So Johnson and others in Downing Street appear to have survived being fined for not following the strict regime that they set up to fight COVID and punters make it almost an evens chance he’ll make it through to 2024 as PM. Looking at other potential hurdles that the PM has to surmount if he is to stay in his job the next one is set to be the period after this year’s local elections. These take place just three…
Do they support their lockdown-busting boss or not? It has now been nearly three hours since the new came out that Johnson, Sunak and Carrie are amongst those being fined by the police for not following the strict Covid lockdown rules by attending a party in May 2020. Inevitably each will be pressed to have view because this is one they cannot duck. My guess is that each is trying to work out how this is going to impact on…
Even the strongest supporters of jury trials accept that sometimes juries get it wrong. Or, rather, the prosecution and defence cases and/or the conduct of the trial were so poor that the jury could not help but come to the wrong (guilty) verdict. So there is nothing wrong – if you believe that a miscarriage of justice has occurred – to campaign for its overturning. If people, including MPs, had not done this – many infamous miscarriages of justice (from…
A chance for a LAB to win back a red wall seat? This afternoon’s conviction of the man elected at GE2019 as the Tory MP for Wakefield opens the possibility of there being a parliamentary by-election in the seat . The MP, Imran Ahmad-Khan who now sits as an independent, has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenager and whether he remains an MP is dependent on the level of sentence he receives. If he gets a prison term…
The French election rather overshadowed the latest Political Pulse from Ipsos (now without the MORI tag) and above are its latest favourability ratings. This is how Sunak’s have moved over the past year. Essentially Sunak has now moved to the same sort of favorability ratings that other leading Conservatives have been getting. One thing is for sure – the Rishi exceptionalism of earlier in the year has come to an end.
With £5m so far traded on the main Betfair French election market alone this looks set to be the biggest political betting event of the year. Only the US midterms in November might top it. As can be seen by the chart Le Pen reached her betting peak just before the first projected results came in. Since then it has been downhill. Compared with the final French polls Macron appears to have done better than that predicted by almost every…
So as predicted its Macron v Le Pen yet again after Macron wins by a slightly bigger margin than expected We now move to the final runoff two weeks on from today. My big longshot bet for the final two, Melenchon, got pretty close but not quite enough. My guess is that the lion’s share of his supporters will back the incumbent in the next round.