Should you now become a Labour buyer?

There have been big moves during the day on the spread-betting markets where punters with deep pockets buy and sell the number of seats each of the parties will get at the next election.

The spreads at 2pm BST are featured above. Just ten days ago a buyer of Tory seats would have had to go in at the 356 level. That’s now down on one market to 344 seats.

I decided to switch my positions this morning not because of the polling fundementals which still show a significant Tory majority but because of the way the media narrative playing.

The story is now about how brilliantly Brown is dealing with the crisis and journalists will look to find poll findings and other information that supports that view – almost irrespective of everything else. Tory supporters should not moan – it has worked in the other direction for nearly a year

So we had one set of YouGov findings favouring Brown/Darling on “handling the crisis” which became on the BBC “handling the economy” which is a different thing altogether. The fact that all the other numbers were against Labour was irrelevant. This is how newsrooms, not just the state broadcaster, work and as a punter you have to take into account the apparent changing perceptions.

So I’ve now taken quite a loss and switched my positions to become once again a Labour buyer. The one thing that could change this is the Glenrothes by-election but that is a few weeks away.

NOTE: PB has a commission arrangement with SportingIndex so commissions are paid for new accounts that are opened. These help towards defraying our costs. If you are opening an account then please use the links…Many thanks.

The Spreadfair figures are rounded to the nearest whole number.

Mike Smithson