Tonight’s leadership prices
Labour leadership betting Smarkets Ladbrokes Betfair David Miliband 60.61% 1/2 1.68 Ed Miliband 24% 5/2 4.4 Ed Balls 9% 8/1 11 Harriet Harman 2% 20/1 40
Balls decides to put his hat into the ring
How big a threat is he to the Miliband duo? Labour’s NEC might have decided on a fairly long campaign to elect Brown’s replacement but they’ve only allowed a very short period for nominations to be made. Essentially a candidate has to find 33 Labour MPs to sign his/her form and there will only be a few days to do this. It will be recalled that in 2007 Brown got his coronation because his team got so many MPs to…
Is a long campaign bad for the favourite?
We’ll have to wait until the end of September Gary Gibbon of Channel 4 is reporting that Labour’s NEC has decided on a long campaign to find Brown’s successor with the result being announced at the party conference in September. Gibbon says: ” It’s widely thought this harms the front-runner, David Miliband, and that’s exactly what some on the NEC want it to do…” Maybe – though it will look mighty odd if over the next four and half months…
Does Ming’s wife pass the Twitter test?
Should this be the new convention for Speaker? If Iain Dale’s “scoop” proves to be right, and so far it hasn’t been confirmed, then later on today the convention that Speakers are re-elected unopposed at the start of a parliament will be cast aside and he’ll face a challenge from ex-Lib Dem leader Ming Campbell. The convention, of course, pre-dates the big changes in the process for electing a speaker that, as we saw a year ago for the first…
Another contender rules himself out
Guardian Could we end up with only the Miliband brothers? The Guardian is running a comment column by John Cruddas ruling himself out of the race. The Dagenham MP who came in third in the 2007 deputy race was seen as a possible outsider helped by the fact that he refused to serve in the Brown government. This will shake up the betting. My guess is that it will help Ed Miliband. With Ed Balls said to be concerned about…
Punters continue to pile on Ed Miliband
Labour leadership betting PoliticalSmarkets Ladbrokes David Miliband 60% 1/2 Ed Miliband 30% 11/4 Ed Balls 10% 12/1 Andy Burnham 25% 14/1 John Cruddas 6.25% 16/1 Harriet Harman 3.3% 25/1
“I’m afraid to tell you there is no money left”
Will Byrne’s “joke” letter come to haunt Labour? In a BBC interview a few minutes ago the new Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Lib Dem David Laws, told of a letter that was waiting for him from his Labour predecessor when we arrived to take up his new role. The letter was from Liam Byrne and consisted of just one sentence – “I’m afraid to tell you there is no money left.” I assume it was meant as joke but…
Get ready for the great peerage scramble
Will this be the coalition’s first big PR test? It’s hard to dispute the political logic of this morning’s main story in the Times – Cameron and Clegg are going to need to create scores, maybe well in excess of 100, new peers simply to ensure that legislation gets through the upper house. As the paper notes: “None of Labour’s 211 existing peers can be removed, so the coalition must appoint dozens of its own to rebalance the upper chamber….