Or will be look ridiculous in the middle of a crisis? While we wait for possible polls to come out tonight the previous thread has seen its course and I thought we ought to have something else up – and that is this piece from the Belfast Telegraph about Peter Mandelson, a former Northern Ireland secretary. It’s Christmas. People do silly thing but is James Forsyth of the Spectator CoffeHouse blog correct when he suggests that “..the risk is that…
Could bloggers be made more vulnerable to libel? I’ve just received some information that could have major consequences for bloggers. My understanding is that a green paper will be published in the New Year setting out plans to make it easier for people to sue for defamation. The idea is to cut down the disproportionate costs of bringing a libel action and there’s even a suggestion that there could be a small claims court for libel. The move is bound…
PB Balance of Money Index: CON majority 20 seats With possibly a YouGov and a ComRes survey still outstanding before we can draw the curtain on the 2008 polling season the apparent set-backs for the Tories are leaving spread betting punters relatively unmoved. The above table shows the overnight levels from which the PB Balance of Money Index is worked out – and as can be seen the mid-point spread on the Tories is at 335 seats – or ten…
How key a factor is this in current poll ratings? We are told that 27,000 Woolworths staff are set to be losing their jobs in the New Year, UK car production is down by a third, unemployment is rising steeply and there’s even talk of a bail-out for the Indian-owned Jaguar cars. Meanwhile the pound continues to take a battering on the foreign exchange markets and businesses up and down the country struggle with their banks to get the support…
How will these charts look next year? With the publication of its December political monitor Ipsos-MORI has produced some charts – a couple of which a reproduced above – showing the big trends. What’s helpful here is the way the margin of error is featured graphically. The big question now, of course, is whether there’s more to come for Labour in the “bail-out” trend that started in October or are we going to see a new normality of the Tories…
Is he in danger of ending up like Kinnock? A couple of weeks ago, on December 6th, David Cameron celebrated his third year as leader of the Conservative party and leader of the opposition. It’s been quite a roller-coaster for him though his main achievement, even on current declining ratings for the Tories, has been to take the party through what appeared to be a concrete ceiling of support at 33%. But is the gloss starting to wear off a…
Could the LD’s price be a new Labour leader? We all like to play fantasy politics but the above outcome, based on feeding into the UK Polling report seat calculator numbers in line with some recent polls, is, surely quite plausible. Labour to win most seats but be five points down on the national vote with less than one third of the overall votes cast. Such an outcome would hardly be a ringing endorsement but Brown, or whoever, would would…
Is an Iraq visit preferable to facing Dave? This maybe totally unfair – but yet again Gordon Brown was away from PMQs and we had to endure a tedious session with Harriet Harman and an off-form William Hague. The thought passed through my mind and to other astute Westminster watchers who I have spoken to this afternoon that Brown might have found a strategy to cut down his appearances at PMQs. Firstly there parliamentary year has been cut back sharply…