For MPs the waiting will soon be over The part of the UK that is most affected by the seat equalisation and reduction plan is Wales where the boundary commissioners were charged with reducing the number of constituencies from the current 40 to 30. This is a cutback of a quarter. To put this into context the national reduction is from 650 seats to 600. According to the initial time-table the proposals for the new Welsh electoral map were due…
The chart shows the responses in today’s YouGov poll for the Sunday Times to the queation – “Which do you think should be the greater priority for government spending on transport – building the proposed High Speed Rail link between London and Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, or expanding air transport by building new runways or a new airport?” I find the backing for HS2 quite surprising and would have though that there would be an almost equal split. Mike Smithson…
Should bookies have waited for the official result? On Wednesday morning the big news from the 2012 White House race was that Mitt Romney had squeezed a victory in Iowa by a margin of of just eight votes. This was based on information from the state party HQ where it was being emphasised that this was not a certified result. That would come after signed returns has been received from the 1,700 precincts – a process that would take a…
Did you take HenryG Manson’s advice in November? It was back in November that Henry G Manson wrote a post here suggesting that we should be betting that the Welsh secretary, Cheryl Gillan, would be the next cabinet exit. At the time Henry noted Gillean told Free Press in June: “If the project goes ahead, I would resign the whip unless the Prime Minsiter tells me he would allow me to vote against it. When I was appointed to the…
Would 3 straight wins give him the nomination? After the knife-edge win for Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses this week, most of those watching the race for the Republican nomination will have moved on to the first primary proper: New Hampshire. That’s only natural as it is the next state to vote but with all expectations that Romney will gain a healthy win there, it may not be as important as it sometimes can be in weeding out losers,…
But is she being too harsh on Labour and Ed?
Who’ll win the New Hampshire without Romney bet? To make Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary more interesting from a betting perspective Ladbrokes have put up a market on who’ll come out top without Romney. This has seen a fair amount of money going on Ron Paul whose price has tightened sharply to 4/6 since the market went up. The result is that other contenders have been moved out and the 11/4 on Rick Santorum looks particularly tempting. I’ve noticed that the…
What can Labour do to inspire confidence? ComRes has released some polling that it did for ITV News just before the Christmas break in which respondents were asked “Do you, or would you, trust each of the following politicians to see the country through the current economic situation?” As can be seen on what other surveys have shown as the key issue facing the country Ed Miliband and Ed Balls score below Nick Clegg and are a long way behind…