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Is Rishi Sunak using a crystal ball and the dark arts to select his most propitious General Election date?    Maybe.  Or perhaps he is using careful polling and political analysis to plot a comeback-kid route victory?   Then again, he could be playing the Mr. Micawber strategy – something will turn up.  Surely? A few PBers have recently suggested that since he knows the game is up, Sunak is simply stringing out his Premiership to the maximum, to move himself as…

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Assume for a moment that you are Boris, and that you would like to be Prime Minister again. What are your prospects of regaining the Tory leadership? Before the GE? Nearly zero. You aren’t an MP, and Sunak has made it clear that you’re not going to be a candidate under his leadership. After the GE? Well, maybe. But someone else will have been made leader post-Sunak. Will they be in a hurry to welcome a rival back in a…

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The Sun famously claimed it had won the election for John Major’s Tories in 1992.  Rupert Murdoch later denied that claim, telling the Leveson Inquiry that the ‘Won It’ headline had been “tasteless and wrong”, adding: “we don’t have that sort of power” (although the Mandy Rice-Davies principle applies here of course). The Sun’s 1992 claim has to be filed under ‘Unprovable’, but with the largest UK daily circulation at the time of 3.8m copies, and a relentless anti-Labour campaign…

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Introduction In my recent entry in the Measurement series, I was chastised by @Cleitophon who pointed out that he came here for “…brutal empirical analysis about the electoral landscape – not this ephemeral theory…”. It’s a fair point, and one that I share. So, what empirical analysis can my small brain bring you? Let’s try the 2024 Finnish Presidential election, the first round of which is 28 January 2024. Finland What do I know about Finland? Not a lot. I…

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A total of 81 of entries were received for the PB Prediction Competition 2024 and I have included a summary of those entries below. Reflecting the prediction challenge I am struck by how quickly the news agenda shifts.  Most entrants predicted the party leaders will remain unchanged but in the days since entries closed, first Davey and then Starmer have come under pressure from the PO Scandal, so who knows how safe those predictions will be.  ‘Events dear boy, events!’ …

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INTRODUCTION The concept of a political elite is much in vogue recently. I find it difficult to cope with the recency, because the existence of a group of people above others is older than Britain: the term “privilege” is derived from “privilegium”, a private law. The British class structure which Thatcherism was supposed to overthrow had existed for centuries, and in turn dates back to divisions between clergy, nobility, landowners, etc. We could spend a lively time talking about how…

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“In order to save space the word esquire has not been added to any name, though of course such should be added in every ease when no inconsistent addition is affixed.” – Kelly’s Handbook to the Upper Ten Thousand, 1875 In the ages before universal suffrage, it was assumed that society was run by an aristocracy. There was a certain flexibility in the British version of this. One could rise (within certain limits) – medicine, science and industry allowed commoners…

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This is part of a series about measuring political concepts. This one is about classification of parties. Introduction In May 2022, SNP MP Mhairi Black said that the Government was “sleepwalking closer to fascism”. This engendered discussion about whether she was right, and that conversation fell into distinct grooves. Events since then have kept this discussion fresh, with various bodies being characterized as fascist or not, reaching its zenith or nadir in the recent essay by former PB contributor @SeanT…

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