This is the closest for LAB in any poll since GE2019 In the first poll by Opinium after Starmer became LAB leader the Tories were on 55% and LAB on 29%. Tonight’s weekly poll from the firm for the Observer has CON 41: LAB 38: LD 6%. That is a remarkable change in less than four months and will be seen as a real vindication of Starmer’s approach to the job since he became leader on April 4th. Of course…
As ever, there’s a lack of strategic thinking to the government’s response Lockdown began in the UK on 24 March because the governments mandated it but not really because they chose to. There were many reasons propelling politicians to that decisions, from the mounting numbers of Covid-19 cases and deaths to the examples being set abroad. What’s easily forgotten though is the extent to which the lockdown was in no small part a legal regulation of something that was already…
Regular PBers will know that at this stage before a general election I take much more notice of leadership ratings than voting intention polls. With the former those sampled are asked for simply an opinion whereas with voting questions they are asked to predict what they might or might not do in 3/4 years time when they could not even turn out. When tested in real elections such as 1992 and 2015 the leader ratings have got the outcome right…
Could Trump get away with sitting tight and refusing to budge? Following his Tweet yesterday suggesting that the Presidential election on November 3rd should be postponed there has been a huge amount of speculation about what Trump will do if if he doesn’t win re-election which based on current polling looks very unlikely. This is from Susan Glasser in the New Yorker: So, sorry, we cannot just ignore it when the President threatens to cancel an election. This is the…
Starmer calls the manner of the announcement a “new low” An estimated 4m people living in large parts of the North wake up this morning to find that a new range of lockdown restrictions has been implemented. The areas covered include Greater Manchester, East Lancashire and parts of Yorkshire. The measures make it illegal in the areas covered for people from different households to meet indoors and have been brought in because of a rising number of COVID cases there. The…
The only way that Trump’s controversial postpone the election move could become a reality would be if senior Republicans were ready to go along with it. So far that backing seems to be absent. Under the heading “Trump floats a ‘delay’ in the election. None of his usual allies are on board” the New York Times reports that top Republicans quickly rejected the move. Never in the history of the federal elections have we not held an election, and we…
Donald Trump’s tweet is quite interesting for those of us betting on this year’s Presidential election. Quite frankly it would require an act of Congress to change the date of this November’s election from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It would require all 50 states to go along with this, which I cannot see happening. If there’s no election Trump’s mandate expires next January and Nancy Pelosi would take over. I suspect this might be more…
And EVERY LAB winner of a general election majority winner went to Oxford One of my little obsessions over the years has been the very narrow base from which political leaders come from in the UK. The table above shows the educational backgrounds of every Tory PM since Churchill stood aside in 1955 and as can be seen all but one of them went to Oxford – the exception being John Major who did not go to university. Labour doesn’t…