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There’s speculation by Simon Carr in the Independent this morning that Tony Blair might be planning to step down in the summer – after his 10th anniversary as Labour leader. This date has been mentioned before and in December there was much talk of some deal being done with Gordon Brown at that famous reconciliation dinner hosted by John Prescott after Gordon Brown returned from maternity leave.

It will be recalled that Brown returned to work with a series of TV interviews in which he was more forthright than ever about the occupant of 10 Downing Street. Prescott called the dinner and since then all has been quiet - but was there an agreement whereby Blair would step down?

For a few weeks the change in mood of Brown was noticed by many at Westminster and people were concluding that a deal had been done. Could they be right?

This is how Carr concludes his article on Blair:-

He’s had his lows, especially in the summertime, so maybe this is coincidence. But he is dealing with a slump in credibility, he has made a mistake over the referendum, and his 10th anniversary is coming up.
If he were to hand over power to Gordon Brown after the next election we would all recoil, would we not, at a Soviet-style breach of the democratic process. Ken Livingstone came to power in the GLC all those years ago without being elected. I don’t think Tony Blair and Gordon Brown would sink to such a stratagem.
So the blinding insight is this: they’re going to do the decent thing. Ha! The column that dares to say what others daren’t think!
The handover in the summer, the installation at the party conference, the election early next year.
Oh, and the punchline to all of this is: Gordon Brown loses. They haven’t seen that coming.

The quip about Gordon could send a flurry through the betting markets - if not Brown who? Currently Blair is 1.49 to be Labour leader at the General Election and Brown is 3.9. After that it is Jack Straw and Peter Hain - both at 50.

For a long time we have been saying that the best political bet about at the moment is laying Blair & Kennedy in the Party Leaders at the General Election market on one of the betting exchanges. If either or both go decided to you win and there’s enough speculation about both men to make this a good value bet. This was one of this week’s Monday Calls on politicalbetting.com.

We do not think that anything will happen with Charles Kennedy until after the June 10 local, Euro and London elections. Elections are the oxygen that drives the party and nobody wants to interfere. If he has decided that enough is enough then an announcement would come afterwards. If the LDs do well, as looks very likely, then his position is reinforced - but this, conversely, could make it easier to stand aside.

Given the core mathematics of the next UK General Election that make it so difficult for him to lose why is Tony Blair making such a big deal of the June 10 elections for the European Parliament? Why is he mortgaging his short-medium term political future with the commitment for the referendum on the Euro constitution?

Sure June 10 2004 is not going to be a good day for Labour. The last time the Euro seats were fought, in 1999, Labour had an unmitigated disaster. The opinion polls had them at 56%, to William Hague’s Tories on just 25%. Yet when it came to real voters putting real votes in real ballot boxes Labour could only manage 28% - or HALF what the pollsters were saying. The Tories, written off by everybody got 35.8% - admittedly on a very low turn-out.

Sure the political climate has changed since 1999 - the opinion poll leads are smaller if non-existent, the Tories are more sure-footed and credible under their new leader and the LDs are enjoying their highest poll ratings since the heady days of the Alliance before the Falklands War in 1982.

Sure Tony Blair must be worried that if Labour could not get it supporters out in the favourable climate of 1999 then it is going to be much tougher this time.

But he has been able to take some measures to ameliorate the situation - tinkering with the election time-table so that the 2004 local elections take place on the Euro day will boost turnout as will forcing through postal voting in parts of the country even though there have been strong warnings about fraud; and of course he’s ditched the Labour party’s own rules to bring Ken Livingstone back into the party as candidate in the London Mayoral Election.

But who cares about the European Parliament? William Hague’s 1999 triumph had no impact at all on the General Election two years later. And as we’ve been saying repeatedly on Politicalbetting.com it is very hard for Tony Blair to get beaten on 05/05/05 – the suggested General Election day – because of the way the Westminster seats are distributed.

The Euro referendum is going to dominate the UK political scene for a long time to come and it is by no means certain that the strategy of trying to paint the Tories as extremists who just want to be out of the EU altogether is going to work. Michael Howard, as we saw in the Commons yesterday, is so much smarter than previous Tory leaders and is not going to let them get away with it.

The question of what will you do if the referendum says no is hard for Tony Blair to answer. Referring to the Irish experience in such a situation just makes him look even more slippery.

One thing is for sure - we need some new political betting markets

After a week away on business in the US I’ve returned to the UK more convinced more than ever that the Bush-Kerry race in November is going to be very tight even though the latest batch of polls has Bush back on top.

The Bush campaign is attacking Kerry’s policies such as threatened hikes in gasolene taxes. In contrast the Kerry campaign is focussing on the qualities of their candidate trying give to give positive reasons to vote. People are talking about this election in a way they were not talking four years ago. I have to be careful not to be guilty of wishful thinking but the anti-Bush resolve seems to be very strong. Given the low turnout in US elections it might be that those wanting change are more determined to vote than those happy with the status quo.

It’s not just Iraq and its ongoing aftermath that is raising the doubts but the whole aggressive isolationist style of the Bush administration.

Common topics of conversation were the lack of ease Bush showed fielding questions at his nationally televised press conference, and of course the visit to Washington by Tony Blair. You also a good feel for opinion from the TV shows particularly C-Span’s “Washington Journal” which usually has a large phone-in content on the immediate political issues of the day.

A friend and colleague from Vermont, who had first raised doubts in my mind about Howard Dean’s chances, is now convinced that Bush can be beaten. He is an acute observer of the US political scene and I take his view seriously. I made a lot of money on his advice on Dean and I’m inclined to think he’s right on the November vote.

One of the wonders of American politics is the extraordinary openness on political donations which mean that it’s often very easy to check people’s politics. There’s a great website where you can find out about all political donations above the very small amounts and you can cross check the view that people express to you with whether they ever contributed to Republican or Democrat campaigns. What really shocked me was discovering that two of those who expressed the biggest doubts about Bush had been Republican donors in the past.

The markets in the UK continue to tighten and now only one bookmaker is offering 2.37 on Kerry which, even with the latest polls, looks good value.

It’s inevitable as politicalbetting.com gets known that candidates running for office are going to use what’s said here if they think it to their advantage. The website of the Steve Norris campaign in London has included some of our observations on the opinion polls.

When we make a call here we do so because we believe that on the basis of the evidence the chances of something happening are less than the current betting odds. Our objective is solely to aid the political gambler. The fact that we think that a particular outcome might happen does not mean that we actually want that outcome. That is beside the point.

Steve Norris’s chances in the London Mayoral race are based on two things - his ability to mobilise the Tory vote and whether for the second election running Ken Livingstone is able to assemble a broad coalition of support from Londoners who do not normally vote Labour.

Last time Ken got in because 160,000 Tories and Lib Dem supporters gave him their number one preference as did 125,000 Green voters and he was able to attract more than 105,000 people to the polls who did not take part in any of the other elections that day. This time he’ll get the full Labour vote - the question is whether he can attract enough switchers and the non-local election participants.

My reading is that the Tories will get 35-40% of the GLA vote and hardly any will switch to Ken for the Mayor vote. The LDs will get 20+% in the GLA poll and most will stick with Hughes - but there could be quite a number of Greens who will make Ken their number 1. The critical group on June 10 could be those who turned out last time just to vote for Ken and do nothing else. Will enough of them do so in June even though Ken is now the official Labour candidate?

Be very careful about opinion polls in this election. At precisely this stage in the 2000 campaign this appeared.

The actual result was-
Livingstone 39% (DOWN 22%)
Norris 27.2% (UP 14.2%)
Dobson 13.1% (DOWN 2.9%)
Kramer (LD) 11.9% (UP 3.9%)
However you look at it the chances of Livingstone winning are much lower than the current odds.

The first Politicalbetting.com Monday Call, a week ago, has been 100% accurate in predicting political betting market movements. All the BACK calls have shortened in price or the bets are no longer available.

The Markets, the Trends and the Calls
UK General Election

London Mayoral Election - June 10 2004

US Presidential Election November 2 2004

For profitable political betting keep following the Monday Calls.

NOTE: When we make a call we are stating that we believe that the chances of something happening are better than the odds that are available.
All prices quoted are as at time of posting.

The third post on the ways of politcal betting looks at at the traditional bookmakers where getting the best price used to be laborious and time-consuming and involved switching between upto 20 sites. But that’s all changed with the emergence of the betting odds search engines. These link to the online bookmakers, continually scan prices in each market, and then present them on the screen in an easy to digest table.

The odds search engines end once and for all the frustration of making a bet with one bookmaker only to discover that another is offering a much better price.

Finding the best value is easy because you can see the odds that each bookie allowing you to compare what’s available. They usually have the betting exchange prices available as well as, now, spread betting information. The one-stop site for all you betting market needs is a great boon.

To make a bet you click on the price and this takes you through to the bookmaker’s site. If you already have an account you simply bet in the normal way. If you do not then the odds engines’ facilities usually make this easy for you.

In preparing these posts for Politicalbetting.com the search engines are indispensable. Not only can you see what the prices are but you can also get an idea of the plethora of different markets that are there.

There are three main betting odds search engines – Oddschecker, Easyodds and Bestbetting.

The leading site for political gamblers is Bestbetting – which is very much “the Google of the betting search engines”. It always has the widest range of political markets whice are updated round the clock at regualr intervals

Number of political markets covered by the main Odds Search Engines:-
Bestbetting 20
Easyodds 1
Oddschecker 5

All the links on odds on this site go to Bestbetting.