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A quick update on the 2024 PB Predictions Competition. We now have the result for the UK General Election question which you may remember asked entrants to predict the election outcome: winning party + majority (±10%). Answer: Labour 172 seat majority (±10% range = 155 to 189). Four people guessed the Labour majority to within 10%: @Cyclefree @NickPalmer @TheWhiteRabbit and closest of all @GF2, whose guess was a Labour majority of 180.  Under the scoring rules they each get 20…

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As the title says, and many here will have gathered from my posts, I am left wing and not in the Labour Party. So you may expect me to be annoyed that Labour have got a massive majority to do with what they wish. And, to some extent, I am. But, when it comes to the actual results of the election and staying up on election night, I was and still am pretty happy – and so were a lot…

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This intervention from Suella Braverman makes me think she knows she’s doomed in the Tory leadership contest and is look for a ‘Hail Mary’ moment like this or is looking for an excuse to be kicked out of the Tory party so she can look like a martyr and defect to Reform. Imagine getting triggered by a flag. Some Tories are already asking Sunak to expel Braverman for these comments. One of the reasons why I don’t think being antiwoke…

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I wonder if the future of polling in Britan will not be MRPs or the usual national VI polls but sticking to geographical polling. In Scotland the standard voting intention polls largely spotted the repudiation of the SNP at the ballot, and losing a third of your voters counts as a repudiation. I am starting to think the MRPs led to poor resource targeting by some parties which does have an impact. As expected Alba didn’t have any real impact….

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I try not to be smug but being a member of the Tories for electoral reform was a lonely business like but seeing more and more Tories embrace electoral reform is encouraging but I wish they had done something about it when the Tories were in power. Much like how the a Tory PM introduced Section 28 to a Tory PM introducing same-sex marriage I suspect a Tory leader will go from defending first past the post to putting in…

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It appears that Danny Krueger and others are switching from Suella Braverman to Robert Jenrick which is bad news for her, she’s not very loyal and a caricature of herself. Braverman is the sort of person that would unplug somebody’s life support machine so she could charge her mobile. She’s a clear lay in the next Tory leader market. I think the best bet is on former Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Claire Coutinho who I…

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1) The collapse of the SNP. They lost half a million votes (42% of their 2019 total) and with it 39 seats. Its remaining 9 seats are not remotely safe – 7 of them are in the top 10 most marginal seats in Scotland. 2) The collapse of the Tories. They lost nearly 400k votes – more than half their 2019 total. That only lost them one seat vs 2019, but they are just not as powerful as they were….

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I am not sure how France has a workable government based on these early scores. Summoning the spirit of the Battle of Verdun the French always seem to use the second to tell the far right you shall not pass into government. This will impact my betting strategy for the next French presidential election, I do not expect the far right candidate to win. TSE