Can he mount an effective fight-back from the election retreat? One of the things that we don’t really know about Gord is how he’ll respond when he is under fire. For almost throughout his career he has managed to avoid public situations where he’s faced a severe grilling. During his time at the Treasury Brown always stood back and let members of his team put themselves forward when the difficult issues, like the level of fraud in the tax credit…
Could Henley become a tasty Lib Dem by election prospect? One aspect of Gord’s non-election decision is that Boris Johnson won’t be put into a difficult position over whether to stick as MP for Henley or not. For if there had been an election and he had not stood he could have found himself out of front-line politics if he then went on to fail in the mayoral race. Last week he was quizzed repeatedly about the dilemma and hinted…
Who is going to get the blame? Masses and masses of coverage in the papers this morning that won’t make comfortable reading at Number 10. Having skimmed most of them on the net the piece that seems the most wounding is from the usually loyal Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. The headline says it all “They will call him Bottler Brown and it is going to hurt”. He writes: “This was not got up by the media. It was a…
YouGov reports a Tory lead of 3% In a most staggering turnaround the internet pollster which restricts its surveys to members of its polling panel, YouGov has these shares in its latest poll. CON 41% (+5): LAB 38% (-2): LD 11% (-2). The comparisons are with the last YouGov poll where the fieldwork finished only two days ago. Only a week ago the pollster had the Tories 11% behind with C32-L43-LD15. The changes for each party are just amazing. Mike…
Just broadcast on BBC News 24. No further details at the moment. UPDATE – this is how it is being reported on the paper’s website:- GORDON Brown will LOSE his majority and be forced to battle for control of a hung parliament if he decides to call a snap General Election according to an exclusive poll in tomorrow’s News of the World. The ICM poll of the key marginal constituencies that will decide whether he stays in power reveals he…
Markets move sharply after the reports from Downing Street With the dramatic news this afternoon that a November is off there’s been a lot of activity on the various general election betting markets. In addition there was a report by Nick Robinson on the BBC that a poll of marginals would show that Labour could lose power. There are no details on that but it has forced the Labour spreads right down on the spread markets. The latest from Spreadfair…
Was it the IHT changes or the speech that prompted the Tory bounce? There’s been a lot of commentary about what prompted the Tory polling surge with Labour saying it was the inheritance tax proposals that were the driving force. This appears to be just spin – and is not supported by the detailed data. The above is from yesterday’s Populus poll in the Times and records how voting intentions changed between those questioned before Cameron’s speech on Wednesday afternoon…
Can Gord call it off without being damaged? There can be absolutely no doubt that if it had not been for the post-Blackpool polls this weekend would effectively have been the first phase of the general election campaign. So much was in place, a series of key announcements has been careful choreographed and a date with Gord had been pencilled into the Queen’s diary. The big question is how can Brown now pull back from that position without suffering too…