It was just 3 weeks ago today that Truss learned that she had become Tory leader and the successor to Johnson. In choosing her cabinet it was made clear that the main requirement was not that of being able to do the job but how loyal they had been to Truss during the leadership campaign. Inevitably this was going to lead to trouble. The amazing thing is that it all has happened so quickly, Her choice of Chancellor and allowing…
It can’t be long before we are hearing of letters being sent to Graham Brady. One of the self-inflicted problems that Truss has created is almost none of her team have any public standing. The time, surely, is running out for the woman who could only make third place in the MPs’ ballot. Mike Smithson
Regular PBers will recall that back in July I was suggesting that a Tory poll lead in September was a likely possibility because the new leader would get a bounce. The contest finished on September 5th and there was plenty of time I reasoned during the month for just one poll to put the Tories over the line The pollster I thought might be the one to have a blue lead was Opinium because of its weighting mechanism and how…
When Johnson was effectively sacked as Conservative leader and Prime Minister following the revolt by Tory MPs in July the widespread assumption was that he would leave politics and go and earn huge amounts of money as a columnist and guest speaker. The interesting thing is that what was predicted for Boris has not actually happened and he is still there playing an active role in politics and according to insiders looking to get his old job back. As the…
The 2022 Special Fiscal Operation delivered by Kwasi Kwarteng might be the most politically tone deaf budget in my lifetime if not longer. As well as being bad economically (just look at the increase on the cost of government borrowing) it writes Labour’s attack lines. In a cost of living crisis giving people earning over £155,000 per year tax cuts is really bad optics, and this budget is only likely to see growth in the Swiss and Italian economies. TSE
That chart that Ben Page has in his tweet is quite striking. In the last 42 years only two leaders of the opposition have led their parties their parties into government, unsurprisingly those two leaders are the top of these ratings. Sir Keir Starmer is more middling with his ratings indistinguishable from those who didn’t lead their parties into government, but does it matter? In one major respect it doesn’t, so long as Starmer’s ratings are better than the Prime…