The betting exchange, Smarkets, has just put up this market in anticipation perhaps of what might happen once MPs have all digested the Gray report. For me what makes betting on a Johnson loss good value are the market rules which state: This market relates to the result of any no confidence vote in Boris Johnson held by the Conservative parliamentary party. This market will be void if no vote is held in 2022. My reading is that the 54…
So many opinions. So few facts. In the spirit so ably demonstrated by our PM over his life, let’s apply a little fiction to our current politics. Vanity Fair – updated for our times Boris: Truly the Becky Sharpe of our age. Determined to achieve the highest position in society he can, no matter what the cost to others. Cunning, sharp and ruthless. But attractive too and a shape-shifter – adapting his persona to whatever is needed to get him…
This is not a market I am betting on but I show it here because it is the issue of the moment. Tonight there’s a BBC documentary with reportedly quite remarkable reports of what was happening in Number 10 when the rest of the nation was locked down. This is from the BBC: For the first time, insiders who were at some of the events have told BBC Panorama in detail what they saw. They describe arriving for work the…
The last time there was an opportunity to oust Johnson was in January though at the time there wasn’t the strength of opinion to carry this through. With the Gray report coming out in the next couple of days there is never going to be a better moment to get rid of the current leadership. For Tory MPs this is about saving their party and saving their seats and there can be little doubt that without Johnson at the helm…
From Martin Baxter of Electoral Calculus Cambridge mathematician and creator of Electoral Calculus, Martin Baxter, has produced an extraordinary 16k sample that seeks to assess what would happen if LAB, the LDs and the Greens entered into an electoral pact whereby only one of them would field candidates in each seat at a general election. The broad results are in the panel above. His pollster, Find out Now, conducted the survey amongst residents of England and Wales over four days…
One of the problems about winning a big General Election majority is that it creates a large group of MPs who came in last time and feel very insecure whenever the party gets into troubled waters. Many of the surprise winners had to endure the huge disruption in their lives that becoming an MP entails and quite a large proportion never really believed they would be there in the first place. This is a group that follows the polls very…
The most thought provoking article I’ve read in 2022 is the piece in Friday’s Times by James Forsyth which suggested the Tories would be more damaged by Starmer winning the next election but being short of a majority than Starmer winning a majority. Forsyth’s logic is compelling If the Tories lose the next election, changes to the voting system (always demanded by the Lib Dems) may see them locked out of office for a generation. And what happens if the…
Looking at who current Green voters may vote for One of the more interesting and complicated things in predicting the next general election is how current Green voters will vote. Labour’s hope is to reawaken the progressive alliance which is the bedrock of the Anyone But The Conservatives (ABC) alliance which allows tactical voting to damage the Conservatives, most spectacularly in 1997. If Labour want to feel confident about winning the next general election they will need to work hard…