politicalbetting.com

Tomorrow marks the second birthday of PB.C. Thanks to everybody for their support and for making the site what it is.

Thanks to my son Robert for handling and maintaining the technical side and his fiance, Lucille for the design. Thanks to Philip Grant (Book Value and one of the first people ever to comment here) for being the stand-in editor and thanks to those who are helping keep PB.C a seven day operation by providing articles and commentaries. Thanks also to Paul Maggs for handling our competitions.

The first post, on March 27th 2004, was on the future of Charles Kennedy and attracted just three comments.

For those who, like me, bet on political outcomes I hope that the site has helped you make some money. For everybody this has become a place where, for most of the time, people of all allegiances can discuss outsomes in a reasonably civilised way.

Mike Smithson

Are Labour MPs fearful about Gordon?

The Tory party, as in the poster above, might have called on the electorate to “burst Blair’s bubble” in the 2001 General Election campaign but they lost and lost again. Now in spite of the appalling headlines there does not seem much Labour pressure for him to go.

From this distance the Tory strategy behind the poster looks questionable. For all it did was to highlight what has proved to be one of Labour’s greatest electoral assets - Tony Blair.

So after a week which has seen the continuing “loans for peerages” row and Gordon Brown’s tenth budget Blair is still at number 10 Downing Street apparently with the intention of doing what he said he would - serving a full third term.

After sitting on the fence on the issue of Blair’s departure I’ve now started putting money on him hanging on until the end of next year. The current prices have this at about 3/1.

Amongst all the political coverage in the Sunday papers the best piece on this is by Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer. In it he argues that the reasons Cabinet and Parliamentary colleagues have not moved against Blair are because of real fears about “…the temperament and style of a Brown premiership.”

Rawnsley goes on “….. He has run the Treasury as a very tight regime. If he has rarely deigned to tell the Prime Minister what was going to be in his budgets, the cabinet is understandably terrified about how it might be treated by a Brown-led Downing Street..There has been a lot of personal rule from Tony Blair’s sofa under the present incumbent. But there has at least been one contesting pole of power to Number 10. That has been the Treasury. There would be no check and balance to Prime Minister Brown because there would no longer be a Chancellor Brown..You can run the Treasury by concentrating on one big project at a time. You can also disappear from view when it is politically convenient. Tax credits go wrong and Gordon Brown pushes his subordinates towards the sound of gunfire. His response to the spending crisis in the health service is simply not to talk about it..A Prime Minister cannot go into denial. He has to be ever-visible as he has to have the capacity to juggle a multitude of balls at the same time. ‘Can Gordon learn to delegate?’ asks one of his colleagues. You have to doubt that after listening to another budget speech which treated the rest of the cabinet as if they were his satraps.”

Things could get worse in the weeks ahead. The May local elections could go badly wrong for Labour but as Sean Fear pointed out on Friday expectations are so low for the party that they could shrug off almost any outcome.

The loans issue continues to rumble and the effort to divert attention to the Tory loans is having only a limited effect. Labour’s problem is that it is the party of power and all the patronage is with the Prime Minister. Thus it’s much harder to smear the motivation of Tory lenders and donors.

William Hill have emailed me about bets on Blair outlasting Margaret Thatcher - which he’ll do if he’s still there in November 2008. You can get 8/1 on this possibility although I cannot find this price online. If it was I’d put a bit on.

Mike Smithson

HOW BADLY WILL LABOUR DO ON MAY 4TH?

Labour is in the fortunate position of being expected to do badly in the local elections on May 4th. Anything other than a complete disaster can be portrayed as a success by Labour’s spin-doctors. So will Labour face a complete disaster, on a par with the wipe-outs of 1968, or 1976-1978?

In fact, this is unlikely. In 1968, Labour were reduced to 350 councillors in London (compared to 1,400 Conservatives). In the late seventies, they did not perform quite so badly, but still lost boroughs like Leeds, Tameside, and Oldham to outright Conservative control. By contrast, even in the mid-1990s, the Conservatives still managed to hold 520 seats in London, and it’s hard to believe that Labour can do worse than that.

Labour’s performance in by-elections since the start of the year (and in fact since Autumn last year) suggests a national vote share of 28%, which is about 9% behind the Conservatives. By-elections in London in 2005 implied a swing of 2-3% from Labour to Conservative and a similar swing from Labour to Liberal Democrat.

If Labour’s performance on May 4th matches its by-election performance, then it will lose considerable ground in London. Several boroughs which Labour controls, such as Hammersmith, Bexley, Harrow, Croydon, Brent, Camden, and Merton, are vulnerable to small swings to their opponents. Labour were lucky to win 15 London boroughs outright in 2002 (compared to 8 for the Conservatives) despite being level-pegging with the Conservatives, in terms of vote share. A loss of 150 seats is plausible. That will hurt, but it would still leave Labour with c.700 seats in the Capital.

Outside London, the scope for Labour losses is smaller. In the Shire District and Unitary Authorities, there is little left for Labour to lose. They may well lose Crawley, one of their very few remaining authorities in the South outside London, and could easily lose 100 or so seats, but there will be few big headline defeats.

In the Metropolitan Boroughs, Labour may manage a small net gain in terms of seats. These were last contested in June 2004, which was a particularly poor year for Labour. Few authorities are likely to change hands, as only one third of the seats is being contested.

Last night’s by-elections saw two seats changing hands:-

Bradford MBC, Keighley West: Labour 1,819, BNP 1,216, Con, 627, LD 208. Labour gain from BNP. Clearly there was huge tactical voting from opponents of the BNP to oust their candidate, doubtless caused in part by annoyance at the sitting BNP councillor quitting and causing an unnecessary by-elections. It is notable however, that the BNP vote share, 31%, was unchanged from 2004, and may point to a high vote for that party in Bradford on May 4th.

Bracknell Forest UA: Con 921, LD 444, Lab 174, UKIP 119. An easy Conservative hold in a safe seat.

South Oxfordshire DC: Watlington; Con 737, LD 274. An easy Conservative hold.

Sunderland MBC – Millfield: LD 566, Lab 397, Con 260, BNP 79. LD hold. This will be very pleasing to the Lib Dems as the other two seats in the ward are held by Labour.

Waverley BC – Ewhurst: Ind 372, Con 360, LD 230, Lab 6(!): Ind gain from Conservative. A very curious result. Waverley is controlled by Conservatives with independent support. A Lib Dem win here would have given them control of the council. The victorious independent will be able to put either party in power on this council

Sean Fear
Sean is a Tory activist in London

Darling now favourite to be next Chancellor

Given the 0.33/1 price tag on Gordon Brown being the next Labour leader a more interesting market for those turned off by such tight prices is on who will be his replacement as Chancellor.

The above chart shows the implied probability of the two front-runners, Alastair Darling and Ed Balls based on best betting prices. Apart from a shot period immediately after David Cameron’s Tory leadership victory when George Osborne came into the frame the market has been dominated by Balls (RED) and Darling (BLUE).

In the immediate aftermath of last May’s General Election we had a good argument on the site when I suggested that Ed Balls, then an MP for less than a week, might be an interesting way of cashing in on an expected Gordon Brown promotion.

For Balls, who had been Brown’s close adviser from 1997, seemed to have a reasonable chance because of the closeness of the two men’s relationship - a view shared by punters in what, admittedly, has been a very light market.

In recent weeks, though, the sentiment has moved away from the former adviser and Alastair Darling is now the 2.4/1 favourite. The position of Balls has not been helped by his lack-lustre speaking style and the less than convincing way he has handled radio and TV interviews.

The MP for Normanton is still a back-bencher and the suggestion that he could suddenly move to one of the top job’s in Government after spending so little time in the Commons seems a big argument against. But Brown will want his close friends round him in his cabinet and Balls fits the bill.

A Balls bet at the current 3.1/1 price might just be worth a punt because there is little doubt that there’ll be big interest in his chances once Tony Blair has announced his departure date and Brown looks all set to take over. This could see the Balls price tighten sharply.

Mike Smithson

Should the “men in grey suits do their duty”?

After all the pressure on Tony Blair over the “loans for honours” row yesterday’s budget must have felt like a welcome respite. But this morning the left-wing magazine, the New Statesmen, joins the growing list of newspapers and magazines which are calling for an early Tony Blair departure.

This is not yet available online but according to Newsnight it says that “the men in grey suits must do their duty” - a suggestion that senior party members should take him aside and suggest that for the good of the party he should make way for a successor.

The programme also says that in an article in the magazine the former Young Liberal Leader, Peter Hain, suggests that the only person who is in a position to tell the Prime Minister to go is the Home Secretary, Charles Clarke.

The problem with this is that Clarke has been a long-standing opponent of Gordon Brown and it’s questionable whether he would make such a move to help the Chancellor. Clarke has also been talked of as a candidate himself though he has recently said that he would back Brown.

An intriguing thought is that if Clarke became the assassin he could put himself into contention. The Home Secretary would have done what others, including Brown, had not had the stomach for and this could be rewarded.

Everything depends on whether “the loans for honours” row burns itself out or will there be further revelations? The Sunday papers could be interesting.

On the markets the Blair’s departure date betting is After January 1 2008 3.2/1: April-June 2006 5.8/1: Oct-Dec 2006 6.6/1: Jul-Sep 2006 4.4/1. So of the 2006 departure periods July-September is favourite.

The Budget has led to no changes in the Next Labour Leader betting. Brown 0.34/1. Miliband 10/1 Johnson 22/1 Milburn 25/1 Benn 25/1 Clarke 37/1

It is very hard to see anybody but Brown doing it and as soon as there’s a whiff of Blair going that 0.34/1 price will tighten considerably. Blair is a remarkable survivor and that 3.2/! on him staying at Number 10 for another 21 months might start to be tempting. I cannot read this and am keeping my money in my pocket.

Mike Smithson

There’s been very little reaction on the various betting markets to today’s Budget. The only real movement was on the Tories for the General Election and whether Tony Blair will survive another 21 months.

As the chart illustrates the immediate reaction was that the chances of Blair staying until the end of next year declined sharply immediately after Gordon Brown sat down but prices recovered soon afterwards.

On the who will win most seats General Election market there was a slight move to the Tories.

Mike Smithson