Unfortunately he has not gone far enough. Made chief whip ready to come back after the next election

Minister for The Today Programme as he was described earlier. He and McVey will hardly be off our screens or radios in the run up to May 2015. A ploy that may yet spectacularly backfire. Both Gove and McVey have irritating voices and screen presence, they'll turn a lot of people off.

Some of Camoron's other promotions seem a little weird too: Priti "I really, really mean this" Patel and Clare "speaking as a mum" Perry both smack of tokenism. However his promotion of Nicky Morgan as Gove's replacement is a strange one. As he tweeted this morning:

! David Cameron ✔ @David_Cameron

Nicky Morgan is the new Education Secretary and continues as Minister for Women and Equalities."

Seeing as she voted against same-sex marriage, I suppose the Women and Equalities bit only applies to straight people?

Double-standards and hypocrisy, from an MP? Who WOULD have thought it? Putting somebody in charge of equality who doesn't believe in equality does seem kind of stupid, though. Unless she's one of those 'equality when it suits' people...

Quite right. The Whip's Office is not far enough, I'd say an uninhabited island in the Pacific with no connection to the outside world would be far enough! Worst education secretary since Thatcher, but Cameron has made his biggest enemy!

Can't help but feel that this is so tokenistic it is untrue. Milliband taunts him about the lack of women on his front bench so Cameron goes all knee jerk with less than a year to go to the next election. He's picked true blue Tory women but would he have done it if Crosby or the focus groups hadn't told him to? Weak, weak PM, desperately trying to fool the electorate - we'll see if they have been in the next 9 months or so.

I agree but because Labour is led by Miliband, E I think the Tories will win. Labour has elected the unelectable and not had the guts to remove him. The population at large will pay the long-term price for Labour's mistakes.

My feelings too, a slick PR campaign, the support of the printed media and a default position of "who else is there to vote for" coupled with "they are all saying the same thing" can only mean a Tory win, its almost like Labour have accepted that its too late for next year and are waiting for a second term implosion by the opposition.

Where do you suggest the 15 point swing, that will be required for an overall tory majority, is going to come from?

Theyve shown that a coalition government is no hinderence to incidious hatred politics especially when your minor partner has little input into your govrrnance, they will have no issues with signing up the Libdems or any other minor partner again.

As for the points and the polls, completely meaningless at the moment and will be until the last few weeks, dont underestimate the ability of the compliant media to supress bad news and promote the PR bollax instead - the British voters are so sheep-like in general elections and the fact that none of the partys offer anything that could be described as a new approach makes it so much easier to just let the newspapers choose.

Looks like a hung parliament but much depends on whether UKIP's support holds up

I reckon UPRIK will have the same number of MPs as they have at the moment

I think Cibaman meant that if the support for UKIP holds up then that will siphon votes away from the Tories and lead them to losing seats to Labour or Lib Dems rather than UKIP itself gaining any MP's.

The only way UKIP can gain an MP is if Nigel Farage stands in the most UKIP friendly constituency possible. Even then I don't see him winning.
I also don't think it'll happen because it's a massive risk for Farage and a bit of a no win situation. If he wins all he's done is get 1 MP and won't be able to change or do much. If he doesn't win then he loses credibility.