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In that other by-election that takes place a fortnight tomorrow, the Tory position remains strong with the party at a 75% chance in the betting. That’s not as good as the current Chesham and Amersham betting but still pretty clear. Whether this is a correct indicator of the final outcome is hard to say but we’ll know on Friday morning how good the betting was at predicting this week’s by-election. The hard thing about B&S is that there has been…

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According to City AM it has seen internal LD polling from Chesham and Amersham suggesting that they are on 41% against the Tory 45% for Thursday’s by-election. We have seen this form of revelation before by the party in Richmond Park and the Brecon by-elections where the numbers they said their internal surveys had them on was in fact lower than that which they achieved in the elections. The purpose is very clear – to attract tactical voters from Labour…

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So far we have not had any opinion polls on the next two Westminster by-elections – Chesham & Amersham (June 17th) and Batley & Spen (July 1st) but in each case the Tories are firm odds-on favourites in the betting. We also saw what happened at Hartlepool on May 6th and the broad assumption is that the same trends will be seen in the next two up. Certainly that is how punters are looking at them. At C&A the Tories…

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The worry that is starting to be expressed a lot more is that BoJo & co so much enjoy all the powers that fighting COVID has given them that they will be reluctant to give it up. For there will always be a reason why things shouldn’t be eased and so far at least the polls are generally supportitve. I just wonder whether a less than good result for the Tories at Chesham & Amersham on Thursday might be an…

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The PM could be moving onto dangerous ground

Although you might not have noticed it if you follow the national media there is a by-election on Thursday which has the potential to cause shockwaves. Chesham and Amersham is the first such contest since Brecon in 2019 where the LDs think they are in with a shout and have been throwing everything at the campaign. Leader Ed Davey has been there almost every day and hundreds of activists from all over the country have been working on the campaign….

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The mood music has changed. It seems that Step 4 – the lifting of the remaining legal restrictions – will no longer be happening on June 21st. Indeed, there are some advisors (mostly health professionals of some kind or other) who seem to think that these (social distancing, in particular) should continue indefinitely and for all sorts of reasons: to deal with flu, the backlog in cancer care, other respiratory diseases etc. Quite what sort of society or life they…

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The picture above isn’t a photoshop but from the official MOD twitter account, see here. Whilst I don’t want to turn this article into an episode of Father Ted it is clear from past evidence that Rishi Sunak is shorter than most politicians, something which he tries to hide which leads to weird photos. Appearances matter in politics, this is why it has been discussed being bald is bad for party leaders. Back in 2001 one newspaper ‘suggested that a…

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