..and congratulations to Roger on his Oscar performance Once again the long-standing PB contributor, Roger, produced a near perfect set of predictions on the Oscar winners and those who followed his tips made themselves a bit of money. This followed a similar record in 2008. This is getting to become a habit. The challenge this year was that there was so little value in the betting. But as is always said a winning odds-on bet is worth a whole lot…
Could over-stating Labour be a thing of the past? John Rentoul in his latest column for the IoS makes some observations about the polls which I believe are out of date and could give a misleading view of what will happen at the next election. He writes: “…Of course, the quirks of the system mean that the Conservative share of the vote has to be eight percentage points larger than Labour’s to win a Commons majority. But I suspect that…
When the music stops, will it be Likud and the Right? So, President Peres has asked Benjamin Netanyahu to try to form a government (he is now a formateur in Dutch / Belgian parlance), despite the fact that Likud finished second at the election – he has 42 days to do so. The immediate post-election posturing and positioning is over, Lieberman has returned from his holiday in Belarus and recommended Bibi for PM, and the real business of government formation…
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…
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…
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…
University of Sheffield 177 years of election history with one mouse click Click on the map to start the animation. HatTip: Snowflake5 on Labourhome
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…