PaddyPower launch a weekly PMQ betting market on number of Bercow interventions.bit.ly/I8PkIO twitter.com/MSmithsonPB/st…

— Mike Smithson (@MSmithsonPB) January 14, 2013

Bet on how many times the Speaker will intervene at PMQs

One of the great problems with political betting is that there is no regular event which you can have a punt on. Almost all the markets are on things that can be months or years ahead.

In the past a number of bookies have tred to create weekly markets but none has caught on or has involved a lot of work on the part of the bookie. A couple of years Ladbrokes introduced a sort of PMQs buzz words where you bet on what the Opposition Leader’s first question would about.

I liked that but the amount of effort required by the firm in setting it up was disproportionate and it only lasted a few weeks.

Now PaddyPower has introduced a weekly John Bercow bet on how many times at PMQs he’ll intervene.

There are only two prices – whether the humber will be above a certain level or below. Initially it’s 5/6 either side of 2.5 interventions.

I like the simplicity of this and it won’t require that much regular input by the firm.

The skill is going to be in assessing the political mood. Bercow generally needs to intervene more when passions are running high. My guess is that punters will generally over-estimate the number and the value might be on the low side.

Let’s see how it develops and I for one hope that it catches on.

Mike Smithson

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ConservativeHome poll September 2009

Why’s Farage’s party so poor at the ground war?

This post has been going round my head since Thursday night’s PB party following a couple of conversations with those who were there. The first was an observation from John O, a regular since the early days of the site, about how few PBers appeared to have little direct experience of the grunt work and expertise required to win elections on the ground.

The second was with a long-standing lurker who posts only occasionally about Nigel Farage’s failure to become the first elected UKIP MP at Buckingham at the last general election – an outcome that led to my biggest losses in any seat at the general election.

Nigel Farage had resigned as leader of his party so he could devote himself full-time to fighting to win John Bercow’s seat. Because the main parties traditionally give the Speaker a clear run potential Farage backers never faced the dilemma of UKIP supporters elsewhere – that not voting Tory could help keep Gordon Brown at Number 10.

ConservativeHome ran a poll, see the panel above, which concluded that “Nearly two-thirds of Tory members would back Nigel Farage against John Bercow”.

So if ever there was a constituency that was tailor-made for a UKIP victory it was Buckingham in 2010.

They had their best-know figure as candidate, there would be few clashes of loyalty with Tory activists, and many were fired up at the prospect of bringing down Bercow.

In the end UKIP flunked it appallingly securing a pathetic 17.4% of the vote and, even worse, being pushed into third place by a former Tory MEP and prominent figure in the Pro-EU Conservative party.

This terrible result was masked by the disaster that hit Farage on election day when the light plane he was in pulling a UKIP banner crashed.

It is against the back-cloth of UKIP’s 2010 Buckingham performance that you have to judge their current opinion poll ratings. If there’s not even a basic comprehension of what it takes to win a first past the post election in a single parliamentary constituency then Westminster voting intentions matter very little.

Maybe UKIP will surprise us with a clutch of council seat gains in the local elections on May 3rd. More likely they won’t.

@MikeSmithsonOGH

Daily Star

But TMFI Sally – TMFI

Do we really want to know?

@MikeSmithsonPB

Channel 5

Has the whole business become a bit sad?

According to the Metro Sally was ‘begged by her husband to turn down the offer to appear – she didn’t.

Bercow, himself, is touring India – apparently he wants to be as far away as possible. You can see his point – in last night’s first programme in the house, she spoke about vajazzles – intimate jewellery for women’s genitals.

According to the Mirror Sally is getting £160,000 for taking part

Across the range of bookies with BB markets Sally is the hot favourite to be the “next eviction” and the best you can get is 8/13 with PaddyPower

PaddyPower seems to have taken down its markets on whether Sally would appear nude at any stage or be seen making love with another contestant.

On the political from there’s a renewal of the Bercow survival markets as speaker. Ladbrokes are offering 10/1 that he won’t last the year.

I’m not tempted by any of these.

This is all very sad.

@MikeSmithsonPB

How’s the Speaker/PM stand-off going to end?

I’m just back from the longest break I’ve had from PB since it’s establishment in 2004 and am only now catching up on what’s happened in the past week and a half.

The above encounter last Wednesday showing the readiness of the speaker to cut off the prime minister while in full flow in his final response to the opposition leader strikes me as being unprecedented which could have long lasting consequences.

Certainly the blue team, particularly those close to Number 10, are furious because interventions like this are not something that Bercow made during Gordon Brown’s final year as Prime Minister. Clearly there is little love lost between a speaker who is said for years to have harboured his own ambitions to be Tory leader and the man who is in the job.

But where do we go from here? What can Dave and his team do? Are ministers going to have to get used to a speaker being more interventionist?

For unless Bercow does something like the dressing down of Kate Hoey during the expenses row in 2009 – the action that sparked off the demise of speaker Martin – there’s unlikely to be be cross-party support for moves against him. The parliamentary arithmetic means that there’s little that the blue team alone can do.

This leaves us with the next general election which, of course, is likely to be fought with new boundaries. Could that, I wonder, provide a pre-text for the Tories to run a candidate against Bercow. I know that this is being looked at but it’s hard to see the precedent of Speaker’s being unopposed by the main parties being broken.

John Bercow could still be in the chair when David Cameron makes his last PMQ appearance whenever that will be.

Mike Smithson

x

Will he follow predecessors and stay till his mid-70s?

Last night night I took part in a PoliticsHome poll of “Westminister insiders” on John Bercow’s chances of staying in the job for this parliament.

Thinking about the question it is hard to see how he could be forced out if he was determined to stay. He’d brazen it out, surely, and it’s unlikely there would ever be a situation when a there’d be a majority of MPs willing to pass a vote of no confidence.

And in the very likely event of him remaining until the next election could he just go on and on to, say, he when was in his 70s?

The thing about Bercow is that his initial long-time political objective, to rise to a senior position in the Tory party, ended in failure. Once that became apparent he switched to pursuing the speakership and he’s not going to let that go easily.

The one thing that could stop him continuing is if his the Tories decide to break with precedent and run a candidate against him in Buckingham.

George Thomas, that great Speaker of the 1970s who came to fame when parliament was first broadcast, carried on until he was 74. Bercow is now 47 – so if he follows Thomas he’ll be stepping down in twenty seven years time – 2038.

Mike Smithson

Evening Standard website

The full feature’s out later – and it’s free

After a couple of months when there’s been much muttering at Westminster about the speaker, John Bercow, his wife, Sally, has sparked of more controversy with an interview and photo-shoot that will be appearing in full in a few hours time in the Friday magazine of the London Evening Standard.

For the “taster” on the Standard website has, not surprisingly, been getting massive coverage and, no doubt, that will continue when we see the full feature.

This is set to become one of those classic pictures that will be shown time and time again. Also of interest have been Sally Bercow’s quoted comments. She says:

“The view from Speaker’s House is incredibly sexy, particularly at night with the moon and the glow from the old gas lamps. When John and I were first courting we used to walk along the South Bank and look at the Houses of Parliament. I never realised how sexy I would find living under Big Ben with the bells chiming.”

In an interview with ES magazine, out tomorrow, she added that her 47-year-old husband’s elevation to the ancient office has made him a hit with women.

“Politicians as a breed aren’t particularly sexy but I think politics can be sexy because power is an aphrodisiac,” she said. “Since John became Speaker, the number of women who hit on him has gone up dramatically.”

So what’s this going to do to the speaker’s detractors? Is it going to fuel their fury or make their task more difficult? I think the latter. Sally is big news and anything that puts the focus on her rather than her husband will, I believe, ease the pressure on him. It’s very difficult to attack someone because of their spouse.

Last night Sally wrote on Twitter: “Oh bugger. I’ve been done up like a kipper. Mr B is going to go potty – Tis a great pic though.”

Mike Smithson

What are the chances of him actually going?

Following the growing criticism of the speaker, John Bercow, the PB thread last night and now the main Times leader this morning Ladbrokes have put up a “Will Bercow survive?” market.

The prices are: “John Bercow to leave post of Speaker in 2011″ – 3/1. “John Bercow to remain as Speaker until end 2011″ – 1/5

Certainly anger amongst Tory MPs has been growing following the incident featured in the clip above when the chief whip, ex-miner, Patrick McLoughlin, was reprimanded by Bercow after a complaint that he’d been over-helpful to Labour on a procedural issue.

I thought that McLoughlin was wrong in this instance though Bercow did himself no favours with the way he dealt with the issue.

This is from the Times leader: “When elected as Speaker in 2009, John Bercow announced: “The Speaker has a responsibility immediately and permanently to cast aside all of his or her political views.” This week it has become clear that Mr Bercow’s chosen method of casting them aside is to throw them at his opponents.

First on hunting, and then on the correct size of the House of Commons, the Speaker has given his own view on controversies that will come before the House during his tenure. This is extremely unwise…

Whatever his intent, the combination of his defiance of Conservative opinion, his questioning of government legislation and the glee he appears to take in provoking fury is inappropriate and inadvisable…. Any Speaker needs to retain the support, or at least the acceptance, of the whole House and Mr Bercow has come surprisingly close to losing it. He should take care.”

Whatever I’m not convinced that the Ladbrokes 3/1 is good value.

UPDATE: Smarkets also now have a market up. Currently it’s 35% that he’ll go with 84% that he’ll survive.

Mike Smithson