This announcement by John Swinney feels very strange, the voting system at Holyrood was set up to ensure no party won a majority and in the six Holyrood elections only once has a party won a majority and that was in 2011 when Alex Salmond led the SNP. For a variety of reasons John Swinney is no Alex Salmond and even with an increasingly divided Unionist opposition I am struggling to see how the SNP win a majority next year…
Last week the Online Safety Act came into force and as long predicted it is a bloody mess as we can see social media companies such as Twitter having to censor content regarding the act which is an Orwellian nightmare, the screenshot above shows a YouGov tweet having to be hidden. The Spectator magazine champions itself as a bastion of free speech, I hope some of their journalists focus on the problems of the online safety act. Their editor is…
Just three and a half more years of President Trump! (Assuming the 22nd Amendment can’t be undone by Executive Order, of course. I mean, perhaps they meant consecutive terms, and just forgot to put the word in there. The master of originalism (when it’s convenient) – Clarence Thomas – might certainly go for that. Anyway. The midterms approach. In just a year and a bit. And midterms are usually a referendum on the incumbent. So, how’s President Trump doing? In…
It’s usually about the economy, and the latest herald from the IMF is bad news for Labour as the screenshot from The Guardian shows. If Reeves follows the IMF’s suggestions then Labour’s popularity will sink lower. TSE
At the 2017 and 2019 elections Labour massively outnumbered the Tories in terms of members but Corbyn still managed to lose both elections and oversaw Labour’s worst election defeat since 1983 so there should be no automaticity that the new party’s membership means an election victory. I suspect at next year’s election Your Party will win fewer seats than the seats they will cost Labour. TSE
I know it is gauche to keep on pointing out your successful tips but back in February I advised PBers to back Kemi Badenoch be Tory leader on the 21st of June 2025 at the stonking odds of 1/12 based on the missive of Nadine Dorries (and apologies to all those people whose lives no longer make any sense following the revelation than Nadine Dorries was wrong.) My view is Kemi Badenoch will be replaced next summer after she takes…
It’s easy to laugh at the inauspicious start Jeremy Corbyn & Zarah Sultana have made but long term they could cause Labour problems. Today Ipsos have reported Sir Keir Starmer has worse net ratings than Jeremy Corbyn so it is possible the new party picks up a substantial number of disaffected number of voters. The new party is going to have more MPs than Reform right now so that will also cause them to get more airtime than Corbyn &…
William Hill have this market up and the talk about Donald Trump running for a third time, many expect the Trump enabling majority on SCOTUS to somehow parse the constitution to say Trump would be eligible. I don’t expect they will but if they did I suspect they would parse the constitution to say Barack Obama is ineligible to run for a third term such is my (lack of) faith in SCOTUS. Another reason why I think this bet is…