Could losing the confidence of the House be what actually does it? One of the great adages on Politicalbetting is that “Nobody ever got rich betting against Teflon Tony”. Certainly he has proved the betting markets wrong time and time and again those who have had faith in his survival gene have made money. Just look at the record:- Getting on for four years ago, in the frenzy over the Hutton Inquiry following David Kelly’s death, Blair became odds on…
What’s the political impact of Labour’s cash crisis? Of all the stories of woe for Tony Blair and Labour in the Sunday papers this morning the one that seems to have the most long term significance is this in the News of the World – the first part of which is reproduced above. The story goes on to list the money that has to be paid back: “..£2.3MILLION to property developer Sir David Garrard in April, £1.5MILLION to Priory Clinic…
Can a Home Secretary ever make it to the top job? The above, reproduced from the Sun web-site, gives a good flavour of how John Reid is being treated this morning following a whole raft of new problems on his patch. His cabinet position, surely, is not for ambitious high flyers and it is hard to see how he can progress from here. But why is he still second favourite almost right across the board to take the to job….
John McTernan – Director of Political Operations BBC News is confirming that Downing Street’s director of political operations, John McTernan, has been interviewed for a second time under caution by police in the honours probe. He is currently seconded to the Scottish Labour Party to run its campaign for May’s key elections. According to the report the interview took place before Ruth Turner, the prime minister’s director of government relations was arrested. The above list, reproduced from the Downing Street…
Brief preface – I am a Labour MP who prefers to post occasionally and anonymously, as it gives me the opportunity to be more outspoken than Nick Palmer, Stewart Jackson and others can be. First the leadership election. Everyone in the PLP now agrees that it’ll be Gordon unless he falls under a bus. Consequently, people aren’t as interested as they used to be in whether there will be a contest or not. The best outcome for him would be…
Honours probe developments cause punters to re-consider The latest betting on the Blair departure date has Q2 at 1.14/1 and Q3 at 1.28/1 with everything, it seems, now dependent on the honours probe. After all the talk of him leaving in early July the developments on Friday have caused some reconsideration. But this one remains very hard to call because nobody knows how the Yates inquiry is likely to pan out or what the PM’s reaction to it will be….
Could bad polls this week affect the Blair departure date? If ICM and Communicate Research are following their normal schedules then the fieldwork for their January surveys will have been taking place this weekend – just as the war of words between some senior Labour figures and the police reached a new height. So we will only have to wait a couple of days to find out whether what appeared to be a concerted strategy to rubbish the police is…
But what if he didn’t get an overwhelming endorsement? An idea is emerging within the Labour Party that there should be a leadership election this summer – even if Gordon is the only person who manages to get the required 45 MPs to nominate him. The plan is that alongside the Deputy Leadership election that is sure to take place that those with votes should also be asked to to “give their affirmation” to Gordon. It was touched on in…