Ever since the Hartlepool by election has been called I’ve vacillated between a Tory gain and a easy Labour hold. If Richard Tice and the Brexit Party hadn’t stood in this seat in 2019 then this would have been a Tory gain at the 2019 general election so that is what I drove my belief that this should be a Tory gain at the by election particularly once it was confirmed Richard Tice wasn’t standing, however it isn’t December 2019 now.

Brexit happened fifteen months ago but Boris Johnson and the government should receive a bounce from the vaccine rollout but as I have noted before the governing party gaining a seat at a by election from the opposition is rarer than a decent Radiohead album so I was moving towards a Labour hold even before the polling turned sub optimal in the last few days after the fun with flats which showed Labour ahead in the Red Wall seats.

Ladbrokes have a market on the size of the winning majority in the forthcoming Hartlepool by election and I think the value is the 5/1 on a Labour majority of 2,000 or more, note this isn’t a prediction, just an assessment on the value of this bet, however I fully understand why plenty of you will be wanting to back the Conservative side of this bet.

TSE

Help keep PB going by supporting its running costs