Wow. When presented with an alternative of Mr Condom and Mr Millipede, the British public actually manage to express a preference for possibly the only person in the country who’d be *even worse*. Time to abolish democracy, surely?

Boris’s popularity is huge with the Tory right, in my local experience. Other less ideologically inclined think he’d be a laugh, fatuous gits.

Boris is great at marketing himself but I bet he has loads of skeletons in his closet. Cameron is despised by Murdoch because of Leveson and much of the righty press will follow this lead.

Along with the risk of Scottish independence the replacement of Cameron with Boris could give us a second term for the Tories. It really is time for Labour to up their game.

The tone of this article is remarkably smug given that it adds up to “Tories more likely to win second term than we thought”.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Boris, though. He’s riding high on the Olympics, essentially extending his London popularity to large segments of the country. I doubt it’ll last. And while people might say now that they’d vote for him, they might feel different when they’re actually standing at the ballot box, considering whether to put a clown in charge of the nation.

I wouldn’t vote for Brainless Boris if he was the last politician on Earth. The man is a buffoon who should stick to appearances on Have I Got News For You or Mock The Week & leave politics to those with intelligence.

Except if you look into the detail of that poll, the Boris effect is very much concentrated in London and the south, with him making little or no impact in the regions where the majority of the swing seats are, as detailed here

http://www7.politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2012/09/12/the-move-to-boris-is-very-much-a-london-and-southern-thing-he-has-no-impact-in-the-north-and-scotland/

So I wouldn’t get too excited or concerned, depending on which side you’re on.

32 comments apparently, but only 4 are listed. You’re site’s screwing up.

Oops, and so is my typing

Shouldn’t read too much into stand-alone polls like this.

For a start – polls have margins of error – so they are useful for analysing trends over time, rather than on detailing exact public sentiment in a given instant.

Secondly – when asked something relative, one tends to get a rather skewed result that excgerates the positive of the unknown. Cameron is unpopular as PM – so “would you vote Tory under Boris” is not entirely a pro-boris question – it is also a “how much do you really want to stick the boot into Cameron” question.

Hypotheticals get dubious results.

This is unsurprising given that the last election was hardly about politics but more of perception. Indeed,after the three TV head to heads, a poll taken shortly after could not distinguish one parties policies from another.
Boris being PM is pretty much in the same mold as Bush getting a second presidency in my view.

@ 6 Richard

“32 comments apparently, but only 4 are listed. You’re site’s screwing up.”

Nah, that’s site policy. Re-tweets count as comments for reasons of self-aggrandisement or something.

Interestingly, the mobile site excludes twitter links and only counts up the btl comments.

@2 Cherub:

Along with the risk of Scottish independence the replacement of Cameron with Boris could give us a second term for the Tories. It really is time for Labour to up their game.

As I pointed out recently, a Labour victory at the next election is by no means a certainty, which is why it makes sense for Miliband to talk to the Lib Dems with a view to him becoming Prime Minister before the 2015 election.

If he offered them Lords Reform in return for confidence and supply, I bet a lot of Lib Dems would be prepared to go for it — it would be more than they’re getting out of the Tories.

Labour would gain too, because if they lose in 2015, they stand to lose in 2020 too, because the economy will have started to pick up and the Tories will have fixed the election rules (boundaries, voter registration, etc) to give themselves an advantage. Whereas if Labour are in power from now to 2015, any pick up of the economy would help them.

Boris has had a month or so of overwhelmingly positive news coverage. He’s not even had the responsibility to deliver the Olympics – he’s just had to turn up and wave a flag.

If he did become leader – there would be some scrutiny of him, and his record as Mayor (abysmal doesnt even cover it)… and he’d make Osborne look Presidential material…

@12 Phil Hunt

Miliband talking to the LDs about coalition? Right now that rather looks like jumping onto a sinking ship.

What is needed from Labour is some bloody good politics. It seems to be not happening.

Nah, that’s site policy. Re-tweets count as comments for reasons of self-aggrandisement or something.

OT, I know, but I had hoped the revamp would have got rid of the pingbacks.

They add nothing to the debate and slow down loading times.

Does anybody care who retweeted what?

The truly terrifying insight is that a substantial chunk of Conservative Party members and supporters evidently believe that Boris Johnson would make a good PM.

Too hypothetical .. for Boris to stand they would have to
1. Engineer a by-election from a constituency that had a gripe against Cameron – Zac Goldsmiths has been muted, but that would be a protest against the government by the governing party….also would Boris necessarily win? Would a more winnable be available.
2.There would then need to be a leadership fight, unless Cameron & Osborne just gave up it would be very very messy.

Would the polls look the same at the end of all that???

This poll, if it is to believed, is a disaster for Labour. Labour have spectacularly failed to make any impact on the abysmal failure of the Tories economic policy. The fact that Labour has a ‘lead’ is irrelevant if a buffoon can overturn it so easily.

Labour’s fear of saying or doing that might be construed as ‘an opinion’, has allowed it to build a reasonable lead by default, given that Labour are the opposition the votes are likely to come straight across, but it is clear that lead is millimetres thick. Good grief, if all the Tories need do is to ditch Cameron for Boris after all the calamities they have pulled in government, then what is the point of the Labour Party.

Labour and the Left have failed to capture the public’s imagination. The Tories have announced unpopular policy after another, but Labour has failed to capitalise on any of it.

One of the most significant political events this week was Milliband coming out with a real condemnation. Not the proliferation of the zero hour contract or Cable’s plan to limit companies labiality of their own incompetence. No, Miliband has shown a real passion when it comes to the Thatcher death celebration kits. His blood has finally been roused at the idea that an eighty six year old woman may be treated with less than complete dignity. All those people with zero hour contracts? Pah, fucking losers, but Thatcher? Goddess.

Fuck off Milliband and take your moribund Party with you.

“This poll, if it is to believed, is a disaster for Labour. Labour have spectacularly failed to make any impact on the abysmal failure of the Tories economic policy. The fact that Labour has a ‘lead’ is irrelevant if a buffoon can overturn it so easily.”

Without blaming Ed Miliband, Labour is carrying loads of political baggage – the regime of ‘light touch’ regulation of banking and financial services; the £1.3 billion consumer debt mountain; the house-price bubble; the collapse of house building back to the levels of the 1920s; the failed reforms of the public services; only one in six pupils in England achieving 5 good GCSEs, including English and maths.

@ Bob B

“nly one in six pupils in England achieving 5 good GCSEs, including English and maths”

What counts as “good”? Do you have a source?

No idea what data Bob’s using – 79% of kids in E&W got five or more A*-Cs in 2011; if only a quarter of those included an A*-C in English and Maths, I’d be bloody surprised.

Jim

“if this poll is to be believed…”

As several people have pointed out – this poll is not to be believed – which makes your rant about as redundant as you seem to want Labour to be.

@ 21 john b

“No idea what data Bob’s using – 79% of kids in E&W got five or more A*-Cs in 2011; if only a quarter of those included an A*-C in English and Maths, I’d be bloody surprised.”

Found it. He’s bending the truth, also known as “basically lying”.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/jan/13/schools-under-fire-one-in-six-english-bac

The statistic refers to the number of pupils who got the “English baccalaureate” last year. That means getting A*-C in English, maths, science, a foreign language, and history or geography.

So if you got A* in all the above except French, where you got a D, plus A* at graphic design, English lit, and business studies – oh, and you did three separate sciences and got A* in all of them – that D in French means that you failed to achieve five “good GCSEs”, by Bob’s standards, and should therefore be whinged about on the internet.

So what Bob really means is “Less than one in six pupils achieved an honour based off a suspiciously specific set of qualifications, that seems to have been designed by Gove to disparage non-academic qualifications and create a statistic that he can use in the House of Commons to claim education is failing in the country.”

He also fails to mention that 2011 was the first year that this was used (and many schools complained about it being retroactively applied, presumably so Gove can announce stunning improvements once they’re teaching to the qualification) and that pupils at some schools (including Eton) can’t get the qualification because they take International GCSEs.

I wonder why Bob left all that out?

Chaise

Ironically – I did exactly that at GCSE. Got my D in french despite passing the rest easilly.

Never occured to me that I, with my fine degree and excellent a-levels, was a sign of a failing education system back when the Tories were last in power.

@ 24 m4e

You have shamed your country with your D in French. Look, you’ve made Bob cry!

However will I live with myself? Perhaps I’ll seek refuge in France?

LOL!