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…
Is now the time to bet on an early Blair departure? The pace of activity in the cash for questions inquiry has stepped up a gear with the dramatic news this afternoon that Labour’s chief fundraiser, Lord Levy has been arrested and then bailed. This followed the news this morning that Scotland Yard had contracted with California-based computer experts to try to track emails in Whitehall which had been deleted. Both David Davis for the Tories and Norman Baker for…
UPDATED 0745 But with Gordon as leader Labour does better than with Tony Blair A new approach in this month’s Populus poll is in the Times, published this morning, provides a better measure of what happens when those interviewed are prompted with the names of the party leaders and their reactions to what they would do if Gordon Brown became leader. The main voting intention from the survey, published yesterday, had CON 36:LAB 34: LD 19 Prompting the respondents with…
Just out – the YouGov daily tracker The above chart is from a seven page report by Anthony Wells of Uk Polling Report showing the results of the YouGov daily tracker on perceptions of leading politicians. The data is based on a daily Brand Index survey of 2,000 people that YouGov carries out for its commercial clients. It shows two ratings for Cameron (blue), Brown (brown), Campbell (yellow), and Blair (red). In each case the thin line represents how well…
Populus shows Tory lead down to two points The seemingly never-ending saga of John Prescott seems to be having almost no impact on the party standings in the latest Populus poll in the Times this morning. These show with comparisons from last month CON 36% (-1): LAB 34 (nc): LD 19% (+1). So the only change being the Tories down a point and the Lib Dems up one. This is in sharp contrast to Sunday’s BPIX poll in the MoS…
Has he a plan to avoid the weekly grillings? One of Tony Blair’s first moves when he came to power in 1997 was to change Prime Minister’s Questions. For decades the PM had had to face the House twice a week – Blair changed it to once but doubled the time available. He was new in the job, there’d been a landslide and change was in the air. The plan was met with little resistance. Is it fanciful to think…