Poll suggests that she could win 15% more votes for Labour According to a YouGov poll reported in the Independent this morning 15% of voters said they would be “more likely” to support Labour if Harriet Harman was deputy leader. Hilary Benn was in second place on this measure with 12% saying they would be more likely to vote Labour but none of the other contenders got into double figures. Hazel Blears – the party chair and other potential female…
Can the new leader solve the party’s financial crisis? The overnight news that all challengers in the coming Labour leadership contests are going to have to pay the party a “tax” of 15% on the campaign funds they raise is a further indication of the serious funding problem that the party is now facing. For a consequence of the “cash for honours crisis” is that big donors are, perhaps understandably, reluctant to make contributions and Labour has a campaigning machine…
But the Tory lead widens to 8% with Brown as Labour leader The headline General Election voting intention figures show a big improvement for Labour in this month’s ICM poll in the Guardian. The shares are with the changes on October CON 37% (-2): LAB 32% (+3): LD 22% (nc). This brings the pollster more into line with the other firms but still contrasts sharply with the 5% Labour lead in the same survey a year ago two weeks before…
Yet on the day nobody even mentioned it on PBC? With the honours probe hanging like a dark shadow over the government and being a dominant factor in the Blair exit date betting it is worth going back nearly eleven months to the Sunday Times investigation that sparked off the whole crisis for the government. For things look very different now than when the story first appeared. At the time the term “loans for peerages” was unknown and the building…
Was Blair doing the Chancellor a favour with his fighting imagery? As often happens in politics the initial reaction to a development or a speech can change quite drastically within a few days. Last Wednesday Tony Blair’s farewell Commons performance in a Queen’s speech debate was well received by commentators particularly his “put down” of David Cameron by threatening him with a “big fist” – a move seen as an endorsement of Gordon Brown. By yesterday there had been a…
Is Tony going back on Wednesday’s apparent endorsement? The extraordinary saga that is the Labour succession will take a new turn on Sunday when the Observer will publish a report of an interview with the Prime Minister in which he refuses to confirm that the “big fist” he threatened Tory leader David Cameron with in the Queen’s speech debate was a reference to the Chancellor. In an interview that took place yesterday for Sunday’s Observer he was pressed to offer…
The money piles on Brown after Blair’s apparent endorsement The above chart shows hour by hour how the betting markets reacted to yesterday’s Queen’s speech debate when Tony Blair apparently endorsed Gordon Brown as his successor. Punters have weighed in to bet on Brown and his best price tightened at one stage to 0.22/1. In fiery exchanges with David Cameron Tony Blair predicted that Labour will be led at the next election by a heavyweight with a “big clunking fist”…
Has the programme been devised to boost Reid and to stop Gordon? Stoking up the rhetoric on crime, terror and immigration looks set to be the central theme of this morning’s traditional speech by the Queen at the opening of Parliament. For those interested in the key betting markets of the Labour leadership and “when Blair will go” the main focus is on who is going to be getting all the publicity as the new legislative programme is pushed through…