Evening Standard What is going on at the top of the Labour party? It says something about the febrile state of things at the heart of government that so far this week three names have emerged as candidates for the Labour leadership – even though there does not appear to be a vacancy. First it was Alan Johnson – the former postman who’s now health secretary. Then the word came that Harriet Harman was back into the frame and today,…
Surely she realised it would all come out one day? Just reflecting on the Jacqui Smith investigation the thing that strikes me is that it apparently never twigged to the holder of one of the highest offices in the land that her home expenses claims stank – irrespective of whether she was following the strict letter of the rules or not. Surely someone who has managed to climb up the greasy poll of politics to the height that she has…
PoliticsHome Sept 2008 Are September’s projections still applicable? Last September the then new PoliticsHome site published an amazing poll that covered more than 34,000 separate online interviews in a total of 238 parliamentary constituencies where the big battles at the next election are going to be fought. The sample was seventeen times the current maximum for the polling of marginals and the PH team, in conjunction with YouGov, devised some interesting approaches to testing things like tactical voting. Fieldwork was…
MailOnline Can the party stop its Deputy “going rogue“ Those who followed the White House race closely last autumn will recall how in the final weeks John McCain’s campaign became plagued by the antics of his ticket partner, Sarah Palin. The V-P nominee, realising that they were facing defeat, began to develop her own agenda and efforts by the offical McCain campaign to rein her were just pushed aside. Palin, it was said, became more interested in positioning herself for…
This is the second cartoon of the day from our cartoonist, Marf. More of her work can be found at LondonSketchbook.com.
PB’s cartoonist is Marf of LondonSketchbook.com.
CONSERVATIVES 48% (+4) LABOUR 28% (-2) LIB DEMS 17% (nc) …and Labour are back in the 20s? The latest MORI poll, just out, has some quite dramatic changes with the Tories now up to 48% – twenty points ahead of Labour who are on 28%. Downing Street might just take some comfort that this is not quite as bad for Brown as last September when MORI had the Tories on 52% with Labour down on 24%. Clearly the past week…
Could a Johnson-led party contain more of the losses? One of the great pieces of wisdom about party leadership betting is that Labour and the Lib Dems always seem to end up with the obvious candidate while being the Conservative front-runner is the “kiss of death”. So what are we to make of the recent suggestions in several quarters about Alan Johnson’s chances? Hardly a day goes by at the moment without one pundit or another pondering over whether an…