Who’ll get the job if/when Martin goes? With Adam Boulton on Sky News this afternoon reporting that there are suggestions that Michael Martin will hold on as Speaker until the general election and then stand down I thought a quick look at the betting might be a good idea. As far as I can see the only bookie with a market is William Hill which currently has Sir Alan Haselhurst (one of those named in the Daily Telegraph today) as…
Guardian online Will the Labour movement rise up against their leader? HenryG, a long-standing PB regular and contributor of guest slots about Labour’s internal workings, wrote on the previous thread that “…the big news today is the Polly Toynbee article on why Brown should go. Pretty devastating and gives clear instructions to the PLP.” The continuing expenses story, now with the focus on the Tories, has somewhat distracted from Polly’s totally damning column about Gordon and her call for a…
What can Cameron say to regain the initiative? It feels like day 27 (it’s actually day five) of the Telegraph MP expenses expose but there’s another batch in the paper this morning and this will dominate the political news agenda again. The paper’s introduction sums up the flavour of today’s focus and it is going to be tricky for the leadership to deal with – for it touches in some cases on a world that is totally different from that…
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REVISED CON 39(-4) LAB 26(-4) LD 22 (+4) What does this say about the expenses expose? The Times Populus survey for May is just out and shows Labour and the Tories both down four points with the LDs up by the same number. Like other recent polls there has been an increase in “others” – something that tends to happen ahead of the Euro elections. In its final Westminster voting poll before the 2004 Euro elections Populus reported an others…
I’ve just got back in from London and have been able to read through the previous thread for the first time. This has now been taken down, Mike Smithson
Can Labour get the agenda back to the economy? After four frenetic days when the headlines and bulletins have been dominated by the MP expenses affair there’s been an apology by Gordon Brown. His precise words as quoted by SkyNews were: “We also, as politicians have a responsibility to show that people who enter our profession are there to serve the public interest and not their own..”I want to apologise on behalf of politicians on behalf of all parties, for…
After the revelations could the LDs unseat Kitty Ussher? Burnley in north-east Lancashire is where my family comes from and, indeed, my grandfather was Labour mayor of the neighbouring town of Nelson in the mid-1930s. The very idea that it could be anything other than rock-solid Labour seems extraordinary. Yet I now think there’s a chance that the Lib Dems could take it – and if Burnley went this way what will it say about other places? There are three…