politicalbetting.com

New data from Alexa – the Amazon.com subsidiary that monitors Internet traffic shows that in the third quarter of the year that ended at the weekend only two UK political sites were in the top 100,000 websites of all kinds in the entire world. One was Guido which is in position 78,062 and the other is Politicalbetting.com that’s rated at 98.904. The difference between the two sites is that while Guido attracts upto four times as many visitors each day…

Read More Read More

Are we about to enter the year of limbo? One of the consequences of Tony Blair’s desire to leave during the summer could be that we won’t see Brown, or whoever, facing Cameron across the dispatch box until October 2007. For if Blair actually steps down to allow his replacement to be in place at the end of July then the first weeks of the new Prime Ministership will be during the parliamentary vacation. We will then have next year’s…

Read More Read More

Has Election Night Special Had its Day? One of my pet hates is the BBC’s Election Night Special. It’s not too bad for General Elections, but their coverage of local elections is woeful. One spends hours watching talking heads, trying to spin the results on behalf of their respective political parties, and all piously agreeing with each other about how dreadful the British National Party is. Amid all this verbiage, one then gets about ten minutes of Professor Anthony King,…

Read More Read More

But could his “Back Story” blow his chances? Judging by the way Tony Blair enthusiastically greeted John Reid’s conference speech are the “anyone but Brown” factions now pinning their hopes on the Home Secretary? Certainly it appeared that way and punters have eased off Brown and have now backed Reid into the second favourite slot again. There can be little doubt that Reid’s powerful speech was in all but name a declaration that he will be standing. The big question…

Read More Read More

The Blair loyalist moves into the 4th favourite slot In spite of all the focus on leadership issues in Manchester over the past three days there’ve been only two real moves in the betting on who will succeed Tony Blair. The second favourite, Alan Johnson has now eased into the third place position at 10/1 with the Home secretary, John Reid, being backed down from 20/1 at the weekend to 8/1 this morning. Meanwhile of the outsiders the Works and…

Read More Read More

Could he have greater influence over the succession? Surely the big political impact of Tony Blair’s extraordinary farewell speech this afternoon is that he, and nobody else, will decide on the precise date when the removal vans will arrive at Number 10? The “tour de force” and the amazing reception he was given by delegates in Manchester put him in a unique position for the coming months. It’s going to be hard for anybody, particularly Gordon, to put any pressure…

Read More Read More

How damaging were Cherie’s alleged remarks? After watching and re-watching the vast amount of material coming out of Manchester I’ve come to the conclusion that the real problem with Gordon is that he cannot “do” sincerity. The world “knows” that he was behind the “rolling resignation” plan to oust Tony earlier in the month that it is stretching credulity to it absolute limits for him to be going on the platform talking about the “great privilege” of working for all…

Read More Read More

Gamblers not convinced so the Chancellor’s odds move out The chart shows the changes during the past six hours in the Gordon Brown price for the Labour leadership. Mike Smithson