Nearly two years on and LAB still being blamed Apart from the HS2 decision the big UK political news today has been Ed Miliband’s big speech on the economy and how a future LAB government would operate. A particular point was his promise that in order to win in 2015 “Labour would be “a different party from the one we were in the past”. He also said they were ready to take on “vested interests” and “deliver fairness”. All fine…
Betfair Hillary price NH primary day 2008 It’s New Hampshire primary day and perhaps a good moment to reflect on the nightmare political betting night that some punters had four years ago. In the Democratic race Obama had won Iowa a few days earlier and looked on target to take New Hampshire. It all seemed so certain. An opinion poll of the state by Gallup on the day before had reported 41% for Obama with 28% for Hillary Clinton. Nobody…
Can Newt get his revenge? The video, a trailer to a 30 minute film, has been funded and made by an organisation that is supporting Newt Gingrich. Although he has not expressed it in these words the ex-house speaker seems intent on doing whatever he can to stop Romney. This is the first time that the front-runner’s time as CEO of Bain has come under serious fire and this is likely to continue right through until November, assuming he gets…
Will he ever get over it with the party? A Labour friend has just dropped me a line to point out that at the Labour leadership election in September 2010 Ed Miliband was the first choice of just 4% of the constituency parties. This comes on top of the Parliamentary Labour Party going for his brother with his victory down totally to the efforts on his behalf by the country’s three big unions. As Henry says this goes a long…
For MPs the waiting will soon be over The part of the UK that is most affected by the seat equalisation and reduction plan is Wales where the boundary commissioners were charged with reducing the number of constituencies from the current 40 to 30. This is a cutback of a quarter. To put this into context the national reduction is from 650 seats to 600. According to the initial time-table the proposals for the new Welsh electoral map were due…
The chart shows the responses in today’s YouGov poll for the Sunday Times to the queation – “Which do you think should be the greater priority for government spending on transport – building the proposed High Speed Rail link between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, or expanding air transport by building new runways or a new airport?” I find the backing for HS2 quite surprising and would have though that there would be an almost equal split. Mike Smithson…
Should bookies have waited for the official result? On Wednesday morning the big news from the 2012 White House race was that Mitt Romney had squeezed a victory in Iowa by a margin of of just eight votes. This was based on information from the state party HQ where it was being emphasised that this was not a certified result. That would come after signed returns has been received from the 1,700 precincts – a process that would take a…
Did you take HenryG Manson’s advice in November? It was back in November that Henry G Manson wrote a post here suggesting that we should be betting that the Welsh secretary, Cheryl Gillan, would be the next cabinet exit. At the time Henry noted Gillean told Free Press in June: “If the project goes ahead, I would resign the whip unless the Prime Minsiter tells me he would allow me to vote against it. When I was appointed to the…