There’s a punchy Evening Standard column from Ian Birrell today challenging the government’s immigration cap as “the sort of gesture politics that makes some sense in opposition but turns out to be nonsense in government”. The author might claim to know something about the pressure to make such political gestures, having been David Cameron’s speechwriter during the 2010 election campaign.
Even if the Tories won a higher share of the vote in 1945 and 1966 than they did this year, Cameron clearly achieved a better result than the eight occasions when another party won a majority (1945, 1950, 1964, 1966, Oct 1974, 1997, 2001 and 2005) or the one Hung Parliament where Labour was the largest party, in February 1974.
Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society, outlines ten policy headaches for David Cameron and George Osborne over the changes to Child Benefit.
While the Labour leadership election is likely to remain too close to call definitively until the day of the result, there is good evidence that the party will be able to unite around the winner.
One possible theory about the swing from David to Ed Miliband, reported in YouGov’s latest poll, is that the interventions of Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson may have done more to hinder than help the candidate that they were tryingtest
Every leadership election since voting was extended beyond MPs has turned into something of a procession. With the the excpetion of 2007 when Gordon Brown who took an uncontested coronation. Labour has never had such closely contested leadership election.
While the leadership campaign has not been covered in great detail in the media, several newspapers are likely to offer a verdict on the campaign as the voting papers go out. Here are a few to watch.
The Conservative right is becoming increasingly exercised about what they are calling the “landmine” of the government’s equality legislation.
CLP nominations reinforce MPs’ endorsements. In nominating constituencies there was a 73% chance of supporting the same candidate as their MP.
David Cameron has recently projected a series of high profile policy pledges to key progressive constituencies. They haven’t made it into the today’s manifesto.
