Could the polls be so wrong again? Above is a picture of the famous speech by the then Labour leader, Neil Kinnock, at the Sheffield party rally a week before polling day on April 9th 1992. The polls were looking good for the party and it really did seem that the Tory government that had been in office since May 1979 was at last going to be beaten. In the days leading up to the rally two polls from ICM…
Does this make an October election a possibility again? It’s 3am as I write and my first action before starting this piece was to open up my Spreadfair account and buy Labour at the 310 seat level on the general election spread market. The latest Guardian ICM poll is out and shows Labour with their biggest lead from the pollster since September 2005 three months before David Cameron became leader. These are the shares with changes on the last ICM…
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…