Is that a value bet or not?

The above picture is a screen-shot from a TV interview Harriet gave within hours of the news coming out of the £5000 donation to her deputy campaign from David Abraham via a proxy. That was a couple of days ago when the stress was clearly showing. Since then Brown has hardly given her the ringing endorsement that she surely could have hoped for from her boss.

Today, in her role as leader of the house, she was in the firing lining during business questions in the commons. The nature of this format makes it hard for a proper interroragtion and from what I saw she seemed to be coping OK. She came out with the line – “You can huff and puff but you will not blow this Leader of the House down.”

But there’s no doubt that she remains under pressure and there must be a possibility that she might have to shift.

Yesterday lunch-time you could have got 9/2 from William Hill that Harriet would be gone by the end of the year. Twenty-four hours later that has tightened to 9/4 with 1/3 being available on her surviving.

She seems a pretty resilient character and my guess is that she’ll hold on – unless something more serious comes out.

Mike Smithson