Is the old Etonian the “natural successor to Blair”?

For somebody who only came into parliament four years ago David Cameron has moved very quickly and it says a lot about his political and media skills that he has established himself as the main challenger to David Davis.

When people discuss Cameron they focus on his old school and hardly anybody comments on his “day job” before 2001 as the PR boss for Britain’s biggest ITV company. This guy is a communications professional and we think that this will help him enormously if the Tory party reject the Howard rule changes and stick with the system of the final leadership say being with the party membership at large.

From a betting standpoint we think he will have a good party conference and his price will tighten the closer it gets to decision time

Just loook at the the way he is presenting himself in the picture above and check off the positive messages it sends to a wide range of different audiences. This is more than just a Blair-like staged family group photo and comes from his professional background. We are, also, intrigued by the spin that is now coming out of his camp and was featured by Peter Oborne in this week’s Spectator

MPs set off on their holidays this week amid a mood of national consensus. Tony Blair’s reputation has never stood so high, and its lustre stretches across all parties. Conservative MPs look at him nowadays with adoration. They laugh when he laughs, and grimace when he grimaces. One of the main candidates for the Tory leadership, the moderniser David Cameron, has come to base his candidacy on the sublime proposition that he is the natural successor to Tony Blair. Cameron’s supporters openly claim that just as Blair, not John Major, was the inheritor of Thatcher, so Cameron rather than Gordon Brown will take on the gleaming Blair legacy

Although David Davis remain the strong favourite there could be money to be made on the spread and exchange markets as the Cameron price tightens, as we think it will, in the run-up to the final decsiion.

SUMMER SCHEDULE From now until early September we will not be posting a new article every day. Much less is happening. For my holiday from August 19th Politicalbetting will have a guest editor. More on this later.

Mike Smithson