On this day a year ago Cameron was a 12.5/1 outsider

On this day a year ago Cameron was a 12.5/1 outsider

How the political world has changed in the past twelve months With Gordon Brown due to make what’s being described as the speech of his career at Labour’s conference at Manchester GMEX centre today it’s perhaps worth underlining how the political world has been turned upside-down in the past 12 months. This is how things looked exactly a year ago today on September 25th 2005. On this day a year ago the prices on the Tory leadership on the Betfair…

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Will Gordon survive the Frank Luntz test

Will Gordon survive the Frank Luntz test

Meet the man who could decide the next Prime Minister With today’s YouGov poll in the Sunday Times reflecting a cut-back in the Tory lead and further unease amongst voter towards Gordon Brown a major hurdle in his campaign to get to Number 10 might be a film tomorrow night on Newsnight. Then he’s to feature in a controversial focus group conducted by the US pollster, Frank Luntz. The programme has the Chancellor being compared with Alan Johnson, John Reid,…

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Sean Fear’s local election commentary

Sean Fear’s local election commentary

So what will be at stake in next May’s elections? Next year, there will be local elections in 345 local authorities in England and Scotland. In total, around 12,000 council seats, more than half the total, are being fought. Year two of a Parliament usually produces worse local election results for the governing party than year one. In both 1999, and 2003, the Labour vote share was 2-3% lower than in the preceding year. If that is again the case…

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Could the Guardian possibly ditch Brown?

Could the Guardian possibly ditch Brown?

Why is it being unfriendly to the Chancellor? One of the problems of reading the newspapers online is that although the words might be the same the overall impact can be very different in the print edition. Yesterday’s reporting of the Guardian ICM poll was a classic example. Taking up almost the entire front page running across five columns the headline ran “Brown feels the Cameron effect”. The main numbers were featured nearly half an inch big and were overlaid…

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Guest Slot: Gavin Baylis on the prospects for the LDs

Guest Slot: Gavin Baylis on the prospects for the LDs

Could there ever be a Liberal Democrat Prime Minister? Ming Campbell talked bravely this week about taking the Lib Dems from a party of opposition to a party of government. A few rare Lib Dem loyalists aside, no-one seriously believes that the party might win the next general election. At Betfair, you can get odds of 75-1 against the Lib Dems being the largest party or winning an overall majority in the next election – and only £2000 has been…

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New ICM poll has Tories still 4% ahead

New ICM poll has Tories still 4% ahead

But 70% of voters say it’s “time for change” With the Labour Conference due to start in Manchester on Sunday the first of several polls this weekend, ICM for the Guardian, shows little change on the last survey by the pollster last weekend. The party shares are: CON 36%(-1), LAB 32%(-1), LD 22%(+1). The finding that should really worry Labour is that 70% of those in the survey said they thought is was “time for change”, if there were a…

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Who’ll write PBC’s 300,000th post?

Who’ll write PBC’s 300,000th post?

Can someone stop Roger reaching a milestone point for the THIRD time? Within the next two-three days the number of posts that have been submitted to PBC since we started in March 2004 will top the 300,000 mark. This is a major milestone and thanks to all of you for making the site what it – the UK’s leading political discussion forum. We got through the six figure mark on October 25th 2005 when Roger managed to make the 100,000th…

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Do women think Johnson’s got the Cameron-style X-Factor?

Do women think Johnson’s got the Cameron-style X-Factor?

How female writers are leading the way for the Education Secretary In June 2005 one of first indications that David Cameron was going to get a huge media boost came when women writers began producing extraordinarily favourable columns and profiles about the then relatively unknown 39 year old. Just read again what Vicki Woods wrote in the Spectator after reading a piece on Cameron’s leadership campaign on PBC. The Woods “Cameron love-in” continued and reached its peak with a Telegraph…

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