The Conservatives have been facing the wrong way, like the guns at Singapore. This is what happens when an organisation comes to believe its own propaganda. Charles Clarke in The Spectator today. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
The phrase “every word scrutinised” and the sight of worm trails stretching out across the TV screen make me shiver. The West Wing boxset, a politics educational series that should have been co-produced by the Open University, long ago taught us the techniques of US pollsters. But just because political parties can afford to wire subjects up to boxes and force them to record their second by second reactions to the witterings of three party leaders doesn’t mean to say …
If I were to judge the generic effectiveness of TV debates as the potential fulcrum of future politics we might look no further than our own backyard squabble on UTV last night. For us, there were no surprises. The highlights were the set piece questions: Adams on the IRA and Robinson on the five pound strip of land. But these had nothing much to do with the election. And both were necessarily truncated by side shifting and the commercial breaks. …
“They were downloading not debating” was Simon Hoggart’s snap verdict tonight. The snap polls average out at about 30% all round. Clegg holding, not running away with it. Cameron showing recovery. Brown halts slide but still coming last. My mind wandered to a lateral thought of our time, prompted by the unexpected question: Will you still welcome the Pope to Britain? Even in these cynical times how many have dreamt that so many elites would have made such a tremendous …
I think Mark’s got some stories about the comedy of errors arising from the boundary changes which I will leave to him. But here’s a couple from the media. A friend on Facebook noted this incident the other day: On Evening Extra Andy Martin ran us through a constituency profile of South Antrim in which he said that transfers would be crucial in deciding who was eventually elected. Now either South Antrim has been unilaterally declared the only Proportional Representation …
Splintered’s guides are shaping up to be the blog gem of this campaign, though he’s not got as far as East Belfast yet. The common wisdom is that Robinson is safe. His majority of just 6,ooo majority in 2005 (which is towards the lower end of the scale in Northern Ireland), would be comfortable in normal times. But, for the Robinson family, these are not normal times. Here’s how it worked out last time amongst the main contenders (the nationalist …
David Gordon has a handy guide to being an (intelligently) awkward bugger when someone comes to the doorstep looking for your vote. Here’s some snippets. First the DUP: The DUP opposed power-sharing for decades and said in its last General Election manifesto in 2005 that a coalition with Sinn Fein was “out of the question”. Just two years |later, Ian Paisley did his deal with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. Why the U-turns? There has been talk in recent months about …
Interesting piece from Jonathan Isaby yesterday at Conservative Home, which points out that the Better Off Out group, which favours British withdrawal from the European Union, had 15 MPs as members. Of which no fewer than 8 out of the DUPs nine MPs constituted more than half its parliamentary members. As Jonathan points out, that’s not exactly what it says in the party’s manifesto… In the section about international affairs, it merely states that: “too many powers have been ceded by …
