
Time for a Coffey break
The recent bias in Downing Street against putting the Work and Pensions Secretary up for press conferences and big media shows is inexplicable.
The recent bias in Downing Street against putting the Work and Pensions Secretary up for press conferences and big media shows is inexplicable.
Johnson is up to ninth from fifth from bottom, Gove jumps up to near the top quarter, Hancock is clearer from the relegation zone – and Truss stays top.
If not for your efforts on the doorstep and the endless nights of telephone canvassing, we would not have defeated Corbyn’s Labour Party a year ago.
Wallace is well up, Gove down, and Patel much the same in the wake of that bullying report – and Johnson and Hancock just outside negative ratings.
All in all, it’s much of a muchness – with Douglas Ross down by about 25 points, now that his Party Conference coverage has faded.
We need a dedicated campaign team, treasurers to build a fighting fund, a mechanism for MPs to feed in ideas – and a Northern Party Board.
Plus: virtual conferences are the way of the future. America’s vice-presidential debate worked. And: Fox deserved better from his WTO campaign.
“This new headquarters will provide the Party with a base at the heart of the blue wall. Because we’re in it for the long haul. “
It’s a rotten springboard from which to vault into Party Conference as it begins today. But what goes down may go back up.
It’s speeches for Sunak, Patel and Raab; interviews in different formats for Gove, Hancock and others; while others still are relegated to panels…
The co-Party Chairman says next year’s local elections will definitely go ahead, and won’t give a figure for Party membership.
Last month, he was sixth from top. Now, he is eighth from bottom. Only six Ministers have a satisfaction rating of more than half.
Johnson will almost certainly decide to tough it out. But he will have a big problem if school returns prove tricky.
His “Goldilocks Politics” of “too much/too little, too fast/too slow” throughout the pandemic is unlikely to win over voters.
This decision reiterates the political importance of the UK’s cities to our party – and we must aim for a blue-led council in 2022.