Can he beat the Tory’s two years and 55 days? With all the talk of the pressure on Gordon Brown just how long can he carry on? Is for instance his tenure as leader of the Labour party going to be shorter than Iain Duncan Smith – the Tory leader from 2001 to 2003. Unlike Brown IDS had to fight an election to get the party’s top job yet within a short time it was clear that the party had…
Will today’s likely drubbing be blamed on the plotters? Later on this evening I’m due to be taking part in BBC Radio 5 live’s election programme when the story is surely going to be Labour’s performance – first in the local results that will come out overnight and then throughout Friday – all this to be followed on Sunday evening, of course, when we get the Euro election figures. This is one of those occasions when, unless the polls have…
Remember the headlines two months ago today? Exactly two months ago this morning I did a similar collage of newspaper front pages to the one here – and how different they all looked. For April 3rd 2009 was the day after the G20 meeting and Mr Brown got some of the best coverage of his premiership. Who would have thought then that only a few weeks later that the big political question politics would be whether Brown can hang on….
Have we now reached the end-game for Mr. Brown? In a long and powerfully argued main leader for the paper tomorrow the Guardian makes a strong call for Mr. Brown to go. In fact it is much more forceful than that – the message is that if Mr. Brown does not agree to step down then he should be, “cut loose”. There’s no need to spell out what that means. The leader concludes: “..Of course many people, who see the…
How’s this going to affect Thursday elections? With just one day’s campaigning left the big political story, once again, has nothing to do with Europe. We’ve got the cabinet re-shuffle coming up and the very messy way in which news of this is coming out. Latest word is that Brown will announce his changes on Monday – the day after the Euro results are known. Meanwhile the betting activity has been stepped up and there’s an interesting range of Euro…
A Marf original – Dec 2nd 2008 How many more will go in the coming days? One of the difficult things about political betting is that often your markets are long term. Unlike most sports betting you can often tie up cash for months maybe years – so news that one of those long-term bets is coming to fruition is very welcome. It was at the start of December 2008 that it was suggested here that the William Hill price…
UKPollingReport Does Brown’s future depend on beating expectations? Perhaps the most critical few hours in Gordon Brown political career will take place on Sunday evening when all the Euro results are coming in. For not only will we be able to find out the big picture but we should also get data, constituency by constituency, of how the parties did within the Westminster seat boundaries. It won’t take long before the news channels and pundits are extrapolating this into what…
YouGov Only 39% of UKIP voters will switch for the general The above table, which I’ve just clipped from YouGov’s cross-tabs on this morning’s poll, is the first time I’ve seen any attempt to link Euro election voting intention to what polling respondents plan to the in the general election. The interesting column is the one I’ve highlighted – what’s going to happen to the UKIP vote once the battle is about who runs Westminster. Inevitably UKIP’s share will drop…