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A guest article by Mighty Fella There is no such thing a Tipping Line for political betting but it occurs to me that PB.com operates in some respects like one and I have occasionally thought that maybe this aspect of its activities should be formalized and converted into a regular service. Tipping lines are associated normally but not exclusively with horseracing and fall into two broad categories. Subscription lines typically charge a flat rate fee, perhaps quarterly or annually, for…

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Or can he win an election in his own right? Gordon Brown’s arrival at Number Ten without winning a General Election recalls the other Prime Ministers since World War Two who likewise didn’t enter Downing Street via the ballot box. Their record is mixed, and Brown will be hoping that he doesn’t join the list of “fag-end” PMs who merely finished a term that someone else had won, and when their own turn came to face the voters, ended up…

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Where Do the Liberal Democrats Go From Here? Despite what some Conservatives believe, the Liberal Democrats are not about to disappear. They have almost 4,500 local council seats, and regularly obtain 25-30% of the projected national vote share in local elections. In addition, regardless of their national poll ratings, there are at least 40 Parliamentary seats that are, in my opinion, unloseable for them, because of the large personal votes which their incumbent MPs enjoy. Nevertheless, if they don’t face…

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The assembled ranks of parliamentary sketch writers had a field day with Gordon’s first PMQs and, it has to be said, the reviews won’t make comfortable reading inside Number 10. Reproduced above is the start of Ann Treneman’s description in the Times of yesterday’s first PMQs for Gordon. She went on: “The event was a slow crash involving one vehicle only. This was no Tony Blair-style Formula One racing duel of burning tyres and screeching corners. Instead we watched as…

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Whose statement came over better? The strangest part of the latest terror crisis is that there’s no Tony Blair. We’ve got so used to the ex-PM’s approach that to watch a crisis evolve without Blair’s trembling voice is something that we are simply not used to. Just contrast the short piece to camera that Gordon did after his Downing Street meetings with Blair’s performances on similar occasions. As well as the presentational differences between the two men there was no…

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Gordon gets his predicted bounce at last There are reports of two polls for tomorrow’s papers showing Labour leads with the ICM survey for the Guardian having a the party at 39% against the Tories on 35%. I’ll report more as soon as there is news. UPDATE 2130: The actual shares in the polls are changes on the previous poll from the pollster are: ICM (in the Guardian) CON 35% (-2): LAB 39% (+7): LD 18% (-3) YouGov (in the…

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Do Local Elections Point to Parliamentary Results? Very often, the answer to this question is No. Good sets of local election results for the Conservatives in 2000 and 2004 were followed by big defeats in general elections the following year. More specifically, seats where a party has a big lead in local elections one year, may produce an equally big lead for another party at Parliamentary level. To take one example, the Liberal Democrats have been a strong force in…

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Site seen as being of “potential historical importance” Politicalbetting has been chosen by the British Library as one of very few blogs that will form part of the UK National Web Archive. A number of institutions are involved and the British Library is handling “sites of research value reflecting national culture and events of historical importance. These could include web pages focusing on key events in national life, museum web pages, e-theses, selected blogs to support research material and web-based…

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