Michael Denzil Xavier Portillo is a British journalist, broadcaster, and former Conservative politician. He was first elected to the House of Commons in a by-election in 1984. A strong admirer of Margaret Thatcher, and a Eurosceptic, Portillo served as a junior minister under both Thatcher and John Major, before entering the cabinet in 1992. A "darling of the right", he was seen as a likely challenger to Major during the 1995 Conservative leadership election, but stayed loyal. As Defence Secretary, he pressed for a purist Thatcherite course of "clear blue water", separating the policies of the Conservatives from those of the Labour Party.
Hancock's Half Hour was a BBC radio comedy, and later television comedy series, broadcast from 1954 to 1961 and written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. The series starred Tony Hancock, with Sidney James; the radio version also co-starred, at various times, Moira Lister, Andrée Melly, Hattie Jacques, Bill Kerr and Kenneth Williams. The final television series, renamed simply Hancock, starred Hancock alone.
BBC Parliament is a British free-to-air television channel which broadcasts live and recorded coverage of the House of Commons, House of Lords and Select Committees of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Scottish Parliament, the London Assembly, the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Welsh Assembly. The channel also broadcasts reports from the European Parliament and the annual conferences of the main political parties and the Trades Union Congress. On average, 1.2% of the UK's total population watch the channel for more than three minutes at least once per week; these viewers watch for an average of just over two hours each over the course of the week.
Douglas Garven Alexander is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, and Chair of the Board of Trustees for UNICEF UK. He is a Council Member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a Member of the Advisory Council for the Scottish Policy Foundation, and a Trustee of the Royal United Services Institute.
Angela Eagle is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Wallasey since the 1992 general election. Eagle was born in Yorkshire and studied PPE at the University of Oxford, before working for the CBI and then a trade union.
Robert Michael Kilroy-Silk is an English former politician and broadcaster. After a decade as a university lecturer, he served as a Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) from 1974 to 1986. He left the House of Commons in 1986 in order to present a new daytime talk show, Kilroy, which ran until 2004. He then served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) from 2004 to 2009. Having been elected as a UK Independence Party (UKIP) candidate, he left in 2005 to found a new party which he called Veritas. He resigned as its leader later the same year, and sat as an independent MEP for the rest of his term.
Robert Trelford McKenzie was a Canadian professor of politics and sociology, and a psephologist. He is perhaps most well known in Britain as one of the main presenters of the BBC's General Election programmes.
The swingometer is a graphics device that shows the effects of the swing from one party to another on British election results programmes. It is used to estimate the number of seats that will be won by different parties, given a particular national swing in the vote towards or away from a given party, and assuming that that percentage change in the vote will apply in each constituency. The device was invented by Peter Milne, and later refined by David Butler and Robert McKenzie.
The 2005 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday 5 May 2005, to elect 646 members to the House of Commons. The Labour Party, led by Tony Blair, won its third consecutive victory, with Blair becoming the only Labour leader beside Harold Wilson to form three majority governments. However, its majority fell to 66 seats compared to the 167-seat majority it had won four years before. This was the first time the Labour Party had won a third consecutive election. As of 2020, it remains the last general election victory for the Labour Party and was also the last general election until 2019 that a single political party would manage to achieve a large overall majority over all other parties.
The 2010 United Kingdom general election was held on Thursday, 6 May 2010, with 45,597,461 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system. None of the parties achieved the 326 seats needed for an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won the largest number of votes and seats, but still fell 20 seats short. This resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the second general election since the Second World War to return a hung parliament, the first being the February 1974 election however unlike then the potential for such an outcome had been anticipated, and subsequently the politicians and the country as a whole was much better prepared for the constitutional process that would follow such a result. The coalition government that was subsequently formed was the first coalition in British history to eventuate directly from an election outcome. The hung parliament came about in spite of the Conservatives managing both a higher vote total and higher share of the vote than the previous Labour government had done in 2005, when it secured a comfortable majority.
Sir Michael Alan Penning is a British Conservative Party politician, who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hemel Hempstead since 2005.
James Edward Fleet is a British actor. He is most famous for his roles as the bumbling and well-meaning Tom in the 1994 British romantic comedy film Four Weddings and a Funeral and the dim-witted but kind Hugo Horton in the BBC sitcom television series The Vicar of Dibley.
Brent Central is a constituency represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament. It is currently represented, since 2015, by Dawn Butler of the Labour Party.
The 2011 Scottish Parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2011 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament.
Jason Alexander McCartney is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Colne Valley in West Yorkshire since 2019, and from 2010 to 2017. He is a former TV sports reporter.
These are the results of the 2010 United Kingdom general election in Scotland. The election was held on 6 May 2010 and all 59 seats in Scotland were contested. There were no seat changes from the 2005 general election, although Labour took back 2 seats that it had lost in by-elections.
The 2016 Scottish parliament election was held on Thursday, 5 May 2016 to elect 129 members to the Scottish Parliament. It was the fifth election held since the devolved parliament was established in 1999. It was the first parliamentary election in Scotland in which 16 and 17 year olds were eligible to vote, under the provisions of the Scottish Elections Act. It was also the first time the three largest parties were led by women.
Tracey Breaks the News is a British topical comedy series starring Tracey Ullman. The programme premiered on BBC One on 27 October 2017, and following a pilot episode that aired on 23 June.