CON 38% (+2) LAB 26% (+2) LD 20% (+1) The Big Parties’ recovery continues The main impact of tonight’s Populus poll for tomorrow’s Times is on the minor parties, which are down 5%, with the gap between Tories and Labour steady at 12%, both up two points on the last Populus poll back on 10 June, shortly after the European elections and at the height of the expenses scandal. The 16% finding for Others is still high by historic standards. The…
Is this about McBride, or the Guardian v Coulson? The interview of Damien McBride in today’s Guardian Media section is an immediate New Entry in the canon of rehabilitative interviews. The full gamut of human emotions is put on display – personal horror, regret, resignation – a truly masochistic apology, topped with remorse and the inevitable father-analogy for Brown. But the mea maxima culpa covers only half of the interview – from there we have various reasons and side-swipes: his…
How’s this version going to go down at Number 10? There’s a must-read column by Julian Glover in the Guardian this morning in which he tries to unpack those critical few weeks last autumn when the banking system seemed on the point of collapse. The following gives a sense of it:- “….The turning point came on Friday 10 October, a day of market panic. Over the next few days the Treasury engineered its emergency part nationalisation. Few would can deny…
Why aren’t Labour using by-elections as practice? There can’t be many Labour supporters who were glad to hear that Ian Gibson had resigned forcing a by-election in Norwich North. They might not have been much happier at the prospect of fighting the SNP for Michael Martin’s old seat either. Both are potential losses for the Government, so it should be a case of finding silver linings. The only benefit to by-elections where you can only lose or hold on (with…
Wikimedia Creative Commons But Finance Minister & over 100 MPs wanted him to quit These are desperate times for the ruling party – the PM is deeply unpopular, polls indicate it will lose the next election badly, there has been a messy cabinet reshuffle and there is a groundswell among the party’s MPs for a new leader to take over. All of this is very familiar from British politics, but is currently being played out in Tokyo as well as…
Where’s the upper limit to Tory ambitions? Yesterday’s opinion polls showed the figures returning to something like the position they were in immediately following the local and European elections in June – yesterday’s YouGov poll produced similar results to one on 7 June which had a Con/Lab/LD split of 40/24/18 and a ComRes poll of 12 June had a split of 38/22/20. In each case, all the comparable figures are within 2% between now and then. So, not much change, although…
Has the Observer columnist fallen into the 1990s polling trap? As PB regulars will know one thing that makes me absolutely furious is when pundits seek to compare the polls of the 1990s with modern day numbers. For back in the run-up to the 1997 election almost all the pollsters were in their unreformed mode and there was a systemic over-statement of Labour – something that we do not see any more. The pollsters from that era have either moved…
CON 42% (+2) LAB 25% (+1) LD 18% (+1) YouGov have Tories over 40%, ComRes say not quite ITN have announced a new YouGov poll which has the Conservatives increasing their lead over Labour to 17 points, but all major parties gaining slightly at the expense of ‘Others’. This implies that the mistrust of the major parties over expenses at the time of the European elections has largely died away, which won’t be good news for the Greens in Norwich…