I agree with Dominic Cummings that Sir Keir Starmer is rubbish at politics but Dominic Cummings needs to get his eyes tested if he thinks he can see evidence that Labour removes its leaders unlike the Tories. Interestingly he also names Starmer’s three likely sucessors. Angela Rayner, Lisa Nandy, and Ed Miliband. The first two are no hopers in my view, whilst Ed Miliband is somebody I tipped to succeed Starmer at 100/1. TSE
Towards the end of the week we get the regular Find Out Now poll which has a tendency to get Reform supporters excited but as Sam Freedman notes this is down to their methodology and sampling and like him I am not convinced. If you have a wildly unrepresentative sample then the chances are the end product will be utter bobbins. Here’s the question I would ask anybody reading this article. Do you really think the people who pick my…
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As Lord Ashcroft can attest constituency polling is very difficult but assuming the poll is largely right, then I think the value is with Plaid Cymru, they are 2/1 in what is a 50/50 race. There’s also plenty of votes on the left for them to squeeze, I can see Labour getting squeezed to single digits which is some achievement as they polled 46% in 2021. The only team to have a worse record in Wales recently than Labour is…
Based on events in Parliament, the commentariat, and social media, the China spy story is a big deal yet very few of the public have noticed. The story may get traction but unless there’s a smoking gun I expect other issues such as Rachel Reeves and her tax plans will dominate the news agenda. TSE
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I suspect this is a proxy bet on whether the peace deal in the Middle East unravels or not. My instinct is to back no as you’re effectively betting on Hamas and Netanyahu to behave and stick to the terms of the deal and that’s like expecting Boris Johnson to tell the truth. TSE
Before I saw this stat my intuition would have been the lower the turnout the better Reform would do but as we can see that’s clearly not the case. I would counsel against reading too much into this for the next general election, the next round of local elections in May (and the devolved ones too) if this pattern holds up. TSE