Could Obama choose a former Bush Secretary of Agriculture? I’ve been given a tip that Ann Veneman, the former Bush Secretary of Agriculture and now CEO of UNICEF might be a good bet for Barack’s VP choice. Certainly there’s been a fair degree of comment in the US media over the past few hours. She looks an interesting choice. I’ve no idea how good the information is but I’ve put £100 on at the 33/1 that Ladbrokes were offering. Mike…
What if the party’s paymasters say he has to go? The founder of the MORI polling organisation, Bob Worcester, has made the most astute observation on a day that has been dominated by the future of Gordon Brown. In a Radio 4 interview he said that it wasn’t the men in grey suits “that Brown has to look out for, it’s the men in black suits, from the trade unions, as they are the paymasters now..The party is skint, and…
Wikimedia Commons “Your turf accountant… doesn’t have a clue” Amongst all the articles about Brown and Obama today there’s this piece by Alan Watkins in the Independent. [The odds] are largely made up – to begin with, at any rate. I once talked at length to a representative of one of our largest bookmaking firms, who specialised in political betting. It was, he explained, a very small part of their turnover. They did it for the sake of the publicity,…
Grim reading for Gordon today – is the endgame finally approaching? The newspapers are dominated by moves to unseat the Prime Minister – with the battle lines for the succession being drawn up between Jack Straw’s “Lancashire Mafia” and the Miliband/Burnham/Purnell “Primrose Hill Pact”. The Independent reports that Andy Burnham and James Purnell, in echoes of the Granita deal, will give David Miliband a free run for the leadership in the event of a contest, allowing him to emerge as…
Has Hillary’s loss helped future female Presidential hopefuls? I’ll start with a controversial premise: Hillary Clinton failing to win the Democratic nomination might well have been the best thing that could have happened, from the perspective of those who like the idea of living under a female President of the United States. I have little doubt that Hillary Clinton would have beaten John McCain – largely because she was better equipped to secure Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Florida than Obama,…
Are we now in the final days of the Brown premiership? In the aftermath of Glasgow East the rumblings have started and the issue that’s going to dominate politics in the immediate future will be Gordon’s survival. Can he hang in there until the next election or will something bring the issue of his leadership to a head? In May I got quite a lot of money on at 6-1 and 5-1 that he would be out during 2008. That…
The PB community wins the battle of the predictors Above are the final predictions from Wednesday’s PB online poll on who we thought would win Glasgow East and the Politics Home panel of 100 “insiders” and “experts”. Notice anything? Without crowing (well only a little bit) this was an overwhelming victory for the site over the PH100 which very much represents received opinion. We can feel proud this morning. Mike Smithson