Has he made the right call over England’s World Cup bid? You can’t help but feeling a bit sorry for Gordon over the timing of the World Cup. There he is in the final stages of his plan to take over the Labour leadership and along comes the contest which in the UK is the ultimate “English-fest”. With the question mark over his appeal to the electors as a whole being the main obstacle standing in the way of the…
The 11/4 on Blair going this year looks a good bet? A week before May’s local elections I suggested that the then PR problems facing the party of John Prescott and Charles Clarke and the immigrant criminals being released row would actually be quite useful to Tony Blair as he sought to hang on to his job. The piece noted “the beauty of the current situation from Lucky’s (Tony’s) point of view is that when Labour is licking its wounds…
[This guest slot contribution has been submitted by Matthew Partridge who had been a strong and consistent defender of Tony Blair’s actions in Iraq and raises an issue that we have not covered on the site for some time – whether Labour will suffer ongoing damage from the war. I disagree with almost everything that Matthew writes and think that his conclusions about the electoral impact are wrong. After some deliberation I’ve decided to publish it because it is a…
What are we to make of the “Spin-Master’s” latest venture? With sharp moves on the “When Blair will go” betting markets to a 2007 departure the Prime Minster’s former top spinner, Alastair Campbell, has launched a “World Cup Blog” on the Labour Party web-site. Why should these two elements be connected you might ask? Well it’s clear that even after only two entries this is no ordinary football blog even though, like me, he is a life-long Burnley fan. It’s…
How Would PR Affect Local Elections? From 2007, Scotland will conduct local elections, using the Single Transferable Vote, the system which is used in the Irish Republic, and Northern Ireland. The Single Transferable Vote is not a pure form of proportional representation. It is perfectly possible, for example, for one party to win an overall majority on 45% of the vote, using this system. It is however, a good deal more proportionate in its outcome than the existing first past…
Will a steady PMQ performance and tax cut promises bring support back? Newly released data from the latest Mori poll and today’s reports of police investigations into the party’s controversial £2.4m election donation are a sharp reminder that Ming Campbell has still got a lot to do to steady the nerves of his party. The poll taken at the end of May shows Ming with a 9% deficit in his approval ratings – depths that no Lib Dem leader has…
Did the pollster find out something that is politically inconvenient? Last week the internet pollster, YouGov, carried out what appears to have been its first ever media-commissioned survey of Labour party members. These party-specific polls have proved to be extraordinarily valuable in the past – so much so that in the Tory leadership races of 2001 and 2005 YouGov got the final results to within 1%. But at the weekend there was just a fleeting reference to the survey in…
Isn’t it all about image and being seen as a nice caring person? One of my favourite contributors on PB.C is David Kendrick who pops up several times a week to make the simple argument that policies and issues play little part in deciding elections. Everything is down to whether voters like the party leaderships and that is mostly determined by how they look, talk and present themselves. Certainly the 7% lead Tory lead recorded in today Indpendent “poll of…