It’s only Monday

It’s only Monday

Two Met officers appear at Westminster Magistrates Court today – one charged with misconduct in public office for abusing his position for sexual purposes and the other for misuse of computer systems. Neither of their names are published, unlike ordinary defendants. Even the Cumberland police are not immune: recently an officer was dismissed for running a pornographic Twitter account under a false name and not declaring it as an outside business interest. The Home Secretary over the weekend issued a…

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Tonight’s Sunak own goal? Blocking the Manchester HS2 link this week

Tonight’s Sunak own goal? Blocking the Manchester HS2 link this week

In just 6 days Tory representatives from all over the UK will be gathering in Manchester for their annual conference. In recent years the city has become one of the regular locations for big conferences and for the Tories it is politically useful to be holding something near where quite a few of their red wall seats gains at the 2019 election are located. Problem this year is the news that has seaped out that Sunak is planning to block…

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Are Sunak’s riches going to be an electoral negative for him?

Are Sunak’s riches going to be an electoral negative for him?

One thing that is becoming more likely is Sunak will be leading the Tories at the general election. In doing so he will probably be the richest person ever to head the party at such a contest. A big question is whether his riches are going to be a negative or a positive. On the one hand they are a mark of his suscess in the past on the other that his life experience is very different from his constituents…

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A little thought experiment for Sunday

A little thought experiment for Sunday

Just for a bit of fun I thought it would be fun to take part in this thought experiment and I hope PBers will join in the comments section. The only way I can see Sunak still being Prime Minister is if the events in Ukraine goes sub optimal for the West (or if Ukraine actually are on the cusp of winning and Putin goes nuclear) and/or if China decides to invade Taiwan, something which cause problems for the entire…

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Sunak might be worse than Johnson and Truss

Sunak might be worse than Johnson and Truss

Longstanding readers of PB know why both Mike Smithson and myself rank the the Ipsos leader ratings so highly and these findings are ominous for Sunak as Alastair Meeks observes. If Sunak was ousted before the next election then I would expect it to be after next May’s locals if the results are much worse than expected for a government that expects to be re-elected a year later. The possibility of three successive mandateless Prime Ministers in one parliament seems…

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Trump 12% behind in New Hampshire

Trump 12% behind in New Hampshire

This is the first mention of New Hampshire on a PB thread ahead of the 2024 American presidential election. New Hampshire is always seen as being important because for several decades it has been the first State to hold its Primary. The Iowa, caucuses generally kick off the presidential election but this is not a primary in the way that New Hampshire. Rather lowa has a series of Precinct level meetings throughout the state at which voters give their view…

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Are we reading June’s Uxbridge by-election wrongly?

Are we reading June’s Uxbridge by-election wrongly?

The successful CON defence of Uxbridge on June 23rd is being used by many to raise doubts about current polling and whether the very large LAB leads would actually be there at a general election. All sorts of different explanations have been put forward particularly on the political impact of ULEZ. It only struck me today whilst looking to the October 19th by-elections that there is another more obvious explanation. Like on June 23rd on October 19th LAB is looking…

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