The extraordinary political assassination of the front-runner Boris Johnson by his campaign chief Michael Gove, is by any standard, the most stunning political betrayal in modern British history. The Justice Secretary Micheal Gove has spoken over the years that he would never run for the leadership of the Conservative Party. My prediction that Boris Johnson would succeed in defeating Theresa May in the Conservative Party leadership election rested on the assumption that Michael Gove would align himself with the Johnson campaign. 

Now that Michael Gove has unexpectedly become a candidate in his own right, the race for the leadership has been blown open. Boris Johnson’s withdrawal has inevitably made void my prediction of a Johnson victory and is a lesson that there are no certainties in politics. The Home Secretary Theresa May is a formidable and savvy political operator and is in a strong position to win the race. May’s biggest weakness is her timid support for the Remain camp which will do her little favour among the pro-Brexit grassroot activists. 

Michael Gove and the rising star Andrea Leadsom are in a battle for second place in advance of the final vote of the MP’s tomorrow. Whoever succeeds in rallying the pro-Brexit forces to their flag will be in a strong position as the race branches out to the 150,000 strong Tory membership. The only aspect of this race which I will state with any certainty is that Theresa May is not guaranteed to win amongst the membership who overwhelmingly backed the Leave cause. 

 

The decision by the British people to leave the European Union has stunned the world and has major implications for the US presidential elections, scheduled on 8 November 2016. The media and political elites (the “Pundocracy”) in the United States have dismissed the chances of the presumptive Republican candidate Donald Trump winning the Presidency.

The truth is quite different. Donald Trump, an instinctive politician, sensed the mood of the American electorate which is angry, frustrated and ready for an outsider to smash the failing status quo when he launched his insurgency campaign in June 2015. What the Brexit result signifies is that the working and middle classes are in open revolt and will not be intimidated, bullied and silenced by the political and economic elites on either side of the Atlantic.

Political experts agree that Donald Trump needs to win the Rust Belt states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michagan and Wisconsin if he has a realistic chance of defeating Clinton. Reports are indicating that Trump could do very well in these states and Hilary Clinton hasn’t connected with the concerns of blue-collar voters. The Pundocracy are underestimating the anger among the American people and the real levels of support for Trump outside the Beltway. Just as a “shy Brexit” phenomenon contributed to the victory of the Leave campaign, the pollsters haven’t factored into their models the potentially 4% of the electorate who are “shy Trump” voters, who could swing the election.

The firing by the Donald of his top aide Corey Lewandowski on 20 June will be considered by future historians as a key turning point in the Trump campaign. Lewandowski encouraged a “let Trump be Trump” strategy that worked well in the primaries but has backfired with the broader electorate. The experienced and ruthless political operator Paul Manafort is now in charge of the Trump campaign and will direct the pivot towards a more “presidential” Trump.

Donald Trump has seen a sharp drop in the national poll ratings recently with the average poll of polls showing that he is 6% behind to the presumptive Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton. This was triggered by ill judged and inflammatory comments about the Mexican heritage of a judge investigating the Trump University law suit which has amplified wider concerns about whether Trump is fit to be president.

Trump will need to deal with this toxic issue head on if he is to gain traction among minority voters and independent voters. Trump, contrary to what some in the Pundocracy appear to think, is not a stupid man. He is fully aware of the need to adopt a more serious, sober and “presidential” campaign and the firing of his closest aide Corey Lewandowski shows that he now “gets” the importance of the general election pivot I have written of before. The Republican Convention at Cleveland will be a key moment in reshaping perceptions of Trump and challenging the view that he is a racist buffoon.

As long as the Donald stays with the playbook outlined by Paul Manafort and pushes his powerful anti-establishment, inclusive and economically populist agenda with the wider American public, than he will be on course for a historic victory on 8 November 2016.

 

The unexpected victory of the Leave campaign in Thursday’s referendum on Great Britain’s membership of the European Union has already caused massive political and financial disruption. Here is my take on what to expect in the coming months;

• The Conservative Party has been deeply divided on whether to remain in the EU and it will take years for these divisions to heal. The 1922 Committee has agreed to a quick leadership race with a new leader to be elected by early September. The leading Leave politician and former London Mayor Boris Johnson is the favourite to win the race and is popular among the notoriously Eurosceptic party membership.  The Home Secretary Theresa May is likely to be his main opponent even through she backed the Remain campaign. I predict that Boris Johnson will be elected the Conservative Party’s next leader.

 

• The Labour Party is in the process of implosion with the bulk of the parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) in open revolt against their veteran socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn. It remains to be seen if Corbyn will be automatically added to the leadership ballot or whether he will need to gain the support of 20% of the MP’s and MEP’s in order to stand as a candidate. Should the Labour leader automatically be a candidate in the upcoming Labour leadership race, it will be hard to defeat him, as he still enjoys significant support among the wider Labour activist membership. Should Corbyn manage to get on the leadership ballot, my prediction is that he will narrowly win the Labour Party leadership election.

 

•  Assuming that Jeremy Corbyn survives the challenge to his leadership, a number of fatal consequences will follow for the party. It is likely that the centre-right MP’s within the PLP will formally split from the Labour Party and create a new centrist political group which will be closely aligned with the Liberal Democrats. A vengeful hard left within the Labour Party, in alliance with the trade unions, will start deselecting anti-Corbyn Labour MP’s and replacing them with Corbynistas.

 

•  Assuming that the above scenarios come true, it is a real possibility that a Boris Johnson led Conservative government will trigger an early general election before the end of this year to gain a popular mandate and exploit the chaos in the Labour Party. I would anticipate that the Tories will gain seats at the expense of Labour and secure a 100 seat majority. However, there are real risks of triggering an early general election and whoever is elected the next Tory leader may decide to get on with negotiating the exit of the EU.

 

• A consensus is emerging within the Conservative Party that the best interests of the country is a “soft Brexit” where Britain will keep access to parts of the single market in return for some controls over EU migration. It is not quite the total control over immigration promised during the referendum campaign and UKIP leader Nigel Farage will exploit this. The cry of betrayal by UKIP will be felt strongly in working class Labour heartlands where the issue of immigration is such a hot topic. UKIP will exploit this cleavage at the next general election and should the Labour Party leadership not oppose a “soft Brexit”, Farage’s UKIP will perform well in the north on their “hard Brexit” platform.

 

• There is much talk among the Pundocracy about a second Scottish referendum on independence. Although there is much anger among the Scottish electorate, who voted for Remain by a substantial margin, the weaknesses of the Scottish independence campaign hasn’t changed. Indeed, it has got far worse. The oil price has collapsed, North Sea is dying and the fiscal deficit has grown to £15 billion. Once passions have cooled, it is likely that older Scottish voters, who voted for the union out of fear of their state pensions, will grudgingly stay within the union. Should Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon decide to take the greatest gamble of her political life, it will be within the next two years, before Britain exits the EU. A second Scottish referendum is a possibility and it will likely happen only if opinion polls show sustained lead for independence over a minimum of six months.

 

 

The British public has narrowly voted to leave the European Union with Leave on 51.9% and Remain on 48.1%. The victory for the Leave campaign is a massive repudiation of a complacent and arrogant political and financial establishment.

For those who have been following my blog this result should not come as a shock as I predicted a narrow Leave victory in my first post in January 2016.

I will write a more comprehensive post on the impact of the Leave vote in due course but the result will certainly have a profound impact on the future of the European Union.

 

After months of, at times, rancorous debate Great Britain is in its final stages on the referendum on whether to stay in the European Union (EU) scheduled on 23 June 2016. The Remain camp has massive advantages with the bulk of the political, trade union and City establishment backing the case to stay in but they have failed to “seal the deal” with the British electorate to date.

Prime Minister Cameron has pursued a similar strategy to the Scottish Independence referendum campaign, with a focus on the economic risks of leaving the EU, known to its critics as Project Fear. The Treasury, Bank of England and the major finance houses have all piled in with dire warnings of the impact of a Brexit vote with little or no impact on the opinion polls. If anything, the general public, if the current opinion polls are correct, are increasingly leaning towards Brexit.

In my opinion the major reason why the Remain camp are not doing as well in the polls as expected is primarily over-egging the economic risks of leaving in the EU. When the Prime Minister warns of World War 3 or a global recession if Britain votes to leave he damages his main asset; his credibility. The Remain camp are right to raise the risks of leaving the EU but it should be done in a balanced way which doesn’t insult the intelligence of the British public.

In my last commentary on the Brexit campaign, I noted that the addition of Michael Gove and Boris Johnson gave the Leave side a fighting chance of winning the referendum. Although Boris has had a troubled campaign to date, Michael Gove’s impressive performance during the recent studio debate shows what a strong asset he is to the Leave camp. Gove brings a seriousness and intellectual credibility to the Leave argument which may prove critical in persuading Tory-leaning floating voters to voting Out.

If the referendum campaign was a marathon then the Remain camp was supposed to out-sprint the Brexiteers doing the months when the full force of the Government machinery could be utilised to bombard the British public of the dire risks of leaving the EU. The Leave camp have survived this most deadly phase of the campaign with their support base intact.

Now, the Leave camp have started to utilise their trump card, immigration, in the final weeks of the campaign. Immigration has regularly appeared as one of the biggest concerns of the public for years and the majority of voters think that voting to leave the EU will help Britain control the flows of EU migrants into the UK.

Whilst the international refugee crisis has been relatively quiet over the past few months, now that the seas are warming up, we are starting to see thousands cross the Mediterranean every day from the shores of Libya. These pictures are being beamed into millions of British homes every night. Should ISIS succeed in attacking Euro 2016 in the coming weeks this could also have a major impact on the campaign.

Ultimately, the result will come down to the perceived economic risks of leaving the EU versus the cultural identity and security concerns of staying within a club which will allow unprecedented future migration into the country. Which is considered a more vital issue for the floating centrist voter will decide the outcome.

It is impossible to say with any degree of certainty how the public will vote on 23 June 2016 and both sides have a fighting chance of winning the referendum as we stand. I would not be surprised however if we wake up on the 24^th June to discover that a slim majority have voted to leave out of a determination to gain control of Britain’s borders and its future.

 

In my predictions for the year 2016, I predicted that because of the controversy caused by Angela Merkel’s “open door” policy towards refugees, an attempt would be made to topple her from power this year.

A recent opinion poll published in Germany reports that a staggering 64% of Germans sampled do not want Angela Merkel to run as chancellor next year. The majority of German public opinion has turned against her decision to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees in 2015. Whether hard-line conservative factions within the ruling party will attempt to remove Angela Merkel from office this year remains to be seen, but it is clear that the German Chancellor has lost her Teflon touch with the German public.

Evidence that ISIS have used the migration crisis to infiltrate terrorists into the heart of Europe continues to grow, with German police currently investigating 40 potential terrorist cases. As many of the migrants who arrived in Germany last year did not have identification papers, it is impossible to know for certain how many terrorists ISIS have managed to infiltrate into those countries in Europe that accepted refugees.

The European intelligence services are in a race against time to prevent a terrorist attack against innocent civilians and I certainly hope that my grim prediction of a multi-state jihadi terror attack this year does not come to pass. The horrifying Brussels attacks show the capability of these jihadi terror networks and it is unfortunately a strong possibility that more attacks will come later this year.

 

The Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump crushed his remaining rivals in the Indiana primary elections on 3 May 2016 winning 53% of the vote. The landslide result forced his chief rival Senator Ted Cruz to suspend his campaign, effectively ensuring that Donald Trump will be the GOP presidential nominee in the 2016 presidential election.

For those who have been reading my blog I predicted that the Donald would have wrapped up the Republican nomination by early May in my article ‘Donald Trump – Cruising towards victory’, dated 23 February 2016. What the Donald has achieved is affectively a hostile takeover of the Republican Party by the populist-nationalist wing of the Republican coalition.

By wresting control away from the traditional elite party grandees and the superrich donor class, Trump now has the opportunity to remake the party as the champion of the American working and middle classes. The conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump is unelectable and will be slaughtered by the centrist establishment figure Hilary Clinton. On the contrary, I argue that as long as Trump moves firmly into the “populist centre” of American politics and reassures independent voters that he is ready to take on the responsibilities of the office of the presidency, he is in a very good position to defeat Clinton in November.

The world is transfixed by the US presidential election and watch with growing horror, disbelief and amazement as the Trump juggernaut gets ever closer to the White House. What would a Trump presidency mean for the United States and the world? I intend to try and answer these questions in a future post soon. The only thing for certain, should Trump win the presidency in November, is that it will be a world-historical event with global implications which will reverberate for decades to come.

After the trouncing of the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in the Wisconsin primary election on 5 April, many in the media and political elites (the “Pundocracy”) hailed the result as a key turning point, indeed, “Peak Trump”.

The defeat in Wisconsin came after a series of self-induced blunders by the Trump campaign and the scale of the defeat has led to significant changes to his message discipline, the tone of his campaign, well as the appointment of key professional advisers to Team Trump. The salient fact is that Trump recognizes the need for change, has adapted his campaign and has appointed the right people on board to secure a majority prior to the Republican Party’s Cleveland convention in July 2016.

In my most recent blog article on 20 March, I predicted Donald Trump would win the majority of the delegates and avoid a contested nomination in Cleveland. The defeat in Wisconsin, contrary to the conventional wisdom, will lead to the securing of the Donald’s nomination as the Republican presidential candidate.

The victory of Trump in his home state of New York, with over 60% of the vote, was a strong comeback for a candidate who had supposedly peaked weeks ago. One of the most interesting aspects of his victory was his appeal to Republican Latino voters, whom he won over 50% of the vote. We have already seen his success with Latino voters in the Nevada primary election, where he won half the Latino vote, even when competing against two Latino Republican candidates.

I have always argued that Trump, once he starts pivoting to the populist centre, will gain traction among minority voters who will find his core economic message appealing compared to the stuffy and wooden establishment figure Hilary Clinton. Of course, Trump is not going to get a majority of minority voters support, or anyway near that, but he only has to do as well, or better, than previous Republican candidates to get into the White House.

The main argument of the Pundocracy on why Trump can’t win the general election is that his negative ratings are worse than Clinton’s. What this perspective totally fails to understand is that the Trumpian Great Pivot into a serious, substantive and presidential candidate will drive those negative ratings down over the rest of the year. The main concern of many voters is the perception is that Trump isn’t ready or doesn’t have the temperament to be president. Acting and behaving “presidentially” will be the main antidote to that worry. The bottom line is that Clinton’s high negative ratings have been formed over a political career lasting 25 years whilst Trump’s ratings have been formed over less than 8 months. Trump can and will overcome these weaknesses in a way that Clinton simply cannot.

There are signs that the Pundocracy are starting to recognise this reality. On the BBC This Week programme, the former Labour London mayor predicted that Trump will defeat Clinton in November and other news media articles suggest that world leaders are starting to seriously prepare for a Trump presidency. It is still possible that Trump’s presidential campaign will self-implode, but the most likely outcome is that Donald Trump will be America’s next president.

The conventional wisdom, as articulated by the political and media elites (the Pundocracy), was that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was a political joke. They were wrong on that.

The Pundocracy than proclaimed that the Donald’s campaign would inevitably implode after a few months, like previous populist outsiders during the Republican primaries. They were wrong on that.

After Trump’s controversial call for a temporary ban on Muslim migration into the United States was announced, the Pundocracy lined up to announce that Trump had just killed his political campaign. Again, they were wrong about that. In fact, a majority of Republican voters and a plurality of the general public supported his proposal.

The Pundocracy, in the face of the sustained success of the Donald, took the view that he had a limit of voters support of 35%. This particular conventional wisdom was blown out of the window during the Nevada primary election, when Trump won with 45% of the vote.

The Pundocracy had also decided, that it was politically impossible for Trump to get any kind of electoral traction with minority voters. This conventional wisdom, albeit on a statistically small scale, was knocked off course when Trump won nearly half the Republican Latino vote, against two Latino opponents!

Now, the new conventional wisdom is that Donald Trump won’t get the majority of the delegates required to avoid a brokered convention, where the GOP elite may trip to stop him becoming the Republican party’s candidate. I predict that this conventional wisdom, like all the others, will be proven wrong in the coming months. Trump will likely start getting close to, and even surpass, the 50% support in the remaining Republican primary elections and will get the majority number of delegates required by the time the Republican Convention begins.

Of course, the greatest conventional wisdom bubble still in existence, is the idea that Trump does not have a realistic chance of defeating Hilary Clinton in November. I will discuss in a later post how he will go about defeating the Democrats, however, to sum it up, Trump will aggressively pivot to a new populist centre of American politics where opinion polls show the majority of voters are. This means protecting Social Security, Medicare, taking a sceptical stance on foreign wars, tax rises for the superrich, reforming Washington and the special interests and taking a more aggressive approach to free trade deals and off-shoring by US companies.

 

 

 

 

The Republican candidate Donald Trump enjoyed a stunning victory against his rivals in the South Carolina primary election this weekend with a 10% lead over his closest rival Rubio and Cruz running at third place. He gained the support of evangelical Christians (despite not knowing the names of the books in the Bible), independents, moderates as well as a surprisingly high proportion of college-educated voters along with his base of white blue-collar supporters.

Trump is ahead in the majority of states coming up on Super Tuesday on 1 March and time is running out for the Republican establishment to stop him winning the race. There is a small chance that Marco Rubio may make the mother of all political comebacks in the coming weeks, but with the momentum behind Trump, it is not a realistic scenario.

So, let us assume that Donald Trump does secure the Republican nomination by the beginning of May and the Republican establishment finally bows to political reality. What happens next? Most observers have noted that Trump has started to moderate his rhetoric and tone from the earlier months of his campaign, as he starts to appear and act more ‘presidential’. Trump’s negative ratings among Democratic and minority voters are very high and if he has any chance of winning the presidency, than he will need to moderate those negative perceptions.

According to the polling group Rasmussen Reports, in a head to head with the likely Democratic candidate Hilary Clinton, Trump enjoys a sizeable lead on whom voters trust more to handle the economy and job creation (48% to 39% with 14% undecided). Focus groups show that Trump’s record as a businessman plays well with voters and it is certain that Trump will emphasis the skills acquired as a businessman in his pitch to the voters.

On the hot topic of immigration, Trump posts a 49% to 38% lead in voters trust on this subject, despite the heated criticism he has received with his policies of building a wall on the border with Mexico and shutting out Muslims from entering the United States. The ‘cultural populism’ of Trump’s anti-immigrant/Muslim policies has been very divisive and will likely be diluted or downgraded as Trump starts to actively court Democratic voters.

I predict that Trump will aggressively occupy the economic populism of Bernie Sanders campaign in the coming months with strong attacks on Wall Street bankers, the financial establishment and a venal political class. Hilary Clinton will be characterised by the Trump campaign as a liberal elitist more concerned about the interests of her super-rich donor friends in Goldman Sachs than the working man. Wall Street bankers are one of the most loathed groups in America and the lingering sense of anger that not a single banker has been sent to prison in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008/2009 is fertile territory for a consummate populist like the Donald.

Expect to see a signature policy, simple and clearly understood, aimed at Wall Street, designed to appeal to Democratic leaning voters. Maybe Trump will propose a retrospective Wall Street Justice Bill, which creates a new definition of economic criminality, aimed at making it much easier for the FBI/Justice department to lock away hundreds of crooked Wall Street bankers. Such a policy could drive a huge wedge between Clinton and millions of her own supporters and lead to a surge of support for Trump’s populist economic agenda. This will form part of his strategy to win the White House with a narrative of Trump leading a popular revolt against a corrupt political and financial elite, personified by Hilary Clinton.

Regrettable as it is to ponder such a grim possibility, a major terrorist attack this year could lead to a rise of support for Trump’s ultra-hawkish domestic security positions as concerns about jihadi terrorism rise to the top of voters concerns. Currently, Trump and Clinton are level on perceptions on which the public trust more on national security, a remarkable feat considering Trump has never held public office. A major terrorist attack in Europe or small scale attacks by lone wolf jihadists in America this year is considered very likely by counter-intelligence professionals and could materially impact the course of the presidential race.

To summarise, for Trump to win the presidency may appear shockingly improbable right now, but should he play his cards right over the coming months and campaign on a broadly popular economically populist platform and tone down his rhetoric, he can defeat Hilary Clinton on 8 November 2016.