Picture credit:Steve Black Will the budget set new dividing lines? As we look forward to the budget there’s an interesting post by Ben Brogan – who’s just moved from the Mail to the Daily Telegraph. He writes: “My bones tell me that the Budget is going to lay out some epic dividing lines on the taxation of wealth and aspiration that will make 45p look tame. Maybe this talk of Lloyd George has spooked me, but I fear we are…
Will he regret not consulting first? I have a very cynical view of allowances and payments to elected politicians. When I became a county councillor twenty years ago we got a minimal basic amount but for every half day meeting we attended there was a £9.50 to be pocketed which was doubled plus a meal allowance if it went on after lunch. The result was that there was an incentive for meetings to to be prolonged. This was, of course,…
Does the budget offer the chance of making a few quid? Tomorrow is budget day which has in recent years developed into a great political betting occasion. For some reason the bookies put a lot of interesting markets and smart punters can sometimes do very well. I like the markets on the words and phrases that Darling might say. the reason – well you can can do a quick computer scan on previous Darling speeches and find out whether he…
The above charts are from an interesting presentation I was at this morning by Ipsos-MORI which has been carrying out political polls in the UK for longer than any other firm and has a wealth of historical data. The two charts above seek to track the net approval ratings of Brown and Cameron and to put them in a historical context. The top one shows, month by month, how Brown compares with John Major while the bottom one has Cameron…
CONSERVATIVES 41% (-1) LABOUR 28% (-4) LIB DEMS 22% (+8) Are Labour voters shifting towards Clegg over Smeargate? Further to the update on the previous thread, the Ipsos MORI Political Monitor for April gives the Conservatives a 13-point lead over Labour, but it is the closing of the gap between Labour and the Lib Dems (from 18-points to just 6) that is the dramatic headline of this poll. Nick Clegg hasn’t had the best of months if you listen to…
Does the union have too much influence over the party? Somebody calling themselves “TrueLabour” posted this on LabourHome yesterday:- “If the Conservative party had a single donor called UnitePLC that provided 40% of its donations, provided the CEO of the Conservative party, had its Head of PR setup websites for the Conservatives, hired people like Derek McPoison to run smear campaigns, unfairly influenced the process whereby many of its UnitePLC employees become Conservative MPs through donations and Uniteplc block votes…
CON 40 (-3) LAB 30 (+4) LD 19 (-2) Brown’s party is back in the 30s After the two terrible polls at the weekend Labour strategists must have been fearing the worst from the Guardian’s ICM survey – the longest polling series in the UK. Well those projecting a big collapse got it wrong. The poll points to a Tory lead of just 10 points which is barely enough to produce an overall majority. This is seriously good news for…
Just listen to Nick Robinson on his return from holiday Yesterday I suggested that the West Yorkshire seat of Morley & Outwood might be good for a speculative punt because this had the makings of being the sensation of election night – a bit like Michael Portillo’s defeat at the 1997 general election. This, of course, is the new seat that Ed Balls will be fighting and on the face of it there is a pretty solid Labour majority. But…