But still longer than evens I find this one hard to call as, judging by the betting, so do punters. Sunak has been favourite for so long but would he fail again in a leadership contest? My guess is that the best chance of him making it to Number 10 would be if he gets a clear run unopposed and there is no contest. I think he would struggle in a two-way election against Penny Mordaunt. Whatever either of these…
The pressure mounts on the PM It really is very hard to see how Truss survives following the latest moves by her Chancellor to eradicate almost completely the changes announced in the budget. By far and away the biggest priority for her government now is to win back the confidence of the markets and if that means Truss being humiliated then so bet it. Her budget changes articulated by her then Chancellor have been a disaster. She completely over-stated the…
What an awful set of front pages this morning for the Prime Minister with even the most loyal newspapers not being supportive. The Tory party rules might say that a new leader has a year before she can face a leadership challenge but for many MPs the prospect of them continuing in the role after a general election looks very thin indeed. The sea change in public opinion since that first budget has been absolutely massive. If the polls are…
This polling was carried out before Liz Truss decided to turn Kwasi Kwarteng’s tenure as Chancellor as a tribute to the Anglo-Zanzibar war but I suspect the appointment of Jeremy Hunt will do little to help this type of polling in the short term. The Tory raison d’être is that we might be bastards but we know how to run an economy, if they aren’t seen competent on the economy then they are on course for a defeat that could…
Longstanding readers of PB know that Mike Smithson and myself love the Ipsos/MORI net satisfaction ratings because their data goes back nearly fifty years and it allows us to help put into context current polling and are usually a greater pointer to electoral outcomes. These ratings show how well the PM is doing one month after becoming PM (Thatcher’s is three months after she became PM as MORI didn’t poll monthly then.) Just imagine what the current Prime Minister’s ratings…
And Truss remains a figurehead at Number 10 The sounds right because Hunt is someone who does have extensive ministerial experience and is one who presumably can restore confidence in the markets. What he doesn’t have is the appeal amongst Tory members to ensure that he could succeed in a leadership election. So we could have a situation whereby Liz Truss can remain at Number 10 but the real power is in the hands of her Chancellor. So all that…
Britain has largely been ungoverned – and certainly not governed with even a basic level of competence – for the best part of a year now. Barely had Covid quietened down and COP 26 been completed, that this latest phase started – around this time last year: The Owen Paterson saga with his resignation in early November following Johnson’s U-turn on his attempts to protect him From December onwards the whole Partygate issue which dragged on and on, despite a resignation…