Hat tip to Guido for drawing this to my attention, but Mike Smithson at the influential Politicalbetting.com site has today called the Labour leadership election against Gordon Brown.
This may of course reflect the fact that Gordon is currently very poor value at around 1-3 on compared with more attractive bets like 13-1 on Alan Johnson and John Reid, but nevertheless given the impact that political punters can have (remember the Chris Huhne betting ramp?) I think this is significant.
Smithson's case is that Brown is not a natural campaigner, and that if the election becomes contested, he will find it hard actually asking for votes he believes should come to him by right. He touts the most likely alternative as Johnson, arguing that he has the killer instinct Brown lacks.
I don't happen to agree with this - in my view Brown has enough of the unions and MPs' votes sewn up to be defeated in the constituency ballot and still win comfortably overall - but the fact that such a possibility is even being canvassed will doutbless add succour to his enemies - of which there are many.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Normal service resumed (again)
I'm now back online following a very relaxing long weekend in Jersey - luckily they had the Cup Final on in the hotel bar - so without further ado here's this week's Saturday Column and accompanying Podcast, about how Blair and Brown stepped back from the brink, together with my North West Enquirer column which focused among other things on how the North-West's MPs fared in the reshuffle.
In terms of other things that have been happening while I was away....the disquiet surrounding Ming Campbell has now reached the point where he feels obliged to deny that anything is wrong...Paddy Hennessy reckons John Reid is planning a Labour leadership bid, which may just be an attempt by the Brownites to flush him out...and there's some utter drivel from Stalin's Gran and others on Guido about how Labour would have lost the 1997 election under John Smith. Enjoy.
In terms of other things that have been happening while I was away....the disquiet surrounding Ming Campbell has now reached the point where he feels obliged to deny that anything is wrong...Paddy Hennessy reckons John Reid is planning a Labour leadership bid, which may just be an attempt by the Brownites to flush him out...and there's some utter drivel from Stalin's Gran and others on Guido about how Labour would have lost the 1997 election under John Smith. Enjoy.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The other leadership crisis
What with all the current media focus on Blair and Brown, little attention has been paid thus far to the other unresolved leadership issue in British politics: whether Ming Campbell should be quietly pensioned off as leader of the Liberal Democrats.
As regular readers of this blog will know, I didn't support him as leader, but when he won I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Ming is a decent man, of that there is no question, but my suspicions that he would prove ill-suited to the demands of modern politics have proved sadly correct, and it is not just Tory MPs and part-time bloggers who think he cannot take the party through the glass ceiling.
He has failed to give the Liberal Democrats the distinctive branding and youthful appeal they had under Ashdown and Kennedy and even his House of Commons performances, which were expected to be his strong suit, have been stumbling.
Sir Ming's official explanation for last Thursday's underwhelming local election performance has been to say that it was a "night of consolidation."
But consolidation is not good enough for an opposition party when a Government is this unpopular. They must be making gains.
Party loyalty being what it is, there has been very little debate thus far in the Lib Dem blogosphere about this issue - where is the sadly-now-defunct Ming's Dynasty when we need you?
Perhaps the most thoughtful contributions, while stopping short of outright criticism of Sir Ming, have come from Quaequam and Jonathan Calder.
Jonathan writes: "It is hard to resist the conclusion that we Liberal Democrats are close to exhausting the incremental strategy we have followed so far. Local campaigning will continue to win us the odd sear. But in order to make a further breakthrough we shall have to develop policies that appeal to voters outside our current areas of strength.
"The questions then become whether we agree on enough as a party to be able to do that and whether we have the skills to put them across in the national media when we have done so."
As regular readers of this blog will know, I didn't support him as leader, but when he won I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Ming is a decent man, of that there is no question, but my suspicions that he would prove ill-suited to the demands of modern politics have proved sadly correct, and it is not just Tory MPs and part-time bloggers who think he cannot take the party through the glass ceiling.
He has failed to give the Liberal Democrats the distinctive branding and youthful appeal they had under Ashdown and Kennedy and even his House of Commons performances, which were expected to be his strong suit, have been stumbling.
Sir Ming's official explanation for last Thursday's underwhelming local election performance has been to say that it was a "night of consolidation."
But consolidation is not good enough for an opposition party when a Government is this unpopular. They must be making gains.
Party loyalty being what it is, there has been very little debate thus far in the Lib Dem blogosphere about this issue - where is the sadly-now-defunct Ming's Dynasty when we need you?
Perhaps the most thoughtful contributions, while stopping short of outright criticism of Sir Ming, have come from Quaequam and Jonathan Calder.
Jonathan writes: "It is hard to resist the conclusion that we Liberal Democrats are close to exhausting the incremental strategy we have followed so far. Local campaigning will continue to win us the odd sear. But in order to make a further breakthrough we shall have to develop policies that appeal to voters outside our current areas of strength.
"The questions then become whether we agree on enough as a party to be able to do that and whether we have the skills to put them across in the national media when we have done so."
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