SkyNews Can Diane make it to 33 by 12.30pm? As he had always said he would if he thought his withdrawal would help get a woman contender onto the ballot John McDonnell has quit the Labour race thus releasing those who have nominated to support other candidates. Whether all those who had gone with McDonnell will follow his lead we will have to see – but it’s looking likely that a total of five will have reached the 33 total…
Will it be a four, five or six horse race? Today marks the final scramble for the three remaining Labour hopefuls who have yet to make the cut to secure the required 33 nominations from fellow MPs. Andy Burnham is just two off and looks a near certainty. John McDonnell has sixteen so might struggle – though will he be helped or hindered by his regret at not murdering Mrs. Thatcher in the 1980s? Judging by the reception he got…
The market where the bookie didn’t have to pay out a penny The appointment of Nick Clegg as Deputy PM means that the curtain has finally closed on a betting matter that has seen quite a lot of political punters losing a fair bit of money. It is also a timely reminder to look at the close detail of any bets you are entering into. For in the months after the 2005 election William Hill opened a market on who…
Does McDonnell’s assassination call still resonate? I’ve just picked up on the John McDonnell clip at yesterday’s hustings when he said he’d wished that he’d assassinated Mrs. Thatcher during the 80s. What I found striking was the reaction of his audience – trade union delegates who gave it the biggest applause of the day. But it does raise the question of Maggie’s legacy. Is this a positive for Labour, as McDonnell seems to think, or has it been neutralised by…
Why I’d be backing Balls if I was Labour There’s been a lot of attention on Ed Balls over the past couple of days as nominations for the Labour leadership are about to close and the race proper will begin. The shadow schools’ secretary had a good appearance on the Politics Show on Sunday and had to miss the first hustings because it was education question yesterday in the commons. The big news from the former was his readiness to…
Correlations between changes in vote share CON LAB LD NAT UKIP LAB -0.29 LD -0.27 –0.52 NAT –0.38 0.19 -0.56 UKIP 0.05 -0.13 0.07 0.03 BNP -0.01 -0.27 0.04 -0.40 -0.13 Did the anti-EU party hurt Labour most? A couple of weeks ago the Telegraph writer, Gerald Warner, claiming the psephological science was on his side, asserted that UKIP had cost the Tories 21 seats on May 6th. He wrote:”..Detailed examination of the election results reveals that UKIP deprived the…
CON lead CON seats LAB seats LD seats OTH seats – 2.7% 239 326 59 26 0.0% 255 306 61 28 4.1% 282 281 59 28 7.3% 307 258 57 28 11.2% 327 233 62 28 What do these seat projections mean for next time? The table above features the new commons seat projections for the next election prepared by Professor John Curtice for Friday’s general election post-mortem at the University of Nottingham. As can be seen the Tories need…
Telegraph The Telegraph has a story that I’m sure will be referred to time and time again when historians come to assess the Brown years. The report goes “…one of Brown’s final acts in the Downing Street bunker was quietly to organise a pay cut for his successor which he must have known would leave him out of pocket to the tune of hundreds of thousands of pounds…On Brown’s orders, the Prime Minister’s remuneration package was cut from £194,000 to…