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Month: January 2020

YouGov’s first post GE2019 poll has the Tories 20% ahead

YouGov’s first post GE2019 poll has the Tories 20% ahead

Something like this could provide the starting numbers for Starmer’s leadership Clearly these are really excellent numbers for Johnson but partly this is explained by the almost total lack of opposition. The biggest battle that Johnson’s had to fight has been with his on party on his plans for Huawei. For a party to extend its polling lead in the aftermath of a stonking general election victory has been seen before and will be seen again. It will take time…

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Another week starts and Thornberry continues to struggle finding CLPs to back her

Another week starts and Thornberry continues to struggle finding CLPs to back her

Keir Starmer: 44 Rebecca Long-Bailey: 18 Lisa Nandy: 10 Emily Thornberry: 3 As can be seen the shadow foreign secretary, Emily Thornberry, continues to find the going tough in her effort to get on the members’ ballot. She needs 33 constituency parties but following her early rush she remains stuck on three. . It had been thought that following the success of Nandy, Long-Bailey and Starmer in getting over the line then constituency parties might look at her position more…

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Warren and Klobuchar get key newspaper endorsements Iowa and New Hampshire

Warren and Klobuchar get key newspaper endorsements Iowa and New Hampshire

But Bernie and Biden still top the polling and betting The weekend has seen the leading papers in first two states to decide give their backing to Senators Warren and Klobuchar. In Iowa its the Des Moines Register that is going for Warren while in New Hampshire the Union Leader goes for Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Historically this does matter and according to Fivethirtyeight the DMR’s backing has been worth an average boost of 4% in previous races. My guess is…

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Irish General Election 2020 : Predictions & Review, Part One

Irish General Election 2020 : Predictions & Review, Part One

Last week, Leo Varadkar called an early Dáil Election. Will his choice backfire or will he get another term? Find out below. Michael Martin (Fianna Fáil) has been putting the pressure on few quite some time, Fine Gael only won by a handful of seats last time (2016 election) and Leo is now starting to feel the heat. Leo has made a handful of school boy errors and according to the recent polls, Michael Martin should be elected as the…

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Covered market: the politics of towns

Covered market: the politics of towns

Since the election, talk of towns has been the talk of the political town.  Labour politicians and Conservative politicians alike have concluded that is the key to political success right now. This apparent unity conceals a string of latent ambiguities and confusions.  What are towns? The Conservatives were mocked when they recently launched their Town Of The Year competition in Wolverhampton, which has been a city for nearly 20 years.  The optics could certainly have been better. Lisa Nandy has…

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Nine days before Iowa and the top 5 contenders are within 12 points of each other

Nine days before Iowa and the top 5 contenders are within 12 points of each other

Chart from Fivethirtyeight.com A week on Monday we have the very first event in the 2020 White House Race. This is of course the caucases in the midwest state of Iowa which has a reputation of pulling off some surprises and having a big impact on the nomination races overall. This involves voters doing much much more than turning out at a polling station to cast a vote. At 1600+ events starting at 7:30 in the evening local time Democratic…

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Global Heating: great crises are difficult and complex. Activists need to recognise that

Global Heating: great crises are difficult and complex. Activists need to recognise that

David Attenborough, like the Queen, is immortal and infallible and therefore the closest thing we have to a living god. Unfortunately, gods have little interest in the practical business of politics (or at least, only among themselves), which is where the problem lies with Attenborough’s call for action on global heating. While it has become popular recently to refer to the problem as the Climate Crisis, this is a poor choice of wording. Presumably the previous preferred terms – ‘global…

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