StephenTall.org

The opinion polls are up-and-down day-in-day-out at the moment, making it almost impossible to say with any confidence whether we are firmly in hung parliament territory, or whether the most likely result is still a Tory victory at the coming general election. But one thing is beyond doubt: the last six months has seen a [...]

Today’s YouGov poll in the Sunday Times suggests the Tory lead over Labour has amost disappeared, and that Labour may even end up the largest party after the general election (which would reflect the exclusive LDV election prediction published here at the start of February). Nor is today’s poll a flash-in-the-pan. None of the last [...]

Bless Nick Herbert: he's doing his best today to make the claim that the Tories' attitudes to homosexuality have changed, and that gay people should trust the party. The trouble is Nick has to contend with the reality of the Tories' voting record - which, as the Lib Dems have pointed out, shows what the Tory party really believes. The voting records of current Tory MPs who are standing again in 2010 show that:

In his hardest-hitting attack yet on the Labour and Tory parties, Nick Clegg has used an interview for BBC News’s Hard Talk programme to denounce both parties for colluding in ‘corrupt politics’. You can watch a three-minute clip from the programme here, in which Nick discusses Afghanistan. The Guardian reports Nick’s comments here: Clegg uses an interview [...]

And verily did David Cameron spake forth unto the multitude of political journalists desperate for Bank Holiday copy, and lo he did utter his New Year platitude: Let’s be honest that whether you’re Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, you’re motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims: a country that is safer, fairer, greener and where [...]

The decision of the Tory party to turn a blind eye to the mysterious tax status of their deputy chairman – and the man who funds their marginal seats campaign – has come under close media scrutiny in the last few weeks, with Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable last week raising the issue at [...]

Mark Hunter, Lib Dem MP for the  Cheshire seat of Cheadle since 2005, could be forgiven for smiling like his county’s proverbial cat this morning. Today’s Times reports that the Tories are scaling back their expectations of election victory in the light of a slew of polls showing the party’s support dipping: The Conservatives are digging in [...]

In an article for the Independent, Steve Richards argued that the best comparison for David Cameron's leadership was not with Tony Blair, but with William Hague. Here Stephen Tall looks at that claim, and argues that the Tory leader has abandoned his strategy of sticking to the centre-ground in favour of uniting his party around a right-wing programme ... "No-one who's observed Mr Cameron's leadership of the Tory party this past four years can be in any doubt of his tactical nous. There is a very big question mark now over his ability to translate those short-term tactics into a long-term strategy. That proved to be William Hague's downfall. It might still yet prove to be the un-doing of Mr Cameron."

Control orders were introduced by Labour in 2005, and give the Home Secretary powers to impose a limitless range of restrictions on any person they suspect of involvement in terrorism. As the Lib Dems noted in our proposed Freedom Bill, ‘The restrictions imposed by some control orders amount to house arrest and they can include [...]

The row over David Cameron’s decision to pull the Tories out of the main centre-right European grouping, the European People’s Party (EPP), and set up a new group of “extreme and rag-bag” assorted right-wingers, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), has been simmering for months. It’s burst into the political mainstream this week, courtesy of [...]