Wednesday 23rd September 2009 | 13:47

PoliticsHome, the Phi100 panel and Lord Ashcroft

The PoliticsHome Phi100 panel, which measures moving political opinion within Westminster, has had a rough couple of days, with the announcement of a large investment in the holding company of PoliticsHome by senior Conservative Lord Ashcroft prompting a concerted campaign for left-leaning panel members to resign in protest. We have always taken great care over the cross-partisan nature of the panel, and weight each day's figures by political leaning to give as accurate as possible a feel for how opinion is moving amongst this influential group.

We have given the panel, as well as our readers, firm assurances that no interference with our much-valued non-partisan coverage or research would ever take place. We understand that we will have to prove that over time, and have introduced a regular 'partisanship tracker' where members of the panel can say if they feel coverage has been veering in one direction or another, and hold us to account. Happily, the majority of the panel are giving us the chance to prove this continued dedication to fairness.

The Phi100 panel is designed to work on an average 50% response rate: in order to get as near as possible to 100 responses a day, there are approximately 200 members of the panel at any moment. These are senior parliamentarians, journalists and commentators, think tank heads and academics and party strategists.

We have so far had thirteen firm resignations from the panel, with an additional seven being reported as considering their position. We will be sad to see them go, and in many cases individual panel members have said they would like to return to the panel if the editorial independence is proved, and that they had found the process rewarding and worthwhile.

For today's survey, as well as the 'strategy lab' on Labour's best approach to its Conference (which will be published over the weekend and early next week) we asked the panel directly what they thought about the source of our additional investment.

Today, we received a slightly lower than average 71 complete responses (we normally expect 80-90 during recess and 100-110 during parliamentary session), but we were pleased that it included an even mix of right-leaning and left-leaning panellists. This consisted of 24 Labour-leaning panel members (of which 6 were Labour parliamentarians, 6 members of the media and 12 thought leaders and strategists), 27 Conservative-leaning panel members (of which 5 were parliamentarians, 7 members of the media and 15 thought leaders and strategists), 6 Lib Dem panel members (of which 3 were parliamentarians, 1 member of the media and 2 thought leaders and strategists) and 14 non-aligned panel members, of which 9 were members of the media and 5 thought leaders.

The weighted results, together with complete comments for each question, are reproduced below.

Parliamentarians	Left	Ashcroft is totally partisan and discredits everything he touches
Media	None	danger of perception of bias is the main issue
Thought leader	Right	Haven't the people who think it will, left the panel?
Thought leader	None	I am sure it won't be significant but long-term it's difficult to see that it won't have a framing influence - if only on reputation and perception
Thought leader	Left	I think that Ashcroft is more likely to exert influence and do not trust him to stand back
Media	Left	Michael's  record is not encouraging, but, hey, let's see
Thought leader	Left	Proof of the pudding.....
Parliamentarians	LibDem	Since he is actively trying to unseat many of my colleagues he is not just any old Tory. This imay be a necessary investment for Mr Shakespeare, but it compromises the site hugely. How exactly do you intend to keep him passive?
Media	None	There is a strong incentive to avoid political interference - any bias would destroy the site's credibility.
Machine/Industry	LibDem	we'll see!

Media	Right	COMPLETELY balanced!
Media	None	I've never seen any bias.
Thought leader	Left	often in the subtle tenor of the questions
Thought leader	Left	Only bias is in favour of Westminster village and its obsessions, unfortunately; but that's in the nature of the beast
Parliamentarians	Right	only in your PHI 100 panel questions, many of which used to sound like they were scripted by Ed Balls
Media	Right	There has been a tendency for Labour-supporting commentators to monopolise the Top Ten - and one Andrew Rawnsley was always top of the list on Sundays.
Parliamentarians	LibDem	Thus far have never had any concerns.