Rebel Tory MPs have lost a sense of reality if they think an election will improve their position Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. In one sense that’s just a truism: that which happens is, by definition, within the bounds of the possible. However, this week’s shown up again that Bismarck’s aphorism is only true to a degree. There are plenty of politicians who are not interested in the possible but only in their own priorities….
The latest Scotland only polls have LAB down in third place The biggest impact on the Labour-Conservative seat balance in the past decade was the virtual wipeout of LAB north of the border at GE2015. Five years earlier at GE2010 when Labour lost power there were, extraordinarily, no seat changes at all north of the border with what was then Gordon Brown’s party retaining all 41 seats that it held on an overall increased Scottish vote share. The SNP had…
Betdata.io A vote this year is rated as just an 11% chance At the weekend we saw reports in the media about the possibility of the huge divide in the Conservative over Brexit being of such a magnitude that an early, 2018, general election was the only way of ending it. I thought the Sunday Times report was over-egged simply because Mrs. May was so scarred by her failure to retain the Tory majority last year that there were no…
Now increasing CON leads have become the norm The above table from Wikipedia shows the published national voting intention polls over the past three months. What is very striking is how there are almost no surveys showing Corbyn’s party ahead at the moment. That compares with January when LAB led in six and was tied in two. We are coming to a point in a parliament when oppositions need to be recording solid leads if they are to have any…
I wonder what Brenda from Bristol makes of this?https://t.co/Rts76OHAve pic.twitter.com/vAHTmJt15Z — TSE (@TSEofPB) May 20, 2018 Today’s Sunday Times report Conservative MPs are preparing for another snap general election as they fear the Brexit deadlock will become insurmountable for the prime minister. Some have spoken to their local party associations asking to be readopted as prospective parliamentary candidates in readiness for an autumn election. The back-bench MPs acted after meeting Theresa May last week for a private Brexit briefing as…
The anniversary of the #DementiaTax On the third Thursday of May exactly a year ago Mrs. May was enjoying huge leads in the polls as she travelled to key Tory target of Halifax (LAB GE2015 majority 428) to launch the Conservative manifesto. The polling in that week was pointing to a landslide. GfK and ICM had her party 20% ahead with leads of 18% by Kantar and 15% by Ipsos-MORI. The spread betting markets had a CON “buy” level of…
There’s not been a “normal” election here since GE2005 One of the intriguing facets of the current speculation over the Speaker, John Bercow, is that there could be a by-election within the next year and a half in the Buckingham parliamentary constituency. There were reports at the weekend that Mr Bercow has indicated to friends that he plans to stand down in 2019 though there could be something earlier if the pressure on him continues. If he does step aside…
Queues like I've never seen out the polling station in hackney pic.twitter.com/oDUBM7wBVj — Tom Clark (@prospect_clark) June 23, 2016 It isn’t new, and it isn’t really backed up by other pollsters or elections Class is supposed to define British politics. Perhaps that explains the flurry of surprise yesterday when YouGov’s latest poll gave the Conservatives a 3% lead among the C2DE group (43-40-7 among the main parties), and showed Labour doing worse with them than with the ABC1s (43-37-11). We…