What do we think of Paul Linford’s speculation? Labour inclined blogger, Paul Linford has an interesting post under the heading “Could it be Prime Minister Bercow one day?”. His article looks at some of the historical precedent and then concludes: “..Bercow has said he will do nine years in the Chair, effectively two full Parliaments plus the toe-end of this one. That will make him 55 when he stands down – younger than Gordon Brown was when he became Prime…
How else could he have got Labour to back his bid? Last night, in the aftermath of the commons election, the Indy writer, Steve Richards, talked in a TV interview about a private conversation that he’d had with Bercow just after the 2005 general election when the Buckingham MP revealed that his career objective was to become speaker. This has set me thinking. For how could a Tory, then in his early 40s, harbour such a dream when everything would…
Is it going to be Bercow after all? On the previous thread someone picked up this from the Guardian – “ To win, someone is going to have to get 298 votes. Bercow is well ahead of young, but even with all the Beckett votes and all the Dhanda votes he only gets up to 279 votes. Can he get another 20-odd votes from Beith? It could turn out to be very, very close.†My guess is that Young will…
Click for latest prices But could a late entrant act as a spoiler? The chart shows the changing prices for Next Speaker in the 24 hours from 4am yesterday to 4am today. The betting prices are shown as an implied probability. As can be seen there were quite a lot of changes in sentiment in this final day before this afternoon’s elections but as at the time of writing (4.30am) the punter view was that Margaret Beckett is going to…
Betfair Politics Young now beating Bercow for the third favourite slot The chart showing price movements on the Betfair betting exchange tells the story of the past 24 hours as opinion amongst punters hardens for Beckett with Young now seen as the only person who can beat her. As I write at 4.15pm it’s Beckett 2.35/1, Young 3.4/1 with Bercow now out to 4.1/1. The view seems to be that the original Labour idea of having a left-wing Tory speaker…
Prices as at 6.30 pm. Click for latest updates Betfair’s last price matched has Beckett as favourite With just three days to go before MPs elect their new speaker there’s been a lot of activity on the betting markets with Bercow, Beckett and Young pulling away from the field. On Betfair the “last prices matched” (at 3.10pm) were Beckett 3.55 (5/2), Young 4.3 (3.3/1), Bercow 5 (4/1), Widdecombe 9.8 (8.8/1). The last price matched is often a better indicator than…
Has redaction just made it a whole lot worse? If anybody thought that the official publication of MPs expense claim forms was going to put an end to the crisis then this morning’s front pages suggest they were wrong. For almost every paper is leading with the same broad story “expenses blackout” – because of the way that most of the documentation is almost totally useless because so much of the key detail been blacked out. All this has done…
Where’s the best value in the Speaker betting? With less than four days to go before the summer’s big political betting event is resolved – the battle for the Speakership of the house of commons – I’m becoming increasingly convinced that this is now a contest between Sir George Young and Margaret Beckett. I had a good session this afternoon with a Labour MP who has been taking a close interest in the contest and his observations closely coincided what…