Have Hill’s got this one priced right? Bookmakers William Hill have opened a market on whether or not Ming will be leading his party at the general election. The opening prices in the market are: Sir Ming to lead Lib Dems into next General Election – 8/11 NO; Evens YES. I think that Hills have got this wrong. Unless Ming decides voluntarily to step down or he has health problems then I do not think the party has the stomach…
How the papers are reporting the crisis Probably the good news for Brown this morning is that most of the tabloids are looking to other than the Northern Rock crisis for their splash headlines. It’s “The police case falls apart” in the Express; “The Tide turns” in the Mirror and “Kate backed by judge” in the Sun. While Brown himself left yesterday evening’s announcement to his chancellor the Times is reporting that “Kate and Gerry McCann go straight to Gordon…
Is Darling right to give a government guarantee? The news within the past hour that the government is to guarantee the deposits of all savers in Northern Rock will be a massive relief to those who have got their savings tied up in the former building society turned plc. But is it the right decision? Should it be the government’s job to step in to safeguard people from their own investment decisions? Will it be setting precedents for the future?…
Why fight hard where it won’t affect the overall outcome? Just imagine what the impact on the next general election would be if David Cameron said something like this in his leader’s speech at the Tory conference. “As we all know about 25 of our leading target seats are held by the Liberal Democrats and in the normal course of events they would be given special treatment in the run-up and during the campaign itself. Extra resource would go in…
Do the events of last March show the scale of the challenge? The BBC story above is NOT from the current Lib Dem conference but from last March when coverage of Ming’s big speech went badly out of control. It wasn’t what was said that sparked it off but the way journalists had been briefed by a top party PR man. The suggestion that the Lib Dems would do a deal with Labour but not the Tories if it controlled…
Karamanlis and New Democracy scrape a second term 1.35 am – final update The polls shut over 8 hours ago in Greece, and the counting is now almost complete – the official website, with results in English, is here. Note that the results map shows the current state of play in each seat as the votes are counted, not the final result. The key number to keep your eyes on is the seat total for New Democracy. With 94% of…
Sunday Times poll gives Lab 39, Con 34, LD 15 There’s a YouGov poll in the Sunday Times today showing Labour with a 5-point lead over the Conservatives. Brown leads Cameron and Campbell 39/17/4 on the “most impressive” leader question, while the good job/bad job splits are 62/22 for Gordon, 35/50 for Dave, and 24/45 for Ming – an impressive +40 for the Prime Minister – how long will such scores last? If there are another couple of polls giving…
A guest article by Alexander Drake Regardless of whether John Howard continues to lead the Liberal-National Coalition, it’s worthwhile to have a look at the main battleground seats for the 2007 Australian federal election. Australia’s electoral topography is fairly standard across each of the five mainland states, with each one having seats that broadly fall into the same categories. To illustrate these different types, I’ve created a rough diagram above. It’s not exactly to scale, and there are some seats…