politicalbetting.com

Can he still get to the top?

With Tory MPs due to vote on how the leadership contest should operate doubts have started to develop in the betting markets over whether the Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis, will do it.

For the first time since the election “was declared” punters are moving against Davis and the most popular current bet is on him not doing it.

The 2005 Tory leadership race is the first one to be held since the betting exchanges became a siginificant force in the political gambling arena and these offer punters a totally different way of backing their judgement. In 2003, of course, Michael Howard was the only candidate.

The exchanges are attractive because instead of always having to bet FOR a particular contender they allow you to bet AGAINST a particular outcome, and that is what is currently happening with the Shadow Home Secretary.

In the contest a huge gap has emerged between the Shadow Home Secretary’s conventional bookie prices and what’s available on the Betfair betting exchange. With the former the best Davis price is 1/2 which suggests a 75% implied probablity. The last Betfair trade was at greater than evens or an implied probability of less than 50%.

Following the Tory disappointment in Cheadle and the talk of the last three Tory leaders trying to initiate a “Stop Davis” campaign punters are rushing to take up the chance to put money on him failing to make it without having to name the person who will actually do it.

Apart from the exchanges you can also bet against a contender on the spread markets which have been relatively quiet in this contest. At the moment you can LAY Davis at the equivalent of 3/4 on IG’s BinaryBet market which represents an implied probablility of 62.5%.

Mike Smithson

I cannot remember whether I had a bet on the 1970 General Election but if I did I certainly did not foresee the extraordinary victory of Edward Heath’s Conservative party. Everybody had written him off and Harold Wilson, it is said, had not even put in place the most rudimentary of removal plans in case he had to get out of Number 10.

Whenever people talk about election certainties I always think of Heath’s achievement.

His term in office was dominated by Britain joining the EEC, the oil crisis of 1973 and his fight with the National Union of Miners which eventually was his undoing.

I have chosen the excellent Heath on a skate board picture because it gives a flavour of the time and the humour in the man. This comes from the excellent http://www.statesmanorskatesman.co.uk/ site which is a great resource of images of politicians doing extraordinary things.

Mike Smithson

Could Blair stay to fight another election?

As the polls were closing at the Hartlepool by-election on September 30th 2004 Tony Blair issued a statement that he was about to go into hospital for a small procedure and that he would stand down as Labour leader and Prime Minister before the then next General Election but one - which is probably scheduled for 2009.

The move seemed designed to deal with ongoing unpopularity following the Iraq war and to end the speculation about his position within the Labour party. In essence he was saying that he was going to go but not immediately.

As a device it worked and since then the Westminster village has been trying to guess when he would in fact leave Number 10. In the immediate aftermath of the May 5th victory there was much talk of a handover to Gordon Brown within months - and certainly not the years envisaged in his September 30th statement. In the first week after the election you could have got just 2/1 on a transition during 2005.

Following the victory over France in securing the 2012 Olympics for London and the general acclaim at the way he, personally, has dealt with the bombings and their aftermath there’ve been weekend press reports that Blair might just be considering staying on.

Quite how Tony Blair would square a statement that he was not, after all, standing aside with what he said last year we do not know. But to him such turnarounds are merely minor linguistic challenges. In the normal Blair way he would get away with it.

From all the reports the critical thing to him personally is whether or not his continuation in the job is undermining or helping Labour and it’s here that we think there has been a change of view. He did not go when everything was against him so why should he leave when things are going he his way. Of course there would be ructions from the Chancellor and parts of the party - but since when has Blair been worried about this?

The spread-betting market that we very much like is Sporting Index’s BetHiLo spread on how many months the Blair third term will last. It’s currently at 19-21 month so a buy would give you increasing profits for every month he stayed after February 2007. This looks great value.

Mike Smithson

Is Liam Fox being lined up as the stop DD candidate?

According to the Sunday Telegraph this morning the last three Tory leaders who failed to make it to Number 10 are considering giving their support to Liam Fox in what the paper says would be “a co-ordinated stop David Davis campaign”.

Melissa Kite, the paper’s Deputy Political Editor, notes that William Hague “….. has expressed privately his admiration for Dr Fox but will demonstrate it publicly when the pair jointly stage a champagne reception at the Conservative Party conference in October on the day that Dr Fox launches his candidacy.MPs last night suggested that Dr Fox might also have the backing of Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard in a co-ordinated “stop David Davis” campaign. All three former party leaders have made no secret that they found it difficult to work with Mr Davis, and might be taking their revenge by backing his Right-wing challenger, senior party figures said. Mr Duncan Smith has invited Dr Fox to speak at his Centre for Social Justice think-tank this week. Mr Howard, meanwhile, has appointed Dr Fox, and not his deputy, Michael Ancram, as his envoy to Washington for a meeting with Republicans this month.”

According to Kite the current second favourite, David Cameron, has upset Michael Howard by “..his recent criticism of party strategy and his attack on the policy of scrapping university tuition fees. Mr Howard was said to be “furious” with Mr Cameron’s suggestion that the party had been criticising Labour for the sake of it.”

Whether this will help or hinder Cameron only time will tell. Certainly being seen as Michael Howard’s preferred choice had both positives and negatives.

The best betting price on Liam Fox is currently 18.5/1 on the Betfair betting exchange and 16/1 with a conventional bookie. At that price it might be worth a few bob.

Mike Smithson

Winner of our Cheadle prediction competition

There were no prizes for the winner of our by-election competition except something which is pricelsss - the recognition of fellow users of the site. This is Mark Senior our winner and these were his answers.

1 - Winning party - Lib Dems 10 points
2 - Percentage turnout - 60 % against actual of 55% giving 3 points
3 - Lib Dem Share - 52 % against actual of 52.15% giving the maximum of 15 points
4 - Tory share - 40 % against actual of 42.42% giving 13 points
5 - Labour share 4 % against actual of 4.63% giving maximum of 6 points
6 - Charles Kennedy’s future. No. Although tomorrow’s deadline has not yet passed we are giving Mark 10 points.

Well done to Mark for getting maximum points on both the Lib Dem and Labour shares - a real achievement. Thanks to everybody else who took part. Given the picture that Mark has provided perhaps we ought to have a caption competition.

Mike Smithson

Has the party moved on since Theresa May’s “nasty party” judgement?

At the 2002 Tory party conference the then Chair, Theresa May, stunned delegates by telling them that..There’s a way to go before we can return to government. There’s a lot we need to do in this party of ours. Our base is too narrow and so, occasionally, are our sympathies, You know what some people call us: the nasty party”

Nearly three years on from that speech the Cheadle by-election on Thursday demonstrated that her diagnosis is still valid. For the reason why the party failed to make inroads in the Lib Dem position is that a large proportion of Cheadle’s voters were prepared to switch their allegiance in order to prevent the Tories winning.

The voting figures are striking because in the past three elections in Cheadle the aggregate Labour/Lib Dem vote hardly changed. What has blocked the Tories and made this into a safe Lib Dem seat has been how that proportion has split.

2001 General Election: Labour 14% Lib Dems 42.4%

2005 General Election: Labour 8.8% Lib Dems 48.9%

2005 By-election: Labour 4.6% Lib Dems 52.2%

The Lib Dems by-election main message followed precisely the same principle as Tony Blair’s General Election campaign by making “stopping the Tories” the objective. It worked on May 5th and again this week because so many electors out there hate the party.

For it’s not the level of support the party enjoys the matters - it’s the negative proportion and how they use their votes. And the hard reality is that until the Tories can make themselve liked again they have no chance of returning to office.

In the next two months the Tories will choose Michael Howard’s successor and there’s little doubt that the Cheadle failure will play a big part in the decision. David Davis continues to be the heavy odds-on favourite. Only time will tell whether the by-election failure will affect that?

Mike Smithson