BBC News What’s the story behind this change? All the speculation that Peter Mandelson might be thinking of running for the Labour leadership was sparked off by the planned changes in the law to allow life peers to resign and so stand for election to the commons. Today’s news mean that this is now not possible. I would love to know that the story is behind this change. Mike Smithson
Survey finds SNP Holyrood support down 5 points Opinion polls confined to just Scotland are rare things indeed and according to UKPollingReport there have only been two this year – one by YouGov for the Sunday Times last January. UPDATE – the last Scottish YouGov poll was in June. This morning the Daily Mail is carrying details of a new YouGov Scottish poll it commissioned following last week’s controversial release of Megrahi – the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing….
Could his support for the war alienate centre-ground voters? One of the big polling trends of the summer has been the growing concern about Britain’s continuing role in Afghanistan. The view that we should not be there at all is becoming increasingly popular and the question arises over whether Cameron is right to go on supporting the UK’s involvement. So far he has been totally in favour – the main dividing line has been over issues like whether the country’s…
Could October 2nd produce another shock? At the end of last week the Dublin bookmaker, Paddy Power was reported as saying that sentiment on the betting markets over the Irish Lisbon Treaty referendum had moved more towards the “No” camp. Yes is still the firm favourite but there has not been a poll since June and that suggested that more than 54% would vote that way. But it’s being recalled that “Yes” was leading ahead of the last Lisbon referendum…
Has Labour’s time run out? Nick Sparrow, boss of ICM, has sent me an email in response to recent comments suggesting that August polling is somehow unreliable. He makes a strong case that this isn’t correct by looking at his polls in the August ahead of the past three general elections and what actually happened. Nick notes that comparing Guardian ICM polls for the August before a general election with the result you get:- August 1996 poll suggested that Labour…
SkyNews Is this response going to suffice? As anybody who has followed PB threads in recent days there are sharp divisions over the Scottish government’s decision to release to Lockerbie bomber. One person who has yet to give a view is Gordon Brown and today at a press conference he continued with that line. Clearly there are a whole lot of issues involved – relations with the US and the leadership in Libya to name just two – and as…
AngusReid Are Londoners really the most compassionate? While we are waiting for the August MORI poll I thought PBers might like to look at another survey on the release of the Lockerbie bomber – but this time with regional differences. The pollster, Angus-Reid, is well known internationally but I think that this is the first political survey it has published in the UK. It is seeking to be a member of the British Polling Council. I don’t think we can…
What’s the politics if the UK lost its AAA credit rating? While the Lockerbie release story has been dominating the news a more bread and butter issue has received scant coverage yet has the potential to have an even bigger impact on the election campaign. The government’s borrowing figures for July were much worse than expected – and needless to say, expectations weren’t healthy to start with. The scale of the battering that the public finances have taken in the…