The latest Ipsos Political Pulse, conducted between 8-12 May 2026 among 2,191 British adults in conjunction with ITV/Peston, reveals a challenging landscape for the current government, with low favourability for Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a significant shift in public expectations regarding Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
How well do you think London's voters understand the complexities of the electoral system, with which they will be faced for the first time in the London Mayor and Assembly elections next month?
Earlier this week Peter Kellner in his column in the London Evening Standard strongly criticised two aspects of BBC coverage of the London Mayor and other local elections to be held next month. First, he complained that the BBC's political journalists in London, who had commissioned a poll on the election from MORI [BBC London Live poll] had been prevented by Corporation policy from including any questions on voting intention; this is merely the continuation of a policy which we have criticised for a number of years. Secondly, he has pointed out a new restriction, which will lead to all the parties being required to run their election broadcasts before Easter, a full ten days before polling day. This, arises from the introduction of pilot schemes in a number of councils across the country, whereby a few polling stations will be open early, on the Thursday, Friday and Saturday before the normal polling day, so that electors who cannot vote in the usual way will be able to cast thei...
People want key public services to be available into the evenings and at weekends according to research published today by Cabinet Office Minister, Ian McCartney. He said that work was now underway to develop plans for meeting that need.
What is "Britishness"? Is there some common national identity that all of us, or most of us, in these islands share? And are there common characteristics which we tend to assume other Britons are likely to have? The question poses itself in the week in which Tony Blair and William Hague, in their own ways, tried to make political capital by appealing to British voters' instincts of national identity.
A BBC London Live Poll conducted by MORI for BBC London Live 94.9 which on Monday 27th March, has revealed that 46% of Londoners believe that without tax raising powers, the Mayor and Greater London Authority will not be able to tackle London's problems effectively, with a further 9% neutral on the issue.
If the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, had time to glance at the Guardian on the morning of Budget Day, perhaps as he ate the frugal breakfast the price of which he apparently had to borrow from a colleague, it might just have raised a smile. For there, in ICM's poll, the mass of the public were saying they wanted him to do very much what he was proposing to announce that he would do. Most of them wanted him to use any spare cash to help the Health Service, and more than half thought a rise in duty on tobacco was the most acceptable tax.
So, the Conservatives have comfortably gained Ayr from Labour in the first by-election to the Scottish Parliament
(as the polls suggested they would! - ICM/Scotsman poll, Scottish Opinion/Daily Record poll), with Labour convincingly beaten into third by the Scottish National Party, and their Liberal Democrat coalition partners slipping to fifth behind the Scottish Socialist Party. What, if anything, are the wider implications for Labour, and for the Tories?
