Tory leadership. BLACK=David Davis: RED=David Cameron: BLUE=Ken Clarke

It’s now down to 2/5 on the Shadow Home Secretary

Our new way of presenting betting odds charts in terms of implied probability has been warmly welcomed by site users including one Wat Tyler, the first person to comment on our Cheadle chart yesterday, who asked if we could do the same on the Tory leadership race.

The best betting prices have seen a steady build-up of the David Davis position since Michael Howard opened the contest on the day after the General election by stating that he intended to step down.

We hope that Wat Tyler is pleased because judging from his one other post on the site he is clearly very close to the front-runner himself – so close, in fact, that you could almost be excused for thinking that it was DD himself. Surely not?

This is what Wat posted here at comment 38 last week on an article about David Davis’s use of the word “privilege” in this campaign. …I scan through the comments here quite often, and generally find something to make me think. But this story? The Davis CPS speech was given on Monday, yet the Independent report on it only appears today. That seems an awfully long time for someone to decide that remark on ‘privilege’ was an attack on Cameron. I reckon Grice just forgot to file the report on Monday and had to warm it up a bit. Having said that, in terms of background and life experience, Davis clearly offers our party something very different to David Cameron. There’s nothing wrong with Old Etonians from North Notting Hill, but right now we have a desperate need to connect across a much broader social and geographical spectrum. Cameron might be able to do it, but DD’s own life story is the very embodiment of the kind of opportunity Britain we want to see….

Clicking on Wat Tyler’s name and you get to the site of “David Davis for Leader”, which is described as “Bloggers for Davis as Next Conservative Leader” which, helpfully has a link to Politicalbetting’s latest Tory leadership prices.

David Davis, himself, might not have got the bug but somebody very close clearly has. Welcome to the site.

Mike Smithson