politicalbetting.com

Aren’t dirty deals sometimes necessary? The Tories, quite rightly in political terms, are trying to squeeze as much as possible from the latest revelations suggesting that the Lockerbie bomber’s release was one of the prices that the Labour government seems to have been prepared to pay as part of an oil deal with the Libyans. But what would a Cameron government have done in such a situation? Would it, in the interests of ensuring energy supplies, have followed exactly the…

Read More Read More

Mail But will he lose the post-visit PR war? There’s an interesting angle on Brown’s surprise trip to Afghanistan in the Mail on Sunday this morning which has all the potential to blow up into a big incident. According to the paper the Tory leader was forced to call off a trip to the country after discovering that the PM had beaten him to it. The report goes on: “The Tory leader scrapped his own visit – which has been…

Read More Read More

BBC online Won’t his trip just highlight the problems? The big political story this afternoon is the surprise trip by Gordon Brown to Afghanistan and the suggestions that the scale of the British deployment might have to be increased. Fine – but what’s the political point at a time when the opinion polls have shown increasing scepticism amongst voters to the whole undertaking? Such a visit over such a distance is a massive undertaking and there really has to be…

Read More Read More

Reuters MORI has Scots more evenly split Just trying to keep up with the Scottish polls on Megrahi is getting to be quite difficult and there has been another one overnight – by MORI for the Reuters news agency. This found that 40% of Scots were in favour of the decision with 47% opposed – so numbers that are more sympathetic to the SNP position than the ICM poll reported earlier. It’s hard to compare one poll with another because…

Read More Read More

BBC News What’s the story behind this change? All the speculation that Peter Mandelson might be thinking of running for the Labour leadership was sparked off by the planned changes in the law to allow life peers to resign and so stand for election to the commons. Today’s news mean that this is now not possible. I would love to know that the story is behind this change. Mike Smithson

Could his support for the war alienate centre-ground voters? One of the big polling trends of the summer has been the growing concern about Britain’s continuing role in Afghanistan. The view that we should not be there at all is becoming increasingly popular and the question arises over whether Cameron is right to go on supporting the UK’s involvement. So far he has been totally in favour – the main dividing line has been over issues like whether the country’s…

Read More Read More

SkyNews Is this response going to suffice? As anybody who has followed PB threads in recent days there are sharp divisions over the Scottish government’s decision to release to Lockerbie bomber. One person who has yet to give a view is Gordon Brown and today at a press conference he continued with that line. Clearly there are a whole lot of issues involved – relations with the US and the leadership in Libya to name just two – and as…

Read More Read More

AngusReid Are Londoners really the most compassionate? While we are waiting for the August MORI poll I thought PBers might like to look at another survey on the release of the Lockerbie bomber – but this time with regional differences. The pollster, Angus-Reid, is well known internationally but I think that this is the first political survey it has published in the UK. It is seeking to be a member of the British Polling Council. I don’t think we can…

Read More Read More