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Guest article: Is Labour’s century-long Party over?

7/7/2006 Editor

A guest contribution from Tabman “The founding of the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than Marx. Discuss.” At the heart of this classic A-Level Politics question is an examination of the founding coalition of the Labour Party â€“ the finding of common interest between the â€œWorking Manâ€, in the form of the TUC, and the â€œConcerned Middle Classâ€ represented by socialist intellectuals such as the Fabians. This founding coalition has changed shape and emphasis over the last 100 years,…

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The betting on Prescott’s successor

6/7/2006 Editor

Writers can be forgiven the occasional cliché when the situation they are trying to describe is an extreme one of its kind. So just as last Saturday Wayne Rooney was as sick as a parrot and Owen Hargreaves covered every blade of grass on the pitch, John Prescott is beleaguered. Having already got himself into a hole where Tony Blair seems to just about accept that his position within the Labour party entitles him to the pay and perks of…

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Latest polls: a mixed story

5/7/2006 Editor

ICM gives Labour a boost; YouGov is steady In the wake of the Blaenau Gwent results, Labour supporters must have got some partial comfort from the ICM poll in the Sunday Telegraph this weekend: Labour’s share had recovered by 3% to 35%, just one point behind the Tories on 36% (a 1% drop). The Liberal Democrats were unchanged at 18%. (The changes are relative to ICM’s previous poll published just 12 days before.) The last survey from YouGov, however, as…

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4th July special: back to the Nineties

4/7/2006 Editor

Gore and Gingrich reflect on their chances Last August, when I last covered the 2008 US presidential election, the favourites for the nominations were Hillary Clinton by a considerable margin on the Democratic side, and John McCain and George Allen roughly neck-and-neck for the Republicans. Eleven months later, Clinton and McCain have remained strong in the betting while Allen has faded. Tradesports rates Clinton a 43.45% chance for the Democratic nomination; on the GOP side McCain is at 41.15% and…

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By-election competition results

3/7/2006 Editor

Landslide victory for ApRhys Following the victories of Dai Davies and Trish Law in Blaenau Gwent, and the Conservatives just managing to see off the Lib Dems in Bromley & Chislehurst, the pb.com prediction competition has yielded a clear winner. ApRhys (post 22) chalked up a comfortable win in the overall rankings, with his score of 21.7 being well ahead of Archibald Schwarz (post 55) in second place with 27.1, and Yet Another David (post 72) in third with 36.4….

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Will Iraq stick to Brown?

3/7/2006 Editor

Focus shifts to the cost of the war Much of the political damage done to Labour by the Iraq war is personally associated with Tony Blair. Many in the Labour party — whatever they think of Blair, Brown or indeed anyone else in the Cabinet — will be relieved at this aspect of Blair’s resignation when it happens: at least, they assume, the successor will not have been tarnished by the war in the same way. Conversely, the other parties…

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Will Murdoch switch back?

1/7/2006 Editor

Earlier in the week, Rupert Murdoch gave an interview to one of his own papers in Australia. Asked if there was a chance he would support the Conservatives in the next general election, he answered with a Majoresque “Oh yes”. The role of Murdoch’s papers in swinging British elections, particularly the Sun, has passed into political folklore. “It Was The Sun Wot Won It”, the paper itself proclaimed after Major’s victory in 1992. More recently, and particularly since Murdoch’s mid-1990s…

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Sean Fear’s local by-election review

30/6/2006 Editor

Nobody can win in West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is unusual in having evolved a multi-party system in local elections. This is unusual under first past the post elections, as there is pressure on the voters to choose between two alternatives, in order to provide one party with an overall majority. Four out of five Metropolitan borough councils, Leeds, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale, are now under No Overall Control. Whatâ€™s more, there is little prospect of that changing in future elections….

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