Osborne edges up further in the next CON leader betting with Boris trailing a long way behind
But history suggests that strong favourites end up as losers
With all the focus today being on the George Osborne speech it is inevitable that there has been a fair amount of betting on whether he will in fact become David Cameron’s successor.
His price has got really quite tight and at 38% I wonder whether that is just not offering value in a contest that could be several years away.
Anything can happen in the meantime and George’s stark could wane in the same way that Boris’s has in the last 5 months. I very much share David Herdson’s view, put strongly on Saturday, that it could be anybody.
The one thing we know about Conservative leadership contests is that the obvious favourite generally does not win. You only have to recall David Davis from 2005 or Michael Portillo 4 years earlier. The latter did not get enough votes from fellow MPs even to make the final runoff in the membership ballot.