyone else. In particular, if Labour didn’t exist, I’ve always assumed I’d vote LibDem. I’d also concede that they’ve sometimes been right in the past when we were wrong (Iraq is the obvious case) and that they’re traditionally better and more interested in some things that…
Pollster Firm Prediction Andrew Hawkins ComRes Con majority 32 Ben Page Ipsos-MORI Con 25 seats short Andrew Cooper Populus Con majority of 10+ Peter Kellner YouGov Con majority 20-30 Robert Salvoni Harris Con majority 2-10 Andy Morris Angus Reid Con majority 40-50 Martin Boon ICM Con majority 20 John Heald Opinion Research Con majority 40+ …remember these April 11th predictions? With almost all the leading figures in the polling industry getting together today for their general election post-mortem I thought…
Have they little to do with the party or its leader? Writing in his Observer column Andrew Rawnsley made this astute comment about Labour’s current poll ratings:- “…… Labour’s rating has very little to do with anything that Labour or its leader are or aren’t doing. The polls are much more a function of voters reacting to the coalition and the cuts. No one is paying much serious attention to Labour, a state of affairs to which most of the…
Part 1: Discovering Blair’s Best Bits These are exciting times for Labour. The party has four and half years to rebuild its support. It may seem like a long time, but it isn’t. There is not enough time to start from scratch. The party has look to its past, discover the best bits and use them as the foundation for something new. The Blair years are a sensible place to start. Whether you were a Blairite, a Brownite, “New labour 
Does him being around make EdM’s challenge that more difficult? Several papers, including the Mail on Sunday and the Sunday Telegraph, this morning carry reports of an interview for the Total Politics magazine with Peter Mandelson during which he reveals that Labour’s new leader told him to “retire with dignity” – a term he interpreted as “being packed off to the old folk’s home“. In it Mandy pledges to be loyal to Ed Miliband, saying he did not want to…