The public verdict is emphatic. As Jeremy Hunt puts his final touches to this week’s budget, voters want more spent on health, education and social benefits and are willing to pay higher taxes to fund these things. The polls also tell us that Hunt’s top priority should be lower taxes, not higher spending. Yes, you … Continue reading Attitudes to tax and spend: a case of lies, damned lies and opinion polls?

Fifty years ago this week, British politics changed course. A controversy that had laid dormant for four decades was abruptly woken up. It has raged ever since and shaped the way our democracy has evolved. On February 28th 1974, Britain’s voters decided to eject Edward Heath’s Conservative government from office. After a weekend of drama … Continue reading How Edward Heath’s gamble changed our democracy

The code is easy to break. Rishi Sunak’s opponents inside the Conservative party want to replace him; but publicly they talk merely of a “change in direction”. We have had more of it over the weekend, following the Tories’ dismal performance in last week’s by-elections. It’s as if the prime minister might wake up one … Continue reading Would the Tories do better under a new leader?

Why should the star rating system be restricted to films, books and TV shows? Let’s apply it to last night’s by-election results. LABOUR * * * * Labour has now gained six seats from the Conservatives in the past two years – a new record, overtaking the five it won in the 1959-64 parliament. It … Continue reading Ignore the spin: what the by-election results really tell us

One question that has been asked recently—by Tories from hope and by Labour from fear—is whether the coming general election could resemble 1992, when John Major snatched victory from what seemed to be the rapidly closing jaws of defeat. My sharpest memory from the night of that election is of just before the polls closed. … Continue reading Could the Tories achieve a 1992-style recovery? Here’s this week’s test for Sunak

Brexit still casts a long shadow over British politics. The main parties try to ignore this. They would prefer to say nothing about it between now and the general election. But its impact persists. The divisions exposed and deepened by the 2016 referendum still affect the way people vote. The table below shows why. It … Continue reading Brexit was good for Johnson – but now bad for Sunak

Eighteen. For the past 12 months, 18 has been the number most frequently mentioned in media reports of voting intentions polls. At almost any time since the start of last year, an average of recent polls has produced a Labour lead of 18 per cent or something very close to it. It has been a … Continue reading Purity versus reality: why the polls vary so much

Lurking in two separate files on YouGov’s website is a remarkable finding. When we bring them together, we find that people who voted Conservative at the last election like Nigel Farage better than Rishi Sunak. It’s not even close. Tory voters give Farage a favourability rating of plus 20 – and Sunak a rating of … Continue reading With Farage, Reform can destroy Sunak. Without him, it’s irrelevant

We, at least I, have been here before. As the new year begins, the Conservative government is stumbling towards the end of a long period in power. We have a recently appointed prime minister that nobody voted for; a revived Labour party, keen to win; arguments about Britain’s relations with the rest of Europe; tough … Continue reading Harold Wilson’s lessons for Keir Starmer

As the general election approaches, we shall be bombarded with a bewildering range of polls and predictions. The New European asked me to provide a survival guide to this year’s fun and games. Polls wobble about. Watch for the signal, ignore the noise. For much of 2023, the great majority of polls put Labour on … Continue reading How to make sense of election year

The front-page headline in Monday’s i newspaper was stark: “Tories losing voters to Farage amid anger over high migration.” The story was presented as a bolt, not so much from the blue as directed at it. It reported 11 per cent support for Reform UK, the successor to UKIP and the Brexit Party, in a … Continue reading Should the Tories fear Nigel Farage and Reform? Not yet

One of the commonest sayings in British politics is that divided parties can’t win elections. On that basis, Rishi Sunak’s decision to sack Suella Braverman and bring back David Cameron looks perverse. Sacking a darling of the Conservative right-wing, and giving one of the biggest jobs in politics to a one-nation centrist, is surely an … Continue reading Why Braverman and the Supreme Court have done Sunak a favour