How much worse can it get for Labour?

How much worse can it get for Labour?

BBC News Should Gordon apologise for the emails? In all likelihood, a year from today the election campaign will be underway, and a month after that this government may well have been ejected from office. Will the spring of 2009 be looked at as the time when the government’s demise finally became irrevocable and terminal? For all his grandstanding on the G20 stage, the poll bounce was modest, and Brown has subsequently been brought back down to earth by the…

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Draper apologises…

Draper apologises…

LabourList Is this going to be enough to draw a line under the affair? “But Damian did write and send those emails, I did respond hastily and stupidly and now, thanks – it appears – to someone hacking into my private emails, they are in the public domain. Damian has paid a heavy price for writing them but I have to stress one important point: without the hacking they would never ever have seen the light of day. They were…

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Guidogate: how much impact will it have?

Guidogate: how much impact will it have?

Sky News In the middle of a political storm, it’s not always easy to keep a grasp of perspective – and there’s no doubt that over the last two days, there’s been a veritable political storm. The question is to what extent this is a Westminster Village story and to what extent does it go beyond that? As yet, the direct damage is limited: one advisor to Gordon Brown has resigned and serious questions hang over the future of a blogger…

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LabourList has been removed

LabourList has been removed

This might seem a pathetic small gesture but I am so outraged by the use that appeared to be planned for LabourList that I have removed the link to the site from PB’s blogroll. Others bloggers ought to do the same.

Emergency Server Upgrade

Emergency Server Upgrade

A message from Robert Smithson – who keeps PB running As some of you may have noticed, pb.com just had an hour of downtime. Checking through the logs, our machine has been running at 100% capacity for the last few days, and it’s time (again) to go through a necessary upgrade. Currently, Politicalbetting runs on a single server at 1and1.co.uk. On this machine there are two “programs” that run – one is the web server (apache2) and the other is…

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Is this the photo that will force resignations?

Is this the photo that will force resignations?

Can the PM afford to be seen next to Watson & McBride? Many voters will never have heard of Damien McBride and Tom Watson before today. Few could give their job titles, or explain their relationship to the Prime Minister. Nadine Dorries demanding apologies, and Charles Clarke insisting that McBride should resign could become a Westminster Village story if Downing Street manages to keep to the line that McBride and Watson were acting independently of the PM, and that he…

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Is this the beginning of the end game?

Is this the beginning of the end game?

Will online campaigning finally come into its own? All the blogs and news channels are running with a story about emails written by Damien McBride that allegedly suggested smears that could be run against leading Conservatives. The emails, sent from a Downing Street account, have rather unfortunately (for the Government, obviously) ended up in the hands of the irrepressable Guido Fawkes, and he has reputedly given then (‘for pleasure, not profit’ according to Iain Dale) to a Sunday Newspaper. The…

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Could prisoners make all the difference?

Could prisoners make all the difference?

What impact the proposed changes to the franchise? Other than the mooted proposals last year about lowering the voting age to 16, there are very few modifications that can be made to the electoral franchise that could have a major effect. Voting in General Elections is already open to resident members of Ireland and the Commonwealth, and Britons overseas (including those in foreign gaols). Short of allowing all other resident EU citizens to vote in General Elections (they already may…

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