Is his position-play strong enough to overcome a weak hand? Many years before I started political betting, I was an avid poker player. I wasn’t tremendously successful, but I broke even or better at some pretty tough clubs, and knew the game as well as most. As one of the few games with as rich a literature as chess, I understood this princely game sufficiently to appreciate the very best, even if I wasn’t worthy of sitting opposite them. I…
But will the next set of polls follow MORI? The panel show the latest spread betting levels on the three main markets. There will be 650 seats next time so to ensure a majority a party will need 325. As can be seen there is now something of a division between IG Index and PB’s co-sponsor, Sporting Index. It’s not often you see a gap as large as five seats in the Tory and Labour spreads between the two companies….
Has the PM been transformed into a “risk taker”? On the Andrew Neil programme last night Michael Portillo made an acute observation which I’ve been thrashing about in my mind ever since – that recent events have led to a transformation in Brown’s character and that he might have become a risk-taker and a gambler. At the time of the Glenrothes by-election I pondered that that for him to become so personally involved was an enormous risk. If Labour hadn’t…
Why Linford’s right about bloggers in the lobby The former Westminster journalist and now leading blogger, Paul Linford, is stepping up his calls for members of the new media, bloggers, to be allowed into the lobby. He notes: “…what we must now call the Big Five political blogs are, by virtue of their size, influence, and networks, practically part of the mainstream media already. They are, in no particular order, Iain Dale’s Diary, Guido Fawkes, Political Betting, Conservative Home and…
Will Gord get thanked for all the bargains? If there’s one place where the recession will be most apparent in the coming months it’s going to be the High Street. Yesterday one major retail chain changed hands for just £1 and others are reported to be struggling particularly in the non-essentials sector of the market. Tomorrow I expect to be buying a new computer and my first thought was to go to a big national chain where there are some…
Will opinion harden behind Gord or Dave? On the thread the other day the question was posed as to whether in the build up to any other general election had there been so many turns. My recall is that while there have been shock results, most notably 1970 and 1992, we haven’t quite had the twists that we have seen in the period from May 2005. It’s perhaps worth repeating that on only one occasion since 1945 has a party…
Do we expect further moves to Labour? As expected the latest Ipsos-MORI poll putting Labour just 3% behind has caused movement on the spread betting markets – the political betting arenas where you can win or lose whole piles of cash by trading the number of seats the parties will get at the general elecxtion as though they were stocks and shares. The latest spreads from from PB’s co-sponsor, Sporting Index are: CON 334-340: LAB 242-248: LD 42-45 seats. With…
Is the Mirror’s Maguire right – Cameron panicked? The big political shift in the past 24 hours has been the abandonment by the Tories of their commitment to match Labour spending plans and, instead, start talking about tax cuts. This is Kevin Maguire’s take on it on the Mirror website: “..Every nurse, teacher, care worker, soldier and their families now has a vested interested in voting Labour at the General Election. No wonder the Prime Minister’s struggling to keep a…