How’s this going to affect Thursday elections? With just one day’s campaigning left the big political story, once again, has nothing to do with Europe. We’ve got the cabinet re-shuffle coming up and the very messy way in which news of this is coming out. Latest word is that Brown will announce his changes on Monday – the day after the Euro results are known. Meanwhile the betting activity has been stepped up and there’s an interesting range of Euro…
A Marf original – Dec 2nd 2008 How many more will go in the coming days? One of the difficult things about political betting is that often your markets are long term. Unlike most sports betting you can often tie up cash for months maybe years – so news that one of those long-term bets is coming to fruition is very welcome. It was at the start of December 2008 that it was suggested here that the William Hill price…
UKPollingReport Does Brown’s future depend on beating expectations? Perhaps the most critical few hours in Gordon Brown political career will take place on Sunday evening when all the Euro results are coming in. For not only will we be able to find out the big picture but we should also get data, constituency by constituency, of how the parties did within the Westminster seat boundaries. It won’t take long before the news channels and pundits are extrapolating this into what…
Will Primaries be how the big parties strike back? In and amongst the big political stories of the week one potentially very significant event has received scant attention. This was the speech given by David Cameron at the Open University which set-out a series of ideas and policies that would bring about one of the biggest changes to political life this country has seen for decades. Â The scope of the proposed changes is vast: they run across the whole…
Will cabinet members heed the Times and depose Brown? There’s a remarkable main leader in the Times this morning the likes of which I cannot recall ever seeing before. For the paper is calling on cabinet ministers, in the wake of next Thursday’s expected mauling in the Euro and local elections, to rise up and get rid of the man who became their leader less than two years ago. The Times declares: “..The vital choice lies with his Cabinet colleagues….
Welcome back from your break Our cartoon, the first for a while, is by Marf who is just getting back to work following a break. It’s great to see your drawing on the site again and we’ve missed your often biting satire – particularly during the first stages the MPs expenses disclosures. I like today’s because it sort of puts the whole thing into perspective. It’s North Korea that we should be worrying about More of Marf’s work can be…
Am I going to win my William Hill bet? Nearly a month ago William Hill put up a market for a short while on the June 4th country councils elections that in several places are happening at the same time as the Euro elections. The bet was simple: 2/1 that Labour would lose control of all of its remaining county – the four featured above. So it’s been very interesting following the canvassing reports of Nick Palmer – MP for…
IpsoMORI July 2008 The data, surely, shows that the PM is a liability Earlier in the month the Labour blogger, Hopi Sen, was making the argument that the polls were showing Gordon Brown was more popular than his party and, therefore, any change of leader would have a negative rather than positive impact on Labour’s chances. Hopi based his case on the MORI monthly question when respondents rated their satisfaction with the government and their satisfaction with Brown. He argued…