Smarkets have some very low liquidity markets on who will be Tory leader at the next general election but it chimes in with markets where punters think Kemi Badenoch is doomed where it is believed that senior members of Hezbollah and the IRFC have longer career prospects that Kemi Badenoch. I cannot see any value here, if it wasn’t for the time value of money backing Boris Johnson to not be Tory leader at the next election would be the…
I suspect it will be some time if the attack has sufficiently degraded Iran’s nuclear ambitions but I do expect a response from Iran. Trump may have done Starmer a favour based on the second tweet. TSE
This is the third in a series looking at the challenges and opportunities for the 7 main Great Britain parties. Today we will look at the emergence of Reform UK. Breadth vs depth It is worth comparing Reform with the LDs, as the two sharply contrast. Reform got a slightly higher share of the vote in 2024, but the LDs got many more seats. To understand why, we need to look at the distribution of votes for each party. Vote…
The heat has addled my brain today so please enjoy this shaggy dog story from Spain in lieu of a regular thread. TSE
Monday is the ninth anniversary of when the United Kingdom voted to impose economic sanctions on itself and it is no surprise pollsters are polling and whilst all the focus on the majority wanting to rejoin/having closer relations with the EU without rejoining my focus will be elsewhere. The majority of Brits think Brexit was the wrong decision/a failure and the Tories are getting the blame both as a party and individual people, the question is how they can fix…
TSE
Our political class is incapable of joining dots, a criticism made by the Home Secretary in Parliament on Monday about several public sector institutions. She really should look in the mirror. However, this week and last provide other examples of a failure to use information painfully learnt in one context to prevent the problem happening again elsewhere. It is a story about two Private Members Bills. The first is the Assisted Dying (“AD”) Bill. The other is the Powers of…
I continue to advise to lay Boris Johnson in the next Tory leader markets for several reasons, he’s not an MP, Kemi Badenoch feels like she will be ousted within the next 12 months or so. Another reason is that he’s not that well regarded by the public, leader approval ratings can often give a better outcome of elections than voting intention polls and there’s plenty of Tories and others who will tell you that Sir Keir Starmer is a…