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Month: September 2018

With polls showing a sharply contrasting picture let’s look at the trend in real election with real voters

With polls showing a sharply contrasting picture let’s look at the trend in real election with real voters

Harry Hayfield’s 2018 Q3 review For all the talk of Labour advancing and the Conservatives getting stuck in the quagmire that is Brexit, the fact that in the third quarter of 2018 in the local by-elections there’s been such a tiny swing from Con to Lab really does show that the Westminster bubble is just that, a bubble. Perhaps this is why the national polls are showing anything from a Con lead of 6% to a Lab lead of 1%,…

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Polling boost for beleaguered Theresa as the Tory conference opens in Birmingham

Polling boost for beleaguered Theresa as the Tory conference opens in Birmingham

Her party retakes the lead with Opinium Opinium fieldwprk Sept 26-29 CON 39+2 LAB 36-3 LD 9= It used to be one of those rock solid polling rules that LAB would always get a boost in its polling position in surveys taken at the end of its September conference and before the Tory one started. After all the media focus has been on the red team and during the week the general perception was that Labour had had a much…

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PB Video Analysis: Optionally Rewarding – The Dark Side of Share Options

PB Video Analysis: Optionally Rewarding – The Dark Side of Share Options

Look in any company report, and you’ll see pages of details about executive compensation. And the biggest part of this is – however dressed up – share options. Get the share price moving, and management is set to make serious money. But what if share options made companies, and the economy, more fragile and encouraged poor decisions. This time, we’re talking about the dark side of share options. Robert Smithson Robert tweets as ‘@MarketWarbles’ Follow @MarketWarbles Tweet

The Conservatives must join and win the battle of ideas

The Conservatives must join and win the battle of ideas

The Thatcherite consensus is dead; the case for choice, freedom and opportunity is not In full, the United States’ Declaration of Independence is not a very good document. It bears the classic mark of the composite motion, being too long overall and unbalanced in its structure: very nearly half of it is a list of twenty-seven grievances. Fortunately, for history and for the revolutionaries, it was drafted by someone who knew not only how to turn a phrase but where…

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Lessons from Labour’s conference for the Conservatives

Lessons from Labour’s conference for the Conservatives

Leadership Labour have, on balance, had a good conference, which should of course worry Conservatives like myself. Their leadership is now in full ascendancy – indeed many of the Corbynsceptic PLP stayed away. Brexit was largely elided (of which more later), so the actual splits in evidence were merely between different degrees of Corbynism. On reselection, Momentum butted heads with the unions and came off slightly worse, for now. (Watch that space…) And Corbyn himself is now much improved as…

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PB Video Analysis: Demographics Two. The Big Drag

PB Video Analysis: Demographics Two. The Big Drag

In my last demographics piece, I looked at the boost developed countries got from falling fertility freeing up females from childcare duties. (I adore alliteration.) This piece looks to the recent past, to the experience of Japan, and asks what next? And the picture isn’t, if we’re going to be honest, a pretty one. Rising life expectancy, and birth rates below replacement almost everywhere mean that population pyramids will continue to invert. Old people produce less economic output than young…

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Canucked. Where the UK goes next

Canucked. Where the UK goes next

Where do we go from here?  After Salzburg, infuriated by the dismissive way in which her fellow EU leaders sought to cast the Chequers approach to one side, the Prime Minister took the usual British approach of dealing with foreigners, speaking loudly and slowly.  The Prime Minister would like to plough on.  She appears to be almost alone in that.  In Theresa’s Party, the EU don’t want Chequers, the Labour Party don’t want Chequers, the Tory Reform Group don’t want…

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The Senate Kavanaugh hearing begins taking evidence from the woman who says she was sexually attacked by Trump’s nominee

The Senate Kavanaugh hearing begins taking evidence from the woman who says she was sexually attacked by Trump’s nominee

BBC News Its odds-on that he’ll be confirmed All eyes in the US are on the Senate Justice committee which is taking evidence from a woman who says she was sexually assaulted by Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court vacancy, Brett Kavanaugh. Christine Blasey Ford told the committee that Kavanaugh’s attack on her 38 years ago had left her “afraid and ashamed”. Because of the power of the Supreme Court and that its members serve for life the stakes couldn’t…

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