What’s this going to mean politically? Extraordinarily this story from the Financial Times is not covered on the main news page of BBC online. Yet the size of the intervention – an injection of 95 million billion euros into the money markets – sounds too huge to be confined to the business pages. I’m no expert on financial markets but this does look worrying and could have a big political impact. To my mind it makes an early election looks…
Could the emerging opposition “attack dog” damage Brown? Go into Google, type in “Chris Grayling MP”, click on the “news” search button and the above is what you get. A whole series of references to attacks that he has made on the government which might not be commanding the big headlines at the moment but, I am told, are starting to irritate the Labour hierarchy. For the 46 year old Epsom MP and shadow work and pension secretary is fast…
A guest article by Peter the Punter Mediums are utterly useless. They have yet to give me a single winning tip I couldn’t have worked out for myself. Messages from the other side of the betting counter can however be helpful. Although they are unlikely to reveal the winner of the next race at Kempton, they may nevertheless contain something every bit as useful to punters. I recently had dinner with an odds compiler from a major firm and although…
Could optimism and praise help him take back the initiative? We are going through an extraordinary period and Labour supporters are, no doubt, pinching themselves to confirm that Gordon’s first weeks are not a dream. By all accounts the public response to the way he’s handled his first three big crises has been enormously positive and if this wasn’t the poll-free holiday period Labour would surely have been consolidating the initial big leads. So what does Cameron do? Each step…
The above story went up a couple of hours ago on the Slate web-site and should provide some welcome relief for Obama who has come under a lot of stick from all sides following comments about Pakistan. Recent polls on the Democratic nomination have seen Hillary Clinton widen her margin. As for Rudi – he still enjoys a good polling margin. For the White House Race betting click here. Mike Smithson
Does the Guardian have no sense of history? I think that the invasion and fall of France in May 1940 followed by Dunkirk, and the evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force that Churchill had to face probably rank some way ahead of the flooding, Glasgow airport and foot and mouth. While not quite on that scale Harold Wilson’s first month of his 1974 government was pretty horrendous with the aftermath of the miners’ strike, the oil crisis and Northern Ireland….
Does he still feel he’s in the shadow of his predecessor? If Labour is retaining poll leads from 3% to 9% after the summer it’s hard to make a case that Brown would not come out with a majority in an October election. Even assuming that the pollsters are still overstating Labour the margins from all five regular UK pollsters together with Britain’s electoral demographics should be enough to see Brown home. But dare he go to the country for…
A London activist’s view of the Boris and Ken show Ken Livingstone said last week that Boris Johnson will provide him with the toughest challenge of his career, assuming the former is selected to run for Mayor of London, by the Conservatives. That is not quite correct. Fighting, and losing, Hampstead in 1979 must have been tougher, but there seems no doubt that he will face the hardest of his three campaigns for London Mayor. The London Mayor is elected…