After months in which her success in the German General Election was seen as almost a foregone conclusion things have started to go badly wrong for Angela Merkel. Heinrich Martz, who has become a PB.C regular, sent this tonight. All those who think the election is over had better take a second look. At the moment, the election is wide open. The CDU (42%) and FDP (6%) have a combined 48% of the vote. But the left-wing parties, the SPD…
Would such a U-turn be enough to beat David Davis? After our thread yesterday on Ken Clarke’s bid for the Tory leadership comes a report this morning that the former Tory Chancellor is prepared to ditch his long-standing support for the Euro in order to position himself better in the campaign for his party’s leadership. Many observers believe that Clarke’s support for the Euro and being ready in 1999 (above) to sit alongside Tony Blair on a platform on the…
What’s behind the betting move towards the veteran campaigner? It’s some time since we featured our chart showing prices changes in the Tory leadership race because there’s been so little movement. For weeks the implied probability based on best betting prices has David Davis at more than 55%; David Cameron on 22% and the rest of the field almost nowhere – except Ken Clarke. For the former Tory Chancellor has seen a recovery and is not far off the peak…
1999 2005 Could Blackpool be a turning point? Before the Betfair betting exchange felt it had had to get respectable it ran lively markets on whether politicians and others apparently in trouble would hold onto their jobs. The whole David Kelly affair and the Hutton inquiry had very lively betting and Charles Kennedy’s failure to make his party’s response after the 2004 budget statement saw the money piling on both for and against the Lib Dem leader. Sadly we cannot…
The third of his generation to die so young I’ve been away all weekend and it is only now that I am able to start a thread on Robin Cook – the former Labour Foreign Secretary who will always be remembered for his resignation speech just before the Iraq War started in March 2003. Almost exactly a year ago on Politicalbetting we were speculating that in the event of a hung parliament then what we termed the “Ginger Alliance” of…
How Tony Blair’s holiday host “prepares” for an election According to the Independent this morning the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, has had a secret hair transplant at a clinic. Unfortunately it was less secret than he would have liked and “…acting on inside information, a correspondent of Rome’s La Repubblica newspaper was on hand outside the private plastic surgery clinic in Ferrara”. The report goes on“…eight hours later, the Prime Minister made his exit, staggering from side to side,…
Will imposing fines on non-voters ensure that Labour stays in power? To Labour officials the party’s supporters must be exasperating. For there’s a big gap between the number who say they support the party and those that actually vote. If some means of boosting turnout can be found, they believe, then Labour’s grip on power could be even stronger than it is at the moment. Labour’s Plan A was to make voting easier. Making postal voting available to everybody seemed…
2001 2003 2005? Three faces of the man punters think will take on Gordon Brown Yesterday’s attack by David Davis in the Daily Telegraph on multiculturalism was a foretaste of what we can expect in the coming weeks as leading contenders for the Tory leadership try to position themselves as the right person to stave off a fourth successive General Election defeat. The Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, has been here before. In the 2001 contest he came joint bottom…