In 2019 the US President decided to withdraw US troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, a move seen by many – and certainly the Kurds, who were heavily involved in fighting and defeating IS in Iraq – as a betrayal. In February 2020 the US reached an agreement with the Taliban to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan, release Taliban prisoners, lift sanctions and facilitate economic co-operation in return for a promise that the Taliban would not allow Afghanistan to host terror…
There’s been a little of movement on a few betting markets in reaction to the latest developments in Afghanistan. Probably the most significant is above on the outcome of the next election. As can be seen an overall CON majority was the odds on favourite in the aftermath of the vaccine bounce. That is no longer the case and other factors like Afghanistan have come into play. There’s been no movement at all in the Johnson exit date betting where…
The Tories largely without masks – in contrast to those on the opposition benches This morning’s emergency debate on Afghanistan is the first time that we have seen a largely packed House of Commons since the first lockdown came into force in March last year and it has been a big reminder of how abnormal politics has been. It was also Starmer’s first taste of being opposition leader in a big debate in front of a full House of Commons…
Today’s Daily Mail is running a JL Partners poll carried out yesterday on the Afghan crisis and the findings are above. As can be seen the current US President and his predecessor get most of the blame in a survey that clearly reflects the nature of the coverage in the past 36 hours. There is a big British interest here given the role our armed forces have for the last two decades played in support of the US and the…
One of the things we sometimes ignore when a new poll comes out is how the party shares compare with the last general election and from that we can compute “swing”. Thus last night’s Redfield poll had LAB 4% behind the Tories which according to my analysis is the “sweet spot” which, could lead to Johnson losing his effective majority even taking into account Sinn Fein’s reluctance to take their seats. That margin on current boundaries would lead to a…
It is August and we are not getting very many surveys at the moment and indeed there is not that much domestic UK political news. As can be seen we have CON leads ranging from the 11% of Ipsos-MORI to 3% and 4% from Redfield. What is remarkably consistent is the CON share ranging from 40-42%. This is in sharp contrast to LAB where the range is 30% to 37% and the LDs with 7% to 13%. Ipsos-MORI is the…