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 [...] »

This week The Times reported of Nikki Sinclaire: The UK Independence Party has expelled one of its MEPs after she refused to sit with its right-wing Italian allies in the European Parliament and fell out with former leader Nigel Farage… Ms Sinclaire, 41, an MEP for the West Midlands, insisted that she wanted to stay with the [...] »

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 [...] »

Good news: the Conservative MP for Mid-Sussex has more than halved the number of outside jobs he does in addition to being an MP. Bad news: he’s still doing three, paying over £350,000 per year in total. (Back in December 2005, he had seven outside jobs, but payment for them did not have to be disclosed.) Certainly can’t [...] »

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, [...] »

In February I reported on the question facing various governments in Europe: should they buy stolen data which will help identify law breaking tax-dodgers? The German government did this in 2008 and the threat of a repeat was sufficient to cause a mini-sampede of people confessing their sins. Nearly 2,500 Germans have now agreed to [...] »

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 [...] »

Defending your plans for cuts at a local council by comparing your management style with that of Toyota doesn’t really sound the smartest move any more does it? Step forward, David Burbage (Conservative Leader of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead).  »

When I sat down to read Peter Watt’s memoirs, Inside Out, I was curious to find the answer to two questions. First, I’d met him regularly at Electoral Commission meetings before he became Labour’s General Secretary and he always struck me as a bright, enthusiastic – and young – person. When he was appointed General Secretary [...] »

This moment from a Granada Regional News report into Luciana Berger, the controversial Labour candidate for Liverpool Wavertree, caught my eye: One Labour candidate on the doorstep, talking to one member of the public – but with three other Labour people minding her by the looks of it. Perhaps just a little over-staffed  »