What will politics be like in a world without Blair? We have known for months that this was coming but still the hard fact that Tony Blair will not be Prime Minister from June 27th still comes as a shock. Politics have been so framed for so long by Blair that’s it’s going to be hard adjusting to what things will be like without him. Will this mean that Labour can start to rebuild its popularity or has Blair been…
Uncertainty over the betting market continues until the last For months many have been saying on the site that the terms of the Blair departure date market added a level of real confusion so that what punters might be betting on is not when he is going but how the betting exchange interprets the rules that it itself set. Given that all the consensus is that at lunchtime in his Sedgefield constituency Blair will announce that he is stepping down…
How will this move in the Brown era? On the eve of the Tony Blair’s historic announcement the table shows how punters were assessing the chances of the main parties for the next general election in the Spreadfair commons seats market. In this form of betting you buy or sell seat numbers and you can trade them day in and day out right until the final election is known maybe three years hence. You also do not need to tie…
Philippe almost spot-on in 2nd Round Competition Following Sarkozy’s win over Royal by 53.06% to 46.94, winning 73 départements to her 33, the results of the pb.com 2nd round competition are shown above. The top five players all managed to get their predictions within 0.1% of the actual result. Also, the tie-breaker was needed to separate second and third place. Final ratification of the election results is awaited from the Constitutional Council, but the Interior Ministry figures are unlikely to…
Will the Oscar-winning ex-VP take up the debate challenge? The current third favourite in the betting on who will be the Democratic nominee in next year’s White House Race is the failed candidate from 2000 who has yet to enter the race. Yet still the money continues to be put on Al Gore and he’s how at a not-so-generous 5.6/1. For the former Vice-President and failed candidate in 2000 has taken on a new lease of life with the climate…
Privately commissioned survey brings more bad news A YouGov survey commissioned by the Harriet Harman campaign for the deputy leadership has just been published and shows a two point drop in support for Ming’s party. Although no top line figures were issued an extrapolation from the detailed data shows the following shares with changes on the last survey from the pollster eleven days ago CON 37% (nc): LAB 32% (nc): LD 16% (-2). The survey was carried out from Tuesday…
Is it going to be a choice between the two ex-MEPs? Whether Ming Campbell or the party hierarchy like it or not the fight for the leadership has already begun. For a contest is not too far off – at the most three years away and possibly a lot lot earlier. For whatever reasons question marks hang over the Edinburgh QC and former Olympic sprinter and Thursday’s disappointing election performances only underline his difficulties. As we saw in the aftermath…
The latest thoughts from our mystery Labour MP With the elections behind us, Labour attention will shift rapidly to the change in leadership. It’s now generally accepted that there will either be no leadership contest or a Brown-McDonnell contest. There have been manoeuvres behind the scenes on the union side over this. The TGWU and Amicus leaderships see the McDonnell challenge as a distraction from the job of getting a good start with Gordon, but many activists disagree, and if…