Picture BBC Lord Sumption has said some silly things lately, a reminder that even experts – once they move beyond their expertise – can be as daft as the rest of us. Still, on the issue of the government’s use of powers to bypass or limit scrutiny to the absolute minimum he is absolutely correct. Consider: – 5 hours to debate the Act implementing the UK-EU Trade Agreement, an Act containing a number of Henry VIII powers allowing the government…
As ever YouGov is quick off the mark and has just published the above polling on the public’s reaction to the events last night in Clapham. Inevitably there is a gender divide but the striking feature is the contrast with attitudes to other protests – clearly last night struck a chord with women. So whereas the female part of the sample split 42-39 in supporting the action going ahead on the general issue of protest during the pandemic they are…
The Mail takes up the Ed Davey call for her to go Given what the issue was that caused the Saturday evening vigil on Clapham Common the way that the Metropolitan Police have handled it looks appalling and naive and the Mail, surely, has read the public mood right in its approach for tomorrow’s front page. The LD leader, Ed Davey, became the first party head to do what appears blindingly obvious when you look at the pictures and see…
Betting on Scottish matters has been an enjoyable and very profitable area for myself and many other PBers, from seeing Iain Gray’s collapsing ratings in 2011 indicating the SNP was going to achieve what the voting system was designed to stop, to 2014 referendum, to the SNP tsunami in 2015, the SNP losing their majority which was tipped at 10/1 and 8/1 on the day of the 2016 election, and the 2017 Scottish Tory surge, perhaps it is distance and…
Easing restrictions remains a gamble for all the UK governments You might think that things are finally going well in the UK in the fight against Covid-19. And, after a pretty awful 2020, so they are. Close to 25m vaccine doses have already been administered – more, proportionally than almost any other country on Earth; weekly case numbers are down by more than 90% from the peak, the weekly death toll is down by more than 85%, hospital admissions by…
And YouGov UK favourability ratings have Meghan, Harry and Charles the main losers
We are now just eight weeks away from the May 4th when there’ll be the biggest group of elections taking place in the UK outside a general election. For as well as those contests that were scheduled to take place this year there are all those which had to be postponed last year because of the pandemic. This is going to be a very big night with counting expected to last well into the Friday evening something that is not…
The big surprise in the race for the London mayoralty has been the apparently well funded campaign by political newcomer, Brian Rose. At one stage he was being traded on the betting exchanges as 7/1 second favourite. For a month a two he was getting a fair amount of publicity and there were a few canny punters about ready to lay him at what seemed ridiculous odds for a total novice without a party machine. Quite how Rose got to…