The Chancellor’s price tightens as punters sense an earlier promotion?

With today’s YouGov poll of Tory members showing a comfortable 2 to 1 one margin in favour of Cameron the only betting interest left is on the scale of the victory. Even the Daily Mail has now come out for the 39 year old.

Labour, meanwhile, looks a lot more interesting. On the betting market on who will be the next leader sentiment has moved sharply to the Chancellor since the heavy defeat for the Prime Minister on the terror detention provision.

Until now there haven’t been many takers because of the tight price, the uncertainty over when Blair would actually go and the possibility that the Brown succession could be over-turned by events. The rebellion this week has changed all that and many punters now see the Brown premiership as a near certainty.

But is Tony Blair going to oblige by getting out early – or could he try to go on and on?

With the best conventional bookie price on Brown at 1/8 and with 0.35/1 available on Betfair we think the prices are still too tight to make this bet attractive.

If Blair does hang on you could be locking you cash up for a couple of years or more and the returns are not much more than you could get from the building society. Far better to have a flutter on one of the “When will Blair go markets. You can get 7/4 against a 2006 change-over and 5/2 against 2007.

For every thing is dependent on when Blair goes so if you think that will happen earlier – take the prices that are available there.

Mike Smithson