Has Gord anointed Balls as the next Labour leader? After more than a decade of serving under the ex-public school boy and Oxford graduate, Tony Blair, it’s suggested this morning that Gord has decided that Labour’s next leader should be Ed Balls – who went to a £10,000 a year public school as a day pupil and then onto Oxford. According to Iain Martin in the Sunday Telegraph Brown is planning to hand-over to his former top aide and now…
Interesting article in the Guardian by the commentator who used to be one of his most enthusiastic supporters, Jackie Ashley. She believe that Brown is being too timid when it comes to picking fights and concludes: “…unless the prime minister has the courage to pick fights with powerful interests, then it really is all over. Labour’s assessment of the Tories as lightweight and meaningless is quite wrong. Cameron has won his advantage by taking some brave decisions, not by staying…
The secret survey that shows Ken could be in trouble When on Tuesday Ken sought to counter the latest YouGov mayoral figures by revealing party private polling data he set off a disclosure process that has, for the first time I believe, allowed us to look at the full numbers from a Labour survey that was supposed to be secret. And with this election looking very tight a key factor will be how the second preferences split – will they…
The MORI poll he reported is nearly three weeks old I have now got the fieldwork dates and some other details from the private MORI poll for Labour that Ken “pulled out of the hat” as news of the 5% deficit in the YouGov survey came out. The MORI fieldwork started getting on for three weeks ago, on February 8th and went on until the 12th. A sample of 808 Londoners was interviewed by telephone. The survey found on that…
Half the voters support nationalisation A “quickie” poll by Populus for tomorrow’s Times has some good news for the government over the Northern Rock crisis. A total of 519 people were interviewed last night with 49% backing nationalisation. The sample supported Darling remaining as Chancellor by 50 to 38 per cent. But it’s not all plain sailing. 58% blamed the Labour Government for some of the problems while 64% blamed the Bank of England and City authorities. There was most…
Does he regret snubbing Barack back in the summer? A story in the Times overnight has it that Brown is desperately trying to build relations with Barack Obama after snubbing the now Democratic front-runner during the summer. According to the paper a meeting had been tentatively fixed but then Downing Street “got the willies” and the possible future President of the United States was offered a drop by private meeting instead. President Sarkozy of France, by contrast, offered Mr Obama…
It’s 5/2 that Darling will be out this year William Hill have put up a market, which is online, that “Alastair Darling Will Be Out Of Office By The End Of The Year? (2008)”. I’ve checked with the firm and “out of office” means no longer being chancellor. Given the poor poll ratings that he’s getting and the growing problems he’s facing this seems like a pretty good bet. The handling of Northern Rock will be a major Tory and…
Is nationalisation really going to have no electoral impact? Even though some are calling it “Labour’s Black Wednesday” there has been very little movement in the general election most seats betting following yesterday’s announcement by Alistair Darling that Northern Rock. The chart showing betting prices as implied probabilities has hardly changed on the past week. It’s the same with the spread betting markets where punters buy and sell the number of seats the parties will get at the election as…