Are the knives out for Osborne?
Peter Hoskin 10:35am
How much have the Deripaska affair and the Tories' flimsy response to the economic and financial crises affected George Osborne's standing within his party? A fair bit, if this survey of party members by ConservativeHome is anything to go by. I quote from their findings:
"...support for the Shadow Chancellor has also plunged among the Tory grassroots. Our latest survey of over 1,600 rank-and-file members found that 49% were satisfied with Mr Osborne but 47% were dissatisfied; a net positive rating of just 2%. That is a huge shift since last...
To some extent, Gordon Brown deserves the plaudits he's getting this morning. Yes, the Labour victory in Glenrothes will be have been catalysed by a number of factors - the quality of their candidate, Lindsay Roy; the financial and economic crises; the deployment, cynical though it may have been, of Sarah Brown; and the failings of the opposition campaigns. But in the background to all that was an uncharacteristic risk by our PM - his decision to closely involve himself in the campaign, made when party support for him was at a low ebb. ...
The SNP should have walked Glenrothes – yet Labour came out on top. Sure, the 6,737 majority is lower than the 10,644 with which they won it three years ago – but the SNP since took the Holyrood seat and the council. After Salmond’s win in Glasgow East, winning Glenrothes should have been a formality. So why did Labour triumph? For starters, their candidate, Lindsay Roy, is excellent – a local head teacher (my mum used to teach at his school!) and seen as being a non-partisan figure. So this diluted the rather...
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