HOW BADLY ARE LABOUR DOING AT LOCAL LEVEL? My initial reaction to the local election results was that while they were bad for Labour, they weren’t terrible. Having thought more about this, I think the results were indeed terrible for Labour. Labour now has almost as few councillors (in percentage terms) as it had in 1978, and far fewer than it had in the 1980s. Labour’s local government base has eroded far more rapidly than that of the Conservatives in…
Could new poll put further pressure on Ming? The May YouGov poll in the Telegraph has the following shares with comparisons on the last survey by the pollster two weeks ago CON 38 (+1): LAB 32 (+1): LD 16 (-1). So all the main pollsters with the regular monthly newspapers slots – YouGov, Populus and ICM – put Cameron’s Conservatives on the same level of support – 38% – and this is starting to look fairly robust. But a 38%…
The pit-falls of using the pollster’s historical all-firms table With the first major shift in party popularity since 1992 a lot of people on the site are looking back at the data from the final years of the John Major government to find comparisons with what we are seeing at the moment. Many are asking how the Tories are doing now compared with how Labour was performing in the polls in the first year or so after the 1992 election….
Poll shows the Tory lead more than doubling with him as leader Today’s monthly ICM poll in the Guardian has with changes on last month CON 38%(+4): LAB 34%(+2): LD20%(-4). This is in line with the trend of other recent polls showing the Tories moving forward although Labour has a better showing than the recent Populus or YouGov surveys. When the voting intention question was asked with Brown named as leader against Cameron’s Conservatives and Campbell’s Lib Dems the shares…
Why Cameron can afford to ignore Manchester, Liverpool etc? The above coats of arms are from Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield – all great commercial centres, the homes of major universities and with proud industrial heritages. One or two of them, I’m told, have, or have had, modestly good soccer teams. Yet none of them has a Tory MP and some commentators are saying that the party can never return to power unless this can be reversed. Indeed –…
Will my 18/1 long-shot stop another damaging rebellion? With the controversial Education Bill coming back to the Commons the next few days could be crucial for the leadership chances of Alan Johnson – currently in the second favourite slot and who I suggested was a good value bet at 18/1. The bill’s passage gives the new Education Secretary a great platform to build up his public profile and to show his political skills dealing with the most divisive domestic Labour…
Make a few bob on the Peter Law seats not being won back? So far there’s been little interest in the Betfair markets on the June 29th by-elections to fill Blaenau Gwent seats that the former Peter Law used to occupy at Westminster and the Welsh Assembly. On the face of it the area is a traditional solid Labour strong-hold and the seats should be returning to the party as a matter of course. Peter Law won in May 2005…
Will B&C be the first Tory by-election hold of the 21st Century? For a party whose performance at by-elections can best be described as pitiful the Tories have had a remarkably good new millennium. For the only seat they have had to defend was Romsey in 2000 – a seat made vacant by the tragic fire in which Michael Colvin died. They lost it to the Lib Dems. The party went through the whole of the 2001-2005 Parliament without the…