Will the runner-up tomorrow concede defeat and avoid the membership ballot? As the BBC is reporting tonight Tory officials are preparing for the possibility that the whole Tory battle could be over this week. With so many MPs now switching to David Cameron the suggestion is being made that whoever comes second might pull out and not put the issue to the final ballot of the membership. For this to happen Cameron would need to be so far far ahead…
For his next trick… What recent speculation there’s been about the political future of Tony Blair has mostly concentrated on the impatience of some of his own MPs to get rid of him: the prospect, for example, of Glenda Jackson as a stalking horse next autumn. But could it be that current events in the Conservative party are making Blair keener to continue? Even Tony Blair’s political detractors have to see the skill in the way he conducts himself at…
Round One to Stephen Thomas as Clarke ejected Report by Paul Maggs Stephen Thomas, entry number 98, has won pb.com’s Round 1 prediction competition with an overall score of just 2, getting the Davis, Cameron, and Clarke scores exactly right, and being two votes out with Fox. There was a three-way tie for second place, between AH Matlock, Cymrumark, and Ukpaul who all scored 4, while Jan, Ben, Roger and Houndtang all scored 6 points. Attention now shifts to Thursday’s…
The money piles on Cameron In the immediate aftermath of his afternoon’s first round ballot of Tory MPs the David Cameron price has moved to 0.32/1 on the betting exchanges and 2/7 with the conventional bookies. This compares with the 0.38/1 in the Labour leader betting that’s currently available on the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to take over from Tony Blair as Labour leader. Apart from Ken Clarke the big loser from this evening’s vote must surely be David Davis who…
Keep your eye on the David Davis price In the last Tory MP leadership ballot, the confidence vote on IDS in October 2003, the best guide to what was going on during the afternoon was on the betting screens. As I recall the poll closed at 6.30pm but an hour before there were exceptional changes on the betting exchange market on who would be Tory leader at the General Election. Michael Howard and David Davis had been running pretty close…
Is today the end for the former Chancellor? If the betting markets and those who took part in PB.C’s prediction competition have got this right then Ken Clarke’s long-standing hope of becoming leader of his party and Prime Minister looks set to end at about 5.20 pm this afternoon – when the results of the first round of the Tory leadership ballot are announced. In the leadership betting the rush to Cameron has continued and he has been trading overnight…
As we said this morning the current prices on Cameron winning are so tight that it has reached the stage where the return might not be worth the risk. If you can get £100 on the current Betfair level of 1.58 a winning bet would produce only £58 profit less commission. On IG’s Binary spread-market, which has just re-opened, the Cameron spread is 58-66 which is even tighter. But there is a great opportunity on Sporting Index’s BetHilo spread market…
Can we expect any more surprises? Tory MPs go into the first round of voting tomorrow with punters – as the above chart showing the implied probability of success based on best betting prices indicates – thinking that this is a one horse race. With the media almost totally focused on the Cameron drug issue the run-up to tomorrow’s vote has seen little discussion on policy issues with David Davis, Liam Fox and Ken Clarke finding it almost impossible to…