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Category: Gordon Brown

Best historical indicator that a LOTO will become PM have been Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings and Corbyn’s struggling

Best historical indicator that a LOTO will become PM have been Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings and Corbyn’s struggling

The Blair-Major MORI satisfaction ratings before GE1997 The Cameron-Brown Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings before GE2010 Current Corbyn-May Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings My thanks to James Bowley for the analysis, compiling the data and the charts. The Ipsos-MORI ratings have been used because these have been recorded at regular intervals since 1977. The proposition works for the only other LOTO to become PM since this polling started – Mrs. Thatcher. In the 1979 polls before the election she led the PM, James Callaghan,…

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LAB’s most successful election winner the latest to question why Corbyn’s party isn’t further ahead

LAB’s most successful election winner the latest to question why Corbyn’s party isn’t further ahead

Tony Blair: 'Labour should be 20 points ahead in polls' https://t.co/DS8q4dkCM6 — BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) November 11, 2017 The record suggests that when LAB’s ahead the Tories are being understated Tony Blair is the person of course, that people like Team Corbyn never like even to acknowledge even though he’s the one living LAB leader who has been an election winner. In fact he’s the only leader never to have lost a general election. One of the points I like…

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Electing a leader from Scotland could give the LDs a huge boost north of the the border

Electing a leader from Scotland could give the LDs a huge boost north of the the border

If Gordon Brown could do it at GE10 then what about the Yellows? We all know that GE10 wasn’t a good one for Gordon Brown’s LAB. The party lost power after having a comfortable majority for 13 years and suffered huge seat losses. The chart above shows the party’s vote share changes in different parts of the UK but there was one place which bucked the overall trend Scotland. Whereas in England LAB was down more than 7.4% in Scotland…

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Mrs. May’s new PM ratings honeymoon is bigger than Thatcher’s, Cameron’s or Brown’s, but smaller than Major or Blair

Mrs. May’s new PM ratings honeymoon is bigger than Thatcher’s, Cameron’s or Brown’s, but smaller than Major or Blair

Putting the current ratings numbers into a historical context With a lot of the non-LAB leadership politics discussion being on May’s polling honeymoon I thought I’d look back at the old MORI ratings to see how other new PM’s were doing at this stage in their occupancy of Number 10. To its great credit Ipsos MORI keeps excellent historical records and has a whole section devoted to old polling data. So compiling the above has been easy. Interestingly Mrs. Thatcher…

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Almost all of LAB’s current problems stem from eight years ago today when Gordon Brown recorded this interview

Almost all of LAB’s current problems stem from eight years ago today when Gordon Brown recorded this interview

The day an autumn 2007 vote was bottled Eight years today an event took place from which, I’d argue, all Labour’s trouble stem – the decision by the then PM to call off what were very advanced plans to have an early general election. Everything had been geared up for this to be called in the days after the Tory conference. Even a fleet of limousines to carry ministers about on had been booked and paid for. Three months earlier…

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Donald Brind says: “Thanks Neil – now we need to hear from Gordon”

Donald Brind says: “Thanks Neil – now we need to hear from Gordon”

Brown is well-placed to deal with the Corbyn surge Shortly after Tony Blair was elected Labour leader in 1994 I bumped into my political hero Jack Jones at a book launch. What inspired me about Jones was that he understood that making gains for the working people he cared passionately about could only be done through a combination of industrial organisation and winning political power. So, what I asked did he make of the new leader? He havered. He hadn’t…

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Remember the Saturday when the Telegraph and Sky News both declared that Alan Johnson had won the deputy leader election

Remember the Saturday when the Telegraph and Sky News both declared that Alan Johnson had won the deputy leader election

With AV LAB elections don’t always go to plan Remember June 2007? So many Labour MPs had chickened out of doing other than nominate Brown for leader that there weren’t enough left for another candidate to go on the ballot. The result – the party got what the polling indicated was a leader who was an electoral liability – not someone who could lead them into a fourth successive general election victory. Instead there was a hard-fought deputy race which…

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The big problem with free TV licences for those 75+ is that a staggering one in six of all UK households qualify

The big problem with free TV licences for those 75+ is that a staggering one in six of all UK households qualify

Gordon Brown’s 2001 exemption rule has a huge loophole which should never have been agreed From 1980-84 a big part my then job at the BBC was to deal with the PR and political issues relating to the corporation’s prime income source, the TV licence. None of the challenges that was as sensitive or as problematic as what should be done about the oldies who were required to pay the same fee as everybody else. There had been a long-standing…

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