http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/index/ en srsmith@scorecomms.com Copyright 2008 2008-07-03T08:13:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/we_are_moving_office_on_june_16_20081/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/we_are_moving_office_on_june_16_20081/#When:11:43:01Z Open Road Golden Cross House 8 Duncannon Street London WC2N 4JF Tel – 0207 484 5014 Fax – 0207 484 5100 Email - info@theopen-road.com Email addresses will stay the same, but direct dials are changing. Please use switchboard in the short term. Map - Click here 2008-06-02T11:43:01+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/scotland_wendy_alexander_and_a_bad_year_for_the_roses1/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/scotland_wendy_alexander_and_a_bad_year_for_the_roses1/#When:08:13:00Z This guest blog is by Illiam Costain McCade who is based in Edinburgh and works as a freelance political consultant and as senior consultant (Scotland) for Cogitamus Limited. He can be contacted at coscade@blueyonder.co.uk When, after the Scottish Parliament election on 3rd May 2007, Labour emerged as Scotland’s second largest party, beaten for the first time by the SNP, and with their support at the lowest level for over half a century, there was, surprisingly, a slight sigh of relief within the Labour ranks that things weren’t quite as bad as they could have been. Indeed, in retrospect, these are now more likely remembered as halcyon days for Scottish Labour. We were entering a new era of politics in Scotland, with our first ever SNP administration ruling as our first ever minority government. With hacks and anoraks wondering whether the SNP could actually govern, and whether or not a minority government could survive very long, it would take a Herculean effort to make anything else dominate the political headlines – but Labour succeeded in stealing the show. Following the historic election defeat, leader Jack McConnell was naturally required to fall on his sword, making way for a Brownite leader. Cue a leadership election with only one candidate, and a new start for the party, from September 2007, under Wendy Alexander. In her resignation speech just ten months later, Wendy was keen to blame the SNP for her troubles, indicating that it was “unrelenting”, “vexatious” and “successive SNP-inspired complaints and investigations” around donations to her leadership campaign which did for her. However, in truth, nothing seemed to go right for Wendy from day one, and her leadership will be remembered for bad performances, bad judgement, and bad management. Her legacy will bear witness to the fact that her problems, and Labour’s problems, go far beyond issues arising from donations to a leadership campaign that never was. Whoever emerges as the new leader later this summer will need to take stock, understand what went wrong, and try to undo the damage. The first point they will need to recognise is that, with regard to the donations issues, the real long-term problems for Wendy were less to do with the details of the donations themselves and much more to do with the way the first story was handled and the lasting impressions this generated. When the first story broke in the Sunday Herald on 25th November, regarding the acceptance of an illegal donation from a Jersey resident, Labour responded with a series of denials and obfuscations until there was no option other than to admit that the law had been broken – though, of course, not deliberately.  It was the nature of the response, rather than the transgression itself, which made the biggest impression on the media and public. It ensured that whenever the issue of donations was raised – and there were three separate issues within the space of eight months – any Labour statement on the matter was met with suspicion. It also generated a public perception of Scottish Labour which saw the party as lacking in honesty, integrity, probity and effective management. An additional problem for Wendy was that the original story, and subsequent information, could only have been leaked to the press by a party insider. She was barely two months into the job, and already enemies within the Labour party were briefing against her. However, the damage done to Wendy by the various donations issues serves to distract from the broader range of problems her leadership suffered. Although she came in to the job with a deserved reputation for intelligence and strong debating skills, at no point during her ten months of leadership did Wendy succeed in besting Alex Salmond during First Minister’s Questions or in outmanoeuvring the SNP on policy or strategy. Indeed, with regard to strategy, she may be best remembered for undermining her own initiatives. In December 2007, Wendy put to the Scottish Parliament a proposal to establish an independent commission with a remit to review devolution and recommend any changes to the present constitutional arrangements within a devolved framework (i.e all options short of independence). The proposal was conceived as a counterweight to the SNPs ‘national conversation’ on independence, to take ownership of the constitutional debate out of the SNPs hands, and to broaden the debate beyond the single issue of independence. With the backing of the Lib Dems, Labour’s former coalition partners, and the Conservatives, the Commission on Scottish Devolution was established. The UK Government announced its support in January 2008, Sir Kenneth Calman was appointed Chair in March, and the Commission held its first meeting on 28th April. Just one week later, Wendy announced that Scottish Labour now supported a referendum on independence. The apparent lack of co-ordination with colleagues at Westminster, with her own party, and with her own policy adviser on the decision to support a referendum meant that media focus never shifted to the SNP, as it was intended to – the policy change itself, and the mismanagement of it, was the main story from start to finish. In terms of internal party support for Wendy, it was this policy shift, poor management and poor performances at FMQs, and not the various donations issues, which made her continued leadership untenable. We will never know whether or not, given the right amount of breathing space and support, Wendy may have been able to grow into the role, but on the evidence of the last ten months it seems that she did not possess the qualities or skills necessary to lead Scottish Labour at this time and, perhaps most fatally, she could not rely on their loyalty. At the same time as the slow disintegration of Scottish Labour has been playing out, the SNP celebrated its first full year as a minority government and without suffering a major defeat in the Scottish Parliament. (The first bill to be rejected, on 18 June 2008, was a proposal to replace Scotland’s two main arts bodies with a new quango. Though MSPs backed the general principles of the legislation, they rejected the accompanying financial memorandum.) According to a recent YouGov Poll in the Daily Telegraph, the approval rating for the SNP administration is 52% (with only 27% expressing dissatisfaction), and almost every poll indicates that support for the SNP, in terms of voting intentions, has increased since the 2007 election. In short, whilst everyone has been watching the Wendy Alexander show, the SNP have had time to settle in relatively unhindered, and are continuing to enjoy an extended honeymoon period. Whoever prevails in the forthcoming Labour leadership election will obviously need to identify new strategies for dealing with the SNP, but given the extent of their own party’s problems, this will have to be a longer-term objective. The focus will need to be on recovery, on reassessing the position on a referendum and repairing the damage done to the Calman Commission and to their relationship with the other unionist parties.  Perhaps most fundamentally, they will also need to find a way of addressing the issue of devolution for the party itself, seeking greater decision-making autonomy, and disengaging its own fortunes from those of Labour at Westminster. It is against this background that Labour are now preparing for the by-election in Glasgow East. On paper, this should be an easy win – it is their third safest Westminster seat in Scotland, with a majority of more than 13,500 over the SNP, who would require a 22% swing to win. But with the SNP riding high in the polls, the Scottish Labour Party leaderless and morale at an all-time low, the timing of the by-election could hardly be worse Gordon Brown. Labour’s fortunes in the by-election, and the fortunes of the new Scottish Labour leader, will both depend heavily on their ability to honestly assess where the party has been going wrong in the last ten months. UK Politics 2008-07-03T08:13:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/ireland_says_no/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/ireland_says_no/#When:08:32:00Z Ireland’s no vote in their referendum on the Lisbon Treaty raises a host of questions and issues. As a country that has benefited more than pretty well any other (alongside Spain) from the EU’s largesse, it is quite something that the Celtic tiger has turned on what was the goose that laid the golden egg. Beyond that, though, it raises the broader question.  Will the EU ever listen to its citizens? Don’t get me wrong – I am not a eurosceptic and this is not a rant against the EU. But it has now been 7 years since the Convention on the Future of Europe started to draw up proposals for an EU constitution.  That was then rejected by both the French and the Dutch in referenda in 2005.  It was then re-named the Lisbon Treaty and has now been rejected by the only country that is holding a referendum. Now I speak as one of the only people in the whole of Europe to have actually read what was the European constitution.  Extraordinarily, it is actually the most readable and sensible document I have ever read about the EU.  Contrary to popular belief, it does not really centralize much at all.  Most of the powers it gives to Brussels are ones in justice and home affairs which the UK wants to have at European level as it would improve our ability to deal with international and cross-border crime. The constitution also gave some powers to the national Parliaments in the EU for the first time ever.  It also set out a mechanism for leaving the EU which currently does not exist. But the constitution was voted down by two countries who were founders of the EU – France and the Netherlands. So what did the EU’s leaders do?  They took out the flag and the anthem, called it a Treaty and claimed that it was something entirely different.  That is a straightforward lie.  Anybody who knows anything about the constitution and the Treaty knows full well that the two are basically identical.  Don’t kid us. And now the Treaty has been rejected too by one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe. It had been thought that the EU would not be able to survive once it became 27 member states without a new constitution or Treaty.  But the fact of the matter has been – and this has been shown through independent research – the EU has worked extremely well without a new Treaty or constitution.  And the member states know that. So the EU’s leaders must listen to the people of Europe and not ride roughshod over them again.  They have to drop the Lisbon Treaty. But of course, they won’t.  They will invent some sham to get it through against the wishes of the electorate. And they wonder why the EU is unpopular? EU 2008-06-17T08:32:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/will_csr_wither_in_a_downturn/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/will_csr_wither_in_a_downturn/#When:16:08:02Z Climate change, sustainability and CSR have had higher profiles in the last few years than ever before. Major companies like M&S, Sky, HSBC, B&Q and others have developed major new CSR and sustainability programmes.  David Cameron famously went to the Arctic to have his photo taken with the huskies.  Labour has introduced the world’s first legislative binding commitments on climate change and Gordon Brown commissioned the Stern review.  Level of public interest rose. But now with the economy slowing down, the credit crunch biting, food prices, oil and energy prices rising rapidly, more bread and butter concerns have taken over as the main priorities.  When your disposable income is down, you are struggling to pay your bills and you are concerned for your future financial security, do you care as much about the planet? Will interest in climate change, sustainability and CSR wither in a downturn? It is very noticeable that in the tracker opinion polls on what issues matter most to people, the level of interest in the environment had risen markedly over recent years.  However, that has all gone into reverse.  The number of people citing the environment in their top priorities has dropped.  Not surprisingly, the numbers reporting the economy as their number one concern has risen dramatically. The Tory party has already taken note.  You can just imagine Andy Coulson, former editor of News of the World and now David Cameron’s spin doctor, taking Cameron aside and telling him to focus on issues like the economy, taxation, the family etc and to leave the environment alone.  Cameron has done so and in a recent speech on his priorities, guess what?  The environment was not one of them. A year ago, Tory policy was to raise green taxes and use the proceeds to reduce other taxes.  Talking about raising green taxes now (e.g. fuel tax escalator, vehicle excise duty) is not so sensible as the government is discovering to their cost and so the Tories understandably have gone quiet. What they are talking more about is how consumers can save money from energy efficiency to keep their fuel bills down. As for Gordon Brown, he never believed in the first place that environmentalism wins votes.  He has always privately felt that the economy, jobs and financial security were more powerful for the vast majority of voters than abstract concepts on climate change.  Historically, he has a point.  But it is more difficult for the government to back down on policies that it has announced than it is for oppositions to go quiet on their previous commitments.  So when the government backs down on bin taxes, delays the fuel escalator (again), goes quiet on national road pricing and maybe gives concessions on vehicle excise duty, as they either have done or are considering, it is widely noticed. So there can be little doubt that politicians will tone down their environmental rhetoric and their policies in response to an economic downturn and rising prices.  They are politicians after all. But what about companies? My feeling is that leading companies will continue to develop their climate change, CSR and sustainability policies.  This is for a range of reasons.  First, everyone said that CSR was a fad and would disappear in the downturn of 2001-03.  They were wrong.  It did not disappear and has gone on rising up the corporate agenda.  Secondly, companies have invested in this area and will want to get a return on their investment.  Thirdly, they know that they will be accused of greenwash if they retreat at the first sign of economic difficulties.  Fourthly, the best companies genuinely do believe that they should act and that in the long term their key stakeholders expect it of them. So, for the leading companies, while they may talk more about how customers can reduce their fuel bills or save money through environmental efficiency and reduced use of resources or travel, their commitment for the most part will remain.  They will benefit from this.  Sticking by your principles when the going gets tough creates respect, trust and loyalty from their stakeholders and will help them when the economy starts to pick up speed again. CSR 2008-06-02T16:08:02+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/keep_calm_and_carry_on/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/keep_calm_and_carry_on/#When:15:32:01Z At Open Road Towers, a bright red, wartime poster adorns the wall. Its motto – Keep Calm and Carry On – was devised by the Ministry of Information in 1939 as war with Germany became inevitable. It is a slogan that Labour MPs would do very well to remember over the coming months, as the parties psyche themselves up for the long campaign until the general election. The triple whammy of the disastrous local elections, the loss of the London Mayoralty and the Crewe and Nantwich by-election were always going to make backbenchers jittery. With so many seats under threat, it was inevitable that they would apportion much of the blame for the Government’s woes to the Prime Minister. And, by and large, that wouldn’t be an unfair analysis. But since the beginning of May, the constant speculation about Gordon Brown’s future and the sniping at the Prime Minister from disaffected Blairites (emboldened by whopping advances from publishing houses) have escalated the scale of the challenge facing the Prime Minister. And have created the impression that the next election is already lost for the Labour Party – a prophecy that will prove self-fulfilling if Labourites don’t impose a little more discipline on themselves. It is unsurprising that someone with a reputation as tarnished as Lord Levy should seize the chance to sling the mud at someone else for once. For John Prescott to vent (or should that be vomit) up a spleen embittered from being the token Old Labourite in Cabinet is, likewise, to be expected. These comments from the wilderness should be taken for what they are – crass, ill-considered, get-rich-quick schemes. The sniping from the backbenchers, and the briefing from Ministerial aides, is more troubling. Much of this has, of course, been exaggerated by a media that smells blood. When Phil Collins, speechwriter to Pensions Secretary James Purnell, wrote in Prospect about the scale of the challenges facing the Government, his comments (which cited both strategic error and ‘Events!’ as equally culpable) were interpreted as a unilateral attack on the Prime Minister. However they were intended, they were mischievous and unhelpful. All Labourites, no matter how disaffected by the Government’s recent poor performance, need to remember that their position is dependent, not on how big a splash they can make on one day’s front pages, but on the party remaining united, strong and bold in outlook. Woes can, by all means, be voiced in private. But as we saw from John Major’s time in office, a Government can get by with a less-than-inspiring Prime Minister. It cannot survive a divided party. So, as a party member, my message to Labour MPs is as follows: get your heads down, keep calm, and carry on. Your country needs you. 2008-06-02T15:32:01+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/interview_with_dan_roberts/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/interview_with_dan_roberts/#When:11:36:00Z Open Road hosted a breakfast seminar on the future of the media with Dan Roberts, Deputy Editor of the Sunday Telegraph on 28 May 2008. Watch our video of Martin Le Jeune of Open Road interviewing Dan Roberts. UK Media 2008-05-29T11:36:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/entering_the_wilderness/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/entering_the_wilderness/#When:13:03:00Z I’ve been away for a while, rocking slowly backward and forward in the corner of a dark room, just wondering what happened to those glory days last year when Gordon Brown couldn’t seem to put a foot wrong.  Having been a Labour party member for just over a year, my spirits feel crushed. It was always too good to be true. Even the most tribal Labourite, the most passionate supporter of Gordon’s could never have dreamed that their man – he with the famous great clunking fist – could have delivered such a bloody nose to the Tories. But for a few weeks, whilst Blighty was subjected to an almost Biblical series of disasters, Gordo stood above politics, handling the crises with reassurance and resolve. And then he bottled the election. In years to come, we may well look back on Brown’s failure to call an election as the watershed moment in his premiership. The decision to postpone until 2009/10 wasn’t surprising, especially bearing in mind the Prime Minister’s legendary aversion to risk: the Government was not, even at that point, so far ahead in the opinion polls that even a half-way decent performance by Cameron at conference would avoid bringing the popularity difference back to within margin-of-error-territory. But the decision brought back to the fore those long-rooted suspicions about Brown – his famous ‘psychological flaws’. We do not need to proceed through the litany of disasters that have beset the Government since then: I wouldn’t want to appeal to the schadenfreude of Tory friends and colleagues. But suffice it to say, Brown has proved a singularly inept people- and issue-manager in the last year. And this despite innumerable shake-ups to the Number 10 team, designed to inject a sense of strategic purpose into Government. And so, on the eve of the Crewe and Nantwich by-election, where does that leave us? For Labour supporters, in a particularly unpleasant position. On the one hand, the party’s campaign in Crewe has been the nastiest I have ever had the misfortune to witness. And for that alone, Labour does not deserve to win. But on the other hand, a defeat would surely signal the death-knell for this Government, albeit one that will toll for at least another year before we finally get that election. It needn’t have been like this. The Government still has a lot of credible, worthy ideas to realise and deliver. The blame cannot be placed entirely on Gordon’s shoulders, but one feels that had it not been for his visceral hatred of the Tories (a hatred Tony Blair never had), many of the short-termist, tactical and ultimately damaging initiatives the Government has proposed over the last eight months would never have seen the light of the day. Ultimately, it is this hatred that has been Brown’s undoing, because it has made the Conservatives seem measured, considered and – shock horror – almost sensible in what few policy proposals they have come up with. It has also given them the space to start making preparations for Government, preparations which demonstrate the seriousness with which they regard their electoral prospects. And who can blame them? 2008-05-22T13:03:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/air_media_rage/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/air_media_rage/#When:15:31:00Z Can things get any worse for British Airways?  You would have thought not until a senior executive from gambling company, Ladbrokes, made public his dissatisfaction with a trip from Barbados with his daughter and her friend.  So disgruntled was he that he has persuaded his company to veto any business trips with British Airways in the future.  To be fair to BA, many of us have been to the check-in desk and been offered money to take another, later flight so I’m sure it’s not just BA who are guilty of this type of activity.  But Ladbrokes’ Chris Bell had very valid points about two fourteen-year-old girls traveling alone back to the UK (bet they were gutted to miss this opportunity for some very grown-up freedom!) This blogger is genuinely interested in what bad publicity like this really does to compensate for the now uniform placatory statements and sad vouchers now issued by airline companies and the like to make up for rubbish service.  What PR can claim that they have neither contemplated or actually resorted to threatening customer service representatives with ‘going to the press’ with complaints along the lines of ‘do you know what I do for a living?’ or worse still ‘do you know who I am?’ I am embarrassed to admit that I have done both and it has never achieved any results.  My last attempt at forcing BA to own up to something that was wholly their fault which ended up costing me a small fortune merely resulted in me writing to the Daily Telegraph’s travel advice page in the hope that my letter would be published (it wasn’t but I did receive a very nice reply.) Either large companies such as BA are now so wise to customers yelling at them about how well they know the Daily Mail or they genuinely don’t care any more (and perhaps this is true given the amount of complaints they must receive.) How much I have wished in the past that I could have taken my revenge on BA so sweetly.  And I’m not saying that the ‘threat of media’ is necessarily the right route but I have to admit that I felt more than slightly envious at the amount of press coverage generated by Chris Bell’s complaint – in addition to several front pages it also made the Today Programme.  Again, I’ve had terrible service at some point on most other airlines so why is this a big story?  Perhaps the media just hate BA so much now that any criticism makes good copy.  And I probably wouldn’t be writing this blog in the first place about anyone else. UK Media 2008-05-21T15:31:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/crewe_cuts/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/crewe_cuts/#When:13:11:00Z My first impression of Crewe was that the place was Red. There were Virgin Train guards in red jackets and red brick buildings such as one finds in the northwest. In fact Crewe looked just like Preston, where I had just come from. Surely not Cameron country? Within half a mile of the town centre however the place changes suddenly into a semi-rural area. Here I saw a lot of Conservative posters – I swear that the face of Edward Timpson is now seared into my retinas until the End Times. This Tory part of the constituency seemed mobilised, keen and organised. Certainly everyone in Crewe was aware of the election, and when I say aware, I mean sick-of. Tories had come in force – MPs, activists and pink-shirted Conservative Future youth. On the other side Jack Straw was known to be on the loose. He won the Labour leadership election for Gordon Brown, I wonder if a contest with other candidates presents a more complex challenge? I helped canvass in one of the outlying villages, a street with well kept semis at one end and fairly large detached houses at the other. Conservative support was strong and enthusiastic, particularly from older people and a couple who ran their own business. About a quarter of those I met used to vote Labour – not one was sure they would now. Concerns varied - economic conditions and “time for a change” all came up on the doorstep, as did local issues – one man was protesting about the fact that his children has not got into the local school and would have to go to another some distance away. Back in town things are more promising for the government, there are actual Labour posters to be seen, but almost as many Lib Dem and even the occasional Tory ones too. I saw no Labour activists, and word was they were not thick on the ground. Labour’s election publicity was backward looking, with lots of black and white pictures telling the history of Crewe and the Dunwoodys. It was also severely tactically flawed – “Tory 10p Tax Chaos” seems a good example of pointing out the splint in your neighbour’s eye just in case someone missed the beam in your own. Conservative publicity echoed that used in London –a leaflet with blue and green positive messages and talk of tackling crime on the one side and scary red letters warning that Gordon Brown wants you to stay at home on the other. The Lib Dems seemed to be running the strangest campaign. The candidate wore a red dress in her poster, thus at first glance displaying the same colour combination as Labour. Her leaflet, grandly called a “magazine,” used SDP style red and blue lettering on the front with no Lib Dem logo before the back page. I have few doubts that this will be a Conservative win, and with Labour support so soft, possibly on a larger scale than the polls indicate. 2008-05-19T13:11:00+00:00 http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/london_and_local_elections_the_fallout1/ http://www.theopen-road.com/index.php/blog/london_and_local_elections_the_fallout1/#When:08:55:00Z Massive losses for Labour.  Boris beat Ken.  Worst Labour election results for 40 years.  100 Labour MPs with marginal seats are getting nervous.  Brown appears to be a loser and the economy is entering a downturn.  Up next a possible By-election loss, votes on 42 days detention and the possibility of another vote on the 10 tax band. So Cameron for Prime Minister? Well it certainly looks far more likely than it ever has before.  Until now, while you may have felt that Brown didn’t look like a winner, you were never necessarily sure that Cameron’s Tories had done enough to be outright winners. Well they still haven’t done enough but that didn’t matter in these local and London mayoral elections.  Even though Boris had very few policies and is not known at all for competence or ability to manage anything, dislike for Labour, dislike of Ken and ‘time for a change’ was enough. Boris was well advised in this campaign by Lynton Crosby and others.  Be serious, do not have too many new policies as they might unravel under questioning, focus on Ken’s cronyism and on time for a change.  And go for the outer London boroughs where you can build on a stronger Tory bedrock of support. The Tories were also helped by Andrew Gilligan and the Evening Standards’s constant drip drip of allegations about Ken’s cronyism, Lee Jasper and Ken’s personal life that was responsible for turning Ken’s initial poll lead into a significant Boris poll lead.  Importantly, the Sun came out on Boris’ side.  That is potentially hugely significant.  It is the first time since 1992 that the Sun has backed the Tories.  If Boris doesn’t mess up completely, it is now possible that some or all of the Murdoch papers could support the Tories at the next general election.  Andy Coulson of Conservative Campaign HQ – take a bow. Across the country, the Tories have done well in the local elections and have even started to re-enter the North of England.  That is only a start for them, but an essential stepping stone. Will these results be replicated in a general election in 2009 or - as looks increasingly likely - May or June 2010? Labour support in a general election will not be as low as the 24 per cent in these elections.  They were hurt in their heartlands this time by the 10 pence tax rate row and Brown will not make that mistake again (surely!).  And in general elections where Labour supporters will not allow themselves the luxury of a protest vote, the core Labour vote will probably be 30 – 35 per cent. That cuts the likely Tory lead significantly.  Also, incumbent governments tend to reduce the lead of oppositions in the run up to a campaign.  So the likely Tory vote would be (looking at it right now) between 38 – 42 per cent.  And the Lib Dem vote held up pretty well and so the Tories may struggle a little to win all of the seats they might like to from Nick Clegg’s team. Incidentally, the figures above mirror the long term trend of pollsters asking about Gordon Brown vs David Cameron. So looking at the position right now, the Tories as the largest party is highly likely.  A Tory government with a workable overall majority is a distinct possibility. UK Politics 2008-05-06T08:55:00+00:00