A reminder: Starmer needs a net gain of 124 seats at the next GE to win a majority

A reminder: Starmer needs a net gain of 124 seats at the next GE to win a majority

Comments 0 Comment

A reminder of the atrocious legacy Corbyn bequeathed Starmer & Labour Today is Sir Keir Starmer’s first anniversary as Labour leader and I thought it would be worth remembering the position Starmer inherited. Only three Leaders of the Opposition have made over 100 net gains at at next election, Attlee, Blair, and Cameron, so Starmer will be joining stellar company if he achieves it. My own opinion is that Labour probably needs to only make around 40 net gains from…

Read More Read More

What YouGov was reporting a year ago today

What YouGov was reporting a year ago today

Comments 0 Comment

Putting LAB’s current position into context Thanks to John Rentoul for Tweeting the above poll data from April 3rd 2020. As can be seen the immediate polling reaction to the start of lockdown was to get behind the government and the Prime Minister. You could easily argue that over the past year there has been a CON-LAB swing of nearly 10% but that simply ignores the strange times in which we live. This huge lead tapered off in the following…

Read More Read More

Can the Greens take their 2021 opportunities?

Can the Greens take their 2021 opportunities?

Comments 0 Comment

Remember the Climate Emergency? It turns out it wasn’t quite the emergency activists claimed, once a genuine emergency arrived. To be clear, this isn’t to say that Global Heating isn’t a problem in many, and very serious, ways; it is to say that it’s not “a sudden state of danger requiring immediate action”: the definition in my desk dictionary. The crucial words there being ‘sudden’ and ‘immediate’. Covid has meant that climate policy responses have had to take a back…

Read More Read More

A year on for Starmer and he has yet been able to shake the hands of a single voter

A year on for Starmer and he has yet been able to shake the hands of a single voter

Comments 0 Comment

Events overshadowing his election were even worse than for IDS in September 2001 I always felt sorry for IDS whose election as Tory leader was due to take place the the day after 9/11 – an event that so dominated the world that he never really had a chance to have a honeymoon period. But at least, unlike Keir Starmer, IDS was able to have a first conference speech within weeks and was not barred from shaking people’s hands. We…

Read More Read More

Alba just get 3% in first Scottish poll since Salmond launched his new party

Alba just get 3% in first Scottish poll since Salmond launched his new party

Comments 0 Comment

Five weeks to go before the Scottish parliament election and we have the first Scotland polling since Alex Salmond made his announcement about setting up his new Alba party to compete with the SNP for the indy vote. The fieldwork from Survation all took place during a period when the former SNP leader and later Westminster MP was dominating the Scottish media. Alba is not standing in a constituency so the relevant polling is that for the regional lists when…

Read More Read More

Boris’s Legacy?

Boris’s Legacy?

Comments 0 Comment

The government’s vaccination programme has been one of the government’s undoubted successes. The extensive genome sequencing of the virus and its mutations.  The Vaccine Task Force – a team consisting of scientists, NHS staff, a venture capitalist skilled in investing in biomedical companies and others, together with politicians backing them with very significant amounts of public money – which has enabled Britain to invest in the development and production of a range of vaccines. The collective focused efforts of the…

Read More Read More

Vaccine passports – the first major political divide in the fight against COVID?

Vaccine passports – the first major political divide in the fight against COVID?

Comments 0 Comment

Both Starmer and Davey go on the offensive After more than a year when there has been broad political support for the anti-COVID strategy it looks as though the idea of vaccine passports could become the first party political issue with both the LAB and LD leaders opposing. The most firm opposition is coming from Ed Davey, the LD leader, who in the Telegraph has an article under the heading “Vaccine passports are unworkable and illiberal”. In it he argues…

Read More Read More

New Ipsos “Vaccine Passport” polling finds strong support across a wide range of activities

New Ipsos “Vaccine Passport” polling finds strong support across a wide range of activities

Comments 0 Comment

But given the level of vaccinations are measures like these necessary The British public, according to this survey, seem to have a very strong desire to impose the most extraordinary regime on everybody as we edge out of lockdown. If all or many of these these were to be implemented we would soon realise the scale of controls on our lives. My guess is that the polling reflects the fact that being able to the things listed is so different…

Read More Read More