Freemania

This blog is ten years old today, which seems a good occasion to announce its death. This will come as no surprise to regular readers, who have been regularly reading nothing at all for the past year and extremely little for the couple of years before...

My vote is very nearly worthless. So is yours. And that’s a good thing.
The idea that a single person is likely to ‘make a difference’ in an election would be a seductive myth if it weren’t so obviously false, because the whole point of democracy is that one person doesn’t make much difference. If you want power in one person...

Scene 1
OSBORNE: Hello, Europe.
EUROPE: Hello, Mr Osborne.

If the public find Ed Miliband so unimpressive, why is his party ahead in the polls? This question, pondered by Anthony Wells among others, is tricky. He calls it the “Ed Miliband paradox”, and says:
Given Labour are ahead now, I think the question is whether perceptions of the opposition and the choice of Prime Minister increase in importance as the election approaches and voting intention becomes less of a way of people indicating their opinion...