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…
Is the Co-operative Party’s specially commissioned poll an own goal? We have not had a new voting intention poll for nearly a fortnight and with so much going on I’ve popped into a cyber cafe (I’m still in France) to see if there’s anything that can point to the way opinion is moving. This from YouGov is a poll that had been commissioned by the Co-operative party – which is an integral part of the movement – and we can…
What’s the political impact of the Quality of Life Report? Yesterday, the Conservative Party’s Quality of Life Policy Group issued a report calling for radical economic and social changes in this country in order to combat climate change. It struck me as being a “courageous†report (in the Yes Minister sense). Proposals included new taxes on short haul flights and cars, a ban on plasma screen televisions, restrictions on the establishment of supermarkets, requirements for businesses to recycle, moratoria on…
Or will it remain an isolated example? Today’s main story comes not from politics but from economics, where it has been announced that the Northern Rock building society has received emergency financial assistance from the Bank of England. In a very rare move, the Bank will become the “lender of last resort” to Northern Rock, after consulting the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority. The money lent will be substantially above base rate, and Treasury Select Committee chairman John McFall…
A guest article by Harry Hayfield Conservative majority of 50: Weaver Vale: Con gain from Lab (Swing: 7.01% to Conservative) Weaver Vale (which as the name suggests is based in the historic weaving communities of South Cheshire) is the newest of all the seats on the Conservative hitlist as it was created in 1997 by taking a huge chunk out of Conservative Eddisbury and creating a new seat out of the remnants. Clearly it was the Labour bits they took…