Can Le Pen eat into the rightist vote? The above story shows what could be the final attack by the far-right Le Pen and on Nicolas Sarkozy as France prepares for the first round of voting on Sunday. For if the FN leader is to do as well as he did last time and get into the final run off he has to take votes from the front-runner who continues to hold up reasonably well in the polls. This is…
Can either party get anybody to take on Ken? Tonight’s extraordinary story about the joint Lib Dem and Tory approach to Greg Dyke to run against Ken Livingstone for the London mayoralty shows what a mess the two main opposition parties have got over next year’s London Mayoral elections. For both of them have had real problems finding decent candidates who are prepared to give up maybe 10 months for a prolonged campaign up to May next year. Nobody of…
The book that came out of the blog What the publishers, Harriman House, are describing as the “first book on political betting” was published yesterday and a number of site users have already received their copies. Those who were at the party were able to buy it at a special rate and by clicking the picture above a good deal is available. If this is a success then it’s possible that there could be an annual publication with updates and…
New poll has her neck and neck with Sarkozy With just four days to go before the French Presidential election a new poll has Socialist candidate Ségolène Royal and Right-wing front runner Nicolas Sarkozy both on 50% should the two of the make the run off of the top two candidates. Sarkozy, however, is still in the lead for the first round of voting. The pollster, CSA, has been giving slightly better figures for the Socialist candidate than the other…
The price movement says it all. Now that David Miliband appears to have ruled himself out the prospect of Brown taking the leadership and becoming Prime Minister without a serious challenge looks even more likely tonight. The latest (2300) price is 0.15/1. Mike Smithson
But are the Labour succession details being held over? The Times Populus survey for April is out this morning and shows that Labour is at its lowest ever level with the pollster. The only consolation for Blair-Brown is that the deficit behind the Tories has remained the same. The headline figures are with comparisons on last month: CON 37%(-1): LAB 29%(-1): LD 20% (+2). There’s no sign in the report of responses to the named leader question – how people…
Do his Brown coronation calls look like sour grapes? One of the features that distinguishes leaders from normal politicians is their ability to seize the moment and go for it when the opportunity occurs. It is about having the courage to risk failure and take your chance however remote. If by any chance that Gordon doesn’t get it this time then he might rue the moment after Neil Kinnock stepped down when he stood aside for John Smith. Michael Portillo…
Is Brown-Miliband contest looking more likely? Over the past month all the indications from the Gordon Brown camp suggested that they were totally opposed to a contested election for the Labour leadership and everything was being designed to give the Chancellor his coronation. We had Margaret Beckett and Peter Hain making statements suggesting it was almost being anti-Labour for anybody to consider fighting against Gordon. There was also the reported plan of Brown’s campaign manager, Jack Straw, to close down…