Liberal democrats

My gut feeling is that Cameron will win with a majority. But I had a gut feeling that Carey Mulligan would get Best Actress at the Oscars. When Scotland play rugby, I have a gut feeling that they will win. My gut, alas, has a pretty poor track record. But if I look at the polls, it suggests that Cameron will not win outright, and that Nick Clegg will be needed to form a majority. Today’s daily Sun/YouGov tracker has the Tories with a five-point lead – which suggests that Cameron is 26 seats short of a majority, and that Nick Clegg has just 22 MPs to bring to the

To be honest, the leg-flashing that the Lib Dems are doing in front of the Tories and Labour just doesn’t really grab my attention.  Their overtures and innuendo may, or may not, turn out to be significant in a few weeks time – but we need a general election before we can judge either way.  In the meantime, they’d be best off keeping their positioning to themselves, and getting on with an election campaign for which they actually have some fairly attractive policies. This story, though, is worth noting down.  Apparently, in the event of a hung Parliament, Nick Clegg just couldn’t bring himself to work with Gordon Brown.  Labour,

One of the refrains made in response to the recent spate of opinion polls is that they don’t really capture what’s going on in the marginals – the real battlgrounds where the election will be fought.  Well, now we have a YouGov/Channel 4 poll which specifically covers 60 key marginal sets, and it provides more evidence that Labour are closing ground on the Tories.  Here are the headline figures, compared to the last marginals poll for Channel 4, a year ago: Conservatives — 39 (down 4) Labour — 37 (up 1) Lib Dems — 35 (up 2) And YouGov’s Peter Kellner provides a useful explanation of what they mean: “The

The various parties involved in the televised leaders’ debate have finally come to an agreement on how they will work.  You can read full details here, courtesy of Sky.  But the main points are: i) Topics and locations. The first debate will be hosted by ITV’s Alastair Stewart, in Manchester, and will cover domestic affairs.  The second will be Sky’s Adam Boulton, in Bristol, and will cover foreign policy.  And the third will be the Beeb’s David Dimbleby, in Birmingham, on the economy. ii) Structure. The rather rigid structure of each programme will be as follows: “Each leader will make an opening statement on the theme of the debate lasting

Guido’s got the inside track that the Beeb have been told not to take the weekend off, and the Tory lead has been cut to five points in the Telegraph’s Ipsos Mori poll. A five point lead is hung parliament territory and Labour could win the most seats – further evidence, as if any were needed, that the force is with Labour. There are a couple of other reasons he may go now. Peter Hain has written an article for the Guardian, wooing Lib Dem voters (more on that later) – could that article be a prelude to the big announcement? Fourth quarter growth figures have been revised upwards, to

He’ll have to because nobody else will. As Robert Peston says ‘Poor RBS, poor Britain’ – today’s figures are catastrophic. Peston’s been digging and the news gets worse: ‘But perhaps the most chilling numbers are these: we as taxpayers put in £25.5bn of new equity into this bank last autumn, the second instalment of the £45.5bn we have invested in total; but over the past year, the equity of this bank has increased by less than £16bn to £80bn. So almost £10bn of the £25.5bn we’ve only just put into RBS has already been wiped out by losses. Which, I think, is probably the best measure of the degree to

With even Michael Portillo predicting a hung parliament, what would Britain’s post-election government actually look like if the Tories did not secure an over-all majority.   The Tories could form a minority government, hoping to persuade enough MPs from other parties, but principally the Liberal Democrats, to vote with them on the key issues. Such a government would be inherently unstable, lurching from vote to vote and dependent on the relationship between a Prime Minister Cameron and Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, as well as between George Osborne, the would-be Chancellor, and Vince Cable, who many think is a more qualified potential occupant of No 11. Party leaders would

Two seriously worrying polls for the Conservatives today. One is a Sunday Times/YouGov poll, showing a Labour recovery reducing the Tory lead to six points  well into hung parliament territory and the lowest since December 2008. The other is a PoliticsHome poll in the News of the World, according to which: Cameron’s approval rate has been steadily falling, and Brown’s similtaneously rising – the difference between them has halved, in recent months, from 90 points to 45 points. If the election is a 39-33 split, then the Tories end up with just ten more seats than Labour and are dependent on coalition with the LibDems. A result like this, against

Contain yourselves, CoffeeHousers.  I know that we’re all really excited about today’s Parliamentary vote on an alternative vote referendum (it is, after all, something our Prime Minister has described as “a rallying call for a new progressive politics”), but it isn’t a done deal just yet.  That “new politics” might still be put on hold. Indeed, things could get messy for Brown in just a few hours time.  You’d expect him to win the vote, what with Labour’s majority and the creeping sense that Downing St very much wants this to happen.  But even the slightest hint of a Labour rebellion, or of Lib Dem disquiet, and the story could

Gordon Brown is usually at his most patronising when confronting Nick Clegg. Last week, however, hectoring gave way to affection. Brown was almost tender. Of course, this sudden change has an obvious explanation. Brown and Clegg are brothers in arms: devotees of electoral reform, or so the Road Block would have us believe. Robert McIlveen laid counter-arguments against Brown’s opportunism and Boris Johnson repeats them in his Telegraph column today, concluding: ‘There is one final and overwhelming reason why Britain should not and will not adopt PR – that it always tends to erode the sovereign right of the people to kick the b––––––s out.’ The Lib Dems have been

On Thursday, the Legg report will be published along with Sir Ian Kennedy’s judgements on those MPs who have appealed against Sir Thomas Legg’s judgement of how much they should repay. The Commons will also be publishing a record of all lunches, dinners and receptions MPs held for outside groups in the Palace of Westminster in the last five years. This is going to be an intriguing document and one that I suspect could set off another series of scandals. First of all, people will cross check this list against the list of electoral donations and there are sure to be some ‘cash for access’ controversies. There will also be

The government broke off relations with the Muslim Council of Britain over Daoud Abdullah, its deputy secretary-general, signing the Istanbul declaration, which the government believed encouraged attacks on British forces if they attempted to enforce a weapons blockade on Gaza. Last week, the government retreated; inviting the MCB back in despite Daoud Abdullah’s signature remaining on the document. The question now is whether the Tories are going to go along with this surrender. The first test of this is a fundraiser that the MCB is holding on the 22nd of February. The invitation boasts that Jack Straw and Nick Clegg will be attending and says that Chris Grayling has been

So Gordon is selling himself as a champion of the middle classes.  There is, as various commentators have pointed out, more than a little bit of hyposcrisy about that.  But the thing that strikes me most about our PM’s change of tack is how similar it is to Darling’s honesty over cuts last weekend.   Like Darling’s admission, it represents some sort of progress for Labour: on paper, the politics of aspiration should play better – and have wider appeal – than the crude class war that they’ve engaged in recently.  But, also like Darling’s admission, it highlights just how inconsistent the government have been over the last few months. 

There’s something quite refreshing about David Cameron’s plan to offer a tax break to married couples.  It says, simply: this is what I believe.  And it does so in spite of polling data and strategic arguments to the contrary.  This is one area where you certainly couldn’t accuse the Tory leader of caring too much about what other people think.  But refreshing or not, that doesn’t make it good policy.  Of course, there’s a tonne of empirical data which demonstrates the benefits of marriage.  That’s important and persuasive.  But, as I’ve written before, there are reasons to doubt the efficacy of a tax break in particular.  And I don’t think

After the hubbub about Hewitt ‘n’ Hoon’s plot to unseat Gordon Brown, PMQs is perhaps a distant memory. It’s certainly made my review a little later than usual. But better late than never, as today’s clash was a bloody and intriguing contest with both party leaders on combative form. Cameron seemed unusually relaxed, glib and self-confident. Perhaps he’d been tipped off about the plot. Or perhaps he’d been thrilled by the sight of his beautifully groomed coiffure in the bathroom mirror this morning. If he spent as much time on his manifesto as he did on his hair there’d be no talk of a hung parliament. But this didn’t seem

Yesterday was all Labour, Tories, Labour, Tories.  So, today, enter the Lib Dems.  Nick Clegg has an article in this morning’s Times which, to be fair, is actually quite noteworthy.  His main point?  That the Lib Dems are a party in their own right, and will not be engaging in “under-the-counter deals” with the Big Two: “This year’s general election is likely to be the most open and unpredictable in a generation. So you have a right to know where we stand. I can promise voters wondering whether to put an “X” against the Liberal Democrats that there are no backroom deals or under-the-counter “understandings” with either of the other