Leaky

What has 410 misses, 2 captains and a professor? Sound like a bad joke? Well no, actually, it’s the BNP membership list. Not for the first time, a story that started on the blogs soon found its way on the front pages, as the far-right party’s entire membership was published online. It was ever-vigilant Lancaster UAF that alerted the blogosphere, dryly noting:

“Curiously, there are [...]

Taxing times

Red meat and political debate in rude health. That’s what we want. And we want it now! Westminster often fails to deliver, and so the bloggers stepped in. Anti-blog whingers in parliament, some of them apparently intelligent people, complain that blogs are the vulgar solipsistic tools of partisans, bent on subverting true debate.

They are profoundly wrong – as this week’s online tax debate between Nick Clegg [...]

Good morning America

Entering Google Trends Top 10 this week: “inauguration day 2009 tickets”. Barack Obama’s victory in the election to decide the 44th president of the United States of America represents a victory fought even more fiercely online than on the ground. His own ”Fight the Smears” website (weirdly, a lapsed domain just a day after the election) gave supporters the tools to tackle some of more [...]

Glenrothes Calling

It almost escaped our collective attention, what with the world economy collapsing around us, but there’s a mighty by-election battle going on in the Kingdom of Fife. And while Labour and the SNP tussle in Glenrothes, Politics Home was roughing it out with Mike Smithson’s Political Betting. Who can best indicate the result of the coming by-election: PH’s panel of experts or PB’s wisdom of the [...]

The Osborne Identity

Shadow Chancellor and marionette impersonator George Osborne is at the centre of an almighty stink, amid suggestions, which he denies, that he sought to illicit filthy great wads of cash from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in order to pad out the Tory coffers. Bright's Blog carries more detail on the questions that will plague the Conservatives.

When a man is under fire, he needs his [...]

Thinking cap?

As Home Office minister Phil Woolas declared new caps on the number of migrants allowed to enter the UK, keyboards began furiously tapping. Iain Dale was quick to jibe at what he saw as an appropriation of recent Tory thinking, in a post sardonically entitled ‘It’s not racist to talk about Phil Woolas’.

Liberal Democrat blog Moments of Clarity was angered by the implications behind Woolas’ [...]

Gordon’s Alive!

Consensus is now the order of the day in Westminster, and bloggers have been following suit – declaring Brown victor at the dispatch box, as PMQs returned this week. Labour councillor Bob Piper had a few nerves on Tuesday, and was hoping for a commanding performance from the dear leader to maintain his post-conference momentum:

"A good solid performance at PMQs will also stiffen the backbone and [...]

If the recommendations of party leader Ciarán Cannon are followed, Ireland's Progressive Democrats won't be with us much longer.

Their disappearance will not be widely lamented.

When the PDs formed in 1985, economically and socially liberal politics had few consistent advocates in Ireland. As an enterprise-friendly party representing modern values, it proved a welcome tonic to the political establishment, with its civil war hang-ups and perpetual [...]

Ready to Gove-ern

“It’s not the same as the old days,” a moustachioed conference attendee adjudged. “The atmosphere in ’81, when Heath launched into Thatcher from the platform – that was electric. It’s not like that now.” Indeed it is not. Unity and suppressed smirks (grinning excessively when the markets are in freefall is indecent) were the order of the day at the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.

At [...]

Half Madchester

Labour had to call on previously untapped depths of optimism to get through conference – stretching the nation’s credulity in the process. “Go fourth” the stickers adorning the crowd proclaimed, as Brown appeared on stage to the strains of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’ for his keynote speech. At a time when the party’s poll rating has plummeted to historic lows, it verged on the surreal. But [...]