The Intermarium

The Intermarium

Introduction The Intermarium is an area between the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas. It is not a country in the same way that Scandinavia, North America, Europe and Iberia aren’t. It contains many peoples with common concerns by virtue of its geography. Over time those peoples formed tribes, nations, alliances, commonwealths, pacts and finally sovereign states, but you can still see the ghosts in modern borders. It has been patronised as Eastern Europe, fit only for plumbers, but it has…

Read More Read More

Snog, marry, or avoid? Just avoid them all?

Snog, marry, or avoid? Just avoid them all?

It bodes ill for Sunak that Tory MPs are alreadfy discussing his successor. Today’s Sunday Times are reporting that Many [Tory] MPs expect to lose [the next general election], and people already wonder who they would support in the next leadership contest. Kemi Badenoch, the trade secretary, is the early favourite but allies say Jacob Rees-Mogg held a dinner before Christmas on the future of the right and is seriously contemplating running. The rump of Trussites are aligning behind Simon…

Read More Read More

Trump back as WH2024 GOP nominee betting favourite

Trump back as WH2024 GOP nominee betting favourite

Although it is more than 20 months away one of the biggest betting markets at the moment is on who will be the nominees for the 2024 White House race. It will be recalled that in November at the time of the Midterms Trump sought to take the attention of what was going on elsewhere by announcing that he would be standing again. Clearly he has a significant supporter base but is that base large enough to first win his…

Read More Read More

The polls continue to be terrible for the Tories

The polls continue to be terrible for the Tories

As PB regulars will know we tend not to focus on individual voting polls on PB but to take a batch every three or 4 weeks and see if we can see the trend or some indication that things might change. Apart from two surveys that had LAB leads in the mid-teens all the other polls in January have been very bad for Sunak party and he has yet to make an impression that sees the prospect of some change….

Read More Read More

LAB to win most seats moves to record betting high

LAB to win most seats moves to record betting high

Punters have no confidence in Sunak The above is a chart from Smarkets on betting on which party will win the most seats at the next general election. The highlight here is that there has been a considerable negative movement for the Tories particularly since Sunak became the Prime Minister. The Tories are down to less than a 25% chance which I would reckon probably overstates their position. One of the problems for The Tories is that so far at…

Read More Read More

Zahawi brazing this one out looks a value bet

Zahawi brazing this one out looks a value bet

Smarkets have a market up on who will be the next cabinet minister out and as you would expect Zahawi is the very strong favourite. He’s currently rated as a 90% chance. The flip side of this is that you can get about 4/1 on Zahami surviving and another cabinet minister being the next exit. What we know about Sunak is that he is very weak when it comes to sacking members of his team and the fact that he…

Read More Read More

LAB extends lead in new “Red Wall” polling

LAB extends lead in new “Red Wall” polling

And Starmer has a net approval lead of 10% There’s a new poll out from R&W of forty ‘Red Wall’ seats. All but one of them went Tory at GE2019 with the only exception, Hartlepool, being gained in the 2020 by-election. What is interesting here is that Reform UK, previously known as the Brexit Party, came third in these seats at GE2019 with 6.5% of the vote so almost no change in this survey. On leader approval, in these seats…

Read More Read More

Weak? Or dishonourable?

Weak? Or dishonourable?

I have finally found a Brexit benefit. No, really. But first, the journey. For someone trained at Goldmans and The Children’s Investment Fund, Sunak is remarkably lacking in ruthlessness. He had a wonderful opportunity to present himself as a clean break with the seediness and shameful self-interest of the Boris years. He could, for instance, have put the ethics advisor on a statutory footing, given him or her the right to start investigations without being asked, differentiated himself from his…

Read More Read More