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Category: Keir Starmer

Why Johnson can take little comfort from the Tory voting intention poll leads

Why Johnson can take little comfort from the Tory voting intention poll leads

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He’s being smashed by Starmer in the leader ratings The latest weekly poll from Opinium the the Observer had the Conservatives with a 4% lead while at the same time the same poll gave Starmer net 30% lead over Johnson in its approval question. On the face of it these two statements about this poll simply don’t make sense. The head of a party in the lead on voting would not, surely, have approval numbers that were so far off….

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Starmer tells Boris to “get a grip” as they prepare for the first PMQs since the Cummings lockdown revelations

Starmer tells Boris to “get a grip” as they prepare for the first PMQs since the Cummings lockdown revelations

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At noon in the Commons LAB leader Keir Starmer will face Johnson in the first PMQs since the story about the Cummings lockdown trip to Durham broke. This could be quite tricky for Johnson who has struggled when faced with the former DPP now Leader of the Opposition. In the Guardian this morning he’s quoted as saying: “We’ve called for an exit strategy. What we appear to have got is an exit without a strategy. We want to see society reopen,…

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In other news Starmer moves to a net 24% lead over Johnson in latest Opinium approval ratings

In other news Starmer moves to a net 24% lead over Johnson in latest Opinium approval ratings

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A third of Tory voters disapprove of Starmer compared with three-quarters of LAB voters disapproving of Johnson The latest Opinium poll carried out before the Cummings lockdown affair came out overnight and the big change has been in the approval ratings of the PM and LOTO. The charts above show the recent trends. A big development is that for the first time Starmer has moved ahead of Johnson and he’s done it with a spectacular jump in just seven days….

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Starmer’s ratings are generally getting better as the number of don’t knows declines

Starmer’s ratings are generally getting better as the number of don’t knows declines

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We are now in the 7th week of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and he could take some comfort about the general direction of his leader ratings which historically have been a better guide to election outcomes than voting intention polling. When Starmer first got the job on April 4th he was relatively unknown and that was reflected in the smallish proportion of those polled who had an opinion. Thus in his first week just 42% of those…

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How steep is Starmer’s mountain?

How steep is Starmer’s mountain?

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Since the last election resulted in a substantial Conservative majority, many have said that Labour has a mountain to climb to win the next one.  The implication is that the result this time significantly influences the result next time.  The results in 2024 are influenced by the results in 2019.   But is that true?  In the jargon, do general election results suffer from serial autocorrelation – that bane of second year graduate students in statistical fields?   Serial autocorrelation defined If…

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Why Starmer is unlikely to be the next PM

Why Starmer is unlikely to be the next PM

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CON MPs will replace their leader if they feel Johnson’s shine has gone For the moment, Boris Johnson walks on water in terms of popularity. He enjoys positive approval ratings, his party sits on opinion poll leads of around 20% and is hoovering up about half the vote. All of which is likely to count for very little in a year’s time, never mind three. It goes without saying that these are abnormal times and that we should therefore treat…

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For decades the standard Tory election PlayBook has been to demonise whoever the LAB leader is. How will they do that with Starmer?

For decades the standard Tory election PlayBook has been to demonise whoever the LAB leader is. How will they do that with Starmer?

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The former DPP presents a bigger challenge In just about every general election in recent times a key Tory approach has been to demonise the the Labour leader in order to frighten voters not to vote for the party. That big broad approach more than anything was why Johnson won a clear majority last December. Just go back to the way Michael Foot was portrayed at GE1983, Kinnock at GE1987 and GE1992 and more recently Brown at GE2010 and EdM…

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Some Tories are getting very nervy about Starmer

Some Tories are getting very nervy about Starmer

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A big COVID-19 political event today has been Keir Starmer’s broadcast response as leader of the opposition to Johnson TV address to the nation last night. Such broadcasts have been an established party of political coverage since the 1960s when TV was starting to establish itself as the primary communications medium. Dehenna Davison is very new to the Commons having won Bishop Auckland from Labour at the general election just five months ago. Normally responses of opposition leaders don’t make…

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