Is welfare the new political divide?

Is welfare the new political divide?

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What are the dangers in getting tough? Maybe I’m being unfair to suggest that there is perhaps nothing that pleases Daily Mail readers more than reading headlines like this morning’s about the efforts to tighten up on who should receive the £95-a-week Employment and Support Allowance – which is replacing incapacity benefit. Phrases like “weeding out the work-shy” are powerful and resonate, surely with the audience. The Mail highlights new statistics showing that 640,000 out of about 840,000 who applied…

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Are the new boundaries going to be announced all at once?

Are the new boundaries going to be announced all at once?

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Is the plan a big bang rather than a dribble? We all know that a key part of the coalition’s electoral reform package is to reduce the commons from the current 650 seats to 600 all apart from one or two of the same size. What I understand tonight is that next September there’s going to be a big announcement when the boundaries of all the new seats will be revealed all at once. Until now the process has been…

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How should oppositions respond to what seems like good news?

How should oppositions respond to what seems like good news?

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What should Labour say about the GDP figures? It’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that for thirteen of the last thirteen and a half years Labour has been in government. Being in opposition requires a totally different skill-set and the party is only just learning how to make best use of the limited number of communications opportunities that are available to it. This morning was a particular challenge. The Q3 GDP increase at 0.8% was far higher than most had expected…

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Is Labour making the Mrs Thatcher “Oct 1990” mistake?

Is Labour making the Mrs Thatcher “Oct 1990” mistake?

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Remember when the “Dead Parrot” struck back Next month we’ll see the twentieth anniversary of what for me was the biggest earthquake in UK politics of my life-time – the ousting of the Conservative party’s three times election winner, Margaret Thatcher. A few weeks earlier, on Friday October 12th 1990, the leader had received her biggest applause from her party conference in Bournemouth in response to a joke based on the famous Monty Python sketch which she linked to the…

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It’s almost no change with ICM

It’s almost no change with ICM

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Poll/publication End date CON (%) LAB (%) LD (%) 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 Opposition to the cuts doesn’t seem to be affecting voting intention The first of two telephone polls that…

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BBC apologises for the EdM results cock-up?

BBC apologises for the EdM results cock-up?

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But will they ever learn – WE WANT THE FECKING NUMBERS The BBC has this afternoon apologised for the total Horlicks it made of its spacial programme on Saturday September 25th when the results in Labour’s leadership election were being announced. It will be recalled that some cretin decided it was smarter to have Nick Robinson talk over the announcement of what was a complex set of numbers coming, as it turned out to entirely the wrong conclusion. Robinson should…

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Should Clegg have confessed to…being a smoker?

Should Clegg have confessed to…being a smoker?

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Has he broken what’s become the ultimate taboo? Extraordinarily one of the most covered political stories this morning is the “confession”, if that is the right word, that Nick Clegg made to Kirsty Young on Radio 4s Desert Island Discs that he likes to smoke. The “revelation” came at the end of the programme when he revealed that his “luxury on a desert island” would be “a stash of cigarettes.” I like Nicholas Lezard’s article on this in the Guardian…

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Is talk of a post election coalition premature?

Is talk of a post election coalition premature?

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Could Old & Sad upset the good relations? After a week in which the coalition has broadly withstood what has probably been its biggest test it’s inevitable that speculation has resumed over the partnership continuing after the next election. This has been fuelled by comments said to have been made in private by Francis Maude suggesting that the coalition should continue even if the Tories won a majority. Ex-Tory front bencher and now ConHome writer, Paul Goodman, has made his…

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