Theresa May’s great political skill, the driving force behind her career, has been the ability to keep her head down. The virtue of ducking out of the firing line is an important one in British politics. When promotion often comes through dead man’s shoes there is a delicate art to making sure others get hit by the flak, of walking through the food fight and coming out only mildly custard-stained. When the other leading figures in your party destroy…
New YouGov poll finds that LAB would drop to behind the LDs if the party helps the Tories to pass Brexit https://t.co/WcnsPVRxJi — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) December 15, 2018 The S Times is reporting a YouGov survey of 5,000 voters, commissioned by the People’s Vote campaign, showing that support for LAB could fall from 36% to 22% if it helped the Tories to pass a compromise deal with Brussels like the one advocated by Theresa May. In these circumstances, the…
While we have been almost totally focused on Brexit in the UK in Washington things are getting even worse for the president who is facing a whole series of probes relating to the 2016 campaign. This week his former attorney, Mike Cohen, was sentenced to 3 years for his part including campaign finance violations by seeking to arrange payoffs to women that Trump was said to have been associated with. Cohen has also gone public in his attacks on Trump’s…
She can’t please all the (necessary) people all the time Not only is Theresa May a bloody difficult woman, she’s also a bloody difficult woman to shift. The ERG, with all their customary Keystone Cops planning, proved once again this week that when it comes to continuing her mission, the PM has a Terminator-like resilience to her and that it takes rather more than saying nasty things in posh voices to blow her off course. Their failure, however, was not…
The Blair-Major MORI satisfaction ratings before GE1997 The Cameron-Brown Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings before GE2010 Current Corbyn-May Ipsos-MORI satisfaction ratings My thanks to James Bowley for the analysis, compiling the data and the charts. The Ipsos-MORI ratings have been used because these have been recorded at regular intervals since 1977. The proposition works for the only other LOTO to become PM since this polling started – Mrs. Thatcher. In the 1979 polls before the election she led the PM, James Callaghan,…
The betting money moves against a second referendum While Mrs May is still in post and the EU are not going to budge on the terms of the deal then it looks as though the two big options remaining are a hard Brexit on March 29th or else a new referendum being announced beforehand. So far LAB has managed to get away almost scot-free without being really pressed to expand its ambivalent position on what it wants. Its main focus…
A festive download to share with your loved one To mark the 100th anniversary today of the 1918 election, the first one in which women were able to vote, the Commons library has produced an extraordinarily good document with just about every detail that you would want from every General Election over the past century. There’s table after table and chart after chart of information covering just about everything that serious political geeks might want. And the great thing is…
On this week’s podcast, Keiran Pedley and Leo Barasi look back at events in a frantic week at Westminster. They debate whether May was right to postpone the meaningful vote, whether a change in leader would have any impact on Brexit negotiations and the prospect of another referendum breaking the parliamentary deadlock. Listen to this week’s episode below: Follow this week’s podcast guests: Follow @KeiranPedley Follow @LeoBarasi Tweet