Who will put the Gvt out of their misery? If I were a better person, I might feel a little more sympathy for some of our Labour MPs. The last fortnight has damaged, in no particular order, Tony McNulty, anyone related to Jacqui Smith, Harry Cohen, Dawn Butler and some of the other London MPs, Nigel Griffiths and now 5 other MPs who think they might recognise that brunette who was so forgettable that the Rt Hon Member for Edinburgh South…
Isn’t now the time to draw some distance? Two of my favourite political writers, Allegra Stratton in the Guardian and James Forsyth over at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, have picked up a tentative alliance that they believe is being woven between Jon Cruddas and James Purnell, with a view to the Labour leadership. Leaving aside the technicality that there is no vacancy, and no election may be called for over a year, all eyes it seems are on the…
Coffee House Once again… can she survive?… and is Darling in trouble too? From James Forsyth at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog: “These revelations are so damaging because they will lead to the voters just laughing at the government. When the electorate rages at a government, its members can at least console themselves they are being taken seriously. But when they are being mocked, there is no such consolation… Labour should prepare itself for a year that will be even…
General election seat betting
David Herdson’s first post as guest editor In another recession, in another country, in another decade, an aide to a presidential candidate once declared that one of the three key themes to their campaign was “the economy, stupidâ€. In fact, it was the key issue; no-one remembers the other two (which is ironic, as one was “don’t forget healthcareâ€). The candidate was of course Bill Clinton and he duly went on to defeat the incumbent president later that year. However,…
CON 44(+2) LAB 31(+1) LD 18(-2) Sunday Telegraph poll gives Cameron a boost A new poll by ICM for tomorrow’s Sunday Telegraph is just out and sees Cameron’s party edging up further from the last survey from the firm in the Guardian a week and a half ago. The shares, incidentally, are almost exactly the mirror image of the 1997 general election result when Labour got 44% to the 31% for the Tories led by John Major. The Lib Dems…
Take the 5/1 that he’ll have to pay some back William Hill have just put out a press release about a new market on whether Harrow East Labour MP and minister, Tony McNulty, will have to pay back some of the £60,000 of taxpayers’ money he claimed for the mortgage on a house he owns in his Harrow constituency where his parent live. You can get 5/1 that he will have to pay at least some it back. As has…
Have we been overlooking a political heavyweight? One of my very favourite political TV dramas was the splendid ‘House of Cards’ trilogy starring Ian Richardson as the deliciously malevolent Francis Urquhart PM. I bought the DVD boxset a couple of years ago, but was heartened to see that it was being repeated on cable channels in the last couple of weeks. The first installment (‘House of Cards’) is my favourite, and the finale (‘The Final Cut’) is wonderfully tragic, but…