YouGov released some polling this morning which painted a political landscape in the midst of massive change. One poll was measuring Westminster voting intention, with both the Tories and Labour on 24%, The Brexit party on 18% and the Lib Dems on 16%, with the Greens on 7% (the rise of Farage’s new group seems […]
Why the Lib Dems saying Bollocks to Brexit is a good idea for them
The Lib Dems new slogan, “Bollocks to Brexit”, has upset some. Too crass, too crude. What’s funny about this is that most of those claiming to be taken aback are precisely the same people who always say the problem with he Lib Dem is that they are too anodyne. This makes me think that the […]
Why compromise on Brexit is no longer possible
A lot of people whom I share much with politically are still calling for a compromise on Brexit; where we leave the EU, yet retain something of the old regime, mostly in the name of keeping the economy from crashing. I respect this in principle. We voted to Leave in 2016 and not carrying out […]
Local elections, 2019, so far at least, party by party – Lib Dem comeback?
More guff is usually said in the wake of local election results than any other type of political event in the United Kingdom. Partially because they are complex and you can generally swing them in all sorts of different ways. This is happening today, despite the results being unusually clear. Let’s start with the Tories. […]
Are the Tories and Labour actually close to making a deal on Brexit? Here’s why that would be bad for both of them
Rumours are floating around the bubble that May and Corbyn are on the verge of agreeing a Brexit deal and are only waiting until after the local elections to make this public. While it’s best not to put too much faith in this sort of thing, it does make sense of recent events: Number 10 […]
What Cameron becoming the Blair of the Conservative party means for the future of the Tories
For a very long time, I was sure the Tories would pull through and win the next election. They still very well might – but only because Labour is so breathtakingly, catastrophically poor. Even a mediocre Labour Party would be expecting to pick up 1,500 local seats on Thursday and win the EU elections by […]
Why Change UK is sleepwalking into a disaster
I more than 99% of people in the UK at the very least desperately wanted The Independence Group to succeed. I have written for a very long time about how I thought the Lib Dems had blown it and how we needed a new centrist force in British politics. When Chuka and co left Labour […]
Why the future of the Liberal Democrats is completely riding on what happens next Thursday
One week from today, large parts of England and all of Northern Ireland will vote in local elections. It used to be that local elections saw the governing party get walloped, while the number of seats gained by the official opposition (and where they were gained) were taken apart by psephologists, both professional and armchair, […]
Why the European elections could go any which way and no result would surprise me
I, as some of you who read me often know, am a staunch defender of the polling industry. Anytime someone pips in with “Yeah, but they got this or that election wrong”, I am keen to point out how amazingly close pollsters come to getting the results of most contests correct. As a good for […]
Why I feel almost certain that if Boris Johnson becomes prime minister, the UK will Remain in the EU
No matter how many times BoJo’s ambition of becoming PM is pronounced dead and buried by the Westminster lobby, it somehow manages to rear its head again. This time in the form of several polls, one of Tory councillors, the other of Tory voters, both of which put Boris way ahead in terms of first […]