Is this worth betting on? William Hill are offering odds of 5/1 that Peter Hain will be back in the Cabinet by the end of 2008, and 3/1 that he will return there by the end of 2009. ‘Mr Hain was a 7/1 shot to be out of the Cabinet by the end of this January and 2/1 to be the first Cabinet Minister to lose his position – so many political punters are celebrating his departure’ said Hill’s spokesman…
Could such an approach backfire on Cameron? Yesterday’s characterisation by David Cameron of the Prime Minster as being “that strange man in Downing Street” has prompted a number of Labour-leaning bloggers, including Paul Linford, to suggest that this is part of a Tory plan. This is what Linford wrote:“it’s clear….that portraying his opponent as somehow not one of us is a key part of the Tory leader’s political strategy..Mr Cameron clearly wants to portray himself as This Charming Man, and…
Was it £200,000 well spent Peter? For me Labour-leaning blogger, Paul Linford, sums up Peter Hain’s predicament best – “…the real reason he’s finished is because he spent 200 grand coming fifth behind Harriet Harman in the deputy leadership contest. However things pan out with the donations story, Hain has been living on borrowed political time ever since that dismal result and the only way is down from now on.” To be be prepared to spend that sort of money…
Was action delayed because of the planned November election? With the government having lined up a veteran City executive, Ron Sandler, to run a nationalised Northern Rock there’s been a big downward move on the stock market on the NR share price. The expectation is that if the government steps in then equity investors will suffer. But what is the political price of such a move which has been advocated by the Lib Dem treasury spokesman, Vince Cable, for several…
Two more polls show increases in the Labour deficit A week ago Gord returned from his holiday and went on the publicity offensive with a series of set-piece interviews and high profile announcements. For days there was hardly a TV bulletin without him featuring. This wasn’t a re-launch, we were assured, but it had all the makings of one. Brown was trying to get the initiative back and to build on the improvements in Labour polling fortunes that we had…
Will the honeymoon bets come to the aid of the NH losers? Quite a few regulars took a battering in the betting on the New Hampshire primary and I note that Peter the Punter reported losses of £1300 – ouch!. This has prompted me to look over outstanding bets and I discovered one that was very popular amongst PBers in late June and early July at the start of the Prime Minister’s extraordinary media honeymoon. For it was not only…
Who were those who cashed in on the afternoon of October 6th? While going through some of the old threads during the key moments of 2007 I came across the following discussion, reproduced below, which got by-passed by the dramatic news of Gordon’s general election U-turn on the afternoon of October 6. For it suggests that a gambler or a group of gamblers who had inside information about the Prime Minister’s decision sought to turn what they knew into cash…
Defeat threatened on terror limits and John Rentoul says “it’s all over” On what must be the first “conventional” front page in a long time the Independent, the normally left-leaning paper, reports a ComRes survey of Labour MPs which suggests that the government is heading for a commons defeat if it presses ahead with plans to extend the limit on detention without trial to 42 days The survey found at least 38 Labour MPs would rebel against – four more…