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How will the increasing crisis play in the polls? Back in September, in what now looks to have been a completely different political era, one of the great surprises was how the early stage of the Northern Rock crisis seemed to have no impact in the polls. In fact when specific questions were put polling respondents did not blame Gordon or Labour. It was the moment when I started to believe that Brown could really walk on water and I…

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UPDATE – YouGov puts him 6% behind? [UPDATE I wrote this article before getting news of a new YouGov poll on the mayor race which has Ken leading Boris 45-39% on first preferences and 53-47% after second. This is probably better than the Tories would have expected at this stage and clearly everything will depend on turnout levels] The Tories have not got a good record when it has come to finding someone suitable to fight Britain’s biggest election –…

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Watch Chris and Nick do what Gordon never had to One thing that having contested leadership elections means, Parliamentary Labour Party members please note, is that the rivals get invited onto Question Time for a special leadership debate. This can be a defining moment of a campaign and both Huhne and Clegg will have been training hard to ensure that they come over best. For Huhne, the betting outsider and the man who has still not been forgiven by the…

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Should policy be about more than just wrong-footing Dave? For me the defining image of the Brown premiership was the look on his face (above) while the chancellor, Alistair Darling, was announcing Labour’s inheritance tax plan just eight days after the Tories had made this the centre-piece of their conference. Defining because whether this had been planned or not Brown was taking great pleasure at thwarting what the polls suggested had been an electorally popular initiative. Defining also because this…

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Changes planned for the New Year After trying to run the site and cope with demanding jobs for nearly four years I am leaving my post at the Open University at Christmas so I can focus much more on Politicalbetting. This is a big change for me but it has become inevitable because trying to do both has become almost impossible. This has been accentuated by the intensity of the Brown-Cameron battle, the Lib Dem leadership changes, all the facets…

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Your chance to put your questions to the favourite in the Lib Dem race After our successful session with Chris Huhne on Sunday the other runner for the Lib Dem leadership, Nick Clegg, will be joining the site for an hour from 9am to answer questions and discuss issues with members of the PBC community. Please can you use the comments thread below to make your points. Nick is, of course, holds the home affairs portfolio for his party and…

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Why my money would be on John Denham and Ruth Kelly I hope that it does not appear too morbid to look at how the “next Prime Minister” market would pan out if something untoward happened to Gordon. So we are talking about leading Labour figures – almost certainly members of the current cabinet. From the list above I would exclude all those who ran for the deputy leadership post in the summer. None of them really shone and the…

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