Politics

Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Saturday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories 3 points ahead in the country as a whole

It just keeps getting better and better for the Conservatives and worse and worse for Gordon Brown. A new YouGov poll shows that the Tories are now 3 points ahead of Labour—a remarkable turnaround from last Saturday’s YouGov poll which had them 11 points behind. The only potential dampener on Tory spirits tonight is the fact that the Lib Dems might now move against Ming seeing as there is almost certainly to be an election until 2009. As Tim points out, Lib Dem support has collapsed—it is down to a mere 11 percent. One has to imagine that pretty much any Lib Dem leader would do better than Ming with Nick

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Another blow to Brown

Adam Boulton, political editor of Sky News, is famously fair minded. That makes his verdict on Brown simply devastating. He has just described this as “one of the worst blows to a serving prime minister that I can remember in quarter of a century of covering politics.” He blames the debacle on Brown’s advisers. “If I was giving him any advice tonight it would be ‘sack the lot of them’”. And he’s hiding away while Ming and Cameron are taking questions. “It’s not leadership as most people will understand it.” This is just a nuclear bomb.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

How much does this hurt Brown?

A relaxed, confident looking David Cameron has just been on the BBC hitting all the right notes about Gordon Brown’s climb-down over the election date. For Brown, the next few weeks will be excruciating. He is being denounced as weak by all and sundry while his reputation for straight-talking is in tatters. Never again will his opponents cower in front of him. The $64,000 question is whether this error by Brown will actually weigh on the minds of voters as they go to the polls in 2009. Labour MPs have been fanning out across the TV studios this afternoon to dismiss this as a mere Westminster story claiming that it will

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Why Brown bottled it: Six point Tory lead in the marginals

Why did Gordon Brown call off the election? The News of the World, where I am a columnist, tells us tomorrow. It is the only newspaper to have polled in the marginal seats (a horribly expensive process) and the results exposes the type of information which Brown has been chewing over. The results are devastating. There is a six-point Tory lead in the marginals – yes, a six point Tory lead: 44% to 38%. It suggests that, if Brown did go, he’d lose his majority. Labour would still be the biggest party, with 306 seats to the 246 for the Tories.   It also confirms what ministers told me anecdotally:

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

No November election

Gordon Brown has called off the election. He may appear on Andrew Marr tomorrow to tell us why. I am in a rather unusual position here – I can tell you why, but not until 4.45pm. Stay tuned.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Will he go now?

As Gordon Brown prepares for tomorrow’s crunch meeting on whether or not to call an election the case against going early is getting stronger. A poll for the Daily Politics found that 57% of voters think Brown would be putting Labour’s interests ahead of those of the country if he went now; suggesting that Labour might not get the bump government normally do at the beginning of a campaign. Labour MPs in marginal seats are now telling the press that they don’t want an election this year and the early polling in the key marginals is reportedly “too close for comfort”. Hedged against that is the diffuclty of backing down

The Spectator

Brown bottles out, no election this year

Gordon Brown has ruled out an election this year following a poll of marginal seats that showed Labour significantly behind the Tories. No election is now expected until 2009. Coffee House has reaction and analysis to this news. Click here to read the latest from our political team.  

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The hoodie-hugging, Polly-praising, huskie-drawn days are over. The Tories are back

For a party still facing defeat at the next general election, the Conservatives left Blackpool feeling remarkably upbeat. ‘It’s the spirit of Gallipoli,’ said a veteran of William Hague’s election campaign. ‘They’re united against Brown,’ mused one shadow Cabinet member. Neither image is quite right. This was no deluded optimism, no awestruck reaction to David Cameron’s speech. The mood at the conference had changed long before he stood up on Wednesday. Something had gone badly right. The week started with the party in a murderous mood, with talk at the candidates’ party centring on who would replace the evidently doomed Mr Cameron. He had focused too much on image, ran the

James Harland

Penguin’s irrational exuberance

What’s the biggest threat to the stability of the global economy today? Derivatives? Hedge funds? The credit crunch? Actually it could be Pearson, the company that owns the Financial Times. How so? By allowing its Penguin imprint to pay $8.5 million for the memoirs of Alan Greenspan, the former chairman of the US Federal Reserve. Let me explain. In March last year, Penguin won an auction for worldwide rights to Greenspan’s memoirs — titled The Age of Turbulence — beating off competition from the rest of the publishing industry. The cheque it ultimately wrote was the second-largest ever paid for a non-fiction book, only beaten by Bill Clinton’s My Life

Friday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

More grim poll news for Brown

Gordon’s decision just got trickier. The latest figures from The Guardian / ICM poll show that 48% of voters want a November poll compared to 43% who don’t. However, 58% of Labour supporters don’t want Gordon to go early. Tory backers are 17% more certain to vote than their Labour counterparts the poll reveals and the people who would be missing from the electoral roll come November are from groups that traditionally support Labour more strongly than the Conservatives. So if Brown goes early there’s a real risk he could end up with a wafer-thin majority or even a hung parliament. But backing down now is not going to be

James Forsyth James Forsyth

A week is a long time in politics

Rarely has that old cliché seemed so true. On Saturday, Anthony King wrote that “Mr Cameron looks increasingly like a rich man’s Iain Duncan Smith” and with the Tories behind by double digits in the polls he had the number to back up his point. Tory modernisers were fretting about how an increased Labour majority and a fourth defeat would dish the party for a generation. While David Cameron was being repeatedly told that nothing short of the performance of his life could pull the party back from the abyss. A week later and all the pressure is on Gordon Brown. With the Tories now effectively level-pegging, Brown faces the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown’s number cruncher

This morning the chances of an early election have receded considerably but it is not over yet. Gordon Brown receives internal polling today and tomorrow and if these numbers look good he might still go for it. Indeed, if one was a Labour Pangloss one might even say that there is a benefit in the Tory bounce in that if Brown called an election now the first polls of the campaign would see the Tories falling back as the memories of conference faded. The person guiding Gordon through these polling numbers will be Deborah Mattinson. Mattinson is one of Brown’s closest advisers and runs many of the Citizen Juries on

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Tories bounce level

This morning’s polls will be causing consternation in Downing Street. ICM in The Guardian finds the two parties level on 38 points and Populus for The Times has Labour ahead 39 to 36.  If Labour went for an election now it is far from certain that Gordon Brown would increase his majority. To go to the country looking for a mandate and come back with fewer seats than Tony Blair achieved in his worst electoral performance would leave Brown a wounded PM.  As Peter Riddell writes in The Times, “Gordon Brown needs an exit strategy, fast.” The debate in Westminster is about how much permanent damage would be done to

Thursday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Labour’s lead drops by 7 points, what will Brown do now?

It’s 7pm and the Channel 4/YouGov poll is out: Lab40, Tory36, LibDem13. Now, 40% isn’t bad for Labour – but a lead that’s shrunk from 11 points to 4 emphasises the volatility of polls in an era where party identification and tribal loyalties have never been weaker. We must factor in the post-conference bounce, so the “real” Labour lead is probably 7 points – but less in the marginals. If Brown goes next week, the bar is high for him: he needs to do better than Blair. A reduced majority will be emasculating, and he risks losing his majority. What a plonker he’d look. But then again – will the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Tories bounce

I’m hearing unconfirmed reports that the Channel Four/YouGov poll has Labour’s lead reduced to four points. The last YouGov poll (for the Telegraph) had a Labour lead of 11 points. Given the margin of error in these polls, that takes us into reduced majority territory for Brown. The phrase “come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough” springs to mind. The results will be here at 7pm. Crucial for Cameron not to let the momentum slip. He must start campaigning now as if the election had already started. It is time to start spelling out family and education plans. As James said, Brown is at his worst when

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Taxing the hand that feeds

The Tories have issued a document defending their plan to pay for the £3.5bn cost of their inheritance tax cut by taxing non dom. Still, the only source they can cite for their claim there will be 150,000 non doms to tax is Accountancy Age magazine. That’s because there is no reliable data: the Tories and the Treasury are fighting each other by stabbing in the dark. No one knows how many non doms there are, how much they earn or how many would skedaddle if asked to give £25k a year to a Tory government. I’m relaxed about funding inheritance tax cuts, though. The state will take £553bn this

Hywel Williams

The lazy party

I must have been watching some other conference. Judging by the general view taken of David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference yesterday this was a masterly exercise in understated urbanity. What I heard instead was a rambling and diffuse statement of aims, conspicuous only in its failure to communicate energy and ambition. Of course it’s true that post-Blair we’ve become suspicious of false messiahs and glib oratory. Nowadays we shudder at those creepy millenarian visions the former prime minister used to dish out when addressing Labour conferences. But a political leader seeking to take his party into government after long years in opposition needs star qualities of drive rather

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Brown rage

Martin Bright sheds light on what Brown’s inner circle are thinking about an early election in this week’s New Statesman. What stands out, though, is how thin-skinned they are.  Danny Finkelstein’s story about the influence of Bob Shrum on his conference speech has clearly got under their skin. One aide tells Bright that, “The behaviour of the Tories and some sections of the media shows they are already electioneering. Why should Gordon put up with another six months of this when he can’t fight back?” Also note how Camilla Cavendish reveals in The Times this morning that, “The Prime Minister’s penchant for calling certain journalists in the early hours of