Archive for Opposition watch
More questions raised over Lord Ashcroft’s business empire
The business dealings of former Conservative Party Deputy Chairman and one of its biggest donors, Lord Ashcroft, are back in the news again. As The Observer reports: Fresh revelations have raised a series of questions about the links between the former Conservative deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft and a company responsible for luxury projects across a [...]
That photo of Ed Miliband standing up to Rupert Murdoch
This week has turned into rather an Ed Miliband themed week, what with his flexible views on the public sector pay freeze (he was against it before he was for it), his views on pension policy (where Ed Miliband manages to be both for and against the same policy at the same time) and his [...]
Ed Miliband: both for and against the same pension policy
A quick follow-up to my post from earlier in the week about Ed Miliband, who was against the public sector pay freeze before he was in favour of it. This time it’s the question of pensions, and whether they should be increased in line with the consumer prices index (CPI) or the retail price index (RPI). [...]
Ed Miliband, public sector pay – then and now
Ed Miliband on the government’s public sector pay freeze: 2010: “Absolutely the wrong thing to do” (Channel 4 News, July) 2012: “I think it’s right” (BBC News, January)
Ken Livingstone attacks Boris Johnson for, er…, agreeing with Ken Livingstone
Ken Livingstone has me a bit confused. Hearing him attack Boris Johnson is certainly not a surprise. But hearing him attack Boris Johnson for saying what Ken Livingstone himself said previously? That’s a bit odd, shall we say. Compare and contrast now and then. The now: Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone were engulfed in a [...]
The best Conservative blog post of the week…
… came from Lord Ashcroft, taking to task fellow Conservatives for their obesssion with Europe: f there is one thing that unites Conservatives it is the desire to win the next general election outright. Certain things follow from this. The first is that we need more votes at the next election than we received at [...]
Ken Livingstone ‘cannot win’, says top Labour official
News from the troubled Labour campaign for Mayor of London: The official in charge of the London Labour Party has been removed after saying that Ken Livingstone, Labour’s candidate for the mayoralty, “cannot win” next year’s election if he continues as now. Hilary Perrin, Labour’s London regional director, has been moved back to her previous [...]
What do you think was the second most important reason why people didn’t vote Tory in the Cotswolds?
Between us, Stephen Tall (he of the Oxford Comma cartoon) and myself (purveyor of news about commas in election law and academic research), appear to be carving out a niche in political punctuation coverage. I fear it is all going to end in tears when someone puts our own punctuation habits under the microscope, but [...]
Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition
Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives. There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies [...]
“Toffs legislating for toffs” – how Cotswold Conservatives fear they are viewed
The Cotswolds were the scene for some of the best Liberal Democrat and worst Conservative local election results in May, with the Tories losing 10 seats. A local newspaper has got hold of an internal Conservative post-mortem: The document reveals concerns within Cotswold Conservatives that the organisation is seen by voters as: “toffs legislating for [...]
