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Category: Brexit Party

The Pressure of the Populist Right

The Pressure of the Populist Right

Oscar Wilde once claimed: “I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”  My thread headers are, I must admit, less riveting than that.  Still, they have their moments.  Three years ago, I wrote about the UKIP leadership contest to replace Paul Nuttall.  The candidates formed a crew that one is compelled to describe as motley.  One candidate sought to mine the asteroids, while another was a survivalist who had once been shocked by a gay…

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Another conference boost for Jo Swinson – this time from LAB

Another conference boost for Jo Swinson – this time from LAB

Corbyn the opposition leader with the worst leader ratings ever gets his way The big political news has been the Labour conference decision to reject a move that would have seen the party take out-and-out Remain position in the run-up to the likely early general election. Delegates rejected a composite motion that would have seen the party pledge to campaign for remain. Whether this was electorally wise only time will tell but my guess is that the biggest cheers for…

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The Bad Boys Of Brexit. A review

The Bad Boys Of Brexit. A review

The “Bad Boys Of Brexit” relates the adventures of Nigel Farage, Aaron Banks and Andy Wigmore and the Leave.eu campaign from July 2015 to the referendum and beyond, with a later addendum taking the story up to the May election announcement . It’s told in diary format as written by Aaron Banks, one of the leaders of Leave.eu. The blurb tells us that “every Remainer should steel themselves to read it, because the mindset that it captures…is driving change on…

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Perhaps we ought to remind ourselves that Farage’s parties are rubbish in first past the post elections

Perhaps we ought to remind ourselves that Farage’s parties are rubbish in first past the post elections

Our first slate of 50 Prospective Parliamentary Candidates to fight a Brexit general election. 100 more will follow next week, watch this space. pic.twitter.com/xGG7qk84Zp — Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) August 3, 2019 Following the Brexit party’ flop in the Brecon and Radnorshire by elections the leader for life, Nigel Farage, has this afternoon published the above tweet with the faces of self first group of candidates to be selected by his party for a possible coming general election. In all his…

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And so to next week’s Brecon & Radnorshire by-election where new leaders Swinson and Johnson will face their first electoral tests

And so to next week’s Brecon & Radnorshire by-election where new leaders Swinson and Johnson will face their first electoral tests

Number Cruncher Politics Brecon Poll Can PM BoJo win back CON to BREX defectors? One of the extraordinary features of UK politics at the moment is just how much is going on. Not only will this week see the outcomes of two party leader elections but there’ll be a new PM and in just over a week’s time there’ll be the first CON defence in a Westminster by-election since 2016. Inevitably this battle,in Brecon and Radnorshire will be portrayed as…

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And now the Tory Brecon bar chart to try to beat off the Brexit party

And now the Tory Brecon bar chart to try to beat off the Brexit party

From a Tory campaign AD Brecon & Radnorshire by-election Boris’s first electoral test – getting more by-election votes than Farage It might be a too big an ask to expect the Tories to retain the Brecon and Radnorshire seat where the by-election takes place on August 1st but the party would dearly love to win more votes than Farage’s Brexit Party. The circumstances, the fact that their candidate is the former MP who was deprived of his seat following the…

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The Midas touch. Living in a world of abundant knowledge

The Midas touch. Living in a world of abundant knowledge

In the middle ages, Timbuktu was fabulously wealthy. It controlled the gold trade and it had all the riches that you would expect from that. Mansa Musa, the sultan, had a fortune that you couldn’t dream away, you couldn’t wish away.   The sultan, as a good Muslim, performed the hajj, making the pilgrimage to Mecca. Being fabulously wealthy as well as a good Muslim, he travelled with a retinue of 60,000 men. All along the way, he gave gold to…

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The best test of a pollster is not how they’re currently doing against other firms but what happened last time they were tested

The best test of a pollster is not how they’re currently doing against other firms but what happened last time they were tested

I am afraid that I have to disagree with David Herdson on his latest Saturday thread about YouGov understating Labour. Firstly you cannot judge pollsters’ based on their current surveys when less than 5 weeks ago they were tested against a real election involving real voters. In the two charts above I compare LAB and LD vote shares for the May Euros in their final published polls.  Just two of them can claim to have come out of the election…

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