On this week’s episode, we discuss the two European nations that are are heading for the polls in the next couple of months. First, we look at Theresa May’s shock decision to hold a snap election, and then we cross the channel to consider the French election as they get set to whittle the field down to just
Oh dear. The first rule of political plotting: tell no-one, or at least tell very few. So it was a curious move of the Hackney branch of Momentum to write-up and publish online everything they discussed at Wednesday night’s meeting about the upcoming election. Activists for Momentum — the pro-Corbyn grassroots campaign group — have come
Theresa May’s decision to hold a snap election in June has scuppered many MPs’ holiday plans — and one politician’s honeymoon. But now word reaches Steerpike that it will also have a negative effect on the Labour Party’s general wellbeing. Yes, in what is perhaps the greatest tragedy of the snap election yet — the Labour
Douglas Carswell has just announced that he will not stand for re-election as the MP for Clacton. The independent MP, who quit Ukip last month, said that he was planning ‘to move on to other things’ and was looking ‘forward to being able to read newspapers without appearing in them’. In a statement on his website,
Mortgage Freedom Day. It has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? Just imagine: no mortgage. I wonder what that feels like. According to Halifax, yesterday was UK Mortgage Freedom Day, the point in the calendar when new borrowers will have earned enough to pay off the annual cost of their mortgage. So not quite the
Some Labour supporters, it’s fair to say, do not like hearing hard truths. So when a journalist at Jeremy Corbyn’s first speech of the general election campaign asked about the party’s dismal support in the polls – and whether Corbyn merely spoke for an ‘Islington elite’ – there was only going to be one outcome.
With a new poll out today giving the Conservatives a 24 point lead over Labour, the June election already looks like a done deal to many. But today Jeremy Corbyn tried to put his party’s woes to one side as he launched Labour’s campaign with his first speech of the election. As hacks were heckled for asking about
The dividing lines in this election could not be clearer from the outset. It is the Conservatives, the party of privilege and the richest, versus the Labour Party, the party that is standing up for working people to improve the lives of all. It is the establishment versus the people and it is our historic
Two days into the election campaign, and the polls are already jaw-dropping. The latest You Gov has the Tories on 48 percent, 24 points ahead of Labour—and that’s before the Tory attack machine has gone to work on Jeremy Corbyn. Now, there is a chance that the Tory lead is being exaggerated by the methodological changes
It’s day two of the snap election campaign and already tensions are running high. In particular, Sky News‘s Adam Boulton is having a rather testing week. After the news presenter speculated on Tuesday that Theresa May’s surprise announcement could relate to an illness, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff sent ‘Bunter’ a text telling him she
What does it mean to be rich? That’s the question already getting the Labour party into a tangle as it struggles to get its act together ahead of the snap general election. Yesterday, John McDonnell said a Labour government would send a higher tax bill the way of all workers earning over £70,000. The shadow
The General Election campaign is officially underway – and the newspapers have wasted no time in compiling their wish lists. Here are the policies the papers want to see put into practise: Theresa May’s plan for Brexit – leaving the single market and being ‘free from EU courts’ – gets the wholehearted backing from the Sun. But
Since I suggested last July that Theresa May, newly anointed as leader of the Conservative and Unionist party and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, should call an election to both establish her own legitimacy and allow the country an argument over the kind of Brexit it preferred, it would
Who’d be a Labour MP? Despite the best efforts of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Corbyn is going nowhere and, if the polls are to be believed, he’s leading Labour to electoral oblivion. A general election landslide is on the cards for the Tories, with some estimates suggesting the Government could boost its majority by more
Some say Genoa takes its name from Janus, the two-faced god of time and doorways. Perhaps. What’s certain is the city has two aspects: the vast industrial port, its docks the bared teeth of the Italian Riviera; and, in the ruched strip of land between the Ligurian Sea and the hills, a bewildering network of
In Westminster, all the general election chatter is about Brexit. Will Tory Remainers turn Lib Dem? Will Labour leavers desert Jeremy Corbyn? As polling day draws near, however, the Europe obsession must recede. Politicians may not be able to look past last year’s referendum, but voters will have moved on. MPs will find that, as
From ‘What ails the House of Commons?’, 21 April 1917: Theoretically no horses kept for pleasure or sport ought to be allowed to be fed with oats at the present time. Such food as can be spared should be kept for ploughhorses and horses used for necessary transport. We are told, of course, that the
In the early hours of 9 June 2017, Jeremy Corbyn conceded defeat. For the luckless political journalists forced to cover the Labour campaign this was a rare moment. The leader of the opposition had avoided the press and public. Now, as Labour was going down to its worst defeat since 1935, Corbyn was at last
Theresa May has long been clear about what sets her apart from other politicians: she doesn’t play political games. When she launched her bid for the top job last year, she was clear that — unlike her rivals — she hadn’t succumbed to the temptations of Westminster. She told us that she didn’t drink in
I argued that it was unnecessary to have made sacrifices during Lent in order to celebrate its conclusion. It is the thought that counts. Others were less sure, though none of them exhibited the stigmata of austerity. Anyway, we ate some magnificent Pascal pig, plus a delicious lamb which would have been scampering around a
