Tag Archives: louise mensch

Lords reform, Boris Johnson and Louise Mensch: Guardian podcast

This week’s Politics Weekly podcast from The Guardian features, ahem, myself alongside Martin Kettle, Nick Cohen and Tom Clark. Lords reform, Boris Johnson’s political future and the Corby by-election (so far, dreadfully lacking in jokes about trouser presses) all feature.

Nick Cohen made a particularly good provocative point about Boris Johnson – saying he’s the only Conservative in the UK to have won a major election since John Major won the 1992 general election. It makes the Tory right’s view of him rather contradictory: they really dislike some of his policy preferences (such as on immigration) yet also love him as …

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Opinion: Can Corby smelt a new Coalition?

Louise Mensch’s resignation on 6 August has triggered a by-election in Corby on 15 November. Initially treated as a silly-season oddity, the likely Labour victory exposes the Coalition’s fragility post Cameron’s dropping of Lords Reform.

A tight Tory-Labour marginal, Corby has been a reliable bell-weather constituency since its creation in 1983. Retaken for the Conservatives by A-lister Louise Mensch in 2010, it has a Conservative majority of 1,951 on a swing of 3.6% – less than the 5.6% swing from Labour to Conservative across England as a whole. Given current national opinion polls, and the fact that the seat will be …

Posted in Op-eds and Parliamentary by-elections | Also tagged | 64 Comments

In other news… Mensch sticks up for Clegg, Rennie takes on Salmond, Bristol mayoral election latest & other stories

Here’s a round-up of stories we haven’t had time to cover on the site this past few days…

On day UKUncut protestors targeted Clegg family home, Tory MP Louise Mensch urges people to donate £5 to Lib Dem funds (ConHome)

Louise Mensch, the Tory MP for Corby is recommending that her followers donate £5 to the Liberal Democrats for today only. She thinks it will show solidarity with the Cleggs who have been targeted by UNuncut protestors today. Hundreds gathered outside the Putney home of the Lib Dem leader, some chained themselves to railings and they held a noisy but apparently

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Opinion: #HandsOffTwitter

So, good news everyone – according to reports in the Guardian and others, the Home Office have decided that introducing legislation to allow the police to turn off access to Social Networks would be, ahem, inappropriate, and will instead work in cooperation with the networks going forward. To quote the Home Office after talks today

“The discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and co-operation to prevent the networks being used for criminal behaviour”.

Good.

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Opinion: Why we should praise Louise Mensch

So the press have dug around into Louise Mensch MP’s past and discovered, shock horror, that she ‘probably’ took some drugs at a nightclub when she was in her twenties. Why this is news is frankly beyond me but why this has come out now, is not. The press are doing their thing, taking on someone that has taken them on. The ‘probably’ is a bit of a give away. There are lots of ‘probablys’ floating around the News of the World scandal. True or not, a ‘probably’ can hurt.

In the case of Louise Mensch I doubt it will …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 37 Comments
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