Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Autumn Election??

Great conference, great speech, election this October/November?
May 1st is my guess - better opportunity missed than being a trivial pursuit question.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Conference season is upon us...

This time of year is a strange one for all political parties. A lot can be measured on the success or relative failure of a party conference.

Take the Libs this week, despite attempting to create a dynamic innivative approach to distinguish themselves from the " cosy consensus", instead they have once again become mired in leadership wobbles following Nick Clegg announing he would stand if there wasa vacancy. Isn't that what Ming said weeks before Charlie K was dropped?

Certainly the situation is not the same ageism vs alcoholism, the old man wins every time, but there is a feeling of the wounded buffalo struggling on about Ming and the party and that won't go away anytime soon.

This conference season will be about expectation and disappointment who is on the receiving end of both those feelings is still a mystery but having continually underestimate our PM I think he has some more tricks up his sleeve.

His handling of the many crisisthis year have been exceptional even with the troubled Northern Rock voters are still confident.

Brown (and I freely admit I never used to be a fan) is full of intelligent, steady policy announcements. Since being made leader he has warmed the middle England vote, frustrated, annoyed and reassured the Labour vote and caused waves amongst the Tory faithful.

If last week was about annoying the Tories with his invitation to Thatcher then this week he was reasurring the party faithful and middle England (no easy task) with the condemnation of Mugabe. His refusal to attend a summit that the Zimbabwae leader might attend is clever and more importantly right. Or as a colleague of mine said today, "Everyone thinks Mugabe is a bastard so how can he go wrong?" Quite so...