Politics over past year as seen by the betting markets
The declining chances of a CON majority
Everybody is talking about the locals at the moment but the big thing about next Thursday’s set of elections is what it will tell us about the next general election. Is Johnson’s government in spite of everything going to be able to survive or else are we going to move into the territory of a hung parliament once again?
A year ago another CON majority got a huge betting spike as a result of the huge success of the first phase of the vaccine rollout. Since then it has all gone downwards for the Tories something that has not been helped by revelations like partygate. Indeed if you look at the betting a CON majority is now only 7% ahead of a LAB one.
Also the vaccines have not proved to be as effective as was hoped. I know. I have had four jabs and still got it a fortnight ago.
I think that punters are grossly overestimating the chances of a LAB majority and have been doing for the whole of the past year. The party starts at its 2019 seat total of 202 and in the past 12 months has seen that drop by one as a result of the loss in the Hartlepool by-election. LAB has not made a by-election gain from the Tories since 2012.
To get to the 326 seats required in a general election for an overall majority is simply too big an ask now that Scotland has almost totally flipped to the SNP.. The best that Starmer can hope for is for the Tories to lose their majority and for him to be the leader of a minority government.
From Starmer’s perspective, all CON losses are a good thing including those to the LDs and the SNP as well as LAB itself.
This is quite likely and you can easily envisage Johnson’s party suffering 47 losses or more which would cost him his majority.