New poll finds anti-Scottish bias south of the border With two of the possible contenders or the coming Labour leadership battle being Scottish – Gordon Brown and John Reid – there are some worrying findings for the party in an an ICM poll carried out for today’s “Politics Show” on BBC1. When asked if they thought it “wrong†that in the era of the Scottish parliament a Scot should become Prime Minister of the whole of the UK 52% said…
Back Balls for Chancellor to cover yourself on Brown getting it The call here on Wednesday to back Alan Johnson at the then 18/1 as Tony Blair’s successor gets good coverage by Vicki Woods in the Telegraph this morning. This is what she writes:- “My favourite website is the curiously influential politicalbetting.com (influential because I’m quite convinced it played a part in Cameron’s capture of the Tory leadership). Anyway, it chirpily suggested only days ago that anyone who fancies an…
“…and the winner is….” As one reader of this site picked up a few days ago, the winner was Lewis Baston, who correctly predicted the outcome of 26 out of the 32 contests in London. If he’d like to e-mail me on sean@grahamfear.co.uk then I’ll arrange for Amazon to e-mail him his prize. Overall, no one performed badly, (the lowest score was 18), and almost all of the entries scored in the range 21-24 (I scored 23). John O’Sullivan deserves…
Isn’t there a little matter of the election rules to think about? Today’s chart shows the implied probability of Gordon Brown being elected next Labour leader based on the best betting odds over time. In the immediate aftermath of the 2005 General Election the certainty of Brown getting the job was rated at 82%. It then declined a little only to soar again to 80% at the time of the party conference last September. Doubts started to emerge following David…
While normally Politicalbetting is devoted to serious topics – gambling, politics, that kind of thing – I thought regular readers should know that today is Mike Smithson’s birthday. So, please all join with me in wishing him the happiest of birthdays. Thanks, Robert
Could the 2005 switchers go back to Labour? With Ming Campbell waking up this morning to the poorest reviews of his short Lib Dem leadership a question the party has not really faced up to is the possible big loss of support when Tony Blair finally goes. For the person the party can most thank for what they achieved at the General Election and maintaining their support in most surveys ever since has been the Prime Minister. Yet judging by…
Is this the man to take on Brown? Although I think that the balance of probability still lies with Gordon Brown to take over from Tony Blair I’m sufficiently uncertain to consider other choices. Certainly at current prices the non-Brown options look very attractive. I’ve just placed my first serious bet on the contest – on the new Education Secretary, Alan Johnson who can be had from a bookmaker at 18/1. The Betfair price is much tighter which is often…
Populus and YouGov fail to shift the markets The trend against Labour shown in yesterday’s Populus Poll is reinforced this morning in a new YouGov poll for this morning’s Daily Telegraph. The Betfair betting exchange price, meanwhile, has seen the Labour price tighten and the Tory price ease. The shares with comparisons on the last YouGov poll are CON 37%(+2): LAB 31%(-1): LD 17% (-1). YouGov is still reporting a high share – 6% – for the BNP. Although other…