Is he campaigning to join the fight after Ming goes? Tonight the “Chris Huhne for Next Lib Dem Leader” show comes to Bedford where I live. It’s not actually billed as that but that is what it is. For he’s the main guest at the local party’s annual dinner – one of dozens of invitations he is attending at the moment part, apparently, of a strategy to get himself better known amongst the membership for when the party votes on…
What about the the Metropolitan Boroughs? Labour’s loss of support in the 36 Metropolitan Boroughs over the past 10 years has been striking. Back in 1996, Labour received 53% of the vote in local elections in these boroughs. In May 2006, the party received 34% of the vote, a fall of 19%. Back in 1996, Labour won 75% of the seats that came up; last year, the figure was 47%. Labour held 31 of these boroughs, compared to 15 now,…
Is there more to Mary Anne Sieghart’s piece than just wishful thinking? In her column in the Times this morning the leading writer, Mary Anne Sieghart, is suggesting that the Environment Secretary, David Miliband, is planning a secret bid to take on Gordon Brown for the Labour leadership. She writes: “..No one wants to talk about this publicly, and some fear doing so even off the record. Supporters of Mr Miliband know that his best hope is to reveal no…
How good are the pollsters with their Scottish surveys? The Channel 4 poll by YouGov was given a lot of prominence yesterday because of its fairly strong indication that this May might see a change of power in Edinburgh. This shows that the outcome of the election in terms of seats could be SNP 45 seats: Labour 42: Conservative 18: Liberal Democrats 14: Green Party 7: Others 3. As the election gets nearer there are going to be a lot…
Do the peer defections have the capability to open up splits? It is perhaps an indication of the complete lack of PR skills of UKIP that news of the defections to the party of the two Tory peers came out on a Tuesday when there was so much other political news about that it got buried. If the party or Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and Lord Willoughby de Broke, had any nouse they would have done it on a Sunday…
Do we make too much of each minute swing? Last week I had an enjoyable session with the YouGov boss and writer, Peter Kellner, when we talked about a new development his company is planning and, of course, the way the polls are going. He made a point that seemed to ring very true – that people’s political allegiances do not change by anything like the magnitudes that are reflected in the polls. Things really are much more stable than…
Tories now open up a 7 point gap A big boost for David Cameron’s Tory party and some better news for Gordon Brown are the main features of the first poll of 2007 – from Populus – in the Times this morning. As the extract reproduced from the Times website shows, the shares and changes on the same poll in December are CON 39% (+5): LAB 32% (-1): LD 18% (-1). Putting these shares in the Anthony Wells seat calculator…
Thanks to Paul Maggs (Double Carpet) for the latest set of data from entries for the PBC Political Forecaster of 2007 Award. So quite a vote of confidence there for Ming Campbell but there’s a gloomier forecast for his Welsh & Northern Ireland spokesman, Lembit Opik. Mike Smithson