Liberal Democrats: why a coalition with Labour wouldn’t cause electoral annihilation like their deal with the Tories: Both Labour leader Keir Starmer and Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey deny that there is any prospect of them forming a coalition government if the next election produces a hung parliament – despite that currently looking like a …
A painful picture for the Tories: forecasting the general election from the local results: Nils Bohr, the Nobel prize winning physicist, once said: “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future.” Electoral forecasting, the science of predicting politics, is a case in point. It’s difficult to do and easy to get wrong. However, …
Can Rishi Sunak save the Tories? Voting behaviour over time suggests it will take more than personal appeal to win the next election: One of the key findings of research into elections is that there is a close relationship between the popularity of party leaders and support for their parties in elections. The reason for …
Is Labour’s vision of a New Britain any different to the Tories’ levelling up?: Former prime minister Gordon Brown’s review of the UK constitution could be a hugely significant moment for the UK. A radical agenda for political change is being offered by the party tipped to win the next election. The Brown review outlines …
Labour sounds like the Tories on immigration – but its policy goes back to its trade union roots: Keir Starmer has given a glimpse of what immigration policy could look like under a Labour government. Speaking to the Confederation for British Industry, the party leader’s key message was about reducing the UK’s dependency on migrant …
Liz Truss: how to understand polls that give Labour an enormous lead – and why the Tories are right to fear a major election loss: The cabinet having an absolute hoot at their annual conference in Birmingham. Alamy/PA When Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng announced that he would not be going ahead with his plan to scrap …
Meta: Nick Clegg is doing the same useful job for Mark Zuckerberg as he did for David Cameron’s Tories: In what many saw as a surprise move, Meta has promoted former UK deputy prime minister Nick Clegg to its president of global affairs. According to Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO, Clegg is now “a …
Cost of living crisis: historical evidence suggests voters could quickly turn against Tories: Rishi Sunak: the lightbulbs are coming for you. HM Treasury/ Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND After years of being relatively low, inflation is now re-emerging with a vengeance. The Bank of England expects it to rise to more than 7% by the spring of …
Six reasons why the Tories lost the Chesham and Amersham byelection: The recent Chesham and Amersham by-election was a major shock for the Conservative Party, which had trumpeted recent polls showing its lead over Labour as proof of Boris Johnson’s ability to “defy political gravity”“. But, in this – previously solidly Tory – constituency in …
Why haven’t the Tories suffered a backlash for austerity?: The recent elections in the UK have been hailed as another success for the Conservative party. The headline loss for Labour in 2021 was the Hartlepool by-election – but it also ceded control of councils across the country. After over a decade in government, overseeing the …