Is the Chancellor now unstoppable? After the odd betting activity of the past two weeks all the money in the Labour leadership betting now seems to be going on Gordon Brown. As the price chart shows those who were betting against him at prices up to 0.58/1 now seemed to have withdrawn and the best you can get this morning is 0.46/1. So a £100 bet winning today would produce would produce a profit of £46 – earlier in the…
Will the 2003 invasion carry on being an issue after Tony has left? Yesterday’s extraordinary comments by the Head of the Army and the mounting daily death toll in Iraq are timely reminders that Labour’s decision to go to war in 2003, supported wholeheartedly by the Tories, will remain high on the UK political agenda. This weeks “revelations” from David Blunkett about Gordon Brown’s role and views ahead of the critical decisions in 2003 will add further to the debate…
Why the North Matters to the Conservatives It’s often assumed that the North of England turned against the Conservative Party, under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. This is, in fact, incorrect. In both 1983, and 1987, the Conservatives outpolled Labour across the North of England. A big swing away from the Conservatives took place in Liverpool, Manchester, and Newcastle, during the Thatcher years, but in other parts of the North, such as Bury, Bolton, Halifax, Bradford, and the Lancashire mill…
What’s the fall-out from the Army Head’s Daily Mail interview? This morning’s dramatic comments in the Daily Mail by General Sir Richard Dannatt, that Britain must withdraw from Iraq “soon” or risk serious consequences for Iraqi and British society must be the biggest public split between the head of the Army and the Government in generations. For they run right across Tony Blair’s flagship foreign policy and bring onto the agenda again an issue that has caused so much damage…
The US “stock market” where political futures are traded With all the focus on the US mid-terms one of the world’s great political betting arenas comes into its own – the Iowa Electronic Markets. This is operated by the state University in Iowa as an academic exercise on how markets function and has grown into a remarkable place where what are termed “political futures” are traded. What happens is that the IEE sets up a market and defines “stock” to…
But can Labour MPs risk giving the Tory leader the trophy of the PM’s head With David Cameron enjoying what are by far and away his best ever PMQ reviews in the papers this morning the question has to be asked – how much more of this can Tony Blair take? Could the apparent impossibility of his position force a departure much earlier than next summer? My first reaction on watching the recording was to log onto Betfair to get…
What do we mean by odds, percentages and the overround? To a betting man, the odds are everything. This may appear obvious but believe me it is often ignored in practice. I suspect this is because our grasp of odds, the implied percentages and our assessment of whether they offer value is somewhat intuitive. But try taking a more analytical approach and you may be surprised at what you find. Start with the simple match bet between two contestants of…
ICM solves the great historical polling mystery. On Monday evening there was a vigorous debate on the site after I published an article on how a 3% lead in the ICM poll of October 1993 had been listed in Mori table of all polls as a 15% margin. Some people just did not believe it because the recall of many from that period was of mega Labour leads. This has become highly relevant today with many comparing the current Tory…