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…
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…
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…
Harry Hayfield reports on the historical precedents Following Tony Blair’s statement two weeks ago now seems an opportune moment to look at past prime ministerial resignations whilst in office and the effect it has on all the parties. Since the war, only four prime ministers have resigned whilst in office. So let’s start with the first of those resignations back in 1957. Eden had won a sizable majority in the 1955 general election and the polls reflected this, however Eden…
The betting markets move to a later departure date With Tony Blair preparing for his final Labour conference as party leader there was a nugget of good news for him in the detailed data, now available, from the latest ICM poll. For when asked “Who do you think will make a better Prime Minister, Gordon Brown or Tony Blair?” the poll came out 40-30% for Tony. But even more significantly the declared Labour supporters in the sample went 61% for…
How will the contestants cope with the media scrutiny? If Alan Johnson had just been an ordinary cabinet minister then today’s row over the alleged attempt to “bury” poor school results would probably have gone unnoticed. For this is what minsters do all the time. If there’s some news that has to be made public that might be embarrassing then you announce something positive at the same time in the hope that good will bury the bad. But as of…
Surely he’ll still be leader in two years time? After a conference which started with a gloomy opinion poll the Lib Dem leader goes into today’s session in Brighton knowing that he has a fight on his hands over the leadership’s taxation plans. With Lib Dem conferences it is always hard judging how key votes will go but there’s little doubt that the “50% tax” faction has got a fair degree of support and it could be that Ming is…
Do the spread markets offer good value? The big unanswered question in the Labour succession is how long is Tony going to stay. In the past three weeks opinion has moved from a departure during 2006 and all the focus is on 2007 – particularly the second quarter – April to June where the best price is now 1.7/1. At the weekend there was a report that the police investigation into the “cash for peerages” row has “yet to find…