How long has he got to prove he can make a difference? There is only one reason why Tory MPs and Tory members want David Cameron as their next leader – they believe that he can lead the party to greater electoral success than the alternative. They desperately want to return to power and the inexperienced and relatively unknown Cameron appears to offer this prospect more than David Davis. If Cameron is to lose the final ballot in the coming…
Six months of betting – six weeks to go Three quarters of a way into the eight month battle for the Tory leadership it is now down to just two men – the two Daves – Cameron and Davis. On the betting markets there’s been a slight easing of the Cameron price and a tightening of the Davis price. Many punters had been piling into Cameron in the expectation that the contest might be over this weekend. Now the battle…
New poll blow to Team Davis Cameron tightens to 1/10 on Betfair With the final MP ballot due to take place this afternoon a YouGov poll of Tory party members in the Telegraph this morning has Cameron 59%: Fox 18%: Davis 15%. This poll is taken very seriously because a similar survey ahead of the 2001 membership ballot predicted the final result to within one percent. Other findings:- If the membership ballot was between Davis and Cameron the Shadow Education…
Will the runner-up tomorrow concede defeat and avoid the membership ballot? As the BBC is reporting tonight Tory officials are preparing for the possibility that the whole Tory battle could be over this week. With so many MPs now switching to David Cameron the suggestion is being made that whoever comes second might pull out and not put the issue to the final ballot of the membership. For this to happen Cameron would need to be so far far ahead…
For his next trick… What recent speculation there’s been about the political future of Tony Blair has mostly concentrated on the impatience of some of his own MPs to get rid of him: the prospect, for example, of Glenda Jackson as a stalking horse next autumn. But could it be that current events in the Conservative party are making Blair keener to continue? Even Tony Blair’s political detractors have to see the skill in the way he conducts himself at…
Round One to Stephen Thomas as Clarke ejected Report by Paul Maggs Stephen Thomas, entry number 98, has won pb.com’s Round 1 prediction competition with an overall score of just 2, getting the Davis, Cameron, and Clarke scores exactly right, and being two votes out with Fox. There was a three-way tie for second place, between AH Matlock, Cymrumark, and Ukpaul who all scored 4, while Jan, Ben, Roger and Houndtang all scored 6 points. Attention now shifts to Thursday’s…
The money piles on Cameron In the immediate aftermath of his afternoon’s first round ballot of Tory MPs the David Cameron price has moved to 0.32/1 on the betting exchanges and 2/7 with the conventional bookies. This compares with the 0.38/1 in the Labour leader betting that’s currently available on the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, to take over from Tony Blair as Labour leader. Apart from Ken Clarke the big loser from this evening’s vote must surely be David Davis who…
Keep your eye on the David Davis price In the last Tory MP leadership ballot, the confidence vote on IDS in October 2003, the best guide to what was going on during the afternoon was on the betting screens. As I recall the poll closed at 6.30pm but an hour before there were exceptional changes on the betting exchange market on who would be Tory leader at the General Election. Michael Howard and David Davis had been running pretty close…