“The next Labour leader is destined to be a loser…”

“The next Labour leader is destined to be a loser…”

Sunday Telegraph “…This is Slumdog Labour Leader” There’s an excellent piece by Matthew D’Ancona in the Sunday Telegraph today in which he looks at the nascent contest to succeed Brown and argues that it is “ferocious, precisely because the outcome matters so little”. After rolling off the stream of recent leadership pretenders, he goes on: “….This, I confidently predict, is only the beginning. Many more names will be suggested in this “potential leader speed dating”, some even more ridiculous than…

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Has Gord won the Euro-Obama race?

Has Gord won the Euro-Obama race?

BBC News online Has Gord slipped in ahead of Angela and Nicholas? One of the speciality betting markets that was opened on January 20th – the day of Obama’s inauguration- was which of Europe’s Big 3 leaders would be first to get a face to face meeting. Brown was favourite and if tonight’s announcement is anything to go by then Brown backers look set to win. But could there be something from Sarkozy or Merkel in the background that hasn’t…

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Morus’ Saturday Tangent

Morus’ Saturday Tangent

Is Brown relying on Wales losing? I’m not going to lie to you – this might be one of my more tangential threads, and it’s not as though directness of purpose has characterised my Saturday morning slots for some time now. Let me take you on a mental journey, into the musing mind of a pair of Catholic Welshmen, pondering rugby, religion and politics over a pint of bitter. One couldn’t help but notice that our Prime Minister this week…

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Could Gord go to put the kybosh on Cameron?

Could Gord go to put the kybosh on Cameron?

Would hurting the Tories come before his own career? In May last year I suggested that a possible outcome to Labour’s leadership saga might be that Gordon would fall on his sword if he felt that bringing in someone new would make life tougher for the Tories. At the time I wrote: “Only a few have suggested that he might come to recognise that his leadership is undermining his party against the dreaded Tories and that he will just fall…

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Will it be the official statisticians wot did it?

Will it be the official statisticians wot did it?

Could Brown rue the day he made the ONS independent? When historians come to examine the final period of Mr. Brown’s career and Labour’s losses in the 2009/2010 general election will the decision to create the UK Statistics Authority and make the Office of National Statistics independent be seen as the decisive error? For yet again this morning the big news in several of the papers stems from official statistics that are hugely embarrassing to the government – numbers that…

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Can Cameron convince public sector workers?

Can Cameron convince public sector workers?

Ipsos-MORI Are public purse voters the bedrock of Labour support? Last July Ipsos-MORI introduced a novel new weighting to try to deal with the over-representation of Labour supporters in polling samples. Unlike the other polling firms who weight by past vote or past party ID MORI now split their samples into those who are on the public pay-roll and those who are not. Just look at the chart above to see two key elements. Conventional telephone polling seems to reach…

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…and Today’s Leadership Rumour is….

…and Today’s Leadership Rumour is….

Evening Standard What is going on at the top of the Labour party? It says something about the febrile state of things at the heart of government that so far this week three names have emerged as candidates for the Labour leadership – even though there does not appear to be a vacancy. First it was Alan Johnson – the former postman who’s now health secretary. Then the word came that Harriet Harman was back into the frame and today,…

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