The Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize

Who will be the 2006 laureate – or laureates? An interesting market which politicalbetting contributors were discussing yesterday for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, to be announced on 13 October. Like many of the bookies’ novelty markets, there’s room for oddsmakers to have some fun. One doubts much money is being taken on Hugo Chávez or Oprah Winfrey. The favourite, at 5/1 with Paddy Power, is Martti Ahtisaari (pictured), the former Social Democrat President of Finland who has taken various…

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Elephants in the conference room

Elephants in the conference room

The market is writing off the old men of the Parti Socialiste The British press has revived its irregular interest in French politics over the weekend, enjoying what can be painted as some bitchy speeches from the platform at the Socialist party’s “summer university” in La Rochelle. The ire of the party’s senior “elephants” is mostly aimed (or at least interpreted to be aimed) at Ségolène Royal (pictured). According to the polls, Royal is the runaway preference of the electorate…

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Labour’s NEC elections

Labour’s NEC elections

A guest contribution from Andrea At the beginning of August the Labour NEC election results for the CLPs division were announced. Members can elect six members to the party ruling body and 16 candidates were contesting the election: the two main slates, “Grassroots Alliance” (the Left wing slate) and “Labour First” (the so called “loyalist” slate), were joined in the race by a handful of independent candidates. The result showed 4 candidates (Black, Shawcroft, Willsman and Wolfgang) from Grassroots Alliance…

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Marvels of modern polling? Exit polls, part 1

Marvels of modern polling? Exit polls, part 1

Part 1 of a two-part guest series by Harry Hayfield. Part 2 can be found here. Exit polls came to fame in 1952 when following a long study of the American electorate, NBC fed the information into a computer and after a few moments said “Eisenhower to win”. As the results came in, the computer was proven right and the sceptics wrong. In our elections, exit polls have only really been around since 1970 when the BBC commissioned a poll…

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Byers: what was he thinking of?

Byers: what was he thinking of?

One of the bigger political stories in last Sunday’s press was Blairite former cabinet minister Stephen Byers‘s call in the Sunday Telegraph for Labour to abolish inheritance tax as “a penalty for hard work, thrift and enterprise”. Perhaps predictably, this didn’t go down well with Brownites; the Guardian reported Alastair Darling and other allies of the Chancellor as “stamping on” the idea, before, after or perhaps simultaneous with giving it a “blistering riposte”. In fact, almost no one at all…

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Sean Fear’s local elections column

Sean Fear’s local elections column

Universities are still hostile to the Tories In the days of Sir Maurice Bowra, C.S. Lewis, and J.R.R. Tolkien, it would have been hard to imagine Oxford as being anything other than a Conservative stronghold. Academics, students, and college servants were all overwhelmingly Conservative in their sympathies, and Conservatives dominated the City Council. Sadly, that has all changed. Mark Senior’s description of the Conservatives as a “minor party” in the City is all too true. The Conservatives don’t have a…

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Are these the chinks in Cameron’s armour?

Are these the chinks in Cameron’s armour?

The Tory leader’s strengths and weaknesses – Part 2 Following yesterday’s post on Cameron’s strengths today I look at some of the factors that are going to make David Cameron’s task that much harder. 1. The Shadow of Mrs Thatcher. For Cameron this is a double whammy. On one hand there are large sections of the electorate who might warm to the him but would never vote Tory because of continuing hostility caused by the Thatcher years. On the other…

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David Cameron – the strengths and the weaknesses

David Cameron – the strengths and the weaknesses

Part 1 – the polished presenter with female appeal? Before my main holiday I thought I’d pen out a couple of posts on THE political phenomenon of the past twelve months in British politics – David Cameron. Is the billing right that he’s the great saviour of his party or will the Cameron thing just fizzle out in a year or so and Labour will win their fourth term? My first part is on his strengths. First a couple of…

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