The wheel turns. In 2005, Labour won 355 seats, a majority of 64. The Conservatives got just 198. But last year, the Conservatives took 365 seats, a majority of 80, while Labour secured just 202. The two elections as close to exact reverses of each other as you’ll ever get for the major parties. Labour would like to turn the tables again. In order to do so, they’ll need to decide how this is achievable. In essence, they have three…
On New Year’s Eve The Spectator dropped a very interesting story. As many hospitals struggle to cope with a surge of Covid-19 patients, the most important judgement yet to be made about 2020 is how much difference it would have made had England been pre-emptively locked down in September. This is not an academic question. Because there were two separate occasions in September when the prime minister’s political and scientific advisers urged him to impose tough national restrictions and suppress…
The Integrated Review: Fighting the Last War But One Rather than actually deliver the 2020 Strategic Defense and Security Review the government took the innovative view that the nation’s strategic goals and security needs could be better met by delaying it a year and giving it the pithy title of The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Foreign Policy and Development. The review has now been scheduled, with a high degree of precision, to be delivered in ‘early 2021’. Part of…
CBS – YouTube Could this depress the Republican vote? This is from the New York Times: Mr. Trump has continued to make the false claim that Georgia’s election system was rigged against him in the Nov. 3 general election. Some Republican leaders are afraid that his supporters will take the president’s argument seriously, and decide that voting in a “corrupt” system is not worth their time, a development that could hand the election to the Democrats. Some strategists and political…
So that was Brexit. The defining political issue in the UK of the last half-decade is now done. Not that the story entirely ends there. Brexit was just one more chapter in the long story of Britain’s relationship with the continent, and as that geographic fact remains, so must the further development of that story. But not with the same intensity for the time being. 2021 will be the first year in several where domestic politics will not be dominated…
Polling average from Nate Silver’s site With just three days to go before the crucial elections in Georgia the latest polls indicate a move to the Democratic contenders, Ossoff and Warnock, who now have slight leads in the Nate Silver polling averages. The margins are still very tight indeed and clearly everything depends on turnout. We do know that more than 3.3 million people have already passed the ballots split about two to one to voting in person over by…
On March 23rd eleven weeks away PB will be celebrating its 17th birthday making the site just about the longest lasting UK political blog. On this day at the start of the new year I’d like to acknowledge all those who have made PB the site that it is. To Robert my son whose idea it was in the first place and who continues to manage PB’s technical side; to TSE for all the support he has given me and…
After the increasingly high drama of the past few years 2021 is going to be a year with a bark but less of a bite – with one notable exception. Covid – For obvious reasons need to start with Covid. Following approval of the Oxford vaccine the rollout of vaccinations happens relatively smoothly (with some disruptions much shared on Twitter). Because of the new variant January and February are not going to be pleasant but by Easter death tolls will be…