Last week in a thread on which party would come out with most votes at next year’s Euro elections Richard Nabavi suggested that the best value bet was the 10/1 which is still available from Ladbrokes on the Conservatives.

His reasoning was that these are a set of elections where the Tories have traditionally done well irrespective of how they’ve been performing in national Westminster polls.

Even, as the interactive chart above shows, in the dark days for the party in 1999 when Blair’s Labour was at its peak, the blues won nationally on votes. In 2004 it was the same and, as expected, they did well last time out in 2009.

Every set of EU elections since the party list voting system was introduced has seen the Tories come out on top. Why should 2014 be any different?

The betting favourite for next year is Ukip which has managed to seize the opportunity created by the party list voting system. But isn’t there a strong possibility that they are now going to be subject to much greater scrutiny. They’ve won lots of council sea and they now need to perform as elected representatives.

As we are seeing at the moment the backgrounds of those who won on May 2nd are being examined closely by their opponents and unfortunate blogs, Facebook entries and Tweets are being unearthed all the time.

Also the EU narrative is changing and who knows what it will look like in a year’s time?

All betting is a gamble but my view is that the Tories have a better than 9% chance of doing it. The current price is a good bet.

Mike Smithson

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