Above is the Smarkets betting market on who will be the prime minister after the next general election. As can be seen punters are still very strongly with Starmer while Sunak is down as a 23% chance.

Clearly there is a very long way to go but Sunak’s prospects don’t look good given how poorly the party has been performing in the opinion polls. There has been some improvement but we need to see what happens in the next few months to come to a firm judgement

He can take some comfort from the latest best PM. poll ratings which have him just edging Starmer by a few points but historically these numbers have a very high incumbency bias.

Maybe Starmer is the right man to benefit from the current political environment.

Mike Smithson