Hills open a “next Tory leader” market
With the polls continuing to go against him William Hill has opened a market on the next Tory leader.
At the weekend I suggested that Cameron should pre-empt such a move by putting his job on the line in a “back me or sack me” move.
These are the prices:
Sacking the manager is not the panacea
Interesting article in the Spectator by Fraser Nelson that wonders "if David Cameron were to be run over by a bus tomorrow, who would lead the Conservative party?". He argues that, should there be an election next spring and the Tories lose, then the question will no longer be a speculative game and become real because "Opposition leaders do not survive failed election attempts in modern politics".
An unholy mess
The revolving door that is the Conservative party leadership sometimes resembles the medieval papacy for shortlived and undistinguished tenures.
The Tories have no plan B
Fraser's piece is already making waves. The reason for this is that it poses the question that all Tories are thinking about but dare not voice - not least because they do not know the answer to the question: "If not Dave, then who?" To lose a fourth successive general election, as the polls suggest the Conservatives are on course to do, would be a savage blow to any party.
Control poll
"More than half of voters do not believe that Tory leader David Cameron is in control of his party, a new poll has found. The survey of 1,877 people, conducted by YouGov for Channel 4 News at Noon, revealed voters consider the Conservative Party to be well to the right of its leaders in terms of politics. Just 22 per cent of those questioned said Mr Cameron was in control of the Tories, compared to 52 per cent who said he was not."
Conservative Home (The Telegraph)
Nowhere but down
According to The Guardian today – which has published the results of an ICM poll giving Labour a six point lead - David Cameron is losing his appeal to voters. It suggests that many Conservative voters have come to dislike the Tory leader and that he is no longer attracting new support to the party.
LibDems up 2 points to 20% in ICM poll
The LibDems are up 2 points in the ICM Guardian poll today. Cameron is losing grassroots support, the poll finds.
Gordon Brown announces Conservative policies on security
He's making a statement in the house right now. His announcement includes:
Unified border forced
A review of using telephone intercept information
Post charge questioning
He's pushing the extra detention argument again - but just quotes from Lord Carlyle. Bring us the evidence Gordon - and we might listen to you. Personally I think this is the wedge issue he';s using for party political purposes to gain advantage.
Lurching right
A blog or two ago I mocked the spinning of comments made at the political Cabinet about the Tory leader lurching to the right. This morning it finally dawned on me that it is Brown not Cameron who has - to use a phrase bequeathed to British politics by Alastair Campbell - "lurched to the right". In terms of political strategy it's brilliant and accounts for many of the Tories problems.
Working from Home and the Transport System
But why do we still do it? Why do we put ourselves through the agony of commuting? It is one of the great mysteries of the modern world, and a rebuke to the futurologists. Do you remember all those people - about five or 10 years ago - who said we were going to be working from home?
Why Voting Intention Polls Matter
We’ve now pretty much got the measure of the “Brown bounce” in the polls - YouGov, MORI and ICM are all showing a Labour lead of around 6 or 7 percent. So, what does this actually tell us? Well, not a lot really. Anyone with sense in their head should have foreseen that Brown would receive a boost after becoming Labour leader. For those of us who write about polls it was becoming incredibly tiresome constantly adding caveats to the hypothetical polls showing Labour slumping with Brown in charge that newspapers insisted on asking. Everyone knew they were artifical, that people are very bad at predicting how they will react to things in the future. No one, of course, could accurately predict how high the Brown bounce would be, but everyone should have expected there to be one.
Seeing the light?
A columnist who urged everyone to support the invasion of
Intelligence Committee observes "
The Intelligence and Security Committee has concluded in its report to Gordon Brown that the
Civilization
This is the engine of it all:
According to the
Not necessarily booze you understand, but anything. That it takes us less hours of work (which is what they mean by "affordable") to purchase a given quantity of something.
Evasion, evasion, evasion
"Running scared", is how The Daily Express puts it – the refusal of Gordon Brown to answer Cameron’s question on the EU constitution.
The Sun, on the other hand, has "
The sour notes came from the left-leaning papers, such as The Daily Mirror which accused the Boy of trying to portray himself as a Eurosceptic by attacking Labour's refusal to hold a referendum on a European treaty.
Splish, splash, splosh
Halfway across a severely swollen river is not a good time to let the tiller go. But that of course is precisely what Cap'n Al Johnson is doing on the good ship NHS. Whereas the Commissar had it hard about (or was that just the way her trousers were hanging?), Cap'n Al has let it go all floppy.
Yesterday he told the Health Select Committee he was junking one of the Commissar's most cherished but highly contentious policies:
Computing uncovers £50m ID card consultant costs
A Freedom of Information request by Computing magazine reveals:
The government has spent £53m on consultants for the national biometric identity card scheme, and continues to use 83 external contractors at a cost of nearly £50,000 per day.
Brown's Bounce Is Dave's Dip
As MPs go away for the long summer break, Sky News Election Analyst Professor Michael Thrasher takes an overview of the state of the parties according to the opinion polls, and looks to past precedents to see what could be in store for our political leaders.
No comments:
Post a Comment