politicalbetting.com

Who will follow Hague, and when? Paddy Power have recently put up a new market on who will be the next permanent Foreign Secretary after William Hague. Though the story surrounding his hiring of Christopher Myers has largely died down, Fraser Nelson (Spectator editor writing for the NotW) has hinted that the personal cost of making the statement he released might cause him to step away from front line politics in the near future anyway. Nelson’s article is worth a…

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It’s 38/34/18 The first non-YouGov poll for three weeks has a boost for the LDs and is showing a share very different from the online pollster’s recent daily polls. According to ComRes, the yellows are now on 18 per cent, up three points on the last survey from the firm. The Tories, on 38 per cent, are down one point while Labour, on 34 per cent, is up one. There are signs that men are more opposed than women to…

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And either way, will it win him votes? One of the interesting developments in the Labour leadership race is the extent to which Ed Miliband is marketing himself as the ‘change’ candidate. The word is all over his campaign website. The BBC is reporting a YouGov poll publicised by his campaign team in which 72% of people considering voting Labour would be less likely to do so if the new leader continues to tread the New Labour path (curiously, there…

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  Or has he built up too many negatives since he quit? Former UKIP leader Lord Pearson’s decision to resign the leadership on the grounds that he was “not much good” at party politics was a refreshingly candid appraisal of his abilities. That’s opened up the prospect of his predecessor, Nigel Farage, returning to the post he held for three years. During that time, UKIP enjoyed its best ever result, in the European elections, when they polled 16.5% of the…

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What is this story really about? I’ve been re-reading the Guardian story about the phone-hacking at the News of the World, as reported in the New York Times extraordinary feature. Even allowing that we had a full-scale spread on the story by the Guardian earlier this year, this story has not been altogether drowned out by the Hague-Myers story or the launch of Tony Blair’s book. The BBC and ITV are both leading with the story this evening. I am…

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Rod Crosby puts the case for voting YES Theoretical Case Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem states that no (#1) voting system can be totally fair when choosing between more than two candidates. Selecting a single-winner voting system therefore depends on which aspects of fairness we consider more important than others. FPTP’s unfairness has been understood for centuries, and its most deprecated flaws are:- 1) failing the Majority Loser Criterion. FPTP can elect the candidate whom the overwhelming majority of voters wish to…

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This is what his memo looks like enlarged. See Daily Mail here.