What will be the eventual shape of the new parliament in Berlin? Today’s results from the German General Election have completely blown apart what the opinion polls were predicting. The final surveys had the CDU/CSU on 41.5-42% with the SPD on 32.5-33% and the FDP at 7.5-8%. Yet from the results that have been coming in all evening it looks as though the CDU/CSU will finish up on 35.4%; the SPD on 34.2% and the FDP on 10%. So for…
Tory Leadership – RED Davis: BLUE Cameron: BLACK Clarke: GREEN Fox ..and a “no-brainer Tory leadership bet Our updated chart showing the implied probabilities of the front-runners in the Tory leadership contest based on the best betting prices available will provide considerable cheer to David Davis supporters – particularly his web cheer leader, the so-called Wat Tyler, who asked specifically for it to be published. The Ken Clarke progress has faltered in the past few days following Davis’s big speech…
Polls show it could still go either way With just one day to go before the Germans vote in their General Election a new poll shows that Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU might just get enough votes which when combined with the FPD could squeeze a majority by a whisker. Other polls have her just under-shooting and the final margin might be fractions of a point either way and there are still a lot of voters who are undecided. German opinion polls…
Does the party want to make it harder for the leader to be replaced? We might get a better idea about Charles Kennedy’s standing amongst Lib Dem activists following a decision to ask next week’s party conference to change the rules to make it harder for somebody to mount a challenge for the party leadership. In what could be a dangerous move for Kennedy delegates will be asked to change the current system where the support of two of its…
Is the former spin-master just playing games? In a Labour view of the Tory leadership candidates in the Times this morning Alastair Campbell makes a scathing attack on Ken Clarke, dismisses David Cameron as a toff, and ends up concluding that David Davis will be the likely winner. It should be noted that Campbell and Davis are known to be on relatively good terms although the former Number 10 PR boss states that the Shadow Home Secretary is “.. is…
Is it feasible to think that Kennedy and Clarke/Davis could do a deal? With the party conference season due to open at the weekend in Blackpool the Lib Dem Campaign Chairman, Tim Razzell, has poured cold water on suggestions that the party could consider a deal with the Tories if the next General Election produced an inconclusive result. He was quoted by the BBC as saying he found it “almost impossible to believe” the Lib Dems could do a deal…
Will the PM just stand aside when Labour chooses who will follow him? With the renewed calls for Tony Blair to leave Number 10 earlier rather than later there’s a new focus on the Labour leadership which had subsided following the French referendum, the 2012 Olympic bid success and the London bombings. As well as the “go early” calls by trade union leaders there were reports at the weekend of ministers being confused about who to please – Tony or…
Could her coalition win after all? When we first covered the German General Election just seven weeks ago everything seemed rosy for the former physicist turned politician, Angela Merkel. At the time her CDU/CSU grouping was scoring 44% in the opinion polls and she looked set to be the next Chancellor with a coalition deal with the FDP, then rating at 7%. At the time Schroeder’s SPD was languishing on 26% and everything appeared to be fairly settled. It was…