Is the Iraq debate encouraging punters to back the Chancellor?

With Tony Blair preparing to face a difficult session in the House of Commons tonight on calls for an inquiry in Iraq the best betting price on Gordon Brown being Tony Blair’s successor has tightened to 0.35/1 – a level that it has been at only once before since David Cameron’s election as Tory leader on December 6th.

The price has been moving in this direction for the past three weeks when punter sentiment started to change and few were taking rival bids seriously. The scale of the change is best expressed in what a £100 winning Brown bet would produce. In the first week of October you would have come out with £56 – today that’s down to £35.

For punters following this market the big question is whether it will tighten further or will it bottom out. Certainly for today a Government defeat on the Iraq motion should send the price even tighter. What happens after that is hard to say.

Mike Smithson

Politicalbetting.com – the UK’s most read political blog