The Tories need to make a net gain of 205 seats at the next election to win a majority of 2. The chart above shows the challenge the new Tory leader faces. Even if they make the sort of net gains Tony Blair won in 1997 it would still likely place the Tories as the second largest party (it would put the Tories on fewer seats than Labour won under Neil Kinnock in 1992.) If Starmer can win a majority…
Removing bishops from the House of Lords is great step in stopping the UK being more like Iran (the other major nation that has unelected clergy in their parliament.) It is an amusing irony that 52% of voters in this poll that support the removal of our unelected religious rulers including a plurality of Tories. Given the widespread approval for removing the hereditaries then perhaps House of Lords reform might give Starmer a boost in the polls although that might…
Last night’s debate is set to be the only debate between the gruesome twosome that are Jenrick and Badenoch, so there’s not much opportunity for Jenrick to turn things around. Punters are clear who won last night. TSE
Longstanding PBers will know my derision for hypothetical polling, particularly those polls potentially nearly five years away from the next general election but there is something intriguing about this poll. Neither candidate can get the Tories to 200 MPs and Badenoch barely gets them to 150 MPs which would be an even worse result than 1997. As we can see from Bobby J’s tweet Team Jenrick will spin this poll to show he’s better than Badenoch which could shift the…
In America we get to see almost live postal (aka absentee) vote returns in a way that just isn’t permissible in the UK. Whilst most Americans will vote on November 5th a substantial number of Americans are already voting or have voted and people will analyse those returns to extrapolate the result of the White House race and I am not sure that is wise. In the past when I was a political betting ingénue I’ve gotten things wrong on…
Chart from Betdata.io of the next Tory leadership market over the last ten days A few years ago I met somebody from the world of politics and the discussion turned to political betting. They said that people in the Westminster village followed PB and the political betting markets as there was a belief the smart money was always right given the amounts traded. It was no surprise to me that so many people were implicated in the political betting scandal…
I think there’s some value in backing Harris at these prices as this is still a 50/50 race, we shall find out in twenty one days. TSE
The Times are reporting Up to a dozen Conservative MPs are considering standing down before the next election because of Labour’s imminent clampdown on second jobs. Senior party sources told The Times that they expected “a drip of resignations” to begin after the Tory leadership contest, starting in the new year. Those who served in Rishi Sunak’s government and who were passed over for senior shadow cabinet roles are said to be most likely to quit. One former cabinet minister…