What are we to make of “The Mole’s” prediction? One of the great additions to the UK online media in the past year or so has been the news magazine The First Post. A feature I always look at are the regular articles under the banner “The Mole” who is billed as a “Downing Street Insider. Shortly before the Chancellor rose to his feet to make his pre-Budget statement “The Mole” published a piece suggesting that Tony Blair will be…
Does the latest price offer value for money? After being sceptical for a long period about Gordon Brown’s chances of making it to Number 10 I changed my view in early October when the price moved to 0.56/1. I got enough on then to cover most of my betting on other contenders when it became clear that nobody else looked able to emerge. As the chart shows there has been a very big change of sentiment since the period after…
Month by month how Cameron’s first year compares with Blair’s With virtually every political commentator wanting to get into the act of writing something about Cameron’s first year I thought I would take a different tack and compare his fortunes with Tony Blair in the twelve months after he got the Labour leadership. By taking the Mori and ICM poll ratings from Blair’s first year in 1994-95 I’ve produced two charts comparing the Blair poll movements with those that Cameron…
How much did the bill-boards help Labour to victory? There is something rather ironic about the fact that a big part of the money Labour borrowed in the run-up to the 2005 General Election was spent on bill-boards like the one above promoting the Government’s successes with the economy and interest rate policy. This was a key theme in the huge advertising blitz in the run-up to May 5th and on which a large part of the borrowed money was…
YouGov’s actual figures were neutral for Harriet and bad for Brown We’ve now got the full data from this morning’s poll by YouGov that was reported in the Indpendent – and my warning that “.. we need to see the full detail of how the survey was carried out before coming to firm conclusions” could not have been more right. For the actual numbers do show that 15% of respondents said they were “much more” or a “little more” likely…
Could retaining the Calcutta Cup impede Salmond’s party? With the weekend ICM poll showing support for an independent Scotland both north and south of the border the conditions for a strong SNP performance in May’s election for the Scottish Parliament could not be better. Judging by the fierce attacks on Alec Salmond’s party by both John Reid and Tony Blair in the two days there can be little doubt that Labour is worried. There is a Glaswegian friend of mine…
Labour support drops 4% on the month as LDs get boost The latest Mori survey, published in the Observer, shows a sharp fall-back in Labour support. Its poll, carried out from November 9-14th, has the following shares with the changes from October – CON 35 (nc): LAB 33 (-4): LD 20 (+2). The poll is quite old and the field-work finished a week last Tuesday. Thus the whole of the survey was completed before the Queen’s Speech the week before…
How serious a financial mess is the party in? While everybody is focussing on the row over Labour ordering its councillors to pay a proportion of their allowances to help it wipe out its massive debts are we missing the bigger picture – that following the loans for peerages crisis that the party is in danger of going broke? This latest move, backed by threats of disciplinary action against those councillors not obeying, follows the decision by the party to…