Should you be taking the 8-1 Lansley next exit bet?

Should you be taking the 8-1 Lansley next exit bet?

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Daily Mail How serious is his resignation threat? According to the Daily Mail the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, is threatening to quit over his NHS reform plan. The paper’s Jason Groves says that Lansley has told the PM that he would reject a face-saving plan to switch him to another role and if it came to it would quit the cabinet. The report goes on: “In an outspoken public intervention ..he said driving through the health reforms was now his…

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Is Labour being marginalised in the NHS stand-off?

Is Labour being marginalised in the NHS stand-off?

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How do the reds get a look in when it’s a Blue-Yellow spat? There’s a poignant piece by Sunny Hundal on Liberal Conspiracy about the challenges for Labour when all the political focus is on the coalition partners. He wrote: “At 9am yesterday morning, Labour shadow health secretary John Healey gave a speech calling for the NHS bill to be scrapped because it essentially meant the end of the NHS..At around 11am Nick Clegg gave a press conference and pretty…

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Heath vs Wilson – the ten year battle

Heath vs Wilson – the ten year battle

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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…

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What does this do to the Huhne story..?

What does this do to the Huhne story..?

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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

How Ed Miliband compares with previous opposition leaders

How Ed Miliband compares with previous opposition leaders

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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….

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How critical is the leader to Labour’s election chances?

How critical is the leader to Labour’s election chances?

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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…

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Labour move into a 7 point lead with Ipsos-MORI

Labour move into a 7 point lead with Ipsos-MORI

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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…

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Why didn’t David Miliband complain about this?

Why didn’t David Miliband complain about this?

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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…

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