I really don’t know much about economics and the intricacies of how and interest rates are set by the Bank of England, looking at this market from Paddy Power is a bit like pinning the tail on the donkey for me. My theory on this market is that is Project Fear turns out to be very close to Project Reality then Sterling will seriously and quickly tank as we head to No Deal. The only time I can remember a…
Could this former member of the Monday Club be our next Prime Minister? John Bercow as Prime Minister seems outlandish even in these interesting times. There’s not enough bandwdith on the information superhighway to list all the reasons why this is a bad idea or why John Bercow is so unsuited to be Prime Minister but given the desperation amongst MPs to stop a No Deal Brexit then something outlandish needs to happen. Do I think Bercow has the ego to…
From Betdata.io – the last month on Betfair GE year market But 2019 still a strong odds-on favourite As can be seen from the chart there has been a huge amount of volatility on the year of the next general election with punters starting to move back from 2019 which got to a 73% chance earlier in the week. As we know under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act there are two ways an election can be triggered ahead of 2022…
What use do Remainers hope another A50 extension would be put to? Boris Johnson’s Brexit plan is commendably clear: leave on 31 October without a deal. The clarity might be the only thing that’s commendable about it and it leaves many questions open about what happens into November and beyond but on the central point of Britain’s EU membership, the issue would be closed. Johnson and the rest of the government might argue that No Deal isn’t technically the government’s…
This weekend hundreds of LAB and LD activists will be heading for Sheffield Hallam, home of PB’s TSE, where there might or might not be a Westminster by-election in the next couple of months. This has been triggered by the statements last month by the man who won it for LAB at GE2017 that he plans to resign as an MP on September 3rd. Jared O’Mara was the person who took this off the ex-LD leader and Deputy PM, Nick…
Betdata.io chart of past three months on Betfair Exchange In an earlier post this week Robert emphasised the importance of the Iowa caucuses in the selection of the Democratic nominee. This is all because the state is the first to decide and voters there tend to pay much greater attention to the contenders at this stage than those states where the primaries are much later in the calendar. This week has been the Iowa State Fair and all the contenders…
President Trump would seem to have an advantage over whoever the Democrats select as his 2020 challenger: since the Second World War, nine elected presidents have sought a second term, and seven of them succeeded. The two exceptions were Jimmy Carter in 1980, and George H. W. Bush in 1992. In both cases, the US economy was performing badly in the lead-up to the election. US voters seem to be indulgent towards their incumbent presidents, but less so…
The US President who took over after Kennedy was assassinated, Lyndon Baines Johnson, was famed for his sayings that wonderfully summed up political situations one of which was that the first rule of politics was that its “practitioners need to be able to count”. If only MPs and the media circus had thought about that last night when Corbyn made his ludicrous pitch to try to embarrass new LD leader Jo Swinson. For the main requirement for the circumstances envisaged…