Is Simon Case the new Cressida Dick? The Civil Service has not been declared institutionally misogynist, racist or homophobic. Nor institutionally corrupt. But it has not been well led in recent years. Had Jeremy Heywood lived, he would have had serious questions to answer about the Greensill affair, though it is fair to note that he may have had good answers. Still, that whole episode does not reflect well on anyone involved: not the civil service nor the politicians nor…
Sunak appears to be struggling more than he was
Thanks to David Cowling for compiling the above tables which give a real sense of how the political environment has changed since 2019 when most of the seats up on Thursday were last fought. The fact that there’s a current average 15% lead compared with 4% four years ago suggests that Starner’s Labour should see a considerable number of gains from the Tories. I tend to regard LAB voting intention to signify being anti-Tory and that people will vote in…
Starmer’s approval rating up 5 Starmer maintains his “best PM” position Mike Smithson
Is the WH2024 nomination race now over? The big news in US politics over the past week has been the announcement by Joe Biden that he wants to seek a second term. If he was nominated and won he would be 86 years old at the end of his term. This is very much against public opinion in the US where voters across the board are opposed to such a move. A poll for Forbes found only 26% of respondents…
YouGov have done some analysis of the local elections which allows them to make the above predictions. Ladbrokes have markets up on who will control the below councils after Thursday’s elections, if you can spot some value let me know in the comments. TSE
Speaking to a Tory activist friend earlier on this week about how things are going on the campaigning front and they said that if the locals were solely about Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer then it wouldn’t be such a bad night for the Tories on Thursday which reflects the leader ratings which are better for the Tories than the headline voting intention figures, although last night’s Opinium might be a harbinger of that unravelling. However the rather large…
And Starmer’s leader ratings a net 15% ahead I tend to favour the surveys from the pollsters that have done at least one general election which is why Opinium gets more attention than those which started after GE2019. These latest numbers are good for Labour and bad for the Tories. We’ll get another view of public opinion from Thursday’s local elections. Mike Smithson