Having bet on Sunak for next PM in November 2019 at 250/1 Ladbrokes this is a market I follow closely and if it comes up my £20 wager will be my biggest ever political betting win. It will outdo the £4,300 I made on the LDs in the June Chesham & Amersham by-election. Interesting that the big betting winner on this market this week has been Liz Truss who is now clear third favourite to succeed BoJo. The big question…
Three times in the last 18 months the UK has seen COVID cases rise sharply. Three times the government has imposed national restrictions. Now cases are up again, but in a post-vaccine world the government is very resistant to go down that road. Will they be forced to? Smarkets punters say yes, albeit only narrowly. I suspect no is the better trading bet, but again with much uncertainty. Vaccines have heavily shifted the risk factors. The July 2021 case spike…
Interesting argument this lunchtime between former PBer, Alastair Meeks and John Rentoul of the Independent. Was Ed Davey right in his FT piece today to rule out any deal that would keep a Tory government in power. The Meeks view is essentially that the way Johnson is current;y running the country is in a manner that is more alien to LD values than it is to LAB ones. Rentoul’s argument is that by ruling out one side Davey could be…
In spite of their ages, Trump’s 75 and Biden 78, the two men who were their party’s nominees last time continue to head the betting for WH2024. Taking them one by one I reckon Biden has to operate as if it is certain that he’ll seek re-election unless he could appear a lame duck. Clearly everything depends on his health but if it holds he looks as though he will go for a second term. I’m not so certain about…
Betting on the end month LAB poll average One of the innovative betting markets that Smarkets has up is in the chart above. What will LAB’s polling average be at the end of the month? These are the market rules: This market relates to the Labour Party’s UK parliament polling average on 30 September 2021, according to Politico’s UK poll of polls . A readout of the Labour Party’s most recent polling average (using the ‘Kalman Smooth’ display, to the…
And Truss should be taken seriously as a possible “Next PM” One of the features of ConHome, which was founded a few months after PB in 2004, has been its monthly survey of party members and the publication of its league table with net satisfaction levels for Cabinet members. It is surely not a coincidence that the reshuffle winners and losers could have been predicted from the latest survey which was published by the site on September 5th. Three of…
After a day in the Uk dominated by the cabinet re-shuffle, the above tripartite event will take place a 10pm. Quite what it is is hard to say although there is a fair amount of speculation on Twitter.
Having lived and brought up my family in the neighbouring constituency of Twickenham Dominic Raab’s seat of Esher and Walton is one I know well and where the LDs have hopes of making a gain whenever the general election happens. At GE2019, as the Wikipedia panel above shows, they came close last time and Raab would have lost if Labour voters had backed the LD. There are four factors that are central when looking at LD prospects in a particular…