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When an organisation in trouble loses its leadership, there is a tendency for the new management to embark on a reorganisation. This is usually a mistake. It’s not that reorganisation isn’t needed. It’s rather that it should not be the priority. It destabilises and distracts from the work which is needed. So it is with the Met. There are big questions to be asked about its responsibilities, about whether counter-terrorism should be hived off, about how fraud is tackled and…

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New Savanta-ComRes polling issued this evening has more bad news for Johnson who is still the occupant at Number 10. Almost half, 45% that Rishi Sunak would be better at managing the economy as PM than Johnson is, according to the new polling. The figure rises to half of GE2019 CON voters 49% who say the same of Sunak, with just 21%saying that Johnson is better at it. And, almost half of Labour voters from 2019 -47% also say that…

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One of the things that surprisingly we do not see much speculation about is when the next general election will be held. Whenever people talk about the date they tend to assume that it will be in 2024 but looking at what previous Prime Ministers with big majorities have done the timing tends to be no more than 4 years after the previous one. Boris Johnson or whoever is Tory leader effectively has it in their gift to choose a…

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The event will be held at the offices of Smarkets at Katherine Docks close to the Tower of London, from 6 30pm to 9.pm. The address is 1 Commodity Quay, St Katharine Docks, London E1W 1AZ. Phone 020 7617 7413. These are nice offices overlooking the Dock. The guestlist includes pollsters and some other faces from the world of politics and forecasting as well as PBers. Smarkets will be providing drinks and some nibbles. We are grateful to Matthew Shaddick, Head…

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Waiting for a Tory VoNC is like waiting for bloody Godot. On and on it goes. Still, on the (questionable) assumption that there will be a vacancy before the days get shorter, it might be worth considering one MP who has not yet figured in any speculation, possibly because he has never expressed any public interest in the role. Nor has anyone else suggested him. The single biggest factor affecting any choice depends on the manner of the PM’s departure…

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An upcoming John Major speech said to be “highly critical” Like many PBers I am completely unable to forecast what is going to happen to Boris Johnson in the next week or so. This is currently the biggest UK political betting market and unusually for me I have not been confident enough to have a punt either way. This is all totally in the hands of Tory MPs and what they say in public has to be treated with a…

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Rather than highlight a single poll from a single pollster I like to look at them in context which is why I have reproduced above the latest polling table from Wikipedia. Given how up to the first week in November the Tories were enjoying polls leads of up to 13% the turnaround has been quite remarkable. The change all started with Johnson’s attempt to sideline the standards committee judgment on Owen Paterson – a move that heralded a massive change…

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The worrying finding for Number 10 is that more than half of GE2019 CON voters agree with this. Worrying because this comes at a time when Johnson is under a lot of pressure which has been exacerbated by the number of his senior staff who have quit their jobs in protest. And worrying too because ultimately his fate is in the hands of CON MPs who will look at developments and might ponder whether their chances of holding their seats…

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