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Should Labour be further ahead in the polls?
We may be living through a volatile, unpredictable political era but there is little evidence of it in recent opinion polls. Since last June’s election, they have moved only slightly towards Labour and another snap election would likely produce a very similar result. Such is the inertia that pundits feel compelled to comment on 1%…
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Five political markets to follow in 2018
The date of the next UK General Election Whilst political betting is fast becoming a global phenomenon, nothing still quite compares to an election in the country that revolutionised it. Each of the last four years has seen a major domestic poll and our latest General Election involved a wider array of speciality markets than…
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2017 Review: The Year of the Liberal Backlash
For the third straight year, Betfair markets illustrated the new politics. Highly unpredictable, with conventional wisdom in crisis and unprecedented volatility. We have seen an outsider, with no party infrastructure, gatecrash the French presidency. The Democrats won Alabama. And Jeremy Corbyn came within a few constituencies of pulling off the greatest upset in the history…
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Is politics now inherently unpredictable?
I was recently privileged to join a distinguished panel for the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute, at Cambridge University, discussing the future of politics. In response to the question raised by this title, here’s my essay. Politics has only become uncertain because the rules of the game have changed In order to predict the future…
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Centrists may be homeless but tainted Lib Dems won’t fill the vacuum
Struggling to find a talking point to take from last week’s Lib Dem conference, much of the media opted to focus on perhaps the ultimate example of what The Independent’s Jon Rentoul would call a QTWAIN – could Vince Cable become the country’s next PM? The BBC’s Question Time even devoted ten minutes to the…
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Five reasons to back Labour for the next election
After 18 months of relentless political drama, generating the biggest ever betting markets in our medium, the summer has felt slightly weird. Sure, there are ongoing Brexit negotiations, rumours of Tory leadership bids and daily Donald Trump developments but, on the political betting front, it has been relatively quiet. That’s because long-term markets will always…
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Why Tories should fear Momentum’s rapid rise
Piece by piece, the British Election Study is revealing the explanations behind our earthquake election, from the profile and churn of voters since 2015 to the issues that most concerned them. These most authoritative findings will be pored over by every party strategist and shape the way they respond to, or spin, policies such as…
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Five ways conventional wisdom has broken down
As recently as 2014, political betting was arguably the most reliable market for favourite-backers. Suddenly it’s become a haven for historic upsets. Anyone who thought 2016 was a freak year got a rude awakening last month. Based on their respective positions at the start of each campaign, Labour denying a Conservative majority was a bigger…
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Where next for the troubled Tories?
If the markets are to believed, the uncertainty and speculation will soon be over. The Next Government is rated 92% likely to be a Conservative Minority with Theresa May a 94% chance to be Prime Minister of it. Whether, after five massive political betting upsets in the space of two years, you regard betting markets…
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General Election 2017: Final predictions
When Theresa May called this election seven weeks ago, the overwhelming consensus predicted a landslide victory. Any non-partisan voices suggesting Labour could put up a fight, let alone deny the Tories a majority, were extremely hard to find. Yet here we are on election eve and there are plenty of punters willing to stake sizeable…