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How damaging were Cherie’s alleged remarks? After watching and re-watching the vast amount of material coming out of Manchester I’ve come to the conclusion that the real problem with Gordon is that he cannot “do” sincerity. The world “knows” that he was behind the “rolling resignation” plan to oust Tony earlier in the month that it is stretching credulity to it absolute limits for him to be going on the platform talking about the “great privilege” of working for all…

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Gamblers not convinced so the Chancellor’s odds move out The chart shows the changes during the past six hours in the Gordon Brown price for the Labour leadership. Mike Smithson

How much of ICM’s and Luntz’s findings are still relevant? If Alan Johnson was going to have any chance in the Labour leadership race he needed a poll boost from something like the Frank Luntz focus groups or the online session carried out by ICM and reported in the Guardian this morning. At this stage he needs something that will give him the status of a challenger. For his problem is his very low public profile and the only way…

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How the political world has changed in the past twelve months With Gordon Brown due to make what’s being described as the speech of his career at Labour’s conference at Manchester GMEX centre today it’s perhaps worth underlining how the political world has been turned upside-down in the past 12 months. This is how things looked exactly a year ago today on September 25th 2005. On this day a year ago the prices on the Tory leadership on the Betfair…

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Meet the man who could decide the next Prime Minister With today’s YouGov poll in the Sunday Times reflecting a cut-back in the Tory lead and further unease amongst voter towards Gordon Brown a major hurdle in his campaign to get to Number 10 might be a film tomorrow night on Newsnight. Then he’s to feature in a controversial focus group conducted by the US pollster, Frank Luntz. The programme has the Chancellor being compared with Alan Johnson, John Reid,…

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So what will be at stake in next May’s elections? Next year, there will be local elections in 345 local authorities in England and Scotland. In total, around 12,000 council seats, more than half the total, are being fought. Year two of a Parliament usually produces worse local election results for the governing party than year one. In both 1999, and 2003, the Labour vote share was 2-3% lower than in the preceding year. If that is again the case…

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Why is it being unfriendly to the Chancellor? One of the problems of reading the newspapers online is that although the words might be the same the overall impact can be very different in the print edition. Yesterday’s reporting of the Guardian ICM poll was a classic example. Taking up almost the entire front page running across five columns the headline ran “Brown feels the Cameron effect”. The main numbers were featured nearly half an inch big and were overlaid…

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Could there ever be a Liberal Democrat Prime Minister? Ming Campbell talked bravely this week about taking the Lib Dems from a party of opposition to a party of government. A few rare Lib Dem loyalists aside, no-one seriously believes that the party might win the next general election. At Betfair, you can get odds of 75-1 against the Lib Dems being the largest party or winning an overall majority in the next election – and only £2000 has been…

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