…. We are not sure whether the person behind the Clarke tea-shirts is backing the ex-Chancellor or whether the plan is to block his leadership bid. Whatever Ken Clarke is having something of a roller coaster experience as he tries, at what surely must be his final attempt, to become leader of his party. For a long period his USP had been that the polls showed that he was the only contender with any chance of making significant progress at…
The heaviest traffic since the General Election hits our servers A big apology to all PB.C’s users for the problems getting through to the site from mid-afternoon today. In the immediate aftermath of Tony Blair’s speech and the Tory vote on the leadership rules trafffic soared dramatically on normal weekday levels and the servers could not cope. Today saw the site at its busiest since May 5th as an estimated 20,000 of you tried to access the discussion forums all…
…. Has the gloss gone off Gordon? One of the odder poll results during this first week of the party conference season is that Labour could drop support if Gordon Brown, as expected, becomes leader. An ICM survey had top-line figures of LAB 40: CON 31: LD 21. But when asked how they would vote if Labour was led by Brown and the Tories by Clarke the vote shares change to LAB 38: CON 30: LD 25. So both Labour…
Win a prize that money cannot buy To occupy you over the bank holiday, another of politicalbetting.com’s occasional prediction competitions. It looks like the only prize on offer will be the admiring respect of your peers on the site. The rules Post your entry as a comment on this thread. Please don’t use this thread for anything other than entries – discussion of the questions can go on the thread below this one. Entries close at 11.59pm BST on Saturday…
Please use this thread for any discussion of the competition… the comments section on the competition post itself should be for entries only. Many thanks.
What will the British political landscape look like in July 2012? It’s easy for political gambling enthusiasts to get carried away and forget how tiny a market our hobby is compared to sports betting. For example, about £150,000 of betting on the Conservative leadership has gone through Betfair so far. That’s less than 5% of the trade on Sunday’s Chelsea–Arsenal game. However, William Hill seems to be aiming at some crossover marketing, with a selection of markets themed around the…
…. …. ….but we love it really This is my last posting before my wife Jacky and I travel to our holiday cottage near Biarritz in South-West France and for the next two and a half weeks Philip Grant (Book Value) will be Politicalbetting’s guest editor. September looks like being an interesting month for political gamblers. There’s the German General Election which might not be as easy for Angela Merkel as seemed probable two or three months ago. Then there’ll…
How Tony Blair’s holiday host “prepares” for an election According to the Independent this morning the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has had a secret hair transplant at a clinic. Unfortunately it was less secret than he would have liked and “…acting on inside information, a correspondent of Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper was on hand outside the private plastic surgery clinic in Ferrara”. The report goes on“…eight hours later, the Prime Minister made his exit, staggering from side to side,…