Why Mrs May might replace her Chancellor with someone who appeals to the hardline Leavers in her party. It is well known that many hardline Leavers want Philip Hammond sacked as Chancellor, I can see certainly envisage a scenario where Mrs May sacks Mr Hammond to save her own skin. To paraphrase Jeremy Thorpe, greater love hath no woman than this, that she lay down her friends for her life. Plus Mrs May appears not to be very keen on Philip…
JRM 18%..Bojo 10%..Rudd 8%..Gove 6%..Hunt & Raab 5%..Davidson & Williamson 3% However you look at the next Conservative leadership betting there’s one thing that is probably not going to happen – that the two men heading the betting at the moment, old Etonians Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, are going to be fighting each other in the membership ballot which, of course, is of the two who top the secret ballot of party MPs. BoJo and Moggsy, I’d suggest will…
By-election gains may well be yet another false dawn Up until last year, Sunderland had carved out for itself one, and only one, niche in British political life: it counted its votes at general elections faster than anywhere else. For six successive elections from 1992 to 2015, the southern Sunderland seat was the first to declare in the country. Other than that, the city was politically unremarkable: it’s returned two Labour MPs ever since the 1960s and the Red team…
Higham Ferrers on Northamptonshire (Con defence) Result: Con 1,414 (57% -3% on last time), Lab 557 (22% +3% on last time), Lib Dem 336 (13% +2% on last time), UKIP 109 (4% -6% on last time), Green 81 (3%, no candidate last time) Conservative HOLD with a majority of 857 (35%) on a swing of 3% from Con to Lab Higham Ferrers, Lancaster on East Northamptonshire (Con defence) Result: Con 611 (56%), Lib Dem 244 (22%), Lab 189 (17%), Green…
New YouGov poll has LAB back in the leadCON 40% -2LAB 41%+3LD 8%=UKIP 4%+1 — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 16, 2018 And the female split is with the red team once again Unlike last week which had big move to CON amongst women latest YouGov has females leading LAB by 8%. — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 16, 2018 One of the things that always seems to happen is that when a shock poll comes out it that people try to…
Some international boundaries are easy to understand. The Pyrenees form a natural frontier between Spain and France. The Kattegat conveniently separates Sweden and Denmark. While in the past each pair of countries has seen their border shift over time, the current resting place looks very natural. The boundary between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland does not come in that category. There are few obvious natural boundaries along the route. Donegal is almost cut off from the rest of…
Big night of local elections in prospect. 14 seats with nearly 90k eligible to vote. Excellent here from @andrewteale https://t.co/AyLxTgrRGX — Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) February 15, 2018 Will tonight’s results reinforce polls view of a shift to CON? The 14 seats in almost all parts of the country feature 7 CON defences; 4 LAB ones + UKIP, SNP & a local Residents’s group a seat apiece. So we are like to get a relatively good picture. It is highly unusual…
Trump amazing powers to distract are stopping bad news taking hold With all the focus on Brexit and Theresa May’s survival in the UK it is sometimes easy to forget that from a political betting point of view the big markets are in the US and particularly on whether Donald Trump survives his first term. We’ve not looked at this for some time but as the chart above shows the price, on Betfair, have moved quite sharply in his favour…