Are Labour MPs fearful about Gordon? The Tory party, as in the poster above, might have called on the electorate to “burst Blair’s bubble” in the 2001 General Election campaign but they lost and lost again. Now in spite of the appalling headlines there does not seem much Labour pressure for him to go. From this distance the Tory strategy behind the poster looks questionable. For all it did was to highlight what has proved to be one of Labour’s…
HOW BADLY WILL LABOUR DO ON MAY 4TH? Labour is in the fortunate position of being expected to do badly in the local elections on May 4th. Anything other than a complete disaster can be portrayed as a success by Labour’s spin-doctors. So will Labour face a complete disaster, on a par with the wipe-outs of 1968, or 1976-1978? In fact, this is unlikely. In 1968, Labour were reduced to 350 councillors in London (compared to 1,400 Conservatives). In the…
Darling now favourite to be next Chancellor Given the 0.33/1 price tag on Gordon Brown being the next Labour leader a more interesting market for those turned off by such tight prices is on who will be his replacement as Chancellor. The above chart shows the implied probability of the two front-runners, Alastair Darling and Ed Balls based on best betting prices. Apart from a shot period immediately after David Cameron’s Tory leadership victory when George Osborne came into the…
Should the “men in grey suits do their duty”? After all the pressure on Tony Blair over the “loans for honours” row yesterday’s budget must have felt like a welcome respite. But this morning the left-wing magazine, the New Statesmen, joins the growing list of newspapers and magazines which are calling for an early Tony Blair departure. This is not yet available online but according to Newsnight it says that “the men in grey suits must do their duty” –…
There’s been very little reaction on the various betting markets to today’s Budget. The only real movement was on the Tories for the General Election and whether Tony Blair will survive another 21 months. As the chart illustrates the immediate reaction was that the chances of Blair staying until the end of next year declined sharply immediately after Gordon Brown sat down but prices recovered soon afterwards. On the who will win most seats General Election market there was a…
Whose career prospects will look better tonight? This afternoon’s budget looks set to become the first one for many decades when there’ll be almost as much interest in the response of the Leader of the Opposition as in the contents of the Chancellor’s statement itself. For this will be the first time that David Cameron has faced Gordon Brown across the floor of the House in what is likely to be a foretaste of things to come. How will Brown’s…
The bad headlines are barely having an impact Even though he is under the most intensive media pressure the detailed numbers, just out, from Sunday’s YouGov poll show that those planning to vote Labour are overwhelmingly loyal to the triple General Election winner Tony Blair. A total of 85% think Tony Blair is doing well in the job – only two points below the way Tory supporters are rating David Cameron. The Labour supporters disagree by 41-34 with the suggestion…
HOW DO PARTIES CHANGE? “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?†A: Only one. But the lightbulb has to *want* to change. It’s my second-favourite light bulb joke (I’ll work the favourite in later), but I wanted to introduce a thread on why political parties change, and how, and why not. The first thing to bear in mind is that people generally join political parties because they like them as they are. Sometimes people join because…