Will Walter Sweeney attack from the right on 42 days? Amongst the massive list of contenders for the Haltemprice and Howden by election is a Dublin-born former Tory MP who looks set to attack Davis from the right on 42 day detention period issue. He is Walter Sweeney who held Vale of Glamorgan for the Tories by 19 votes in 1992 and who had plenty of run-ins with David Davis during the Maastricht votes in the final years of the…
Will this have an impact on Brown’s survival? As predicted and recommended here over the past week the most certain bet on the Henley by-election was that Labour would lose its deposit which they did dropping from 6,862 votes at the general election to 1,066 and end up in fifth place behind both the Green party and the BNP. With the Lib Dems fighting hard it was always going to be that the Labour vote would get squeezed and in…
Does this signal that a recovery is on the way? As we wait for the Henley result there’s some goodish polling news for Labour in the June YouGov poll for the Daily Telegraph. So the shares with the changes on the last YouGov poll in the Sunday Times twelve days ago are – CON 46%(-1): LAB 28%(+3): LD 15%(-3) The main move is a 3% fall in the Lib Dem shares and a similar increase in the Labour share. The…
Reports coming onto the last thread from on the ground in Henley suggest that the BNP have done quite well – there’s even talk of them getting into third place. Such a result would certainly put the cat amongst the pigeons. We’ll know the result in a few hours. There’s be no indication from the betting markets that this is going to be anything other than a Conservative victory. The big questions are how close the Lib Dems will have…
Revised Could a collapse on this scale seal Gordon’s fate? I’ve just had a long phone call with my closest Labour party link and he was suggesting that Henley could have the same impact on Gordon Brown’s leadership as the reverberations within the Tory party from the Bradford North by election in November 1990. It was this result – a 16% CON>LAB swing – that provided the backcloth for the dramatic events that month that eventually led to Maggie’s departure….
Did his intervention change the mood in Gord’s election U-turn week? On the final day of Gordon Brown’s first year as PM the media look-back continues with an excellent breakdown by Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt in the Guardian of the events that led to that fateful decision to abandon a November 1st 2007 general election. Step-by-step each move during September and early October is examined and the authors come to a view that I have not seen before –…
Could Obama win by more than the bare margin? The latest polling numbers have been good for Barack Obama ahead of his coming battle with John McCain for the White House. Today’s LA Times/Bloomberg poll has a 12% margin which rises to 15% when the the minor candidates of Nader and Barr are added into the mix. Add on to that his decision to avoid public financing for the campaign and the signs are that he’ll be able to outspend…
Would he get the kudos for putting his career on the line? The latest ICM poll means that all the main pollsters who report at least monthly on public opinion are showing almost exactly the same figures. Three have Labour at 25% the other, ComRes, has it at 26%. And the Tory shares and overall leads are in the same ball-park as well. There can be no doubt about what would happen if there was an immediate general election. Add…