Creating a betting market for the local elections is very challenging because a different group of seats comes up each year for election. Smarkets have got around this by providing an exchange bet on the projected national vote share that the BBC generally issues in its local election results coverage.

Currently, LAB is the 90% favourite which is by far too high for me to be tempted and I still wonder whether Johnson’s party might surprise us. Unless something quite dramatic happens Labour looks set to do substantially better than it did last May The question is whether it will be the projected leader on this number which is usually issued during the BBC’s local election coverage probably quite late on in the evening.

Mike Smithson