17 months. That’s all it took, though to judge by the outraged comments from Ministers it may as well have been 17 centuries ago, so short are their memories. What happened 17 months ago that could possibly have any relevance today? On 8 September 2020 Brandon Lewis, then Northern Ireland Secretary, announced to the House of Commons that provisions in the Internal Markets Bill on Northern Ireland customs arrangements broke “international law in a very specific and limited way“. It…
It is being reported in the Telegraph that the Prime Minister has blocked the Maldon MP from being appointed head of OfCom because of the risk of losing the seat in a by-election. The figures from the last general election are in the Wikipedia table above. On the face of it this looks crazy given the sheer size of Whittingdale’s majority at GE2019. The seat went leave at the referendum with a 62% vote share and the proportion of graduates,…
But still no CON lead One of the current active betting markets has been on whether the Tories would take the lead in a published poll before March 31st. Well the time is running out and the latest poll from R&W carried out and published on Monday had LAB 5% ahead. The new Kantar poll which has LAB and CON level pegging was carried out from March 17th to the 21st so includes the day of the R&W survey. Generally…
The Betdata chart shows how those considered by punters as being in with a chance of becoming next PM have moved in the betting over the past three months. The big story is very clear. Chancellor Sunak who was rated by the betting markets as a 42% chance at the height of “Partygate” has now edged down to just a 21% one. He’s still favourite but nothing like as strong. Johnson has made it very clear that he won’t stand…
After the March budget a year ago Opinium found the Tory government had with a net plus six approving ministers’ economic handling. As can be seen from the chart the latest finding is for a net minus of 22%. So the total drop since last year is 28%.
I never know what to make of instant polling like the above from YouGov. Clearly it will take some time before the details of what Sunak announced this afternoon sink in and mostly what the sample responded is based on media responses. We have not got the details of the YouGov poll yet but my assumption that it is based on those on its panel who said that they had followed the statement and are thus in a position to…
Ahead of today's #SpringStatement 44% of the public tell @IpsosUK they are satisfied with the job Rishi Sunak is doing as Chancellor. – This compares to an average of 42% going back to 1976.– Quite something when 76% tell us they expect the economy to worsen in the coming year pic.twitter.com/jMWjFqoVaT — Keiran Pedley (@keiranpedley) March 23, 2022
We all know that there has not been a CON poll lead since the start of December and one of the current active betting markets is on whether such a move will happen in March. As I write it is 36% chance on Smarkets. What generally happens at budget time is that there is a lot of publicity for the Chancellor. For the two or three days after his big speech he and the government get a reasonable amount of…