It is early days so far in the Rutherglen by-election but punters have already made their minds up – Labour is the very tight odds on favorite to take the seat from the SNP. Certainly, there has been a very big move to LAB from the SNP in recent Scottish polls the latest of which has the party just 2% behind In the other possible by-election, Mid-Bedfordshire, the Lib Dems are odds on favourite to gain the seat. There is…
The true face of Sunak’s party? Lee Anderson who only became an MP at GE2019 has risen fast up the ranks and is now deputy chairman of the Tory party. A former coal-miner he was previously a Labour Councillor. He’s been in the news in the past 24 hours or so for his comment that asylum seekers should just “fuck off” and there’s little doubt that this will be raised by Labour and the LDs in the years to come….
At the next election there will be 650 parliamentary constituencies so in order to secure a majority, certainly as defined by the bookmakers, LAB needs to come out with 326 MPs which is 124 more than their GE2019 haul. That is a massive ask not far short of the 146 LAB gains at GE1997 when the party went into power for 13 years. Starmer is no Tony Blair The electoral system even with the boundary changes looks set to favour…
As we all see from the national polls things look pretty bad for the blue team at the moment. But is the Tory strategy to describe LAB candidates as part of the “Eco Mob” going to resonate? As in the Tweet above the Tories are trying to undermine the LAB candidate in the mid-Beds by-elections raising his previous participation in a Green party demo. To add potency they have tried to link this to the attack on Sunak’s house in…
Ben Walker in the New Statesman has a piece on a subject we are going to hear a lot about in the coming months – when will Sunak decide to call a general election? Since the law changes brought in by Johnson the decision on the date is now one for the PM and the PM alone so history can blame the incumbent who made the decision if he gets it wrong. This is the core of Walker’s analysis: If…
All we seem to hear from the PM are the efforts to curb immigration. Based on the news coverage it appears as though this is by a big margin the government’s top priority. Yet is Sunak’s approach in keeping with the public mood? Earlier in the year YouGov carried out a mega poll (see chart above)l with a sample of 36k to establish what voters saw as the big issues. As can be seen for all segments including the red…
I suppose that it should not come as too much of a surprise to look at the Opinium poll table above with the party split on views of climate change – an issue that has been in the news following the Tory by-election campaign in Uxbridge. As it will be recalled the Tories managed to hold onto the seat by running a highly focused campaign raising concerns about ULEZ whereby drivers of older cars face a financial penalty in parts…
This looks very damning for Team Trump Increasingly the big issue dominating the WH2024 race is what happened nearly three years ago. These comments from former VP Pence are going to make it much harder for Trump. This is a very brave move by Pence because he’ll surely get attacked for making it. But those who have been fearful about the future of democracy should be supportive. In January 2021 Pence made a big step that probably saved democracy in…