With maybe three years to go the Commons majority markets open So we’ve ended conference season and we’ve now got a clearer idea about how all three main parties will tackle the coming months. But what’s this all going to mean in General Election terms? Do we have any greater feeling about the outcome? The challenge is that nobody has any real idea how a Brown-led Labour is going to go down with the voters. Will his changed status as…
It was good on the bulletins but did it fall flat in the hall? Having now watched all the TV bulletins it’s clear that like almost all Cameron’s set-pieces he gets his sound bites right. The speech has come over much better on the TV bulletins than it actually was. From what could be gathered from the TV bulletins you did not get the feeling of overwhelming support amongst the activists for their new leader and you could see that…
Are betting odds being “managed” to influence the race Over the past two to three days there have been some very odd happenings on the £500,000 Labour leadership betting market on the Betfair – the leading betting exchange that usually sets the scene for other bookmakers. For as the chart shows the Brown price has eased considerably from 0.51/1 on Sunday to 0.58/1 where it has remained almost stuck. Now what makes this move remarkable from a betting market perspective…
How long a standing ovation will the new leader receive? Sir Menzies Campbell’s lasted five minutes, Tony Blair’s seven minutes, now spread betting firm IG Index has opened a market on how long a standing ovation David Cameron will receive after his closing speech tomorrow. The spread is between five-and-a-half and six minutes. By comparison last year when he was a leadership contender the standing ovation went on for three minutes. Then, of course, there weren’t the “floor managers assisting…
Is it necessary for him to be seen to have a victory? As an ace public relations man nobody is better placed than the Tory leader to understand the problems of holding a party conference when there is little real news about. For unlike last year when there was the excitement of the leadership race this year there’s not a lot happening. That’s fine except there are hundreds of journalists with them by the seaside all looking for some angle…
New data from Alexa – the Amazon.com subsidiary that monitors Internet traffic shows that in the third quarter of the year that ended at the weekend only two UK political sites were in the top 100,000 websites of all kinds in the entire world. One was Guido which is in position 78,062 and the other is Politicalbetting.com that’s rated at 98.904. The difference between the two sites is that while Guido attracts upto four times as many visitors each day…
Are we about to enter the year of limbo? One of the consequences of Tony Blair’s desire to leave during the summer could be that we won’t see Brown, or whoever, facing Cameron across the dispatch box until October 2007. For if Blair actually steps down to allow his replacement to be in place at the end of July then the first weeks of the new Prime Ministership will be during the parliamentary vacation. We will then have next year’s…
Are we going to get a poll that will confirm or refute Frank Luntz? In terms of political betting the key focus this morning is not on anything coming out of the Tories at Bournemouth – but on whether Gordon Brown will face a serious challenge in his quest to succeed Tony Blair and if so by whom? For we are talking here about who will be the next Prime Minister and we might get a better indication of how…