Video: Excerpt from a January 2016 episode of Newsnight We’ve been here before, the best hope for the Tory party winning the next general election is a Scot that isn’t an MP and yet the Tory Party yet somehow engineers the situation for that non MP to become Tory leader & Prime Minister and an MP shortly thereafter. Today’s Sun newspaper reports RUTH Davidson has told friends she may move to Westminster to become a Cabinet minister as a stepping…
Polling Matters returns for an extended episode exploring the latest goings-on in Washington DC and what a recent avalanche of Brexit related polling tells us about public opinion as we head into a crucial party conference season. In part one, Keiran Pedley and Leo Barasi look at Trump’s approval rating and what that says about his prospects for re-election and the GOP’s prospects in the upcoming midterms. Keiran and Leo also look in-depth at the potential Democratic candidates to face…
Nigel Farage considers running for London mayor https://t.co/zKaSNpDIpc — FT UK Politics (@ftukpolitics) August 30, 2018 The Financial Times are reporting Nigel Farage is weighing a bid to become mayor of London, in an attempt to push the Conservative party into third place in the British capital. Mr Farage, who lives in Bromley in south London, quit as leader of the UK Independence party in July 2016, weeks after the UK voted to leave the EU. He is still a…
A summer of conspiratorial meetings amongst serial rebels has fuelled talk of a split. Picture the scene. Lord Mandleson hosts a BBQ where “up to” 20 Labour rebels look at their options for a breakaway party. Labour’s Deputy Leader Tom Watson was amongst the group, uniting the remnant Blairite and Brownite camps against Corbyn. Whether plotting to adopt the IHRA definition against the NEC, or plotting to deliberately lose to spite Corbyn (Stephen Kinnock not being very good at this),…
I’ve just discovered a Wikipedia page which seeks to record all the main leader ratings from the leading pollsters. The page describes itself as being confined to “approval ratings” which it doesn’t. Instead we see a range of four or five different formats. Unfortunately the page isn’t quite as comprehensive as it suggests and I have had to add to the polls covered in my version of the spreadsheet above of 2018 ratings for Mr Corbyn. The trend for the…
TMay indicates she would fight Johnson leadership bid & suggests that she wants to lead the party at the next election https://t.co/Y21ZydMSWG — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) August 29, 2018 The Cape Town message is that she’s not going of her own accord With Mr Corbyn apparently totally secure as Labour leader for as long as he wants the main UK political betting activity, as we get ready for the conference season, is focused on the Tories particularly on Mrs May’s…
I love tables like the one from YouGov featured above showing the trend in responses to a political tracker question. This one is on who would make the best prime minister and what seems quite striking is that Theresa May has held up pretty well apart from July when her numbers slipped following the critical response to the Chequers agreement. The big mover, of course, has been the Labour leader Mr Corbyn who has seen a fair amount of slip…
https://youtu.be/KfI9VrbFI2E The CON MP ” fundamentally misunderstands” Ireland’s history There are several interesting elements of The Moggster’s latest contribution to the Brexit debate. First, he has shown that he understands that the land border in Northern Ireland is a critical issue in the Brexit negotiations. Secondly, he has shown, by harking back to the Troubles with such breezy insouciance, that he fundamentally misunderstands the history of the island of Ireland. And thirdly, in telling us that no checks on the border…