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One of the many good things Smarkets have done is regularly have a market up on opinion poll leads. With eight days left in February I can just about understand these odds but my inclination is to back a Conservative lead this month. If they follow their usual schedule I’d expect a YouGov poll later on this week and Opinium poll on Saturday, by happenstance they are the pollsters with the smallest Labour leads with leads of 4% and 3%…

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Sunak has been favourite for the Conservative leadership for so long now that it is almost becoming an established fact that this will eventually happen. But does he have the backing of enough MPs and is the betting price wrong? At the start of February when everything looked very bleak for Johnson many became convinced that we were about to see a confidence vote against the incumbent Prime Minister. But that didn’t happen and I wonder whether that was down…

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Keir Starmer has it in for Jeremy Corbyn. Ever since Corbyn was suspended from the Labour Party in October 2020, following the EHRC’s critical report into antisemitism complaints under his leadership*, he and his allies have insisted that this was just a cover by Starmer to force him out of the party. While his party membership was reinstated in November 2020, his Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) membership was not and he remains an independent MP to this day. Just because…

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Johnson’s doing 4% worse than Corbyn on the eve of GE2019 I am sure that just about all PBers are aware of my position that leader approval numbers are a better guide to the public mood than voting intention. Having been stuck in all day because of the storms I’ve been looking at historical ratings and have discovered that in the final Opinium polling before GE2019 Corbyn had a net approval rating of 24% approving and 54% disapproving – a…

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The above finding is from a new voting survey out from new pollster, Techne UK, that like other recent polls finds a drop in the LAB share. It has LAB 39% -2, CON 34% +1, LD 10%+ GRN 6% =. It is that finding highlighted above which focuses on one of the big dilemmas that Starmer faces – what should his party’s view be on Brexit. A real difficulty here is that his view about not going back is not…

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AS can be seen from the chart there has been a sharp decline in the next PM betting price of Chancellor Sunak on the Betfair betting exchange. This, I guess, is being driven by the growing realisation that there might not be an immediate vacancy. Interesting that Penny Mordaunt is now in sixth place. During the TMay years she was a full cabinet member serving as International Development Secretary and then Defence Secretary where she built a good reputation. She…

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In my view today’s news about an informal LAB/LD non-aggression pact has always been on the cards given the personalities of the two leaders. Davey wants a clearer run for his party in perhaps 30 CON held seats which mostly voted Remain and Starmer has his eyes on Number 10. My understanding is that both parties will still be fielding candidates in all the GB seats but will just run token campaigns in seats where the other party is the…

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It increasingly looks like Johnson will remain Just cast your mind back to the end of January when “partygate” was at its height and the prevailing assumption was that Johnson would not survive with the likely successor being Rishi Sunak. That’s not happened. Johnson set up the Gray investigation which was then taken up by the Met all taking the immediate sting out of the whole business. For the fact is that Johnson is going to fight hard to retain…

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