Mark Pack

With the question of how well Lord Ashcroft’s marginal seats campaign for the Conservatives really is doing back in the news, now seems a good time to remind people of this which I wrote in 2007: How good is Ashcroft? Well, here’s his own account of his record supporting target seats at the 2005 general election: The national [...] »

So far, it’s true to say, that despite heavy negative coverage for the Conservative Party day after day about Lord Ashcroft, there hasn’t been much sign of damage to the Conservatives in the opinion polls. In some ways that reflects the degree to which the issue plays to natural political cleavages: is doing everything you can within [...] »

Two different stories today, unconnected in one way but both – particularly when put together – speaking volumes for the current state of the Conservative Party. Obviously, panic or disagreements are in no way involved. Not at all. First we have ConservativeHome’s take on the party starting to use YouGov in addition to Populus: Up until now [...] »

I wrote the following piece from the Election 2010 edition of Behind The Spin, an online magazine for public relations students and young PR  practitioners, expanding on some of my previous posts: When it comes to numbers, coverage of politics in the UK tends to be rather mesmerised by opinion poll ratings and seat projections. However, there [...] »

From today’s Observer: David Cameron’s Tories were accused last night of dog-whistle politics after the Conservative leader appeared on the front of flyers saying the floodgates had been opened to mass immigration. Critics say the flyers are alarmist and misleading because they imply limits could be imposed on entrants from EU countries such as Poland. Last night, [...] »

Iain Martin’s general election commentary for the Wall Street Journal is rapidly become a must-read for me due to his record of unearthing useful bits of extra information that shed an extra light on the big political stories. This week he had a good piece on the Conservative Party’s preparation for televised party leader debates during [...] »

Not very, if the “Scrap ID cards” campaign on MyConservatives.com is anything to go by. At the time of writing, it has raised only £100 towards its £5,000 target and got the signatures of just 46 people. Oh, and no – it’s not a new campaign that has only just been added. Indeed, from the statistics [...] »

Despite their professed enthusiasm for having a bonfire of the quangos, in practice the Conservative Party keep on announcing new ones – and have rather run in to trouble when pressed to explain what’s going on the bonfire (both points I wrote about here). The tally of new quangos the Conservatives is now at least 19, [...] »

The New Statesman reported this week: In a furious letter sent to Conservative MPs in Westminster, and leaked to the New Statesman, Edward McMillan-Scott describes the decision to allow Michal Kaminski to become the Tories’ new group leader in the EU as “disastrous” and says that his own expulsion for opposing the move was designed “to [...] »

I’ve commented on the fate of the 21 Conservative MPs who voted against reform of Parliamentary expenses (in brief: nearly all of them have since had to pay back money or had an expenses scandal come to light). That was one of two key votes where Parliament had had the chance to clean up its act [...] »