'The right' did very well in June's elections to the European Parliament. ComRes' regular summary of opinion across Europe has just been published and it is noticeable that in addition to David Cameron's big lead in British opinion surveys, the centre right leaders of Europe's other three big nations all remain popular: 53% of French […]
A new opinion poll puts Canada's minority Conservative government 39% to 28% ahead of the opposition Liberals. This Conservative lead is the reverse of the position before the summer recess when the Liberals enjoyed a narrow lead. That lead had prompted renewed speculation that Canada would be forced to go to the polls again. Another […]
Five update observations on our sister party in Australia, the Liberal Party: Current opinion polls suggest that Kevin Rudd will gain seats if he calls an election. The Liberal Leader Malcolm Turnbull is seen by only 19% of Australians as best choice to be PM. That compares to 66% for the incumbent Prime Minister Kevin […]
After many months of deep gloom there are suddenly plenty of things to encourage America's Republicans in political terms: Obama has lost control of the budget. Figures released by the White House budget office – reports Associated Press – now foresee a cumulative $9 trillion deficit from 2010-2019. That's $2 trillion more than the Obama […]
Current opinion polls point to Angela Merkel not only remaining Chancellor when Germany votes on 27th September but she should also be free to govern without the left-wing Social Democrats. Since 2005 she has had to govern in an awkward grand coalition with the SPD. In that election her party won 35.2% and the SPD […]
The poster for CDU candidate Vera Lengsfeld has the slogan: "We have more to offer"! A couple of weeks ago we featured the extraordinary posters of the Czech Civic Democrats.
The former Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, gave a lecture to the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Advanced Journalism this week about politics and the media. He covered a variety of themes, some of which will be of interest to a British audience: How the Daily Telegraph's coverage of MPs' expenses suggests that newspapers have […]
With apologies for the rubbish photoshopping but imagine if the British Conservatives ran a poster campaign like this on the beaches of Spain to encourage British tourists to vote for them at the forthcoming election… Well, it’s the strategy that the Czech Civic Democrats have chosen to adopt for their own countrymen’s tourists visiting Croatia: […]
France may have Western Europe's largest Muslim population – five million – but it was also the country that, five years ago, banned the Muslim headscarf and other religious symbols from public schools. President Nicolas Sarkozy has now joined calls for the burkha to be banned: "We cannot accept to have in our country women […]
The Economist's Charlemagne doesn't quite believe the argument but posts a possible explanation for why Europe's Right is benefiting from this decade's recession when Europe's Left benefited from the downturn of the 1990s: "Normally, recessions benefit the left. The Golden Age for the centre left in the European Parliament was the 1990s when Europe had […]
When the recession struck many expected the Left to gain in global politics but in yesterday’s European Parliamentary elections, it was centre right parties that advanced. The Guardian: “In Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Poland, Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the centre right won the elections, with stunning defeats for the left in certain […]
On European Elections Day for Britain (not the rest of Europe) here are snapshots of opinion across the continent as compiled by London's ComRes opinion pollster: "Controversial nationalist politician Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (NI), formed only in February 2006, is tied with Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s Christian Democrat Appeal (EPP-ED) in terms of projected […]
Some key numbers from the latest ComRes survey of European opinion: "Controversial nationalist politician Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party (NI), formed only in February 2006, holds a narrow lead over Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s Christian Democrat Appeal (EPP-ED). Wilders’ party, whose support has swelled since the publication of the firebrand’s anti-Islam film Fitna, may well […]
The Australian Liberals have sent the above email to their supporters in Australia urging them to encourage their British friends to register to vote as part of the Conservatives' dontleaveyourvoteathome project. Thank you Mr Turnbull!
In an interesting article for the FT, John Lloyd argues that the Left is not benefiting from the so-called ‘crisis of capitalism’ that is reportedly engulfing the world: “In no big European country is the main party of the left, in or out of government, surging ahead. The Burson-Marsteller forecast for the European elections in […]