And Starmer has a net approval lead of 10% There’s a new poll out from R&W of forty ‘Red Wall’ seats. All but one of them went Tory at GE2019 with the only exception, Hartlepool, being gained in the 2020 by-election. What is interesting here is that Reform UK, previously known as the Brexit Party, came third in these seats at GE2019 with 6.5% of the vote so almost no change in this survey. On leader approval, in these seats…
I have finally found a Brexit benefit. No, really. But first, the journey. For someone trained at Goldmans and The Children’s Investment Fund, Sunak is remarkably lacking in ruthlessness. He had a wonderful opportunity to present himself as a clean break with the seediness and shameful self-interest of the Boris years. He could, for instance, have put the ethics advisor on a statutory footing, given him or her the right to start investigations without being asked, differentiated himself from his…
This word cloud issued this afternoon by the pollster Redfield and Wilton makes a very strong point in a clear way. It is very hard to work out what Starmer stands for in terms of policy. While this might give a bit of comfort to the Tories who are seeing the massive LAB leads continue I wonder whether it actually matters. The point about the next general election is the that voters appear to have abandoned the Tories in sufficient…
We are getting to that time when possible contenders for next year’s White House race start putting there hats into the ring and indicating that they might be making a formal bid for the nomination of their parties. The Republican contest has been partly hit by the fact that Donald Trump has already stated that he will be standing. This makes it significantly harder for other potential runners to go forward but one who appears to be making a move…
The extraordinary thing about today is that Sunak has not yet acted on Zahawi. He’s still there doing heaven knows what damage to his party. One of the things about being a leader is that you have to have it in yourself to sack those of your team when the need arises. The first objective for the Prime Minister is to maintain the reputation of his government and allowing this story to dominate the news yet again isn’t very smart….
I’ve got a hospital appointment today so there will be no more updates from me until I return. This is my main focus at the moment. Mike Smithson
Good question. In a week when we’ve learnt that a Met officer known as “Bastard Dave” by his colleagues was left uninvestigated on 9 separate occasions when allegations were made, why did those colleagues and his bosses do nothing and say nothing? How is it possible that people turn a blind eye to what is being said and done in front of them, the nature of the people they associate with, listen to and, all too often, enable? By their…
This morning Ipsos issued their January leader ratings and as can be seen in the chart above the numbers are not very good for Boris Johnson. There is one figure in British politics who attracts more negatives than Johnson, Corbyn, who is simply no longer relevant and I’m not even sure without checking whether he is still a member of the parliamentary Labour Party. Johnson attracts very significant negatives and this, I would suggest, rules out him returning to the…