Take part in the live online hustings from 11am This morning the person who has become the betting outsider in the race for Lib Dem leadership, the former journalist and MEP, Chris Huhne, joins us on PBC for the first of our two live online hustings. This is your chance to put questions to the man who in six weeks might be leading Britain’s third party. Please write your questions in the comments thread below and Chris will be standing…
Has this become Brown’s Bournemouth gift to Cameron? After FPTP and the WLQ political anoraks are going to have to get used to another acronym – BJ4BW the new short-form for “British Jobs for British Workers” which is, of course, illegal under EU law. There’s lots of comment in the Sundays this morning on the political impact immigration and the number of immigrant workers in the UK with the Independent on Sunday commentator, John Rentoul, focussing on the origins of…
Whoops – the poll I nearly missed! I am just on my way home from the Arsenal – Manchester United clash at the Emirates Stadium and I’ve just discovered that there was a major poll in the Sun this morning that I missed. The headline figures with comparison on last weeks Ipsos-MORI poll in the Observer areCON 40% (nc): LAB 35% (-6): LD 13% (nc). This is a real surprise and is not what I would have expected. As Anthony…
Are the Tories really better placed to win an overall majority than Labour? The chart shows the changing market views on whether it’ll be a Labour majority, Tory majority or a hung parliament with the prices expressed as an implied probability. As can be seen the big change in the past few days has been for the Tories to squeeze ahead of Labour in the market assessment of which of the main parties is likely to secure an overall majority,…
Why Are the Conservatives So Bad at By-Elections? The Conservatives have recovered ground strongly in local elections, in every round of local elections since 1997. Even their opinion poll ratings gradually rose from the disastrous levels of the mid-nineties, after 1997, and rose sharply following David Cameron’s election as Leader. In 2005, they managed to claw back 33 Parliamentary seats, which at least provides a platform for fighting the next election. Yet, in Parliamentary by-elections, their performance has never really…
Anybody who has just read Ben Brogan’s report that Sir Ian Blair might walk should call William Hill about a market that was launched two hours earlier. This is the email I got from the firm “William Hill are offering odds of 6/4 that Sir Ian Blair will cease to be Metropolitan Police Commissioner on or before December 31, 2007 – and 1/ 2 that he will still be in the job on that date. ‘Controversy is raging over whether…
Who’ll come out best in the first test of White House hopefuls? Just four years ago the person that everybody was talking about for the Democratic nomination in the 2004 White House race was the ex-governor of Vermont, Howard Dean. He had built up a hugely effective fundraising machine which surpassed, even, the sums raised by Bill Clinton in his campaigns. In the run up to the first electoral test, the Iowa caucus, he was well ahead in the national…
David Herdson reviews a new Betfair betting market One of the most popular political betting markets over the last couple of years was who would follow Tony Blair as Labour leader, which given Blair’s announcement that it would be during this parliament meant that person would also become the next Prime Minister. Because of the dominant position Gordon Brown held as Blair’s heir apparent, there were two key questions to that market: how likely was it that it would /…