Ballots & Bullets

This is the twenty-fourth in a series of posts that report on the state of the parties as measured by opinion polls. By pooling together all the available polling evidence we can reduce the impact of the random variation each individual survey inevitably produces. Most of the short term advances and setbacks in party polling fortunes are nothing more than …

Ed Miliband by net_efekt

Ed Miliband’s comment in his recent House Magazine interview that he would like to see a more diverse House of Commons – and especially more working class MPs – is not a new development.  It is an argument he has been making repeatedly since becoming Labour leader in 2010, and in one sense, in doing this …

Jeremy Hunt, the UK’s Culture Secretary, remains under fire for his handling of his ‘quasi-judicial’ role in deciding whether News Corp, Rupert Murdoch’s media company, could take full ownership of the broadcaster BSkyB. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, insists that the Leveson inquiry is the appropriate venue to determine the facts of the case, and no decision will be taken …

With numerous voices questioning the ability of Ed Miliband to deliver Labour election success, two undergraduates enrolled in the ‘British Party Politics’ module offer their thoughts.

Three Problems Facing Red Ed

Being the leader of the Labour party against a Tory-led coalition government that is introducing vast cuts should be easy. But Ed Miliband has somehow managed to make the …

Image via New Statesman

In late 2010, Ed Miliband emerged victorious from the contest for the leadership of the British Labour party. First elected to parliament in 2005, he became leader of his party after just one term in the House of Commons. When he faces David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions, he takes on someone who was himself …

In this post for my personal blog I put Ed Miliband’s current problems into perspective with the help of some political fictions and wonder if Miliband’s troubles are due to the fact that he is a Geek rather than an Actor?

For despite what we would like to think, most voters seem to prefer a politician who makes them feel …

I’ve written about New Labour over the years, teach Nottingham students about its rise and (maybe?) fall and will be producing a second edition of this book in the fullness of time. So, let me try and put Ed Miliband’s 2011 speech to the TUC in some kind of context.

No political speech from a Leader of the …

By 196 votes to 41, Labour MPs recently endorsed Ed Miliband’s proposal to abolish bi-annual elections to the Shadow Cabinet and allow him to pick its members. If endorsed by Labour’s autumn conference (and it will) this will mean that the leader, and only the leader, can decide who will sit on the Front Bench.

In my first piece for …

Today’s newspapers don’t make pleasant reading for Ed Miliband.  The Telegraph claims he has been given two years to prove himself. The Mail puts the figure at 15 months. The Sun gives him just a year.

Miliband is not the only leader to find himself under pressure: there is also discussion at Westminster about Nick Clegg’s political future, and …

According to political journalists Ed Miliband is in a crisis. In the political equivalent of a cop movie cliche he has until the next Labour conference to fix things – or else. Labour has no direction, its poll ratings are poor and all because Miliband’s leadership credentials have got lost in the post. Labour elected the wrong Miliband and …