The last time a party elected a leader in the face of the polls In August 2001 ICM carried out a poll to test the reactions of ordinary voters to the two remaining candidates in that year’s Tory leadership contest – Iain Duncan Smith and Ken Clarke. It will be recalled that these two had got to the final short-list after Michael Portillo had been squeezed out in the Tory MP part of the selection process. When asked to compare…
Do Scottish leaders go down badly in England? In what must be the first survey of its kind confined to one specific English region there’s striking news tonight of the different reactions voters have to the two Scottish party leaders and the English Tory one. The survey from Marketing Means was carried out last week and involved contacting 1,008 people. The vote shares found were with changes on the General Election CON 41 (+3): LAB 22 (-1): LD 30 (-3)…..
Time to make a call on the next General Election Over the weekend the city mathematician who runs Electoral Calculus, Martin Baxter (right), produced another of his General Election predictions based on his “poll of polls” and applying the swing to each Westminster seat. His figures with the Tories 3.37% ahead produced a projected House of Commons of CON 267: LAB 311: LD 36 seats. So Labour would be just 13 short of an overall majority. The Tories, in spite…
Could the police inquiry really force him out? With Tony Blair spending the weekend at the G8 summit in St Petersburg this morning’s Sunday papers won’t make comfortable reading for Labour – particularly those close to the Prime Minister. For all the speculation is on how the loans/gifts for honours inquiry will impact on Number 10 and the Prime Minister himself. The Sunday Telegraph carries a report by Patrick Hennessy and Melissa Kite that friends of Lord Levy are saying…
How have the parties been performing since May 5th? The Conservatives have continued to perform strongly in local by-elections, since the last round of local elections on May 5th. Over that period they have made a net gain of 7 seats, compared to a net gain of 3 for the Liberal Democrats and a net loss of 2 seats for Labour. The bulk of the gains have come from rural Independents, who have often not contested the seats which have…
Will the move by the “Honour the IRA” MP open up the race? The last time that Labour left-winger John McDonnell got big headlines was three years ago when at an event to commemorate the IRA hunger striker, Bobby Sands he is reported to have said: “It’s about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating…
Will party debts and “cash for honours” lead to very different campaigns? A report in the Independent this morning suggests that Labour now has debts of £26m after running at a £14m loss in the last financial year to add to its existing £11.5m deficit. While no one can predict what’s going to happen in the “cash for honours” investigation one thing must be a near certainty – that it is going to be a lot tougher for political parties…
How damaging is the EPP climb-down to Cameron? With the reverberations from the Lord Levy continuing to dominate the headlines the Indpendent is reporting that the Conservatives will today announce that David Cameron’s plan to leave the EPP Group in the European Parliament is being “shelved until 2009”. So while the NuLab spin machine is frantically trying to recover from Levy the Tories will be dealing with their own bad news which had to come out sometime. They’ll be hoping…