What’s his reward for delivering Brown his coronation? Looking back over the past three months the move that secured the leadership and Number 10 for Brown without the bother of a contest was the appointment of Jack Straw to run the Chancellor’s campaign. At the time Straw himself was being tipped as a contender and everybody assumed that he must have been promised something big. But what was that going to be for the former boss of both the home…
Could the Republicans choose a movie actor again? Big moves on the Republican White House ’08 nominee markets following the news this afternoon that the lawyer turned movie actor turned Senator, Fred Thompson looks certain to run. He’s now trading at just over 4/1 and has moved into the third favourite position. The idea that the party, which had its most successful years when ex-actor, Ronald Reagan served two full terms, might choose someone similar has been the cause of…
Brown’s party moves up four points and more gloomy news for Ming A two thread day on PBC with news of the new poll here and the betting reaction to the Newsnight Deputy Leader hustings below. The May Communicate Research poll for the Independent shows a big boost for Labour this morning up four points from the 27% share that the pollster recorded in May. These are the figures with changes from last month: CON 35% (-1): LAB 31% (+4):…
The money moves to Cruddas after the Newsnight hustings The above chart records the changing fortunes on the Betfair betting exchange of the four outsiders in the race for the Deputy Leadership before, during, and in the aftermath of last night’s Newsnight hustings on BBC2 which started at 10.30 pm. To watch the debate click here. Most of us have opinions about political outcomes – gamblers are prepared to back up their views with hard cash and that’s what these…
With Labour’s deputy hopefuls preparing for their ordeal by Paxman on Newsnight tonight and Tony Blair on his farewell tour of Africa it’s the Tories who are once again making the headlines. The conventional thinking is that this should be harming Cameron. I’m not so sure. The notion of a grammar school is from a bygone age and the Graham Brady looks like just the sort of Tory that the leadership are not going to worry about sacrificing. He’ll have…
Would the Cameron project flounder without Cameron? In recent weeks we have had threads about the successors to both Brown and Campbell but so far we’ve not ventured into post-Cameron Tory territory – who would be leader if, for whatever reason, the party had to find a replacement? In many ways this seems a more remote possibility – Cameron’s made progress for his party in the polls and at forty is considerably younger than either Campbell or Brown. Also there’s…
Is Johnson suffering over his public school teacher comments? The deputy leadership candidate who had the most trouble getting the necessary 45 nominations to get on the ballot, Hilary Benn, is continuing to attract the money on the Betfair market and now stands at his tightest price yet – 1.32/1. As the chart shows there has been a big turnaround in the past week with interest moving away from the Education Secretary, Alan Johnson, who chalked up the biggest slate…
What do we think of Cameron-Osborne’s latest wheeze? Perhaps the most interesting political piece in an otherwise boring lot of Sunday papers is an article by Melissa Kite in the Sunday Telegraph in which she quotes from a secret campaign report prepared for the Tory leadership on the May 3rd outcome. The document concludes “…. that a strategy of not campaigning negatively against the Liberal Democrats, but rather appearing to agree with them on key issues, has been vindicated. The…