Above is the Smarkets betting market on who will be the prime minister after the next general election. As can be seen punters are still very strongly with Starmer while Sunak is down as a 23% chance. Clearly there is a very long way to go but Sunak’s prospects don’t look good given how poorly the party has been performing in the opinion polls. There has been some improvement but we need to see what happens in the next few…
The US mid-term elections, taking place a week tomorrow, look as though they’re going to be very tight indeed. The Republicans appear certain to take the House of Representatives but in the Senate it is a completely different picture and there’s a good chance that the Democrats will be able to hold on to control of the Senate. At the moment the Democratic-Republican split in the Senate is 50-50 which means that the Vice President Kamala Harris has the casting…
Although things are slightly better on the poll chart for the Tories the party still has very substantial double-digit deficits to make-up if it is to stand any chance at all at the next election of remaining in power. On the face of it this looks impossible. Sunak has got into a bit of a mess with his Home Sec appointment and that is going to take some explaining. Best poll for the party since Sunak took over was Opinium…
The sure way of knowing that the Tories are in serious trouble is when they they seek to associate Starmer with his predecessor Corbyn. Even Sunak got into the act at his first PMQs. Back at GE2019 a strategy of reminding voters of the Corbyn connection played a big part in Johnson’s victory but it is much harder to get it to resonate now. Time has moved on. I just wonder whether Labour could use the same approach reminding voters…
This betting opportunity from Smarkets is worth looking at, the market is about a Tory MP defecting to Labour by the end of the year, my hunch is plenty of you will fancy a seven per cent return in just over two months. I wonder if the value is with yes, the grim reality for Tory MPs is that the smallest Labour lead this month is a mere 16%, if you want to save your career the best option is…
This story is genuinely jaw dropping Liz Truss’s personal phone was hacked for top-secret information by suspected Russian agents, according to the Mail on Sunday. The attackers are said to have gained access to details of negotiations with international allies, as well as private messages exchanged with her close friend Kwasi Kwarteng. The hack was uncovered during the Tory leadership campaign this summer, while Ms Truss was foreign secretary but the details were suppressed by then prime minister Boris Johnson and Simon…
An attack on the spouse of the 2nd in line to the White House is not trivial I sometimes despair at what has happened to American politics since Trump won the election in 2016. To try to trivialise the attack on the husband of Nancy Pelosi in this way is beyond the pale especially as it took place only a week and a half before the MidTerms on November 8th. Fox News should be ashamed because it is almost as…
Ipsos aren’t the only pollsters to find support/opinions on Brexit being very low. I take the view that people saying Brexit is going badly/viewed negatively is not synonymous with rejoining however I recall a conversation I had with a Brexiteer in the run up to the referendum who took the view that if the UK voted to Leave and the country ultimately decided Brexit was a mistake they would vote to overturn it. Unless something fundamentally changes I suspect support/approval…