The recent resignation announcement of Prime Minister Tony Blair and the imminent accession of Gordon Brown have been followed by a 'bounce' in Gordon Brown's ratings, both as Chancellor and as a potential Prime Minister. There has also been an increase in the number of Britons who are optimistic about the future of the economy and public services.
Tony Blair's legacy has been the topic of discussion across the media and the world of late. His recent announcement of his resignation date has led to a small boost in the polls for the Labour party, according to some of the latest polls. In his speech announcing his intention to go, Blair highlighted some of the key accomplishments of his time as Prime Minister, citing improved healthcare, schools and employment. However, despite comparing favourably to Margaret Thatcher on a number of measures, our latest data shows that Blair's legacy will undoubtedly be overshadowed by the war in Iraq. The findings from our recent poll (link below) are compared to the public's views of Mrs Thatcher immediately after her announcement of her intention to resign in November 1990.
According to political folklore, the results of general elections are dependent on the weather. If polling day is cold, wet and grey — a dreich day as us Scots would say — it was long assumed that the Conservatives would benefit. Their supporters, the argument went, were more likely than Labour's supporters to brave the weather. A forecast of warmth and sunshine, in contrast, was seen as a positive omen for Labour's fortunes.
A number of events, commemorations and television programmes have recently marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Argentine invasion of the Falklands islands. Received wisdom seems to have it that the "Falklands Factor" was the political making of Margaret Thatcher, but data from the Ipsos Public Affairs Archive says something quite different.
In recent months there have been some high-profile controversies involving the relationship between public sector workers and the Labour Government. The most recent of these involved below-inflation pay rises for public sector workers, as well as opposition to the Government's public sector reforms — particularly with the NHS.
Does it make sense to talk about "British public opinion" as a single phenomenon? Surely the public consists of some many different groups with different interests and different strands of opinion that this is far too simplistic a notion? Well, no, not necessarily.
What is it about dying governments? No sooner than the bloom is off the rose, the chancers, the wanderers, the sense of power that suggests to some that laws are for little people and not them, and those who 'just can't help themselves', ascribed to Peter Mandelson after his second fall from grace and before the Prime Minister awarded him his third job, give the government of the day a bad name.
