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Smarkets are continuing with their weekly local by-election bets and tonight’s contest is in a ward which I know well and where my wife and I rented a cottage just before the March 2020 lockdown. It is the University and Scotforth ward on Lancaster council. The last time this ward was contested with three seats available the result was: Lab 295, 278, 267Green 217, 175, 142Cons 119, 113, 112LD 88, 83, 72 Currently, the Green party is favourite and is…

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For the second day running the Daily Mail decides that Geoffrey Cox is the main story unlike almost the rest of the papers which have moved on. I’m not so sure what the impact on public opinion that the Cox story is having apart from highlighting the fact the Tory MP is a very successful lawyer. It is getting to a stage where Johnson needs to do something about the the MP second jobs issue which could be very tricky…

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Veteran coverer of Westminster by-elections, Michael Crick, has an interesting piece out on Mail+ observing the remarkable degree of collaboration that seems to be going on between LAB and the LDs over by-elections. He notes that in the summer that the LDs only had a token presence in Batley and Spen while it was the same for LAB in Chesham and Amersham. The same seems to be happening in the December contests with the LDs just have a token presence…

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It is just a week since Owen Paterson had to step down but there no abating the media interest in what other Tory MPs are doing. As can be seen the Times is leading on the former Attorney General Geoffrey Cox and the Guardian is putting the focus on the former Tory leader, IDS. All this comes after the polls are showing the Tory lead collapse and Johnson with some terrible personal rating numbers. At some stage this will die…

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December’s battles should surely change that Here’s a political trivia question that even the most ardent PBer would struggle to answer – when and where was the last successful Tory Westminster by-election defence? The answer is hard because there have been so few such contests. The answer is Sleaford and North Hykeham in December 2016 when TMay was PM. Since then the Tories gained Copeland from LAB in February 2017, and lost Brecon & Radnorshire to the LDs a week…

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This just drives the “different rules for them” narrative Johnson’s visit to a hospital in Northumberland where he refused to wear a face mask is getting a fair amount of attention on social media and comes at a difficult time for the PM who has seen his ratings drop sharply. I don’t think he was helped this morning by Deputy PM Dominic Raab in the above BBC Breakfast interview. Surely someone reputed to be as good a communicator as Johnson…

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Another morning and another set of newspaper front pages with the Mail finding a new line of attack on the government highlighting a “Tory Grandee” who spent weeks in the Caribbean while the Commons was sitting. The one thing that seems to be consistent is that the Telegraph, Johnson’s former employer, seems to be staying loyal to their man and yet again is almost alone in not attacking the PM and his government. I’m beginning to think that he might…

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