Is the Education secretary worth his favourite status? After getting the most MP nominations for Labour deputy Alan Johnson has become the early favourite and although his price has eased a touch the best that can be had is 2.1/1. Yet the problem Johnson faces is that Labour MPs only represent a third of the electoral college that will decide the job – another third being the party membership at large and the final third being trade unionists who pay…
We’ve waited an awful long time but at last Betfair has opened a market on the deputy leadership. I’ve bet a bit already but I’m going to wait until we see the next YouGov poll of Labour and affiliated trade union members. Earlier surveys had Benn well ahead but Johnson has the most MP nominations. Harman has the implicit support of Brown while Blears is said to have come out best in the first hustings. Cruddas, meanwhile, has the backing…
Has Ming got the most job security? With last Thursday’s historic resignation by Tony Blair we reached the unprecedented situation where all three main parties have ousted leaders within the past four years. Labour and the Lib Dems have taken up what used to be the exclusive Tory habit of deposing leaders who are thought to be performing badly. This is new territory for UK politics and means, surely, that none of the three has real job security. Once you…
Is it worth betting on Brown taking over a lot earlier? The extraordinary situation that could see Gordon winning the Labour leadership by default this afternoon but having to wait until the end of June before taking over has already led to calls that the change-over should happen now. This is the front page editorial in the Independent this morning and the message could not be clearer. Brown is the winner – what’s the point of Blair struggling on for…
Contest or coronation – what’s best for the Tories? With the time fast running out on John McDonnell’s desperate attempt to get a further seventeen Labour MPs to back his nomination what outcome are the Tories hoping for tomorrow lunchtime? Does the Cameron gang want Gordon to get his coronation and then spend the next six weeks with his rather pointless campaign or would they like to see Brown having to face a challenge from McDonnell? My guess is that…
1250 gmt We are experiencing severe difficulties with the site today and it might be a few hours before we can get it back to normal. I can still publish articles but it is not possible for people to submit comments. Mike Smithson
We seem to be having problems this morning. Let’s see if the thread on here works.
Could the party lose two leaders in the same parliament? The power of the media to frame the agenda by deciding what is asked in opinion polls is shown vividly this morning with the top political story in the Times being the findings from the second part of its monthly Populus poll. Yesterday we saw that all the rise in Labour support has been at the expense of the Lib Dems which dropped from 20% to 17% – the second…