At the end of last week, the Spectator came out with which party they are endorsing for this very shortly to be upon us election. It was, as I fully expected, the Green Party. All kidding aside, there was one sentence in the endorsement article that stuck in my teeth: “Like so many former bag-carriers […]
Could the UKIPers plump for the Tories at the last moment?
There are two competing narratives about what’s going to happen on May 7th. One, which was dominant for a while but is becoming less so, is that Labour will form the next government. It will be a minority one, but Miliband has more options in this regard, with the SNP saying they would never back […]
Imagining life under a Labour minority propped up by the SNP for real
The right of centre press have had a field day throughout this election campaign talking about how horrible a Labour-SNP formation ruling the country would be. Words and phrases like “chaos”, “chain to Labour’s wrecking ball”, “clear and present danger”, have all been thrown around with aplomb by the prime minister as well. But what […]
A review of last night’s Question Time Election Leaders Special
First of all, as many pundits have already covered but is necessary to say again, the audience were great, weren’t they? I was worried beforehand given the quality of the questions we had at the Paxman thing a month ago, that we’d end up in “Mr Miliband, your campaign has the momentum of a runaway […]
If Labour wants to avoid the 1992 scenario for sure, they need to talk about this
The 1992 scenario, which many of you will already have heard of, goes like this: Labour are ahead in the polls, slightly. The right-wing press have thrown everything at them, but still the Tories cannot get a lead. A Labour government looms. Until polling day comes and, low and behold, the Tories have somehow ended […]
Given how successful the SNP have been in Scotland, here’s what their next move should be: franchise themselves across the UK
One thing everyone agrees is going to happen on May 7th, if nothing else: the SNP are going to do bloody ace. Even if they fare much worse than predicted, say 30 seats, that would still mean they’ve quintupled their Westminster representation. Whatever you think of their weird brand of nationalism, their Tartan Toryism wrapped […]
The Conservative Party of the United Kingdom used to be the most formidable election winning machine in the entire world – where did it all go wrong?
Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph printed a letter, supposedly signed by 5,000 people from the commercial world, saying that a Labour government would be bad for business. Problems with the whole move quickly emerged, however. Turns out the letter had been on the members’ section of the Tories’ own website for weeks, so the idea that […]
If Ed Miliband becomes prime minister after the election, this is what he needs to do as a matter of priority
This weekend past, Miliband ruled out doing any sort of a deal with the SNP, even confidence and supply. This places the Labour Party in a rather precarious position. If Labour are the largest party in a hung parliament and Miliband becomes prime minister with less than 35% of the vote, without a parliamentary majority […]
The general election as seen through the prism of “House of Cards” (the Kevin Spacey American version, I mean)
Having already looked at the impending general election through the lens of one television series full of bloody, political intrigue inspired me to take a look at it through another. House of Cards, as we all know, was originally a British mini-series about a psychopathic, murderous Tory MP who through various manipulations becomes prime minister. […]
If Cameron is so worried about the SNP having power in Westminster, why doesn’t he do the following?
David Cameron and the Tories continue to “bang on” about the Scottish National Party. Just this past week alone, we’ve had an England only manifesto, in which English Votes for English Laws, or the humorously acronymed EVEL, featured prominently. We had more from Dave and Boris about a “looming constitutional crisis” should the SNP be […]