Will it be Balls in – Darling out? Lots of talk today about who would replace Alistair Darling as chancellor and one man whose name keeps on coming up is Ed Balls – the former public school boy who has probably the closest relationship with Brown of any minister in the cabinet. He spent more than a decade as his top advisor and has long been tipped for a top position in a Brown government. It was Balls who played…
Can we now expect fierce full-frontal attacks? What could be the most significant UK political development of the weekend was the news that Brown’s PR guru, Stephen Carter, has been “moved on”. This, according to James Forsyth of the Spectator Coffee House blog, could herald a major shift in Number 10s approach because Carter was a keen advocate of a more softly softly approach, particularly to David Cameron. He writes:”In recent weeks, Carter has been advocating not trying to tear…
TUESDAY 19th AUGUST 2008 @ 21:51 BST Welcome all to the grand opening of Morus’ Denver Diary! PoliticalBetting.com is almost the only UK online outpost to be reporting live from the Democratic Convention in 2008, where Senator Barack Obama will accept his party’s nomination for President of the United States. This is where I will be writing at greater length than the main thread allows – posting thoughts and rumours, as well as transcripts of any interviews I conduct. I…
Will Canadian Liberals benefit from the Obama buzz? A guest article by Jack Peterson This week, the eyes of the free world will shift from Denver, where Morus has been keeping tabs on the Democrats for PB, to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St Paul, where John McCain will accept the Republican nomination and try to distance himself from President Bush. However, political punters would be well advised to keep an eye on events a few hundred miles to the north,…
TUESDAY 19th AUGUST 2008 @ 21:51 BST Welcome all to the grand opening of Morus’ Denver Diary! PoliticalBetting.com is almost the only UK online outpost to be reporting live from the Democratic Convention in 2008, where Senator Barack Obama will accept his party’s nomination for President of the United States. This is where I will be writing at greater length than the main thread allows – posting thoughts and rumours, as well as transcripts of any interviews I conduct. I…
What if Darling resigns over Gord’s £40bn plan? Three political stories dominate the Sunday papers and all point to just one conclusion – that we might be in the final phase of the Gordon Brown era. The first is in the Independent of Sunday which reports that Stephen Carter, the high-powered PR guru who was brought into Downing Street as Gord’s key strategist is to be moved to a new role. The second is the lead in the Mail on…
Could she really just a heart-beat away from being President? Yesterday the focus was on the betting excitement of McCain’s running mate choice and the fact that the rock solid safe favourites had been ditched for someone who just eighteen months ago was Mayor of a town of just 9,000 people. Well we have all had 24 hours to let the news sink in and frankly it is still breath-taking. Some of the information that’s been dribbling out really adds…
Should you be betting on an early Brown departure? The main story from BBC News overnight is the interview that Alastair Darling has given to the Guardian in which he says that Britain’s economic prospects are the “worst for 60 years”. The timing could not have been more significant as Brown prepares for yet another “relaunch” in order to try to stem the massive decline in Labour’s support that we have seen over the past six months. That was due…