Can a bald leader beat one with hair? If you aspire to the leadership of your party and are a bit thin on top one of the most depressing political facts is that in modern times a party led by a bald man has never beaten a party led by someone with hair in a UK general election. The only time the country has had bald man at Number 10 was between 1940 and 1955 when first it was Churchill,…
Even when he looks down keep following Lucky Tony For the fourth time in just two years punters who piled in to bet on Tony Blair’s imminent departure are set to lose money on the political betting markets. In the aftermath of the May 5th General Election the price on him stepping aside during 2005 was just 2/1. On the Betfair exchange one punter bet that he would be out by September at a price less than evens. More bookmakers…
How long will the smiles last? One of the rules of Tory leadership contests is that the early favourite never wins. We thought that the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, was going to buck this trend as the money piled on him during June and early July pushing the implied probability represented by his betting price to nearly 62%. This has moved back sharply and is only just above evens – at a 52% chance. We’ve observed before in this…
Would a Schroeder defeat mean that it’s all change in Europe? If the polls and the betting markets have the German election right then Angela Merkel’s grouping of Christian Democrats and its Bavarian-based associate party Christian Social Union are on their way to a victory in the national ballot which is now set to take place on September 18th. The “starting gun” was fired on Thursday when the German President, Horst Koehler, announced that he had agreed to Chancellor Schroeder’s…
It’s 6/1 against him having to go The Dublin-based international betting exchange, Tradesports, has opened a market on whether George Bush’s closest aide and architect of his election victories, Karl Rove, will announce his resignation on or before 30 September 2005. The current price is about 6/1. The heart of the issue is whether Rove told a journalist that the wife of a prominent critic of the White House’s Iraq polcy was a covert CIA agent and if he did…
RED Alan Johnson: GREEN David Miliband: BLUE David Blunkett: BLACK Alan Milburn What if “events” blew the Chancellor’s career plan off course? While all the focus has been on the Tory leadership race it’s easy to forget that there’s almost certainly going to be a Labour leadership contest before the General Election. Gordon Brown, of course, is the red hot odds-on favourite but at 0.29/1 you would probably be better off leaving your stake in the building society than locking…
Davis’s challengers – RED David Cameron: BLUE Ken Clarke: BLACK Liam Fox Clarke and Fox barely make an impact The moves to get the Liam Fox and Ken Clarke bandwagons moving in the Tory leadership contest have so far failed to impress the punters who are continuing to rate David Cameron as the man most likely to take on David Davis. Our latest chart shows the implied probablility of the three main challengers to Davis in the Tory leadership contenders…
Can the veteran Europhile make it in a party of Europhobes? To many of his supporters Ken Clarke’s greatest strength is that like on the EU, or his link with a tobacco company the former Chancellor has never been prepared to tone down his positions in order win political popularity. What a contrast, they say, with Tony Blair and New Labour. On the face of it the moves to give a bigger role to Tory MPs in the leadership selection…