….but I’ll be otherwise engaged The big polling news this evening should be from Populus – the firm’s first public survey for nearly two months. Fieldwork for the last one finished on July 19th and the shares were C38-L26-LD20. The Tories, surely, must be hoping to be in the 40s like they are with all the other pollsters. I’ll be doing a full thread later but I’m tied up this evening with a big political event in Bedford where I…
Mail Online Do we now have a stalking horse? Probably the most significant political move this morning is the above story by Tim Shipman on the Mail website about the plans of Barry Sheerman MP to make a stand in coming secret PLP elections as the anti-Brown candidate. The outline of the process was first revealed by Shipman last week but this takes it a couple of steps forward. Firstly long-standing Brown critic, Sheerman, is named and secondly there’s a…
Guardian Has the movement forgotten what made Blair electable? In days gone by the TUC conference (it starts today by the way) used to be a high profile event that kicked off the season of political gatherings and would be given almost as much coverage as the Liberal, Labour and Tories ones that followed. That was when the unions were much larger and much more powerful than they are today and, of course, when the country still had a significant…
Ladbrokes Labour’s Stoltenberg is firm PM favourite despite tight polls Yukio Hatoyama is set to be officially confirmed as Japan’s new Prime Minister this week, but already the international circus has moved on, and tomorrow will see the first election of the autumn with serious betting interest, in the shape of Norway. The above market from Ladbrokes (such is the betting importance of Norway that the Magic Sign have a local trading desk) shows that Labour’s Jens Stoltenberg is a…
Times Online Can the former student rebel turn it round for Gord? Inevitability as we edge towards the final party conference season before the general election the Sundays are full of political stories relating to the coming battle. Two of items are linked – but only indirectly. Simon Walters in the Mail on Sunday is reporting on the problems that Brown is having building up a team for the general election and notes three figures who played key roles in…
CON 41 (+1) LAB 27 (nc) LD 17 (-1) Tories up one – LDs down one The striking consistency of national Westminster voting intention polls that we’ve seen all summer has continued with the latest YouGov survey for the Sunday Times. Tories up one the Lib Dems down one is the sum total of the movement – all within the margin of error. The online pollster has been showing the biggest Labour shares of all the firms during the past…
Is this a foretaste of what the rest of the UK will be like? The embargo on tonight’s MORI poll on voting intentions has been broken elsewhere and is in the public domain. Accordingly I feel that we ought to report it here as well. The big news is contained in the Westminster voting figures in the panel above and point to a LAB>SNP swing of just under 14% – a movement which if replicated on polling day would see…
Could this spice up the betting? The Facebook group of the campaign to “Keep General Election Night”has attracted almost 4,000 members in its first week, and those involved have begun surveying which seats might need to wait until Friday afternoon to know the identity of their new MP. I happen to be absolutely on the side of the traditionalists with this one – not least given that my new home is in a time zone where a late finishing Thursday…