Are her V-P chances really better than 10%? Maybe I am being a mug, maybe I have contributed too much already to Shadsy at Ladrokes and other bookies’ profits on the Democratic V-P nomination, maybe I should have stuck with my self-denying ordinance not to throw any more money at this issue but I’ve just placed a bet at 10/1 on the former first lady. Partly it was the discussion on the overnight thread, partly it was reading the latest…
Or is it one more thing that they can be accused of dithering on? There’s lots in the papers this morning about the apparent plan to have a stamp duty “holiday” on property purchases of less than £250k in a effort to boost the depressed housing market. The problem is that raising the possibility without taking immediate action can have precisely the opposite effect – those people on the point of buying a house might be deterred for a few…
Are you best to stay out of it? Two months ago I posted here that I was pulling out of the betting on who would share the tickets with Barack Obama and John McCain because it was so difficult for anybody to who out who was going to be chosen. I’ve got several hundred pounds at risk and I am convinced that I’m going to be a loser. I’ve managed to keep away from the betting apart from a brief…
Would PM Miliband get the same fawning treatment? Exactly a year ago today the Guardian asked breathlessly whether any previous incoming prime minister had had such a first month in office having to deal with one “crisis” after another. To recap there had been some storms, a failed terrorist attack in Glasgow and some animals had got ill. Out of the ordinary? To a limited degree but nothing on the scale that several other incoming prime ministers had had to…
Could it be months, years or even more than a decade? Exactly a year ago we ran a competition here asking when entrants thought that the Conservatives would regain their poll lead over Labour. The thread makes an interesting read. At the time the Tory deficit ranged from 3% to 9% (the biggest coming from YouGov) and it took the party just two months to restore the situation. The current Labour deficits are reproduced above and the question now is…
Is getting the leader out easier than was thought? Writing the piece this morning has really focussed my attention on the chances that Brown could be out this year. The process, as set out in the previous post, is a lot easier than first appeared and crucially does not, in the initial stage, involve the input of Labour MPs. The parliamentary party, as Nick Palmer MP keeps on reminding us, is not of a mind that it wants change. But…
Could a resolution make it to the conference floor? In all the discussion about Labour’s rule-book and how a challenge to Mr. Brown could come about the most clear explanation came in Alan Watkins’s column in this weekend’s Indy on Sunday. For there has been a lot of confusion over the role of Labour MPs who retain the power to nominate. The critical element, however, is how a contest when the leader wants to stay is initiated and it is…
Is now the time to be betting against Barack? Several people on the site have been making the point in the past couple of days that Betfair and other UK betting firms are trailing behind the US-focussed markets on the McCain-Obama battle. Quite simply, given recent polling, this is much tighter than the betting prices here might suggest. Thus the automated telephone pollster, Rasmussen, is reporting today that its tracking poll now has McCain ahead by one point and across…