The billionaire Tory donor Michael Ashcroft’s dream of reinventing himself as the Pollfather has suffered a knock. Sky News is excluding the Conservative peer’s regular surveys from its election poll of polls. Lord Ashcroft isn’t a member of the British Polling Council and industry rivals mumble about his transparency, particularly because he generated headlines early this month with a surprisingly big Tory lead and a Green tsunami, rather than a surge.
Few MPs work harder than Dan Jarvis, a former major in the Parachute Regiment, yomping across Britain to fight Labour’s ground war against the Tories. The shadow justice minister, who won the 2011 Barnsley Central by-election, is tipped for great things. Labour comrades remember his baptism of fire on entering Westminster. “Dan served in the special forces in Afghanistan, leading men on deadly missions in the mountains, enduring deprivation and fear for weeks on end,” one colleague recalled, “but nothing prepared him for the indignity of serving in Harriet Harman’s culture team.” They say Hattie’s boot camp was the real making of him.
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