By Lord Ashcroft
Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union, told the Guardian last week that his members were “not queuing up to join the Labour Party”. This is quite a mild remark for a man not usually given to understatement. He added that he could not justify signing up a million of his members to Labour when a large chunk of them do not support the party.
A poll of Unite members I conducted last week shows his crisis of conscience (if that is what it is) to be well founded. (more…)
By Lord Ashcroft
It is sometimes remarked that the centre ground of politics is not the same thing as the common ground. There is some truth in this. Overall, most people want to vote for parties that seem sensibly moderate rather than those that have veered too far one way or the other, but this does not mean that on any given issue – crime, immigration, the NHS – the centre of gravity of public opinion is always in the middle of the spectrum.
Yet politicians should beware of using this argument as an excuse to pursue preoccupations of their own which few voters share. A good example of this occurred at the end of June in the form of the so-called Alternative Queen’s Speech, a raft of measures (why do measures always arrive on rafts?) put forward by a number of Tory backbenchers which are, according to Peter Bone MP, designed to “recapture the common ground, where most views are”.
I decided to put this contention to the test in a poll. (more…)