Finally Lost One!

It’s taken six weeks but we finally suffered our first defeat in the weekly contest with Anthony Wells of YouGov and his Politicians’ Popularity Index. In fact it should be ‘I suffered’ because for reasons we won’t go into, I did all the selections last week.

Benn’s improvement was a surprise. Maybe there’s an instructive cross-reference to his performance in the Deputy Leader race. If he’s still available at 3/1 for that, I’d be tempted. Hague was a huge surprise. His popularity line was flat until last week. Did his trip to Basra slip under my radar? Or was it spillover from DC, whose rating saved the day with a sharp hike?

Loss on the week was 0.6, reducing the profit on a £10 stake to £92 to date:

There was a striking volatility about last week’s scores and I need hardly stress to PBers the probability of greater volatility this week. Undaunted, we are going for a high risk strategy. We note that Brown’s popularity took a hell of a knock last week and Blair is under siege. We think Anthony has overadjusted. We recommend them as buys – one point each at 62.7 and 55 respectively. Ming is a rather more cautious sell, following a strong popularity rating last week and a slightly iffy press this week – again one point, at 79.2.

Above are the summary numbers on which we worked.

Remember that if you took advantage of IG’s Special Offer when opening a new account, the Politicians Brand Index counts as a Sport, so your free bets can be used on this market. Please mention PBC in your application because Mike gets a small commission which goes towards the cost of running the site.

Could be an interesting week. Good luck.

Peter Smith