At the next election there will be 650 parliamentary constituencies so in order to secure a majority, certainly as defined by the bookmakers, LAB needs to come out with 326 MPs which is 124 more than their GE2019 haul. That is a massive ask not far short of the 146 LAB gains at GE1997 when the party went into power for 13 years. Starmer is no Tony Blair The electoral system even with the boundary changes looks set to favour…
As we all see from the national polls things look pretty bad for the blue team at the moment. But is the Tory strategy to describe LAB candidates as part of the “Eco Mob” going to resonate? As in the Tweet above the Tories are trying to undermine the LAB candidate in the mid-Beds by-elections raising his previous participation in a Green party demo. To add potency they have tried to link this to the attack on Sunak’s house in…
Ben Walker in the New Statesman has a piece on a subject we are going to hear a lot about in the coming months – when will Sunak decide to call a general election? Since the law changes brought in by Johnson the decision on the date is now one for the PM and the PM alone so history can blame the incumbent who made the decision if he gets it wrong. This is the core of Walker’s analysis: If…
All we seem to hear from the PM are the efforts to curb immigration. Based on the news coverage it appears as though this is by a big margin the government’s top priority. Yet is Sunak’s approach in keeping with the public mood? Earlier in the year YouGov carried out a mega poll (see chart above)l with a sample of 36k to establish what voters saw as the big issues. As can be seen for all segments including the red…
I suppose that it should not come as too much of a surprise to look at the Opinium poll table above with the party split on views of climate change – an issue that has been in the news following the Tory by-election campaign in Uxbridge. As it will be recalled the Tories managed to hold onto the seat by running a highly focused campaign raising concerns about ULEZ whereby drivers of older cars face a financial penalty in parts…
This looks very damning for Team Trump Increasingly the big issue dominating the WH2024 race is what happened nearly three years ago. These comments from former VP Pence are going to make it much harder for Trump. This is a very brave move by Pence because he’ll surely get attacked for making it. But those who have been fearful about the future of democracy should be supportive. In January 2021 Pence made a big step that probably saved democracy in…
The veteran Labour MP Chris Bryant thinks he has found a way that could force Dorries to do what she announced on June 9th when she said she was resigning with immediate effect. He is calling for the restoration of an obscure parliamentary rule from 1801 stating that “no member do presume to go out of town without leave of this House”. Nadine of course announced her resignation in the expectation that she would be elevated to the House of…
Could we see another GE1992? The Tory hold of Hillingdon in the by-election is a reminder that the party of Sunak is not dead and has still got the ability to pull off surprises. We all know the scale of the LAB leads the polls have been showing and I just wonder whether we might wake up like we did on that Friday in March 1992 and discovered that the Tories are still in power with a majority albeit a…