The main story on the front page of The Times this morning is a piece about Jeremy Hunt who was the health secretary in Theresa May’s government and of course, was the one who reached the final two in the leadership election 3 years ago. Unlike colleagues at Westminster who are ministers, Hunt is in a much better position to take initiatives like this one and he must be pleased about the way the Times is covering it this morning….
One thing that I don’t think Johnson and team don’t fully appreciate is the big role Joe Biden and other US politicians played in the Anglo-Iriish agreement in the late 1990s which just about stopped decades of the “troubles” in Ireland. It all might seem a long time ago. The changes announced this afternoon have the UK breaking the international treaty which brought sought to bring peace to Ireland. The UK will have few friends in taking this action. Biden…
This was a CON GE2019 gain on 39% of the vote Anderson’s comment in the Commons on the cookery skills of poor people are getting a lot of negative coverage in the media and I really wonder if he will later see this as a gaffe that cost him his political career. His observations to fellow MPs are surely going to be used against him in what had traditionally been a tight LAB-CON marginal. At GE2017 the LAB majority was…
One thing that really boosts Johnson in his current position is that there is no obvious person there to replace him as we see from the betting chart above. This of course all changed with the massive decline of the Sunak in March and since then no one has really emerged to perhaps take his place. As can be seen in the betting there are 5 contenders who are rated as having an 8% or greater chance of becoming the…
Leader candidates have to be MPs I have made this point repeatedly before but nothing drives me mad more at the moment than those who are betting on Andy Burnham as the successor to Keir Starmer. Burnham is of course the mayor of Greater Manchester and the only way he could be nominated for the Labour leadership is if he became an MP by the time of the next leadership election. Assuming SKS does go some friendly Labour MP might…
But will other pollsters back it up? This is by far the best poll for the Tories for sometime and as ever the question is whether it is an outlier or not. Other recent polls have had with much bigger margins including R&W where all the fieldwork took place yesterday. Time will tell. Mike Smithson
Perhaps the best analysis is in the Financial Times which notes under the heading – Keir Starmer’s gamble could be the making of him. If he escapes a fine — as he seems sure he will — he can show himself to be a man of principle. He will be defined in the public mind as someone who believes in obeying the rules and will stand in sharp contrast to a prime minister who does not. He is the dry…