Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the woman who’s got under Trump’s skin, moves up in the Dem VP betting

Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the woman who’s got under Trump’s skin, moves up in the Dem VP betting

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At 15/1 she’s worth a punt One of the features of the coronavirus crisis is that we are hearing a lot more from some American state governors. We’ve already seen the developments relating to Andrew Cuomo of New York and another one whose role in the crisis is getting a fair degree of national coverage is Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. You can tell she’s being effective because her approach is causing a lot of irritation from President who who refers…

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Biden trailing badly in terms of the enthusiasm of his backers

Biden trailing badly in terms of the enthusiasm of his backers

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These are worse numbers than Hillary was getting at WH2016 This is a good polling question and one that I attach importance to – just how enthusiastic are your backers. This, surely is something that will show when it comes to election day and how many of your backers will actually be bothered to turn out. The comparison with Trump supporters is striking. What should worry the Democratic establishment is that when a similar question was asked of party supporters…

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Tuesday is the 54th anniversary the last time a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a working majority

Tuesday is the 54th anniversary the last time a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a working majority

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As we approach the end of the Corbyn era I thought it would be look at what winning the argument actually looks like. This is not meant as an attack on Corbyn or Labour per se because winning a working majority is bloody hard. Prior to Boris Johnson’s victory last December in the last 49 years no Tory had won a working majority other than Margaret Thatcher. It shows the difficulty of Corbyn’s successor, whoever that may be, winning a…

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The exit door. The state of Labour as Jeremy Corbyn departs

The exit door. The state of Labour as Jeremy Corbyn departs

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What of Labour?  This is a question that almost no one is thinking about as, almost unnoticed, Jeremy Corbyn slips out of the limelight.  Like the Magnificent Ambersons, Labour have got their comeuppance. They’d got it three times filled and running over. But those who had longed for it were not there to see it. And they never knew it, those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about them. That irrelevance bodes ill for Labour. …

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Joe Biden: tough seasoned candidate or bumbling geriatric?

Joe Biden: tough seasoned candidate or bumbling geriatric?

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How to reconcile his stumbles with his success I have not covered myself with glory during the 2020 US presidential election so far. To date, I have tipped, successively, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden for victory – and I’m not exactly convinced at the moment that it’ll be any of them. To be fair, I don’t think my reasoning has been a million miles out. At the start of the year, I assumed that impeachment would leave Trump…

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The Past is Not Another Country

The Past is Not Another Country

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When I was a child in Naples, the trams had signs on them telling people not to spit and also to offer up seats to the “mutilati di guerra” (the war wounded). The first sign always puzzled me. Spitting was terribly bad-mannered, of course, but why was this instruction so much more necessary than any other? It took one of my many elderly relatives to tell me that spitting and coughing into the space where others were could spread disease. And diseases could kill….

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9% of members of the UK cabinet have now tested positive

9% of members of the UK cabinet have now tested positive

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Let’s hope the same proportion doesn’t apply to the country as a whole On a morning of dramatic developments in the UK it has been announced that both PM Johnson and Healthsec Hancock have tested positive for the coronavirus. Given that there are just 23 members of the cabinet that means that just under 9% of its members have been afflicted. Maybe that is not surprising because the two have obviously spent a lot of time in each other’s company…

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