The documentary you cannot miss One of the great “must-watch” political documentaries of recent times was the on BBC4 channel on Wednesday night on the mighty tussle between two grammar school boys who went to Oxford and fought four general elections against other. Two of those elections were pivotal – 1970 when against all the odds and polling Heath won a majority and February 1974 when the Tories went to the country in the middle of the miners’ strike in…
From the front page of tomorrow’s Telegraph The clip is all we’ve got at the moment but if the headline is borne out in the story then it looks like good news for the energy secretary and bad news for those who’ve been betting on him to be the next cabinet minister out. Mike Smithson
Will Labour find cold comfort in the IDS comparison? The Ipsos-MORI data on Ed Miliband is getting a lot of coverage today and I thought that this chart puts the “ready to be PM” responses into an historical context. It shows the trend with all opposition leaders from Tony Blair onwards and, interestingly the man who was to lead Labour to three election victories had a positive rating of 59 to 28 six months after he took over the job….
Is there a lesson to be learned from Scotland? My biggest betting wins of 2011 were against the SNP taking most seats in the Scottish Parliament election earlier in the month. I started piling on towards the end of March when I became convinced that the leaderships ratings of Alex Salmond and Iain Grey were a far better pointer to the outcome than the voting intention polls. At the time Labour was in the lead in almost all the polls…
But only 17% think Miliband is ready to be PM In what the Reuters news agency is calling a “slight fall” the Tories have dropped five points in this months Ipsos-MORI political monitor for May. Labour, meanwhile are up two and the LDs one. Fieldwork for phone poll was finished on Tuesday and this is the only non-online survey that we’ve had since the May 5th elections. But this is not all good news for Labour with only 17% of…
Should the votes involved have been disqualified? The other day I was having a conversation with a Labour figure who was furious about the manner of Ed Miliband’s election as Labour leader on September 25th last year. It will be recalled that David Miliband had clear margins amongst the party members and the party’s MPs/MEPs. The elder brother was also ahead in most of the affiliated organisations apart from in a small group of very large unions where voting papers…
Ipsos-MORI Would the MORI method have produced a different picture? Much has been made in the past week of Michael Ashcroft’s massive poll in which he sought to identify the issues that the Tories need to focus upon if they are to win a majority. He highlighted two policy strands: – the NHS and crime/law and order and it’s on the latter that there’s been much focus in recent days with the strong suggestion being that being “tough” is the…
Could my 200/1 shot possibly make it? Having tipped and backed Barack Obama for the 2008 White House race when he was 50/1 in May 2005 I was determined to try to repeat the success for 2012. So in November 2008 less than a fortnight after Obama’s victory I placed £50 with Ladbrokes at 200/1 against Jon Huntsman being the next president. When he accepted the post of ambassador to China from President Obama two and a half years ago…