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This morning’s shock news that Nicola Sturgeon is stepping down as the Scottish first minister and leader of the SNP inevitably reduces what chances there were of an early second independence referendum. The move also makes it a bit easier for Scottish labour in a UK general election. It will be recalled how Scottish politics was totally changed by the initial independence referendum in September 2014. At the 2010 General Election LAB managed to secure 41 of Scotland’s 59 seats….

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The SNP leader and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is expected to resign at a press conference which is scheduled for 11 this morning. This follows a period when her leadership has come under pressure over the way that her party pushed through the highly controversial gender recognition Bill through the Scottish Parliament. This was set to lead to a massive confrontation with Westminster because the Sunak government was totally opposed to the measure. Mike Smithson

But is this taking it too far? The Smarkets chart shows how the betting on the next general election outcome has been moving and as can be seen there has been a sharpish switch to a Labour majority. This is almost totally in reaction to the opinion polls and also the three by-elections in Labour seats that we’ve had since the start of December. The big thing in British politics in the last 4 months has been the arrival of…

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The survey of Scottish voters was carried out by Lord Ashcroft polls

What makes this interesting is that Nikki Haley was the Ambassador to the United Nations who was appointed by Trump when he was President. So she is taking on her former boss who has already declared. In the betting she has moved sharply and is now 12/1 on Betfair for the nomination. I rate her highly and believe she will give Trump a. run for his money. Mike Smithson

I have been trying to envisage the electoral outcome under which Starmer doesn’t become PM. Let’s assume for a moment that there is a big recovery for the Tories and they come out of the general election as top party but below the threshold required for them to have a majority. By my reckoning if the Tory losses are more than 47 seats Starmer could become Prime Minister of a minority government even if his party came second on seats…

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One of the things we have not focused on that much is how vulnerable the Tories could be in seats mainly in the home counties that voted Remain and where the Lib Dems can establish themselves as the main challenger. The Survation poll above looks very worrying for former minister John Redwood and Sunak’s party. As well as trying to defend seats in the Red wall that were taken from Labour last time there are perhaps two to three dozen…

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If he runs it will be a vanity trip There have been number of polls like this on whether Joe Biden should go for a second term and in almost all cases the outcome has been the same – voters don’t want him to run. Yet the 80 year old seems absolutely committed to putting his hat into the ring. If he ignores the polling and finds himself the losing nominee he’ll get the blame for generations for allowing the…

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