Is it being premature to write her off? During the morning I’ve wagered about £80 at odds of about 50/1 against Diane Abbott winning the Labour leadership. Crazy? Maybe – but I’ve had political bets at that price coming good over the past two years* and the way Labour’s election system works makes Abbott just a possibility. Firstly she’ll probably get the 33 nominations – the first hurdle for each of the contenders which has to be done by next…
How long is the coalition going to last? Under the headline – “David Cameron takes on Tory back-bench ‘awkward squad” the second story on the Telegraph’s front page is about what is described as an audacious attempt by Cameron “to stamp his authority on Conservative MPs and smother back-bench dissent.” For while his partner in the coalition, Nick Clegg, has gone to great lengths to bring and keep the Lib Dems on board the Cameron style is much more ruthless…
Look at who did best in the three segments Given how much is going to be wagered on the Labour leadership in the next four months I thought it might be useful to examine in detail what happened the last time the party’s system was used – for the deputy job in June 2007. Labour uses the Alternative Vote system in an electoral college made up of a third to MPs and MEPs; a third to individual members, and a…
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BBC 2010 seat predictor How the blues beat the uniform swing In the high-octane political atmosphere following the May 6th election we never looked back to to check out what had been a contentious issue on PB for months beforehand – how the uniform national swing would operate. Above is what happens when you feed the GB votes shares on CON 36.9%: LAB 29.7%: LD 23.6% into the BBC’s swing calculator. Assuming the outstanding seat goes with last time then…
Labour leadership betting Smarkets Ladbrokes Betfair David Miliband 60.61% 1/2 1.68 Ed Miliband 24% 5/2 4.4 Ed Balls 9% 8/1 11 Harriet Harman 2% 20/1 40
How big a threat is he to the Miliband duo? Labour’s NEC might have decided on a fairly long campaign to elect Brown’s replacement but they’ve only allowed a very short period for nominations to be made. Essentially a candidate has to find 33 Labour MPs to sign his/her form and there will only be a few days to do this. It will be recalled that in 2007 Brown got his coronation because his team got so many MPs to…
We’ll have to wait until the end of September Gary Gibbon of Channel 4 is reporting that Labour’s NEC has decided on a long campaign to find Brown’s successor with the result being announced at the party conference in September. Gibbon says: ” It’s widely thought this harms the front-runner, David Miliband, and that’s exactly what some on the NEC want it to do…” Maybe – though it will look mighty odd if over the next four and half months…