1250 gmt We are experiencing severe difficulties with the site today and it might be a few hours before we can get it back to normal. I can still publish articles but it is not possible for people to submit comments. Mike Smithson
We seem to be having problems this morning. Let’s see if the thread on here works.
Could the party lose two leaders in the same parliament? The power of the media to frame the agenda by deciding what is asked in opinion polls is shown vividly this morning with the top political story in the Times being the findings from the second part of its monthly Populus poll. Yesterday we saw that all the rise in Labour support has been at the expense of the Lib Dems which dropped from 20% to 17% – the second…
Is Harman ready to pick up the lion’s share of Benn’s support? The above is the last poll of Labour members on the coming deputy leadership election which was taken just over two weeks ago. Clearly if Benn gets the nominations then he is worthy of his 7/2 third favourite status – particularly as he is picking up so much of the female vote as can be seen in the chart. But how are the 36% that placed Benn top…
But the Tories return to 42% on the named leader question The May Populus survey for the Times, out this morning shows a biggish swing from the Lib Dems to Labour but with the Tory share remaining static. The headline numbers with changes on last month are CON 37% (nc): LAB 33% (+4): LD 17% which, if repeated at a general election would produce a hung parliament with Labour having most seats. But when the “named leader” question was asked…
Will McDonnell manage to get the 44 nominations? After this afternoon’s announcement that Michael Meacher is standing aside to let John McDonnell run the big issue is whether he’ll get the required 44 nominations to be on the ballot alongside Brown. He has until Thursday and will be helped, no doubt by his assured performance in last night’s debate. He’ll also attract a fair degree of media attention in the coming days and my guess is that people are going…
How is the new “humble” Brown going down with the voters? So far we have not had a proper polling reaction to the “wall-to-wall” Brown coverage that seems to have been dominating the TV screens since the Chancellor launched his campaign for the leadership last Friday. Yesterday’s YouGov poll was carried out last Thursday and Friday when Blair’s historic departure speech was dominating the headlines and only a proportion of the pollster’s internet voting panel will have completed their online…
Could tonight’s debate have any impact? With John McDonnell and Michael Meacher due to resume their discussions tomorrow on which one should seek to be the left-wing nominee for the Labour leadership they are joining Gordon Brown tonight for what could be the first and last debate of the campaign. With nominations due to close on Thursday a key question tonight could be which one will end up in a better position. So although Gordon is there the real attention…