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Above from BBC News are the final totals from last Thursday’s local elections. As can be seen the Tories lost the most councillors but the LDs not the official opposition got the most seats. For the LDs this comes 12 years after under Nick Clegg that the party entered into the coalition arrangement with the Tories something that proved to be a major negative in the period that followed. Thursday’s outcome and their Westminster by-election victories in Chesham & Amersham…

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I’m not keen on this betting market from Smarkets, despite the grim news from Andrew Bailey and the Bank of England earlier on this week. The Bank of England has warned that Britain is on the brink of a recession as the country is battered by a cost of living crisis that has sent inflation surging to a 40-year high. Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s Governor, said that sharply rising energy prices will inflict “hardship” on millions of consumers as it increased…

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At the start of 2022 I never expected to be writing a thread on a betting market on Sir Keir Starmer getting a penalty notice for breaking Covid-19 regulations, quite frankly Starmer seems a bit vanilla and boring to be breaking any rules but thanks to Smarkets you can bet on this market. That Starmer finds himself in this position represents quite the existential threat for him given the way he has rightly pilloried Boris Johnson for his parties in…

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Time to bet that there’ll be a confidence vote? What makes the aftermath of the local elections so dangerous for the prime minister is that the outcome was not predicted. The Tory losses were far in excess of what anybody thought was going to happen and it is going to take some time for this to be digested by the party. This is Johnson’s first major electoral setback and raises the question of whether he is the electoral asset the…

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Given that after yesterday’s locals the prime minister looks even stronger in his position there has been a marked change in the betting on when he will actually step down. At the same time in the successor betting, Starmer has edged up because it is looking even more likely that these two will still be there to fight the general election against each other whenever that happens between now and 2024. The next electoral hurdles will be the outstanding Tory…

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The big message from the local election results is that the Tories suffered a lot of losses, particularly in places in the South which the party once regarded as its homeland. Even before these elections, there was very little to indicate that LAB was heading for a majority. Quite simply the polls, now reinforced by the latest results, suggest that Johnson could lose power if there’s no major change of opinion before the general election but no LAB majority. The…

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