Politics

This latest YouGov poll for Channel 4 will really give Labour MPs the cold sweats… It was conducted across 60 constituencies which currently have Labour majorities of 6 to 14 percent.  Why?  Because they’re the seats that the Tories will need to win to be Britain’s largest party after the next election, and they’ll need an overall swing of 7 percent to achieve that. According to YouGov, though, there’s currently a 12 percent swing in favour of the Tories.  That would actually give Cameron & Co. a 150 majority in the Commons.  And leave Jack Straw among the many Labour casualties. YouGov’s Peter Kellner may be insisting that Labour could still win the next election.  But these latest results confirm just how difficult that

Ed Balls’s announcement today of 100 co-operative schools deserves to be taken seriously, as it shows sign of Brown responding to Cameron’s “choice” agenda in schools. First, Brown dismissed choice as he had done under Blair. Now, he realises he has to respond to it and today’s move is, as Joe Murphy says, a “battle over parent power”. Michael Gove (in Sweden right now, looking at the schools model he proposes for Britain) scored a success in his version of parent power, where they’d be free to choose whatever school they want. Balls proposes a “co-operative” model which sounds a lot more radical than it is. It would – in

I almost feel sorry for the Tory Ten in Tatler. Great to get the profile, of course, but there’s no greater curse in politics than being tipped as the Next Big Thing. And the spread even assigns them all Cabinet positions (“tipped as a future Chancellor of the Exchequer” etc). The media mood has swung – see The Guardian’s leader the other day – and there’s a huge appetite to crown a new establishment. The media loves heroes, especially new ones, just as it loved villains in the Hague/IDS era. But this swing of the pendulum brings mixed blessings. The public don’t like feeling that their vote is being taken

Ok, so it turns out that Brown’s article today wasn’t an apology of any sort.  But there’s still some speculation that he’s going to use his conference speech to more or less say “sorry”.  With that in mind, the Tories have just launched ‘Brown’s Big Apology’, a corner of their website where – from now until the speech – there’ll be daily suggestions of what Brown should apologise for.  The first is the 10p tax debacle.  What would CoffeeHousers add to the list? Hat-tip: Jonathan Isaby @ Three Line Whip  

Could it be? Has Brown admitted that he needs to rethink his approach, that he needs to change?  Has he – in a roundabout way – apologised?  It was starting to look that way earlier today, with the publication of an article by the PM in the Parliamentary Monitor.  The subhead of that article: “The world has changed so much since New Labour came to power that it makes sense at this conference to rethink the way we govern Britain, writes prime minister Gordon Brown.”  And it contains such calls to change as: “I believe that Britain is well placed to withstand the shocks that these transformations bring, but if we

One of the major recent debates within the Labour party has been over how best to attack David Cameron and the Tories.  Well – if a briefing obtained by the Guardian is anything to go by – that debate has pretty much resolved itself.  It suggests that Labour should portray the Tories as a wolf in sheep’s clothing – as a nasty party lurking beneath a veneer of compassionate conservatism.  This passage should give you a taste of what it’s about: “Occasionally the mask slips [from Cameron’s Tories] and we see the dangerous, old- fashioned Tory rightwing instincts hidden underneath. They believe in unfettered free markets, cuts in public services to fund tax cuts for the

David Cameron’s recent visit to Afghanistan and Pakistan received relatively little press attention; showing just how exceptional the amount of coverage that Cameron’s statements on Georgia and trip there garnered were. In his address in Pakistan, Cameron once more set out his ‘liberal conservative’ agenda. Here’s the key passage of the speech: “A liberal Conservative approach…recognises that democracy must be built around the institutions, habits and culture of each country. Democracy should be the work of patient craftsmanship and not of a uniform mass production line, if the final product is to be of a quality that endures.” In other words, states are not built; they develop over time. The

Two analyses of the economy today, one fanciful and one spot-on. Gordon Brown says “I am confident that we can get through these difficult times and meet these challenges a stronger, more secure and fairer country then ever before.” Why is he confident? The cure for this will require the precise opposite to his policies – and this is what he shows no sign of beginning to grasp. The UK economy has buckled under the weight of the debt Brown has rung up. The speech of recovery will be dictated by how debt-burdened countries are going into recession. Britain starts – starts – with a 3% deficit, and this may