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Month: March 2020

We might all be confined to our homes but the PB NightHawk cafe is open

We might all be confined to our homes but the PB NightHawk cafe is open

The best place for late night political convesation Clearly the fight against the coronavirus continues to dominate and looks set to do so for weeks if not months. There are so many factors and the increasing death toll in the UK with the knowledge that it will go much higher must be seriously worrying for ministers. What are your thoughts? Even if you have never posted on PB before you will be most welcome. Have a good night. Mike Smithson

UK coronavirus death toll up 381 in a single day – the worst yet

UK coronavirus death toll up 381 in a single day – the worst yet

This had been widely predicted and, indeed, follows the pattern or some other countries but even so the scale of what is happening comes as something of a shock. The forecasts earlier in the week of the eventual UK death total being 20k don’t now look exaggerated. One thing is for sure the more old people are losing their lives the more people are taking note of the government warnings. Quite where this will end is hard to say but…

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Ever since the first LAB leadership YouGov poll came out the result has never really been in doubt

Ever since the first LAB leadership YouGov poll came out the result has never really been in doubt

Ever since that first YouGov labour leadership poll come out at the start of the year there has never been any real question that the next LAB leader would be the former DPP, Sir Keir Starmer. His margin in that first poll came as quite a shock it will be recalled, because the assumption was that at the candidate favoured by the current leadership, Rebecca long Bailey, would secure the backing of the same groups in the party that were…

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And now after five years the return of PB NightHawks

And now after five years the return of PB NightHawks

For the best in late night political conversation For many years a regular feature on PB was nighthawks – an overnight open thread. For some reason we stopped doing it and I am bringing it back following calls by a couple of longstanding PBers. The nighthawks “logo”, inspired by the original Edward Hooper painting, was designed by Marf. For me there are two big unknowns – how long this is going to last and how the world will have changed…

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Even LAB voters are giving Johnson positive leader ratings

Even LAB voters are giving Johnson positive leader ratings

There haven’t been many opinion polls of late but this afternoon we’ve got the detail of the latest Deltapoll which includes its regular well/badly leader ratings. The detail is shown in the panel above together with what those sampled did at GE2019 and the referendum. For me the most interesting numbers are the views of Johnson particularly the sub-set of LAB voters just three and a bit months ago. Generally there is a very clear party split in views of…

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Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the woman who’s got under Trump’s skin, moves up in the Dem VP betting

Michigan Governor, Gretchen Whitmer, the woman who’s got under Trump’s skin, moves up in the Dem VP betting

At 15/1 she’s worth a punt One of the features of the coronavirus crisis is that we are hearing a lot more from some American state governors. We’ve already seen the developments relating to Andrew Cuomo of New York and another one whose role in the crisis is getting a fair degree of national coverage is Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. You can tell she’s being effective because her approach is causing a lot of irritation from President who who refers…

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Biden trailing badly in terms of the enthusiasm of his backers

Biden trailing badly in terms of the enthusiasm of his backers

These are worse numbers than Hillary was getting at WH2016 This is a good polling question and one that I attach importance to – just how enthusiastic are your backers. This, surely is something that will show when it comes to election day and how many of your backers will actually be bothered to turn out. The comparison with Trump supporters is striking. What should worry the Democratic establishment is that when a similar question was asked of party supporters…

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Tuesday is the 54th anniversary the last time a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a working majority

Tuesday is the 54th anniversary the last time a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a working majority

As we approach the end of the Corbyn era I thought it would be look at what winning the argument actually looks like. This is not meant as an attack on Corbyn or Labour per se because winning a working majority is bloody hard. Prior to Boris Johnson’s victory last December in the last 49 years no Tory had won a working majority other than Margaret Thatcher. It shows the difficulty of Corbyn’s successor, whoever that may be, winning a…

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