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?
A poll conducted by MORI Scotland for BBC Scotland's Gaelic community debate series CUNNTAS (translated as "An account of…") suggests that a majority of islanders now favour the introduction of ferry and air services on Sundays. The poll shows that an overwhelming majority would like to see a local referendum on the issue.
"POLL SHOCK: VOTERS TO GIVE DEWAR A BLOODY NOSE. LABOUR FACE AYR CRASH - EXCLUSIVE BY RON MACKENNA" screams the front page of yesterday's Daily Record, Scotland's highest circulation daily newspaper. It certainly shocked me - but it was the accuracy of the reporting, not the data in the poll (a constituency poll by Scottish Opinion Limited ahead of next week's Ayr by-election) that was disturbing.
The Labour Party (or, to be precise, the Labour Representation Committee as it then was) was founded a hundred years ago this week. The driving force behind the LRC's foundation was the trade union movement, with the intention of getting working men into Parliament, and thereby better to represent working class voters.
In ten weeks' time, in theory, Londoners should be voting for their first directly-elected mayor. Even that is uncertain: because the House of Lords has blocked the passage of the regulations that will govern the contest, there is even the possibility that it may have to be postponed altogether. If so, it would be a final indignity in keeping with the shambles which has pervaded all aspects of the proceedings up to now.
