How London Voted on May 5th I have now finished working out how each of the new constituencies voted in May’s local elections. This is a useful exercise, as the new boundaries will almost certainly be in force at the time of the next election. As each of the three main parties contested the vast majority of London’s council seats, it is quite easy to work out the results by constituency. In each case, I have taken the highest vote…
At what stage is it worth betting on the Chancellor? The above chart shows the best betting price available on Gordon Brown to be the next Labour leader shown as an implied probability. This morning on the Betfair betting exchange you could get 0.44/1 – which for those less familiar with betting prices means that an investment of £100 would produce a profit of £44 on top of getting your stake back if he made it. So is that good…
Yougov finds that less than one in two believes the politicians In a YouGov poll for this week’s Spectator just 49% of those surveyed said “No” to the question “Do you think British politicians generally exaggerate the terrorist threat?” A total of 12% said they did exaggerate “because they are ill informed themselves” while 23%, nearly a quarter, agreed with the statement “Yes, they do – and they know that the truth is not as they portray it”. Men seem…
How worried should punters be about the Home Secretary’s past? When Tony Blair finally announces his intentions the starting gun will be fired on an event unprecedented in UK politics – a mass leadership election in a party that will effectively choose a new Prime Minister. For the last times that new leaders have been chosen while their parties were in power the electorates were restricted to just MPs. It was the respective parliamentary parties that chose Jim Callaghan after…
Would he still get it if polls showed a leadership rival in the lead? With the Telegraph and the Independent both having big articles this morning talking up a potential John Reid leadership bid could Gordon Brown’s chances of taking the top job be hit by opinion polls showing that he was behind a rival? For the Chancellor has not got a good record in leadership polls in spite of the efforts by his supporters to over-state the importance of…
Could Johnson be the kingmaker, not the king? In the wake of last week’s terror raids, most Labour leadership speculation has inevitably centred on whether the episode has boosted the chances of Home Secretary John Reid – not least on this blog. In my regional newspaper columns this weekend, I myself wrote that momentum is building behind a Reid candidature, although I think it will take sharp drop in Labour’s poll ratings to persuade Labour members to opt for him…
Could Blair be to Gordon what Heath was to Maggie? Tony Blair has been such a dominating figure in British politics for so long that it’s hard imagining what things are going to be like when he and Cherie have moved to Connaught Square and Gordon, assuming it is he, is the undisputed master at Number 10. Heath was still in his 50s when Maggie beat him in the 1975 leadership election and throughout her years he remained a vocal…
Will Cameron’s absence and Reid’s profile turn the position round? During the past four months there have been twenty one consecutive voting intention polls from five different pollsters all showing a Tory lead – the party’s best polling performance for a decade and a half. The margins have been between two and ten points and the highest Labour share has been 35. But is this all about to change? Could one or two of the next scheduled polls have Labour…