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Category: Labour

Which one could trouble Gordon most?

Which one could trouble Gordon most?

Could tonight’s debate have any impact? With John McDonnell and Michael Meacher due to resume their discussions tomorrow on which one should seek to be the left-wing nominee for the Labour leadership they are joining Gordon Brown tonight for what could be the first and last debate of the campaign. With nominations due to close on Thursday a key question tonight could be which one will end up in a better position. So although Gordon is there the real attention…

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Is it still worth betting on Brown?

Is it still worth betting on Brown?

At what price does the risk become too great? My final bet on Brown to succeed Tony was last Sunday when I got a price of 0.08/1. This means for my £200 stake I’ll make a profit of just £16 should, as seems almost certain now, he takes over at Number 10 at the end of June. With Blair’s announcement now over with and the only possible challengers, Meacher and McDonnell, arguing amongst themselves over who should fly the flag…

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Will McDonnell get enough support to take on Gordon?

Will McDonnell get enough support to take on Gordon?

..Or will the pro-Iraq war Meacher be the left’s standard bearer? The question of whether Brown will get his coronation or face a left-wing challenge is still in the air tonight after the pro-Iraq war Michael Meacher and John McDonnell, who opposed it, announced that they had delayed until Monday a decision over which one of them will run. The plan is that the candidate with the most backing will go forward to see if he can get the 45…

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So how will Betfair decide?

So how will Betfair decide?

Uncertainty over the betting market continues until the last For months many have been saying on the site that the terms of the Blair departure date market added a level of real confusion so that what punters might be betting on is not when he is going but how the betting exchange interprets the rules that it itself set. Given that all the consensus is that at lunchtime in his Sedgefield constituency Blair will announce that he is stepping down…

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The Labour succession by “Red Sky MP”

The Labour succession by “Red Sky MP”

The latest thoughts from our mystery Labour MP With the elections behind us, Labour attention will shift rapidly to the change in leadership. It’s now generally accepted that there will either be no leadership contest or a Brown-McDonnell contest. There have been manoeuvres behind the scenes on the union side over this. The TGWU and Amicus leaderships see the McDonnell challenge as a distraction from the job of getting a good start with Gordon, but many activists disagree, and if…

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What does Scotland’s loss do for Gordon?

What does Scotland’s loss do for Gordon?

Has the Chancellor what it takes to turn the party round? So Scotland is now lost and the question must be asked about what this means to the Scotsman who looks set, within the next few weeks, to take over at Number 10? Even though the final result is nothing like as bad as might have been feared a week or so the news within the last few minutes that the SNP is top party must cast a shadow over…

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So is Labour winning the expectation war?

So is Labour winning the expectation war?

The election thread – part 3 With the BBC national vote share projection showing CON 41%: LAB 27%: LD 26% there’s little doubt that the party that has done better than expectation is Labour. The talk of an electoral “meltdown” has been somewhat premature. Yet there is still a long way to go before we see the full results from yesterday’s and today should be very exciting. The stories about electronic counting and the number of ballot papers declared void…

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Betting strategies for a big political week

Betting strategies for a big political week

How prices change in the final few days One of the features covered in my book “The Political Punter” is what happens to betting markets in the final few days before an election when the small body of knowledgeable political gamblers is joined by many in the wider betting community. They tend to follow favourites resulting in the prices of the most fancied options getting tighter and others moving out. So according to the book “If the person or party…

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