Can the old survivor do it again? Well the day has gone on and Number 10’s spin machine has been desperately trying to spin that the Hazel Blear resignation wasn’t timed to cause maximum embarrassment to Mr. Brown. Yet as was pointed out at PMQs – she’s the local government minister and there are local elections tomorrow. “It was just that she was fed up of being hounded by the media” – they say of her motives. “No – this…
Are we seeing a co-ordinated attack on Brown’s leadership The news this morning, barely an hour and half before PMQs is due to start, that Hazel Blears is resigning looks like it’s part of a plan to undermine Brown just before he takes part in what could be his most critical session. For with the growing noise about Mr Brown’s leadership it could just be possible that today will be the last occasion on which he takes PMQs. Next Wednesday…
Remember the headlines two months ago today? Exactly two months ago this morning I did a similar collage of newspaper front pages to the one here – and how different they all looked. For April 3rd 2009 was the day after the G20 meeting and Mr Brown got some of the best coverage of his premiership. Who would have thought then that only a few weeks later that the big political question politics would be whether Brown can hang on….
Have we now reached the end-game for Mr. Brown? In a long and powerfully argued main leader for the paper tomorrow the Guardian makes a strong call for Mr. Brown to go. In fact it is much more forceful than that – the message is that if Mr. Brown does not agree to step down then he should be, “cut loose”. There’s no need to spell out what that means. The leader concludes: “..Of course many people, who see the…
How’s this going to affect Thursday elections? With just one day’s campaigning left the big political story, once again, has nothing to do with Europe. We’ve got the cabinet re-shuffle coming up and the very messy way in which news of this is coming out. Latest word is that Brown will announce his changes on Monday – the day after the Euro results are known. Meanwhile the betting activity has been stepped up and there’s an interesting range of Euro…
A Marf original – Dec 2nd 2008 How many more will go in the coming days? One of the difficult things about political betting is that often your markets are long term. Unlike most sports betting you can often tie up cash for months maybe years – so news that one of those long-term bets is coming to fruition is very welcome. It was at the start of December 2008 that it was suggested here that the William Hill price…
UKPollingReport Does Brown’s future depend on beating expectations? Perhaps the most critical few hours in Gordon Brown political career will take place on Sunday evening when all the Euro results are coming in. For not only will we be able to find out the big picture but we should also get data, constituency by constituency, of how the parties did within the Westminster seat boundaries. It won’t take long before the news channels and pundits are extrapolating this into what…
ComRes WESTMINSTER: CON 30(-10) LAB 22(+1) LD 18 (nc) Tonight’s second shock poll is from ComRes for the Independent which shows a dramatic collapse in the Tory vote to just 30% while Labour is up one point at 22%. Fieldwork took place from Friday until Sunday at exactly the same time as this evening’s MORI poll which had C40-L18-LD18. So how come that all the other firms which have polled in recent days have the Conservatives in the range of…