politicalbetting.com

Who’ll be PB.C’s top forecaster of 2006?

With so many question marks hanging over the UK domestic political scene it’s is going to be quite a challenge working out what is going to happen in the next twelve months. Will Blair and Kennedy go? Who will be the new leaders? Is the poll boost for Cameron’s Conservatives just a temporary thing or will it be sustained.

All these issues and more are covered in our competition for the year which has been designed so we can see how entrants are doing as the year progresses. There will be a prize for the winner. Please post your answers in the thread below by 2359 GMT on January 3rd 2006. Include a valid email address on the comment form – this will not be published.

Please do not use this thread to post comments on the competition. This is for entries only.

As in all PB.C competitions the final decision on all matters relating to the competition is mine and I am right even when I am wrong.

1. For how many weeks of 2006 will Tony Blair continue to be Labour leader? One hundred points for a correct answer losing ten points for each complete week out.

2. For how many weeks of 2006 will Charles Kennedy continue to be Lib Dem leader? Fifty points for a correct answer losing five points for each complete week out.

3. Who will be Labour leader on Christmas Day 2006? One hundred points for a correct answer.

4. Who will be Lib Dem leader on Christmas Day 2006? Fifty points for a correct answer.

5. According to the BBC website on the Sunday after the May local elections what will be Labour’s net losses or gains of council seats? Indicate plus or minus. One hundred points for a correct answer losing one point for each three seats out.

6. According to the BBC website on the Sunday after the May local elections what will be the Liberal Democrats’ net losses or gains of council seats? Indicate plus or minus. One hundred points for a correct answer losing one point for each three seats out.

7. What will be Cameron’s Conservatives’ best position in relation to Labour in a Guardian ICM poll during 2006? Fifty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

8. What will be the Lib Dems’ best share in a Guardian ICM poll during 2006? Thirty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

9. By how many points will the Conservatives be below or above Labour in the February 2006 Guardian ICM poll? Indicate plus or minus. Fifty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

10. By how many points will the Conservatives be below or above Labour in the June 2006 Guardian ICM poll? Indicate plus or minus. Fifty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

11. By how many points will the Conservatives be below or above Labour in the September 2006 Guardian ICM poll? Indicate plus or minus. Fifty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

12. By how many points will the Conservatives be below or above Labour in the December 2006 Guardian ICM poll? Indicate plus or minus. Fifty for a correct answer losing 10 for each percentage point out.

Mike Smithson

Maybe riding to work will get his leadership back on track?

After his skirmishes with leading party MPs over the the past two weeks Charles Kennedy knows that when he returns to Westminster in the New Year he will be under the most intense scrutiny. Can he save his leadership?

With the less than ringing endorsements from the top two in the betting to replace him, Menzies Campbell (11/8) and Mark Oaten (3/1), Kennedy has to establish quickly that he’s capable of carrying on with the job. As a senior party official told me a few days ago, “It comes to something when the only MP speaking unequivocally for you is Lembit Opik“.

As well as his political capabilities there are also the question marks about his life-style and Kennedy needs to do something about those perceptions. But how can he show that he has turned over a new leaf?

An answer we suggest, and it is Christmas Eve, is that Kennedy should get a bike and start riding to work Cameron-style. He should look at the way that Cameron has used his cycling to make one political point after another.

The bike says that he’s fit and healthy whatever he might have done in his youth. It says that this guy is confident enough of himself that he does not need the trappings of office like a car to work. It also says that while others might be talking about global warming and the environment that he, in his own personal way, is doing something about it.

For a day or so Kennedy cycling to work would attract a huge amount of publicity and no doubt detractors would be saying that he was just copying Cameron. But after he got into it he would feel the real physical benefits as well as finding that a bike is probably the fastest and most stress-free way of getting about Central London.

Go on Charles – be daring – get on a bike.

After all if any party leader is to travel like this it should be the Lib Dem one.

Mike Smithson

Can the Prime Minister survive 2006?

It was Peter Oborne in the Spectator earlier in the month who observed that David Cameron and Gordon Brown had an extraordinary shared strategic purpose – they both want Tony Blair out as soon as possible.

Brown’s desire to take what he regards as rightly his is probably the most documented political drama of modern times – and the longer he has to wait the greater the chance of something going wrong. Cameron’s desire to get Blair out of the way as soon as possible so he is facing Brown is only now becoming apparent.

Martin Kettle describes it like this is today’s Guardian: “Cameron has twin tactics for making the Conservatives electable. The first is to move the Tory party from the right to the centre. This week’s Guardian poll shows just how well that is going. ..the second tactic is equally simple. It is to get Blair out as soon as possible. Early days these may be, but those Cameronian embraces of Blair have a cold logic. The aim – aided and abetted by the Daily Telegraph’s rediscovered bias – is to divide Blair from his party in the hope that a Labour revolt will clear the Tories’ most formidable foe from their path. If Blair is forced out, Cameron will paint Labour as the enemy of change and reform. He will say that the Tories are the party that can achieve what Blair failed to do. And he may very well succeed. Because important parts of that message would be true.”

The Education Bill is the current big issue and the public expressions of unease by John Prescott show the challenge facing Blair. If he waters down the Bill he gets attacked by Cameron while if he doesn’t there’s the prospect of a big Labour rebellion.

Even if the Prime Minister skirts his way round this problem then other issues will emerge and he will face the same challenge again.

But nobody ever got rich underestimating Tony Blair’s ability to survive.

Time and time again the betting markets have been indicating an early departure but each time Blair has bounced back. We’ve had going into the Iraq War without UN sanction, the Hutton Inquiry and the rebellion earlier in the year on tuition fees and in each case Blair came out on top.

For those, like me, who get pleasure in viewing politics as a spectator sport 2006 looks very promising. Will Blair survive? The form books indicates that he will but there’s a new Opposition Leader to deal with.

For betting on when Blair will go click here.

Mike Smithson

Brown succession worries cause Balls price to ease

One market we have not looked at for some time is “who will succeed Gordon Brown as Chancellor?” In one of those quirks that sometimes happen on betting markets the close Tory colleague of David Cameron, George Osborne is now 5/1.

For Osborne to be Brown’s successor Tony Blair has to continue right up to the General Election, the Tories have to win, and David Cameron has to decide to leave Osborne with the Treasury brief. You would also be locking up your money for, perhaps, four years. Just 5/1 for all of that seems ungenerous to say the least.

This seems to have been caused by a very light market and a change in sentiment about Ed Balls – former close adviser to Gordon Brown who became an MP in May. A month ago Balls had tightened to evens but he’s now moved out to 2.75/1 – probably because his future is very much linked to Brown securing the leadership and this is not quite as certain as it looked.

Balls is always popping up to give interviews when Gordon is not available which would normally seem odd for a rookie back-bencher. But Balls is no normal MP after being Brown’s closest adviser for a decade. Negatives are his hectoring style which seems stuck in the 1990s and his powers as an orator that make David Davis’s infamous Blackpool speech sound good.

Just after the General Election we suggested that the then 4.2/1 Balls price might be a better way of profiting from Brown succeeding than the odds-on price then being quoted on the Chancellor. The argument being, of course, that Brown would choose Balls to take over at Number 11. Given Gordon’s less than certain position now and Balls’s underwhelming performances anything tighter now should be avoided.

REMEMBER TO BOOK FOR THE PB.C PARTY. Saturday January 14, “Star Tavern” Belgrave Mews West, London SW1 (nearest tube Hyde Park Corner but also 10 minutes walk or an affordable taxi ride from Victoria – for those who attended the last one, it’s the same venue). Time – from 6 o’clock onwards. Please contact Innocent Abroad if you want to attend.

Mike Smithson