That’s it for today above the line. Thanks for all your comments - have a great weekend.
As it’s Friday afternoon, it must be time for AnatolyKasparov’s local council by-election round up.
An interesting take on Syriza’s election victory, from Ben Quinn and Aisha Gani: they explore the role of Greek’s UK-based academic community in the party’s rise to power.
A lesser known story of Syriza’s rise, however, has been the role played by a sizeable number of Greek intellectuals based now or previously at British universities – some of whom have been catapulted from academia to senior positions of power in Greece’s new government.
Most notable is Greece’s new finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, who obtained a mathematical economics degree and PhD at the University of Essex, later teaching at East Anglia, Cambridge and Glasgow.
Tipped to join him in the cabinet is Costas Lapavitsas, a professor of economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of London, who was also elected as a new Syriza MP.
Updated
Here’s today’s Populus poll, showing Labour with a one point lead.
Latest Populus VI: Lab 35 (-), Con 34 (-), LD 10 (+1), UKIP 14 (+1), Others 7 (-2). Tables here: http://t.co/tmTDvNMYGH
— Populus (@PopulusPolls) January 30, 2015
Commenter TheGreatBaldo has done a round up of coverage from - or about - the state of play in Scotland. Ed Miliband was in Glasgow earlier this week to give Jim Murphy his backing, as Libby Brooks reported.
Greeting....some writings about politics north of the border..
First up, The Economist take at Jim Murphy's chances....essentially they like and rate him but think he has no chance
Then there is this interview with Jim Murphy with (the very good) Jamie Ross of Buzzfeed....where Murphy is "Astonished By How Easy It’s Been To Outwit The SNP"....
A rather strange conclusion for him to reach given the current state of polling and the widespread ridicule he is getting for his recent moves, not just as expected from YES voters but from also from admirers and supporters in the press like like Alan Cochrane in HM Telegraph
And also from Jamie Ross on Buzzfeed....his interview/report on Alex Salmond on the campaign trail in Gordon is well worth 5 minutes of your time.
Also worth it for Jamie Ross quite rightly slapping down one of the shall we say 'window licking eejits' who are sadly amongst my YES voting fellow travellers who questioned his knowledge of Scottish history...this is very good too
Updated
Ed Miliband has asked the press to remember their responsibilities and report the issues, reports Rowena Mason. He seems to desire less coverage of what Peter Hain described, rather winningly, as the “Westminster-bubble tittle-tattle that the media enjoy and the political class enjoy”
The Labour leader was speaking at a Westminster dinner for political journalists, similar to the ones held by Barack Obama at the White House. As part of a humorous, self-deprecating speech, he struck a more serious note as he made a plea for reporters to concentrate on the issues.
“You will shape this election too,” he said in a direct appeal to journalists. “And my only request is that you do your bit too to try and make this election about the issues, choices and beliefs that matter to the country as well.
“One of the biggest enemies of politics is cynicism, the belief that we are all in it for base motives. Agree with us or disagree with us, but report us for what we believe. This is all we can ask for.
“We may have different roles and be on different sides but as custodians of politics and its reputation, we are, as somebody else once said, all in this together.”
Updated
Today’s YouGov / Sun poll sees Labour and the Conversatives tied on 34%. This fits in with my colleague Alberto Nardelli’s analysis of the current crop of opinion polls, which - if they are correct - tend to point to neither party gaining enough seats to form an outright majority.
Morning all. Tories & Labour tied on Yougov:
Latest YouGov / The Sun results 29th January -
Con 34%, (+1)
Lab 34%, (+1)
LD 6%, (nc)
UKIP 14%, (-2)
GRN 7%, (nc)
Andrew is not writing his usual Politics Live blog today but, as an alternative, here’s Politics Live: readers’ edition. It’s intended to be a place where you can catch up with the latest news and find links to good politics blogs and articles on the web.
Please feel free to use this as somewhere you can comment on any of the day’s political stories - just as you do during the daily blog. It would be particularly useful for readers to flag up new material in the comments - breaking news or blogposts or tweets that are worth passing on because someone is going to find them interesting.
As we’re now in a general election year, there’s plenty to talk about. With this in mind, we are going to update the readers’ edition throughout the day, with polls, talking points and material flagged up by readers.
All today’s Guardian politics stories are here, and all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today’s paper, are here.
Two local council by-elections this week:
Windsor and Maidenhead - Tory hold in an unusual Wednesday poll with just over two thirds of the vote, of a very safe ward in what looks like the last vacancy from the 2011 set of elections to be filled before this May. They got a modest swing from second placed Labour, who finished only just ahead of UKIP who got nearly 12% in their first outing here (though they may have hoped for more, and the runners up position) LibDems in last place as their vote fell further on last time when they were pushed into third (having been fairly competitive in 2003 and still narrowly second in 2007) which sums up their long term decline in this one time "flagship" council - the days when Theresa May genuinely feared for her seat seem very distant now.
St Albans DC - Tories hold both seats in a rare "double vacancy", thus preserving their single seat majority on the council. They were run fairly close by the LibDems who gained a swing of 5% since last May - though this was a low point for them in this ward as they fell into third place having won it at every election between 2002 and 2010 (with the sole exception of a narrow Tory win in 2006) sometimes by big margins, so they may have hoped for even better. Labour back to third, down 4% on their recent high last May but little changed on the previous few years - followed by the Greens whose top candidate finished ahead of Labour but gained almost three times the number of votes their running mate did; this is explained by their explicitly calling on voters to prefer one candidate in their election literature (they have tried this tactic before, with mixed results) Taken together their score was up about 5% - compare with UKIP, who came last with a drop in their share and only a single vote separating their two hopefuls.
Just one contest next week (Derbyshire CC)