Housing has long had a special place in the Tory party’s heart. A “property owning democracy” in Mrs Thatcher’s vision. It has also proved a nightmare as the rises in interest rates, negative equity and repossessions in the 1990’s showed. Now the problem is different: people desperate to own a home (the young) are shut out by sky high prices (at least in some places), the difficulties of saving for a deposit while renting and the lack of sufficient affordable…
This last weekend was going to be the moment when Trump would seriously bounce back in his re-election effort with a mass rally in Tulsa Oklahoma. Unfortunately for him and his team the event proved to be something of a disaster with just over 6k in the 19k seat venue. A second location nearby to deal with the overflow was abandoned when it became clear the numbers weren’t there. This was in spite of all the boasts and predictions Trump…
During the day I had a call from an old friend who told me she had recently come out of hospital after getting COVID19. Her story was, no doubt, very similar to what many of the hundreds of thousands who have been struck down with the disease have experienced. The sheer awfulness of gasping for breath and then the incredible joy after arriving in hospital and getting oxygen. The totality of the pain, the physical discomfort when our organs aren’t…
This morning The Sunday Times have done some excellent analysis based on figures from the gold standard Office of National Statistics that shows While the virus threat is receding in London and other urban centres, our research shows many of the 44 parliamentary seats in the north and the Midlands that switched from Labour to Conservative last year are suffering an above-average mortality rate. The red wall has become a blue dilemma for a prime minister determined to make last year’s…
The events of the last three weeks aren’t ones many of us are likely to forget. It started with footage of a senseless murder taking place in real-time: a man pleading for his life and crying for his mother as the life is gradually squeezed out of him by a police officer whilst the pleas of by-standers are ignored. The fact the Minneapolis police initially put out a statement that glossed over this, whilst the union president stood-up for the…
Just imagine what would happen if those people who resided in the City of Westminster were not allowed to have an MP. It would be decidedly odd and very hard to justify on democratic terms and no doubt the residents there would rightly feel angry. Well that is the situation that exists for the 0.75m people whose home is in Washington DC. Clearly it is understandable that those who live in the US capitol feel aggrieved by this and why…
4/1 is value that he’ll pardon himself this term Decorum has never featured highly among Donald Trump’s characteristics. If you view life rather like a computer game where the High Scores are measured in dollars and ratings, and any casulaties along the way can be dismissed as casually as a pixellated image, norms of behaviour are of little consequence. And decorum is certainly not what to expect should Trump lose in November. And he should lose. RCP give Joe Biden…
From Keiran Pedley – now of Ipsos-MORI It is fair to say that Keir Starmer has made a positive start to life as Labour leader. Our latest figures from the Ipsos MORI political monitor show that 51% of the British public are satisfied with the job Starmer is doing, 20% are dissatisfied and 29% don’t know. Starmer’s net satisfaction score of +31 has never been beaten by a leader of the opposition in the 40+ years we have been tracking…