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Thursday’s elections take place against a huge amount of speculation about the future of the man who won the 2019 general election for the Tories. After partygate and other issues that have raised questions over Johnson he badly needs the Tories to do better than expectations in the elections. My view is the big problem for the Tories is not leadership but the growing evidence that people are getting poorer at a time when the new higher NI tax levels…

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On ‘Election Eve’ it is traditional for some cheeky punters to stick a small mortgage-worth of cash onto a sure thing to try and bag a quick if small return. Apparently during the week of a general election even seats as short as 1/100 see 5 figure bets on this basis, since in theory the annual equivalent ROI of such a bet is very good. Browsing the local election odds over the last couple of days, I think there are…

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There is an election today, and it might be rather a consequential one. Yep: it’s the Republican Senate Primary in Ohio, and it’s going to give us an early glimpse into Trump’s ongoing popularity with ‘the base’. Because the three leading candidate represent the three different strands within the GOP: Firstly, there’s Trump (and family) themselves. This is represented by JD Vance, the Hillbilly Elegy author, Peter Thiel acolyte, and onetime never-Trumper. Well… he’s the thrown his lot in with…

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Latest betting on Thursday’s local elections Almost since I began running PB in 2004 the two councils that have dominated discussion of the London local elections have been Wandsworth and Westminster and as can be seen punters on the Smarkets exchange think that LAB will take the former but fail in the latter. Overall there is a 92% chance according to the betting that LAB will come out on top on the BBC’s National Equivalent Vote share. There are markets…

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Quite a number of PBers have been contacting me to ask how I am after reporting here during the Easter weekend that I had contracted COVID. Well it took just over a week but I am pretty much over it now. My wife still has it and remains infectious. The worst part was the unbelievable splitting headache. This was relieved a bit for an hour or so by Paracetamol and Codeine but then I had to wait for five or…

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Above are the latest betting odds from the Smarkets exchange on the two outstanding by-elections both of which were Tory held at the last election. If LAB do do it in Wakefield it will end a by-election gain famine for the party which has continued since they took Corby from the Tories in 2012. I am less sure of Tiverton & Honiton because the period of LD strength in SW England really came to an end at GE2015. They are…

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1) MACKINDER AND THE HEARTLAND Between 1909 and 1943 geographer Halford John Mackinder outlined the Heartland theory which goes like this. You can split the world into three parts: The World-Island (Europe, Asia, and Africa combined), the Offshore Islands (British Isles, Japan, etc) and the Outlying Islands (North America, South America, and Oceania). The World-Island can in turn be split into three: the Heartland (approx the Soviet Union), the Southern Heartland (basically Africa), and the Rimlands (the bits between the…

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Who would have thought only 6 days ago that we would be having a by-election in the Devon seat of Tiverton and Honiton with the LDs as red hot favourites? The pace and the betting has been quite extraordinary given that at GE2019 the LDs came in third 46% behind the Tories. From my perspective the big way of telling whether Davey’s party is in with a shout is if the LDs decide to make it a priority and their…

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