Oh Jeremy Corbyn

Oh Jeremy Corbyn

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In the past week there’s been some astonishing revelations about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, some of which I covered last week, but for me the most fascinating was this revelation by The HuffPost’s revelations that Jeremy Corbyn’s office ordered that a raft of “moderate” Labour MPs should be stripped of extra campaign funding in the 2017 general election, a senior former party official has revealed. Patrick Heneghan, who was executive director for elections and campaigns, said that he was asked to…

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Back to basics. Poor administration and its consequences

Back to basics. Poor administration and its consequences

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How Covid-Alert are you? Or, put another way, without checking, can you tell me what the current Covid Alert Level is? And without checking, can you tell me what that alert level means? I expect that most of you will have proven unalert by that measure.* It was supposed to be a touchstone measure. When Boris Johnson addressed the nation on 10 May, the introduction of the Covid Alert Level System was his central point. Let me remind you of his words: “And to chart our…

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Whatever the WH2020 polls might be saying punters continue to bet heavily on Trump

Whatever the WH2020 polls might be saying punters continue to bet heavily on Trump

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This battle is far from over We are just starting to see serious analysis of the Trump campaign following his party’s virtual convention this week. The New York Times had this key observation of the Trump campaign approach: The Republican convention this week marked an extraordinary effort to recast President Trump’s image on issues of race and gender, with the party stretching to find African-Americans who would testify that Mr. Trump is not racist, and lining up women to describe…

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Ministers are only just waking up to the Covid hangover

Ministers are only just waking up to the Covid hangover

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The phantom recession is about to get real Panic might be too strong a word but the urgency with which ministers and business leaders have called this week for people to return to working in offices and city centres suggests that they’re seriously concerned, and rightly so. Economies are ecosystems and Covid-19 has trampled through Britain’s like a bulldozer through a meadow. A study for Sky News last week found that in early August, worker footfall in cities was just…

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TV ratings: Biden’s convention speech got a bigger audience than Trump’s

TV ratings: Biden’s convention speech got a bigger audience than Trump’s

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Given that elections at this stage are all about metrics of one form or another we now have the TV audience figures for Trump’s speech overnight which we can compare with Biden’s and the numbers give the Democrat the edge. This is how CNN is reporting it: President Trump’s Thursday night convention speech making the case for his reelection was lower-rated than his challenger Joe Biden’s speech one week ago, according to overnight Nielsen ratings. About 21.6 million viewers watched…

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Sunak getting close to Starmer in the next PM betting

Sunak getting close to Starmer in the next PM betting

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Rishi is now a 22% chance while Stamer’s at 28% Since Stamer became LAB leader on April 4th his lead in the next PM betting has been shaved by much more interest in the man who was a junior minister barely 10 months ago, Rishi Sunak. The key factor here, of course, is when will the next general election take place for it is hard to see Starmer having any chance until there has been an election and the Tories…

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Kamala Harris looks set have a bigger role in this White House campaign than previous VP picks

Kamala Harris looks set have a bigger role in this White House campaign than previous VP picks

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She’s the Democrat making big set piece attacks on Trump’s big night One of the undoubted weaknesses of the Democrats as we go into the next phase of the White House Race is the age of Joe Biden and that he can often appear to be old. If he won he’d be 78 on Inauguration Day. His apparent frailty has already become a major attack line for the Republicans who don’t just want to retain the White House in November…

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Sunak still leads Starmer in “Best PM” polling but the gap is closing

Sunak still leads Starmer in “Best PM” polling but the gap is closing

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We have referred before to this polling series from newbie pollsters Redfield Wilson which asks those sampled to choose between Starmer and Sunak as “Best PM”. The Chancellor has led throughout but as can be seen the gap is nothing like it was and is now at 3%. We have to take into account as well that for whatever reason R&W is just about the most Tory-friendly pollsters carrying out surveys at the moment and has been reporting bigger leads…

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