Corbyn’s new “I’ll be PM by Xmas next year” boast fails to impress punters
The markets remain unmoved
We all remember the heady days of June this year when after doing surprisingly well at the general election Corbyn was reported to have a told people at Glastonbury that he would be PM by Christmas.
Well we are five days away and that certainly isn’t going to happen. But he’s now reported today saying that he expects to be Prime Minister by Christmas 2018. He said “there will probably be another election in the next 12 months’ which he’d probably win.
That is fantasy stuff. Labour is too far behind the Conservatives in terms of seats that even if he could create a coalition with the LDs, SNP & PC LAB would still not be top party.
For Corbyn to achieve his goal there has to be an mass exit from the Conservative Party which seems unlikely or else there needs to be another General Election.
A problem with the latter of course is the Fixed Term Parliament Act which Theresa May used last April when she decided to go to the country after just on 2 years. But that required two-thirds of all MPs to back an early election which they did.
Now I’m sure that Theresa May learnt an enormous amount from what happened on June 8th and one of those, I would suggest, is that PMs have to be ultra-careful careful about calling early elections even when you have 20%+ poll leads. This would resonate as well with other potential successors. What the outcome of the last year’s election has done is effectively to block out governments going to the country early even when they have got massive poll margins
The other way that the fixed term Parliament Act allows an early election is if there is a vote of confidence in the government which is not rescinded within two weeks.
Again it is very hard to see that happening. Even if the DUP had not entered an agreement with the Conservatives it is hard to envisage the party doing anything that could enable Mr Corbyn to secure the keys of number 10. The Labour leader’s Irish links in the past are just too toxic.
On the betting markets there has been a slight movement towards 2022 election on Betfair. 2018, the year that coping was talking about, is still seeing as a 27% chance.