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 […]
If you were going to bet on a political long shot happening, this is where I would put my money
I will begin this article with a disclaimer: I am not making a solid prediction here, nor am I telling you how you should bet your own money. What I am doing rather is making a point about the unpredictability of British politics at present and how if you were a betting person, you could […]
My take on David Lammy’s “not strong enough” comments, for what it’s worth
I have been on holiday over the last week and intermittently catching up with British politics because, well, even on holiday I can’t quite let it go. This weekend, I happened upon the David Lammy story in which he compared the ERG to the Nazis. When confronted by Marr on his programme, Lammy decided to […]
What the Newport West by-election result tells us about the state of Labour, the Tories, Lib Dem and UKIP
Political types tend to read way too much into by-election results. My all time favourite was a Labour pundit saying in the aftermath of the 2013 Eastleigh by-election that Labour were definitely going to win the 2015 general election because their 0.2% increase in vote share (to 9.8%) compared to 2010 demonstrated the unstoppable momentum […]