Are they betting that the media narrative is wrong?

Spread betters who risk hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds on the outcome of the next election have moved sharply against Labour. There have been shifts of a massive eight seats on the markets where the number of MPs the parties will end up with are traded like stocks and shares.

This in spite of the big opinion poll stories in the papers yesterday about the move back to Labour in the wake of Brown being portrayed as a ‘superhero’ round the world for his handling of the banking crisis.

The media narrative says that Brown is benefiting so those are the numbers that are selected to support their stories. Tories shouldn’t moan – the narrative had been all their way until about a month ago. So the voting intention figures in the BPIX poll are ignored and all the focus is on the non-voting figures that support their perceived trend.

Normally this is an ideal moment for smart spread betters to make their move. Betting against the all-prevailing narrative can be quite profitable.

Alas that has not happened. The money is going against Labour and for the Tories. We should see several polls in the next few days to see if gamblers are right.

Emergency arrangements when the site goes down. The site was down for several hours during the night. In order that things can continue in these circumstances I have created an emergency site so we can continue if there are problems. The URL is http://politicalbetting.blogspot.com/.

Mike Smithson