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…
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…
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…
How a CON leadership contest might work out As I have stated before I have a £20 bet at 250/1 with Ladbrokes placed in November 2019 bet on Sunak being the next PM and have been trying to think through the dynamics of a CON leadership contest. I am still not convinced that Boris Johnson is going to be ousted by his parliamentary party – the body that has total power here because of its ability to no-confidence the PM….
Today scenes in the Westminster area when police had to rescue Starmer from anti-lockdown protestors is the latest development in the Saville slur saga which began with Johnson at PMQs at the end of January. For the driving force of the crowd’s apparent anger was an attack on Starmer over the Saville case when he was DPP. This was even though this has been widely rebuked. What has struck me as worrying for Number 10 is the number of Tory…
For a change let’s end the dark blue strangehold With Johnson under police investigation we might be only days or possibly or just a few months away from a Tory leadership election and inevitably we are starting to see leadership speculation. Currently, Chancellor Sunak is favourite with Foreign Secretary Truss second favourite and the loser to Johnson in 2019, Hunt third favourite. What the four have in common is that they are all alumni of the University of Oxford. This…
You know you’ve hit rock bottom when Boris Johnson, that paragon of faithfulness, and his allies accuse you of disloyalty but that’s where Rishi Sunak finds himself this weekend. Following the Savile row Sunak rightly said he wouldn’t have said the disgraceful comments that Boris Johnson came out with some of the cabinet have become a bit vengeful towards Sunak, with at least three cabinet ministers want Sunak sacked, they are intent on belittling Sunak. ‘Cabinet ministers have turned on…
On the BBC this morning Kwasi Kwarteng was asked about the statement made by the PM in the Commons this week that crime had gone down by 14%. As has been quickly pointed out, this is a statistical sleight of hand – or a flat out lie, as those of us not educated at Eton, Cambridge and Harvard Universities then working as a columnist at the The Daily Telegraph and a financial analyst at an investment bank might put it….