Joe Biden will be 79 in November and provided his health holds then he’ll surely seek to retain the White House at WH2024. So far his approval ratings are just about holding up and next time the Dems will face a party that is now in the total control of Trump who would be a not too difficult opponent to face even though he is still in denial about what happened last November. Actually, I don’t think he believes a…
Time to be bet on a possible early exit? Every month we have the Conservative Home satisfaction ratings of cabinet ministers and the big feature of the latest one is the position of the PM. He’s down since last month a massive 36% and has a net satisfaction rating of just 3.4. As one of the many comments on the site put it “Boris should have learned the lesson from his predecessor. People don’t like dithering, and don’t like being…
The “99%” certain CON gain according to the exit poll At about 4pm on election night in December 2019 I decided to call it a day and try to get some sleep. Before I did I checked if my own result in Bedford had come in and the BBC website suggested the count was still going on but that this was a “99% certain Tory gain” according to the exit poll. Well that was pretty emphatic and I didn’t bother…
Don’t let the bookies get away Scot free. Nota bene, for the purposes of this piece ‘wildcat referendum’ refers to a plebiscite held without a section 30 order. With life starting to get back some sort of normality I expect the usual political issues to rear their collective and individual heads soon. Primus inter pares is likely to be Scottish independence where in May the Indyref2 movement secured a majority at Holyrood. This piece isn’t looking at the result of…
Source: Wikipedia – data tables can be viewed here. Serving as Prime Minister for a long time does not guarantee that history will remember you kindly. But I suspect most who reach the summit of politics are keenly aware of their place in the longevity league table. The chart above shows the length of time served as Prime Minister for each of the 77 individual stints. They can be grouped into three broad categories: 1) The also-rans: 50 stints of…
As has been widely reported there’s a YouGov/S Times poll of “blue wall” seats to see the change since GE2019. The outcome is not good for the Tories and suggests that it might be challenging holding on to them and red wall ones at the same time. With the Tories dropping 8% and LAB going up by 4% that equates to a CON to LAB swing of 6%. The Tory seats chosen for the poll all voted Remain at the…
Last week I wrote about the Olympic medal markets, and why I had bet on the USA to get under 111 and 113 medals with two bookies. This was stupid. I placed the bet for the wrong reasons and went beyond my Circle of Competence. A Circle of Competence is a subject area where a person has the appropriate skills and expertise to operate. It isn’t only experts who have Circles of Competence, we all do, theirs are just bigger…
The Tories cannot go into the next election with 5m on the list One of the inevitable consequences of dealing with COVID has been the impact on those who have wanted the NHS for other reasons who are currently on waiting lists of one sort or another. It is estimated that there are 5m currently on them and this could be increasing all the time. Inevitably the primary focus has been on controlling the infection but as that pressure eases…