A guest slot by Gerard Tully – in his final year at Cambridge I should make clear that while I am not involved in the Cambridge occupation, many people I know are. As someone who is strongly skeptical about whether students can really be motivated, this wave of occupation and protest is looking to me more and more like a game-changer. The number of student occupations is growing by the day – now a list including Cambridge, Oxford, UCL, LSE,…
Does today’s judgement really impact on “free speech”? In his response to today’s judgement the ex-MP, Phil Woolas said the ruling had created uncertainty about what election candidates could and could not say about each other adding that “That is not good for a strong democracy”. But is this the case? For a close reading of the detailed judgement, which I recommend, shows the extraordinary lengths the judges went to distinguish between the rough and tumble of campaigning and what…
What will an emphatic victory do for his leadership? Parliamentary by-elections are generally a good thing for leaders under a bit of pressure. For in the run-up to such important electoral tests even the most dissident members of their own parties tend to hold their tongues. No one wants to be accused of saying or doing anything that could undermine their chances. So if today’s court announcement in the Phil Woolas case does open the door to an early contest…
PAPA since the General Election PB All Pollsters’ Average Date CON % LAB % LD % PAPA November 2010 30/11/10 36.6 39.4 12.6 PAPA October 2010 31/10/10 37.6 37.2 15.2 PAPA September 2010 30/09/10 37.8 37.0 14.8 PAPA August 2010 31/08/10 39.3 36.0 15.0 PAPA July 2010 31/07/10 40.0 36.7 15.0 PAPA June 2010 30/06/10 40.2 37.2 17.2 This shows the averages until the end of November. The PAPA from last night had CON 37: LAB 39: LD 12.8 Mike…
What’ll be the political affect of the decision – win or lose? In just under an hour the voting by FIFA on the venue for the 2018 World Cup will be announced in Zurich after a morning of presentations and a remarkable Tweet by Ed Miliband’s chief media spokesperson, Kate Myler. In it she accused the Prime Minister of “pimping himself out in Zurich..” – a quote that’s likely to be repeated back at the opposition leader time and time…
How serious is it for the party’s new leader? The eighteen or so hours since the end of PMQs yesterday the big focus at Westminster has been on Labour’s leader of only ten weeks – Ed Miliband. The write-ups in the papers of his performance have been pretty bad and last night there was a longish feature on Newsnight by Michael Crick about EdM’s position. Yet in spite of all this Labour continues to poll well and the latest PAPA…
Are the fees proposals going to get through? With it looking increasingly likely that almost all Lib Dem MPs will abstain on the student fees issue government business managers have come up with a wheeze that they hope will ensure the measure goes through – the vote will take place in the evening a week tomorrow. The idea according to Sky’s Jon Craig, is that , “MPs from smaller parties like the Democratic Unionists, Scottish and Welsh Nationalists will be…