Politics

By Jack Peat, TLE Editor The only thing we can say for certain in the run-up to the 2015 General Election is that there are no certainties. Set to be the closest fought election in recent history the electorate is split and Westminster is divided. Very few political commentators feel confident enough to call it one way or the other and the polls have been returning the same results since the start of the year. So what is going to happen? Well, we...

By Alan Owens, Partner and Head of Technology at law firm DWF The current Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations explicitly fail to address the big issues facing the global tech industry – data and US dominance. These issues have come right to the fore following the recent EU action against internet giant Google. Google has been in the crosshairs of the EU for some time, replacing Microsoft as its US tech target of choice. On 27 November last...

By David Binder  Alongside the more established parties, General Elections usually bring their fair share of serious and not so serious smaller parties, and 2015 is no exception. One party making something of a comeback is the Whig Party. Whilst to some the Whig name will illicit visions of politics of a by gone era, the party under leader Waleed Ghani apparently offers a radical new vision for the 21st century whilst remaining true to it’s progressive roots. To find out...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  Police targeted, stores looted and havoc wreaked across the streets of Baltimore. The past week has been a mass of ugly pictures in Maryland as footage emerge from riots that broke out after the funeral of Freddie Gray, 25, who died after suffering a spinal injury in police custody. Like the London riots, citizen journalism has played a prominent role in conveying the events which seems to have humanised the uprising. Subsequent media responses have been...

By Ivan McKeever, CEO SwitchMyBusiness.com It is a political cliché that if every one of Britain’s 5.2 million small and micro firms were each helped to create one job, we would wipe out our unemployment problem. But what do those parties seeking our votes offer beyond tempting rhetoric at election time? A survey for SwitchMyBusiness.com, an energy compare and switch service for small businesses, revealed 93 per cent of small business owners want drastic change from the next Government. And...

By Pieter Cranenbroek As Owen Jones has noted, the Tory election campaign has proved far from a Machiavellian plan to win the election. The Conservatives’ personal attacks on Labour leader Ed Miliband have backfired and they are openly mocked for making silly blank cheque promises. Good news for Labour, except there is one problem: Labour is still more or less tied with the Tories. Many blame Miliband’s persona for this but Labour’s real problem is its inability to influence the...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  The NUS is set to reveal a national advertising campaign targeted at MPs who voted to increase student fees, with billboards across Sheffield, Manchester and London from Thursday 23rd April. Dubbed 'the 2010 pledge breakers' the advertisement attacks MPs who pledged to scrap tuition fees before voting for the increase. Prominent locations in London Victoria, Sheffield Central and Manchester Piccadilly have been selected with the billboards being erected overnight tonight to be up for the...

By James Emslie We're off. Another scramble to be Britain's most powerful man. This time round, we are faced with quite a choice, largely because we haven't got one. A power sharing deal between the Conservatives and UKIP? An 11th hour Lib/Lab covenant? Labour buoyed up by Alex and his band of Scottish Nationals with help from what remains of Cleggmania? The potential combinations, mergers and alliances is all MP's, pollsters and theorists can think about these days. Cabinet ministers,...

By Nathan Lee, TLE Correspondent  If the outcome of the 2015 General Election was left up to social media to decide, Facebook users would vote for a right-wing coalition and Twitter a left-wing coalition. That is according to new research by 72Point which calculates the outcome of the election based on Facebook likes and Twitter followers. The study found that if Facebook likes were votes in this year’s General Election the result would be a Conservative/ UKIP coalition, but if votes...