Ed beats David by a fraction on the Affiliates section So, Ed wins it – just – with the affiliates section proving the crucial factor and the late rumours for DM were just that and may even have been a case of talk following betting rather than vice-versa. Ed Balls beat Abbott and Burnham for third place, which with a reasonable showing in the MPs section should reinforce his claim for a top job in the shadow cabinet. On a personal…
Has Ed snatched it or did David hold on? What looks like being the closest Labour leadership contest since voting was opened up to the membership finally draws to a close in Manchester this afternoon, with the result expected to be announced around 4.40pm. Until the very final days of the more than four months of campaigning, David Miliband’s position as favourite went more-or-less unchallenged, with his odds at times implying a better than 80% chance of winning. That all…
Who’ll get what in the Shadow Cabinet? One of the first tasks that the new Labour leader will have is to assign portfolios to the members of his shadow cabinet. How he does that could be significant in determining how Labour develops as an opposition over the parliament – depending how radical he chooses to be. To some extent, his hands are tied. Labour’s shadow cabinet is elected, something the PLP stood firm on earlier this month, and so he…
 Is the change down to more than my post? When I posted my call on the election at 3am this morning I sort of expected that there could be some movement on the Labour leadership markets but nothing on the scale of what has happened. The prices seem an almost exact mirror image of what they were last night but with a different Miliband in the favourite slot. The question I’m trying to answer is whether the prices are…
But is he the right one to take on Boris? No surprise then. The 1/20 favourite for Labour’s London mayoral nomination, Ken Livingstone, has won with 68% of the vote and it all looks set for a re-run of the 2008 race with Boris. But I wonder whether a beaten two term ex-mayor can return like this? For while Ken will try to make Boris’s record the main campaign issue the blue team are going to dig deep into Ken’s…
Are his political views most in tune with the movement? Until now I’ve been saying that I thought it was a 50-50 chance between the Miliband brothers and that that an EdM bet was the better value because his price was longer. Now I’m changing my view – I believe that Ed Miliband has a better chance of winning. There are two main reasons – firstly the progress his campaign seems to have made in the MP/MEP third of the…
Politicalbetting June 24 2007 What caused the last minute rush to Harriet? With punters and pundits looking forward to Saturday’s big announcement on the next Labour leader I thought I’d look back and see what happened the last time this election process was used. Above is a piece published on June 24th 2007 here 75 minutes before the official deputy result was announced. As can be seen Alan Johnson was a rock solid odds-on favourite with the others nowhere. Then,…
Home Secretary, Theresa May, has tried to turn the spotlight and put the blame on Labour following the chief inspector of constabulary’s criticism of the police “retreating from the streets” and the data that suggests that one such incident was reported every 10 seconds. I just wonder whether bringing a new element into the “Labour blame game” might be devaluing its effectiveness. My sense is that the government needs to be doing more than simply blaming the “last lot” particularly…