Who’ll submit comment number 1,000,000? Just five years and two weeks after PB was established at some stage in the next 24 hours somebody is going to submit the one millionth comment. This is an extraordinary number and an achievement that all who are part of the PB community, lurkers and commenters alike, can feel proud of. As I write at 4am the total stands at 998,482 – just over 1,500 to go. So it could be later on this…
How’s the independence referendum going to go? There’s a new market out on the planned Scottish referendum on independence. The opening prices are 1/3 NO and 2/1 YES. What do you think – where’s the best betting value?
CONSERVATIVES 43% (+1) LABOUR 30% (nc) LIB DEMS 18% (-1) How big a disappointment will this be at No 10? After the YouGov poll showing that the Tory lead had slipped backed to just seven percent at the weekend there were high hopes at Brown Central that the G20 meeting last week might have turned the corner. Well the Times Populus Poll for April is just out and the only changes are a one point increase in the Tory share…
What do you think the outcome of the next UK General Election will be? LAB majority Hung LAB most seats Hung CON most seats CON majority: 1 – 25 CON majority: 26 – 50 CON majority: 51 – 75 CON majority: 76 – 100 CON majority: 100 plus Is Rentoul right about the Brown “dead cat bounce”? In his weekly column for the Independent on Sunday John Rentoul was very doubtful that the G20 meeting would provide Gordon Brown…
Mail Online … and Darling admits that economic forecasts were wrong [International thread is below this one – many thanks.] So, after all the excitement of the G20 and Brown enjoying his key role at the summit and rubbing shoulders with world leaders, it’s back down to earth, and domestic politics, with a bump. It now looks as though any benefits that the PM gained from this week may be fleeting and minor. Not only did last night’s YouGov poll…
Are Summits Suffering from Attention Deficit? For the ten presidents, fourteen prime ministers and one king who attended the G20 summit in London it’s generally been a very successful week. All look to have got much of what they wanted from the final communique, there have been some excellent photo-opportunities which will play well to domestic audiences, there’s been welcome progress on other topics – such as the nuclear arms limitation talks between the US and Russia – and it…
Could ‘ever-closer union’ ever face westwards? Fulfilling my promise to Mike of filing Saturday mornings in the category of ‘Whimsy and Caprice’, I thought we’d try a little thought-experiment combining our understandings of the European elections with the coverage of this week’s G20 and NATO meetings. Let’s start with some uncontroversial premises – firstly, that irrespective of how UKIP do in June’s European Parliamentary elections, there is in the UK a broad antipathy to the European project as currently constituted…
Would an IMF bailout guarantee a Conservative government? The Daily Telegraph has a story that a ‘Senior Cabinet Minister’ has told them that Britain may consider asking the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for funds, and that it should not be too proud or fearful to do so. The process of requesting a bailout from the Washington-based fund has long been considered a demeaning final recourse for a national economy in trouble. Common amongst Latin American and Asian economies in the…