The latest edition of my weekly political polling round-up, The Week in Polls, is out. As it says: There's a full table of the final poll from each pollster in the next section, but the overall picture painted by the national voting intention polls was pretty good. The polls got right that Labour was well ahead of the Conservatives, that the Conservatives were on course for their worst-ever vote share, that Reform was up in the teens but clearly behind the Conservatives (with the exception of two pollsters), that the Lib Dems were on a similar vote share to 2019 ...
Stuart Whomsley on how voting Liberal Democrat last Thursday has changed his life. I voted Liberal Democrats, for the first time, for three reasons: Through my union membership I got to vote for the Labour leader. I voted for Starmer. I voted for him on the basis of promises that he later broke. Fool me once, shame on you: fool me twice, shame on me. The Lib Dem manifesto had more policies that I agreed with, particularly rejoining the EU. I had been on a London march for that. after all. A website algorithm said that they had most in ...
The latest episode of Never Mind The Bar Charts takes a look back to the five criteria for success that Professor Tim Bale set out for opposition leaders and considers how they played out by the end of the 2024 general election: Feedback very welcome, and do share this podcast with others who you think may enjoy it. Show notes Our original discussion of five tests for opposition parties. Our December 2020, March 2022 and December 2022 updates. Some of those Ed Davey stunts. My puzzlement over the lack of concern from Conservatives about losing support in Surrey and London. ...
See how Pathe News reported on the 1964 general election in Britain.
After a campaign where she promised commitment to the interests of local residents, the MP for Fareham & Waterlooville, (re-elected with a majority reduced from 26086 to 6079) flew immediately to Washington to continue her cultural campaign in a speech to the National Conservatism Conference (NATCON) and subsequently repeated her remarks via a transatlantic link to a Westminster conference of Popular Conservatism where she spoke of the need to insulate government bodies from what she called the "lunatic woke virus". The immediacy of her attention-switch from apparent local concerns to distant and divisive hate-filled ideology is a sharp reminder of ...
Bored in Oxford, three weeks after the end of term and with everyone else having gone home, I decided to take an impulsive day trip to see the Reform UK rally in Birmingham on the last Sunday before election day. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, as a committed Liberal Democrat and a son of immigrants, I was most certainly apprehensive. I was viewing it essentially as a learning experience, a chance to discover what had driven these people towards Nigel Farage's newest political entity. After an extremely pleasant National Express bus trip and getting slightly lost in ...
In all my excitement at the rise of Talking Pictures TV, I've been guilty of neglecting my first love ITV3. But I did watch an episode of Heartbeat on ITV3 the other day, and it provided me with this week's music video. Heartbeat was a police drama set in the Sixties and with a soundtrack to match. Whoever chose the music tended to be literal-minded - Keep on Running by the Spencer Davis Group turned up regularly to accompany someone fleeing the rozzers - but they knew their stuff. So my episode of Heartbeat this week, which was about a ...
European Parliament Patriots for Europe is a political oxymoron designed to confuse the public about its true intentions. It stands alongside other political oxymorons such as The Democratic People's Republic of Korea, aka North Korea, which is neither democratic, a republic or run for the benefit of the North Korean people. Patriots for Europe is a new political grouping in the European Parliament. And the political reality is that none of the national political parties that belong to this group feel the least patriotic leanings towards the European concept. In fact, they are all Euro-sceptics whose main mission in life ...
I was about to go to bed last night when news started to filter through about shots being fired at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania. The initial pictures showing a bleeding Donald Trump being taken from the stage by the Secret Service agents who had courageously got between him and the bullets that were being sent his way were incredibly disturbing. Thankfully, he was ok, though he is bound to be shocked but two people died and two people are, at the time of writing, critically ill. I was incredibly impressed by how calmly and articulately BBC reporter Gary O'Donaghue ...
From Sheena Wellington of Friends of Wighton : Saturday 20th July at 11am - Cappuccino Concert with sisters Sally Garden and Alison Hart Songs and Springs from Scotland and Scandinavia Another important part of the Wighton story, singer and musicologist Sally Garden (pictured) was our inaugural Historical Musician in Residence and we are delighted to welcome her, accompanied by her sister Alison Hart, for what promises to be a fascinating programme.
