As far as Betfair punters are concerned Ed Davey is heading for almost certain victory in the LD leadership election

As far as Betfair punters are concerned Ed Davey is heading for almost certain victory in the LD leadership election

Comments 0 Comment

As the betting chart shows there have been a number of ups and down in the LD leadership race and on June 23rd Layla Moran was rated on the markets as a 69.4% chance. That was before the ballot packs went out and the series of virtual hustings took place. Since then the Betfair betting chart tells its own story and as can be seen Davey is heading into the count on Thursday with them thinking he’s a near certainty….

Read More Read More

The Corbynite delusion about YouGov contributed to their defeat in 2019

The Corbynite delusion about YouGov contributed to their defeat in 2019

Comments 0 Comment

Team Corbyn learnt that Labour would lose the 2019 general election three months before a voter had gone to the polls. On September 22, the Sunday morning of the party’s annual conference in Brighton, John McDonnell walked with his wife, Cynthia, to a meeting room in the bowels of the Metropole hotel. What the shadow chancellor was about to find out would prove difficult to stomach. In the last days of August, Niall Sookoo, Labour’s director of elections, and Tim…

Read More Read More

If Leaving the EU was easy

If Leaving the EU was easy

Comments 0 Comment

When it comes down to it, most articles only have one point at their heart.  They can be tricked out with lively language or illustrated with telling examples (or they can be pedestrian plods through the topic). Nevertheless, that one point is usually missed by most readers. So let me sum up the point of this article in one plain paragraph. The EU can choose the terms of a deal with Britain that it wishes to offer.  Britain in turn is…

Read More Read More

First post convention polling has Biden retaining his clear lead but no signs of a bounce

First post convention polling has Biden retaining his clear lead but no signs of a bounce

Comments 0 Comment

Generally speaking in previous White House races the big party conventions have been the trigger for significant moves in the polling. This year because of the pandemic the conventions are virtual and all eyes are on the the first full surveys to come out following the Democratic party event which finished on Thursday night. So far there is only one new poll carried out totally after the convention and that has Biden with a 9% lead rather than an 8%…

Read More Read More

No 10 is once again going to have to choose between No Deal and a Bad Deal

No 10 is once again going to have to choose between No Deal and a Bad Deal

Comments 0 Comment

Brexit has not gone away; far from it Gavin Williamson is a lucky man. In any ordinary government he would have been sacked over the exams fiasco this month, ex-Chief Whip’s book or not. This, however, is not a normal government. It’s not normal in part because it simply doesn’t play by the conventions of the game and is happy to brazen out scandals or tolerate failure that generally wouldn’t have been accepted in the past. It also has the…

Read More Read More

In the WH2020 betting the Trump price continues to recover

In the WH2020 betting the Trump price continues to recover

Comments 0 Comment

On Betfair the total matched now exceeds £60m This week has, of course, been the Democratic convention which because of the pandemic has been a virtual one. This has meant none of the last spectacle that we normally associate with US conventions but the party has used the prime time TV coverage that it has got to send out specific messages and promote specific people. Last night Joe Biden was up with his acceptance speech and the general view of…

Read More Read More

A 14% return in a little over 65 hours?

A 14% return in a little over 65 hours?

Comments 0 Comment

Paddy Power have a market up on whether Gavin Williamson will be out of the cabinet by the end of Sunday, now we should praise Paddy Power for putting up both sides of the markets. I’m advising taking the 1/7 because the bar for being sacked from Boris Johnson has been raised to the point where I suspect only denouncing Brexit or saying Dominic Cummings broke lockdown & quarantine rules on his excursion to Durham will get you sacked. I…

Read More Read More