The row that is going on at the BBC is very familiar territory for me because it was at Broadcasting House that I worked as a news editor in the early years of the Thatcher government. At the time I was also very active in the National Union of Journalists and was Father of the Chapel (head of union branch) at Broadcasting House. I later became head of BBC corporate PR. Unless Gary Lineker can be restored to his role…
How is his action going to be viewed? The one thing that is missing so far from the Lineker story is some polling to ascertain how the public is viewing his stance and whether he has the backing that I think he thought he had. Hopefully one or two of the Sunday papers will have commissioned some polling and we should get some information overnight. I like football and I’ve always been impressed by the relaxed and accommodating way that…
The big move in US Politics of late has been back to Trump for the 2024 Republican Party nomination. At the same time, there has been a decline in the betting on the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. But there is still a long way to go and we are more than 10 months away from the first state primary. Got a feeling now that we might just be we see a rematch of 2020 Trump vs Biden – two very…
Above are the latest odds for the SNP leadership election and as can be seen this is now a two horse race between Yiusaf and Forbes. In the absence of any SNP members polling this is about the best info there is and the question is have punters got this right or not. I think Forbes is the better one when it comes to how they come over and how I think they would perform in elections. Mike Smithson
Before the weekend my old friend Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, was in town as part of his party’s local elections campaign and I managed to speak to him about the party’s objectives at the next general election. His big challenge is one of visibility and that has been seriously undermined by the rise and rise of the SNP in Scotland. Under the Commons rules the third party leader gets to ask two questions at PMQs every week while…
39 of the 40 seats polled were won by CON at GE2019. The other one, Hartlepool, was picked up by the Tories in a by-election. The numbers here are very striking even though there has been a narrowing of the LAB lead since the last R&W RedWall poll. The big thing, of course, is that the LAB leader is no longer Corbyn and the Tories were very able at exploiting the “threat” he posed in the GE2019 campaign. For all…