Given all the troubles that the Labour leader Keir Starmer appears to be facing at the moment then it is no wonder there has been a move on the betting markets about his future. Betfair don’t seem to have a Starmer exit date market up but Smarkets do although it is a very light on liquidity. Their trend chart is above.

A big issue here is that unlike Conservative leaders the man or woman at the head of the Labour Party has considerably more job security. With the Conservatives, as we have seen, the decision to sack a leader is within the gift of MPs. If enough of them request it then their is a secret ballot of MPs. With Labour the process is much more convoluted meaning that leaders who are clearly voter repellents can remain as we saw with Corbyn.

A huge challenge for Starmer at the moment is that the man who refuses to tell us how many children he has is enjoying a period of popularity because of the success of the COVID vaccination programme leading to the confirmation yesterday from Johnson things will get a lot easier next week.

As we get back to “normality” the political weather could change. The worst assumption you can make in politics is that things will go on as they are

It is perhaps worth recalling that for eleven of the thirteen and a half months that Starmer has been LAB leader he has had better net approval ratings from Opinium than Johnson.

If there is a change I think that Labour should choose a woman and almost all of those leading the betting are female.