John Curtice is Professor of Politics, Strathclyde University, and Senior Research Fellow at NatCen Social Research and ‘The UK in a Changing Europe’.
Academic conferences – even ones about politics – rarely make the news. This week’s annual conference of UK political scientists at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow talked about many interesting topics, including the link between football and populism in Southern Europe and the role that comedy plays in the formation of Scottish identity. But
Sixteen months ago Rishi Sunak was installed as Conservative leader and prime minister in the hope that he would be able to turn his party’s fortunes around in the wake of the damage inflicted on the party’s popularity by Liz Truss’ ‘fiscal event’. However, Thursday’s by-elections confirm the message of the polls that Mr Sunak
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Labour has the won two by-elections in Wellingborough and Kingswood, overturning big Conservative majorities in the process. Party chairman Richard Holden has brushed the results off as typical midterm by-elections where voters what to give the government a kicking. Does this argument stack up? And what can Reform take from the results? Isabel Hardman speaks
A lot has happened in the last fortnight of Scottish politics, most notably the arrest of Nicola Sturgeon. This development has not passed voters by. Though support for Scottish independence remains steady, the reputation of former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has taken a substantial knock. Meanwhile, the threat posed by Labour to the SNP’s dominance
The last twelve months have been traumatic for the Conservative Party. It has elected and deposed two party leaders. It has found itself caught in a financial crisis of its own making. And most recently it has faced a still largely unresolved ‘winter of discontent’ from a public sector workforce that, like much of those
It’s easy to spot when a party thinks it is going to get the thumbs down from voters in the annual round of local elections each May. It tries to up everyone’s expectations of just how badly it will do. It does so in the hope that the results themselves are not actually as bad
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The Tories are preparing for a drubbing in the local elections next week. But just how bad will they be? Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and John Curtice. Produced by Natasha Feroze and Max Jeffery.
New party leaders usually deliver their party a boost in the polls. One of the first signs that voters were not comfortable with Liz Truss as their Prime Minister was the absence of any rise in Conservative fortunes following her success last September in securing the keys to 10 Downing St. Those doubts were then
Voting for the next SNP leader has begun. But who will emerge as the winner is far from clear. Nearly all of the polling to date has been of the general public. Among them, Kate Forbes, Scotland’s finance secretary – whose candidacy got into hot water when she revealed she would have voted against the
Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation has left Labour feeling hopeful. Might this be their chance to make significant gains north of the border at the next general election? Even before the First Minister’s unexpected announcement, the Scottish Labour party was already running at 29 per cent in polls of Westminster vote intentions, 10 points up on
Liz Truss is not quite the shortest-serving prime minister in history. George Cunning has that prize because he died while he was in office. But for somebody who is still alive, at least, this is the shortest running term. If MPs can whittle the number of candidates down to two by, let’s say, Tuesday the
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After the news of the fixed penalty notices, Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak paid their fines and issued a public apology. For Boris, the reaction has been surprisingly positive compared to the beginning of the year. The majority of cabinet ministers have come out in support of the Prime Minister, but
I thought I would take as my starting points what seems to be the internal debate inside the Labour party as to why it ended up where it did in the election. Thesis number one: it was Brexit wot did it. Thesis number two: it was being too left-wing wot did it. I’m going to
