Will they cope as the pressure builds up? Yet again Gordon and his team are having their weekend spoilt by a hostile story about a past action by the Chancellor from a part of the media empire that they used to think of as being supportive. Today in the Sunday Times it’s Gordon’s decision to flog off half of Britain’s gold reserves in 1999 that comes under scrutiny. Unfortunately, as the paper observes, the price of gold has trebled in…
Are both Labour and the Tories be doing better than the surveys suggest? With the Scottish elections less than three weeks away and almost all the polls pointing to the SNP finishing up as top party in the Scottish Parliament it is perhaps worth looking at the record of polling in Scotland. For as the above table on how the pollsters fared in 2003 illustrates there is a strong tendency for all the firms to over-state the SNP vote. Could…
Tuesday 17th April – National Liberal Club – 3pm – 7pm Harriman House, publishers of Mike’s book, are offering a bottle of champagne to whoever gets closest to guessing the amount of the advance to Tony Blair for his political memoirs. Entry is free. Just email me at arklebar@talktalk.net. If you want a copy of the book to collect at the Launch, you can get it for the knock down price of £10 by contacting Tom Orchard through this link….
A Guide to the Local Elections (Part I) – The Background On May 3rd, approximately 10,500 council seats (including by-elections) will be contested in England, and another 1,100 in Scotland. In England, 154 District Councils and 25 Unitary Authorities have all-out elections, while the 36 Metropolitan Boroughs, 20 Unitary Authorities, and 77 Districts are electing one third of their seats. The 32 Scottish Authorities have all out elections, although they will change from first past the post, to election by…
Is there money to be made looking for short-term movements? After the May 3rd elections at least one other spread-betting firm will be offering a general election seat market to run alongside that from Spreadfair (see latest price above) on how many MPs each of the main parties will get next time. If the next election follows previous ones then this form of betting and these prices will play a key part in the next two years or so. For…
The Guardian steps up the pressure with today’s main splash With just four weeks to go to May 9th – one of the the dates being touted for Tony Blair’s historic exit announcement – the Guardian ratchets up the anti-Brown coronation rhetoric with its front page lead this morning. Under the headline “Blairite plot to lure Miliband into leadership contest” the paper’s Patrick Wintour reports that MPs would be encouraged to declare their support for the environment secretary on the…
Will Bescanot prevent Sego getting to the final run-off? This is Olivier Besancenot, the 33 year old postman who might have a crucial part to play in the French presidential election a week on Sunday. He’s standing for the Ligue communiste révolutionnaire (LCR), the French section of the Fourth International and five years ago he gained 1.2 million votes or 4.25% of the vote. This was several times the gap that the far right leader, Le Pen, had over the…
How will the betting exchange settle the departure date market? Anybody who had money on last November’s US MidTerms Senate market with Betfair will know what happens when the rules are not tied down tight enough. Then Betfair settled the election on the basis of a tie even though the actual outcome was that the Democrats took control of the Senate. Then the problem was the position of two senators who had not gone into the election as Democratic candidates…