Tag Archives: tim bale

NewsHound

LibLink: Tim Bale – “The biggest effect of the Lib Dems holding their nerve has been to help the Conservatives lose theirs”

By NewsHound | Sun 19th May 2013 - 3:25 pm

tim baleTim Bale is professor of politics at Queen Mary, University of London, an an historian of the Conservative party. And this week, to mark the third anniversary of the formation of the Coalition, he’s turned his attention to the Lib Dems.

The article begins by dissecting that ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ verb — compromise — to highlight the problems posed by the Coalition for both its parties: ‘Used actively, it’s a good thing – you want something; I want something different; we talk it over; we come to an arrangement; …

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Stephen Tall

A Tory-Ukip pact? Up to you, guys. But you do know there’s an easier way, right?

By Stephen Tall | Mon 6th May 2013 - 3:35 pm

farage and cameronUkip’s spectacular showing at last week’s local elections has got the Tories spooked. The full realisation is sinking in that this may not be a one-off eruption of popular protest.

Nigel Farage’s band of modern-life-is-rubbish disciples will likely top next year’s Euro polls. Such momentum may propel them towards a double-digit general election performance in 2015. If so, the Tories’ hope of a majority is dead: Ed Miliband will become prime minister as leader of the largest single party.

Though the local elections were scarcely a bundle of laughs for …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , , and | 47 Comments
Stephen Tall

Your essential Easter weekend reader — my personal pick of the week’s must-reads

By Stephen Tall | Sun 31st March 2013 - 7:00 pm

Papers - Some rights reserved by NS MewsflashIt’s Sunday afternoon, so here are a baker’s dozen of thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices, culled from all those I’ve linked to this past fortnight. You can follow me on Delicious here.

Even Britain has now abandoned austerity – Anatole Kaletsky highlights the abandonment of Plan A: “While Osborne repeated his mantra that “you can’t cure a crisis caused by debt with more debt,” he will now do exactly this by creating a British equivalent of government-guaranteed Fannie Mae mortgages to …

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Stephen Tall

Your Saturday morning reader – 8 must-read articles

By Stephen Tall | Sat 6th October 2012 - 8:15 am

It’s Saturday morning, so here are eight thought-provoking articles to stimulate your thinking juices…

5 Years On: The Election That Never Was – Damian McBride, Gordon Brown’s former spinner-in-chief whose must-read blog is essentially a memoir-by-instalments, recalls the week in 2007 that turned the new Prime Minister from hero to zero.

Jimmy Savile: The birth of a paedophile hoax on “Have I Got News For You” – John Fleming recounts the curious tale of how some invented, ‘censored’ scenes achieved such wide currency on the internet, eerily anticipating the past week’s revelations.

A speech that, thankfully, will not be made …

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Ed Randall

Opinion: Baleful – keeping our heads despite the ‘debate tsunami’

By Ed Randall | Tue 20th April 2010 - 4:50 pm

The fact that Tim Bale, an academic from Sussex University and author of The Conservative Party; From Thatcher to Cameron, is represented in the FT as attempting to answer a silly question about the Liberal Democrats illustrates the extraordinary nature of the ‘debate tsunami’ that has struck British politics. It also serves to underline the need to resist any temptation (limited I know so far as most Liberal Democrats are concerned) to build castles in the air, on the basis of a few days of post ‘debate’ polling.

Bale’s piece is entitled: ‘Lib Dem Revival not yet a Revolution’. There is, of course, a slight problem with the …

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Posted in Op-eds | 5 Comments
Stephen Tall

The Guardian asks, “What happens if Cameron loses?”

By Stephen Tall | Fri 26th March 2010 - 9:55 am

Here’s a bit of fun speculation, at least if you’re not a Tory. Let’s suppose most of the last 10 days’ polls are right, and David Cameron’s Tories are destined to have fewer MPs than Labour in the House of Commons (even if they win more votes) – what would the Tories do?

That’s the question Andy Beckett ponders in today’s Guardian.

Would David Cameron resign or be forced to quit? According to Tim Bale, author of The Conservative Party: From Thatcher to Cameron, he’d be safe if he chooses to be:

“You’ll get lots of huffing and puffing on

…

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