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Month: September 2010

How will Labour’s new leader shuffle his pack?

How will Labour’s new leader shuffle his pack?

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Who’ll get what in the Shadow Cabinet? One of the first tasks that the new Labour leader will have is to assign portfolios to the members of his shadow cabinet. How he does that could be significant in determining how Labour develops as an opposition over the parliament – depending how radical he chooses to be. To some extent, his hands are tied. Labour’s shadow cabinet is elected, something the PLP stood firm on earlier this month, and so he…

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What a day on the markets

What a day on the markets

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  Is the change down to more than my post? When I posted my call on the election at 3am this morning I sort of expected that there could be some movement on the Labour leadership markets but nothing on the scale of what has happened. The prices seem an almost exact mirror image of what they were last night but with a different Miliband in the favourite slot. The question I’m trying to answer is whether the prices are…

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Will it be “Yes we Ken” in 2012?

Will it be “Yes we Ken” in 2012?

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But is he the right one to take on Boris? No surprise then. The 1/20 favourite for Labour’s London mayoral nomination, Ken Livingstone, has won with 68% of the vote and it all looks set for a re-run of the 2008 race with Boris. But I wonder whether a beaten two term ex-mayor can return like this? For while Ken will try to make Boris’s record the main campaign issue the blue team are going to dig deep into Ken’s…

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Why I’m now calling it for Ed Miliband

Why I’m now calling it for Ed Miliband

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Are his political views most in tune with the movement? Until now I’ve been saying that I thought it was a 50-50 chance between the Miliband brothers and that that an EdM bet was the better value because his price was longer. Now I’m changing my view – I believe that Ed Miliband has a better chance of winning. There are two main reasons – firstly the progress his campaign seems to have made in the MP/MEP third of the…

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Did the result seep out early in the 2007 deputy race?

Did the result seep out early in the 2007 deputy race?

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Politicalbetting June 24 2007 What caused the last minute rush to Harriet? With punters and pundits looking forward to Saturday’s big announcement on the next Labour leader I thought I’d look back and see what happened the last time this election process was used. Above is a piece published on June 24th 2007 here 75 minutes before the official deputy result was announced. As can be seen Alan Johnson was a rock solid odds-on favourite with the others nowhere. Then,…

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How much “Labour’s to blame” stuff will voters take?

How much “Labour’s to blame” stuff will voters take?

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Home Secretary, Theresa May, has tried to turn the spotlight and put the blame on Labour following the chief inspector of constabulary’s criticism of the police “retreating from the streets” and the data that suggests that one such incident was reported every 10 seconds. I just wonder whether bringing a new element into the “Labour blame game” might be devaluing its effectiveness. My sense is that the government needs to be doing more than simply blaming the “last lot” particularly…

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Is it foolhardy to be betting against YouGov?

Is it foolhardy to be betting against YouGov?

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Why are punters ignoring the polling? The great mystery of the 2010 Labour leadership race has been that David Miliband has continued to be an odds-on favourite even though the only members’ and trade unionists’ polling since voting began showed that he was losing in these two segments of the electoral college. True the ex-foreign secretary has drifted from 1.2 on Betfair since the publication of the Sunday Times poll eleven days ago but he’s still the heavy odds-on favourite….

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Which one will be smiling on Saturday afternoon?

Which one will be smiling on Saturday afternoon?

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Will YouGov have got this one right? Voting closed dead on 1700 in the election of Labour’s next leader. All the contenders were encourage stragglers right until the end to get votes in online. Now we’ve got a three day wait for the ballot forms in this complex election to be counted. The count is being carried out by the Electoral Reform Society without any Labour or campaign representative there. The ERS has a good reputation for confidentiality and I…

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