Will Populus wake up Labour’s leadership race?
October 2nd, 2006-
Are we going to get a poll that will confirm or refute Frank Luntz?
In terms of political betting the key focus this morning is not on anything coming out of the Tories at Bournemouth - but on whether Gordon Brown will face a serious challenge in his quest to succeed Tony Blair and if so by whom?
For we are talking here about who will be the next Prime Minister and we might get a better indication of how things are going within the next twenty-four hours.
A month ago, a few hours before Tom Watson’s explosive resignation, the September survey by Populus was published in the Times showing for the first time a comparison of Brown’s leadership chances against another contender, John Reid. For as well as what has become the standard “How would you vote if the leaders were Cameron/Brown/Campbell” question the pollster added another option - the Home Secretary who had had a high profile August following the alleged terror plot against airliners. The result was that the Tory margin would be one point smaller with Reid as leader rather than Brown.
Assuming Populus is following its normal schedule then October’s survey should be out tomorrow and the field-work will have started the day after John Reid’s big speech at Labour’s Manchester conference.
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If similar Reid-Brown questions were part of the survey could Reid’s relative position be better than last month and if so what impact will that have on his chances? What margin over Brown does Reid need to make himself a credible challenger?
I don’t know what’s in the poll but it would be surprising if this or another pollster did not test Brown/Reid/Johnson against Cameron very soon. This would be the first occasion that the outcome of last Monday’s controversial Frank Luntz focus group would have been measured in a conventional opinion poll.
Everybody I’ve spoken to within the Labour party tells me that Reid does not have a chance. He will be hard put, it is said, to even find enough fellow MPs to nominate him so that he could mount a challenge. So his only real chance will come if polls start to show that he will do demonstrably better than Gordon against Cameron’s Tories.
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My guess is that Reid needs substantially more than the 1% margin of last month and probably 3% is the minimum required to maintain momentum.
Clearly this will have an impact on the betting. Compared with a week ago Reid is now firm second favourite at about 6.6/1 but even though his price has eased Gordon is still heavily odds on at 0.54/1.
If the polls show that a challenger won’t make much difference to Labour’s position against Cameron then Gordon’s price will, surely, get tighter. If not then Reid or whoever could start attracting bigger money.
Site news. Regular visitors will notice that we’ve changed our masthead and we’ve changed the line up of leading politicians who feature in it. Out have gone David Miliband and Angela Merkel. They’ve been replaced by Senator John McCain and John Reid in line with our policy of featuring those who are part of the major betting markets.
We’ve also changed the design so that the leaders are not “peering” through the letters. We’ve also made design changes that solve the comments numbering problem for visitors using Internet Explorer.
Thanks to my daughter-in-law, Lucille Smithson, for all the work she has done.
Mike Smithson
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Too many ifs.
can we stop this pro-reid rubbish? there is no desire for him within the party and the tories would take him and us us apart. pbc has got to get over its anti-brown stance.
2. I don’t think it’s Anti-Brown, SR. It’s just boredom with the inevitability of a GB accession.
Btw, I trust the punters here got onto Rail Link in yesterday’s Arc, as advised on PB.com. Double figure odds were widely available in the UK and an astonishing 23.5 on the Pari-Mutuel.
Nice new heading, Mike. Thanks to Ms Smithson.
Last week, Brown’s speech was NOT a sell out - there were many rows empty and many people not stnading up to applaud. This was significantly below what many people expected.
Reid, on the other hand, recveived a standing ovation on a rather less full final day, and got roughly the same number of delegates standing to applaud - though not for anywhere like as long. This must have sent chills down Johnson’s back, as he received nothing comparable.
Like it or not, Reid has a lot of momentum behind him in the party, and once established as the stop Brown candidate will certainly get the 44 nominations.
John McDonnell isn’t out of the running either - the best thing a stop Brown candidate can do is to ensure McDonnell gets the 44 sigs - he’ll take far more first choices of Brown than off anyone else - possibly 15% of the votes from CLPs and Unions. Many of these will not cast a second preference and might enable an anti-Brown candidate to top the poll on the first count, and possibly resist second cast votes piling up for Brown.
A straight Reid - Brown contest would be won by Brown straight off
I can understand why you have chosen not to talk about the Tories today.
“Let optimism beat pessimism. Let sunshine win the day”.
Even their own MP’s were blushing!
Mike, come on and tell us who was speaking whilst Gordon, Prezza and Tessa were falling asleep.
yesterday Sky coverage of the Tory conference included a not positive report about Osborne. At one of the fringe meetings he went on and on about Brown’s character. The journalist remarked that Osborne’s taste in questionable, that DC promised the end of punch and judy, but Osborne isn’t doing it, that the level of political debate won’t be raised by Osborne’s attacks and that maybe he has gone an attack too far this time
For the many fans of Maude:
http://www.recessmonkey.com/2006/10/02/top-tory-porn-baron-shock/
hahaha….reid….momentum…..anyone for alan milburn…remember him?
Many thanks for the perspective Mike. Can’t wait for the poll.
Interesting Andrea! I’m surprised no-one has mentioned Maude’s brilliant straw blond hair which he seems to have produced for the conference. Probably his interpretation of”letting sunshine win the day”
The tory’s great weakness is their lack of enthusiasm for playing ‘dirty’. What did you hear from the Nulab ‘project’ in the mid-90’s? A relentless attack on tory sleaze and we’ll be ‘whiter than white’. On policy, we’ll ‘throw more money at education, education, education’. That that would improve things was taken as read.
‘Tory sleaze’ often consisted of nothing more than some MPs asking PMQs for a grand, or various legover photo ops of David Mellor and similar. Donations from companies which then received large contracts (or the other way round), was not on the horizon. It is almost mainstream now. We’ve moved from sleaze to corruption. The MSM (excluding the ‘Eye’) have ignored it. The tories have not set the pace.
DC has failed to find himself an Alistair Campbell. Friendly journalists need feeding with stories (which need only have a grain of truth in them). Then the words he wants highlighted are highlighted. The more often you repeat something, even if untrue, the more people will believe it.
He doesn’t need any policies, or any policy groups. He does need shadowy background figures who understand how to ’stop’ a dog, or sharpen plastic studs, or…
DC seems to want to be too gentlemanly for this ’studs up’ approach. It is easy to portray him as amateurish and dilettante.
The tories need to play it rougher. TB arranged it, without any dirt under his fingernails. DC could do probably do it. But he’s got to want to. And he needs help.
We’ve put up today’s odds on the deputy leadership, which are proving a bit more volatile that the leadership race:
http://thedaily.wordpress.com/2006/10/02/new-deputy-leadership-odds/
Some good chances to hedge if you’re interested…