politicalbetting.com

Huge moves in Brown’s price as markets react to the Chancellor’s speech

Based on best betting prices the implied probability of Gordon Brown being next Labour leader touched more than 80% this morning as punters took stock of the Chancellor’s conference speech and news of his forthcoming Middle East trip.

Brown’s unveiling of “New Labour renewed” will set the backcloth to the expected transition from Tony Blair and has clearly been designed to allow the Prime Minister to step aside in the most positive manner. With his successor talking the same language but with his personal slant the two men have developed a powerful formula.

Can the new-style New Labour under Brown deliver to the party the electoral success that is has come to get used to under Tony Blair?

Whatever your political allegiance it is hard not to be impressed by the skill of this morning and to wonder if the Tories, under whoever they choose as their next leader, have any chance at all in 2009.

Mike Smithson

Will the Iraq situation affect voting in Robin Cook’s old seat?

After seeing themselves safely home by holding the Hartlepool by-election in the same week as the Labour conference a year ago party officials have adopted the same tactic for the Livingston Westminster by-election and the one at Glasgow Cathcart for the Scottish Parliament.

During conference weeks parties get much more broadcast coverage than usual and Labour officials clearly felt that this was extra insurance just in case there was the possibility of a shock.

In Robin Cook’s old seat at Livingston Labour are fielding the former MP’s agent, Jim Devine and his main challenge looks set to come from the SNP’s Blackburn-born Angela Constance, above, who secured 21.6% of the vote on May 5th - a massive 30% behind Cook. Even allowing for a personal vote and the difficulty Labour might have in getting its supporters out it is very hard to see anything other than a Labour hold with a much reduced majority.

The generally down-beat nature of the media coverage of last week’s Lib Dem conference won’t have helped the party who were in a reasonable third place last time.

Because the outcome has seemed a foregone conclusion there has been no online betting market and almost no coverage in the national media. It is hard to know what has been going on.

The main political impact could be the way a bad result for Labour will be interpreted. Given that this is Robin Cook’s old seat and the deterioration of the situation in Iraq it will be seen as further evidence of the political price Labour is paying for going to war.

The SNP’s campaign has possibly been hurt by Labour’s decision to hold the Cathcart by-election for the Edinburgh Parliament on the same day. This is the seat made vacant after the incumbent MSP, Mike Watson, was sent to prison last week after pleading guilty to a criminal charge of wilful fire-raising at a hotel.

If anybody has information about the campaigns then please let us know?

Mike Smithson

Tory leadership betting: RED Davis, BLACK Clarke, BLUE Cameron, GREEN Fox

But what if the rule changes are rejected?

With the Labour Conference, the Scottish by-elections and the announcement on Tuesday of whether the Howard changes to the Tory leadership rules have gone through it’s the biggest week in British politics since the General Election in May.

For the Tory leadership our latest chart shows further a improvements in the implied probability of David Davis winning based on the latest best betting prices.

It certainly looks as though the momentum is with the Shadow Home Secretary and the view of the other contenders, as the Observer reports this morning, is that Davis will benefit most if Tuesday’s decision on how the leader is chosen puts the final say in the hands of MPs. This is a complete reversal of the view at the start of this contest when it was thought that Davis would fare better if it went out to the membership at large.

We had thought that the move to Davis in the past few days was based on leaks about how the rule change ballot was going. However the amount of money that’s been required to shift his price has been very small - just £8,000, for instance, in a week has been traded on him on Betfair.

The big factor will be what happens in Blackpool next week. What will be mood of the party as one candidate after another set out their stalls to delegates? Opinion polls could also be crucial in shaping views particularly if there are more surveys showing Clarke convincingly ahead in both the country and amongst Tories.

Blackpool also gives a chance to the other contenders - Liam Fox, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and David Cameron - to put some traction into their campaigns. They must be hoping to make a speech that resonates with the party because this could possibly make a difference.

Davis’s big challenge is that he is still relatively unknown amongst the general public and the last time the party chose someone like that they ended up with Ian Duncan Smith.

Davis’s strong point is the support he has managed to garner amongst the party’s MPs - though whether they will do in private what they say in public is a different matter. This could be crucial if the rules remain unchanged because then the parliamentary party ballot to select which two contenders go on to the final ballot of members. Anti-Clarke factions could work to block him out of this even if the polls continue to show that he is the first choice amongst the membership.

It is hard to call against Davis but he still has a lot of work to do.

Tory leadership betting prices

Conventional bookmakers best price: Davis 8/15: Clarke 9/4: Cameron 13/2: Fox 16/1: Rifkind 25/1

Betfair betting exchange: Davis 0.47/1: Clark 4/1: Cameron 12.5/1: Fox 14.5/1: Rifkind 47/1

BinaryBet spread market. Davis 59-66: Clarke 19-25: Cameron 6-10 Fox 5-8: Rifkind 1-3

Mike Smithson

Is AC Milan’s George Weah the right man to become Liberia’s next President?

Of the 22 candidates standing for President in the tiny West African country’s presidential election, few have anything like the name recognition of Liberia’s soccer legend and FIFA 1996 player of the year, George Weah. The former AC Milan striker won the nomination of his Congress for Democratic Change (CDC) more than a month ago and is campaigning evergetically.

In the UK the Spreadfair spread-betting exchange has now opened a market on whether Weah will do it and the money seems to getting behind the former soccer star. In the spread, listed in Spreadfair’s “specials section” not politics, the price is 17-18 with 25 points on him winning and 10 points on him coming second

Weah, who was voted Africa’s player of the year and Africa’s player of all times, was also a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador.

The election has been set for October 11th and if Weah withdraws or the date is set back by more than a fortnight all bets will be void.

But be warned - Weah’s campaign is controversial and he is having trouble convincing other Liberian footballers. Jonathan Sogbie, one of the members of Weah’s Liberian side, has followed another star, James Debbah, in attacking Weah’s plan.

Sogbie held a news conference to declare that Weah was “incapable” of governing his country. Weah is also being attacked for not having the level of education required for the top job - he dropped out of secondary school.

Mike Smithson

Was the decision taken while on holiday?

The big unanswered question over-hanging British politics is when will Blair step down? When will he make his big announcement? When will the baton be passed on to Gordon Brown?

We have long taken the view that this will happen later rather than sooner and that he would serve most of his third term. Now we are not so sure and next week’s Labour conference, which Tony Blair is surely not looking forward to, might be the time for the news to be broken.

Rather than days of bitching and arguments with the party that has never really taken to him why not have a week of accolades by making an announcement about his departure time-table just as delegates are arriving in Brighton?

Adrian Hamilton in the Independent has been watching the Prime Minister closely and has noticed that things seem to be different about him since his return from holiday.

He notes ..But it’s the tone that has changed. And tone, as we have all come to learn in Tony’s case, is all. He proclaims debt relief and increased aid, he lectures on tougher measures to meet the new world of terror, he declares his ambition radically to reform public services. But none of it is said with much conviction, or at least with a sense of much concern about the result. His now-famous comment about the BBC to Rupert Murdoch seems par for the course. A careful politician wouldn’t have said it, knowing that it would be repeated in public. But, while he is mildly irritated that it has caused a small fuss, I don’t believe that Blair minds very much. It proves his American loyalties and the direction of his future. It’s not that he seems wearied of power or worn down by the strains it brings. Just the opposite. He appears positively refreshed by his unusually long holiday. It’s just that you feel that if it all ended tomorrow he wouldn’t mind too much, that out there in Barbados he reached some form of conclusion or contract with himself

Timing, of course, is everything and Tony Blair is a master of doing things at precisely the right moment to make maximum impact. It will be recalled that just a year ago, a couple of hours before the polls closed in the Hartlepool by-election at the end of the Labour conference, Blair made a big announcement. Then he gave news about going into hospital and that he would be stepping aside during his third term. If by any chance Labour had lost the by-election the media would have been on this news not on the result.

I have no idea what Tony Blair will do but Hamilton’s piece has set me thinking. There are several betting markets:-

Mike Smithson

How will tonight’s by-elections go?

In the immediate aftermath of last year’s Lib Dem conference the party’s poll ratings soared to the dizzy heights of 29% - a point ahead of the Tories and just 3 points behind Labour. The share was never to get anywhere near that again and on May 5th 22.7% of the electorate cast their votes for Charles Kennedy’s party.

The dashed expectations were surely one of the causes of the widespread view in Blackpool this week that in spite of the seat gains off Labour they could have done better. Charles’s 2004 rhetoric that they would replace the Tories as the official opposition looked a bit sick.

Given the less than postive nature of the media coverage this week we doubt whether they’ll get anywhere near to the September 2004 ratings in the new round of polls which comes out in the next few days.

But there’s another test of political trends that we can follow - the local council by-elections that take place almost every Thursday throughout the year. In response to special requests we are experimenting with a regular Thursday evening piece that, hopefully, will be a good introduction to a discussion on the results as they come out.

Tonight there are three local contests with significant Lib Dem interest.

Will there be any clues about the Lib Dem leadership from these results? The polls close at 9pm.

Mike Smithson