That’s it for today above the line. Thanks for all your comments - have a great weekend.
Politics Live - readers' edition: Friday 30 January
Share breaking news, leave links to interesting articles online and chat about the week’s political events in our open thread. We’ll post the best above the line
Fri 30 Jan 2015 11.03 EST
First published on Fri 30 Jan 2015 03.04 ESTLive feed
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.
Here’s today’s Populus poll, showing Labour with a one point lead.
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.
This week’s politics quiz is now ready for your attention. Do let us know how you get on.
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.”
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.
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.
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